I have mulled over the responses I’ve gotten in this thread. In summary, I’d have to say that I have received very little that I feel has gotten me closer to an answer. I say this not to be critical, but simply to acknowledge the reality that if there is a consensus, or majority, view among BioLogos responders to my question it is that there is no need to answer my question - that is, there is no need to provide a reconciliation of the Bible and evolution because there is no conflict between the Bible and evolution. If you doubt this, go back and read the first couple of answers to my question and, especially, the group that runs from, roughly, 264 to 270.
If my question is deemed superfluous in this context, I don’t know if it makes sense to continue pressing for answers to it here.
The text is quite clear… it quotes these words from Yahweh himself.
Using the same standards as those you apply to Genesis, how would you know that Yahweh is speaking figuratively?
No one knew for sure what was in the realms of outer space until the invention of radar… or maybe not even until a human made it into orbit!
Conversely, I think we can be absolutely sure that the ancient readers of Job would have interpreted these verses as literally true. In fact, these texts are in the midst of a long chain of texts demonstrating Job’s ignorance of the mysteries of the Cosmos!
It would be quite exceptional for God to mock Job about his ignorance regarding something that wasn’t even real!!
BOOK OF JOB : Chapter 38
Job 38:1 Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind. He [Yahweh] said:
Job 38:2 Who is this who obscures My counsel with ignorant words?
Job 38:3 Get ready to answer Me like a man; when I question you, you will inform Me.
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Job 38:4 Where were you when I established the earth?
Job 38:6 What supports its foundations? Or who laid its cornerstone…
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Job 38:7 while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?..
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Job 38:12 Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place…
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Job 38:22 Have you entered the place where the snow is stored? Or have you seen the storehouses of hail,
Job 38:23 which I hold in reserve for times of trouble, for the day of warfare and battle…
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As you can see… the snow & hail reference is just one of many references in this chapter that are literally incorrect in view of modern science, but impossible to for anyone of that time to know!
The author of Genesis could see the earth, sun and moon move and described what he saw. That is why you can accept that. However the author could not see any indication of evolution or the extreme age of the earth so you will not find anything in Scripture that would refer to this. You are holding to an extreme standard of what you expect to find in Scripture and I don’t think anybody is going to be able to satisfy that standard for you. You need to consider what you want to find and can the Bible supply that answer. And don’t fall back on “Well God could have provided the answer” when there is so much other information that is not provided.
I don’t see that you are really seeking information. You are issuing a challenge and not quite engaging with those who are trying to respond constructively.
You say that you have “…received very little that I feel has gotten me closer to an answer.”
But you have provided the answer on your own in a separate posting:
Unlike Genesis, Job explicitly states that it is quoting God. And you have awarded his divine declamations as “figurative speech”. There are no real warehouses or treasuries of snow and hail in the sky.
You have provided no method for clearly distinguishing Yahweh’s speech in Job as in any important way different from the reportage of Yahweh’s speech in Genesis.
The conclusion is obvious: God is using figurative speech when he describes 6 days of creation - - in the same way when he says snow and hail are “stored” in orbit around the Earth.
You may not want to accept your own words and your own logic - - but there it is for all to behold. You should write a column about your discovery.
[quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:5, topic:36078”]
When I say “ostensibly clash” I mean that both give explanations of how the world of which we are a part came to be…and the two explanations differ in several material ways - at least at first glance. For example, evolution says that “creation” is still taking place while the Bible says (whether you take “day” to mean 24 hours or eons of time) that creation has been completed.[/quote]
This is where you are being polemic.
Evolution doesn’t “say” anything. People say things. You are, IMO for polemic reasons, conflating the phenomenon of evolution with the mechanistic aspects of evolutionary theory.
Even if evolution says this, the evidence says that creation is still occurring. This is why you go to the polemic of “evolution says.”
Again, the evidence says that.
Once again, evolutionary theory does not require a single, original, living thing. It’s looking like there was a lot of horizontal transmission early on, not just vertical. That doesn’t effect most of the organisms polemicists are concerned with, though.
[quote]You might then ask, “Well, why can’t you just accept the clash and live with it?” My answer is that creation is not a minor issue in the Bible. It sits right there in, arguably, the most prominent place in the Bible and is referred to throughout the rest of it. I don’t know how to ignore its claims…or the conflict that occurs when compared to the claims of evolution.
[/quote]You’re conflating mostly facts of evidence with “claims” of something that as a phenomenon, can’t claim a thing.
My previous polemics were sincere, and my current non-polemical inquiry is sincere. As I’ve said, you can either view my activity here as a weak moment of my faith, or an appropriate humbling of my prior attitude. Either way, my current inquiry is sincere. If, however, after multiple explanations and assurances from me, you still do not accept my inquiry here as sincere, then perhaps it would be best for me to abandon this thread.
Please go back and re-read the second paragraph of the original question I asked and which launched this topic. Saying that one is going to interpret Genesis 1 figuratively can be the beginning of reconciling the Bible and evolution - it cannot be the reconciliation itself. To do that, one must actually give the figurative explanation. If you need an example of this, check out the explanation Jesus gave of the parable of the sower and the seed.
I am not being polemic. To be polemic would be to set the Bible and evolution in opposition to each other and then push one side of the argument or the other. I am merely saying that they conflict with one another and I am asking how other people have resolved that conflict.
Now, you may be one of the many people in this forum who say that there is no conflict between the Bible and evolution. I don’t understand how anyone can say this. Yet I won’t doubt your sincerity. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t doubt mine.
Thank you very much for your feedback. The key point I was trying to make is that if you read the sequence of the events in the Bible, other men and women are created prior to Adam and Eve and if you remove the link of Adam and Eve being the first Homo sapiens, then you remove the conflict with evolution.
I will use your feedback to try and improve the second edition, thank you again!
So, then, how is it that you can conclude that God is being figurative about snow and hail?
Your statement “cannot be the reconciliation itself. To do that, one must actually give the figurative explanation.”
So what is your figurative explanation for why God tells Job that if he hasn’t seen the treasuries of snow and hail, how can he presume to be as wise as God himself?
How is this section of Job different from Genesis?
I. God speaks in both sections.
2. God uses plain words in both chapters; plain words that would be easily understood in just one or two different ways.
3. Indeed, there is even less “wiggle room” in the Job discussion than there is in Genesis - - because Psalms actually talks about God’s concept of Time being very different from the human concept of time. I know of no Biblical text that explains God’s concept of snow and hail is vastly different from the human concept of precipitation!
What would be the equivalent conundrum in Job? Do you presume to suggest that God’s idea of “cold storage” is sublimely different from the human awareness of “cold storage”? Is God describing some incredibly subtle metaphysical property of “snow and hail” - - that Job could not hope to understand about “snow and hail”.
You have laid out the rules… and you are trapped by them.
You are an honest man. Simply say here and now, that you don’t have any good way to explain why Job is justifiably more figurative than Genesis.
Just admit it. And we will all marvel at the words of an honest man.
You think that God doesn’t know how He makes snow and hail?
I am asking you for your figurative explanation of Genesis 1. Instead of giving it to me, you ask me for my figurative explanation of Job. Do you have a figurative explanation of Genesis 1 which works with evolution? If so, please give it; otherwise, please stop adding bloat to the discussion.
It has become clear to me that it is time to close this topic. (Some of you would say past time - ) Therefore, this will be my last post on it.
That said, I have learned enough from the interaction here to ask a related question, but one that has a much narrower focus. It is about reconciling creatio continua with Genesis 2:1-3 and, if you’re interested, you can find it here.
The following question is asked with complete and total sincerity:
How can you expect us to formulate an answer to your question (which many suspect is impossible to satisfy) if you don’t demonstrate the ability to formulate an answer to a verse that you think is ‘Obviously Different’ (I.e., easier to explain!).
Your ongoing failure to demonstrate that your type of question can be answered (with an easier text no less!) is the clincher evidence (!) … that you have indeed posed an impossible question!
Of course! I was just trying to illuminate why natural history is a reasonable and accurate term to use.
The Bible is, perhaps, about how to be human. It’s not about how we became human. It summarizes many things not relevant to the main purpose of the text, or does not mention them at all. Just from reading the Bible, would we have any idea that we are made up of cells, and that these cells have mitochondria and nucleii with DNA in them, and cell membranes and ribosomes and the endoplasmic reticulum? Of course not. All that stuff is left to human ingenuity and perseverance to find out about.
But the Bible tells us not to fall into goofy superstitious explanations, not to worship pagan gods or golden calves or other false idols. It tells us to see reality as it is, not as we would like it to be. And it tells us to be honest with ourselves and others when we seek truth, and without that, how far would science ever have gotten? Even if someone figured out something brilliant, it’s worth nothing if others refuse to see it as true and pass it on.
The Bible doesn’t tell us how many planets there are or the structure of an atom. Nobody expects it to. It would be bizarre if it did.
There are interesting questions in this day and age about what kinds of questions are best solved by computers vs. what kinds of questions the human brain still outperforms computers in. I do not think it is simple hubris to put higher value on the kinds of thinking that a computer cannot do for you, easily or at all. And I think the wisdom of the Bible—the kinds of things God would consider it important to convey—falls almost entirely on this higher, more complex, non-computational level. I think trying to apply nitpicky factoid-based error-searching the way we critique a science paper is so totally pointless and counterproductive to actually getting anything out of the Bible that you might as well be trying to use a jet engine for brain surgery. It’s nothing against jet engines, which are marvels of engineering, and it’s not that we shouldn’t be trying to do brain surgery, either. It’s about recognizing appropriate tools for the job.
I think the ancient Hebrews who wrote the Bible did a remarkably good job of not including a lot of fanciful myths which we know were floating around neighboring cultures at the time. And yet they weren’t perfect, and God didn’t try to make them write like they were all-knowing: that would be ridiculous. Early Genesis in particular is obviously something that went through many generations of (likely oral) transmission before being written down by Moses or even later writers, not something recorded by any human who had any reason to be there. And yet apart from the sea monsters, the talking snake, and the flaming sword—
Ok, I just talked myself out of the argument I was about to make.
Instead, let’s say you take a poll of reputable biologists on the subject of whether snakes can talk. Nearly all of them agree that snake dentition, oral structure, and vocal cords (not to mention brains) are totally unsuitable for talking. Do you:
A. Conclude that the biologists are part of an atheist conspiracy,
B. Conclude that the Bible is wrong and you must become an atheist,
C. Conclude that anything is possible with a miracle from God,
D. Conclude that it is a figurative snake, or
E. Conclude that it is a figurative snake and also it is the Devil.
Here’s the great part about this example: nobody needed modern biologists to tell them that snakes can’t, as a rule, talk, so theologians have a well-established tradition in place that it was not a simple, ordinary snake. We are used to this ‘conflict’ and everybody’s pretty much fine with it.
Ancient Greek science and the early church fathers supposed that future generations were all miniaturized and contained in semen. So it made sense to them that when Adam sinned, we all sinned “in him.” Modern explanations of original sin would do better to reject the biological, genetic idea of sin entirely. Sin is something you do, not something you are.
And the opportunity for sin coincided exactly with the opportunity or capacity for us to be good: for us to be gardeners for God, to care for and cultivate the tree of knowledge, and ultimately to look at and fully absorb what good and evil are, and to choose between them. That didn’t go well the first time around. It continued not going well until Jesus, as the Bible documents extensively. It’s hard to see what relevance the question of whether God made us out of monkeys or mud has to the point of the story.
Adam was called to a higher purpose than his neighbors by God. After an unspecified but presumably short period of time, he fudged it up and lost all opportunity for Life. His descendants continued in cycles of successes and failures, and got thoroughly mixed together with everybody else.
I think the original impetus for seeing Gen 1&2 as the same story probably had a lot to do with wanting to make the theological point that all humans are related to each other and that sin (and the need for redemption) is universal to the human condition. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we can still arrive at those conclusions without the belief that Adam and Eve are the sole progenitors of the human race. I think science amply demonstrates the relatedness of all humans, and if you believe in sin at all, that, too, has pretty plainly spread univerally, even without being genetically transmittable.
I feel a bit as though I’m swinging in the dark, trying to guess what specific things in Genesis you’re hanging up on currently, but this post has gotten more than long enough and I see you’ve started a new thread now, so I will conclude that means it’s time for me to be done with it and hit post.
I feel like a man accused of racism - it’s one of those charges that can stick even when there’s no merit to it.
Are you really suggesting that “unfiltered evidence” resides only on one side of the argument. It is my perception that scientists are interpreting physical data and exegetes are interpreting biblical data. Both sets of data are being mediated to us.
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding you. If so, please give me another explanation of your thinking - only please don’t tell me again that you know better what I’m thinking than I do.
) Therefore, this will be my last post on it.