So basically, just like “creation science” this view requires everyone else to be wrong about almost everything, not just in biology, chemistry, physics, and geology, but also archaeology, ancient history, biblical scholarship, and even Greek/Hebrew translation. And it requires reading into the Genesis accounts facts and information that would never have been understood by the original audience, indeed never understood by anyone up until now, and then only by your select group. Doesn’t it require an amazing amount of hubris and self-delusion to believe you have nailed it where so many others have “failed”?
2 Likes
The Bible is reliable because there really was a great flood around 12,000 years ago? This kind of assessment, along with Rohl’s always seems ironic to me:
Rohl says the Bible can reliably tell us about the Exodus once we totally revise the Biblical Chronology?
Does Rohl still place the Exodus as BEFORE the Hyksos expulsion? Devising ways to change the Chronology of the Bible so that we don’t have to change OTHER parts of the Bible seems pretty confusing …
I’ve been following the comments since I posted my blog, both here on the BioLogos page and also on my Facebook page and on other Facebook pages which have shared the post. I added a comment to one of these pages, where the discussion was becoming a bit heated. It might be relevant to repeat it here:
Perhaps I should make it clear that my BioLogos blogs are not written to try and convince anyone who is adamantly opposed to my views. I have been both a philosopher and a teacher for long enough to know that two people with adamantly divergent positions who simply want to win an argument can’t have a genuine conversation.
I am writing for those who want a genuine conversation, where all conversation partners respect the others. I’m especially addressing those who both trust the Bible as the source of revelation and who also
want to take science seriously. Among such persons are those like myself who wonder about some points of seeming tension between what we take the Bible to be saying and what science seems to be saying.
So my blog postings are not apologetics for a particular position. They are meant to help those who want to think with me on these issues. If you’re not open to the conversation, there is no need to read on.
I have to admit that I find grandstanding and absolutist claims to be right quite unhelpful. Of course we all think we are right (unless we have some genuine perplexity about an issue). The question is can we listen (genuinely listen) to another point of view, including why the person holds that point of view?
So if you really want to think with me about, for example, how the understanding of God’s creation of the cosmos (heaven and earth) in Genesis 1 and other biblical texts relates to the scientific picture of a
very ancient and immensely large universe (the topic of my next BioLogos blog), tune in Tuesday, July 19, when my exploration of this topic will be posted on the BioLogos website.
1 Like
Another replacement? You are late to the party, because Reality R and D paid us a visit and has already replaced Evolution. To quote from their website,
DARWIN REPLACEMENT through ATOMIC BIOLOGY proposed by Reality R&D Inc.
But these things happen fairly regularly.
Seriously?
Drat! I was finally getting really good with the old paradigm. And nobody bothered to include me in the memo. I’m feeling very left out and in the dark.
It is amazing that the Theory of Evolution survived a century and a half of falsification testing and then suddenly some not yet published falsification is going to be announced at a meeting in the UK. Is it entirely bypassing the peer-review process? Will there be a live interview with the alien who seeded life on earth and planted the deceptive evidence for evolutionary processes?)
Honestly, I sometimes have a hard time determining whether a tongue-in-cheek comment has flown over my head. I guess emoticons really do help resolve ambiguities at times like this.
Yes. Exactly.
If you are referring to the Royal Society meeting, you are incorrect. The purpose of that conference is not to replace evolution with something else, but to discuss whether some accounts of how evolution works need to be replaced by other accounts.
No one is wrong, and everyone is wrong. It’s called hypothesis testing, and it is the natural state of science. Genesis gives us some incredible information about the Big Bang and the nature of dark matter (Gen 1:2). Take for example “the earth was formless and void”, wahaerets tohu wabohu in the Hebrew, which is routinely hashed out in commentaries as vague reference to a formless substance. But in physics we say the difference between a liquid and a solid is that a liquid “takes the form of its container”. Likewise we say that the difference between a gas and a liquid is the density–a gas is several orders of magnitude less dense than a liquid. So what else could “formless and void” mean but “gaseous”?
This is why Genesis is science. Because it uses technical language with specific, observational meaning. If we have not understood it in the past, perhaps it was because we didn’t expect technical and scientific terms. A similar argument can be shown for “firmament” or “raqiya” in the Hebrew. Replace the usual dictionary meaning (which is vague because no one really knows) with the phrase “gravitational potential”, and the entire Genesis passage makes perfect sense, discussing the evolution of galaxies out of gaseous nebulae.
Now is this hubris? Do I think I am the only one with hidden gnostic wisdom? Of course not! It’s called “a hypothesis”, and we can line up our ducks and fight it out with your ducks, and may the best ducks win. But don’t confuse that with gnosis. That’s what theologians and metaphysicians do.
Nor should you think that a majority of scientists who agree on some hypothesis make it a “fact”. It’s called a “working hypothesis” and at any time it might stop working. Ditto for Hebrew lexicon entries. They are all “working hypotheses” and some work better than others. Don’t Hebrew scholars know this better than physicists? Of course, and among Talmudic scholars such an approach is called “midrash”, because the text is sacred, but not the interpretation. It is only us Christians who do not work in original languages who think the translation, the dictionary, the “meaning” is sacred–all other religions will tell you it is the original text itself and not the meaning that is sacred.
Finally, why should the original audience understand everything? And do we even know who the original audience was? I deliver papers at scientific meetings and I assure, there are papers that the original audience has no idea what is being said. This is the natural state of affairs. Did anyone understand Augustine when he said that God created time and space? But what happened when Einstein said it 1500 years later? And did Einstein understand all the ramifications of his own work? Most certainly not, or else he wouldn’t have wasted 40 more years trying to get a unified theory out of it.
So let us put aside any pretense to knowing “right” and “wrong” interpretations. They are all right, and all wrong. Let us instead focus our attention on what explanatory power can be gained from the different interpretations. At least then we are on the side of the Talmud.
Read David Rohl, or watch his movies. Very enjoyable and very instructive.
A flood at 9590 BC lines up with Plato, with Gilgamesh, with Rig Veda, with Egyptian Pyramid Texts, with Nordic myth so it is textually satisfying. It also lines up with Greenland ice cores, Black Sea mud cores, mud cores from the bed of the Med, mud cores from North Carolina and Maryland coasts, coral cores from Polynesia, and Antarctic ice cores. Not to leave genetics out of it, it also lines up with genetic history of paleolithic man in Europe and the Middle East. Honestly, I have almost too much confirmation than too little, which is when we start using the Flood to fine tune the dates of the cores.
Thanks Eddie! You said it so well. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!
This “soft-sell” is insulting to intelligent Christians. The deceptive equation of single-cell-origin theories, and Darwin’s theories of speciation, with “science” is misleading, and likely a deliberate sleight of hand to pass off numerous theories involving evolution, under one term “evolution,” as the single flagship of “science.” That’s a falsehood.
Hi there Thomas,
Welcome to the Forum. I haven’t seen you on here before.
When you’re responding to a long article (one that kicks off a series, no less) and a far longer comment thread, it can be helpful to cite what bits you’re responding to. You should be able to use the “Blockquote” function to do this. Without this it’s hard for others on the Forum to interact with your comments.
I skimmed the article and didn’t see any evidence of the author having conflated the things you said were being conflated, but it’s likely I’m missing something.
Also, just a thought from the peanut gallery: It’s not very gracious to accuse your dialogue partners of deliberately lying. I presume you don’t like it when others do that to you.
Grace and peace,
AMW
As a moderator, will echo what @AMWolfe said regarding implying others intent is less than honest. Also, it is unlikely the original posters are interested in rehashing a year old post, if they are still around.
If you have issues with something, it may be better to define the issue in a new post with arguments supporting your line of reasoning on the subject, again, without personal attack.
1 Like
What a sad perspective.
If parents raise a kid (who is not biologically theirs) and their kid misunderstands them and believes he was biological, is the current relationship and love gone somehow?
Was Obi-Wan Kenobi lying when he said Luke’s dad was dead? He thought so when he interpreted it wrong.
The creation account does not make one iota of a difference in the love and righteousness God has for us and demonstrated through His one and only Son, Jesus.
My God is bigger than the Bible, His truths go far beyond words on paper. He can and does use words on paper and words of man as a tool to communicate to us, but that is certainly not the only way, nor is He confined to either.
The wages of sin is death. Are you a sinner? Are you dead? Oh, you mean you can use other parts of the Bible to understand other parts? Aka Hermeneutics…
So what about Psalms 91:4? Do you suppose God is a winged creature?
Isaiah 68:4? Are we literally clay?
It’s not a “special interpretation”, but the Bible clearly uses metaphors and parables in it to make points.
There are 4 different accounts with 80 chapters and many more in the rest of the NT confirming this and arguably hundreds of other OT passages written about Jesus’s life.
There are only a few chapters which aren’t referenced very much throughout the rest of the Bible on that account, and when the do reference it, there is just that God was the Creator, not length of time or process.
Not really apples to apples comparison…
Ok. I don’t think anyone who is an EC proponent will argue this verse. Nor does it say anything about evolution or 6 days…
It says God created the universe, humans sinned against Abel and Zachariah. We agree.
Something most EC believes in too.
Are you just trolling? Or are you genuinely searching for the truth?
Edit: whoops, this got bumped. I didn’t realize this was a year old.
1 Like
Since Darwin didn’t know the existence of DNA, it’s difficult to make a complete presentation of Evolution without, at some point, introducing the concept and machinery of genetics.