Hey everybody,
I really appreciate your all’s thoughts! I’ve put everyone’s replies that I’m responding to below.
In what way did a God [or whatever you are calling a God] speak to them? through dreams, drugs or what?
I don't see how you can make statements that have no meaning and still expect people to follow your reasoning?
to say "God spoke to our forefathers" is a meaningless statement and tells us nothing.
Seeing as your foundation is atheism, of course this doesn’t make sense to you. If I didn’t believe in blenders and you started talking about what all blenders can do, I would think you are crazy too. For people of faith, we read the Bible or are just going through normal everyday life when we have ideas, images, or thoughts pop into our minds. We choose to believe that God uses these ideas, images, or thoughts to speak to us. God isn’t “speaking” to us in the audible sense. In the same way, God “spoke” to our forefathers. I hope this helps.
P.S. – I’m glad to see that there are atheists on these forums to keep us Christians honest. Thanks for your feedback.
Practical-Christianity said: I struggled with reconciling the science of creation/evolution with Genesis for a long time.
Why? I never understood the problem with this that so many people have. A lot of atheists think that because the creation story doesn't match data the whole Bible is wrong, and it seems that many Christians think that if the science got proven right, then they can't believe in God and Jesus anymore. But why?
I'm not a believer myself, but it isn't because the creation story doesn't match up to our scientific findings. If we could prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our universe popped into existence, and then over time abiogenesis occurred, that moved forward through evolution, it still wouldn't be evidence that there is no God, in my opinion. Why does God have to be so direct as he seems to be in Genesis? Why not set things in motion knowing full well what your actions will result in eventually? Unless the only evidence you have for God is that there is a lack of an explanation as to how things came to be, i.e. you only believe in God because you will only believe in a God of the Gaps, then it shouldn't be a problem for you either.
Here is a quote from Part 2 of my series which I believe encapsulates exactly why so many of us have a hard time with evolution and creation:
In the beginning... God created Adam and Eve. (Gen. 1:1, 1:7, 1:22)
We think...
Except, what if God never created Adam and Eve? What if we evolved from other life forms, like science seems to claim?
Does that mean Genesis is wrong?
And if Genesis is wrong, are other parts of the Bible are wrong too? Like, the parts about Jesus?
And if the Bible is wrong about Jesus, isn't my faith based on a lie?
There are a lot of Christians that do believe that God set everything up in the very beginning and hit the start button. I adhere to this belief. I don’t think it is a god-of-the-gaps approach but rather a reasonable explanation for how things came to be. I don’t think it is any less reasonable of a position than thinking that our universe popped into existence from nothing, as physicist Lawrence Krauss believes. I’ll be talking more about this in Parts 6 and 7 in my series.
Hello Stephen,
So as not to repeat ad nauseam what others have already said, I'll just say: I'm hitch'n a ride on the BioLogos train, and you're welcome to climb aboard! For me, it has always been the "practical" thing to do.
And welcome to CF!!
Peace
2PhiloVoid
Thanks 2PhiloVoid! Yea, BioLogos has been awesome. Francis Collins’ (founder of BioLogos) book, the Language of God, was what kept me from going full agnostic or atheism. My only issue there was that there aren’t enough specifics on how Genesis really is a polemic. There are certainly some great articles by Peter Enns, etc. From the science perspective, it seems like they’ve got some really great resources. Just not as much on the Genesis interpretation side.
It is interesting to me that people look to so many places to find out the 'hidden meanings' and scientific 'proof' to understand the writings of the Bible while, by doing so, they are totally ignoring the simple truth you get just by believing what is written in the first place.
If you need proof to believe then you have no faith to begin with. Faith is not blind, it is believing.
Blessings,
Alan
Alan, I wish I could just simply believe. If you read Part 1 of my series, you will see that I simply wasn’t able to believe in God and pray/worship without feeling like a fraud. For example, I believe that evolution is true. There is just too much scientific evidence for me to deny it. But I also believed that Genesis was in direct contradiction to evolution.
Therefore, how could I simply “believe what is written in the first place?” I had to throw out one or the other unless I just wanted to fake my way through it, which I could not do. So I would say it is not a matter of having enough faith in my case. Also, I am not looking for “hidden meanings” or anything like that. I want to know what the Biblical authors really meant when they wrote it; not what I interpret it to mean without context of their history, etc. That is what leads me to the polemic interpretation.
You wrote on your blog : I won’t bore you with a laundry list of my research methods but suffice it to say that I have spent somewhere in the ballpark of 80-100 hours researching this topic. But most importantly, I’ve looked at all sides of the arguments with an open mind.
I don't want to be offensive but put things in a perspective here. I am sure this is quite some time invested on your behalf but you have to realize when it come to scientific topics, 100 hours is a drop in the ocean. A typical undergraduate student will spend about 5000 hours just learning the basic stuff in his or her field. That time does not account for high school education, prep. courses, etc nor does it include the time for post graduate studies, such as master or a doctors exam. I am not saying you wrote that to impress, clearly you did not, but still - considering what I just written - to me it is not an impressive amount of time you spent looking into this, considering that and expert in the field typically spends somewhere around 100 times more time (i.e. ~5-6 years full time work v.s. 2 weeks) learning a subject - and then only focused on one or very few narrow questions in his or her field. And when we talk about gray haired and bald guys like Coyne we talk about people that spent around up to 100 thousand hours on these subjects... Therefore, based on how much there is to know and learn, I would say it is virtually impossible to have looked (and understood) "all sides of the argument" in just 100 hours, no matter how open minded one are.
Yea, definitely agreed that 100 hours doesn't even compare to a true expert in the field. I think the piece you are missing is that my 100 hours’ worth of studying was not based on a “first principals” method where I learn science and Biblical studies from the ground up. Rather, my 100 hours was spent understanding the conclusions that people like Coyne have reached after their thousands of hours’ worth of research. I don't hold myself out to be an expert but that doesn't mean I can't talk about it and reach compelling conclusions.
My point about seeing “all sides of the argument” is simply a way of communicating that I kept an open mind about the various arguments I ran across and that I do believe I was able to see most of the spectrum of belief on the subject. My point there wasn’t to say that I see and fully understand every argument and all of their facets.
What I ran into a lot in studying the interpretation of Genesis was people that weren’t willing to even entertain the idea that Genesis could be interpreted differently than what they believed.
I didn't read the whole article yet, but wanted to say amen to the polemic idea. In fact, my husband and I have been saying this for years and the book, "The Genesis Record" really opened my eyes to what Genesis really does say, vs. what we are taught it says.
I was on these boards once talking about how Genesis isn't a scientific treatise but a polemic and the main opposition was an evolutionist theist. We ended up starting a whole nother thread to discuss it and that poster couldn't get past what beginning is referring to in order to deal with the whole idea of a polemic, which is very sad indeed. Bravo, now to read the article.
Thanks Razzelflabben! I will have to check out that book as I didn’t run across it in my studies. I’m going to post an excerpt from Part 4 of my series which – in my mind – puts to rest whether Genesis in a polemic or not. Hope it helps!
