10 dangers of theistic evolution

[Willtor]

I understand the difference.

However, if we are back at the common point of cleavage where we have to decide which prevails -- the witness of scripture or the witness of science regarding Gen. 1 to 3 concepts, how is it that we draw this line so neatly?

We kind of had an agreement to disagree on such matters, until the trash talk above.

Certainly if we accept evolutionary theory, we have a neat boundary as you suggest. This is possible because we overlook the conflict between certain theologies and the fundamental consensus and assumptions of several scientific disciplines. We just take that a priori as a boundary that scripture cannot cross. And scripture will not cross it as long as much of it remains metaphor.

But, we are left with a messy and ragged interpretive boundary with scripture, ie, more than it would otherwise be from simply wrestling the the text itself. The metaphorical interpretation presumes to neaten things up by making the hard parts fiction.

Its not like I don't already know what lots of people here think of my theology. So attaching a few barbs to that point doesn't change anything. And it doesn't change the nature of that fundamental cleavage.

LW's retributive model for expressing disagreement assumes I care but doesn't ever address the fundamental conflict, other than to assume he has the right to call a philosophical difference a lie. And I have no problem establishing again the boundary in theologies.

And, as I pm'd you, I appreciate your inquisitive and unassuming tone -- ie, anticipating that there is common ground to be found and that no offense was intended. I am responding to you, because there is just so little dialogue here.

Wrestling with the text, itself, was actually how I came to a non-literal reading.

At the time I was a YEC. But I had become so firm in my thoughts from reading the YEC scientists that it wasn't an issue that concerned me, anymore. Then I read a treatment of the fall account that blew my mind. The author was taking the account largely figuratively, but it didn't contradict a literal reading. It just surprised me that in all the defense of Genesis that I had never heard some of these things.

At a later time I was reading up on Trinitarianism and I started reading ancient sources that called elements of the Genesis account figurative that I had thought were necessarily literal. As I found, there were ancients who read Genesis literally and there were ancients who didn't. They seemed to disagree with one another and defended their points but it didn't seem to be an issue of whether Scripture was authoritative. Merely in what way the Genesis narrative was best taken.

Science in general and evolution in particular came later. But at that point, they were exclusively contending with YEC science and my reading of Genesis didn't enter into it.

Now, I understand that the point of contention, here, is what role science should play in biblical hermeneutics (if I'm mistaken, please correct me). I would contend that nothing of what Scripture teaches should be taken to imply scientific facts. This comes from the process of studying Scripture and striving to understand what is intended, passage by passage. One day, a new mode of knowledge may come along, and our descendants will be tempted to take the Scriptures to speak to that. Only, if we had anything to say about it, we would be much more cautious and say that was never something we could have gotten out of the text, and we think that the text was as meant for us as it will be for them.

One asks about science and what it has to say about something like the resurrection. A glib forensic scientists might look at the empty tomb and say that there is no evidence that Christ ever died at all. But being that we contend that this was a supernatural event, we say that the physical consequences are the same: a thing that the forensic scientist will easily grant. He may argue that it isn't parsimonious, but that's all he can say unless he intends to speak philosohpically. And if he does, then let the discussion revolve around philosophy, not science. After all, we aren't contending science when we speak of the resurrection. We don't build alternative models for life and death because of it. On the contrary, we relish the fact that this is not a natural matter.