That's fine by me Vance. You are allowed to believe what you like about the Bible. But... my point is to take it as it was intended by the authors. And so I agree with you that particular interpretations of the Bible are being believed here. However, I do not see the interpretation I hold to as being my own. I see it (the interpretation) as being a contextually accurate rendering of Bible truth and the history it contains.
Yes, please, let's take it as intended by the authors. And that is as a figurative, symbolic and typological account of past events, and NOT as a historical literal narrative. That is a point agreed to by nearly every scholar of the ANE, and I have written a post on this very point elsewhere. So, if you are serious about determining what the original authors intended, you need to provide me with some actual historical/cultural/literary evidence that they would have intended it to be read the way you read it.
Once again, it is not 'my' interpretation. Many others believe as I do, and others now dead have done so.
Well, yes, it is your interpretation since it is the one, among a few different options, that YOU choose. I am not saying that no one else agrees with you, only that there is a subjective choice being made by you, and you are fallible. As are we all. So, it is not you defending Scripture and others attacking it. It is you defending your choice and others defending their choice. It is vitally important to keep that clearly in mind since creationists have the horrible habit of painting themselves somehow as the defenders of Scripture against other Christians who want to water it down. This, of course, is simply not the case.
Sir, I do not see your POV of scripture as being accurate since I do not have to try to reconcile the Bible with evolution.
You seem to forget that I arrived at my decisions regarding how to read Genesis before I even accepted the evidence for evolution, while I was still a YEC. In fact, it was when I realized that the Bible did not say exactly one way or the other HOW God made things, or WHEN, that I was able to look at the evidence without any particular bias. And, without such a bias, the evidence is overwhelming.
And so you were looking for ways to harmonise the world's understandings with Scripture. That sounds like compromise to me.
No, that is not true. See above.
But, regardless, do you not think there is EVER a case in which a faulty reading of Scripture could be corrected by more complete evidence from the natural world? Of course you do! And you would make exactly that argument to any geocentrist you came across who would be arguing that YOU were compromising with "atheistic" science by accepting heliocentrism.
I have also reviewed the scientific evidence currently available, and I still find no reason to abandon the position I hold to.
Then I would suggest that you have not looked at the evidence closely enough, or objectively enough. If I had to guess, I would say that most of your review has been through creationist sources. Just a guess, but past experience tells me it is highly likely. Remember, getting information about evolution from a creationist source is like getting information about Christianity from an atheist source.
Scripture says, in the beginning. This is 'when'. The 'how' is answered by God simply speaking things into existence.
Yes, all it says in "in the beginning", that is what we get for the WHEN. We do not get whether that was billions of years ago or a few thousand. That part of the WHEN is left entirely unstated. And, yes, the HOW is just that: God speaking things into existence. What we don't have is exactly whether that means instantaneous creation of all that exists or describing, in powerful and evocative language, the use of a process or development over time. Augustine thought it was an immediate creation of all things, in a sense, but not all things being present at once at the beginning. He considered that God embedded "seminal seeds" of a sort that would all come to fruition at some point in the future.
You are telling me that you are conclusively convinced of evolution as being accurate? As well as the Bible, albeit in a twisted fashion? Because that is what you have to do to reconcile the Bible with evolutionism.
Well, no, that is not true at all. First, I am 99% convinced that evolution is an accurate description of how God did it. But, no, I did not have to twist the Bible at all to get there. As I mentioned above, I had made my decisions regarding Scripture first.
Fine. But it should be a devotion to accuracy of those very scriptures too. Otherwise we could end up like so many who take a verse out of context and build an entire doctrine and even denomination out of falsehood.
Right, a devotion to the accuracy of those verses! Exactly. That is what I am doing. I refuse to read into the text a modern literalness that was never intended, just because it is what our modern minds first consider as the most "accurate" way to describe events, so it is the most attractive and natural to our modern ears. We are creatures of our times, and this is a document that is NOT of our times. We need to keep that in mind, and I think God expects us to keep that in mind.
And you are right about entire doctrines being developed out of a false interpretation. There are dozens of "creation ministries" right there to prove your point. Oddly, there are no Theistic Evolution ministries out there promoting some particular doctrine or teaching about Christianity. We add nothing to the text beyond what ALL Christians agree about the true message of Genesis. We are not out there saying that the Bible teaches evolution or an old earth. And TE's hold to every consistent doctrine of the Christian Faith.
Why did you say, "atheistic science of heliocentrism"? How is it an 'atheistic' science?
If you mean to say that this is what the geocentrists would say about heliocentrism, then I would respond this way:
Would an atheist make the claim that God doesn't exist merely by pointing out that the sciences hundreds of years ago adopted a false view of the solar system, and since they believed in God, then that proves that God doesn't exist?
I didn't think so...
How then could it possibly be an 'atheistic' science?
You are right, it is what the geocentrists would say then, and what the few remaining ones say now. They call it the Copernican heresy and other such terms. And, no, a current atheist could not really use that argument, since so few Christians are out there saying that. BUT, what would happen if every Christian was insisting that the Scriptures must be read geocentrically? Do you see the potential damage to the Scripture from such a promotion of an incorrect reading of Scripture?
Well, many of us Christians believe the same type of damage is being done to Scripture today by the creationist insistence, especially the dogmatic, "either/or" insistence, that because a literal reading IS THE correct reading, if evolution is true, then Scripture is false.
I think the potential damage to the Gospel message is obvious.
