Creationists: How certain are you of your interpretation of Genesis?

[Assyrian]

narrative. clearly this is a viable argument. the literary arguments are indirect inferences at best. all other scriptural references to metaphors for creation telegraph their similes

This sound to me like a version of classic creationist circular reasoning. They approach the bible from the basis unless the text clearly says it is figurative, then you interpret it literally. Having excluded the possibility of unlabelled metaphor and parable, they claim parables and metaphors in the bible are always labelled. That is circular.

You argument is slightly different in that you only claim it for a particular subject, creation, but the issue is how God speaks to us in scripture. If the bible contains a wide array of literal statements, labelled metaphors and parables, as well as plenty of unlabelled metaphors and parables, it is irrelevant that the bible uses similes in some places to describe creation, why does the use of simile in one place exclude metaphor somewhere else?

and take other subjects that those in this narrative.

Is there a list of subjects in the bible that are allowed to be described in metaphor?

And Exod. 20 aint on poem.

I would have though the literary genre was law...

But it is a good example. If we to expect clear literalism anywhere in the Pentateuch surely it is in The Ten Commandments.

It starts off:
Exodus 20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
All the Israelite slaves lived in a single house? How big would that building have to be? Doesn't that contradict the description of the passover where each house had a passover lamb and they painted the blood on the doors of their houses Exodus 12:7 Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. Or is God at the very start of the ten commandments describing the history of their captivity and slavery in a metaphor?

Exodus 20:3 "You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Look at that again:

anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth.

God is demanding they not make idols of anything else in the entire cosmos, but to emphasise that it is the entire, God describes the cosmos in terms they would understand, the classic A.N.E. three story universe. It makes sense too. Which were the Israelites in more danger of worshipping, Egyptian and Canaanite gods of the underworld, or some undiscovered but literal axolotyl from a subterranean lake?

Then we get to the six day creation, which is not being used here to teach six day creationism, but is used as an illustration of the Sabbath command. Does it have to be a literal historical illustration in the Ten Commandments? Well we have already seen their captivity described in an unlabelled metaphor. But it is even more interesting if you look at the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy.

Incidentally, if these commandments were carved on stone tablets, why do we have two different versions in Exodus and Deuteronomy?

Anyway what the Deuteronomy version of the Sabbath command say is,
Deut 5:12 "'Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.
13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
Same Sabbath command, but it comes with a different illustration, this time taken from the captivity and exodus from Egypt. From a creationist p.o.v. it is should be great, an illustration drawn from their history. The only problem is the history of their liberation is described metaphorically. God using his 'mighty hand and outstretched arm' is an anthropomorphic metaphor.

(again)
all other scriptural references to metaphors for creation telegraph their similes

The creation account in Prov 8 has 'Wisdom' working alongside God in the creation, which either an anthropomorphic personification, or a figurative description of Jesus. Or both. What it is not is telegraphed metaphor or a simile.

Psalm 104 contains both metaphor and simile. The similes are obvious from their construction using comparisons 'as' or 'like' , but the metaphors as unlabelled.
Psalm 104:2 covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.
3 He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind;
4 he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.
5 He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.
6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains

Lets have a look at the creation account in Job 38
Job 38:4 "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Building metaphor but unlabelled.
Job 38:5 Who determined its measurements--surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
More building metaphor.
Job 38:6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
Building metaphor
Job 38:7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Singing astronomical bodies... or a figurative description of spiritual beings.
Job 38:8 "Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb,
Obstetrics and zookeeping metaphors
Job 38:9 when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,
Baby care metaphor
Job 38:10 and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors,
More building or zookeeping metaphors
Job 38:11 and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed'?
Anthropomorphism
Job 38:12 "Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place,
Anthropomorphism
Job 38:13 that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?
picnic blanket metaphor
Job 38:14 It is changed like clay under the seal, and its features stand out like a garment.
And at last a labelled simile.

 

[busterdog]

This sound to me like a version of classic creationist circular reasoning. They approach the bible from the basis unless the text clearly says it is figurative, then you interpret it literally. Having excluded the possibility of unlabelled metaphor and parable, they claim parables and metaphors in the bible are always labelled. That is circular.

You argument is slightly different in that you only claim it for a particular subject, creation, but the issue is how God speaks to us in scripture. If the bible contains a wide array of literal statements, labelled metaphors and parables, as well as plenty of unlabelled metaphors and parables, it is irrelevant that the bible uses similes in some places to describe creation, why does the use of simile in one place exclude metaphor somewhere else?

The nature of reasoning from an a priori is that it is indeed circular. A fair cop.

Now, prove to me the supremacy of believing your own eyes or scientific observation and do so without using circular reasoning.

If you simply want to accept it as an a priori, I have no complaints.

There is a range of directness in language. There is a range of directness as one moves from simile to metaphor. The words "like" and "as" are not the proper determinants in all cases. Most of the nonliteral uses of figures and images in the Bible are so obvious that they in fact would appear to be very much like similes. But, I am not enough of Hebrew scholar to know whether there is a meaningful difference in the original language.

But, when we are looking at the intent of the writer, that is a literary analysis using established rules. They are not my rules, and thus on that point my reasoning is not circular at all. I again refer folks to the classic work of Auerbach regarding the story of Abraham. By the same rules he concludes that the text demands attention to its narrative recitation of fact.

Here is a fairly good summary of the literary style of Genesis, in a short piece about Auerbach's book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=1Z...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA6,M1

It starts off:
Exodus 20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Check the concordance. Bayith. And it was a house of slavery.

15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

Well, they you have it. God then must have arms.

 

[cottonmather]

I do not think the authors of Genesis believed in evolution, nor did they intend to present creation allegorically. They expected the readers to take them for their word. If evolution is true, it poses too many theological problems. How did sin really come in? Why wasn't it revealed? I'm not sure it can be reconciled. Unless you want to tell me what all of those generations stand for, because I have no idea how to interpret them.

This is a thorny issue because it isn't a simple one. If someone doesn't want to believe in evolution, fine. But dismissing all of the scientific evidence with a wave of the hand doesn't explain anything. Can Genesis and science be reconciled, or not?

 

[busterdog]

This is a thorny issue because it isn't a simple one. If someone doesn't want to believe in evolution, fine. But dismissing all of the scientific evidence with a wave of the hand doesn't explain anything. Can Genesis and science be reconciled, or not?

You know, I have dismissed medical diagnoses and clear medical evidence, not with a wave of the hand by faith. Now, radiocarbon dating is not blisters from second degree burns or an MRI.

But, it is dismissing what is seen. There is nothing wrong per se with dismissing what your lying eyes tell you.

Once we then get to the qualitative issues about whether the evidence of evolution is better, insurmountable evidence, what is certainly well established is that most of the models supporting evolution are not black and white. Arguably, they are significantly less than that. Much of that argument requires false dichotomies between micro and macro (for lack of a better term) evolution and the positions of creationists on such matters.

Lets understand 1. the per se argument; and 2. a distinct "qualitative" argument about the strength of evidence.

When the per se argument is gone, as it must be, the qualitative argument is one where there should be respect for the creationist position because we are talking shades of grey in terms of this scientific "reconciliation."

I have no problem looking first to a body of knowledge that has far less internal inconsistency (or grey) than the science of evolution.

And that is why I am trying to look so carefully at literary forms and consistency of voice within scripture.

 

[AV1611VET]

I voted 100% --- but that's only because there's no 110% ---

 

[Assyrian]

The nature of reasoning from an a priori is that it is indeed circular. A fair cop.

Now, prove to me the supremacy of believing your own eyes or scientific observation and do so without using circular reasoning.

So unless I provide a philosophical basis for epistemology you are justified in using circular arguments?

Has any science or philosophy got beyond Descartes' demon? The world we experience could be an illusion from some deceptive god or demon, it could be Hindu maya, or the matrix, for all you know you could be a brain in a vat being fed stimuli in a bizarre experiment. Science does not even try to answer that question, it simply studies the universe we know and live in and finds it very consistent and operating on identifiable scientific laws. Perhaps when they get to study energy and matter on a level below quantum they may be in a position to give an answer to that. Probably not even then. In the meantime science simply studies the world we know and live in.

It is interesting though that creationists when they try to defend young earth creationism, end up questioning the fundamental doctrine of creation. The universe God created is real, not an illusion like Hindu cosmology.

If you simply want to accept it as an a priori, I have no complaints.

I don't even think it is that. Do scientist from India find a conflict between between science and maya? If the world is an illusion it is a consistent one that operates on rules that can be discovered and understood by science. Science simply ignored the problems of philosophy and instead of trying to work out everything from a philosophical basis, they studied how the world worked and tested any ideas against actual experiment. The result was the scientific explosion we have seen since the Renaissance. Science was adopted as the way of understanding the world because science worked. Galileo's laws of motion could explain how a cannon ball moved through the air, Aristotelian physics could not. Philosophy told them the ball flew straight until it ran out of energy and dropped straight down.

There is a range of directness in language. There is a range of directness as one moves from simile to metaphor. The words "like" and "as" are not the proper determinants in all cases. Most of the nonliteral uses of figures and images in the Bible are so obvious that they in fact would appear to be very much like similes. But, I am not enough of Hebrew scholar to know whether there is a meaningful difference in the original language.

I agree there is a wide spectrum of figurative language in the bible that does not always fit into neat categories. There is also a problem in using Greek categories to describe Hebrew language and thought. The bible uses its own terms to describe figurative language, parables and dark sayings, though Paul also used Greek terms like allegory.

However metaphor and simile are useful categories for discussion. It does not depend on any subtleties of the Hebrew language. The difference between them is that a simile says two things are similar. The language admits they are different objects that are being compared. He has nose like a bloodhound. She is a quiet as a mouse. It is not saying the nose is a dog's nose, or that she is a small rodent, just that they are similar. A metaphor does not say it is like, it says it is. Get your paws off my sandwich. Pretty women out walking their gorillas down my street. You are not saying his hand are like paws or the boyfriends are like gorillas. A metaphor says his thieving hands are paws, the boyfriends are gorillas.

Is this important? Well it keeps coming up in discussions with creationists, they think figurative language in the bible is clearly indicated. Parables are introduced as parables and figures of speech come with clear indication that figurative language is being used. For example:

A figure of speech is generally indicated by the use of 'like' or 'as', this is basic Bible exposition.

But if creationist think figurative language is limited to phrases with 'like' or 'as' then the only figurative passages they recognise are similes, missing out on a whole world of biblical metaphor. And because they only recognise the similes, they think unlabelled metaphors must be literal.

But, when we are looking at the intent of the writer, that is a literary analysis using established rules. They are not my rules, and thus on that point my reasoning is not circular at all. I again refer folks to the classic work of Auerbach regarding the story of Abraham. By the same rules he concludes that the text demands attention to its narrative recitation of fact.

Here is a fairly good summary of the literary style of Genesis, in a short piece about Auerbach's book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=1Z...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA6,M1

Google books is responding pretty slowly on my computer, what exactly are these rules for literary analysis? The passage in question seems to be comparing the Odyssey with the story of Abraham, but the creation accounts in Gen 1 and 2&3 are very different from the later narratives in Genesis.

If you wanted to compare the Genesis account to any non biblical literature it would have to be epics like Gilgamesh rather the Homer. But I prefer to look at biblical examples, the nearest comparison to the style of Gen 1 are the Psalms with repetitive choruses. Gen 2&3, well Revelation is the closest I can see with it tree of life by a river flowing out to the nations and the serpent again as well as another marriage summing up the human race, or there is the parable of the trees in Judges, strange trees and creatures that don't usually talk.

Of we could look at how the passages are interpreted in the rest of scripture. God making people from clay or God the potter is an idea that is repeated all through the bible. It is never literal. There are very few references to the creation days, but Moses didn't take God's days literally as he tell us in a Psalm that looks at the creation and the early part of Genesis Ps 90:4. The only other writer to refer to one of the seven day of creation is the writer of Hebrews who took God's seventh day rest as an ongoing rest we are commanded to enter as we live in another ongoing (and concurrent) day called 'Today' Heb 3&4. The writer of Gen 6 seems to have been familiar with the story of the creation of Adam and echoes the language talking about the flood. But instead of Adam being and individual who died well before the flood, the flood is descried in the language of the creation, God was sorry he had formed Adam on the earth and was going to wipe out the Adam he had created. Even back when Gen 6 was written the story of the creation of Adam was understood as figurative. The serpent which reads as literal serpent in Gen 3, is revealed not being an animal at all in Revelation, but Satan. But throughout the bible people realised the serpent was not talking about a literal reptile, as we have seen looking at leviathan in the OT, Ezek 28 also reveals the snakes like being in Eden as a guardian Cherub who sins and fall. Again Jesus fulfilment of the promise in Eden did not involve bruising a literal snake on the head. For Christians a literal tree of life should pose profound theological problem as it says there is another source of everlasting life apart from Jesus Christ. On the other hand as a figure of the one who died on a tree to give us everlasting life, the one who told us he was a vine tree, it is a wonderful prophetic image of our redeemer.

Check the concordance. Bayith. And it was a house of slavery.

But not a literal house.

Well, they you have it. God then must have arms.

And wings, and an eye with an apple in it. You are joking of course, but you illustrate the problem literalists run into. There is no end to the metaphors they can take literally if they really try. Talking trees? Well, they you have it. God can even make trees talk. This is my body? Most evangelical literalists fall own on that one, but just ask a Catholic how it should be taken.

 

[busterdog]

So unless I provide a philosophical basis for epistemology you are justified in using circular arguments?

Of course I am justified in using them. Scripture says so and not to lean upon my own understanding.

Actually, what do you mean by justified? The main point we are all working from an a priori. Does our relative shortsightedness justify anything? I am just saying we are in the same boat.

Has any science or philosophy got beyond Descartes' demon? The world we experience could be an illusion from some deceptive god or demon, it could be Hindu maya, or the matrix, for all you know you could be a brain in a vat being fed stimuli in a bizarre experiment. Science does not even try to answer that question, it simply studies the universe we know and live in and finds it very consistent and operating on identifiable scientific laws. Perhaps when they get to study energy and matter on a level below quantum they may be in a position to give an answer to that. Probably not even then. In the meantime science simply studies the world we know and live in.

That is one what to describe it.

I dont know that this is necessary, however, as a description.

Lets say that you have a certain percentage of available fact. Pick a number. 20%, 75% .... I don't think it matters much. Your ability to know anything is extremely limited. The notion that have a certain grasp on data for what is happening at this moment or seen on your dig at the moment you are doing the digging is a vastly over-rated data-set. Extrapolating forward or backward is the problem. If it were not so, then the relatively simple task of picking a football game wold mean that Vega would be unable to take a gamblers money. But the fact is that even the experts are not very good at picking football games.

As for the more esoteric suggestions in your examples, well, yeah, we don't know really that much even about the here and now, or whether, relatively speaking, you are Broca's brain in a simulation. Here is one example of the point:

Num 22:23 And the ass saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.

Another example of teh very unwieldy nature of the data set we try to extrapolate from, go and look at Altenberg again. "Self-organizing" is an admission that science lacks a grasp on all the factors and the unlikely operations required for their to be successful adaptation in a cell.

It is interesting though that creationists when they try to defend young earth creationism, end up questioning the fundamental doctrine of creation. The universe God created is real, not an illusion like Hindu cosmology.

Not at all. As noted, its the data set. Not that there isnt reality in the data at hand.

Whether something is "real" is in part a question of your frame of reference. It isnt so much that we wonder whether a hand is real (though the Wittgenstein examples are helpful) but whether things like love or danger or a particular resolution of a conflict are real -- this is, our conclusions are the problem. Our notions of how things will turn out are largely unreal. Science has mostly been wrong for the last 500 years about what things were like in prehistory, and history for that matter.

I don't even think it is that. Do scientist from India find a conflict between between science and maya? If the world is an illusion it is a consistent one that operates on rules that can be discovered and understood by science. Science simply ignored the problems of philosophy and instead of trying to work out everything from a philosophical basis, they studied how the world worked and tested any ideas against actual experiment. The result was the scientific explosion we have seen since the Renaissance. Science was adopted as the way of understanding the world because science worked. Galileo's laws of motion could explain how a cannon ball moved through the air, Aristotelian physics could not. Philosophy told them the ball flew straight until it ran out of energy and dropped straight down.

Actually, it is not consistent at all. I am unimpressed by the fact that you can predict that mass will accelerate at 9.9 m/sec per sec. or whatever it is. So what? The creation and eventual destruction of continents is still what makes or breaks a civilization and the sample cannot make an appropriate prediction. Yes, you can predict that the odds look good for the next ten years. But, so what? That is nothing in the scale of things. Look at global warming and how royally that whole concept was botched.

I agree there is a wide spectrum of figurative language in the bible that does not always fit into neat categories. There is also a problem in using Greek categories to describe Hebrew language and thought. The bible uses its own terms to describe figurative language, parables and dark sayings, though Paul also used Greek terms like allegory.

And so we proceed with caution.

Get your paws off my sandwich. Pretty women out walking their gorillas down my street. You are not saying his hand are like paws or the boyfriends are like gorillas. A metaphor says his thieving hands are paws, the boyfriends are gorillas.

And when you say, consider the oaf Joe Jackson, pounding the piano, an animal, a gorilla. The "as" is inferred, or as good as inferred. The notion of a neat seperation of the two devices never made sense to me. Call me a rebel. The Bible most telegraphs its idioms the same way. They dont often pop up so abruptly as in "this is my body."

Google books is responding pretty slowly on my computer, what exactly are these rules for literary analysis? The passage in question seems to be comparing the Odyssey with the story of Abraham, but the creation accounts in Gen 1 and 2&3 are very different from the later narratives in Genesis.

I will scan some of the Mimesis book when I get a second, because the writing is so much better than I can provide.

One simple comparison is just to look at the subject of a passage. Where the might of God is the introduced as the subject of inquiry, a qualitative analysis involved. You can also infer a subjective quality to what the author is doing. When the surface text introduces a sequence as the immediate subject of inquiry and largely ignores qualitative properties, that is something quite different. At that point, the notion of hyperbole can only be inferred from facts outside the text. It is remarkable in Genesis that when we get to a word like "good" as in, "saw that it was good", the reader's response is almost visceral, because it is a such a dramatic shift from a sequence of facts to abstract, qualitative properties.

Once aspect of the Auerbach piece is the sequence of Abraham's journey to Moriah is referent only to the demands of the Lord. The sequence of the story itself meets one set of requirements: illustrating the Lord's purpose.

Auerbach sees in that the work of a despot (a benevolent despot) who neither entices, nor coddles. He simply demands attention to facts that are very precisely chosen. Ie, the author is uncompromising is demanding that the surface text be accepted as fact.

Homer's sequence is designed to entice the reader into the narrative. Homer implicitly worries about the concerns of the reader -- what are the unanswered questions of background and context, and how can this curiosity be satisfied? This flatters the reader in a way. Moses could freaking care less what your questions are in Genesis.

Your reference to Jeremiah is a good contrast to Genesis. What is the predominant voice in Jeremiah? Exasperation. Quite unlike the inscrutible persona of Genesis, in Jeremiah, God is fairly begging the human reader to get something through his freaking head. So much so, that, like an actor turnging from a dialogue to break character and speak directly to the camera, God is suddenly trying to spoon feed concepts to the prophet and his audience -- and he does it with simile.

If you wanted to compare the Genesis account to any non biblical literature it would have to be epics like Gilgamesh rather the Homer. But I prefer to look at biblical examples, the nearest comparison to the style of Gen 1 are the Psalms with repetitive choruses. Gen 2&3, well Revelation is the closest I can see with it tree of life by a river flowing out to the nations and the serpent again as well as another marriage summing up the human race, or there is the parable of the trees in Judges, strange trees and creatures that don't usually talk.

But, what is the evident purpose of the narrator in the two pieces? In Genesis, other than exposition, one must infer a purpose such as using fiction to illustrate a principle. In Judges, the purpose is clearly different than in Genesis.

But not a literal house.

Bayith can be pretty abstract:

1) house
a) house, dwelling habitation
b) shelter or abode of animals
c) human bodies (fig.)
d) of Sheol
e) of abode of light and darkness
f) of land of Ephraim
2) place
3) receptacle
4) home, house as containing a family
5) household, family
a) those belonging to the same household
b) family of descendants, descendants as organized body
6) household affairs
7) inwards (metaph.)
8) (TWOT) temple


IT is not clear to me how that would really look in Hebrew. Whether the concept of "abode" or "origin" would be aparent or whether that would be inferred as a simile is from context. Jury is out on this one.

And wings, and an eye with an apple in it. You are joking of course, but you illustrate the problem literalists run into. There is no end to the metaphors they can take literally if they really try. Talking trees? Well, they you have it. God can even make trees talk. This is my body? Most evangelical literalists fall own on that one, but just ask a Catholic how it should be taken.

How is our problem different from that of those who demythologize? There is obvious expositional fact in the Bible and you still must distinguish metaphor from fact. We are just at different poles, but with the same problem.

Ignorance is bliss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BuQFUhsRM&feature=related

There is no spoon. (That is a joke!)

 

[JesusThree16]

I think creationism is not only the literal truth of God but is also scientifically accurate. There are lots of scientists that are trying to work for the science of truth but cannot because universities and journals discriminate against creationists. we arent even allowed in the front door.

 

[Mallon]

I think creationism is not only the literal truth of God but is also scientifically accurate. There are lots of scientists that are trying to work for the science of truth but cannot because universities and journals discriminate against creationists. we arent even allowed in the front door.

Then how do you account for people like Marcus Ross and Kurt Wise?

 

[JesusThree16]

Then how do you account for people like Marcus Ross and Kurt Wise?

Thats too few and far between. and its kind of sad because in order to get degrees we have to sit through classes we dont believe in and participate in research we dont believe in.

 

[dies-l]

I do not think the authors of Genesis believed in evolution, nor did they intend to present creation allegorically. They expected the readers to take them for their word. If evolution is true, it poses too many theological problems. How did sin really come in? Why wasn't it revealed? I'm not sure it can be reconciled. Unless you want to tell me what all of those generations stand for, because I have no idea how to interpret them.

Honestly, I doubt that the authors of Genesis thought about such things in such a thoroughly modern way. I see the authors telling a story that is based upon their understanding of their history, not in the modern sense, which is focused on verifiable accuracy, but in the sense in which the story is an invaluable part of the history and communicates a truth that a people has come to understand, even if the story itself is not historically accurate in the modern sense. I think that the difficulties that modern Christians have in reconciling origins science with the Genesis story stem from our flawed assumption that ancient people shared our modern worldview.

TEs and YECs seem to come to very similar theological understandings of the Creation story. We both read the story as telling us that God created everything and that human beings were the pinnacle of His Creation, that but for sin, Creation was very good, and that human sinfulness has made the world less than it was intended to be. As a TE, I have no problem embracing that the spiritual implications of the story are true, even if the narrative itself is not historically or scientifically accurate according to modern notions of the term.

 

[Mallon]

Thats too few and far between.

I take it you are skeptical of the Dissent from Darwin list, then?
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
Me too. Most of the people on that list are not accredited in biology, and many that are have asked to be removed (to no avail).
See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty1Bo6GmPqM

and its kind of sad because in order to get degrees we have to sit through classes we dont believe in and participate in research we dont believe in.

When you say "we", are you speaking from personal experience?
I'm not sure why you would want to get a degree in a field you fundamentally disagree with, anyway. Science does not -- indeed, cannot -- start with the assumption that a particular interpretation of the Bible is correct. Yet this is the approach you take on the matter. It seems you assume that which you seek to prove. Maybe you can explain further to help us understand your philosophy of science.

 

[JesusThree16]

When you say "we", are you speaking from personal experience?
I'm not sure why you would want to get a degree in a field you fundamentally disagree with, anyway.

It's the only way to get in a position to do the research that will prove young earth creationism. You gotta go through the proper channels and get a reputation before they will even look at your paper, and even then they might not.

Science does not -- indeed, cannot -- start with the assumption that a particular interpretation of the Bible is correct. . It seems you assume that which you seek to prove. Maybe you can explain further to help us understand your philosophy of science.

If the bible is accurate, and i believe it is, and science is a valid way of investigating truth, and i believe it is, then they must agree. and they do agree if you know where to look.

 

[dies-l]

I take it you are skeptical of the Dissent from Darwin list, then?
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
Me too. Most of the people on that list are not accredited in biology, and many that are have asked to be removed (to no avail).
See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty1Bo6GmPqM


When you say "we", are you speaking from personal experience?
I'm not sure why you would want to get a degree in a field you fundamentally disagree with, anyway. Science does not -- indeed, cannot -- start with the assumption that a particular interpretation of the Bible is correct. Yet this is the approach you take on the matter. It seems you assume that which you seek to prove. Maybe you can explain further to help us understand your philosophy of science.

Interesting video that points to one of the saddest phenomena that I see in the modern "Christian" Church: Christians who will go to any length, even immoral lengths such as blatant dishonesty (i.e., lying), to promote their own theological and social agendas. Very sad.

And, on a side note, like one of the scientists in the video, I too recommend Ken Miller's Finding Darwin's God. It was given to me by my father (who, before passing away, was a retired pastor) in response to some of the discussions that I had had with him regarding the creation/evolution debate. Until reading it, I seriously questioned evolutionism and especially any claims that it was reconcilable with Genesis. Since then, I have tried to read Kurt Wise's Faith, Form, and Time, and I found it to be so chock full of blunders that I could not stomach it any more, let alone treat it as a valid work of scientific and/or theological reasoning.

 

[dies-l]

It's the only way to get in a position to do the research that will prove young earth creationism. You gotta go through the proper channels and get a reputation before they will even look at your paper, and even then they might not.

Are you saying that there is something wrong with this system? Don't you think that it is appropriate that you be required to thoroughly understand the prevailing theory before you will be taken seriously enough to challenge it?

 

[Mallon]

It's the only way to get in a position to do the research that will prove young earth creationism. You gotta go through the proper channels and get a reputation before they will even look at your paper, and even then they might not.

Ah. So you're not actually interested in doing science. You're simply interested proving the case of young earth creationism.
The problem is that this isn't an option in science. You don't get to pick your conclusions first and then look for evidence in support of your conclusions. That's backwards. You have to look at the evidence first and then see where it leads.
So, getting back to my first question, are you a student in university, JesusThree16?

If the bible is accurate, and i believe it is, and science is a valid way of investigating truth, and i believe it is, then they must agree. and they do agree if you know where to look.

... and if you know where not to look.

How can you be sure the science is wrong and your interpretation is right and not the other way around?

 

[JesusThree16]

Are you saying that there is something wrong with this system? Don't you think that it is appropriate that you be required to thoroughly understand the prevailing theory before you will be taken seriously enough to challenge it?

of course i realize that i have to be versed in it and i can spew the basics of darwinism as well as any student of science. change in allele frequency over time, which is a bit misleading, cuz who can have fault with that? Their main problem areas are too much time and common descent.

 

[Assyrian]

Of course I am justified in using them. Scripture says so and not to lean upon my own understanding.

How does Prov 3:5 justify circular arguments? But relying on man-made interpretive rules that say unless a metaphor is telegraphed you should interpret it literally, and from that finding scripture is made of of labelled metaphors and passages you interpret literally, then concluding the only metaphors in scripture are clearly labelled, therefore unless it is clearly labelled metaphor you should interpret Genesis literally, this is not only circular, it is relying on your own understanding.

Actually, what do you mean by justified? The main point we are all working from an a priori. Does our relative shortsightedness justify anything? I am just saying we are in the same boat.

Like I said science does not need that a priori. Oh I am sure if you really searched you would probably be able to find some underlying assumptions. But that is very different from a gratuitous justification of any circular argument you may care to use.

That is one what to describe it.

I dont know that this is necessary, however, as a description.

Lets say that you have a certain percentage of available fact. Pick a number. 20%, 75% .... I don't think it matters much. Your ability to know anything is extremely limited. The notion that have a certain grasp on data for what is happening at this moment or seen on your dig at the moment you are doing the digging is a vastly over-rated data-set. Extrapolating forward or backward is the problem. If it were not so, then the relatively simple task of picking a football game wold mean that Vega would be unable to take a gamblers money. But the fact is that even the experts are not very good at picking football games.

How much available fact do we need? Can we deny Copernican heliocentrism because we have only examined one star system and glimpsed a handful of others, out of the hundred billion billion or so stars in the universe. How many rock samples do we need to date radiometrically? It must be millions now, but only a tiniest fraction of all the rock on earth. Do we need to radiometrically date the rock in the planet before we can conclude its age. “It is official, the earth is, sorry was, 4.55 billion years old.” How many times to scientists need to measure the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes in the laboratory, in supernovae billions of light years away, and in the remains of ancient nuclear reactors in Precambrian rock? They can do it again with more sensitive instruments to get even more precise measurements. But do you really think if they measure often enough they will suddenly discover radioactive decay is actually a million times faster than all the measurements they made to date?

As for the more esoteric suggestions in your examples, well, yeah, we don't know really that much even about the here and now, or whether, relatively speaking, you are Broca's brain in a simulation. Here is one example of the point:

Yes they are esoteric. But this is the territory you get into when you need an alternative to the reality of the observable universe. Certainly if you deny reality of the universe God created you are way outside any form of traditional Christianity. The nearest you get is Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science.

Here is one example of the point:

Num 22:23 And the ass saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.

I don’t see how that is an illustration of any point you are making. God could have opened the donkey’s mouth and given him the ability to speak. He is God you know. Then again the only witness the Israelites had to the event was Balaam who as we are told in the bible was mad. Or God could have given Balaam and understanding of what the donkey was expressing in donkey. You are not try to say God opened the snake’s mouth so the snake could deceive a completely innocent Eve?

Another example of teh very unwieldy nature of the data set we try to extrapolate from, go and look at Altenberg again. "Self-organizing" is an admission that science lacks a grasp on all the factors and the unlikely operations required for their to be successful adaptation in a cell.

Self organization is a very simple idea in science.

Not at all. As noted, its the data set. Not that there isnt reality in the data at hand.

So you are dropping your original defence of of circular argument and all the rest is digression?

Whether something is "real" is in part a question of your frame of reference. It isnt so much that we wonder whether a hand is real (though the Wittgenstein examples are helpful) but whether things like love or danger or a particular resolution of a conflict are real -- this is, our conclusions are the problem. Our notions of how things will turn out are largely unreal. Science has mostly been wrong for the last 500 years about what things were like in prehistory, and history for that matter.

I wonder why creationists get on aeroplane at all, if they really believed their antiscience rhetoric. You could argue Copernicus was wrong. He said the earth circled he sun. But Kepler and Newton showed how the planets really moved in elliptical orbits. Copernicus was wrong, they should have stuck with the bible. Then when they measured the orbit of Mercury they found out as Einstein suggested, it did not quite agree with Newton. So you can say Newton and Kepler were wrong too. Do we say the science was wrong or that our understanding is growing and getting better.
But as we have seen, this is simply a red herring and distraction from a discussion about what scripture says and how we should interpret it.

Actually, it is not consistent at all. I am unimpressed by the fact that you can predict that mass will accelerate at 9.9 m/sec per sec. or whatever it is. So what? The creation and eventual destruction of continents is still what makes or breaks a civilization and the sample cannot make an appropriate prediction. Yes, you can predict that the odds look good for the next ten years. But, so what? That is nothing in the scale of things. Look at global warming and how royally that whole concept was botched.

So what? So you tried to undermine science with philosophy but science gives a better understanding of the world God created that than philosophy. Before you complain about meteorology, how good are modern philosophers at predicting weather? Should the mayor consult the New Orleans University philosophy department about hurricanes? You would have a better chance of convincing them global warming was botched than meteorologists.

And so we proceed with caution.

Which is sadly lacking among creationists who are convinced there literal interpretation of Genesis is correct.

And when you say, consider the oaf Joe Jackson, pounding the piano, an animal, a gorilla. The "as" is inferred, or as good as inferred. The notion of a neat seperation of the two devices never made sense to me. Call me a rebel. The Bible most telegraphs its idioms the same way. They dont often pop up so abruptly as in "this is my body."

The difference between the two devices like in what should be most important for literalists, what the texts actually say. The meaning is the same. But literally, one, the simile, says Joe Jackson is like a gorilla, the other, the metaphor, says he is.
The other difference which is important for literalists trying to understand biblical figurative writing. Only the similes are telegraphed, and this is by their very structure. Metaphors can pop up abruptly and are much more common than literalists realise, as in this is my body, I am the vine, tell that fox, you must be born again, in the beginning was the word. Where does God signal the metaphor in Ezekiel 16 the story of Jerusalem and her sisters. Do we know it is a parable because Jerusalem is the name of a city? Adam is Hebrew for mankind. What about God’s description of the Exodus calling on the Israelites as witnesses, Exodus 19:4 You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Is there any hint that this is a metaphor. The only reason Creationists don’t claim God used miraculous giant wings to carry the Israelites out of Egypt is because it contradicts the account of the Israelites walked out and crossed the Red Sea. Of course the plain reading two Genesis account contradict each other too. Why isn’t that seen as evidence they are not literal?

Or are you saying the homo sapien Joe Jackson is almost the same species as a gorilla?

I will scan some of the Mimesis book when I get a second, because the writing is so much better than I can provide.

One simple comparison is just to look at the subject of a passage. Where the might of God is the introduced as the subject of inquiry, a qualitative analysis involved. You can also infer a subjective quality to what the author is doing. When the surface text introduces a sequence as the immediate subject of inquiry and largely ignores qualitative properties, that is something quite different. At that point, the notion of hyperbole can only be inferred from facts outside the text. It is remarkable in Genesis that when we get to a word like "good" as in, "saw that it was good", the reader's response is almost visceral, because it is a such a dramatic shift from a sequence of facts to abstract, qualitative properties.

Once aspect of the Auerbach piece is the sequence of Abraham's journey to Moriah is referent only to the demands of the Lord. The sequence of the story itself meets one set of requirements: illustrating the Lord's purpose.

Auerbach sees in that the work of a despot (a benevolent despot) who neither entices, nor coddles. He simply demands attention to facts that are very precisely chosen. Ie, the author is uncompromising is demanding that the surface text be accepted as fact.

Homer's sequence is designed to entice the reader into the narrative. Homer implicitly worries about the concerns of the reader -- what are the unanswered questions of background and context, and how can this curiosity be satisfied? This flatters the reader in a way. Moses could freaking care less what your questions are in Genesis.

Your reference to Jeremiah is a good contrast to Genesis. What is the predominant voice in Jeremiah? Exasperation. Quite unlike the inscrutible persona of Genesis, in Jeremiah, God is fairly begging the human reader to get something through his freaking head. So much so, that, like an actor turnging from a dialogue to break character and speak directly to the camera, God is suddenly trying to spoon feed concepts to the prophet and his audience -- and he does it with simile.

Jeremiah? You mean my reference to Ezekiel? I don’t think you can tied God down to always teaching specific lessons in specific genres. The whole history of Israel is a lesson in God’s love and exasperation. God can also teach this through analogy, the example of Hosea and his wife. God sovereign demands feature in plenty of parables too. The parables of the two sons, the talents, the servants in the vineyard. Genesis reveals God’s heart too his cry in the garden Adam where are you, his grief that he had created man in Genesis 6.

But, what is the evident purpose of the narrator in the two pieces? In Genesis, other than exposition, one must infer a purpose such as using fiction to illustrate a principle. In Judges, the purpose is clearly different than in Genesis.

Of course different parables have different purposes. If they didn’t you would only need one parable in the whole bible.
As for the purpose, Gen 1 reads like a hymn of praise to God the creator, especially if you hear it read out in Hebrew. It proclaims God as creator of all, (and that the gods of the nations aren’t). It proclaims the goodness and wonder of his creation. Most preachers get the meaning of Gen 2&3 whether they are creationists or not, it is about God creating us and his plan for marriage, the goodness of sex in marriage bonding man and woman together. It is about the danger of temptation we all face, and how mankind has fallen from relationship with God. It is about the promise of a redeemer.

 

[Assyrian]

Bayith can be pretty abstract:

1) house
a) house, dwelling habitation
b) shelter or abode of animals
c) human bodies (fig.)
d) of Sheol
e) of abode of light and darkness
f) of land of Ephraim
2) place
3) receptacle
4) home, house as containing a family
5) household, family
a) those belonging to the same household
b) family of descendants, descendants as organized body
6) household affairs
7) inwards (metaph.)
8) (TWOT) temple

IT is not clear to me how that would really look in Hebrew. Whether the concept of "abode" or "origin" would be aparent or whether that would be inferred as a simile is from context.

I have had a look at the full version of BDB. The only references to abode are
1) shelter or abode of animals. That is pretty literal. It is a barn. The sort of solid building that if the people in Egypt did not get their cattle inside the bayith, they were killed by hail. BDB quotes Exodus 9:19 Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.
2) of abode of light and darkness. The verse they quote for this is Job 38:20.
Job 38:19 "Where is the way to the dwelling of light? And darkness, where is its place, 20 That you may take it to its territory And that you may discern the paths to its home? Or as the Message puts it.
Job 38:19 "Do you know where Light comes from and where Darkness lives 20 So you can take them by the hand and lead them home when they get lost? That would be a metaphor. A wild surrealistic hyperbole of a metaphor.
According to BDB the house of slavery in Ex 20:2 is a figurative description of Egypt:

בֵּיתעֲבָדִים h. of slaves (where slaves live), only fig. of Egypt Ex 13:3, 14; 20:2 Dt 5:6; 6:13; 7:8; 8:14; 13:6, 11 Jos 24:17 Ju 6:8 Mi 6:4 Je 34:13

Jury is out on this one.

Only a jury that does not understand what a metaphor is.

How is our problem different from that of those who demythologize? There is obvious expositional fact in the Bible and you still must distinguish metaphor from fact. We are just at different poles, but with the same problem.

I am not convinced our position is that different. It is just distorted by the debate about creationism. As you point out metaphor is an obvious expositional fact. Evangelicals have always known that and have been happy handling metaphors and the wide range of figurative language in scripture. They have also been very good at reexamining their interpretation of passages when science has show the old interpretation is wrong, as we have seen with heliocentrism. You even had the leaders of evangelicalism, the original Fundamentalists reinterpreting Genesis in the light of what we learned about the geological history of the earth. Science and metaphor were never a problem with scholarly evangelicalism. It is only with the rise of modern creationism that the church suddenly has a problem with metaphor. From a balanced understanding of metaphor and parable, the church has lurched down the path of literalism. Why? Because only dogmatic literalism can defend six day creationism.

 

[marktheblake]

I quoted what you said: its a false representation to claim that the serpent was a physical snake

Yes that is what i said

What is the difference between saying
1) it is false to claim something is
and saying
2) something isn't

plenty. if there is not enough evidence to be absolute about "A", then you have to consider that alternatives to "A" are possible, and therefore you are not in a position to make an absolute claim based on "A", and I have pointed that out.

It is the straightforward meaning of the text, there is nothing obscure in the name, or in the description of the snake sliding on its belly eating dust.

But the Serpent wasn't sliding on its belly and eating dust until AFTER God placed the curse on him.

If you want to stand by the absolute truth claim that the Serpent who beguiled Eve was a Snake, then please explain to me what type of Snake talks, doesn't crawl on its belly and doesn't 'eat dust'.

If he was a snake originally then it ain't much of a curse is it?

Creationists sometimes claim that if you allow metaphorical meanings in the bible

I dont know of any animals that eat dust so is it permissable to accept this as a metaphor?

Has anyone here tried to discredit Genesis saying 'talking snakes is silly'?

my first entry in this thread was responding to someone alluding to just that, something like that talking snakes is evidence that it Genesis not a historical account. What else could he be referring to other than talking snakes is not realistic?