Human brain evolution

Mallon said:

I'd retort that ANE cosmology is based, in part, on phenomenological description (e.g., geocentrism).

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But aren't we all, at heart, ANE cosmologists? Do you honestly go about your everyday life thinking the sun is a massive fusion-powered ball of gas millions of miles away from you and thousands of times bigger than the Earth? Or do you (as I find myself doing) think of the Sun as a big light tacked onto a large moving dome above your head?

shernren said:

I'm not as convinced by those, although some people find them helpful. The ANE cosmology in particular seems to be reading too much into what is essentially a phenomenological description. But phenomenological descriptions occur in both literal and figurative accounts. "I walked my dog at sunset" is phenomenological (the sun doesn't move, it only appears to) and literal (it isn't an analogy for anything) ... and fictional (I don't actually have a dog).

There is enough intratextual evidence for the complexity of Genesis 1-11 that I tend to shy away from using ideas like ANE cosmology to read the text or to argue for my interpretation, especially since the latter tends to rile creationists up with the unavoidably charged comparisons with geocentrism and flat earth.

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I tend not to use ANE cosmology unless I am talking about accommodation. but I do have problems with phenomenology, the approach is way too modern, in fact it is a philosophical forerunner to existentialism. Are we really meant to use proto-existentialism to interpret the bible? The writers of the bible may have been describing what they saw, but they thought they were describing reality, that when the described the sun hurrying across the sky it really was moving.

Assyrian said:

The writers of the bible may have been describing what they saw, but they thought they were describing reality, that when the described the sun hurrying across the sky it really was moving.

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mark kennedy said:

Naturalistic assumptions, the effort is to reconcile the scientific explanations for origins with Christian theism.

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Do you think it's at all possible that the approach to scripture that we use isn't based on "naturalistic assumptions", but rather on what the text itself is saying? After all, even the early church fathers took the creation account figuratively, and they had no need for fitting scientific theories into scripture. Why do you think they interpreted it that way?

While there are dangers of being too literal and 'making the text walk on all fours' when dealing with figurative language, Genesis is an historical narrative. Their approach negates the ordinary meaning of the language and intent of the author.

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How can you know the ordinary meaning of the language? Scholars tend to study the language and make determinations such as that the word "firmament" is referring to a solid dome. How can we know the intent of the author? Again, scholars (and I'm talking about Christian scholars, both liberal AND conservative) look at the cultural context of the words to determine that an ancient cosmology was what was in the authors mind as a backdrop to more important theological truths.

It seems that the YECs take the ordinary english reading but ignore where it came from and what it meant to the original audience. A plain meaning puts water above the sun, moon and stars, doesn't it? Which group accepts that plain meaning?

I listen, I consider and understand what they are saying and why. I just disagree based on the clear testimony of Scripture and the uniform teaching extended beyond the Genesis account to the New Testament witness.

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I certainly understand how you see that the new testament refers to a literal interpretation of Genesis. The way that I see it is that the message was accomodated to the cosmogony of that time so that they would understand it, and by doing so the truth of scripture is not compromised in any way.

A few things you may well consider. First of all I am a YEC based on the New Testament witness regarding Genesis, in other words, the totality of Scripture. I am a YEC by default and reserve the right to remain unconvinced by the conjecture stemming from naturalistic assumptions intrinsic to evolution as natural history.

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I think this is hindering your search for understanding the bible. A figurative understanding of the creation account isn't based on naturalistic assumptions or evolution. We may find out that evolution is completely wrong and our interpretation of Genesis will still remain true.

My efforts here are to learn more about evolutionary biology but reconciliation is always the most important effort anyone makes in these discussions. While I want, above all things, to be able to extend the right hand of fellowship to TEs it cannot be at the expense of doctrine and conviction.

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It's ok for Christians to disagree on some things. We can still fellowship together.

shernren said:

wouldn't you immediately imagine that the writer is stuck in ANE cosmology, thinking of snow as being stored up in a giant vault above the earth and that the Sun moves around so that it needs to be concealed to bring night?

And yet, as I'm sure you know, these words were penned by Chris Tomlin, a still-living poet who (as far as I am aware) would subscribe to a fairly modern - anachronistic, even, given the words he penned above - cosmology.

How would we tell from the words themselves?

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I think we let who the words are written to influence how we read them. If Chris Tomlin had been writing to the people stuck in ANE cosmology, we would not read them the same as if he's writing to us.

shernren said:

How would you tell?

I mean, suppose you were to be told that the following stanza was a fragment of a hymn sung by a monotheistic nomadic tribe during the Bronze Age:

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night

wouldn't you immediately imagine that the writer is stuck in ANE cosmology, thinking of snow as being stored up in a giant vault above the earth and that the Sun moves around so that it needs to be concealed to bring night?

And yet, as I'm sure you know, these words were penned by Chris Tomlin, a still-living poet who (as far as I am aware) would subscribe to a fairly modern - anachronistic, even, given the words he penned above - cosmology.

How would we tell from the words themselves?

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Realising that he lived in a society that did understand meteorology but was paraphrasing a bronze age writer of Job would help. It is harder to tell how literal writers were being talking about things they had not seen like storehouses for snow than describing the apparent movement of the sun across the sky. However with the movements of the sun and moon, not only do you have the fact that all the societies around them believed they both went round the earth, you also have the passages where the explanation of what happened is based on the sun and moon actually moving, when Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stop it tells us he actually thought they were the ones doing the moving. When the writer of Ecclesiastes wants to describe the cycles of life one generation following another he uses the cycles of nature, rain, wind and the sun all going through their paths and returning to the place they started, he is giving his best ANE scientific analysis of the processes of the natural world and using the sun actually going around the earth to make his point.