withreason
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but, what if understanding God's creation is only possible through believing what he wrote to us about it?
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Pasteur and spontaneous generation
- Thread starter rmwilliamsll
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Does this imply that the best scientists must study the Bible, or one requires the Bible in order to be a scientist, or that only Christians make good scientists? Also, a scientist must take a literal interpretation of Genesis in order to do correct science? If so, I disagree. Science is set up so that it does not matter what faith or beliefs a scientist has, as long as they follow the method, they can be good scientists.
I also think that if some diaster occurred, and every Bible was destroyed, it would still not affect science. I believe that God Creation can be studied without requiring a Bible.
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I believe some of what I wrote contains my answers to your last questions.
But let me try to be clearer.
What God expects of us with regard to understanding the universe is one of the questions that takes me to the end of a path. Hence, faith. I have faith that God intends for me to understand creation through examination. He gave us the faculties to do so.
If I were to believe that God's creation is only possible through believing what he wrote (per your question), then I would have to believe that by faith! The bible doesn't tell us that believing it is the only way to understand creation.
Again, I reach this point of faith by walking to end of the path that evidence has lead me. For example, the evidence is that the Bible tells us nothing (AFAIK) about gravity. It tells nothing of the properties of super-conductors. It tells us nothing for Fermat's last equation nor germ theory.
Yet proper investigation into the universe has yielded vast rewards.
I say this acknowledging that faith is involved: This must be what God intended.
But let me try to be clearer.
What God expects of us with regard to understanding the universe is one of the questions that takes me to the end of a path. Hence, faith. I have faith that God intends for me to understand creation through examination. He gave us the faculties to do so.
If I were to believe that God's creation is only possible through believing what he wrote (per your question), then I would have to believe that by faith! The bible doesn't tell us that believing it is the only way to understand creation.
Again, I reach this point of faith by walking to end of the path that evidence has lead me. For example, the evidence is that the Bible tells us nothing (AFAIK) about gravity. It tells nothing of the properties of super-conductors. It tells us nothing for Fermat's last equation nor germ theory.
Yet proper investigation into the universe has yielded vast rewards.
I say this acknowledging that faith is involved: This must be what God intended.
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withreason
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or, a good scientist must reject the Genesis account?
the possibility does exist that God created all of the evolutionay appearance in his 6 day creation, we are talking about God right! he could very well have excellerated 6 billion years as a cascading of unfolding processes within his creative power, or, his process of creation may only appear to have the evidence that we see as evolution....this is God we are trying to confine within the limits of our very immature understanding through science
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The Omphalos argument. It cannot be scientifically or logically disproved, but for me it is a non-starter because we don't just believe that God exists. We believe that God has a certain character. In particular, we believe that God is true and truthful.
Creating the appearance of age in a young earth/universe, or evidence of events that never happened, simply does not square with a God who is truth. How could we have faith in God if his work is filled with deceit? Why should we believe what he says if what he does is not believable?
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withreason
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there is one side of me that says..wow! nicely done! referring to your post. but, there is nothing that I am saying to try to reduce the importance of scientific discovery, or, the gift that God gives to us to discover these amazing wonders that science has been able to do, along with the all the benefits that we enjoy, medically as well...and we are created in his image and likeness, that is why these things are possible for us!.
but, i do not believe it gives us the right to reduce Gods creative power to a natural sequence of events that implies that God cannot keep his record of the creation in a perfect and accurate account for us. only to use his gifts to us to slander and deny his ability.
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withreason
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I did not imply that God created a false appearance to decieve, in the process of his creation it may only appear to US, by the methods we employ.
It is not Gods fault that we can not see beyond the confines of our understanding.
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These comments illustrate how far creationists are from understanding the whole approach of TEs to scripture. It is automatically assumed that to reject a literal interpretation of scripture is to compromise the integrity of scripture and constitutes a rejection of the Genesis account.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that TEs affirm the Genesis account. They do not reject scripture; they only reject what they believe to be an inadequate and erroneous human interpretation of scripture. From a TE perspective, it is the creationist's literal interpretation which compromises the integrity of scripture.
I acknowledge that if one has always been taught the correctness and importance of a literalist interpretation, it is not easy to see the scripture from a different perspective. For example, you ask in one post how plants would have survived without photosynthesis until the sun was created if the days of creation were long ages.
But this is smuggling part of a literalist interpretation into a non-literal interpretation. (Really, you need to ask Day-Age proponents that question, not TEs.) An interpretation which sees Genesis 1 as poetry and praise rather than history does not historicize the days in any way: neither as literal days, nor as literal ages.
From science we know that the sun shone on the earth long before any vegetation existed--even before life existed. There is no reconciling the order of creation in Genesis 1 with the order discerned scientifically. So it makes much more sense to see the author's attribution of various creations to various days as thematic rather than historical. All the plants appear on one "day" where the historical record shows different types of plants appearing millions of years apart, e.g nearly three hundred million years separate the first appearance of ferns and the first appearance of angiosperms.
I agree with rmwilliamsll that the Framework Interpretation makes best sense of Genesis 1 without either compromising the integrity of the text or rejecting the account.
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Ok, I'm still struggling with your post #135,specifically the first paragraph and I'll try to address that later.
I did want to address your whole post here but it's the underlined part that intrigues me the most. I can't imagine what consequences you are talking about. How is it possible for an honest scientist (which most are) to offend God? They go out and do there experiments or collect their samples or make their observations, then come back and try to fit their data into a logical coherent model... going where the data leads them (sometimes reluctantly), but doing it with the objective of better understanding our universe (or to put it in other terms God's creation). I really am at a loss to see how that can be construed as being offensive to God, in fact I see it as actually acknowledging the wonder of God. Ok, maybe that's just me...
Now to the first part. Scientists, probably better than anyone else, are all too aware of their own fallibility. That's why they are constantly checking, rechecking, and reanalyzing their findings with additional tests and observations. They, if at all possible do not rely on a single measurement or even a single methodology to arrive at their conclusions but rather look for as many independent means at their disposal to arrive at their best estimate of truth. As an example, there currently are over 40 different radiometric dating schemes in use today. Why? Well if you arrive at a date using only one technique, it is possible that you can be in error due to a systemic flaw in your measurement methodology. However if you use 2, 3, or more independent techniques and arrive at the same answer, then your confidence in the veracity of your conclusion increases by a considerable amount. That's why even today, as good as our radiometric data is (and it really is very very good), there are still people who are working very hard to make it even better. It's a constant struggle, and quite frankly, there are a lot of people that don't have the right temperament to work in a scientific field. That's not meant as a slam, it's just different strokes for different folks.
The point is, that we have progressed so far (with yet a lot to learn) in our understanding of our planet and our universe that we will never be able to return back to some old beliefs that were held in some cases as little as 100 years ago. In short, there isn't that one piece of data sitting in somebodies file cabinet that's going to turn around billions of data points that point to the great antiquity of our planet. I rambled enough!
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withreason
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CREATION
A man said to his wife one day, "I don't know how you can be
so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
"The wife responded, "Allow me to explain.
God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me;
God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!
A man said to his wife one day, "I don't know how you can be
so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
"The wife responded, "Allow me to explain.
God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me;
God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!
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Comes to the same thing in a way. If this were true, God did not intend us to understand his creation. Yet he gave us senses to perceive it and rational powers to seek understanding.
We used those perceptions and powers of reasoning to discern that the earth is a sphere, that it orbits the sun, that the sky is open space, not a roof above our heads, that we are one small planet in a large galaxy and that our galaxy is only one of hundreds of millions of galaxies.
What makes our perceptions and reasoning right in those cases (in spite of scripture that appears to disagree) and wrong in the case of the age and history of the earth?
Scripture tells us that God made the earth to be our habitation and that he gave the care and governance of the earth to us. Did he expect us to rule a domain we cannot understand?
Yes, our understanding is limited. That doesn't necessarily make it incorrect as far as it goes. And we know from history that we can improve our understanding of creation through further study. I agree with the other posters in believing this is God's will for us concerning nature. Since he made us in his image and gave us the faculties to know it, he expects us to study it and learn about it, the better to exercise the responsibility he has given us in respect to it.
This simply does not square with the idea that we are looking at an appearance that does not correspond to reality.
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withreason
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grimbly; I am sorry, I must not be very articulate at defining my post's, (no sarcasm).
I am referring to the potential millions, that may, as a result of trusting in the theoretical teaching of evolution, may have destroyed a potential relationship with Christ, ultimately...suffering the consequences!
that being offensive to God, not the sciences in general.
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withreason
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I can agree with 99.9 % of this, and I must admit that I do admire your detail to observance, and very refined response...but, with all the falculties that we have to perceive, to admire, to reason, to experiment, does not mean that we have excelled to a point to be able claim that we have gained enough reasoning through observation, to assume that God was not capable of creating what we observe according to the genesis account, and that is the stumbling block for millions.
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Nah, it was probably me misreading you. Musta got my stupid pills mixed up with my vitamins this morning.
So let's go with the underlined part. I can see Biblical literalism doing exactly the same thing. I NEED that St. Augustine quote. Ah here it is!
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo
I guess he said it much better than I could
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withreason
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thats amazing..I was just following up on glaudys, looking into theistic evo....and I just read that st augustine quote, I'm not kidding.Nah, it was probably me misreading you. Musta got my stupid pills mixed up with my vitamins this morning.
So let's go with the underlined part. I can see Biblical literalism doing exactly the same thing. I NEED that St. Augustine quote. Ah here it is!
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo
I guess he said it mush better than I could
but again ..we are talking about a Man that postulated the idea's that propagated most of the dissenting views of the 6 day creation, even before science had it's turn.
but, I'm not saying this to bash catholics, I think that ...well, I'll research before I post what I am inclined to at the moment, peace.
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For what it's worth, I've known more people to fall away from God, having had their faith in YECism debunked by science. I think it's the insistence that people must deny logic and observation to be Christian that ultimately leads them away from the faith. Not science itself.
(For proof of this, look at the number of waning YECs who drop by the TE subforum, struggling to keep their faiths intact after, say, starting a college science degree.)
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Well, no one is disputing God's capability. It is not what God can do that is disputed. It is what does the record show that God did do.
God's works and God's words cannot conflict with each other. So when God's work in nature tells us the universe and the earth are billions of years old, and that there is a long history of evolving species, including our own, that cannot be in conflict with scripture. If it seems as if it is, then we have some sort of misunderstanding of scripture.
Yes, it is a problem when one is raised with an understanding of scripture that does not agree with the reality God created. But since we cannot change the reality God created, the solution is not to turn a blind eye to the evidence, but to correct the way we understand scripture.
This is one reason for learning to understand the cultural context in which scripture was written--a cultural context that did not value history in the same way we do, and which did not have the scientific understanding that we do, so expressed their ideas in different ways.
When we understand how ANE cultures expressed themselves, it is easier to accept those differences without treating them as inferior or incorrect even when they conflict with our science-based knowledge. We no longer have to choose between ancient and modern paradigms, but can value both.
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withreason
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well...I must say gluadys, you continue to amaze me with your preceptive post's. and your "virtually" un-arguable replys, only due to my inadaquecies to respond with equalative insight... are you the same gluadys from interfaith forums..?? KUDOS My only rebutal is.....http://www.trueorigin.org/biotic.asp
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