The scientific myth of creationism

[shernren]

[No, this isn't another OP lamenting the inaccuracies of YEC science. This is a totally different approach to the issue.]

Ask any "well-informed" (in the arguments of AiG, ICR, and the "scientific creationists") YEC about Genesis 1-11. Some very interesting concepts will appear in a standard answer. It seems that Genesis 1 contains a white hole, a primeval large ball of water (with nucleosynthesis happening at its center!), a layer of ice at the edge of the universe, the formation of the Sun and Moon, planets, and stars (from aforementioned ball of water), the formation of the biosphere with genetically inscribed "kind"-boundaries (whatever kinds are), and of course the creation of man themselves. Genesis 3 apparently sees God turning on the entropy switch (or at least turning it up to full blast, whatever "partial sustenance" means) and flicking the carnivorosity toggle-button (unless you're suggesting Satan put together the carnivores? So *he's* the Intelligent Designer ... ). Genesis 6 and 7 are really interesting: hypercanes, runaway subduction, hydrological sorting and pseudo-ecological zonation, Ark engineering and bio-capacity analyses. All these are scientific concepts, of course. And this is my new grouse against scientific creationism:

It creates a scientific myth of origins.

"But how can a myth be scientific?"

A myth is any symbolic expression of the significance of creation and its relationship with both humanity and the numinous, nearly always couched in the form of a narrative. There are many myths which claim to have a unique understanding of these relationships. There is the Genesis myth, where in six days in orderly fashion God overcame chaos, pulled the earth out of water, and populated the world with life. There are other creation myths, like the Chinese myth of Pan Gu splitting the Cosmic Egg, or the Norse stories of the Giant who was killed and his body fashioned into the universe. The theme recurring throughout is the triumph of order over chaos and the identification of gods with the people who worship him. The uniqueness of the Genesis myth lies in the fact that God is at once separate from creation and cannot be identified with anything in creation, even man who is just "an image". God never has to work through anything but the force of His own creative declaration; nature obeys exactly to each command.

Then there are the modern myths. Modern or not we are still human, and humans look for significance and relationships and they tell stories around what they find. There is the directed evolutionary myth, the idea that order eventually emerges from disorder, the story of how a primeval, infinitely chaotic singularity became an orderly universe. Order is written into the very fabric of the cosmos, we are told; energy intuitively forms flux systems which are orderly and thus the development of life and ultimately humanity was written into the very heart of the Big Bang. Closely related is the "insignificance" evolutionary myth (which claims to do much "demythologizing", but is itself a myth which happens to be strong), the idea that we are just a speck in this galaxy, this galaxy is just a speck in this cosmos, and we are here only because universes which are comfortable to life do tend to spit out sentient lifeforms once in a while for no other reason than bland, undirected probability. There are the more esoteric ones, such as the belief that we were created by aliens (who will return and make us ascendant - presumably that does *them* some good) and the Omega-Point / Singularitarian myths so common in science-fiction. And scientific creationism is a myth, too, and a modern myth, and a particularly weak one at that.

Genesis 1 is a story about the creation of the world, and so every Christian who reads it reads it as a myth - the only question is, what kind of myth? My contention is that scientific creationism, even if it is right, strangles the right reading of Genesis 1 for the simple virtue of being scientific. It is a strange animal, a myth born out of the need to read something as not being "just a myth" but as something which has scientific and historical explanatory power. But what does it mean for Genesis 1 to be scientific, to be historical? Such a reading of Genesis 1 locks it into the past, rendering its mythical guidance useless, and thus leaves the Christian without a consistent paradigmatic understanding of his or her Christianity, in almost every case.

The reason I say this is because science operates on the principle of specificity - a scientific description must necessarily be accurate and specific to the phenomenon described. Science up to today has been primarily the compartmentalization and the organization of human knowledge about the natural world - the writing of formulae that describe relationships between measurables, and the construction of comfortable boxes in which to store these formulae. Therefore scientific knowledge is specific to an event, a definable instant or set of conditions. Furthermore, due to the modern state of scientific inquiry, scientific knowledge has also become (to some extent) specific to a certain category of people, namely the scientists. To the rest of us non-scientists science seems to be a black box where unseen machinations churn out unassailable conclusions about reality, since we are ignorant of the mechanisms of science.

To me, to construe Genesis 1-11 as a narrative from which science can be done is highly dangerous. It is nothing less than the construction of a scientific myth revolving around a modernist, indicative-historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11. By nature, scientific statements about the origins must necessarily be specifically about the first few days of the universe's existence, and therefore Genesis 1-11 becomes something which actually happened in the past, a set of truth statements chained to the physical state of the universe at a certain t=T. Not only that, but as Genesis 1-11 becomes wrapped in that set of truth statements it becomes more specific not only in spatial and temporal association, but also in the depth to which it can be understood. Much recent science is not something we non-scientists can experience personally, let alone creation science. None of us have seen an actual global inundation of water, and few of us have the theoretical skills to model and assess such an occurrence. Do you see what has happened? Science boxes up phenomena, and science in Genesis 1-11 places Genesis 1-11 in a box locked tight to non-scientists and placed 6,000 years in the past, remote from everyday experience.

As a scientific myth, therefore, Genesis 1-11 says almost nothing to us in modern experience, 6,000 years removed from the scientific realities these statements are describing. True, scientific creationism is a convenient litmus test to separate the True Christians (TM) from all the faithless Bible-burning heretics, but it loses its grip of relevance to the modern world outside genes and sediments. Most of the time creationists lose the theological significance of the imagery in Genesis 1-11 in their apparent zeal to scientificise and thus authenticate Genesis 1-11. For example, they do not see how the doctrine of Sabbath is intimately connected to Genesis 1 or how the chaos waters of the deep represent chaos in general in 1:3, and God's position as bringer of order and the explicit parallels between Israel's order under God's rule and the pagan nations' chaos under idolatry. These are not just dry doctrines; an understanding of Yahweh the Warrior from Genesis 1, for example, helps greatly in understanding the Canaanite "genocide" that troubles so many readers of Joshua.

More importantly, Genesis 1 in a prescientific framework represents a paradigmatic, omni-relevant myth. *We* are Adam in the garden, reaching for the fruit and eating it and sinning and losing life in the process. The deep is no mere 6,000-year-ago-large-ball-of-water, it represents chaos and disorder wherever it is found and we know from Genesis 1 that God is always able to cut through the chaos to bring order and satisfaction out of "formless and void" circumstances. Genesis 1-11 isn't a literal-historical description of things that only happened once 6,000 years ago, it isn't even a veiled and mystical narration of human history in code and mist, it is a very real and present description of who I am ("the image of God"), what nature is ("and God saw that it was very good"), who God is ("in the beginning God created ... ") - it becomes the truly Christian expression of the significance of creation and its relationship with both humanity and the numinous, something at which the scientific myths of scientific creationism fail miserably.

Part of the reason for the misery of modernity is that we have fallen for the lie that our myths must be scientific - everything we do must have some quantifiable reason. And scientific creationism plays right into that lie, by believing that in order for the Genesis myth to be authentic it has to be scientific. But making Genesis 1-11 scientific locks it away from being paradigmatic, and locks it away from the sphere of modern life save for when we want to fire Bible hammers at people who disagree. The zeal of scientific creationism to make the Genesis myth scientific causes people to lose sight of what the Genesis myth really means, like a person who goes to great lengths to prove that a cheque is authentic ... and then never cashes it in.

*provocation disclaimer 1: This article describes scientific creationism in connection with the word "myth" many times. I use this word "myth" the way a TE uses it, to describe a paradigmatic explanation of the creation of the world, without expressly commenting on whether it is historically and epistemologically true or not. I am aware that YECs normally use the word "myth" in a derogatory sense to describe ideas which to them are self-evidently false, such as evolution ("the conglomeration of all the science we happen to dislike"), evolution (biological evolution), the Big Bang theory, and the idea that TEism is a scriptural way to look at the world. If your mental picture of "myth" is that you will be deeply offended when I use the word to describe your beliefs. That is partly intended - affront is an effective way to gain attention - but I do not intend to say that something is false purely by describing it as a "myth". If the provocation is really too much for you then I suggest you copy the article, paste it into any decent text editor, find every occurrence of "myth" and replace it with "explanatory story" (or if you are ambitious, "metanarrative"). I've tried my best to make the article equally legible with such a substitution performed.

**provocation disclaimer 2: I am very specific in the target of this article. It is not all creationism, and not even all YECism (for AAism is a form of it too). This article is for all the scientific creationists. However, they do form the most significant proportion of creationism, especially within the non-scientific community.

 

[Willtor]

Would that I could rep you, Shernren.

This is quite an interesting approach, and one that I haven't seen before. You're absolutely right, though. That the myth includes us is something that is lost in the shuffle. Society's loss of the myth (apart from science) as a legitimate mode of communication is lamentable.

Fascinating approach.

 

[chaoschristian]

Christian Forums Message

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to shernren again.​

Blast, blast, blast, blast - I hate that little box.

Seriosly, you have presented the most articulate synthesis of most if not all of what has been going on here in this forum since I wandered on in, and I am duly humbled and mightily impressed.

 

[Mandrake]

I add my compliments to those above. Truly exceptional.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

And scientific creationism plays right into that lie, by believing that in order for the Genesis myth to be authentic it has to be scientific.

This is one of the key ideas that i'd like to think more about.

it's related to several things we've talked about here over the last few months. _Phantom of the Opera_ for instance:
i got the novel from the library just the other day, in an excellent foreword by John Flint he writes

By making use of diaries, journal entries, and alternating first-prson narratives. Leroux was able to exeute a chilling tale that cleverly walks the fine line between truth and fiction.
...
provides the reader with a kind of verisimilitude that makes the characters and settings seem borrowed from the headlines of the daily post.

authentication. it is part of a system, a complex set of ideas that provide for the certification of truth or the certification of identity.

scientism, the weak form thinks that science provides the most valid form of truth about the physical world. the strong form makes claims of sufficiency of explanation over the long run, the eventual destruction of all the gaps where a god of the gaps can take refuge.

not just scientific, but historical as well. things have to have links back into our shared real world in order to be valid. and those links have to look like science and history. for our culture believes that these methodologies yield the best kind of knowledge. so even if something is not science or not history, it has to be reinterpreted back in those terms for modern people to believe it, hence the rise of YECism in the 20th C.


nice thoughts. i too wish i could rep the author.

 

[Willtor]

Yeah, Shernren, stop making so many rep-able posts so frequently.

 

[Melethiel]

Reps given on behalf of those unable to.

 

[shernren]

[the part II wasn't planned, it just popped into my head this morning. Honest! But I have an idea for a part III: "the oxymoron of the scientific myth", looking at the unusual superimposition of presuppositionalism and evidentialism that results from taking Genesis 1 as a scientific myth.]

[The usual caveats remain: using "myth" in its standard definition, instead of the creationist "myths are lies" definition in which case substitute "explanatory story" or "metanarrative"; hitting mainly scientific creationism and nothing much else.]

The Anatomy of a Scientific Myth

Having seen that scientific creationism tries to reinterpret Genesis 1 within a scientism-ist* framework to yield a scientific myth, what does the result look like?

1. The scientific myth of creationism is unfalsifiable.

This is the famous proclamation of scientific creationism:

No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. [Answers in Genesis Statement of Faith]

With one caveat: "the Scriptural record as we read it." As we shall see later this inability to recognize alternative viewpoints is another hallmark of the scientific myth of creationism.

Of course it makes sense that a myth is unfalsifiable. A myth is ultimately a worldview, a (whether historical or paradigmatic) past-based foundation for interpreting the events of modern times. By definition therefore a myth cannot be falsified. After all, any observation can be made to fit a specific worldview. By various devices of logic, emotion, and sometimes sheer denial (which is valid in some cases), the atheist and the Christian can look at the same events happening in the world today and draw diametrically opposite conclusions. Revelations speaks of how when God pours out His wrath on the world the unsaved will continue in their ways of wickedness - and yet the intended effect on the reader was to press him or her to continual repentance and dependance on God.

Creationism therefore admits no evidence which seems to falsify it, and explains away any prominent evidence against it. And it tries to do so in scientific terms, being after all a scientific myth. Of course, it helps that it has recourse to God's unquantifiable power, which is freely available as a sort of cosmic Blanko to squeeze anything inexplicable out of the picture. The "dinosaur fossils are planted by God to test our faith!" mentality is still present in the creationist mindset. As a corollary, since evidence cannot falsify creationism it need not be scrutinized too deeply (cosmic Blanko for all the embarrassing details). This explains the perplexing contradiction between how scientific creationism seems to enjoy doing "science", and yet decries science as a humanistic invention designed to give pride to man in being able to explain the world without God - don't look too close at what we say supports our theory!

Scientific creationism's infalsifiability is entirely appropriate for a scientific myth ... but it does mean that it can't cut the mustard as a scientific theory. Evolution, on the other hand, is entirely falsifiable. The discovery that all mutations are deleterious, for example (although creationists don't have a global "fitness function", for good reasons), or the discovery of a Cambrian rabbit, or a true chimera, reuse of modules - all these would nail evolution into a coffin. And yet scientific creationism is content to nibble at the fringes with speculative attacks on the integrity of radiodating and other such peripheral matters, while not going for the jugular of evolutionism: descent with modification.

2. The scientific myth of creationism is relativist.

Is it? You might be surprised, having seen how creationism sets itself up as being foundational to theology and all that other Christian stuff, but both its relativism and its claims of being foundational do not actually contradict each other. I am not saying that creationism gives any credit to competing myths as equally valid paradigms, but it does admit that as one myth among many it is not supported by scientific evidence but has scientific evidence read into it and cannot be selected based on scientific evidence alone.

Here are two interesting articles into what Ken Ham seems to be promoting as the true creationist mindset:

Creation: where's the proof?
Searching for the magic bullet

Here are open admissions that scientific creationism isn't based on evidence: it is based on pre-existing suppositions. Of course, the big pre-supposition they don't name is the pre-supposition of modernist scientism: all truth has to be scientifically verifiable and/or historically accurate. This pre-supposition, more than any "evidence", compels them to anchor Genesis 1 down to a specific, inaccessible space-time moment, rendering it next to useless as a paradigmatic myth.

Scientific creationism therefore has to admit that the evidence does not support its pre-suppositions any more or less than it supports other mythical pre-suppositions. curiously, though, scientific creationists, when required to prop up scientific creationism, often do so without any reference to the pre-suppositions at all. This is another typical feature of the scientific myth, which we shall look at later. On the other hand, evolution requires no pre-suppositions other than methodological naturalism, and consciously limits itself to the realm of science and scientific reality.

3. The scientific myth of creationism portrays itself as exclusively foundational.

The predominant creationist mindset is that if you do not believe in creationism your whole Christian faith is on the rocks. Apparently, without transplanting modern scientism-ist notions into Genesis 1-11, we do not have a reason to believe in Christianity, the Bible, sin, death, faith, salvation, and clothes! This again is typical of a myth mentality. The myth is designed to be all-encompassing, making value-judgment statements on all aspects of life. Therefore the scientific creationist myth does just that: it portrays itself as being fundamental and paradigmatic to understanding everything else around it, while portraying itself as being mutually exclusive to any other way of understanding the world.

Of course, the biggest problem with this is that to put a scientific myth at the foundation of faith anchors and weighs this foundation down to a specific space-time location, robbing it of its universal paradigmatic relevance. In giving us the Bible God wisely made the Resurrection both historic (an event to which there were witnesses, causes, effects, and implications) and paradigmatic ("we are all crucified with Christ", for example). The scientific myth of creationism on the other hand makes Genesis 1-11 fully historic, and by setting itself up as being foundational, it builds faith on a foundation that is both physically and intellectually inaccessible to most of modern Christianity.

4. The scientific myth of creationism is transmitted palimpsestically, with multiple variations.

The scientific myth of creationism has no central textual or credal authority, and thus it is handed down through paths of transmission which are very much analogous to the oral transmission of myths in prescientific times. (Genesis 1-11 is not the textual authority of scientific creationism, as shown in part I: it is merely a text from which scientific creationism emerges when scientism is applied, and it does not contain the extended content which scientism overlays on it to create the scientific creationist myth.) This is why on details, there are many varieties of evidence-proof approaches and methods. Some creationists will put forward the Paluxy prints and the moondust arguments as valid proof, some will decry those and move towards more modern "evidence", some go for genetics, some for astrophysics, some for disproof-by-authority quotefests.

This is to be expected as the scientific creationist myth is transmitted from person to person. Most scientific creationists either derive their arguments from some sort of authority - there are as many types of creationists as there are creationist websites! - while some learn bits and pieces from other people who have checked those sites, some learn thirdhand, and so on. Very little of scientific creationist support actually derives from the community which does primary research in the pertinent areas, so that there is no central reference frame for scientific creationism, but rather a hodge-podge of independent pseudo-research churning out new ideas which take time to disseminate through the community and do not reach all areas of scientific creationism uniformly.

The anatomy of scientific creationism is clear for all to see. Scientific creationism is a myth, and it cannot pretend convincingly to be anything else.

*[is there a better cognate adjective for "scientism"? "scientist" has a totally different meaning!]

 

[chaoschristian]

You must have figured out how to shunt Wheaties directly into your cerebral cortext.

If you continue writing like this, there will be no reason for the rest of us to post.

Shernren, another great job.

 

[Willtor]

Agreed. Shernren, we're all going to become lurkers if you're not careful.

 

[Katarn]

shernren:

Firstly, I generally don't get engaged in these kind of debates, but since there is absolutely no other thread going on in any of the forums which I participate in that interests me, so I though that I might as well reply to a part of this thread for a while.

While the first part your first paragraph is oversimplified and rather smugly stated, they are simply theories of how God may have created the universe based on the historical information presented in Genesis 1. Evolutionists have already at the start of reading the Bible ignored the most important and basic principles of Bible study, that being literal interpretation.

Now you probably have a preconceived idea about what the literal interpretation means, so I'll define what it is considered to mean by many theologians. The literal interpretation maintains that every passge must be taken to mean exactly what it says unless context or the expression itself indicates otherwise. Someone has aptly said, "If the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest it result in nonsense," which the evolutionist has surely found out.

A Biblical expression or its immediate context will enable anyone with common sense to recognize when a passage must be interpreted figuratively. In Matthew 23:14, for example, our Lord denounces the Pharisees, declaring, "For ye devour widows' houses." Now we would all agree that the lumber and nails that go into a house would be rather indigestable, and therefore we know that the Lord Jesus was speaking figuratively, for these men were enriching themselves financially by taking advantage of widows. It is important to remember in Bible study that we areto interpret every passage literally unless the literal sense makes no sense.

The rule that we must interpret the Scriptures literally, however, does not mean that we reject all symbolism in the Bible as many theistic evolutionists claim. Nor does the use of symbols present a real difficulty. Daniel 2 is a good example of this. The use of symbols and imagery is an effective and valid means of communicating truth. The person and work of the Lord Jesus could not be expressed more beautifully and accurately than in the term "the good Shepher" or "the Lamb of God"; yet we know He was not a literal shepherd or a lamb.

Genesis 3 apparently sees God turning on the entropy switch (or at least turning it up to full blast, whatever "partial sustenance" means)

Entropy had to exist before the Fall such that man could eat and digest food, for example. However, the Bible makes it very clear that God is a good God and that He created everything "very good". So, a logical consequence of this is that God created the universe without death, suffering, pain, bloodshed and so on. So, He must have been preventing the negative effects of entropy on Adam and His creation. Is this really so hard for the evolutionist to believe? For example, while the Israelites were wandering around in the desert for 40 years their shoes and clothes didn't wear out, their feet didn't swell, and so on. In other words, God was keeping His elect from the negative effects of entropy. How much more than, could God conserve His creation when He upholds it 100%?

You only have a point if God isn't good and just. In fact, evolution denies this very fact that God is a good and just God by assuming that He considers death, disease, bloodshed, suffering, pain, crying, hurt, etc, as "very good". I just want to ask you: what kind of God do you think the Christian God (YHVH) is? Besides that, your whole assertion is contradicted by Paul who describes death as an intruder into the creation, an enemy, and this makes no sense if God created using death. You see, even on this topic alone, however little I have covered it here, evolution contradicts a clear and truthful understanding of God.

Since the curse, He has loosened His grip on upholding His creation to give man a taste of what he asked for when he rebelled against God - a taste of life without Him. This is a foreshadow of what will come for those who reject Him.

and flicking the carnivorosity toggle-button (unless you're suggesting Satan put together the carnivores? So *he's* the Intelligent Designer ... ).

There is no Scriptural evidence to suggest that Satan had anything to do with it. This is just a consequence of the Curse that God placed on the creation because of man's sin. Perhaps God changed some of them so that they could adapt to and survive in the post-Curse world (not to mention the post-Flood world which would have been more dramatically different).

Genesis 6 and 7 are really interesting: hypercanes, runaway subduction, hydrological sorting and pseudo-ecological zonation, Ark engineering and bio-capacity analyses. All these are scientific concepts, of course.

Like the first paragraph, they are just attempts at explaining what may have happened using Scriptural and scientific knowledge.

As a scientific myth, therefore, Genesis 1-11 says almost nothing to us in modern experience, 6,000 years removed from the scientific realities these statements are describing. True, scientific creationism is a convenient litmus test to separate the True Christians (TM) from all the faithless Bible-burning heretics, but it loses its grip of relevance to the modern world outside genes and sediments. Most of the time creationists lose the theological significance of the imagery in Genesis 1-11 in their apparent zeal to scientificise and thus authenticate Genesis 1-11. For example, they do not see how the doctrine of Sabbath is intimately connected to Genesis 1 or how the chaos waters of the deep represent chaos in general in 1:3, and God's position as bringer of order and the explicit parallels between Israel's order under God's rule and the pagan nations' chaos under idolatry. These are not just dry doctrines; an understanding of Yahweh the Warrior from Genesis 1, for example, helps greatly in understanding the Canaanite "genocide" that troubles so many readers of Joshua.

I have to respectfully LOL when I read you saying that [Christian creationists] do not 'see how the doctrine of Sabbath is intimately connected to Genesis 1' when it is you evolutionists who have totally destroyed the logical and only foundation for understanding the Sabbath - that God completed His work on the seventh day. Take away the literal week then the Sabbath is meaningless. It is a literal view that makes the Sabbath true and relevant; in fact the whole justification for the commandment to the Israelites is that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh! Your statement about the chaos of the deep resembling chaos in general has me confused. To what do you refer to? There are also many parallels between the exodus and Jesus' life - does this mean that the exodus didn't occur? Of course not. In the same way, creationists believe the Genesis account as literal history, but they also agree that there are important lessons to be learned through the text. For example, the exodus. Another example is that we can learn a lot through the experience of Sampson.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

A Biblical expression or its immediate context will enable anyone with common sense to recognize when a passage must be interpreted figuratively.

what you are describing as THE Biblical hermeneutic is actually A hermeneutic which owes it's principles first to Scottish Common Sense philosophy and second to the Princeton Seminary greats of the Hodges and Warfield. The best introduction, imho, to this is Noll's
chapter 18 "The 'Bible Alone' and a Reformed, Literal Hermeneutic" of America's God, i have some pull quotes on the topic at: http://rmwilliamsjr.livejournal.com/84610.html.
What is important to realize is that this is a thoroughly modern hermeneutic that owes it's existence to both the battle with science and the battle with Protestant liberalism. It does not solve the problems of Gen 1 but makes them worse.

you evolutionists who have totally destroyed the logical and only foundation for understanding the Sabbath - that God completed His work on the seventh day. Take away the literal week then the Sabbath is meaningless. It is a literal view that makes the Sabbath true and relevant; in fact the whole justification for the commandment to the Israelites is that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh!

it is a metaphor, a great motif, a huge tapestry woven of important themes. why do you'all insist that it has to be in scientific order and historical to be true? are you that wrapped up in the modern notions of historicism and scientism that you can't even see the options? you don't have to believe them but to continually state the same errors without even understanding your opposition is just plain deafness.

is God a chicken that we can rest underneath His wings and feel secure?
you get that metaphor. why can't you see the Treaty of the Great King built on the Sabbath Creation Week where the heavenly temple is the model for the universe? where the gods of the neighborhood are reduced to timekeepers. Where the 2 triads demonstrate visually the creation of kingdoms and the providential care in filling them up. where man as vice-regerent under God and under the Sabbath is the crowing element of this creation. it is a METAPHOR. it does not have to happen 1 24 hr day at a time to be true and to be real, to be authoritative and right. once you see the patterns and the enormity of the metaphor it is almost crass to go back to arguing over why the sun comes 3 days after the light, or why fish/birds/land mammals are created in the order that they are. That is the problem with the modern notion of common sense, man in the pew hermeneutic, it is so seductive and so obvious that most people can't get it out of their heads long enough to see any options to it....
sad.

 

[Willtor]

. . .

Evolutionists have already at the start of reading the Bible ignored the most important and basic principles of Bible study, that being literal interpretation.

Now you probably have a preconceived idea about what the literal interpretation means, so I'll define what it is considered to mean by many theologians. The literal interpretation maintains that every passge must be taken to mean exactly what it says unless context or the expression itself indicates otherwise. Someone has aptly said, "If the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest it result in nonsense," which the evolutionist has surely found out.

A Biblical expression or its immediate context will enable anyone with common sense to recognize when a passage must be interpreted figuratively.

. . .

I'm actually not convinced that this is the most important principle of Bible study. I'm not convinced that this is not a principle of Bible study at all, but I think in a moment you will agree that it is certainly not the most important. The most important principle of Bible study is meeting God on His terms in His context and hearing what He has to say. To be sure, we may conclude that a literal interpretation of a particular passage is what is intended, but if we treat it as a default besides which only common sense can refute, then we are almost certainly imposing our particular order on the Scriptures.

I'll address this on two levels. The first is that common sense is not necessarily common. I had a Christian housemate from Africa, last year, and he was so sure his interpretation was common sense. But it wasn't common to America. Some of his interpretations were quite insightful, not because he was a great theologian, but because he grew up in an agrarian society. A lot of his common sense conflicted with my common sense. On many of these issues I agreed with him because I was not so concerned with my common sense as I was with understanding what was meant by the author.

That said, there were many issues on which we disagreed. Here, he was still using his common sense. I was still not using my common sense, but an (albeit limited) understanding of the culture into which particular Scriptures were written. On many of these things, that culture was different from his culture. If he was right more often than a typical American Fundamentalist, it was only because his culture was more similar to the cultures in which the Scriptures were penned than American culture.

The second level deals with the history of interpretation. This often speaks to the first point I made. There may be subtleties that are difficult to find in a particular translation, or have not successfully made the jump between cultures. These subtleties may not be so subtle to the ancient reader - they may be blindingly obvious - but to us, they become indistinguishable from anything else.

Thus, rather than saying, "literal," (in the sense you have used the word) by default, and only non-literal when it is clearly otherwise, let us endeavor to discover what is meant by each passage we read. If we cannot pin down literal or non-literal, let it remain ambiguous until such time as we have good reason to say one way or another.

. . .

Entropy had to exist before the Fall such that man could eat and digest food, for example. However, the Bible makes it very clear that God is a good God and that He created everything "very good". So, a logical consequence of this is that God created the universe without death, suffering, pain, bloodshed and so on. So, He must have been preventing the negative effects of entropy on Adam and His creation. Is this really so hard for the evolutionist to believe? For example, while the Israelites were wandering around in the desert for 40 years their shoes and clothes didn't wear out, their feet didn't swell, and so on. In other words, God was keeping His elect from the negative effects of entropy. How much more than, could God conserve His creation when He upholds it 100%?

You only have a point if God isn't good and just. In fact, evolution denies this very fact that God is a good and just God by assuming that He considers death, disease, bloodshed, suffering, pain, crying, hurt, etc, as "very good". I just want to ask you: what kind of God do you think the Christian God (YHVH) is? Besides that, your whole assertion is contradicted by Paul who describes death as an intruder into the creation, an enemy, and this makes no sense if God created using death. You see, even on this topic alone, however little I have covered it here, evolution contradicts a clear and truthful understanding of God.

. . .

Throughout the Bible, death is seen as punishment, but is it the bodily death that is so dreadful? Is it an end to physical life that is the hard limit to the Fall? I don't think so, and here's why: Even in the garden, Adam and Eve are said to have eaten fruit. This caused death. Plants are living organisms comprised of living organisms. People knew this, back then. Jesus made a tree die. The fact that the author realized it died indicates that he realized it had once had life. There was physical death in the garden. To make use of some of my previous arguments, the death of the curse has been interpreted by most theologians and Church Fathers as a spiritual death.

To address this more fundamentally, however, I am concerned that you see a universe without physical death as good, and then conclude that God could not have created the universe with this in the original model. It might be more appropriate to consider God, as He is, and learn what is good by looking at Him, rather than saying that particular things are or are not good and saying "God is that."

 

[shernren]

Firstly, I generally don't get engaged in these kind of debates, but since there is absolutely no other thread going on in any of the forums which I participate in that interests me, so I though that I might as well reply to a part of this thread for a while.

Actually you're the one starting the debate here. But sure thing!

Now you probably have a preconceived idea about what the literal interpretation means, so I'll define what it is considered to mean by many theologians. The literal interpretation maintains that every passge must be taken to mean exactly what it says unless context or the expression itself indicates otherwise. Someone has aptly said, "If the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest it result in nonsense," which the evolutionist has surely found out.

A Biblical expression or its immediate context will enable anyone with common sense to recognize when a passage must be interpreted figuratively. In Matthew 23:14, for example, our Lord denounces the Pharisees, declaring, "For ye devour widows' houses." Now we would all agree that the lumber and nails that go into a house would be rather indigestable, and therefore we know that the Lord Jesus was speaking figuratively, for these men were enriching themselves financially by taking advantage of widows. It is important to remember in Bible study that we areto interpret every passage literally unless the literal sense makes no sense.

There is a specific problem with your example and a general problem with your point which illuminate each other. The specific problem is that we are nowhere told in the Bible that Pharisees couldn't eat houses. Not a hint of it. The Bible tells us a lot of fantastic things about Pharisees, such as them being able to strain at gnats, uncanny resemblance to whitewashed walls and unwashed cups, etc. And nowhere from Scripture can we prove that these shouldn't be taken literally.

Your argument was, "It is obvious that Pharisees can't eat houses!" Obvious from what? From common sense. Not from the Bible. So in saying that Pharisees can't devour houses, you can't prove this from Scripture, you have to prove it from outside Scripture. Extra-biblical evidence informs your interpretation of Matthew. So is it so wrong for it to inform our interpretation of Genesis?

The general problem is that if the literal interpretation is to read only what the passage says the immediate question is to whom? This is a paramount problem which the scientific myth of creationism completely ignores. Take Genesis 1: "In the beginning God created the heavens ... " which is enough to demonstrate the problem. Whose heavens?

To you, "the heavens" are outer space, stars, galaxies, the solar system.
To pre-Copernicans, "the heavens" were the planets and the sun and the moon making perfect circular orbits around the earth, all encased by a dark sphere with holes punched in it from which the light of God's heaven shone through. (And the "solar system" was a heresy.)
To the ancient Jews, "the heavens" were a solid dome above the earth which was covered by water, hence its being blue.

So whose interpretation is literal? You think yours is literal and the others' aren't? A "literal" pre-Copernican or a "literal" Jew would think you were the non-literal one.

All interpretations are informed by some sort of world-view. There is no such thing as the naked Scripture: Scripture always comes to us clothed in our own ideas as we read it.

my response to the rest later, after dinner and Easter practice.

 

[shernren]

There is no Scriptural evidence to suggest that Satan had anything to do with it. This is just a consequence of the Curse that God placed on the creation because of man's sin. Perhaps God changed some of them so that they could adapt to and survive in the post-Curse world (not to mention the post-Flood world which would have been more dramatically different).

I've never understood how creationists who wax "literal" love to read carnivorism into the Fall, when God never said anything about it in Genesis 3. You know, while God was telling us precisely what the Fall would do? If God had suddenly retconned (comics term) all those lions and tigers and crocodiles etc. to think Adam and Eve were dinner, don't You think He would have been considerate enough to warn them about it?

I have to respectfully LOL when I read you saying that [Christian creationists] do not 'see how the doctrine of Sabbath is intimately connected to Genesis 1' when it is you evolutionists who have totally destroyed the logical and only foundation for understanding the Sabbath - that God completed His work on the seventh day. Take away the literal week then the Sabbath is meaningless.

We've destroyed the foundation for understanding the Sabbath? lol ... most creationists here never even knew the word or controversy of "Sabbatarianism" until evolutionists brought it up. If there's anybody doing serious thinking about the Sabbath-creation link, it definitely isn't creationists.

Search AiG for yourself ... Sabbath is relegated to the level of being a proof for creation, instead of being a doctrine flowing from creation. And how can they afford to say this?

Because Answers in Genesis is a non-denominational ministry reaching out to multitudes of churches and various denominations, we do not have an official position on many important doctrinal issues such as modes of baptism, eschatology, signs and wonders, tongues, the Sabbath, etc. We refrain from taking an official ministry position because clarification on these issues is not the thrust of this ministry. http://www.answersingenesis.org/feedback/sendmail.aspx?TopicID=Theological

One extremely major point of Genesis 1 is to justify the week, a chronological structure which has no astronomical basis. AiG has never held any position on the Sabbath ... and it claims to have explored origins thoroughly?

Your statement about the chaos of the deep resembling chaos in general has me confused. To what do you refer to?

My point exactly.

Here's a sample passage:

For this is what the LORD says--
he who created the heavens,
he is God;
he who fashioned and made the earth,
he founded it;
he did not create it to be empty,
but formed it to be inhabited--
he says:
"I am the LORD,
and there is no other.
I have not spoken in secret,
from somewhere in a land of darkness;
I have not said to Jacob's descendants,
'Seek me in vain.'
I, the LORD, speak the truth;
I declare what is right.
(Isaiah 45:18-19 NIV)

The obvious parallel in this passage is:

fashioned with order and habitation vs. formless and void
[land of] Jacob's descendants vs. land of darkness
declaration of truth vs. speaking in secret
God vs. the idols of the pagans

Yahweh as the God of the Jews is their divine representative warrior. He is portrayed as a powerful warrior, both in "human form" and by taking on the metaphor of powerful carnivores such as the lion, whenever His people are oppressed or disobedient. However, the foundation for understanding Yahweh as warrior is found all the way back in Genesis 1. In Genesis 1 Yahweh is the warrior for order, and who is His "adversary"? The chaos waters: the deep in Genesis 1:2,3; and the resulting formlessness and emptiness of creation initially. God is seen to "set apart" the sky between the waters, and the land above which the waters cannot encroach, and plants from empty land, and stars in the sky to mark off seasons (give order to) in time (primeval, undivided chaos). This forms the paradigm within which the people of Israel understood Yahweh as their warrior: they were the order which God had wrested from the chaos around them.

See what creationism's straitjacket makes people miss?

There are also many parallels between the exodus and Jesus' life - does this mean that the exodus didn't occur? Of course not. In the same way, creationists believe the Genesis account as literal history, but they also agree that there are important lessons to be learned through the text.

I've only seen two creationist "lessons" from the text:

1. God created everything and left nothing to chance, therefore He cares about us! (The rest of the Bible teaches it as well, and TEs believe it as well.)

2. Evolutionists are either dirty atheists or lousy compromising Christians, who know nuts about the Bible. (Which is untrue, as can be witnessed on this forum.)

My personal experience is that becoming a TE really opened my eyes to the riches of Genesis 1-11, not my former YEC background.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Sometimes i really wonder about the amount of time i spend here and if it is really worth it.

Then i watch someone like Shernren. He is really paying attention to what is going on here. He is taking it as a learning lesson and as a creative writing exercise. I can see pieces of other people's postings integrated into his thinking, i can see changes in his arguments as he proceeds to discuss the issues. and listen to people and react to their concerns.

and you know what?
it makes the time and energy spent here so much more valuable. so much more a learning experience for me as well.

much public thanks to him and all those who bring in riches from their worlds to share and enrich ours.

THANKS.

and thanks to God for not only making the world accessible to us in some very important ways, for making us to be curious and interested in our world/His world, also for the time, energy and opportunity to study.

 

[Willtor]

Amen.

 

[chaoschristian]

 

[chaoschristian]

I am awarding this post Three Stars of Irony under the category of Best Attempt to Refute an Argument By Using Exactly the Same Means As Described and Predicted By Said Argument.

*

*I couldn't find stars per se, but these are suns and the sun is a star.

Firstly, I generally don't get engaged in these kind of debates, but since there is absolutely no other thread going on in any of the forums which I participate in that interests me, so I though that I might as well reply to a part of this thread for a while.

While the first part your first paragraph is oversimplified and rather smugly stated, they are simply theories of how God may have created the universe based on the historical information presented in Genesis 1. Evolutionists have already at the start of reading the Bible ignored the most important and basic principles of Bible study, that being literal interpretation.

Now you probably have a preconceived idea about what the literal interpretation means, so I'll define what it is considered to mean by many theologians. The literal interpretation maintains that every passge must be taken to mean exactly what it says unless context or the expression itself indicates otherwise. Someone has aptly said, "If the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest it result in nonsense," which the evolutionist has surely found out.

A Biblical expression or its immediate context will enable anyone with common sense to recognize when a passage must be interpreted figuratively. In Matthew 23:14, for example, our Lord denounces the Pharisees, declaring, "For ye devour widows' houses." Now we would all agree that the lumber and nails that go into a house would be rather indigestable, and therefore we know that the Lord Jesus was speaking figuratively, for these men were enriching themselves financially by taking advantage of widows. It is important to remember in Bible study that we areto interpret every passage literally unless the literal sense makes no sense.

The rule that we must interpret the Scriptures literally, however, does not mean that we reject all symbolism in the Bible as many theistic evolutionists claim. Nor does the use of symbols present a real difficulty. Daniel 2 is a good example of this. The use of symbols and imagery is an effective and valid means of communicating truth. The person and work of the Lord Jesus could not be expressed more beautifully and accurately than in the term "the good Shepher" or "the Lamb of God"; yet we know He was not a literal shepherd or a lamb.

Entropy had to exist before the Fall such that man could eat and digest food, for example. However, the Bible makes it very clear that God is a good God and that He created everything "very good". So, a logical consequence of this is that God created the universe without death, suffering, pain, bloodshed and so on. So, He must have been preventing the negative effects of entropy on Adam and His creation. Is this really so hard for the evolutionist to believe? For example, while the Israelites were wandering around in the desert for 40 years their shoes and clothes didn't wear out, their feet didn't swell, and so on. In other words, God was keeping His elect from the negative effects of entropy. How much more than, could God conserve His creation when He upholds it 100%?

You only have a point if God isn't good and just. In fact, evolution denies this very fact that God is a good and just God by assuming that He considers death, disease, bloodshed, suffering, pain, crying, hurt, etc, as "very good". I just want to ask you: what kind of God do you think the Christian God (YHVH) is? Besides that, your whole assertion is contradicted by Paul who describes death as an intruder into the creation, an enemy, and this makes no sense if God created using death. You see, even on this topic alone, however little I have covered it here, evolution contradicts a clear and truthful understanding of God.

Since the curse, He has loosened His grip on upholding His creation to give man a taste of what he asked for when he rebelled against God - a taste of life without Him. This is a foreshadow of what will come for those who reject Him.

There is no Scriptural evidence to suggest that Satan had anything to do with it. This is just a consequence of the Curse that God placed on the creation because of man's sin. Perhaps God changed some of them so that they could adapt to and survive in the post-Curse world (not to mention the post-Flood world which would have been more dramatically different).

Like the first paragraph, they are just attempts at explaining what may have happened using Scriptural and scientific knowledge.

I have to respectfully LOL when I read you saying that [Christian creationists] do not 'see how the doctrine of Sabbath is intimately connected to Genesis 1' when it is you evolutionists who have totally destroyed the logical and only foundation for understanding the Sabbath - that God completed His work on the seventh day. Take away the literal week then the Sabbath is meaningless. It is a literal view that makes the Sabbath true and relevant; in fact the whole justification for the commandment to the Israelites is that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh! Your statement about the chaos of the deep resembling chaos in general has me confused. To what do you refer to? There are also many parallels between the exodus and Jesus' life - does this mean that the exodus didn't occur? Of course not. In the same way, creationists believe the Genesis account as literal history, but they also agree that there are important lessons to be learned through the text. For example, the exodus. Another example is that we can learn a lot through the experience of Sampson.

The problem with 'common sense' is that is not so common; and the problem with 'plain meaning' is that its just not that plain.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

The problem with 'common sense' is that is not so common; and the problem with 'plain meaning' is that its just not that plain.

we could build a whole argument like this.

the problem with declaring things clear is that up close it often isn't.

the problem with using literal techniques that it is true that sentences are made up of words, and words in turn consist of letters. however looking only at the letters doesn't help understand the sentence they built.
([Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin litterālis, of letters, from Latin littera, lītera, letter.)

to make things simple enough for most people to understand usually makes it simply wrong.