Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

TEs Must Say the Explanation of an Illusion is Itself an Illusion as the Price of Admission to the “Cool Kids” Club

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Editors:  This was originally posted under a different title in May 2012.  We were inspired to repost it by Dr. Sewell’s post here

Bishop Ussher famously calculated that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC.  I do not hold this or any other young earth creationist (YEC) position.  The evidence that the universe is several billion years old seems fairly compelling to me.  In particular, certain celestial objects (stars, galaxies, supernovas, etc.) are billions of light years away.  From this fact I deduce that the light we see from these objects has been traveling billions of years to get to us, which leads to the conclusion that the objects emitted the light billions of years ago, which in turn means the objects are billions of years old.  This chain of inferences obviously leaves no room for an age of the universe measured in only thousands of years.

YEC proponents have the same evidence as the rest of us, and they admit the universe appears to be billions of years old.  Nevertheless, they persist in their YEC beliefs.  How can they do this?  There is an enormous body of literature on the subject that cannot be summarized adequately in the confines of a blog post, but the short answer is YECs have erected a series of plausible (to them) explanations for the apparent age of the universe.  For example, some YECs hold that just as God created Adam with apparent age (i.e, he started out as an adult; he was never an infant, a toddler, or a teenager), God also created the universe with apparent age.  This means that the light we see from those distant objects was not emitted billions of years ago.  Instead, God created that light “in route.”  Other YECs assert that the speed of light need not have been constant, and if light traveled in the past many times faster than it does now, our deductions about the age of the universe based on an assumption that the speed of light has always been the same would be wrong.

I do not reject YEC reasoning such as this as a logical impossibility.  By this I mean that while God cannot do logically impossible things (e.g., he cannot make a “square circle” or cause 2+2 to equal 73), he can perform miracles.  He can turn water into wine; he can make five loaves of bread and two fish feed thousands of people.  Indeed, the very act of creating the universe — no matter when he did it — was a miracle.  Therefore, I conclude that God, being God, could have created the universe on October 23, 4004 BC and made it look billions of years old just as the YECs say, even if that is not what I personally believe.  

The YEC position cannot, therefore, be refuted as a logical impossibility.  Nor can it be refuted by appealing to the evidence.  “Wait just a cotton picking minute Barry!” you might say.  “In the first paragraph you told us you believe the ‘evidence’ leads to the conclusion that the universe is billions of years old.”  And so I did.  Here is where we must distinguish between the evidence, which is the same for everyone, and an interpretive framework for that evidence, which can vary.  By “interpretive framework” I mean the set of unprovable assumptions each of us brings to bear when we analyze the evidence.  For example, the vast majority of scientists assume that the speed of light has been constant since the beginning of the universe.  As we have seen, some YEC scientists believe that light has slowed down significantly since the creation event.  Obviously, conclusions about the age of the universe from the “light evidence” will vary enormously depending upon which group is correct.  

Very interestingly, despite the fact that most people believe that it is a scientifically proven “fact” that the speed of light has always been the same as it is now, it most certainly is not.  The current speed of light is an observable scientific fact.  We cannot, however, know with certainty what the speed of light was before observations of the speed of light were made.  This assertion is not in the least controversial.  Mainstream scientists admit that their assumptions about the fixed nature of the speed of light in the remote past are just that, assumptions.  In philosophical terms, mainstream scientists subscribe to “uniformitarianism,” the assumption that physical processes operated in the past in the same way they are observed to operate now.  YEC scientists by and large reject uniformitarianism.  Which group is correct is beside my point.  The point is that uniformitarianism is an assumption of most scientists.  It has not been, and indeed as a matter of strict logic cannot be, demonstrated by science.  In other words, the uniformitarian assumption is part of the interpretive framework mainstream scientists bring to bear on the evidence.  The uniformitarian assumption is not part of the evidence itself.

This brings me to the point of this post.  I don’t usually argue with YEC’s, because no matter how long and hard you argue with them, you will never convince them based on appeals to logic and evidence.  There is, almost literally, nothing you can say that might change their mind, so arguing with them is usually pointless.  Yes, the YEC proponent has the same evidence that you do, but he interprets that evidence within a different interpretive framework.  You might think his interpretive framework is flawed, but you cannot say, as a matter of strict logic, that his interpretive framework must be necessarily flawed.  In other words, you must admit that as a matter of strict logic it is possible, for instance, for light to be slower now than it was in the past.  And given the premise of some YECs that light is in fact slower now than it was in the past, their conclusions might then follow.  

Why do YECs reject uniformitarianism?  Because they are devoted to a particular interpretation of the Biblical creation account.  They believe the Bible says the universe was created in six days a few thousand years ago, and if they are going to believe the Bible is true they must therefore believe the universe was created in six days a few thousand years ago.  It does no good to appeal to logic or evidence.  As I have demonstrated above, a young universe is not a logical impossibility and no matter what evidence you adduce that, to you, indicates the universe is very old, the YEC will have an answer (e.g., “light has slowed down”). 

I was thinking about this yesterday when we were discussing the theistic evolutionists (TEs) over at BioLogos.  TEs are like YECs in this respect — they cling to a scientific view that runs counter to the obvious evidence because of their prior commitments.  

Let me explain what I mean.  Just as it is “obvious” that the universe appears to be several billion years old, it is “obvious” that living things appear to have been designed for a purpose.  That statement is not based on my religious beliefs; even the atheists believe that living things appear to have been designed for a purpose.  Arch-atheist Richard Dawkins famously said that “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”  Surely our friends at BioLogos will go as far as atheist Dawkins and admit that living things “appear” to have been designed for a purpose.  

Now notice the similarity between TEs and YECs:  Everyone concedes that the universe appears to be billions of years old; everyone concedes that living things appear to have been designed for a purpose.  YECs say the first appearance is an illusion.  TEs  say the second appearance is an illusion.  

We have already seen how YECs come to the conclusion that the apparent age of the universe is an illusion.  How do TEs come to the conclusion that the appearance of design in living things is an illusion?  The same way Richard Dawkins does, by appealing to the marvelous creative powers of Darwinian processes that, he says, are able to mimic design through strictly natural means.  Darwinists say, as they must, that the appearance of design that they admit exists is not real but an illusion.  Indeed, the whole purpose of the Darwinian theory of origins is to account for the appearance of design without having to resort to a designer. 

YECs reject the “obvious” conclusion about the age of the universe because of their prior commitments.  Why do TEs reject the “obvious” conclusion about the design of living things?  Further, why do TEs reject that obvious conclusion in the very teeth of the Biblical injunction to regard the appearance of design as proof of God’s existence (Romans 1).  

The answer has to do with what I call the “cool kids” impulse that all humans have to one extent or another.  When I was in school all of the “cool kids” sat at a particular table at lunch, and everyone wanted to be in that group.  I was not a cool kid, and I figured out pretty early that, for better or ill, the streak of stubborn individualism that runs to my very core would probably prevent me from ever being a cool kid.  I refused to conform and in order to be a cool kid you have to conform to the other cool kids.  Don’t get me wrong.  I very much wanted to be a cool kid.  Everyone wants to be a cool kid, and believe me, my life would have been so much easier if I had been a cool kid.  This is sociology 101.  But I was unwilling (perhaps even unable) to pay the price of admission to the cool kids club – i.e., conformity.

The cool kids impulse does not go away when we are adults, and in the academic community all of the cool kids sit at the Darwinian table.  TEs want to be cool kids; they want to be respectable and accepted in the academic community.  Sadly for them, the price the academic cool kids club extracts for admission is denial of the obvious appearance of design in living things and acceptance of the patent absurdity that the accretion of random errors sorted by a fitness function can account for the stupendously complex nano-machines we call cells.  

This is not, however, the end of the story for TEs.  They know that to deny design in the universe is to deny the designer of the universe, which is to deny God, and what is the point of being a TE if you reject the “T” part?  In order to maintain their membership in the cool kids club TEs slam the front door in God’s face when they deny the reality underlying the apparent design of living things that even atheists admit.  But they are perfectly willing to let God in the backdoor just so long as he stays out of sight and doesn’t get them kicked out of the club.  

As I discussed yesterday, I am thinking of TEs like Stephen Barr.  Dr. Barr is perfectly happy to accept the Darwinian account of evolution.  Darwinism says that mechanical necessity (i.e., natural selection) plus random chance (mutation, drift, etc.) are sufficient to account for the apparent design of living things.  It is, in StephenB’s words, a “design-free random process.”  In his “Miracle of Evolution,” Dr. Barr slams the front door shut on God when he accepts the Darwinian account.  Then he cracks the backdoor open ever so slightly to let God slip in when he asserts that what we perceive as a “design-free random process” is really, at a deeper level of existence, directed by God in a way that is empirically undetectable at this level of existence.

Barr is saying that in order to maintain his membership in the cool kids club he must affirm that evolution is purely random and design free.  How is his position different from the atheist position espoused by Richard Dawkins?  At the level of existence in which we examine empirical data, Barr’s position is identical to Dawkins’ position.  But, says Barr, when he uses the word “random,” he really means “apparently random but really directed.”  Apparently, Barr believes that, in Einstein’s famous phrase, God really does play dice with the universe.  But according to Barr, God, has loaded the dice so that they rolled “life,” however improbable that might have been (like a thousand 7′s in a row with real dice), and God’s dice loading is so clever that the “fix” can never be detected empirically. 

In this way Barr maintains membership in the academic cool kids club by espousing a Darwinian account of origins that is indistinguishable from the account of origins that atheists like Dawkins and Dennnett espouse.  Yet he keeps the “T” in his “TE” by saying that at a wholly different level of existence God fixed the game so that “random” is not really random but “directed.”  He wants to have it both ways. 

Here again, the TE position is exactly the same as the YEC position.  As we have already seen, you cannot push a YEC off his position by appealing to logic or evidence.  Nor can you push Dr. Barr off his position by appealing to logic and evidence.  We cannot rule Barr’s position out on strictly logical grounds.  God, being God, can certainly fix the dice in an empirically undetectable way if that is how he wants to accomplish his purposes.  Nor, by definition, can one rule Barr’s position out empirically short of finding the proverbial “made by YHWH” inscription on a cell.  

Finally, there is a certain irony in Barr’s position.  The atheist says living things appear to be designed but the appearance of design is an illusion explained by random Darwinian processes.  The TE says that living things appear to be designed but the appearance of design is an illusion explained by random Darwinian processes, BUT the randomness of Darwinian process is itself an illusion, because those processes are really directed by God to produce living things.  Thus, according to the TEs, the explanation of one illusion (the randomness of underlying Darwinism), which is an explanation of another illusion (the apparent design of living things) is, you guessed it, design.  Another way of putting it is the TE says design is an illusion explained by random process which are in turn an illusion explained by design.  As the comedian says, “That’s funny.  I don’t care who you are.”

Comments
In discussing William Paley's view of apparent chance/randomness today on a thread over at BioLogos, it occurred to me that Paley's view was identical to that of Steven Barr. For details, see the comments under http://biologos.org/blog/creation-evolution-and-the-over-active-imagination-part-1. I will repeat the point I made there: "Arrington is obviously not aware of the fact that Paley, that great proponent of the design of biological “contrivances,” must also have been a full fledged member of the same club of cowards that Arrington invented as a place to put Barr." So, my question for Barry, if he's still paying attention: Is Paley now to be added to the cowards club, Barry, or is Barr now to be barred from that club (pun intended)?Ted Davis
May 16, 2014
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tragic mishap:
YECs recognize that human knowledge is incomplete and God’s isn’t. As a consequence, we would take any sliver of an iota of a chance that God knows what he’s talking about over the entire sum total of collective human wisdom.
How does this help you interpret Scripture? How dose it provide answers to "how old is the universe" and "how old is the earth" and "for how long has life existed on earth" and "what was the rate and extent of evolution post fiood"? It's just another statement of faith. If god would deceive us in the work of his hands, why would he not also deceive us through his words? This is a good example of why YEC'ism is anti-science.Mung
October 25, 2013
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Or, Barry, YECs recognize that human knowledge is incomplete and God's isn't. As a consequence, we would take any sliver of an iota of a chance that God knows what he's talking about over the entire sum total of collective human wisdom.tragic mishap
October 25, 2013
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Yes, those are literal statements. :)Mung
October 24, 2013
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Timaus: There is a tremendous fear in American evangelical circles that if even a single narrative statement in Genesis 1-11 does not correspond to “historical fact,” the entire Christian revelation will be proved untrustworthy.
Indeed. Now, a question for all you Biblical literalists out there: Do you accept this as a literal statement about a historical event? Yes or no?...
Psalm 18: Smoke went up from God’s nostrils; out of his mouth came a devouring fire; flaming coals blazed out in front of him! God parted the skies and came down; thick darkness was beneath his feet. God mounted the heavenly creatures and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind... The seabeds were exposed; the earth’s foundations were laid bare
If your "yes" is accompanied with any qualifiers, then it's actually a "no."CentralScrutinizer
October 24, 2013
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BA:
Very interestingly, despite the fact that most people believe that it is a scientifically proven “fact” that the speed of light has always been the same as it is now, it most certainly is not. The current speed of light is an observable scientific fact. We cannot, however, know with certainty what the speed of light was before observations of the speed of light were made. This assertion is not in the least controversial. Mainstream scientists admit that their assumptions about the fixed nature of the speed of light in the remote past are just that, assumptions.
While I perfectly understand this line of reasoning, I must, however, disagree with its conclusion. I believe that Young Earth Creationists are confabulating one imaginary scenario after another in order to defend their position at the cost of sounding and looking ridiculous, not unlike the evolutionists themselves. I, too, am willing to risk looking like a crackpot with the following argument. Mainstream scientists do not know whether or not the speed of light has not changed for billions of years but that does not mean no one knows. It is easy to show logically that, in a discrete universe (which our universe certainly is), there can only be one speed and that speed is the speed of light. That's right. I know. It's hard to believe, initially, but nothing moves or can move faster or slower than c. Objects that appear to move at speeds slower than light are actually taking discrete quantum jumps at c, interspersed with a number of wait periods. A body moving at c has no wait periods between jumps. Half the speed of life requires an equal number of jumps and waits, etc. The motion of bodies moving at ordinary speeds consists mostly of wait periods with a few jumps sprinkled in. The above is the reason that I am not a YEC.Mapou
October 23, 2013
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Timaeus @229 Interesting:
In other words, knowledge and being itself are intimately connected. There is no such connection in most modern philosophers. For most modern philosophers, reason is just a tool, handy to have, useful for calculating things and manipulating the external world, but not intrinsically connected with ultimate reality, and therefore unable to teach us anything about that reality.
I think the modern view you describe probably comes from the improper identification of natural science with Reason. I don't ascribe to that. In my understanding, natural science is backwards reasoning, though still legitimate. From this description it definitely sounds like I'm more with the ancient conception here. I've described this before, but here it is again. I identify three parts of a man, which are identical to the three parts of the Trinity: Body (Jesus), Mind (Holy Spirit), Spirit (God the Father). As a substance dualist I say there are two realms, a physical and a spiritual. The Body exists in the physical and the Spirit exists in the spiritual. The Mind is the connector between the two. I explicitly identify the Mind with Reason as its chief function and the primary method of connecting Body with Spirit, thus connecting our physical selves with our spiritual selves. So in other words, if we are to receive anything from the Spirit, either our own Spirit or from God the Father, it is automatically through the process of Reason or the Holy Spirit, respectively, or it doesn't happen. I've found a lot of support for this view in the New Testament. (1 Cor 1-2 and 14, Col 1-2, Rom 8 and 12:1-2, John 3)tragic mishap
June 3, 2012
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tjguy: I wasn't offering Lamoureux as someone who isn't motivated by evolution. He certainly is motivated by evolution. I was offering Lamoureux as someone who has employed a narratological approach to the creation and flood stories, whose ideas are easy of access because there is an introductory article discussing those stories on his university web site. Of course, his ideas in that essay are not original, but derivative. Those narrative features of those stories were noticed years before Lamoureux discussed them, by narratologically inclined Biblical scholars. In fact, the days pattern was noticed decades if not centuries ago, long before "narratological interpretation" appeared as a term in Biblical studies. However, the fact that Lamoureux is externally motivated doesn't by itself make his textual observations on those two passages wrong. The text certainly reveals the literary patterns he points out. You can resist his interpretation, but you can't deny the literary facts on which it is based, because they are straight out of Scripture. Many others, however, aren't in the slightest preoccupied by making room for evolution. Alter, for example, whom I mentioned, is Jewish professor of English literature who is interested in narratological approaches to the Bible out of his interest in literature generally. He couldn't care less about creationism, ID, Darwin, etc. C. S. Lewis didn't take everything in the Garden story literally, and that's certainly not because he was trying to make room for evolution. His belief in evolution was never terribly strong, and in later life he had serious doubts about it, as his private correspondence shows. And Augustine, who thought that creation was simultaneous rather than over six days, has been mentioned somewhere above. Augustine didn't believe in evolution, either. So it's clear that non-literal readings of Genesis don't have to be motivated by evolution. My own view is that these questions should be approached in light of the literary features of the Biblical stories, rather than in light of later theology. That doesn't mean that later theology should be ignored, but only that the original meaning of a story may be different from the one it acquires later, in light of the reflection of future generations. For example, as originally written, Genesis 3 doesn't teach anything about a general "Fall of nature." In later Biblical writings, there are some hints of something like that, but nothing is well-developed. It is only in post-Biblical tradition that a "Fall of nature with the Fall of man" idea becomes fixed in some Christians' minds. This doesn't make the later idea wrong, but it's always good to keep what Genesis actually says separate from later readings of Genesis. I think that the inerrancy and authority of the Biblical stories should be attached to what they teach, not to the historical accuracy of individual sentences. I don't think the Fall story "teaches" that a talking snake tempted a woman into eating the fruit of a magical tree. I think the Fall story teaches that man voluntarily separated (and continues to separate) himself from simple obedience to God, in the name of autonomy, and that this choice had (and has) consequences of a destructive kind. The narrative details of the story are not what we should be insisting on. You will probably differ. If so, there is nothing I can do about it. These interpretive judgments are never based on one piece of evidence, or one knockdown logical inference. They are part of a wider set of considerations picked up over a lifetime of study, and neither one of us is likely to change a well-developed and long-held position as a result of a single internet conversation. All that I'm suggesting to you is that you read people like Alter, to get the feel for how modern Biblical scholars -- those who are outside the whole creation vs evolution sphere of combat -- approach many of the stories in the Bible. If you don't agree with what you read, no one is forcing you to accept it. But it can't hurt you to read something new, and see what world-class scholars outside the conservative evangelical world are thinking. I certainly don't agree with you about the Flood, and we don't need anything as sophisticated as geological theory to determine that a global Flood did not occur at the dates indicated by the Biblical genealogies. Our ancient historical records alone are enough to establish that. A Flood might have occurred much earlier, of course, but not at the time indicated. But I don't take the Biblical genealogies -- certainly not the ones for the earliest period -- as accurate; in fact, I don't even think they were intended to be taken literally. For that matter, I don't think most of the details of the Flood story were meant to be taken literally. You will doubtless disagree, but again, we can't settle that without a long study of ancient literature and comparative religion and hermeneutics. I add that I've learned a great respect for many YEC people that I've met while working to promote ID. I think the motivations of YECs are noble and I like their courage and their willingness to hold on to unpopular views rather than just go with the flow in order to be thought of as up-to-date. I just think their Biblical hermeneutics are of a narrow kind that don't do justice to the richness and variety of the Biblical stories. Thus, I don't think they should change their view in order to please science or in order to please other aspects of the secular world; I think they should change their view because the Bible is a deeper book, and one less concerned with accurate history, than they suppose it to be. But we can't thrash that out here. I leave you with my reading suggestions, and I think I now have to exit this thread.Timaeus
June 3, 2012
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For Timaeus @ 230
Vincent Torley wrote an extensive post here on Philo and Origen, which I have read, so I’m aware of the information you have presented on them. I don’t contest Vincent’s arguments. Regarding Origen, however, despite his position on the age of the earth, he indicated a strongly non-literal approach to some other parts of Genesis in his book, On First Principles.
Yes, this was basically his whole approach to Scripture. He was extreme in his approach to Scripture so he isn’t a very good person to use to try and find a reason to ignore the plain meaning of the words. Thanks for the tip on the post by Vincent Torley on Philo and Origen. I guess I missed that one. I’ll take a look at it.
Regarding Augustine, I’ve actually studied his book that you are talking about, De Genesi ad Literam, and, despite its title, it offers some allegorical reading, along the lines of Philo, of the early chapters of Genesis. What most people don’t know is that the word “literal” had a much broader meaning in ancient hermeneutics than it does today. There is actually a more literal reading of Genesis, in the modern sense of “literal,” in Augustine’s City of God. To see the good literary reasons for reading Genesis (and some other parts of the Bible) differently, you will have to step outside of the world of conservative evangelical exegesis. In the scholarly landscape that you are probably used to, the “higher critics” and the “literalists” battled to the death. The newer Biblical scholars are much less concerned with trying to uncover “what actually happened back then” and much more concerned with “what does the story mean”?
Hmm. Well, I’m pretty set on the historical grammatical method of interpretation, but I am interested in understanding the narratological approach.
This does not mean that the historicity of Biblical events is denied; rather, the historicity or non-historicity is not in the front and center of the scholar’s research.
I think for those of us concerned with upholding biblical authority, we view both things as important. The meaning comes out of the historical event so it is hard to separate the two. In other words, it is not a parable, but a true historical event.
So, for example, whereas a higher-critical scholar may dismiss the Garden story entirely as a crude fable, and a literalist will insist that Christian faith requires the Fall and therefore requires the belief that a snake talked in human speech to the first woman about the virtues of a magical tree, a narratological approach takes seriously *both* the claim that the story teaches about a Fall *and* the sort of literary details which caused the higher critics to doubt that every event in the narrative was meant to be taken as historical.
What does “take seriously” mean? This sounds exactly like the historical grammatical approach. We just believe that God’s Word means what it says and even if we can’t understand a talking snake. The important thing is what God tells us in His Word. Sometimes there is also a secondary meaning that can be understood from the historical event such as the deliverance out of Egypt. This is seen as a picture of our salvation and Jesus leading us out of sin, but it doesn’t mean that the event was not historical at all. Both are true. So if God tells us there was a talking snake or a talking donkey, then we trust Him as opposed to fallible modern people who were not present to either verify or disprove the story.
If you want an introduction to the narratological approach, though one with not much direct discussion of Genesis 1-11, read Alter’s Art of Biblical Narrative. If you want to see that sort of reading applied to Genesis, have a look at the comments of Denis Lamoureux on the pattern of days in Genesis 1 and the narrative pattern in the Flood story. I don’t think you will find narratological approaches wholly compatible with your view of Scripture. I’m therefore not trying to sell you on them. I mention them only as examples of serious scholarship which would read the Garden story non-historically without being motivated by the need to please evolutionary biologists.
I think you are right. I doubt I will find it compatible or acceptable, but like I said, I would like to at least familiarize myself with it. Is this your particular view? If so, I wonder if you could tell me why you think this is the best approach to Scripture. Thanks. You say that this is an example of a method of interpretation that has nothing to do with the need to please evolutionary biologists, but it seems to me that it has a lot to do with finding a way to read evolution into Scripture. I just took a look at Denis Lamoureux’s web page and it is all about science and religion. He is a professor of science and religion so I don’t quite understand what you mean here. He believes in “evolutionary creation” and wrote a book entitled "I love Jesus and i accept evolution". Sounds to me like he is clearly trying to fit evolution into the Bible. He claims that “the purpose of the Bible is to teach us that God is the Creator, and not how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created.” That is a nice opinion and I have heard it before, but I wonder how he knows this to be true. If that is all God intended for us to understand from the creation account, if that is the only purpose of the Bible, then it would seem to me that it could have been a lot shorter. But it is not. There are 3 whole chapters on the creation story and they form the very foundation of the Bible and are quoted throughout the Bible as literal history. So, it seems God wanted us to know a bit more than just the fact that He created everything. That fact is repeated throughout the Scripture, but here, He goes into more detail. He actually tells us some of the “how” concerning creation in Genesis. So that is where we would differ. Denis would dismiss what God said about the “how” because he doesn’t believe the Bible is a book of science. Neither do I, but as God’s Word, I believe it is true and inerrant, so I do believe that it is accurate wherever it touches science. We are dealing with the authority of God’s Word here and this is a serious issue to me. And the flood is a good example of why we need to start with the Bible when we interpret God’s creation. Without knowledge of the flood, we would come up with uniformitarian ideas that would be far from the truth. We would tend to think evolution occurred by looking at the fossil record as having been laid down over millions of years, but the flood makes it clear that this is not the right interpretation of the fossil record. cheers, Jimtjguy
June 3, 2012
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Thanks, tjguy. Vincent Torley wrote an extensive post here on Philo and Origen, which I have read, so I'm aware of the information you have presented on them. I don't contest Vincent's arguments. Regarding Origen, however, despite his position on the age of the earth, he indicated a strongly non-literal approach to some other parts of Genesis in his book, On First Principles. As I said above, I'm not particularly concerned with the details of "old earth" exegesis. I wasn't defending that line of textual reading. It seems to have arisen out of a need to harmonize a semi-literal reading of Genesis with the alleged truths of modern geology, biology, etc. Such harmonizations have no attraction for me. Regarding Augustine, I've actually studied his book that you are talking about, De Genesi ad Literam, and, despite its title, it offers some allegorical reading, along the lines of Philo, of the early chapters of Genesis. What most people don't know is that the word "literal" had a much broader meaning in ancient hermeneutics than it does today. There is actually a more literal reading of Genesis, in the modern sense of "literal," in Augustine's City of God. To see the good literary reasons for reading Genesis (and some other parts of the Bible) differently, you will have to step outside of the world of conservative evangelical exegesis. In the scholarly landscape that you are probably used to, the "higher critics" and the "literalists" battled to the death. The newer Biblical scholars are much less concerned with trying to uncover "what actually happened back then" and much more concerned with "what does the story mean"? This does not mean that the historicity of Biblical events is denied; rather, the historicity or non-historicity is not in the front and center of the scholar's research. So, for example, whereas a higher-critical scholar may dismiss the Garden story entirely as a crude fable, and a literalist will insist that Christian faith requires the Fall and therefore requires the belief that a snake talked in human speech to the first woman about the virtues of a magical tree, a narratological approach takes seriously *both* the claim that the story teaches about a Fall *and* the sort of literary details which caused the higher critics to doubt that every event in the narrative was meant to be taken as historical. If you want an introduction to the narratological approach, though one with not much direct discussion of Genesis 1-11, read Alter's Art of Biblical Narrative. If you want to see that sort of reading applied to Genesis, have a look at the comments of Denis Lamoureux on the pattern of days in Genesis 1 and the narrative pattern in the Flood story. I don't think you will find narratological approaches wholly compatible with your view of Scripture. I'm therefore not trying to sell you on them. I mention them only as examples of serious scholarship which would read the Garden story non-historically without being motivated by the need to please evolutionary biologists.Timaeus
June 2, 2012
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tragic: Yes, the Republic is partly about education and the cave image is also partly about education. But the cave image is connected with the images of the sun and the line. And the sun is the source not only of the knowledge but even of the being of the knower. In other words, knowledge and being itself are intimately connected. There is no such connection in most modern philosophers. For most modern philosophers, reason is just a tool, handy to have, useful for calculating things and manipulating the external world, but not intrinsically connected with ultimate reality, and therefore unable to teach us anything about that reality. Modern philosophy expects only a lower kind of knowledge from reason. This is often called "the instrumental view of reason." Many Protestants accept this view, because they believe that all higher knowledge is accessible only through revelation. StephenB, a Catholic, sees both reason and revelation as pathways to higher knowledge. I'm not Catholic, but I hold a similar view. However, in the interest of intellectual caution and of justice, I'll say that my original comment, linking your understanding of reason with that of modern philosophy, was based on one particular passage in one of your replies to someone else, and that is not enough of a sample on which to characterize someone's view. I might well have read far too much into what you were saying. So I'll withdraw that charge, as overly conjectural. In any case, we have discovered that we both like C. S. Lewis, so we now have some common ground. Whether we like the same things in Lewis, and for the same reasons, I am not sure. For me, anyway, what sets Lewis above many Protestant evangelical thinkers is that he has a tremendous respect for Classical philosophy and culture. Much of the strength and beauty of his presentation of Christianity comes from that. But that is a topic for another time, and another thread.Timaeus
June 2, 2012
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StephenB @ 213
Again, on the subject of Biblical literalism, I hearken back to many of Jesus’ (God’s) comments that reflect clear allegorical meaning. When he says that the “Father causes the sun to rise,” you agree that we should not take his words literally. How do you justify taking that tack given your insistence that we should take ALL of God’s words literally?
StephenB, why do you insist that since I take Genesis 1 literally, I have to take everything else in the Bible literally as well? You misunderstand the historical grammatical hermeneutical method. And, this misunderstanding causes you to falsely claim that I am being inconsistent when I don’t interpret everything Jesus said in a literal method. Very few YECers if any hold to that view. No wonder you don’t think a literal view of Genesis is accurate or trustworthy. Perhaps if you get a better more accurate understanding of the historical grammatical hermeneutic method, you might be more open to it. Although there may be a few YECers who hold to an overly literalistic hermeneutic, this is certainly not true of most of us. We do not “a priori” deny the presence of metaphor, symbolism, or idiom, as you seem to be insinuating, but we believe there needs to be a good CONTECXTUAL reason for interpreting ‘day’ as anything other than a normal day. Indeed, this is the way you would read most letters and books – even this correspondence between the two of us. It is the normal method of communication. I gave you the reasons why I think Genesis 1 was meant to be taken literally. You did not interact with those grammatical and textual reasons at all. In my mind, they are very strong reasons and since this is the normal way of interpreting most of what we read, the onus is on the OECers to show us why we should not read it in this way. Given the strong textual support in Genesis 1, the interpretation of the Church throughout history, and the interpretation of Genesis in a literal way by other Scriptural writers, and Jesus' own words, you would need some extremely persuasive reasons.
For that matter, why do you not, as Catholics do, take his words literally about the Eucharist. He didn’t say that the consecrated bread is “symbolic” of his body, He said that it IS His body. Further, He insisted that only those who eat His flesh and drink His blood will have life in them. His listeners understood his words literally and they walked away from him scandalized. Why do you not take his words literally? Are you not aware of the fact that the differences in sectarian religions are, in large part, differences of opinion about which of God’s statements are to be taken literally and which ones are not?
For the same reason we don't take "I am the door" literally. The Roman Catholic Church does not even take that literally. No one literally ate his flesh or drank his blood ever. He died and was buried and then rose again. He was eaten by no one. So obviously, He was not telling people to literally eat Him. This chapter though is a great example of how and why it is sometimes necessary to take things in a symbolic manner. In this interaction with the Jews, Jesus was clearly speaking in a non-literal fashion all the way through. This passage is littered with analogies, symbolism, and metaphors. He tells them "I am the bread of life." Obviously Jesus was a person and not bread and everyone understands that he was not speaking in a literal fashion. It is clear what is intended here, so there is no dispute. As you know, Jesus often spoke in parables and sometimes even spoke about deliberately hiding the truth from some of the Jews. In fact, this was the purpose for some of his non-literal teaching. Besides, this a historical record of Jesus' interaction with the Jews and in this type of conversation, we tend to use analogies and symbols more often than when we record a historical event like in Genesis. On the matter of the earlier writers, I didn’t say that they were not “intellectually capable” of receiving a scientific message, rather I pointed out that they were not “intellectually prepared.” It is not the same thing. OK, thanks for clarifying that. Still, Adam, Eve, and their descendants surely would have been “intellectually prepared” to understand the difference between a short 24 hour period of time and long ages. That is all that had to be communicated and yet, God chose to communicate in a way that for most of history, the Church and His people, the Jews would overwhelmingly understand creation to have happened in 6 literal 24 hour days. The Bible is God’s special revelation and its purpose is to communicate specific truth to ALL humanity, past, present and future. In order to accomplish this, God employed common human language as the medium for His message. The biblical account of creation does not discuss the question of whether God can meaningfully speak to mankind or whether mankind can accurately understand God. It is simply assumed this as ‘self-evident’. God made man with this capability.
–”If it weren’t for what modern science tells you, I seriously doubt you would think the Bible teaches an old earth or a local flood.”
I don’t think the Bible teaches a local flood, and I don’t think science has proven it. On the other hand, if it was not for modern science, you would not acknowledge that Jesus spoke allegorically with respect to the sun rising. You appear to agree that the earth revolves around the sun, which means that you hold a double standard here and have not resolved it.
Stephen, first you said that you are open to a global flooe IF the Bible demands it. Then, when I took this as a positive belief in the flood, you countered with this: “I am open to the prospect that it may not have been a world-wide flood because I am not sure that Scripture requires that interpretation.” So, you said you were open to that prospect, because you weren't convinced the Bible teaches a global flood. But now you say that you do believe in a global flood. I’m a bit confused here by what you are trying to say. It seems as if your beliefs are evolving before my eyes. I take that to mean that you never really gave it much thought or actually studied the issue. If I am right on that point, you have never given much thought to the impact that belief in a global flood would have on OEC ideas. Anyway, now we have a clear statement here that you DO believe in a global flood. We're making progress! That means of course that you must be willing to turn your back on the conclusions of modern day paleontologists and uniformitarian geologists because the flood obviously messes up their "scientific" interpretations.
–”So although you claim to be seeking to understand what the author was trying to communicate, in reality, it seems to me that you are taking what science tells you and reading it into the Bible. You are forced by your OEC views to find a way to deny the author’s clear meaning in certain passages.”
This debate has been going on for two thousand years. It was not introduced by enlightenment partisans or Darwinist atheists.
No, this debate has not been around for 2000 years. What evidence do you have to support that statement? By far the overwhelming interpretation of the early Church was a young earth. There may have been some rare birds who had a similar interpretation before Hutton and Lyell, but they were few and far between. Even Augustine, Origen, and Philo, who sometimes followed the allegorical method of interpretation, all believed in a young earth! See the previous post to Timaeus that I wrote. There was no controversy about that back then. These are the guys that biologos always uses to try and justify their interpretation of Genesis, but they were young earthers!
I think that the flood may well have been global because it seems like a reasonable interpretation given the words and the historical references. I also believe that this world-wide flood can be reconciled with an old earth. As I said earlier, I think that the value of geological science is highly overrated.
OK, here is another clear statement. So, Stephen, may I ask you then what makes you believe in an old earth? Can you tell me why you think the earth is old? What is your scientific evidence for an old earth?tjguy
June 1, 2012
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There's a third possibility: You're wrong that there is a difference between the ancient conception of Reason and the modern one. Again I don't know.tragic mishap
June 1, 2012
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I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, Timaeus. I don't believe that my conception of Reason is any different than Lewis'. I'm taking your word for it that my conception of Reason is the "modern" one. But then you said that Lewis' conception of Reason is the ancient one. I'm extremely familiar with Lewis and I don't believe my conception of Reason is vastly different than his. All I'm saying here is that either you're wrong about my conception of Reason being the "modern" one, or you're wrong about Lewis' conception being the "ancient" one. I don't claim to know which of your assertions is wrong. I claim that one of them must be. I'm simply not familiar with the distinction you are making. Thanks for your reading suggestions. I may actually check that out. I have already read Plato's Republic. The analogy of the cave was meant to apply to the process of education, so I'm not too clear on what it has to do with Reason. My understanding of it is that we are all bound to looking at shadows and must free ourselves to turn and see the light, and the role of the teacher is to perfect the "art of turning" the students' heads to look at the light. I believe they were also meant to walk out into the light before coming back to help the others in shadows. If living in the shadows is analogous to earthly, physical existence, and the light is spiritual existence, then I would say Reason is process by which we proceed from one to the other and back again. Plato I assume meant the earth to be one and the light to be the Platonic ideal, the world of perfect forms. So if he means Reason to be that process, first of turning, then of walking into the light, than I'm in agreement. But if he maintains that Reason is the light itself, than I'd probably disagree. And I think Lewis would have as well.tragic mishap
June 1, 2012
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Timaeus, I wonder if I can respond to something you said in post 217:
“… I would hesitate to say that “young earth” was the “only” interpretation up to modern times. But it was certainly the predominant one.”
Agreed! It was the predominant one and even Augustine, Origen, and Philo were young earthers in spite of their non-literal interpretation of Genesis. Philo is not a very trustworthy source from which to gain an accurate understanding of Genesis. His whole method of interpretation was allegorical. He didn’t need any textual justification to make an allegorical interpretation. That was his standard interpretation, so, with a faulty method like that, it really doesn't help the OECers case at all. I think we would all agree that his ideas are way off base. But, even so, it is interesting that even Philo believed in a young earth and a literal 6 day creation!
Here is a quote from Philo: “The nation of the Jews keep every seventh day regularly, after each interval of six days; and there is an account of events recorded in the history of the creation of the world, comprising a sufficient relation of the cause of this ordinance; for the sacred historian says, that the world was created in six days, and that on the seventh day God desisted from his works, and began to contemplate what he had so beautifully created.” (On the Decalogue XX,97)
Here is what Clement had to say in Stromata 6.16: “For the creation of the world was concluded in six days. For the motion of the sun from solstice to solstice is completed in six months— in the course of which, at one time the leaves fall, and at another plants bud and seeds come to maturity. And they say that the embryo is perfected exactly in the sixth month, that is, in one hundred and eighty days in addition to the two and a half, as Polybus the physician relates in his book On the Eighth Month, and Aristotle the philosopher in his book On Nature.”
He believes clearly that God created the world in 6 days. How about Augustine? Yes, earlier in his life he leaned toward an allegorical interpretation of the days, but he was a YECer all the way through.
Augustine: ‘Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. … They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.’ Augustine, Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), 12(10).
As you mentioned, he believed in the instantaneous creation of the universe, not in long ages. And over the course of his life, he became more and more historical in his interpretation of Genesis. His book “On Genesis Literally Interpreted” (notice the title) was written toward the end of his life and in it he renounces all allegorical and typological interpretation like he had used in his previous exegesis of Genesis. He even believed in a literal Adam and Eve and a literal Garden of Eden. In this work, he is seeking to show that even when taken literally, there is no conflict between the Bible and science. In Genesis 1:7, where it speaks of the waters above the earth, Augustine takes the attitude that God’s Word is trustworthy so we should trust it believing that we will find an answer in the future to the problem. He can not legitimately be used to support OEC interpretations of Genesis, unless you take some quotes out of context. All you can say is that early in his life, having been influenced by Origen and the Alexandria school of allegory, he thought that creation was spontaneous as opposed to 6 long 24 hour days. And even Origen himself, like has been shown to be true of Augustine, actually believed in a young earth. He clearly understood that the Bible teaches a young earth.
Origen: ‘After these statements, Celsus, from a secret desire to cast discredit upon the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that, while concealing his wish, intimates his agreement with those who hold that the world is uncreated. For, maintaining that there have been, from all eternity, many conflagrations and many deluges, and that the flood which lately took place in the time of Deucalion is comparatively modern, he clearly demonstrates to those who are able to understand him, that, in his opinion, the world was uncreated. But let this assailant of the Christian faith tell us by what arguments he was compelled to accept the statement that there have been many conflagrations and many cataclysms, and that the flood which occurred in the time of Deucalion, and the conflagration in that of Phaethon, were more recent than any others.’ Contra Celsum (Against Celsus) 1.19, Ante-Nicene Fathers4:404.
For a careful, thorough survey of historical views on the days of creation, see J.P. Lewis’ The Days of Creation: an historical survey of interpretation, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society32(4):433-455, 1989. Another good source is The Genesis Debate by: J. Ligon Duncan III, David W. Hall, Lee Irons, Hugh Ross Global Publishing Services / 2002 / Paperback They could have done a better job backing up the YEC view, but at least they gave a good summary of the historical interpretation of the word day.
“My point was not about young earth vs old earth. It was that not every statement in Genesis 1-11 was read historically in pre-modern times — not even by writers of unimpeachable orthodoxy. Augustine’s notion of instantaneous creation (not over six literal days) is a case in point. So the non-historical reading is not, as you suggested, generated exclusively by the need to cope with evolution or geology. It can have other sources.”
Again I agree with you. Not everyone in the past who interpreted Genesis in a non-literal fashion did so in order to fit evolution into the Scripture, but these days, I think that is far ans away the main reason for a non-literal approach. Like I said, Augustine did understand the Bible to teach a young earth, even when he used a non-literal interpretation of the word “day”. That idea is worlds apart from the OEC interpretation of Scripture. And like you said, the young earth and literal interpretation of Genesis was the predominant one of the Jews and the early Church fathers. This is the important point. If all these people were wrong, then God really did a poor job of communicating His truth to us. If the OEC interpretation is the meaning God intended to communicate to us, then we have misunderstood His Word for thousands of years and only in the last 200 years, thanks to anti-biblical geologists like Hutton and Lyell, do we now have the right interpretation. Is that what you think?
“There are good literary and philosophical reasons for not reading parts of Genesis (and certain other parts of the Bible) as straight chronicle.”
Here, I am not so sure that I agree. I’m interested in knowing what the “good literary” reasons for not reading parts of Genesis as straight chronicle” are.
In post number 200, I listed a good number of textual reasons that support a plain reading of Genesis one. In light of those reasons, I wonder what your reasons are for doing the opposite.
Although there may be some YECers who hold to an overly literalistic hermeneutic, this is certainly not true of most of us. We do not “a priori” deny the presence of metaphor, symbolism, or idiom, as you seem to be insinuating, but we believe there needs to be a good CONTECXTUAL reason for interpreting ‘day’ as anything other than a normal day. Indeed, this is the way you would read most letters and books. tjtjguy
June 1, 2012
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tragic mishap (223): You want evidence for my claim about ancient vs modern reason? I don't have time to retype all of Nancy Pearcey's books for you on this site. I gave you her name; most of her writing in one way or another deals with the abandonment of the classical idea of reason in modern Western thought. If you would read her stuff, she would direct you to plenty of primary sources. I also already mentioned to you a particular primary source -- Plato's Republic. If you compare that with the account of reason given in Part I of Hobbes's Leviathan, you should be able to see the difference. There are also numerous other works you could read, starting with Eric Voegelin's commentary on Plato, and some general works on medieval philosophy by the likes of Gilson and Copleston, but I have the impression that the history of philosophy is not your favorite reading material. As for the rest of the points I have been making, most of them were not in fact in disagreement with you, but rather, clarifications to show that I wasn't disagreeing with you, because you had misunderstood what I was saying. But you have brushed off my clarifications without comment, so it's obvious that the moment for constructive conversation on this thread has passed. I congratulate you again for standing up to Peterson. And if it's any comfort, I'm confident that he is going to lose the war over Lewis's views on evolution. There is too much good scholarship on Lewis to allow such distortions to stand.Timaeus
May 29, 2012
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I'm open to being wrong and changing my mind when presented with evidence. You have presented none.tragic mishap
May 29, 2012
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tragic: Despite what I have said above about your misunderstanding Lewis on some points, I offer my congratulations to you for standing up to the slanted (bordering on academically dishonest) presentation of Lewis offered by Michael Peterson on BioLogos. You and I seem to be on the same page regarding Lewis and evolution. I hope that sometime down the road you will see the connection between Lewis's doubts, especially in later life, about evolution, and Lewis's classical rationality. Evolution is the natural conclusion of the line of philosophical thought running from Hobbes through Kant; but a Platonist like Lewis will of course reject the premises of that line of thought.Timaeus
May 28, 2012
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tragic (218): I perceive that you are one of those people who finds it very hard to ever concede a point in argument. That's too bad. Being able to admit that someone has taught you something, instead of feeling you have to reflexively oppose everything he says, can be very relaxing. As for Lewis, you've deeply misunderstood his position on the interpretation of older literature. He was a very competent Medieval and Renaissance scholar, and the business of his work as a literary critic was in fact to get the modern reader face-to-face with what these older texts were saying. He was of course aware that modern ideas act as a screen to obscure the meaning of older texts, but that is what the scholar is supposed to do -- remove, as far as humanly possible, such barriers, and bring the modern reader into contact with the living ideas of the texts. Indeed, if this is not possible, there is no hope at all that a modern reader can be sure that his understanding of the Bible is what the Biblical authors intended, and then it's bye-bye, YEC. To say that you don't know the ancients, but that you do know Lewis, is like saying you don't know math, but you do know physics. Lewis's thought was steeped in the ancients -- Greek and Roman literature, the Church Fathers, and less ancient, but still pre-modern, Medieval and Renaissance literature. If you don't the first thing about Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Arthurian legend, etc., you are not going to fully understand Lewis. You'll have a rough idea of his general positions, but crystal clarity will elude you, because you won't understand how he is using the ancient material. Nor will you be able to exercise critical judgment on whether he is using that material well. I regret that I can't remember where I read Lewis's comments on Genesis -- they might have been passing remarks in a letter. (He often replied to queries by American fundamentalists, trying to expand their rather narrow interpretation of Christianity.) But he indicated that he did not take all the details of the Garden story literally. (Which is not the same thing as denying a Fall, but it is the same thing as denying the historicity of certain parts of Genesis.) There is no one spot where "Lewis explains his views on reason." His view of reason is implicit in everything he writes. And it's deeply Classical. I realize that is a hard pill for a YEC admirer of Lewis to swallow, but the facts are the facts.Timaeus
May 28, 2012
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"To the biologist, Evolution is a hypothesis. It covers more of the facts than any other hypothesis at present on the market, and is therefore to be accepted unless, or until, some new supposal can be shown to cover still more facts with even fewer assumptions. At least, that is what I think most biologists would say. Professor D.M.S. Watson, it is true, would not go so far. According to him, "Evolution is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or... can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible." (Watson, quoted in Nineteenth Century, April 1943, "Science and the BBC".) This would mean that the sole ground for believing it is not empirical but metaphysical - the dogma of an amateur metaphysician who finds "special creation" incredible. But I do not think it has really come to that. Most biologists have a more robust belief in Evolution than Professor Watson. But it is certainly a hypothesis. In the Myth, however, there is nothing hypothetical about it: it is basic fact; or, to speak more strictly, such distinctions do not exist on the mythical level at all. There are more important differences to follow. In the science, Evolution is a theory about changes: in the Myth, it is a fact about improvements. Thus a real scientist like Professor J.B.S. Haldane is at pains to point out that popular ideas of Evolution lay a wholly unjustified emphasis on those changes which have rendered creatures (by human standards) ‘better’ or more interesting. He adds, ‘We are therefore inclined to regard progress as the rule in evolution. Actually it is the exception, and for every case of it there are ten of degeneration.’ ("Darwinism Today, Possible Worlds, p.28.)." ~C.S. Lewistragic mishap
May 28, 2012
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He did however comment on what he called the Popular Myth of Evolution, and came strikingly close to the contemporary ID critique of it, noting that Haldane described evolution as being harmful nine times out of ten. "I shall keep my Cave-Man where I keep Balder and Helen and the Argonauts; and there often revisit him." ~C.S. Lewis That essay is online here: http://fpb.livejournal.com/297710.htmltragic mishap
May 28, 2012
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If I were an English teacher I'd be asking you for textual evidence right now. It's all the rage these days. But I'm not, so I'll simply direct you to the passage where Lewis talks about various philosophical viewpoints as lenses which must be tried on in order to evaluate them. Whichever lens brings the world into the sharpest focus is the best one. He chose Christianity because of that long process of trying on different lenses. I believe the process he went through was described by yours truly a few posts ago. Don't ask me for a reference until you bring me one of your own. The ancients I don't know. Lewis I do. And he understood very well that there were vast differences between the way they thought and the way moderns thought, expressing something of astonishment at it (Reflections on the Psalms), and he was also skeptical that modern people could somehow travel back into ancient times and interpret those texts through the ancients' lens. He didn't believe it was possible, in part because in his experience as an author, people who shared his own worldview and even his own language always read into his writings things that weren't there. Because of this he doubted anything of the sort could be done with ancient literature, even though he was an expert on it. (This discussion is in one of the essays of either God in the Dock or Christian Reflections.) When it came down to it, he chose to take the ancients at their word and not try to read anything into it. As far as I know, there are no writings of Lewis commenting on Genesis. I'd be obliged if you could find me somewhere that he does. Maybe you could look for it while you're looking for where Lewis explains his views on Reason. If I can't trust you to interpret Lewis accurately, why should I trust you to interpret the Greeks or the church fathers? Lewis I'm sure would have thought that a reasonable question.tragic mishap
May 28, 2012
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tragic (215, 216): As I have not read every single Christian document ever written from the time of Christ up to the Enlightenment, I would hesitate to say that "young earth" was the "only" interpretation up to modern times. But it was certainly the predominant one. My point was not about young earth vs old earth. It was that not every statement in Genesis 1-11 was read historically in pre-modern times -- not even by writers of unimpeachable orthodoxy. Augustine's notion of instantaneous creation (not over six literal days) is a case in point. So the non-historical reading is not, as you suggested, generated exclusively by the need to cope with evolution or geology. It can have other sources. There are good literary and philosophical reasons for not reading parts of Genesis (and certain other parts of the Bible) as straight chronicle. I realize that no YEC will accept a non-historical reading of any part of Genesis. I am not trying to get you to change your position. I'm merely indicating the variety of motivations for non-historical readings. It's not *always* the case that the motivation is to pay homage to the alleged results of modern science. Maybe most of the time that is a conscious or unconscious motivation. But not all of the time. That's all I have to say on that topic. Regarding Lewis, of course he did not think that reason alone could bring one to Christ. The point was that, in his employment of reason, whether his subject is ethics or politics or apologetics, he regularly shows a preference for the ancients over the moderns. He thinks more like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero than he thinks like Hobbes, Hume, Bacon, Kant, etc. He does not see reason as simply a tool for reckoning correctly. Its very existence is tied in with a larger metaphysical and epistemological picture. The discussion of the sun, the line, and the cave in the Republic may help you to see this. The question of how Genesis is to be read is a separate one from the point I'm making about reason. But of course, as you know, Lewis did not take every sentence in Genesis 1-11 as historical chronicle. So he is a good example of what I am talking about -- someone with non-modern motivations for not reading parts of Genesis literally. Augustine and Origen are a couple of other examples. I'm not asking you to agree with any of these people's remarks on Genesis. I'm just pointing out that, as far as "evolutionary motivation" goes, these people are entirely in the clear.Timaeus
May 28, 2012
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I have read most of C.S. Lewis, including The Pilgrim's Regress, where he meets a character named Reason and eventually rejects it as his ultimate destination, preferring instead the Mother Kirk character, who is the Christ in the story. One of my favorite Lewis quotes is from the character Sense trying to convince Lewis to follow himself instead of Reason: "Sense is easy, Reason is hard. Sense knows where to stop with gracious inconsistency, while Reason slavishly follows an abstract logic whither she knows not. The one seeks comfort and finds it, the other seeks truth and is still seeking." Lewis would have agreed with Sense about Reason here. Reason can never find Truth on its own. That's why Lewis rejected both and instead found Christ as the source of Truth.tragic mishap
May 28, 2012
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Well thanks for clarifying your position. The reason there was no argument over a young earth is because that was the only interpretation of Genesis until the modern time. Thanks. As for other interpretations of Genesis, I have already stated on this thread that you can read Genesis theologically without the reading ever being exclusive to a young earth. I know YECs who have written books about the theology of Genesis, intentionally staying away from the young earth interpretation. Even Dembski's karyological interpretation of the eternal consequences of the Fall is not exclusive to a young earth interpretation, despite the fact Dembski's entire purpose was to eliminate certain theological problems with the old earth view, specifically the existence of death before the Fall.tragic mishap
May 28, 2012
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tragic: I've tried to be clear and precise in my wording, but it seems you are still misreading me. I had not spoken of the "old earth interpretation" and I did not claim that it existed in pre-modern times. I was responding directly to this: "As if it wasn’t the moderns who first denied the historical interpretation of Genesis." I was indicating that Origin and Augustine (among others) did not take all parts of Genesis 1-11 "historically." I was not implying that they adopted an "old earth" as opposed to a "young" earth interpretation. Both "Old Earth" and "Young Earth" interpretations *as we know them today* are modern interpretations, reactions to the modern historical sciences of cosmology, geology and evolutionary biology. Of course the majority of ancient interpreters were "young earth" (without the capitals), in that they took the earth to be young, but the culture-war edge of "young earth" did not exist, because there was no "science and Enlightenment vs the Bible" ethos, such as we have in the modern world from the 18th century on. So it's technically correct, but materially misleading, to speak of pre-modern Christians as "YECs." I prefer to say simply that most pre-modern Christians understood the world to be young, not much older than the date back-calculated for the creation of Adam. I did not say, in the post above, that your interpretation of Genesis is "the modern one"; I said that your view of reason is the predominant modern one. I was providing that as a point of useful historical information. You can follow up that point by reading Nancy Pearcey, C. S. Lewis, and other authors who hold to the classical view of reason. Whether or not you do that is something over which I have no control. In an earlier post, I think I did speak of YEC as *a* modern interpretation of Genesis, a reaction to secularism and materialism which unwisely adopts some of the premises of those positions in the course of trying to refute them; but I did not say that YEC was "the" modern interpretation, since there are many; and in any case, I acknowledge that "young earth" without the capitals and without the cultural overtones of the phrase was certainly the main ancient interpretation. However, there are reasons, based not on evolution but on the Biblical text itself, for thinking that the ancient Christians misread parts of Genesis 1-11. There are literary features of the text, and considerations from comparative literature, which seem to shout out: "This is not a chronicle or news report." It is simply not true that the only motivation for reading Genesis 1-11 non-literally is to make room for the theory of evolution, even if the theory of evolution played an important role in stimulating people to look at Genesis afresh. If a bad motive (say, to harmonize with evolution) induces someone to look at Genesis with fresh eyes, and in that second look the person discovers genuine literary features of the text that he never noticed before, features intended by the author, and this causes him to change his interpretation of Genesis, I see nothing wrong with that. Especially if that same person later rejects Darwinian evolution, while retaining the new reading of Genesis. Such things do happen.Timaeus
May 27, 2012
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tjguy, Again, on the subject of Biblical literalism, I hearken back to many of Jesus' (God's) comments that reflect clear allegorical meaning. When he says that the "Father causes the sun to rise," you agree that we should not take his words literally. How do you justify taking that tack given your insistence that we should take ALL of God's words literally? For that matter, why do you not, as Catholics do, take his words literally about the Eucharist. He didn't say that the consecrated bread is "symbolic" of his body, He said that it IS His body. Further, He insisted that only those who eat His flesh and drink His blood will have life in them. His listeners understood his words literally and they walked away from him scandalized. Why do you not take his words literally? Are you not aware of the fact that the differences in sectarian religions are, in large part, differences of opinion about which of God's statements are to be taken literally and which ones are not? On the matter of the earlier writers, I didn't say that they were not "intellectually capable" of receiving a scientific message, rather I pointed out that they were not "intellectually prepared." It is not the same thing. --"If it weren’t for what modern science tells you, I seriously doubt you would think the Bible teaches an old earth or a local flood." I don't think the Bible teaches a local flood, and I don't think science has proven it. On the other hand, if it was not for modern science, you would not acknowledge that Jesus spoke allegorically with respect to the sun rising. You appear to agree that the earth revolves around the sun, which means that you hold a double standard here and have not resolved it. --"So although you claim to be seeking to understand what the author was trying to communicate, in reality, it seems to me that you are taking what science tells you and reading it into the Bible. You are forced by your OEC views to find a way to deny the author’s clear meaning in certain passages." This debate has been going on for two thousand years. It was not introduced by enlightenment partisans or Darwinist atheists. --"And seriously Stephen, if reason is so important to you, why do you throw out reason when it comes to the flood story? If Moses, wanted to make it any clearer that the Flood covered the entire globe, what else could he have said? What more could he have done? He told us: I think that the flood may well have been global because it seems like a reasonable interpretation given the words and the historical references. I also believe that this world-wide flood can be reconciled with an old earth. As I said earlier, I think that the value of geological science is highly overrated. --"You think God made Noah build that huge ark for a local flood?" No, I don't. I think He likely made if for a world-wide flood. --" I’m very interested in the biblical evidence you have to support your local flood theory." I don't have a local-flood theory because I think the flood was likely world-wide event. Would it help if I made the point in capital letters. --"I’ll be happy to share the biblical evidence for a global flood if you are interested. And believe it or not, there is even geological evidence for a global flood if you have eyes to see it – which uniformitarians have trouble explaining." Our discussion about the flood has likely come to an end.StephenB
May 27, 2012
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Timaeus, Lame appeals to Origen and Augustine's minor deviations from standard YEC doesn't change the fact that the old earth interpretation DID NOT EXIST until modern times. Nobody believed it until modern science told them so. It wasn't even a possibility from which one could choose, unless you were an atheist who believed not in an old universe but an eternal universe explicitly rejecting God as the first cause and replacing Him with matter. I don't give a crap what anyone labels me. As you remember I openly prefer the modern view of the mind-body problem. But it's preposterous to suggest that my interpretation of Genesis is the modern one.tragic mishap
May 27, 2012
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@ StephenB 201 continued Like I said before, if God had intended us to understand the word “day” in a non-literal sense, or that the creation days were periods of time, He could easily have chosen other words that would have more clearly communicated that. This is huge in my view. Context, which helps us understand the author’s original intent and how other biblical authors interpreted the passage are the two most important principles of hermeneutics and they normally trump all secondary principles. 1) Context is determined by mostly by linguistics. I gave you a list of grammatical reasons why the Hebrew language of Genesis clearly points to a literal interpretation. I do not believe God would have written Genesis the way He did if He intended a non-literal meaning. That would be truly misleading as is evidenced by the fact that up until the past 200 years, a literal interpretation was the norm. Isn’t this a reasonable argument? 2) Since all the other biblical writers understood Genesis in a literal sense, isn’t this another strong reason for us to do the same? The idea of progressive revelation is true whether you take an OEC or a YEC position. So I don’t see that as a big factor here, at least certainly not a big enough reason to go against the clear meaning of not only Genesis, but all of Scripture. That sounds unreasonable to me. If it weren’t for what modern science tells you, I seriously doubt you would think the Bible teaches an old earth or a local flood. So although you claim to be seeking to understand what the author was trying to communicate, in reality, it seems to me that you are taking what science tells you and reading it into the Bible. You are forced by your OEC views to find a way to deny the author’s clear meaning in certain passages. I don’t agree with the idea that somehow the first people were less intellectually capable than we are. If anything, the opposite was true. Adam was just as intellectually capable as you. In fact, before the fall, even more so. God’s revelation of knowledge certainly progressed over time, but Genesis is a dependable and accurate description of God’s creative acts. And seriously Stephen, if reason is so important to you, why do you throw out reason when it comes to the flood story? If Moses, wanted to make it any clearer that the Flood covered the entire globe, what else could he have said? What more could he have done? He told us:
“And the water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered” (Genesis 7:19).
You think God made Noah build that huge ark for a local flood? How could a local flood last a year and deposit the ark high in the mountains of Ararat? Why take animals on the ark when it was a local flood? Why not just send Noah outside of the flood territory? What does the rainbow mean if it was simply a local flood?
I’m very interested in the biblical evidence you have to support your local flood theory.
I’ll be happy to share the biblical evidence for a global flood if you are interested. And believe it or not, there is even geological evidence for a global flood if you have eyes to see it – which uniformitarians have trouble explaining. God’s 7 day ex nihilo creation by His spoken word is a glorious thing!
(Ps.33:6-9) By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,and by the breath of his mouth all their host.7 He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap; he puts the deeps in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
Praising God for His acts of creation is a major theme of the Bible. Creating the world in a perfect state all in 6 days shows God’s wisdom, power, and glory in an amazing way!
But OECers want us to believe that God created over billions of years and that death(the last enemy – I Cor 15), suffering, bloodshed, competition, and disease were all a part of God’s very good creation from the very beginning!
Is this reasonable? Starting from uniformitarian science, perhaps, but biblically speaking, I don’t think it is. This is where we need to make a choice. Do we trust God’s Word or trust the uniformitarian interpretations of nature that ignore God and the revelation He has given us(ie the global flood)? Remember this passage? II Peter 3:3-7
knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly....10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
Why did these people deny Jesus' second coming and universal future judgment? Because they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. They deliberately overlooked the flood and said it didn't happen. Why? Because they were blinded by their uniformitarian ideology and perhaps because they just didn't want to believe in God's judgment. Look at v. 4 "...For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” But the Bible tells us something different. All things have not continued as they were from the beginning. There was a global flood among other things. Peter is comparing the global judgment by water in Noah's time with the coming future global judgment by fire when Jesus returns. What meaning would a local flood have here in Peter's argument? Even uniformitarians accept local floods! Peter is contrasting two universal/global judgments. That is the only way this passage makes sense. He says that because it happened in Noah's day, we can be sure it will happen again in the future just like Jesus promised. And lastly, remember this truth that Paul taught us: Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, “That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.” (Romans 3:4.) God gives us His truth. Whether we receive it as truth or not is up to us. Even if the whole world came to the conclusion that God did not create the world, still His truth will prevail in the end.tjguy
May 27, 2012
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@StephenB 201 Thanks for the interaction StephenB! You and I agree that God’s Word is trustworthy and dependable, but we have fundamentally different approaches to God’s Word and therefore we have different interpretations of it. You lean toward Father Spitzer’s views. Father Spitzer says this on his website:
The Magis Center of Reason and Faith is dedicated to looking at the evidence for a transcendent being from the disciplines of physics, philosophy, mathematics and metaphysics. In order to clarify issues concerning the Bible, science, and evolution, we will sometimes answer questions about the Bible and Christianity. We believe that the New Testament is a broader, fuller revelation of God which emerged from the time of Abraham in 1800 BCE to the time of Jesus Christ and found its complete expression in the death and resurrection of Jesus, who revealed God to be unconditional love. Biblical exegesis is normally beyond our scope, however.
That pretty well explains it. He says that biblical exegesis is normally beyond their scope. This means that their normal practice is that they do not take the Word of God into account when they do science. They use uniformitarian principles to interpret the evidence. So, no surprise that they come up with an old earth and then, after having based their interpretation of nature on non-biblical uniformitarian assumptions, they come back to Scripture and reinterpret it to fit their scientific views. Needless to say, this is not the way I believe we should interpret the Bible I do agree with progressive revelation in that we do not have all of God’s truth in Genesis or even in the OT. We learn more about heaven and the afterlife as we move from the OT to the NT. But the important thing to remember about all “new” revelation is that it must agree with or build upon past revelation. It will never nullify older revelation. For instance, Noah and his descendants had no idea that the ark was a type of Christ. God is amazing in the way He ordained history. David was a type of Christ, but we all believe in a literal David and don’t question anything about his life. In the same way, just because Noah and Adam are types of Christ, does not mean that the historical record of their lives is unreliable. So, I do not believe that new revelation will nullify or change the meaning of older revelation. This is why Jesus and all the NT authors took Genesis as truth and interpreted it in the plain sense of the words. And that is why I believe God intends for us to do the same. The first 11 chapters form the whole foundation for the Bible and it is one of the most important passages in the whole Bible. Genesis is the most quoted book in the Bible. Many doctrines of Scripture are delineated in this book. So this passage had better be clear and understandable. The first few chapters of Genesis were probably written by Adam as he was inspired by the Holy Spirit and then he passed on the written record to Noah. Noah wrote more and passed on the records to Abraham. Abraham wrote more and passed on the records down the line until Moses inherited all the records. He edited them and put it into the form of Genesis through Deuteronomy. Do you remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees who were challenging him in John 5:46–47? He said “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But, since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” He was telling them that they needed to believe Moses – meaning the first 5 books of the Bible. The clear understanding at that time was a young earth and a global flood. In essence Jesus is saying they need to believe in these things as well. He didn’t qualify that statement to say “You should believe Moses all except for Genesis 1-11.”tjguy
May 27, 2012
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