Originally posted by LightSon
Greetings Heino and bmyers,
And to you as well. I must say, this is exactly the sort of thing I come here for - a civil discussion among people who are all clearly honestly and respectfully looking for answers. We can disagree without losing that, and I do appreciate the effort that this takes.
I agree that Genesis is open to interpretation. If Genesis is intended as figurative, then I’d like to understand exactly what the referents are. Figures still shadow something concrete or they serve no purpose.
Well, I have my own beliefs about that, obviously, but I don't think they'd work well within your beliefs. Remember, I am coming from the perspective of what I like to call a "spiritual agnostic" - meaning that while I DO have spiritual "beliefs" (or at least questions!), I consider the question of God to be one that cannot be conclusively answered. Obviously, then, I do not accept the standard Judeo-Christian model of God, so what works for me within that context may be problematic for you.
But if I were to try to answer this from the standpoint of what I THINK might work while still allowing one to believe, my response would be simply that in my mind, the question of the inerrancy or divine nature of the Bible AS A WHOLE is completely separate from the question of whether or not one believes in God. Specifically, I believe that the Bible, in its current form and REGARDLESS of the origin of the various specific books within it, was assembled by men. Even if I were to believe that some of the books in the Bible were completely and utterly the direct Word of God, some of them might still not be, or at least not the be taken literally. I happen to believe, as I said before, that Genesis is most likely simply a collection of the very early mythology of the Hebrews; it reads very much like any of a number of other such collections from other peoples. I also don't think that putting Genesis in that category does much harm at all to the rest of the message of the Bible, especially that of the New Testament. (But then, I also see the New Testament as a VERY different thing than the Old; to me, they are related only in that the teaching of Jesus came about within a culture that was at the time predominantly Jewish, as was Jesus himself.)
Even if Genesis IS taken to be in some sense divinely inspired, I would again point to the possibility that it was written in a way that could be accepted and understood by those of the time. I would not expect God to say things to a culture 3,000 years ago in quite the same way as they would be said today. The basic message would still be: I am God, I have made the world, and so forth. Exactly how all that happened is mere detail, VERY much secondary to that basic message.
I care a great deal about science. I care less about how old the universe is and more about uphold God’s integrity. As I’ve said before, there is only 1 ontological truth. If one were to watch the year-to-year mutation of the evolutionary model, it is clearly not something I want to put my faith in. Is evolution true?
Well, here's where perhaps we differ on just what "science" means and how it works. To me, the fundamental assumption of science is that, as long as we are working within its limits (and we DO understand that it is a tool with limits, applicable only to certain types of questions), we will acknowledge that NOTHING that we think we know is completely and unquestionably "true" except that which we can directly observe. Our descriptions of what we observe and how we think it all works - those models that we call "theories" - will always and forever only be approximations of reality, not "truth" itself. We will continue always to test them and in that way refine them, and they will continue to become better and better descriptions of reality - in many cases, to the point where the description is so good that the difference between what it predicts and reality is PRACTICALLY gone. But it still never QUITE gets there, just as we never QUITE really get to zero by taking a step of half the remaining difference. I put my faith in this process, meaning that if it is honestly and rigorously applied, I will always move closer to "the truth". From this perspective, the "mutation" of the evolutionary model is something to be pointed to with pride - it shows the self-correcting nature of scientific investigation, the willingness of science (again, if honestly done) to abandon earlier models when those are shown to be wrong, in favor of a better description.
As a computer programmer, I’ve been so certain that a piece of code was “correct”, only to have egg on my face days later, when bugs appear. Computer code is a form of actualization. To the degree that I can understand a model, I can attempt to write code which will make that model come alive. Even when I have all the pieces right in front of me, I struggle to find a stable solution.
And the first line of the Programmer's Code is "there's ALWAYS one more bug...."
Yes, I've been there too...
When I consider that evolutionists are attempting to model the generation of the universe, it is simply mind boggling. To think they could scratch the surface of depicting reality is a stretch, yet they will wax dogmatic that this or that occurred billions and billions of years ago. Then, every few years, they change.
Yes, but let's realize that "waxing dogmatic" is a failing of scientists, not science itself. Science, just like religion, is still something that is done by human beings. If it could be done perfectly, it would truly be a wonderful thing, but it's never going to happen - any more than ANY religion, no matter how good it would be if practiced by perfect beings, is ever going to eliminate all the errors made by its human practitioners. And in fact, both suffer at times from the same human flaw - after anyone has invested so much time and energy in a particular belief, they are very, very reluctant to give that belief up - even when it's shown that they should. Religion, I think, is also like the model I gave above for science; no religion has a perfect description of God, but can only be at best a flawed reflection of the truth (since it IS still something done by humans). But if a religious person (or a scientist) "applies the process" honestly, they can at least always hope to move closer and closer to the whole truth.
Given this sandy foundation, the Bible appeals to me. It makes substantive claims about our origins and purpose of existence, and does so with authority. If inspired, surely this is a reason to give credence to it. If not found factual, then this would undermine my premise, that the Bible is from God.
Sure. But again, at this I have to ask - would saying that the Bible might not be entirely from God really say anything about God himself, other than a minor point about what he DIDN'T do?
If I could get to this point, I might be less belligerent towards evolution. I need scripture to be true (and trustworthy) even it a particular passage is judged to be allegorical or figurative.
And here is where we differ, unfortunately. If I were to believe unquestioningly in a God - and I admit that I do not so believe, at least not in the conventional description (we can get more in to that later, if you like) - then I would look to works written by men as only one way in which that God would reveal his nature. The nature of God should also be apparent in ALL of his works; as Stephen Hawking once said, if and when science manages to come up with a unified "theory of everything," then we "would know the mind of God".
My connection is acting up, and I've already had to try this post twice; I'll take up the other points a bit later.
