Fascinating story! Did you enjoy the visit with Hashimoto's granddaughter?
Very much. We stay in touch.
… the victory of the war is not yours to claim
I don’t often seek victory. I am satisfied when I feel I have honestly, firmly, and respectfully tried to clarify or correct erroneous ideas in science.
Do I detect some familiarity with Nihongo in your prepending the honorific “O” in front of my screen name?
Standing, as you claim, as an outsider to Christianity, let me introduce you to the idea that God both made the world and also told us something about how He created it, something no one else that we know of observed.
Here I think we have a distinct divergence on our beliefs in the Bible. Commonly I hear Christians use the term “God’s Word” as synonymous with the Bible. But I see the earlier parts of the Old Testament as being simply a collection of creation accounts that were probably orally handed down for generations within a rather primitive nomadic society. Extended arguments seen earlier in this thread, and in lots of other ToL threads show that within the Christian community there is a wide range of hotly debated beliefs as to what the creation account really says.
For a book that is purportedly the most important tome in existence, how come it is so poorly written? No teacher that is even minimally competent would tolerate teaching from a text that is the source of so much disagreement.
Turning to your assertion that “God both made the world and also told us something about how He created it”, as I read Genesis I don’t see God telling us anything, but rather I see pretty much what I would expect from a scientifically ignorant society trying to come up with an account of how the world came into existence.
Speaking more broadly, what if I were to come to you with a religious tome that you were unfamiliar with. As you read it, you saw a number of examples of clear violation of scientific principles that you had never questioned before. Adherents to this religious book had protracted disagreements over crucial passages in it. Would you be likely to turn a blind eye to its ambiguity and scientific nonsense and join in praising the book?
… force-fitting ideas from science into our peculiar theological frameworks … kind of depends on how good the current science framework turns out to be.
Science has been spectacularly successful in helping us understand the physical universe we find ourselves in. Science has made missteps, sometimes important ones, but it has been remarkable in eventually self-correcting. In comparison, absolutist claims made by some (such as 6days) about the Bible being absolutely true are ludicrous to most scientists.
I tend to judge the relative values of science and of religion by the fruits I see coming from each. Christianity has a track record reaching back many centuries, yet I see little scientific progress due to religion. Yet just within my lifetime, science has added more knowledge than mankind had in the several thousand years when religion was revered as the paramount source of knowledge.
I hope you had a fine day.