 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > General Chat > Getting Desperate... | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 2/8/2006 5:03 PM (GMT -6) |   |
JET said...Corey: So I'm fully convinced that purely naturalistic evolution is implausible. Yet that is the form held by the vast consensus of scientists today. Theistic evolution would still have the problem of being a quite minority view.
JET: "Theistic" evolution isn't incompatible with "naturalistic methodology". Howard Van Till argues for a naturalistic methodology which precludes "immediate divine causality" (i.e., God of the gaps) because such gaps would imply that creation lacked "functional integrity". A creation characterized by "functional integrity" would be able to "employ its capacities to carry out the intentions of the Creator". Thus, special creationism implies a creation that is either deficient or defective.
For Van Till, theistic science or theistic evolution "should differ from ordinary science not by the occasional insertion of immediate divine acts into a world whose internal economy is either deficient or defective, but rather by its recognition that every aspect of the world's functionally complete economy is radically dependent on the Creator's ceaseless activity: as the world's Originator, Sustainer, Governor and Provider."
Good stuff. I think I'm on board with this concept of "functional integrity." However, it doesn't help me answer how the universe in general or life in particular was able to transition from being formless and void to coming to a state where it has this fundamental "functional integrity". We can use that concept once the state of affairs "has sufficient capacities to carry out the intentions of the Creator", but how did this formless void gain this capacity in the first place? This is one gap, maybe the only one, which I think can only be filled by God.
Now I understand Process thought has things to say about this, but I've not engaged myself in it yet.
"You are too skilled in the art of talking in generalities about everything without letting yourself be personally involved." SK in Either/Or. | | Back to Top | | |
 |
J.N.Darby
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2005
Total Posts : 124
| Posted 2/8/2006 5:25 PM (GMT -6) | | MephEternal said...
Here's the deal, Corey. Even realizing that there are some gaps in evolutionary theory (with respect to natural selection), to me, at least, I cannot ignore the the very clear consensus of the scientific community on this matter. I'm not a scientist, but I try to read and watch as much as I can surrounding the areas of anthropology and such. From my experience, and with what I have seen, I have been given very, very, little to no reason to dispute that consensus. As JET has said, even some strong, dyed-in-the-wool evangelicals have been forced to deal with the HUGE amount of evidence for an old earth and early hominid development.
It isn't necessary to ignore the consensus, but it is necessary to not swallow it unquestioningly. Just as having certain philosophical presuppositions can lead a great number of Christians into examining the scripture and concluding "Calvinism", having certain philosophical presuppositions can lead a great number of scientists into examining the physical evidences and concluding "evolution". No person - Christians in particular - should ever feel brow-beaten into accepting any given theory just because a large cross-section of the intellectual-elite adhere to that theory and proclaim it loudly. In fact, we should view it as our duty to scrutinize the theory as best as we are able, in order to enforce an objectivity which might not otherwise exist. This applies to neo-Darwinism just as readily as it applies to Calvinism.
In a previous post I recommended a book titled "Shattering the Myths of Darwinism" by Richard Milton - a science journalist who has no religious/theological axe to grind against evolutionary theory. Here are some excerpts from this book:
"Let me make it clear that my doubts about the general theory of evolution do not arise from religious objections... But I am seriously concerned, on purely rational grounds, that generations of school and university teachers have been led to accept speculation as scientific theory, and faulty data as scientific fact; that this process has accumulated a mountainous catalog of mingled fact and fiction that can no longer be contained by the sparsely elegant theory; and that it is high time that the theory was taken out of its ornate Victorian glass cabinet and examined with a fresh and skeptical eye.
"My doubt about the theory arises from a number of sources. It comes first and most importantly from the inability ... to show a thinking member of the public conclusive scientific evidence to substantiate the theory, in the same way that the National Physical Laboratory can demonstrate physical constants, the College of Surgeons can demonstrate the circulation of the blood, or the Greenwich Observatory can demonstrate the expanding universe.
"Second, it comes from the world of scientific investigation itself, a world that I write about in my job as a science reporter and where many discoveries that have an important bearing on evolutionary theory have been made in the last two decades, but have received little publicity...
"To most students, teachers, and even some scientists it will come as a surprise to learn that recent research into the age of the Earth has produced evidence that our planet could be much younger than had previously been thought; existing methods of geochronometry such as uranium-lead decay and radiocarbon assay have been found to be deeply flawed and unreliable; the extent of genetic change by selection has been found experimentally to be limited; bacteria can be induced in the laboratory to mutate in a direction that is beneficial to them - without generations of natural selection; only a catastrophist model of development can account for important Earth structures and processes such as continental drift and most fossil-bearing rock formations - most of the Earth's surface in fact. These major discoveries have had profound consequences for the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution, yet few of them have found their way into the public domain, still less into school or university textbooks or museum displays...
"This book attempts to make accessible, and put into context, these new discoveries to enable nonscientists to evaluate for themselves the status of the general theory of evolution and the new light cast on existing theories by the latest discoveries.
"A number of books attacking the neo-Darwinist theory - and evolution in general - have been published in recent decades by religious writers seeking to promulgate biblical creation as an alternative viewpoint, and I should make it clear at the outset that this book is not in any sense a contribution to creationist literature, nor does it represent the creationist viewpoint (although some creationist objections to neo-Darwinism that have a basis in scientific research are included here)..."
Milton also wrote a book titled "Alternative Science", in which he primarily addresses how a scientist's presuppositions (philosophical or otherwise) can and do heavily influence how he or she views physical evidences. Though this book is not about theology, it was supremely helpful to me in understanding the differences between various theologies, and why these differences exist to begin with. Here is an an excerpt from chapter 8:
"When Cecily Cardew confronted her rival for the hand of Ernest Worthing in Wilde's famous duel over the tea cups, she declared that when she sees a spade, she calls it a spade. Cecily might have been less uncompromising and confident had she been a subscriber to the Journal of Personality and read the paper by J.S. Bruner and Leo Postman, published in 1949.
"The two psychologists wanted to discover exactly how people perceive and understand visual symbols. To help them, they designed and made some special packs of playing cards. Some cards were quite normal, but others were altered in subtle ways; for instance the six of spades was turned into a red card and the four of hearts was made black. The anomalous cards were mixed with normal cards, the pack was shuffled and test subjects were shown the cards one at a time.
"At first, people were shown the test card for merely a short glimpse. Gradually they were shown each test card for a longer and longer time until they were able to recognise and identify it to the researchers. Even with only a short glimpse, most people were able to identify all the cards shown. But the extraordinary finding was that the anomalous cards were always identified as being normal without any hesitation or puzzlement.
"The people looking at them actually saw the black four of hearts as either a four of spades or as a normal (red) four of hearts. Their perceptions were simply fitted naturally into the conceptual categories that had already been prepared by their previous experience of playing cards.
"When the experimenters increased the amount of exposure to each anomalous card, people began to become aware of something wrong. One subject shown the red six of spades said: 'that's the six of spades but there's something wrong with it - the black has a red border'.
"Further increases in exposure time made subjects even more confused and hesitant, until most people finally 'saw' what was really before their eyes. Most interesting of all, however, was that more than 10 per cent of the anomalous playing cards were never correctly identified even when exposed for forty times the average exposure needed to recognise normal cards. And many of the people taking part in the test experienced acute personal distress. One person remarked to the experimenters, 'I can't make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn't even look like a card that time. I don't know what colour it is now or whether it's a spade or a heart. I'm not even sure what a spade looks like. My God!'
"Even the experimenters themselves, who knew every card in the phoney deck, were disturbed by viewing them. Postman told a colleague that, 'though knowing all about the apparatus and display in advance, he nevertheless found looking at the incongruous cards acutely uncomfortable.'
"This mental discomfort, and our attempt to avoid it, extends beyond perception of the mere physical symbols themselves and embraces the meaning or significance of those symbols. At around the time that Bruner and Postman were asking questions about how we perceive things, Leon Festinger and his colleagues at Stanford University were formulating a theory about how we believe things and how those beliefs affect our behaviour. Festinger proposed the theory of cognitive dissonance - that we all strive to keep a sense of consistency between the things that we think we know and we resist any new information that causes dissonance between our beliefs, or we strive to reduce that dissonance.
"The kind of studies on which Festinger based his theory of cognitive dissonance seem rather obvious when looked at in a common-sense way. But they actually expose an important component of our thought processes (or, if you prefer, of our behavioural processes) that is normally invisible to us.
"Take, for example, the survey poll carried out in Minnesota in which 585 people were asked, 'Do you think the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer is proven or not proven?' The poll showed that the attitude of smokers and non-smokers to this question differed sharply. Among non-smokers, 29 per cent thought the link was proved and 55 per cent thought it not proved. Those who smoked heavily held very different views. Only 7 per cent of heavy smokers thought the link proved and a whopping 86 per cent thought it not proved.
"The important question here is not the factual scientific question of who is right and who is wrong. It is why should smokers hold such a strongly different belief from nonsmokers? The answer that Festinger gives is that the smokers are acting to reduce their level of cognitive dissonance by denying the link - despite considerable medical evidence. Knowing they smoke and accepting the medical evidence would create a distressing inconsistency in their beliefs. The simplest way to reduce that distress is to deny the new information.
"Festinger generalised his theory to explain how people will tend to reduce cognitive dissonance that stems from social disagreement. The greater the magnitude of the dissonance the more strenuous the efforts to reduce it. Festinger identified three mechanisms that we may use to try to reduce dissonance that stems from such disagreement.
"The first and most obvious is to change our own opinion so that it corresponds more closely with our knowledge of what others believe. This explains the widespread phenomenon of the group viewpoint or the tendency of any group of people to wish to achieve a consensus viewpoint.
"The second way is to try to apply pressure to those people who disagree to alter their opinion. This is an equally common phenomenon and one that explains just why some individuals are willing to go to such strenuous lengths to try to make others think as they think.
"The third method, according to Festinger, is equally easily recognised: 'Another way of reducing dissonance between one's own opinion and the knowledge that someone else holds a different opinion is to make the other person, in some manner, not comparable to oneself. Such an allegation can take a number of forms. One can attribute different characteristics, experiences or motives to the other person or one can even reject him and derogate him. Thus if some other person claims the grass is brown when I see it as green, the dissonance thus created can be effectively reduced if the characteristic of being colour-blind can be attributed to the other person. There would be no dissonance between knowing the grass is green and knowing that a colour-blind person asserted it was brown.'
"There is substantial experimental evidence to support this view. Schacter set up a complex series of experiments involving people brought together in 'clubs' to discuss how best to deal with young criminals. Without the knowledge of the test subjects, paid participants always adopted certain attitudes in the club debates that followed. One paid participant always agreed with the meeting, another always disagreed, saying for example that juvenile offenders should be harshly punished. The study found that people who persistently disagreed with the group's view were consistently derogated by the group and there was a move to exclude these people from future meetings of the 'club'. Even more interesting, half of the 'clubs' were made to seem very attractive to the participants, while the other half were made to seem considerably less attractive. The extent to which members derogated and wished to ostracise the person who disagreed with them was far higher in the attractive clubs than in the less attractive clubs.
"But, of course, not everyone reacts in the same way to learning new information that contradicts their existing beliefs. Festinger concluded that: 'For some people, dissonance is an extremely painful and intolerable thing, while there are others who seem to be able to tolerate a large amount of dissonance. This variation in 'tolerance for dissonance' would seem to be measurable at least in a rough way. Persons with low tolerance for dissonance should show more discomfort in the presence of dissonance and should manifest greater efforts to reduce dissonance than persons who have high tolerance. At this point many readers will feel like suggesting that perhaps such a test already exists, having recognised a certain similarity between our discussion immediately above and some descriptions of 'authoritarian personalities' and some descriptions of people with high 'intolerance for ambiguity'. My own suspicion would be that existing tests such as the F scale do measure, to some extent, the degree to which people hold extreme opinions, that is, opinions where dissonance has been effectively eliminated.'
"The authoritarian personality with low tolerance for dissonance and who readily adopts the device of derogating others is one that we have already met in previous chapters and will be meeting in a number of guises in later ones. The F scale referred to by Festinger is a measure of authoritarian tendencies, devised by American researchers to try to measure an individual's predisposition towards fascism. This is also examined in more detail later.
"There have, of course, been many such basic findings about perception in experimental psychology over the past fifty years or more. The question is, what if anything do they show in the case of scientific discovery? One scientist who concluded that they show a great deal was Thomas Kuhn of Berkeley University, California, who originated the first comprehensive theory of how scientific revolutions come about.
"In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn popularised the now widely accepted idea of the scientific 'paradigm'; universally recognised scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of scientists engaged in those and related problems.
"'In science,' says Kuhn, 'as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be observed.'
"This idea is one that many people, including scientists, will find simply impossible to accept. Are we really being asked to believe that when scientist 'A' looks at an experimental result he sees one thing, but when scientist 'B' looks at the same experiment he sees something quite different, because of differences in their personality? Extraordinary though it may sound, that is exactly the conclusion that Kuhn and others have reached. And the evidence from the history of science is not merely persuasive, it is overwhelming.
"One of the most interesting examples that Kuhn cites is Sir William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus - the first planet to be discovered since prehistoric times. This is interesting not merely because it shows the 'playing card' syndrome in action, but because it also triggered what Kuhn has called a paradigm shift in the branch of science concerned.
"On at least seventeen occasions between the years 1690 and 1781, a number of astronomers, including some of Europe's most influential observers, had seen a 'star' in positions that we now know to have been that of Uranus. One astronomer had even observed the object for four nights in a row in 1769 but without noticing the motion that would have disclosed it as a planet not a star.
"When Herschel first observed the same object twelve years later he was able to examine it with a much better telescope that he had himself designed and built. Herschel saw that the object appeared to have a disc shape - something not characteristic of stars because they are too far away to be resolved. Herschel thus put a question mark against the nature of the object - the first person to do so. When he observed it further, Herschel saw that the object had a real motion with respect to the Earth. He therefore concluded that he was looking at a comet!
"Several months were spent trying to fit the new 'comet' to a suitable cometary orbit, until Lexell suggested that the orbit was probably planetary. Once the suggestion had been made, it was at once seen to be obvious. As Kuhn put it, 'A celestial body that had been observed off and on for almost a century was seen differently after 1781 because, like an anomalous playing card, it could no longer be fitted to the perceptual categories (star or comet) provided by the paradigm that had previously prevailed.'
"Kuhn points out that the discovery of Uranus did more for astronomy than merely add another planet to the solar system. It prepared astronomers to perceive other such objects, and after 1801 they did indeed begin to see numerous minor planets and asteroids. No fewer than twenty such planetary bodies were discovered by astronomers using standard instrumentation in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century.
"This failure simply to see what is before our eyes is far from rare. In the 1890s, scientists all over Europe were experimenting with cathode rays - electrons accelerated in a partially evacuated tube by an electric charge. Researchers trying to tease out the secrets of cathode rays included great names such as Lord Kelvin, who had contributed to the mathematical foundations of electricity and magnetism including the electromagnetic theory of light.
"One of these hopeful experimenters was the young Wilhelm Roentgen, working at the University of Wurtzburg in 1895. One day, Roentgen noticed that a screen near his shielded cathoderay apparatus glowed when the cathode rays discharged. Roentgen locked himself in his laboratory virtually night and day for many days before emerging to announce the discovery of X-rays. By the time he unlocked his laboratory door he had discovered that the new rays travelled in straight lines, that they cast shadows and could not be deflected by a magnet.
"When Roentgen announced his discovery it was greeted with surprise and with shock. Lord Kelvin pronounced X-rays an elaborate hoax. Other scientists, though they felt bound to accept the physical results, were staggered by the discovery. Yet, as Kuhn points out, the discovery of X-rays was, 'not at least for a decade after the event, implicated in any obvious upheaval in scientific theory': 'To be sure, the paradigm subscribed to by Roentgen and his contemporaries could not have been used to predict X-rays. (Maxwell's electromagnetic theory had not yet been accepted everywhere, and the particulate theory of cathode rays was only one of several current speculations.) But neither did those paradigms, at least in any obvious sense, prohibit the existence of X-rays.... On the contrary, in 1895, accepted scientific theory and practice admitted a number of forms of radiation - visible, infrared and ultraviolet. Why could not X-rays have been accepted as just one more form of a well-known class of natural phenomena? Why were they not, for example, received in the same way as the discovery of an additional chemical element? New elements to fill empty places in the periodic table were still being sought and found in Roentgen's day. Their pursuit was a standard project for normal science, and success was an occasion only for congratulations, not for surprise.'
"There can be little doubt that many European scientific laboratories must have been producing X-rays on a substantial scale yet no one had perceived them. Anyone who thinks that this is merely a case of people 'not noticing' the new rays should remind themselves that Britain's most eminent physical scientist, Lord Kelvin, declared them to be a hoax. There is more to this than not noticing.
"Interestingly, at least one other eminent scientist was on the track of X-rays: Sir William Crookes, who had been alerted by some photographic plates that had become unaccountably fogged while covered up. Crookes's exceptional openness to the possibility of a new form of radiation may perhaps be connected with his high tolerance to dissonant ideas - a trait which he demonstrated repeatedly in his later researches.
"In many of the examples given so far, we are looking back in time and examining cases of fundamental scientific importance. But how does this strange phenomenon affect ordinary working scientists today? The answer is that it affects them in exactly the same way that it affected Roentgen and Lord Kelvin. Scientists at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Stanford University, US Naval Laboratory and Texas A & M University have built Fleischmann-Pons cold fusion cells and they have perceived gamma-rays, tritium and excess heat energy. Scientists at Harwell and MIT have built Fleischmann-Pons cells and have gone on record as saying that they do not see such results - one eminent MIT scientist even claiming, in the best traditions of Kelvin, that cold fusion is a hoax.
"Researchers at Stanford Research Institute, Birkbeck College and King's College say they have perceived (and, indeed, filmed and recorded) people producing readings on electrical instruments remotely without touching them, by means that are inexplicable. Researchers at other institutions say they have been unable to perceive or record such things and that the results must be conjuring tricks...
If you've read this far, you should be able to perceive the implications that this has for modern evolutionary research. The physical evidence is given meaning only by the interpretations of fallible humans - and these humans have presuppositions which have been instilled in them by their education, their culture, and their religious leanings (atheism in particular). As Milton notes elsewhere in "Shattering":
"Dating advocates, such as Dalrymple, accept that potassium-argon methods can be flawed but claim that they knew the occassions on which the results are correct and when they are incorrect: 'Like all radiometic methods, the potassium-argon method does not work on all rocks and minerals under all geologic conditions. By many experiments over the past three decades, geologists have learned which rocks and minerals act as closed systems and under what geologic conditions they do so.'
"The problem with this widely held belief is that there is no truly independent means of verifying the age of any given sample... And the experiments to which Dalrymple refers have consisted solely of rejecting dates that seem wrong while accepting those that seem right, "seem" in this context meaning in line with uniformitarian expectations, thus compiling a database of self-fulfilling predictions...Post Edited (John N. Darby) : 2/8/2006 4:41:27 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 2/8/2006 7:09 PM (GMT -6) | |
JET said...
Sahid: How is "God of the gaps" world deficient or defective? How are we to judge a deficient or defective world from a suficient and good world. Is a universe deficient if it doesn't develop and sustain life? Maybe God can create the world without the ability to do certain things we happen to appreciate.
JET: God could create the world without the ability to develop and sustain life. However, to the extent that God intends for creation to develop and sustain life, the idea of "functional integrity" would require that creation ought to be able to do so without God having to step in to fill some gap or deficiency. According to Van Till when God says "Let the land produce vegetation", God gives the land the enabling power to produce vegetation. Thus, barring some defect or deficiency, the land ought to be able to produce vegetation.
Popping in from the side.....
Is this "Uhrwerk" (Clockwork)? Are you painting a picture of a creation that has EverReady batteries?
Hope not.
Of another thought is that God puts his utterance in each thing in the creation, and that their being themselves has its very basis in his utterance (I can't spell Greek any better than English, but I think its "logoi.") That, and that the Church confesses that the Holy Spirit is "everywhere and fillest all things..."
I don't know any Christian confession that gives God a work-break.
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/8/2006 8:12:48 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
|
J.N.Darby
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2005
Total Posts : 124
| Posted 2/10/2006 6:53 AM (GMT -6) | | BBBCanada said...
Just one simple question. Are not most of the events in Genesis, but ESPECIALLY the creation story, lacking eyewitnesses? How do you have an eyewitness for that?
At the time when the Torah was written, during the lifetime of Moses, there would have been no living human eyewitnesses to the events of Genesis (and, as you mention, there could not have been any human eyewitnesses to the first six days of Creation, prior to Adam on the 6th day). The only possible remaining eyewitness would have been God Himself (and perhaps angels).
So with the book of Genesis, either you have a direct revelation from God recorded by a man, or a human fabrication - a fabrication perhaps based on otherwise reliable oral traditions, but a fabrication nonetheless. Another possibility would be to think that Moses (or whoever) had authored Genesis out of his own mind and/or imagination, and God guided his writing to some degree (perhaps slightly, perhaps greatly). Since the scripture itself attests to the first view (direct revelation from God), along with the early Church (and arguably the rest of Church history prior to the last few centuries), I go with the first view.
Numbers 12:6 Then He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream.
7 Not so with My servant Moses; He is faithful in all My house.
8 I speak with him face to face, Even plainly, and not in dark sayings; And he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid To speak against My servant Moses?"
Matthew 22:31-32 "But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." | | Back to Top | | |
|
BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 2/10/2006 12:58 PM (GMT -6) | |
John N. Darby said...
So with the book of Genesis, either you have a direct revelation from God recorded by a man, or a human fabrication - a fabrication perhaps based on otherwise reliable oral traditions, but a fabrication nonetheless. Another possibility would be to think that Moses (or whoever) had authored Genesis out of his own mind and/or imagination, and God guided his writing to some degree (perhaps slightly, perhaps greatly). Since the scripture itself attests to the first view (direct revelation from God), along with the early Church (and arguably the rest of Church history prior to the last few centuries), I go with the first view.
Ummm…can’t say that I go along with this view. Unlike revelatory literature elsewhere in scripture, such as the Revelation of John, the narrator makes no such claim (you should not blanket all of scripture under the same cover of revelation). When the authors of biblical histories tell us about the process whereby they wrote i.e. Luke 1:1-4, they suggest that their work was undertaken in the same way ANY OTHER historical work would have been. As I suggested before, God’s involvement in the task did not bring about additional facts. They tell us that their facts came from the same sources as anyone else’s.
As I stated before, I see the whole of the first five books to be of epic quality as a whole. They are a continuous work and not a collection of separate works and in the form that we have it, according to some scholars, dates from the fall of Jerusalem and the exiles of many Judeans to Babylon, the last of the events that it refers to. Again, it is an account of how Israel reached a tragic point in its history.
And when we look at the creation stories, it speaks of events that took place millennia before the completion fo the work in which we read them. It might in principle be the case that the content of Gen 1 was much older than the exile and was incorporated into this later work. The same goes for Gen 2 and the Adam and Eve story. As with the Gospels, we would need to look within the material itself to see if it contains material of earlier origin. In which case, the material strongly suggests that the chapter is from exile. There are concerns of the exile such as the status of the sun, moon, stars and Sabbath. It shows signs that it is written to controvert the understanding to creation within the Babylonian creation story.
So, Genesis 1 would have come into existence by the same process as the rest of the material found from Genesis through Kings “by the narrator working from traditional material, empirical evidence, (working backward from the nature of the known world, i.e. God’s involvement with the narrator is such that God does not give additional hard facts; the facts come from the same sources as everyone else’s) and theological conviction.
Let’s remember something about biblical history. It comes in four different flavors There is:
1. tradition that comes from the historical events and seems of clear historical value (2 Kings 25).
2. tradition that is separated by a generation or two of reflection, but deserving of our trust (I want to hit on something in the "Inerrancy" thread that touches on this) i.e. the Gospels.
3. tradition that is separated by CENTURIES from the events it relates, material about which on purely historical grounds we basically have to be agnostic about (Josh 6).
4. tradition that doesn’t actually mediate historical evidence in the ordinary sense at all i.e. Gen 1.
Lastly, you seem to view “fabrication” as some sort of moral evil as lying. The material in the fourth category is generally the hardest to live with and makes claims that critical historical study cannot vindicate (one of my issues with Meph Man’s “commitment to history.” Don’t get me wrong, there is something to his view that “real events” are not to be ruled out as a matter of principle. But when we have discovered that we cannot “get behind them” or directly verify them in practice, we can live with the situation and learn from the narratives.
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
J.N.Darby
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2005
Total Posts : 124
| Posted 2/10/2006 5:38 PM (GMT -6) | | BBBCanada,
See, personally, I just don't see any reason why I should bother with or accept any of the premises or assertions of "higher criticism" (or even literary criticism in general). I'm satisfied with the attitude toward the Old Testament demonstrated by Christ and His Apostles in the New Testament, an attitude also held by the early Christian Church.
I like this quote from Herman Wouk:
"What the scholars had found out at long last, of course, was that literary analysis is not a scientific method. Literary style is a fluid, shifting thing, at best, a palimpsest or a potpourri. The hand of Shakespeare is in the pages of Dickens; Scott wrote chapters of Mark Twain; Spinoza is full of Hobbes and Descartes. Shakespeare was the greatest echoer of all, and the greatest stylist of all. Literary analysis has been used for generations by obsessive men to prove that everybody but Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. I believe literary analysis could be used to prove that I wrote both David Copperfield and A Farewell to Arms. I wish it were sound." | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/10/2006 9:50 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Interestingly, while a majority of scientists hold to that view of evolution entailed by methodological naturalism, recent surveys indicate that a majority of them still have some belief in God. Thus, it would seem that they simply CHOOSE to believe that methodological naturalism will eventually account for what Van Till calls the "functional integrity" of creation's "capacities."
The bottom line is this: if there IS a creator God, there is no apriori reason to assume that nature can do what science can not account for. Whether one believes that those really huge gaps in our knowledge will ultimately be filled by a "god" or "nature" has much more to do with one's philosophical outlook than empirical science. So, unless one embraces materialistic atheism, philosophy is ultimately the umpire in many of these matters.
And, unfortunately, the problem of evil sits right smack in the lap of all non-atheistic approaches. So THAT problem will have MUCH to do with how one tends to lean. Science simply can not solve THIS problem for us insomuch as it deals with matters of fact, only, whereas philosophy deals with matters of value/morality/etc, also.
But science can make (and, indeed, HAS MADE) accounting for the problem of evil more difficult. It has made all attempts to resolve that problem seem less plausible. This much we ought to concede, I think, to those who argue that science has rendered the problem insoluble.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 2/11/2006 4:38 PM (GMT -6) | |
John N. Darby said...
BBBCanada,
See, personally, I just don't see any reason why I should bother with or accept any of the premises or assertions of "higher criticism" (or even literary criticism in general). I'm satisfied with the attitude toward the Old Testament demonstrated by Christ and His Apostles in the New Testament, an attitude also held by the early Christian Church.
On ANY LEVEL? Even at the most rudimentary level? That’s kinda throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For example, the resurrection is a space-time event (against Bultmann) though it is different in not being the kind of event that can be handled by the ordinary methods of historians. Why? Because it breaks the rules for what can be counted as a historical event. I understand that there are some negative things about historical criticism. ULTIMATELY, historical research cannot establish the truth of the Gospel. But if the Gospel is a MESSAGE about what God has done in Christ, then some HISTORICAL FACTS are needed in order to provide part of it’s justification.
Because the resurrection can be approached as both a historical event AND BE OF SUPRAHISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE (a real historical event that hinges on it’s relationship with the purpose and activity of God, Barth) is no reason to reject some of the more positive aspects of historical criticism.
In terms of the Bible as literature. There is both historical facts and literary creativity in scripture (especially the narratives). Both should not be ignored BECAUSE they are there.
So, my post still stands. Gen 1 and 2 are more of the second kind and they are brought together by an author who used the same processes that are normally used in all writing. There is no “revelation” there that you claim there is.
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
a_theist
"Thy will be done."
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 286
|  Posted 2/14/2006 12:59 AM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...
Interestingly enough, VERY few skeptics that I've dialogued with even ENGAGE process theology seriously, choosing rather to deal with more supernaturalistic religion. It's a shame.
A_Theist is saying...
Meph! It is a darn shame. I share your sentiments on how most skeptics attack supernatural theism but fail to critcially engage process theology. Either A.) they love attacking weaker forms of theism, or B.) they are not aware of process theology. I sometimes wonder fi the skeptics are aware of process theism. The world may never know.
Peace!
P.S. I would like to know if you have picked up and read any of that book I gave you? Thanks.
"From an infallible God to an infallible book (to an infallible reader of the book?) is a gigantic step. For many of us it is a step from rational faith to idolatry."
~Charles HartshornePost Edited (A_Theist) : 2/15/2006 12:16:55 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
| 64 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 3 |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 8:27 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|