The Religion of Evolution

But that might not have been the original function. Two bones adjacent to each other can become a working joint without all those other refinements. In Diarthrognathus, for example, a new joint between the upper jaw and the dentary formed with no such additions.

That's because there aren't any. Gills never became lungs. Lungs appeared separately from gills, and long preceded any land animal. Some organisms still have both gills and lungs, and many more have the lungs in a vestigial state, recruited for a new function.

You're saying that there are no intermedates between the highly precise thermoregulation we have, and an organism that lets its body temperature fluctuate with the atmosphere? That's wrong. We have such organisms alive today.

Tenrecs are one such example. Apparently, most species have no ability to respond when temperatures go below 10 degrees Celsius. (about 50 degrees F.) And they have a psuedocloaca, similar to that in reptiles.

Hair doesn't fossilize very well. But since we have evidence of feathers evolving from scutes, there's nothing amazing about something less complex doing so.

On what evidence? From all the evidence in the fossil record, moving to eukaryotic cells took far longer than anything since.

That is what the evidence shows. The time between these changes is well documented.

All of them believe their particular interpretation of it. Bible-believing Christians differ on exactly what it says.

Most Christians think that's what literalists are doing. Of course, only God knows for sure who is right, but none of us is God.

To quote you,(referring to Galatian's observation that there are people of great learning and wisdom, and piety on all sides of the literalism issue) “It's important to remember that.”

So "brainwashing" and "high priests" are acceptable terms to use for one's opponents and one's ideas? I think that's unfortunate, Helen.

And does that mean evolutionists are now permitted to call creationism "dishonest"?

Apparently it means something different to you. Fact is, few kids hear at all about evolution until middle school, and some don't even then. And citing evidence for evolution is hardly "brainwashing". It is a very specific and effective technique, first encountered by American POWs in Korea. To trivialize the horrors of the process these men went through by applying the word to education is a mistake, I think.

Hmm.. haven't seen that in a textbook. Which one was that?

I think someone has misled you about what's actually in the textbooks. I get to review them, and I've never seen one like that.

Other than for historical comparison of Haeckle's errors, where do you see it in a textbook? Which one? I haven't seen it in any at all in the last few decades.

Er, I never said any of that. I think perhaps you're reading things into what I said.

It's wrong. And it trivializes a very, very terrible episode in our history.

I haven't heard Eugenie Scott say that all things have to have a natural cause. Dawkins would like to say it, but even he admits that he can't quite prove it.

No, that's wrong. God remains engaged in creation in all respects. He just uses nature for most things in this world. And we accept that He communicates to us in a number of ways, including scripture. You've been misled about that, too.

They share the same desire as YE creationists; that God and evolution must be incompatible. It's just not the case.

As someone else admitted here, "Nature" published articles and letters critical to it's own editorial position. By definition, that's academic freedom.

[ April 13, 2003, 10:08 AM: Message edited by: The Galatian ]

 

Barbarian observes:
I wouldn't know about mythology, but it is unnecessary to evolutionary theory,which only describes how living things evolve

I'd be pleased to. I review science textbooks, and have a little influence in how they are selected. To which textbooks do you refer? Get me a list, with referenced pages, and I'll start with a stinging letter to the publisher. If you'd be kind enough to post the city and schools using this sort of thing, I'll write them a letter too.

And I assure you, I would not let such a book pass my review without doing my level best to have it rejected.

Be sure to include the publisher and title.

 

Take a visit to the Smithsonian Museum of natural history and you will see a nice little vieo explicitly teaching the unwary student about the reducing atmosphere with the primordial "Amonia Seas". A series of exhibit that DO teach the unwary student that life simply "happened" out of a non-living stew. Life centric Levro-proteins assembling themselves to create the first living cell.

And this is the sequence in ALL of the books on "origins" where abiogenesis is an essential concept to a non-God view of origins.

In fact - it is very "logical" to conclude that "WITHOUT GOD - the only POSSIBLE explanation is that life just HAPPENED out of a non-living environment". It is the zenith of gullibility to suppose any OTHER option in a non-God model. Because EVEN for evolutionists - there is no "easter bunny".

Bob

 

I must assume that you are new to the debate - I find it hard to believe you would be trying to deceive. The "fact is" that origin WAS the explicit point of the exercise from the start. Even Huxley admitted that - from the start.

The abiogenesis "START" is critical to the non-God view of origins because it is the ONLY option for the rational mind once you get rid of God.

The turn-a-blind-eye model you propose above - is not taken by evolutionists. I can't believe you are being serious.

Bob

 

Now we are on the point of the thread. The fact is that the "MAJORITY" of ALL Christians in ALL AGES but the very RECENT 200 years - ALL took the SAME view of the ORIGIN doctrine as did the HEBREWS reading the HEBREW text on origins. "In the Beginning GOD CREATED".

The fact is that "SIX days you SHALL labor.. FOR IN SIX DAYS the LORD..." has ALWAYS been taken to mean six literal rotations of the planet - six literal days -- from Sinai to the very present day. EVEN Orthodox Jews today ADMIT that the SIX day locked-in-equivalence for that text is immutable - explicit - without deviation. And THEY have recently adopted evilutionism just as our Catholic bretheren - yet THEY admit that the SIX DAY equivalence is STILL there.

So with such a UNITED definition from ALL AGES - in BOTH Christianity and Judaism - and ONLY the recent century or two to find opposition - how in the world could you argue that HISTORICALLY the majority of EITHER religion denied what linguists STILL assert to be the case from Exodus 20??

Bob

 

Consider the "corrupt religion of evilutionism".

No LITERAL Six day sequence - EVEN though God's own Exodus 20 summary of Genesis 1-2 explicitly states it.

NO SEQUENCe as stated in Genesis 1 - no matter what the length of time.

NO Literal Adam, No SINLESS mankind, NO bloodless creation.

INSTEAD - we have "Creation via death, starvation, extinction, and the law of carnage - the law of tooth-and-claw".

And for the feeble-minded compromised-gospel-christian there is "humanity" in the form of "Adam squatting on the floor of his cave - bashing in his monkey brain treat while mommy hominid watches in approval. And suddenly he has a BAD thought causing ALL mankind to FALL and reuiring the DEATH of God's own Son".

The mockery that such a compromised-gospel presents of BOTH the NT and the OT - and the atoning sacrifice of Christ - is at the CORE of evilutionisms tale.

Bob

 

Bob Ryan asks for some help:

(Galatian agrees, and asks Bob for the names and publishers of the textbooks in which this is presented)

So you don't know of any textbooks that teach life came from primordial slime? I don't either, and I've been looking for them. But if you ever find one, let me know, I'll be glad to help you go after them.

It's possible. Right now, it's probably the best explaination for why life was brought forth by the earth and waters, as Genesis says. But the evidence is not yet compelling enough to put it in science textbooks. That's why you won't find it there. It's been over 18 years since I visited the Smithsonian, but if they present it as a fact, shame on them.

Again, if you have actually read a textbook like that, give us the name of the textbook and the publisher, (and the school that uses it) and I'll help you. Incidentally, since Genesis says that God created life by natural means, it certainly isn't "non-God" to accept it.

As you might know, most of us are theists, the biggest part of us, Christians.

 

(testimony from former YEC, now a theistic evolutionist)

Well, all Christians still do agree that God created. However, young Earth creationism is a very recent doctrine, first promulgated by Seventh-Day Adventists, and then introduced to other denominations by Henry Morris, who got the doctrine from Adventist George McCready Price.

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~gavinru/creation2.htm

It is not a traditional Christian doctrine at all. St. Augustine pointed out that a six-day creation was refuted within Genesis itself. Nor is it true that the Jewish theologians agreed on a young Earth.

You've been misled. That was never a universal belief.

Some Orthodox Jews do. Perhaps most. Howver, they are a minority among believers in Judaism, just as YE creationists are a minority among Bible-believing Christians.

 

Galatian observes:
I wouldn't know about mythology, but it is unnecessary to evolutionary theory,which only describes how living things evolve, not how they came to be.

I took my first college course in evolution in um, 1967, I think. Our instructor invited a YE creationist to come in and give us his viewpoint. He tried the same thing. We invited him to show us in Darwin's book, or any other book on evolutionary theory, where the theory predicted how life began. He declined to show us.

In fact, one can easily suppose that God created the first organisms by magic, and everything evolved from there. Or you could take His word for it in Genesis, that the earth and waters brought forth life. Up to you. But it doesn't matter to evolutionary theory.

Good. That is a very sensible conclusion. I don't lie on these boards. That's always a bad idea.

I'd certainly be open to the part of Darwin's book in which he says life was created by natural forces rather than God. Tell us about it.

Huxley disagreed with Darwin on a number of things. However, Huxley didn't propose the theory; Darwin did.

Yep. But for those who accept both science and God, it's not the only possible beginning. And most of us do.

In science, a theory is accountable only for the claims it makes. Hence, evolutionary theory cannot account for the beginning of life, nor is it meant to. One such theory is called "abiogenesis".

Galatian, In the future please combine your posts into one as a matter of courtesy. Thank you. The Administrators

[ April 13, 2003, 10:48 AM: Message edited by: Administrator ]

 

OK, Bob and Helen, here are some quotes from church history:-

Origen was a scholar and writer in the first half of the third century and wrote in his "On First Principles" Book 4 - Chapter 3

THE PRINCIPLE UNDERLYING THE OBSCURITIES IN DIVINE SCRIPTURE AND ITS IMPOSSIBLE OR UNREASONABLE CHARACTER IN PLACES, IF TAKEN LITERALLY.

i. Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first and the second and the third day, and the evening and the morning existed without the sun and moon and stars? And that the first day, if we may so call it, was even without a heaven? And who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, 'planted a paradise eastward in Eden', and set in it a visible and palpable 'tree of life', of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life; and again that one could partake of 'good and evil' by masticating the fruit taken from the tree of that name? And when God is said to 'walk in the paradise in the cool of the day' and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual events.

A couple of hundred years later St. Augustine, a famous theologian and thinker of the early church wrote -

"THE LITERAL MEANING OF GENESIS"
(AD 420?) BOOK 1 CHAPTER 19
Titled "On interpreting the mind of the sacred writer. Christians sbould not talk nonsense to unbelievers."
Paragraph 39. Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

Moving on to the time of the reformation, John Calvin, a famous theologian from Switzerland wrote in about 1550 (before Galileo had made his discoveries about planetary orbits known) -

"Commentary on Genesis"
Paragraph 16. "The greater light." I have said, that Moses does not here subtilely descant, as a philosopher, on the secrets of nature, as may be seen in these words. First, he assigns a place in the expanse of heaven to the planets and stars; but astronomers make a distinction of spheres, and, at the same time, teach that the fixed stars have their proper place in the firmament. Moses makes two great luminaries; but astronomers prove, by conclusive reasons that the star of Saturn, which on account of its great distance, appears the least of all, is greater than the moon. Here lies the difference; Moses wrote in a popular style things which without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, are able to understand; but astronomers investigate with great labour whatever the sagacity of the human mind can comprehend. Nevertheless, this study is not to be reprobated, nor this science to be condemned, because some frantic persons are wont boldly to reject whatever is unknown to them. For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God. Wherefore, as ingenious men are to be honoured who have expended useful labour on this subject, so they who have leisure and capacity ought not to neglect this kind of exercise. Nor did Moses truly wish to withdraw us from this pursuit in omitting such things as are peculiar to the art; but because he was ordained a teacher as well of the unlearned and rude as of the learned, he could not otherwise fulfill his office than by descending to this grosser method of instruction. Had he spoken of things generally unknown, the uneducated might have pleaded in excuse that such subjects were beyond their capacity. Lastly since the Spirit of God here opens a common school for all, it is not surprising that he should chiefly choose those subjects which would be intelligible to all. If the astronomer inquires respecting the actual dimensions of the stars, he will find the moon to be less than Saturn; but this is something abstruse, for to the sight it appears differently. Moses, therefore, rather adapts his discourse to common usage. For since the Lord stretches forth, as it were, his hand to us in causing us to enjoy the brightness of the sun and moon, how great would be our ingratitude were we to close our eyes against our own experience? There is therefore no reason why janglers should deride the unskilfulness of Moses in making the moon the second luminary; for he does not call us up into heaven, he only proposes things which lie open before our eyes. Let the astronomers possess their more exalted knowledge; but, in the meantime, they who perceive by the moon the splendour of night, are convicted by its use of perverse ingratitude unless they acknowledge the beneficence of God."

ISTM pretty clear that the great thinkers of church history didn't adhere to YEC or to literalism and that both are fabrications of the last 150 years or so, mainly as a fundamentalist backlash against Darwin and liberal theology; if I still believed that sort of stuff I'd still be going to my old charismatic fundamentalist church and believing in Faith -Word doctrine. Er...thanks but no thanks.

Yours in Christ

Matt

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

Actually, he did. Let's see...

And I have another challenge.

If you really believe this, why don't you help us get the stuff about "the primordial ooze springing into life on it's own" out of the textbooks used in our schools?

He asked for my help. I agreed to help. I just need him (or anyone else) to give me the text and publisher and school using a science text that says "primordial ooze" sprung into life on its own."

I know many people who think that abiogenesis is true. I'll freely admit that the evidence is intriguing, but not quite compelling at this point. However, abiogenesis is a different theory than evolutionary theory. Perhaps we could discuss abigenesis in a separate thread, so we don't get the two confused.

Remember the key is that each theory is judged only by the claims it makes. Hence, abiogenesis is not about a change in allele frequencies over time, and evolutionary theory is not about the way life began. I think, because creationism is about the way life began, and about the way life varies, it's easy for creationists to imagine that evolutionary theory is like that, too. It's not. Except the Cartoon Theory of Evolution, but I'll concede that one is wrong.

Right, a theory is only responsible for the claims it makes.

Actually, it does. Of course God created life. But he commanded the earth and waters to bring forth life.

Gen. 1:20: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Gen. 1:24: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

That's how God does most of His work in this universe. You and I are creatures of God, after all, and He created us by natural means, too.

I've heard the story, but it doesn't square with the facts. Most creationists prior to George McCready Price were Old Earth creationists. Even William Jennings Bryan, the hope of creationists, was an Old Earth creationist. Only after the Seventh-Day Adventists recruited Henry Morris to their point of view did YE get much play with evangelicals.

I wasn't aware someone thought so. By the time Darwin came along, most scientists knew that some kind of evolution was necessary. Some of the ancient Greeks and early Christian writers pointed this out. Darwin's major discovery was natural selection, not evolution.

Erasmus was a bit of a latecomer. Lamark had realized evolution had to be true a long time before that, and St. Augustine had written about it many centuries before him.

 

Helen, I'm still going through the site - it's very lengthy and you will appreciate my time is limited, but so far I haven't come across much that I haven't heard before. But I'll let you know if I hit anything that changes my mind back

YOurs in Christ

Matt

 

I'm merely pointing out the evidence. Darwin's original theory was only about the way living things varied. He has one paragraph in which he speculates that life might have begun in a "warm little pond", without any comment on how it might have happened. Nothing in subsequent changes to evolutionary theory has included any claims about the origin of life. If you read carefully, you'll find that very few scientists claim to know how life started.

"Presenting the "Urey-Miller experiment in a favorable light" is a very long way from saying that abiogenesis is correct, and even longer from saying what was originally claimed to have been said. Miller-Urey is about pre-biotic chemistry on Earth, not how life began. It turns out that the experiment has been validated by the discovery of amino acids within the Murchison meteorite, many of which were formed by the Urey-Miller experiment. But it's not about the beginning of life, and still less about evoluton.

Since creationists tend to think of the Big Bang, and chemistry, and astronomy, and whatever, as part of the "evolutionary model", one wonders what you mean by that. However, I would certainly be willing to hear of even one of those folks who says that the origin of life is part of evolutionary theory. Do you have something to offer in that regard?

As the early Christian theologians pointed out, a literal 24 hour, six-day creation is not supported by scripture. It's just one more reminder that Genesis was never meant to be taken literally.

 

I've presented a great deal of evidence on all sorts of topics within this thread. I've also posted links for you.

I didn't ignore it. But as Matt Black showed you, that isn't the case. Did you not read his evidence?

That's the way it usually goes. Creationist makes the claim that (something) is being taught to our children in public schools. Scientist asks for some evidence. Creationists say "find it yourself". I thank you for the textbook list though. I will see if any of them have what was alleged to be in them.

But you don't actually know of any?

That was the original claim. If you'd like to make a somewhat weaker claim that they say "life began abiogenetically, I'd be willing to take that on as well. Which of them actually say that?

For science, belief is secondary to evidence.

It did. I believe Him when He tells us that the Earth and waters brought forth life. I just can't verify it with science.

So far, I've got no evidence. I have a list of books you claim say that life began abiogenetically, and no evidence that they are used in public schools. You tell me I have to go verify your claims for you. I'll go take a look, but so far, we have no evidence for any of those claims.

This is completely within Christian doctrine. I know people of your particular persuasion take a different view than most of us. And you aren't going to lose your salvation for believing it. And I know that good and wise people are on your side as well as the various other persuasions among Christians. We all believe we have it right.

I am very sure you are as sincere as I am in wanting to know the truth. I have no need to compel you to believe as I do, or in disparaging your particular interpertation of Scripture, even while I disagree with it.

That is the Christian way.

 

Helen, I have read further into the website you linked to and I haven't really come across much I haven't heard before when I was a charismatic. For me, the turning point in my 'faith journey' on this issue when I was struggling to break free from the straitjacket of charismaticism and fundamentalism is best exemplified by these two articles, the first written by a theology professor, the second giving an alternative - and more credible IMO - interpretation of Genesis 1-3:-

"If everything in the Bible is not literally true, then how can I trust it?

"There's a time in every semester when we discover together that the Bible is less literalistic than some students might have thought.

That discovery brings a barrage of comments and questions. How are we to judge the Gen. 1 narrative, which has been taken hostage by all sides in the culture wars? Or the flexibility of meaning in the word "day" in the first three chapters of Genesis, on which so many creationist and anti-creationist apologetics have staked their towering claims? Or the symbols of talking snakes, God talking walks, fruit that confers immortality, and people named after an entire species? Or the historicity of a worldwide flood and a boat with every kind of animal Or the normativity of the traditional synthesis of the Genesis serpent, the Gospels' devil, Isaiah 14's Day Star (which explicitly refers to the King of Babylon in 14:4), the "sign" or "portent" of Rev. 12's dragon (who seems to be Rome rather than some prehistoric figure, 14:4)?

My doctrine classes always reach this point. It's always the same text — Gen. 1-3. Why? Because many of us have come from a tradition that rests its entire plausibility on a reading of those texts as scientific and historical in the modern senses of historicity and science. If the texts are not, many of you have been taught that there's no use defending the historicity of (say) Jesus' death and resurrection, and the faith falls in tatters.

I could do the comfortable thing, and avoid these texts. I could teach the doctrine of sin through the psalms, and then there would be no problem. Maybe some year I'll make the switch, and leave the headache to your Old Testament teachers.

But I don't — I just can't — because it's time for you to see something, whatever your church tradition. In fact, it's long past time. You need to see that the integrity of the Christian faith, and the integrity of all the doctrines we're learning in this course, does not depend on a literalistic reading of the Bible.

Here's why this matters to me: A friend of mine has a brother who left the Christian faith when he found out that rabbits don't chew cud.

"Huh," you say? Well, look at Lev. 11:6. There rabbits are portrayed as cud-chewing. They make a cud-chewing motion with their mouths, and so ancient Israel apparently thought they were doing what cows do (and God apparently humored them, because making the point was more important than introducing Israel to modern biology).

Well, I hate to break this to you, but rabbits don't chew cud after all. And when this fellow found out, he decided the Bible was unreliable, and that Jesus might not have risen. And so he left the faith.

Why was this such a reasonable course for him? Because his church had taught him that every "fact" in the Bible had to be scientifically, historically valid — that Leviticus was (among other things) a zoological manual, or else it was a lie.

I think this is not only an incorrect interpretive strategy, it's an immoral one.

The irony is that we're trained to be open to just this latitude with many other texts. When Jesus notes that God causes the sun to rise (Matt. 5:45), we don't worry like our medieval brothers and sisters did. When the Bible speaks of God as being "above" or "in" the heavens, we don't worry that "above" no longer makes any sense in a heliocentric solar system. Why not? I think it's because these figures of speech are so firmly entrenched in our common language that their symbolism strikes us as normal. We don't think Jesus is "wrong" to speak of sunrises any more than we think of each other as wrong to do so!

Now imagine that you are teaching a small group of pre-Copernican Christians. You use the phrase "God above" or "sunrise." Someone asks the innocent question, "How does God make the sun rise?" And now you have reached a Rubicon. You could just claim that it's a mystery and just to take it "on faith." But then what would happen if he found out from somewhere else — say, a physics book written by an atheist — that it doesn't work like he (and apparently Jesus) thinks?

Besides, you have become so used to thinking in Copernican terms that that kind of answer simply no longer occurs to you. You can't get back beyond your world into theirs. So you casually mention that, actually, the earth goes around the sun, and the sun doesn't actually "rise."

And wow, the looks on their faces!

Then one of the bright ones figures out that a revolving earth implies no fixed place for "up," and objects that a revolving earth would dislocate heaven. And the Bible is full of references to God "above." And now you rock their world again by telling them that that's right, but not to worry because all that "above" imagery is just spatial imagery for something that's not spatial. And then your student objects that it's misleading for God to use spatial imagery if heaven isn't really above us, and how can she read her Bible anymore?

And then you realize how we Religious Studies professors feel sometimes.

You see, you've begun to open up a new world to your pre-Copernican students; and that first glimpse terrifies them. Everything is now so upside-down (if "up" even still means anything!) that they feel fundamentally disoriented. (They aren't fundamentally disoriented, but they can't tell that at the moment.) And they don't know whether their old God still fits in the world you seem to live in. They are no longer sure how to read their Bibles — not because the text has changed, but because the interpretive grid through which they saw it has changed.

Furthermore, they were comfortable in their old geocentric world. They knew their way around it. It took you only a few minutes to destroy that old world; but you can't orient them to a Copernican world nearly as quickly. In the meantime, they're at sea, and they're really ticked at you for putting them there, and they don't know what's going to happen next.

So what do you do?

I would tell them: Relax. Trust me. God is still Lord of heaven (!) and earth. Jesus is still risen and ascended (!). Look at me, and my fellow Christians; we still confess the same things you do, even if we're using unfamiliar terms. Look at how what worries you doesn't worry us. We've managed to answer those questions. And be patient. You'll get your bearings again, and soon you won't miss, or maybe even understand, that old geocentric world.

I am working to find ways to teach Christian doctrine that are not as structured according to the modern way of seeing things. Maybe there's a better structure for helping modernists adjust to a postmodern world where Jesus is still Lord, but objectivity is not; where science and history are understood to be communal literary practices just as poetry and fiction-writing are; where we revel in the Bible's premodern ways rather than trying to wish (or explain) them away.

Yet even if I can do this, for some students the transition will still be like a leap from one world to the other, and it will be disorienting. Others will already have made that leap, and they'll be impatient with those who are scared or adversarial or resentful. It will be easy for those to have made the leap to imagine that their grasp of Christian faith is superior, when in fact it is not necessarily so. (How many premodern Christians had faith far more powerful than ours?) It will be easy for both groups to distrust the others as somehow having given up the essentials of the gospel. And it will be easy for your professor, who made that leap some time ago, to forget how to help others across, and to fail to understand why some aren't interested in coming.

Let everyone who is impatient, frustrated, worried, or delighted with these questions, and with those who have different answers for them, hear the words of Paul:

"Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand" (Rom. 14:3-4).""

"Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance

by Conrad Hyers

Woe to him who strives with his Maker,
an earthen vessel with the potter!
Does the clay say to him who fashions it,
‘What are you making?’
or ‘Your work has no handles?’ [Isa. 45:9].

With all the decades of scientific research and biblical scholarship that have intervened since the Scopes “monkey trial” in 1925, one might have thought that the issues were by now passé. Yet the recent wave of school-board hearings, legislative bills and court cases suggests that literalism is a persistent phenomenon. Indeed, we may be seeing only the top of the turnip.

The literalist mentality does not manifest itself only in conservative churches, private-school enclaves, television programs of the evangelical right, and a considerable amount of Christian bookstore material; one often finds a literalist understanding of Bible and faith being assumed by those who have no religious inclinations, or who are avowedly antireligious in sentiment. Even in educated circles the possibility of more sophisticated theologies of creation is easily obscured by burning straw effigies of biblical literalism.

But the problem is even more deep-rooted. A literalist imagination -- or lack of imagination -- pervades contemporary culture. One of the more dubious successes of modern science -- and of its attendant spirits technology, historiography and mathematics -- is the suffusion of intellectual life with a prosaic and pedantic mind-set. One may observe this feature in almost any college classroom, not only in religious studies, but within the humanities in general. Students have difficulty in thinking, feeling and expressing themselves symbolically.

The problem is, no doubt, further amplified by the obviousness and banality of most of the television programming on which the present generation has been weaned and reared. Not only is imagination a strain; even to imagine what a symbolic world is like is difficult. Poetry is turned into prose, truth into statistics, understanding into facts, education into note-taking, art into criticism, symbols into signs, faith into beliefs. That which cannot be listed, out-lined, dated, keypunched, reduced to a formula, fed into a computer, or sold through commercials cannot be thought or experienced.

Our situation calls to mind a backstage interview with Anna Pavlova, the dancer. Following an illustrious and moving performance, she was asked the meaning of the dance. She replied, “If I could say it, do you think I should have danced it?” To give dance a literal meaning would be to reduce dancing to something else. It would lose its capacity to involve the whole person. And one would miss all the subtle nuances and delicate shadings and rich polyvalences of the dance itself.

The remark has its parallel in religion. The early ethnologist R. R. Marett is noted for his dictum that “religion is not so much thought out as danced out.” But even when thought out, religion is focused in the verbal equivalent of the dance: myth, symbol and metaphor. To insist on assigning to it a literal, one-dimensional meaning is to shrink and stifle and distort the significance. In the words of E. H. W. Meyer- stein, “Myth is my tongue, which means not that I cheat, but stagger in a light too great to bear.” Religious expression trembles with a sense of inexpressible mystery, a mystery which nevertheless addresses us in the totality of our being.

The literal imagination is univocal. Words mean one thing, and one thing only. They don’t bristle with meanings and possibilities; they are bald, clean-shaven. Literal clarity and simplicity, to be sure, offer a kind of security in a world (or Bible) where otherwise issues seem incorrigibly complex, ambiguous and muddy. But it is a false security, a temporary bastion, maintained by dogmatism and misguided loyalty. Literalism pays a high price for the hope of having firm and unbreakable handles attached to reality. The result is to move in the opposite direction from religious symbolism, emptying symbols of their amplitude of meaning and power, reducing the cosmic dance to a calibrated discussion.

One of the ironies of biblical literalism is that it shares so largely in the reductionist and literalist spirit of the age. It is not nearly as conservative as it supposes. It is modernistic, and it sells its symbolic birthright for a mess of tangible pottage. Biblical materials and affirmations -- in this case the symbolism of Creator and creation – are treated as though of the same order and the same literary genre as scientific and historical writing. “I believe in God the Father Almighty” becomes a chronological issue, and “Maker of heaven and earth” a technological problem.

To suggest that the first chapters of Genesis ought to be read in the classroom as an alternative to evolutionary theories presupposes that these chapters are yielding something comparable to scientific theories and historical reconstructions of empirical data. Interpreting the Genesis accounts faithfully, and believing in their reliability and significance as divine revelation, is understood to mean taking them literally as history, as chronology, as scientific truth. In the words of Henry Morris, a leading “scientific creationist”: “The Biblical record, accepted in its natural and literal sense, gives the only scientific and satisfying account of the origins of things. . . . The creation account is clear, definite, sequential and matter-of-fact, giving every appearance of straightforward historical narrative” (The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth [Bethany, 1978], pp. iv, 84).

Two further ironies result from such literalism. The biblical understanding of creation is not being pitted against evolutionary theories, as is supposed; rather, evolutionary theories are being juxtaposed with literalist theories of biblical interpretation. Doing this is not even like comparing oranges and apples; it is more like trying to compare oranges and orangutans. Even if evolution is only a scientific theory of interpretation posing as scientific fact, as the creationists argue, creationism is only a religious theory of biblical interpretation posing as biblical fact. And to compound the confusions, these biblical ‘facts” are then treated as belonging to the same level of discourse and family of concerns as scientific facts, and therefore supportable by scientific data, properly interpreted. Yet if one is unable to follow all these intertwinings, let alone bow the knee, a veritable Pandora’s box of dire fates awaits:

Belief in evolution is a necessary component of atheism, pantheism, and all other systems that reject the sovereign authority of an omnipotent personal God. [It] has historically been used by their leaders to justify a long succession of evil systems -- including fascism, communism, anarchism, nazism, occultism, and many others. [It] leads normally to selfishness, aggressiveness, and fighting between groups, as well as animal is-tic attitudes and behavior by individuals [ibid., vii].

But the greatest irony is that the symbolic richness and power -- the religious meaning -- of creation are largely lost in the cloud of geological and paleontological dust stirred up in the confusion. If one were to speak of a hermeneutical fall, it would have to be the fall into literalism. Literalism diverts attention from, as well as flattening out, the symbolic depth and multidimensionality of the biblical texts. The literalist, instead of opening up the treasurehouse of symbolic imagination, digresses into more and more ingenious and fantastic attempts at defending literalism itself. Again and again the real issue turns out to be not belief in divine creativity but belief in a particular theory of Scripture, not faith but security. The divine word and work ought to have better handles!

Even among interpreters who do not identify with the literalism of the creationists, one often finds a sense of relief expressed in noting that the sequence of days in Genesis 1, if viewed as eons, offers a rough approximation to modern reconstructions of the evolution of matter and life. It is a very rough approximation, considering such difficulties as that the sun, moon and stars were not created until the fourth “eon,” following the earth and vegetation in the third. And even if all rough correlations could be made smooth by convoluted arguments about cloud covers and the like, the two Genesis accounts themselves, taken as chronologies, do not agree. In Genesis 2, for example, Adam is created before plants and animals, and Eve after. Still, no matter how close the approximations, the entire line of argument is a lapse into literalism and its assumption that this account is in some way comparable to a scientific, historical one.

A case in point is the supposition that the numbering of days in Genesis is to be understood in an arithmetical sense. The use of numbers in ancient religious texts was usually numerological rather than numerical; that is, their symbolic value was more important than their secular value as counters. To deal with numbers in a religious context as an actual numbering of days, or eons, is an instance of the way in which a literal reading loses the symbolic richness of the text.

While the conversion of numerology to arithmetic was essential for the rise of modern science, historiography and mathematics, in which numbers had to be neutralized and emptied of any symbolic suggestion in order to be utilized, the result is that numerological symbols are reduced to signs. The principal surviving exception is the number 13, which still holds a strange power over Fridays, and over the listing of floors in hotels and high rises.

Biblical literalism, in its treatment of the days of creation, substitutes a modern arithmetical reading for the original symbolic one. Not only does the completion of creation in six days correlate with and support the religious calendar and Sabbath observance (if the Hebrews had had a five-day work week, the account would have read differently), but also the seventh day of rest employs to the full the symbolic meaning of the number seven as wholeness, plenitude, completion.

The religious meaning of the number seven is derived in part from the numerological combination of the three zones of the cosmos (heaven, earth, underworld) seen vertically, and the four directions, or zones, of the cosmos seen horizontally. Thus seven (adding three and four) and twelve (multiplying them) are recurrent biblical symbols of totality and perfection. The liturgically repeated phrase “And God saw that it was good,” and the final capping phrase “And behold it was very good,” are paralleled and underlined by being placed in a structure climaxed by a seventh day.

A parallelism of two sets of three days is also being employed, with the second set of days populating the first: light and darkness (day one) are populated by the greater and lesser lights (four); firmament and waters (two) by birds and fish (five); earth and vegetation (three) by land animals and humans (six). Two sets of three days, each with two types of created phenomena, equaling 12, thus permitted the additional association with the corresponding numerological symbol of wholeness and fulfillment. The totality of nature is created by God, and is to be affirmed in a hymn of celebration and praise for its “very goodness.”

While it is true that the biblical view of creation sanctifies time and nature as created by God -- and therefore good -- it does not follow that the creation accounts as such are to be understood chronologically or as natural history. And while it is true that history is seen as the context and vehicle of divine activity, it does not follow that the creation accounts are to be interpreted as history, or even prehistory. One of the symbolic functions of the creation accounts themselves is to give positive value to time and to provide the staging for history. They are no more historical than the set and scenery of a play are part of the narrative of the drama, or than the order in which an artist fills in the pigment and detail of a painting is part of the significance of the painting.

The symbolic function of creation in valuing time and history becomes clearer when the Genesis accounts are compared with myths whose purpose is to legitimate cyclical time (as in the Babylonian myth of the primeval conquest of Tiamat by Marduk, alluded to in Genesis 1:2), or to those in which time itself is a negative aspect of a fallen order (as in Plato’s myth of the fall of the soul, or similar myths favored by Hindu and Buddhist mysticism).

When one looks at the myths of surrounding cultures, in fact, one senses that the current debate over creationism would have seemed very strange, if not unintelligible, to the writers and readers of Genesis. Scientific and historical issues in their modern form were not issues at all. Science and natural history as we know them simply did not exist, even though they owe a debt to the positive value given to space, time, matter and history by the biblical affirmation of creation.

What did exist -- what very much existed -- and what pressed on Jewish faith from all sides, and even from within, were the religious problems of idolatry and syncretism. The critical question in the creation account of Genesis 1 was polytheism versus monotheism. That was the burning issue of the day, not some issue which certain Americans 2,500 years later in the midst of a scientific age might imagine that it was. And one of the reasons for its being such a burning issue was that Jewish monotheism was such a unique and hard-won faith. The temptations of idolatry and syncretism were everywhere. Every nation surrounding Israel, both great and small, was polytheistic; and many Jews themselves held -- as they always had -- similar inclinations. Hence the frequent prophetic diatribes against altars in high places, the Canaanite cult of Baal, and “whoring after other gods.”

Read through the eyes of the people who wrote it, Genesis 1 would seem very different from the way most people today would tend to read it -- including both evolutionists who may dismiss it as a prescientific account of origins, and creationists who may try to defend it as the true science and literal history of origins. For most peoples in the ancient world the various regions of nature were divine. Sun, moon and stars were gods. There were sky gods and earth gods and water gods. There were gods of light and darkness, rivers and vegetation, animals and fertility. Though for us nature has been “demythologized” and “naturalized” -- in large part because of this very passage of Scripture -- for ancient Jewish faith a divinized nature posed a fundamental religious problem.

In addition, pharaohs, kings and heroes were often seen as sons of gods, or at least as special mediators between the divine and human spheres. The greatness and vaunted power and glory of the successive waves of empires that impinged on or conquered Israel (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia) posed an analogous problem of idolatry in the human sphere.

In the light of this historical context it becomes clearer what Genesis 1 is undertaking and accomplishing: a radical and sweeping affirmation of monotheism vis-à-vis polytheism, syncretism and idolatry. Each day of creation takes on two principal categories of divinity in the pantheons of the day, and declares that these are not gods at all, but creatures -- creations of the one true God who is the only one, without a second or third. Each day dismisses an additional cluster of deities, arranged in a cosmological and symmetrical order.

On the first day the gods of light and darkness are dismissed. On the second day, the gods of sky and sea. On the third day, earth gods and gods of vegetation. On the fourth day, sun, moon and star gods. The fifth and sixth days take away any associations with divinity from the animal kingdom. And finally human existence, too, is emptied of any intrinsic divinity -- while at the same time all human beings, from the greatest to the least, and not just pharaohs, kings and heroes, are granted a divine likeness and mediation.

On each day of creation another set of idols is smashed. These, O Israel, are no gods at all -- even the great gods and rulers of conquering superpowers. They are the creations of that transcendent One who is not to be confused with any piece of the furniture of the universe of creaturely habitation. The creation is good, it is very good, but it is not divine.

We are then given a further clue concerning the polemical design of the passage when the final verse (2:4a) concludes: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” Why the word “generations,” especially if what is being offered is a chronology of days of creation? Now to polytheist and monotheist alike the word “generations” at this point would immediately call one thing to mind. If we should ask how these various divinities were related to one another in the pantheons of the day, the most common answer would be that they were related as members of a family tree. We would be given a genealogy, as in Hesiod’s Theogony, where the great tangle of Greek gods and goddesses were sorted out by generations. Ouranos begat Kronos; Kronos begat Zeus; Zeus begat Prometheus.

The Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians all had their “generations of the gods.” Thus the priestly account, which had begun with the majestic words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” now concludes -- over against all the impressive and colorful pantheons with their divine pedigrees -- “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” It was a final pun on the concept of the divine family tree.

The fundamental question at stake, then, could not have been the scientific question of how things achieved their present form and by what processes, nor even the historical question about time periods and chronological order. The issue was idolatry, not science; syncretism, not natural history; theology, not chronology; affirmation of faith in one transcendent God, not creationist or evolutionist theories of origin. Attempting to be loyal to the Bible by turning the creation accounts into a kind of science or history is like trying to be loyal to the teachings of Jesus by arguing that the parables are actual historical events, and only reliable and trustworthy when taken literally as such.

If one really wishes to appreciate more fully the religious meaning of creation in Genesis 1, one should read not creationist or anticreationist diatribes but Isaiah 40. For the theology of Genesis 1 is essentially the same as the theology of Deutero-Isaiah. They are also both from the same time period, and therefore part of the same interpretive context. It was a time that had been marked, first, by the conquest of most of Palestine -- save Jerusalem -- by the Assyrians under Sennacherib (ca. 701 B.C.). And a century later the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar had in turn conquered the Middle East, Palestine and even Jerusalem.

The last vestige of Jewish autonomy and Promised Land had been overrun. The Holy City had been invaded, the temple of Solomon destroyed, the city burned, and many of the people carried off into exile, leaving “the poorest of the land to be vine-dressers and plowmen” (II Kings 25:12). Those taken into Babylonian captivity, as well as those left behind, now had even greater temptations placed before them to abandon faith in their God, and to turn after other gods who were clearly more powerful and victorious.

Given the awesome might and splendor and triumphs of Assyria and then Babylon, was it not obvious that the shepherd-god of Israel was but a local spirit, a petty tribal god who was hardly a match for the likes of Marduk, god of Babylon? Where was this god, or the people of his hand, or the land of his promise? Faith was hard and idolatry easy. And now a new and greater power, Persia, loomed on the horizon. Yet despite the littleness and powerlessness of a conquered people before the might and majesty of the great empires of the day, a prophet dared to stand forth and declare what Genesis 1 in its own way also declares:

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his
hand,
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales in a balance?
Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord,
or as his counselor has instructed him? [Isa. 40:12,13].

Here too is a poetic affirmation which no literalism can reduce to its own scales and balances, and no symbolism or imagery exhaust.

To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him? ...
Have you riot known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations
of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nought,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing
[Isa. 40:21-23].

Had there been a controversy in the Babylonian public schools of the day -- and had there been Babylonian public schools -- these would have been the issues in debate."

And BTW, the 'day'/ 'Yom' issue is a total red herring - from the website of a Christian pal of mine:-

"A look first at a favourite diversion - whether the term 'Yom' refers to a 24 hour period. This term is the one used for 'Day' in Genesis 1, and much debate about how this narrative should be viewed revolves around whether it has to mean a 24 hour period or not.

I think that this is a collosal red herring, and will not be revisiting that debate here.

Why? Firstly, because if Yom means a literal 24 hours it makes not the slightest bit of difference to how I view this narrative. The days may well be literal (and I strongly suspect they are) within the mythology of the narrative, just as the Ring is a literal Ring within Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. To put it another way, it is the narrative that is figurative, not the elements within it.

Secondly, because it doesn't actually make the narrative any more scientifically credible to say the days are millions of years long. The order is all wrong; there were flying things long before there were fishes, for example.

So that just wraps it up for 'Yom'."

Helen and Bob - you may think other Christians not taking the Bible literally is their problem, but I used to be a literalist, and it gradually became a colossal problem for me. I've found it a lot easier to take the Bible seriously since abandoning literalism and inerrancy, and my relationship with Jesus has deepened as a consequence.

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

Helen,

Hi! I was wondering if you could give a little more explanation concerning the articles from Science Daily you linked to and quoted from. I am not sure what point you are making. I think you are trying to find fault in evolutionary theory because the genetic evidence does not line up perfectly with what scientists thought the morphology evidence showed.

First, in the article concerning the genetic links between insects and Collembola, my reading of the article is that they are merely pushing back the time of the last common ancestor of the two groups. Now, not knowing anything about this before reading the article, the tone of the article suggests that this is a fairly major rethinking of how the arthropods fit together as a family. But the genetic evidence still points to a common ancestor, just not as recently was supposed. I am not sure how this helps your case. I could see how it could if the genetic data did not show a relationship.

Second, I also do not see how the article on the fruit flies, nematodes, and humans helps. to quote

My reading of this says that in the 10 slowest mutating genes, that there was statistical certainty that the fruit flies and and humans were the closest related pair of the three. My expectations, if there were not a common ancestor, would be for the relationships found by such studies to generally be messy and inconclusive. "100 % significance" sounds rather cut and dry to me. The combination of overall morphology and genetics seems to be a powerful indicator of common decent.

Since I was at the site I poked around a bit and found some other things that interested me. Relevent to the discussion I found the following article http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030408085204.htm. The article deals with the results of sequencing the DNA of a specific weedy plant, Arabidopsis. You often talk of "junk" DNA and how it may have more of a role than some give it credit for. To pull a few quotes from the article.

It seems that for this plant the "junk" DNA preserves major events in the development of the plant and others. To read between the lines, since a good copy of the DNA exists, the duplicates are free to mutate into junk, become code for new useful proteins, or to simply disappear among other options. But the point is that there is strong evidence for where the "junk" comes from and that it has good evidence for being from an evolutionary cause.