|
Charles Darwin (1809-1882):
A Fulcrum Appreciation
by Michael Roberts
 February 12th 2009 sees the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth. Along with Isaac Newton he was one of the greatest British scientists, though his science is still controversial. To some he was a great scientist and to others the devil incarnate!
He was a quiet family man, whose life was marred by illness. He was born into an affluent home in Shrewsbury and went to Cambridge to study for the Anglican ministry. In 1831 he was invited to join the Beagle to sail round the world. That changed his life and the course of science. On that voyage he was more interested in geology and only later “moved” over to biology.
Darwin learned his science at both Edinburgh and Cambridge and some of his student notes survive. His family was scientific and as a teenager he had a well-equipped chemistry lab in an outhouse at the Mount, the family home. At Cambridge he joined the Rev John Henslow’s unofficial natural history classes and fieldtrips and was introduced to the geologist, the Rev Adam Sedgwick. In August 1831 he joined Sedgwick on a geological trip to North Wales, which gave Darwin the finest teaching a budding geologist could hope for and the grounding for the Beagle voyage.
His priority on the voyage was geology, and he also collected many biological specimens. On return Darwin wrote up his geology in three volumes and got other naturalists to deal with biology. After marriage to Emma Wedgwood in 1839, he moved to Downe in 1842 by which time illness had struck. For many years he carried out detailed work on barnacles, while developing with his species theory. He had written two drafts in 1842 and 1844. In the late 1850s he was working on a big book on evolution, but was jolted into action by the arrival of a letter from Wallace in 1858 in which Wallace independently proposed the theory of natural selection. As a result, he wrote a shorter book The Origin of Species, which was published in 1859. Over the next twenty years he wrote a series of biological books on orchids, insectivorous plants, climbing plants, cross- and self-fertilisation in plants, and, finally, on worms. The book, which gave the greatest challenge to some theological views was The Descent of Man (1871), which posited a totally evolutionary view of humans. His published works fill 29 volumes and represented the cutting edge of biology in his day.
The great achievement of Darwin was to show how all life is inter-related and tied into the physical structure of this planet. By showing the evolution of humans he demonstrated that we are part of the natural world and not separate from it. Though aspects of his work have been superseded, his basic theory still holds today. To put it simply, Darwin took over earlier ideas of geology and the succession of life from trilobites and invertebrates, through dinosaurs and other vertebrates and finally to humans. Drawing from many aspects of biology he argued that life forms change over time and that ultimately all living things have a common ancestor. This now forms the basis of all biology and TV programmes on wildlife like those of David Attenborough.
Faith
When Darwin set sail on the Beagle he had intended to become an Anglican clergyman, but that faded during the voyage. The Darwin-Wedgwood family came from radical dissenting stock, though Charles was baptised in St Chad’s Church Shrewsbury, and with his parents and siblings worshipped at the Unitarian Church. How far his faith was simply nominal we cannot say, but before the Beagle he showed some signs of devotion and his notes on the evangelical John Sumner’s Evidence of Christianity show some serious theological thinking. However, by 1839 all that had gone and he was open to his future wife, Emma, about his lack of belief. He wavered between a vague theism and atheism and ‘must be content to remain an agnostic’. I consider Moore and Desmond’s argument that he lost his faith after the death of his ten-year-old daughter, Annie, overstated and not based on hard evidence. At Downe he was a flying-buttress member of the church.
Morality
Some portray Darwin as destroying all morality because of our evolutionary ancestry. Darwin was a highly moral person, both in his personal life and concern for others. He supported many good causes, including SAMS (South American Missionary Society). He is often charged with being a racist, and perhaps he was according to 21st century PC standards. However he was the third generation Darwin/Wedgwood to oppose slavery. He was appalled at slavery in Brazil and in the 1860s objected to the slavery in the Southern states of the USA. Same anti-evolutionists claim that Darwin’s views lead straight to Mein Kampf and the Holocaust, as if Darwin was responsible for the twisted ideas of Hitler. A close study does not support that, and we need to note that anti-evolution has often resulted in racism as in the Southern States and Apartheid South Africa.
The Effect of Darwin on Christian Belief
Darwin is often credited with making Christian belief intellectually untenable. He never considered that to be the case and the greatest challenge to biblical orthodoxy came from biblical criticism and a new theology. Compared to Essays and Reviews (1861) the Origin of Species had little theological impact. It is often not known that decades before 1859 most educated Christians had rejected a literal Genesis (if they had ever held it, which I doubt), a young Earth, a worldwide flood and a theodicy dependent on physical death coming in at the fall of Man. In a recent BBC Wildlife magazine, Attenborough repeated this incorrect opinion that “This[the date of 4004BC for creation] was based on the calculations of archbishop Ussher”.
Where Darwin has impacted negatively on belief this has been far more later generations reading back to Darwin rather than what Darwin said. This negativity is epitomised by Samuel Wilberforce and his “debate” with Huxley, which came to the fore in the 1890s when T H Huxley and others wrote their memoirs and claimed there had been a battle royal in the 1860s, which gave rise to the conflict thesis of science and religion which has been rejected by recent historians of science. However it is repeated by many today, e.g. Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones and much pop history of science. It is still adopted by several church historians and theologians, despite constant criticism.
Christian opposition to Darwin and Evolution
The popular perception is that the Christians have always been implacably opposed to Darwin, despite the vast volume of scholarship contradicting this. However, ever since 1859 some Christians have opposed Darwin. Initially some, who accepted geology, rejected evolution for various reasons, but none from a Young Earth position, which claims that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old.
During the last twenty years in Britain, Young Earth Creationism (YEC) has come to prominence. YEC is not the traditional Christian view, as it originated with the Seventh Day Adventists in the late 19th century from Ellen White and George McCready Price. It remained a minority view among American evangelicals until YEC was kick-started again in 1961 with the publication of The Genesis Flood. YEC now dominates American evangelicalism and is growing rapidly in Britain.
A more recent anti-evolution movement is Intelligent Design, which is now closely associated with YEC. Neither YEC nor ID has any credence as science.
Anglicans and Darwinian Evolution
Contrary to some opinion the Anglican Church has been very postive towards all science for 500 years. While Galileo was under house arrest, the Revd John Wilkins published a Copernican book. Many of the early fellows of the Royal Society were Anglican clergy; I shall only mention John Ray. From 1780 many Anglicans supported the rising science of geology and some of the most significant world geologists before Darwin were Anglican clergy like Adam Sedgwick, William Buckland and William Conybeare. In the period 1800 to 1855, over 80% of Anglican clergy accepted geology (an approximate figure from my reading as many writers as possible). A small and vociferous minority did oppose geology; for example the Revd Henry Cole calling the evangelical Sedgwick an ‘infidel scoffer’. However, these devout anti-geologists were savaged by clerical-geologists like Sedgwick and disappeared by 1855 only to re-appear, Phoenix-like, in the 1980s.
The reaction to Darwin was varied. Some happily accepted evolution: Frederick Temple, R. W. Church, Hort (but Westcott was wary), Baden Powell, Liddon, Pusey (just!), Symonds and two evangelicals – H. B. Tristram of Durham and Prof C Babbington of Cambridge. Within decades most thinking Anglicans had accepted evolution but often insisted on the direct creation of humans. Some Anglicans opposed evolution, archetypically Samuel Wilberforce, but all opponents accepted geological time. Some of the main opposition to Darwin came from physicists and geologists.
This rapprochement between Christianity and evolution continued until 1980, with most, including the majority of evangelicals, accepting evolution, with a minority rejecting evolution but not geology. In fact, I can only find one YEC Anglican from 1855 until the 1970s. That was W. H. Griffith Thomas, who accepted evolution while principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He went to North America in 1910 and by 1917 came to accept a Young Earth through the influence of the Seventh Day Adventist autodidact McCready Price. I cannot find of another Anglican example, and teachers from Moule to Packer and Stott all accepted evolution. (Bishop J. C. Ryle accepted geological time albeit not evolution, and represents the ultra-conservative Anglican of 1900.)
Things began to change after the publication in Britain of The Genesis Flood by Morris and Whitcomb in 1968. Since then increasing numbers of British evangelicals have rejected evolution and espoused the biblical literalism of YEC. My informed impression is that possibly 5% of Church of England clergy are YEC. At least two, Kevin Logan and Martin Dowe, have written paperbacks of doubtful value promulgating YEC. There are more who are sympathetic to Intelligent Design, which is marginally more scientific than YEC.
Against that, the majority of Christians, whether or not Anglicans simply don’t care about doubts about evolution and take it for granted! For the last 130 years most Anglican theological writers have happily accepted evolution, whether they were conservative or liberal. Some have focussed on science and religion and from a previous generation include Mascall, Yarnold, Raven and Smethurst. The late Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne have dominated the scene since 1980, with Alister McGrath of increasing significance. Very few concentrate on Darwin and evolution, apart from R. J. Berry, a geneticist.
To some, Darwin’s theory of evolution nullifies the Christian faith and both Richard Dawkins and Creationist Christians share that opinion. These opinions and those of the majority, agnostic or Christian, who reckon that Darwin does not affect the Christian faith will be heard loudly and widely this year.
Conclusion
Understandably some don’t like the thought that they are descended from apes and ultimately from an amoeba. At first sight this makes us less than human and that our morals have no basis. Atheists like Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion claiming that you have to choose between God and evolution, or even science, do not help this. Compared to that strident claim, those who take the bible literally with a six day creation as in Genesis seem plausible – until you examine their arguments and find that their science is simply appalling, as well as their biblical interpretation.
In one sense I can see why some Christians are disturbed by Darwin or evolution, but the whole picture of a five billion year old Earth which first produced life four billion years ago and then ultimately all the intricate variety of life we know today is breathtaking and should fill us with awe and wonder – of the Creator. As the Revd. H. B. Tristam, a Victorian evangelical and naturalist, always said, “as we were evolved, sorry, created”.
Now where do I stand? I became a Christian through a Christian Union a few weeks before I graduated in geology. For several years I was unaware there was a clash between science and faith! The conflict between science and faith came as a surprise to me, partly for family reasons as my physicist uncle was ordained and my biochemist father non-religious. I happily keep my faith and science together. To me, all science enhances my faith. I have a particular interest in Darwin, as I have researched his geology in depth. The more I study the man, the more I respect him, but I get irritated with either gross adulation or denigration of a great scientist. He was not a Christian, but was a very moral person. His science was brilliant in its day and laid the foundation for the future. I will enjoy celebrating Darwin’s bicentenary.
_______________________________________________________
The Revd Michael Roberts, Vicar of Cockerham, Winmarleigh and Glasson is an authority on Darwin’s geology and author of Evangelicals and Science (Greenwood Press, 2008) and book chapters and papers on science and religion and Darwin’s geology.
References
The literature is vast and of uneven quality.
Janet Browne has probably written the best biography.
More popular is
Van Wyhe, John, 2008, Darwin, the story of the man and his theories of evolution. London Andre Deutsch.
General topics
Alexander, Denis, 2008 Creation or Evolution. Monarch
Young, Davis & Stearley, 2008 The Bible, Rocks and Time. IVP
Miller, Ken, 1999. Finding Darwin’s God. Harper/Collins
Roberts, M., 2008 Evangelicals and science. Greenwood Press.
Useful websites
http://darwin-online.org.uk/2009.html
http://www.cis.org.uk/
http://www.asa3.org
Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum
Forum Posts About This Article:
Posted by: DavidR
Friday 24 April 2009 - 12:17pm
Dear Phil,
Thanks for yours but ….
God does not declare the eating of plants ‘very good’.
‘He saw all that he had made and behold it was very good’. 2.31
The 'very good' is a summary of the whole creation passage not a reference to how good the food is in it.
My point is that if vegetation is given for food then biological death is present in the world that is ‘good’. I still think you need to clarify on what basis this is different from creaturely death.
I still don’t think you have understood the point I am making about literary genre. Or maybe I am missing something?
You say – ‘I was trying to press the point that whatever genre you consider Genesis 1-3 to be you have to give an exegesis of the passage, or say "I don’t know what that means".
Yes of course. But I am trying to seek common ground with you on what kind of literature we are reading here. You have still not told me what kind of literature you think this is, though you are clearly working from certain assumptions about the literary style (historic fact, poetic or parable etc). If you take the reference to seed and vegetation as 'fact' why not talking snakes and the tree of knowledge and a literal eating of fruit? Perhaps you do?
Yes ‘disobedience’, yes ‘alientation’. Rest assured we are agreed.
My comment on the effect of the fall being progressive …
I do not think Scripture or science reveals a catastophic ‘fall’ moment in history –eg the fruit is eaten and suddenly everyone eats meat, turns violent and the cosmos is dis-eased. Rather when world war breaks out. It has ‘happened’ and will effect everywhere but the impact and consequence takes time to spread across the world. It is accumuative. That’s what I meant.
You ask: 'Are you prepared to say at what point in the Bible’s history we can definitely say that all human beings needed salvation?'
How can anyone possibly know that? We are not told. I suggested a possible scenario in my last post based on Denis Alexander’s book - but we simply don't know.
In any case Paul says all have sinned. So what do we need a starting date for anyway?
Re: Romans 8:19-23. I do not have to believe in a cosmic fall to make sense of the idea that creation at all levels is deeply vulnerable to and suffers under the hands of fallen humanity. Does that answer you? To answer your question needs one sentence or a very large book. Can I stick with one sentence for now?
Colossians 1:20 and ta panta.
I have gone back to your earlier post on this to remind myself of what you are arguing,
You wrote ‘ "All things” probably includes the whole of sub-human nature, which, being reconciled through the blood of the cross must at some point have been alienated from God.
Therefore at some point the whole of sub-human nature has been subject to vanity, enslaved to corruption, alienated from God.
Two questions: when? And, with what if any observable result?’
Sorry Phil - I find all this highly speculative – based on a ‘probably’ that needs a big jump of interpretative imagination.
Plants or insects be ‘alienated from God’? Nettles and daffodils ‘subject to vanity’?
We are back again to the question of what kind of language is being used here. And once again I have to say I find you looking for very literal, factual information in passages that are at very least mysterious, allusive and poetic.
I have no trouble – and glory in – the understanding that through the cross the world itself is restored to God … and that one day all creation will be transformed by Christ. Ta panta! For me that is simply what it says on the tin.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 21 April 2009 - 08:17pm
David
To answer your last question first:
(‘But one question back to you …. on what biblical basis do you separate organic death – vegetation (given for food) – from organic death – animal?’)
On the basis that the Bible says that eating of plants and fruit is ‘very good’. We have to bow before God’s wisdom.
Another quick answer: I invite Graham Kings to give a view as a representative of the Fulcrum leadership.
I said in my March 11 post (in reply to your assertion that I am regularly assuming a “literal reading (and thus finding ‘facts’)” ‘If you examine my 21 and 23 February postings I think you will see that the only facts I am finding are that that Gen 1:29-30 and 9:3 must mean something whatever the genre….’. In other words I was trying to press the point that whatever genre you consider Genesis 1-3 to be you have to give an exegesis of the passage, or say ‘I don’t know what that means’. Similarly with the question of the fall. By mentioning a talking snake and a forbidden tree you are not taking on board the very general way I put my question as to whether you agree that ‘at some point the human race disobeyed God and that from that point on the whole human race became alienated from God and in need of salvation? And that this disobedience and this alienation was a historical event?’. I find your reply unclear in that it does not mention ‘disobedience’ or ‘alienation’ and you seem to be implying that the fall was in some sense progressive. Have I understood you correctly on this point? Are you prepared to say at what point in the Bible’s history we can definitely say that all human beings needed salvation?
I also asked you to comment on my assertions about the right understanding of Romans 8:19-23. I take it that your observation ‘Nor do I think scripture teaches some kind of cosmic fall – the OT alone is innocent of any such notion’ means that you disagree. So what do you think these verses mean? And what in your view are the ta panta which according to Colossians 1:20 is reconciled through the blood of the cross?
Phil Almond
Posted by: DavidR
Tuesday 21 April 2009 - 11:56am
Phil
Thanks you for your post …..
But you have not actually engaged with my point about what kind of literature we are reading and therefore how it is to be understood and interpreted. Your post of 11 March to me does not ‘answer your assertion’ at all. Instead you press your question as to whether I (and, for some reason Graham Kings) agree that the world is in need of salvation and that this need is traceable to an event at a certain moment in history.
Well – puzzled you need to ask - I for one am in no doubt that this world is deeply lost and disordered – and that if anything we underestimate the depths from which we need redeeming. I also believe this comes through Christ.
But to ask if I believe it happened in a precise moment in history? That assumes we are agreed what kind of literature it is. If it is history, what kind of history is it?
But my response is ... yes and no
Do I believe that at a certain, unmeasured and unwitnessed moment in time in a ‘good’ garden the first previously two faithful and obedient human beings (created uniquely, without history – either on the first or the last day of God’s creating of the world – choose your passage), spoke with a talking snake and then picked and ate fruit from a certain forbidden tree ….. at which point the whole cosmos fell into violent disorder, including eating meat instead of just veg ….
No I don’t.
I don’t believe it is that kind of literature. And for what its worth many early church theologians mocked people for taking Genesis literally – including Augustine – who could never be accused of being soft on sin and our need for salvation.
Do I believe that at a certain evolutionary point in history, a couple and/or community of (perhaps) Neolithic farmers grew into some awakening and revelation of God – a gift of God to be a means of witness to the world around (rather like the call of Israel) … but that this calling went tragically wrong …. We do not know how – but Genesis and other places in scripture reflect in story and parable on what human impulse lay behind it.
Yes – something like that seems to make sense to me – but we have to say we just don’t know. (I have found Denis Alexander ‘Creation or Evolution’ so helpful on this). The Genesis story speaks of the deep catastrophe of sin – but I suspect the impact was accumulative in its effect.
But even having tried to trace beginnings, Paul makes clear that all have sinned. We are all responsible. We have not traced it back to lay blame or pass the buck.
I find no reason in scripture or scientific research to believe other than that death, in a natural, organic sense, has always been part of life from the beginning. Apart from anything else the world would have surely been hopelessly overpopulated within a matter of decades without death. I realise this throws up a whole host of other questions - but I simply do not think Genesis is interested in answering them! The bible as a whole is not good at giving us the information we feel we need. It does not follow our agenda.
Nor do I think scripture teaches some kind of cosmic fall – the OT alone is innocent of any such notion. Though global warming alone makes clear that creation is intensely vulnerable to human disorder.
Must stop there for now ….
But one question back to you …. on what biblical basis do you separate organic death – vegetation (given for food) – from organic death – animal?
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Thursday 16 April 2009 - 09:52pm
Thanks David, that does clarify things, and it all falls into place.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 14 April 2009 - 09:15pm
David
1 Your core issue about the kind of literature:
I refer you to my 11 March 2009 20.45 post where I attempt to answer your assertion that I am regularly assuming a literal reading and thus finding facts. It might helpfully clarify our positions if you responded to my invitations in my 23 February post:
‘In this debate about literal and figurative, historical and non-historical, I would like to ask you what view you have about the fall. Whatever the mix of history and symbol (or whatever words you want to use) in the Genesis 3 account, whether Adam and Eve were two individuals or whether they represent the human race in some sense, whether the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a real tree or symbolises something else, do you agree (does Graham Kings agree) that, to put it in a very general way, at some point the human race disobeyed God and that from that point on the whole human race became alienated from God and in need of salvation? And that this disobedience and this alienation was a historical event?’
And in my 11 March post:
‘On Paul’s letter to the Romans: In my view written by Paul to the Christians at Rome. Having not visited them but being eager to preach the gospel to them, he writes. From 1:16 to at least 8:39 the argument he sets out is a continuous connected one, with subordinate clauses so to speak. Is this common ground? If so, what do you make of my assertions about the right understanding of 8: 19-23?’
2 Jesus and the law and ‘vegetarianism’. In Genesis 9:3 God gives explicit permission to the human race to eat meat. There is therefore no problem in Jesus so doing before his death and resurrection. The fact that he did so does not weaken my argument at all. For the same reason there is no problem about Christians eating meat. My line of thought about Genesis 1:29-30 and 9:3 leads me to the conclusion that animal predation is something that has gone wrong or been made wrong with the original creation. That is the focus, not human vegetarianism. And it is that which is rectified in the new heavens and the new earth if we take Isaiah 11:6-9 literally. And even if that passage is figurative its force, as I pointed out earlier, depends on animal predation being something gone/made wrong. Though I do agree, as I have already said, that Jesus eating fish after the resurrection is one of the serious issues my view has to meet. We are faced here with what often faces us when there appear to be Biblical points on both sides of an issue; we have to weigh the strength of the arguments on either side. It is clear, as I see it, from the Isaiah, Romans and Colossians passages that sub-human nature has been subjected to vanity, enslaved to corruption and alienated from God. GAU cannot find a place for such a discontinuity unless the fall of satan is invoked or the view is taken that sub-human nature has been like that from the beginning. As I recall, Spanner has no problem with the latter option. Does anyone agree with him? And even then, for both options, there are very serious obstacles in the ‘good’ and ‘very good’ of Genesis 1. OK, ‘Do not cling on to me’ may be irrelevant. But clearly the Ascension is significant. It is at that point that Christ began to reign until all enemies are put under his feet.
Phil Almond
Posted by: DavidR
Monday 13 April 2009 - 07:42am
L Roberts
You need to trace the discussion Phil and I have been having - which starts from interpreting Genesis. Phil is trying to argue that before the 'Fall' the world was vegetarian and that meat eating is a consequence of the fall.
I have been arguing that neither the OT nor the NT communities show any sign of eating meat with any regret (and nor does God) and mainstream church history too has never promoted vege diets as a key sign of creation redeemed. Why not? So I asked Phil why Jesus - before or after Easter was not vege.
Hope that clarifies ....
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Sunday 12 April 2009 - 06:26pm
Did Phil say our Lord was vegetarian ? I missed it. And would be very interested.
I am sure a meat free diet is an important witness for those called to it. But I hadnt been basing it on any notion of Jesus' abstaining from meat- though I could easily imagine it. I reget not having caught on to meat free living sooner than I did.
Minimising suffering is part of how many of us would want to seek to live our spiritual-physical lives, I imagine.
Posted by: DavidR
Saturday 11 April 2009 - 11:16am
Phil,
This has to brief ... my core issue remains what kind of literature we are reading here. I raised this in an earlier response to you. The current Bible Society magazine is an extended reflection on this issue and very helpful. This is key to how we read and interpret scripture. My position is that simply don't have to justify the 'proof texts' you focus on because I don't think they are intended to be taken as fact in the way that you insist. Van Till writes 'twentieth century western culture seems to me to be partiuclarly inept at understanding and using figurative or symbolic literature. We are so accustomed to to straightforward, matter of fact descriptive prose that we expect nearly all writing to be in that form ....' I think you are making precisely that mistake.
As to the points you raise ... I remain unconvinced and frankly you sound far more hesitant than your usual self on these threads. ....
Jesus and the Law. Jesus was clearly not uncritically 'under the law'. On certain issues he 'broke' the Law - cf the sabbath or the woman taken in adultery. Something as core as this would surely be raised in his teaching wouldn't it? Why does the second Adam give no shred of a lead or vision on this one if it so central to what redemption and salvation means for us all? It just isn't there. And are you asking us to assume he only pretended to enjoy chicken or fish at all those parties he went to - or that he secretly stuck vegetables whenever he could?
'Do not cling to me' - your use of this text to argue your case is entirely novel I'm afraid. I see no connection whatsoever.
Early church and vege diets?
It just isn't an issue there either Phil. You won't find it. And there is no hiding behind the idea that it will be part of the life to come and we are not there yet ... It has simply never been part of maintream teaching of the church in history - even about the life to come actually. This fatally weakens your case. And aren't we supposed to be living now as signs and anticipation of the world to come? Peace making, justice, morality, ecology, community life, love, forgiveness, worship - but lets leave the vegetables until after the eschaton?
Easter greetings - we're eating roast lamb.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Wednesday 8 April 2009 - 08:43pm
David
22 and 24 February: Your points about vegetarianism, Jesus before and after resurrection eating meat/fish, early Church, Paul’s teaching:
Jesus before resurrection: no issue: Jesus was born under the law and since Gen 9:3 eating meat/fish is part of the law.
Jesus after resurrection: I don’t know yet how to handle this; I accept it is one of the serious issues my view has to meet; but my present opinion is that it is not sufficient to overthrow my view. Of significance may be Jesus words to Mary in John 20:17 translated variously as ‘Touch me not….’ ‘Do not hold on to me…’ ‘Do not cling to me….’ indicating perhaps that all of ‘risen, ascended, glorified’ are necessary to complete Christ’s mission of redemption.
Early Church practice etc. I would take the same general view here as I take of death and marriage: we are redeemed but we still suffer disease and die. We are not given in marriage in heaven but marriage is good in this life. These transformations, like the Isaiah passage, take place at the consummation of the work of salvation.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Michael
Tuesday 31 March 2009 - 07:37am
I suppose I have an interest in Darwin’s beliefs as well as his geology.
I have never been convinced by Jim Moore’s claim that the death of Annie in 1851 finished off Darwin’s religious faith. There is no evidence for it, though it is a nice sentimental story. Her death shattered him but nowhere have I found anything referring to religion in anyway.
I have yet to do more than flip through Spencer’s book but will make some comments on Alison’s review.
Her first stage on 1809 to 1836 makes some useful points about his “formal” faith. Again I ask where was the evidence for his belief in “Paley’s vision of an ordered and happy cosmos”? It is not in his letters or in his notes (and the notes labelled as on Paley in 1828 are in fact on Sumner). To say that “BUT – reading Lyell on geology and witnessing volcanoes and earthquakes in Chile cast shadows over his neat, stable, Paleyan faith” is simply not the case. BEFORE Darwin went on the Beagle he was a competent geologist having been trained up by Sedgwick and Henslow as I recently presented at a Darwin conference in Cardiff. He knew his volcanic rocks well and convinced of the vast age of the world. The evangelical Sedgwick was not a Paleyean anyway. (see my recent article on Religion and Geology published by the Geol Soc of London). He was looking at volcanic rocks on the voyage using other writings as well as Lyell and some argument needs to be produced for this assertion.
On the second stage it is not mentioned that Emma was a Unitarian of a liberal hue- i.e typically Wedgwood. To claim she was an orthodox Christian will not do.
The last section on the response to the Origin is satisfactory
The weakness of the review is that it is not based on historical evidence and operates from a bit of a straw man of formal “Paleyan” Anglicanism of the early 19th century. Perhaps it would be good to look at the religious influence of his sisters and the good evangelical Sedgwick, but documentation is very sparse. I cannot see what dear Lyell has got to do with Darwin’s demise of faith.
For once I tend to agree with Pluralist!!
.
Michael
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Monday 30 March 2009 - 02:59am
Your review does not allow for the Unitarian background of both Charles and Emma Darwin, that she turned the family around at the creed for example. He and his brother were baptised into the Church of England with its understanding of its educational privilege and social role, and indeed he retained an active role in the village regarding his local church throughout. It was only the final and stable curate of the village that had strained relations with him and Emma, over their background, and then they showed increasing sympathy with a non-conformist of the area and his social impact.
The piece mentions some sort of commitment to the cross, etc. to maintain belief. This is just an add-on regarding this matter, and has little to do with the Darwins and Emma in particular had a frame of reference of some of the leading Unitarians and people associated: James Martineau, Francis Newman (brother of John, went in a Unitarian and agnostic direction) and other preachers. And this business that Charles lost his faith through his daughter: rather more, his daughter's death and the weakness of the children led to his reflection on the necessity of sexual selection among the further-other, that is away from immediate sources of reproduction. His own Wedgwood-Darwin intermarried family was a source of weakness in reproductive terms, and this gave rise to much experiment among his plants.
Do look at the Cambridge site that uses the correspondence by which we see what they did and what they thought. I had my blog entry a while back with these links.
Had there been a Unitarian chapel near to the Darwins' home the history of affiliations would have been more obviously different, though even then they may still have played an important church-village social role. Such was the way of Victorian religion.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Sunday 29 March 2009 - 05:26pm
We have just published a Fulcrum review of Nick Spencer's, 'Darwin and God' (SPCK, 2009), by Alison Morgan.
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Thursday 12 March 2009 - 04:38pm
As a member of "all and sundry": no it was not a historical event.
There was not a time when God was obeyed and then was not, rather there was a time when people evolved primitive and magical rituals based around death and, as the human species (plural) evolved, the future. The rituals were close and environmental. Later on people developed more explanation around these rituals and more a sense of a people and history, inventing patriarchs and mythic journeys, and identified those with present situations. Thus in Babylon were set down past histories.
You read this book - the Bible - as if it has some sort of privileged insight into history or making the universe or whatever. It isn't: it is rather a book of identification of a people that developed over time. It tells us nothing globally or universally, not does it tell very much at all that is historical or scientific, and why would it, and how could it.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Wednesday 11 March 2009 - 08:45pm
David
There follows my attempt to respond to the parts of your posts 4 March, 24 February, 22 February (in that order) I have not yet replied to.
March 4 Your point about Paul’s use of the creation/fall account…etc:
I am not sure what you mean when you say ‘even though the rest of the OT works with very different ways of expressing human sin and the hope of salvation’. The writers of the New Testament and Jesus himself don’t appear to me to be conscious of any difference between the way they understood human sin and the salvation Christ brings. On the contrary, as you know, they quote constantly from the Old Testament. In Romans 1 Paul paints the picture of the human condition in all ages after the fall and quite likely has in mind as illustrating this the early chapters of Genesis. He quotes from the Old Testament to support his assertion ‘proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin’.
March 4 Gen 1:29-30 and Gen 9:3:
Just to underline, though you no doubt realize it, my line of argument is to establish the point that God in Genesis 1 gives only the green plant to the creatures. God’s regret has been fully expressed in the passage leading up to the flood. And clearly, the permission to eat meat is an act of mercy in a fallen world with a cursed earth/land. I don’t consider that you can avoid the exegetical connection I am making by saying ‘the focus of this passage clearly lies elsewhere’. As I have said before, whatever the genre of these passages the verses under discussion must be there for a reason. We can’t just ignore them.
March 4 Romans, Colossians, Isaiah passages:
You say I am regularly assuming a “literal reading (and thus finding ‘facts’)”
If you examine my 21 and 23 February postings I think you will see that the only facts I am finding are that that Gen 1:29-30 and 9:3 must mean something whatever the genre and that
‘at some point the human race disobeyed God and that from that point on the whole human race became alienated from God and in need of salvation And that this disobedience and this alienation was a historical event’
(Incidentally I invited all and sundry including your good self and the Fulcrum leadership to indicate whether you agree with the sentence immediately above – I repeat that invitation again).
On Paul’s letter to the Romans: In my view written by Paul to the Christians at Rome. Having not visited them but being eager to preach the gospel to them, he writes. From 1:16 to at least 8:39 the argument he sets out is a continuous connected one, with subordinate clauses so to speak. Is this common ground? If so, what do you make of my assertions about the right understanding of 8: 19-23?
To be continued.
Phil Almond
Posted by: DavidR
Wednesday 4 March 2009 - 10:21am
Dear Phil,
Thank you for your post and for engaging with my own offerings. I confess to struggling a bit to respond with the care and details the debate needs. I note further and (no doubt) characteristically detailed posts are imminent from you … but here are a few further thoughts.
Firstly a correction. Gen 9.3 is linked to Gen 1.29-30 - you are right to correct me on this. I was working too fast and from one translation. Careless of me.
(I also accept that there is an interpretive debate to be had over how Paul uses the creation story and the significance of this. But it is not enough just to say Paul uses the Creation/Fall account as core even though the rest of the OT works with very different ways of expressing human sin and the hope of salvation. At the very least we need to explore how Paul’s theology builds from his own scriptures and relates to these. You are not claiming he simply by-passes the rest of the OT and hangs everything on Gen 1-3?)
But back to Gen 1.29/9.3!
I still think you cannot draw from this link the conclusion your argument needs. Yes a link is there – but what is the significance of it? There is no sense of regret or tragic concession in the adding of flesh to the human diet in 9.3 is there? Wouldn’t you expect that if we are meant to hear a tragic pre and post fall connection? If anything it simply reads as if more variety has now been added to human diet – with no apparent regret at this fact. The passage lends no support to a ‘before’ (veggie) and ‘after’ (flesh eating) scenario. You need to persuade me that is not a reading into the text.
As I said before, the focus of this passage clearly lies elsewhere and that should make us wary of pressing it into support of a question it is not trying to answer. The passage underlines what 1.29 affirms – that sustenance in God’s creation is based upon mutual need and interdependence – and this therefore needs respecting. That’s it. And that remains a very contemporary challenge.
The core significance of Gen 9 lies in the command to honour of the sanctity of life and the human vocation is to safeguard that – it is part of what it means to have dominion. Von Rad notes - ‘Even when a man slaughters and kills, he is to know that he is touching something which, because it is life, is in a special manner God’s property; and a sign of this is that he is to keep his hands off the blood. (Genesis Comm)
One reason this discussion is so hard is that we are not agreed what kind of literature we are reading about here. ‘Twentieth-century Western culture seems to me particularly inept at understanding and using figurative or symbolic literature. We are so accustomed to straightforward, matter-of-fact descriptive prose that we expect nearly all writing to be of that form … scientific writing has made an illegitimate claim of superiority over artistic literature.’ (Van Till)
Everything turns on this. You are regularly assuming a literal reading (and thus finding ‘facts’) where I find an ancient respected literary approach to truth telling and enquiry – a kind of parable, a symbolic story that offers a way of reflecting upon our pre-history ad seeks meaning and truth within it. We have no contemporary equivalent of this kind of writing and easily ‘read’ it with very modern assumptions about how to understand it. The creation/evolution debate is one of the major fault lines.
So it is hard to discuss the detail of the passages you quote (even Isaiah) without some common ground around the following questions.
What kind of language is being used?
What kind of literature is it?
What is the expected audience?
What is the purpose of the text?
What relevant knowledge from outside the text is there may contribute to our understanding (eg scientific findings)?
(of course these questions need asking of whatever we are reading – but they are vitally important when reading the Bible)
My post on 17th Feb offered one way of responding to these questions.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Wednesday 4 March 2009 - 08:31am
See Fulcrum newswatch today for various articles relating to the new Theos report by Caroline Lawes, 'Faith and Darwin: Harmony, Conflict or Confusion?', Theos site, 2 March 2009 [pdf].
Posted by: Phil Almond
Saturday 28 February 2009 - 09:31pm
David
This is the first stage of an attempted response to your 22 February and 24 February postings. However I am not sure I understand the first part of 22 February (start to ‘Fallen cosmos’) so I will try to answer the last part (‘this raises’ to the end). First I have got to give my summary understanding of the Romans, Isaiah and Colossians passages to give my reply a context/framework. I will make a series of assertions. We can debate in detail whether these assertions are right or wrong in subsequent posts.
In Romans 8, ktisis is just ‘sub-human nature’, inorganic and organic: everything except unfallen and fallen angels and saved and unsaved people. Sub-human nature includes the animals. Therefore the animals have been subject to vanity and enslaved to corruption. And the animals are eagerly expecting the revelation of the sons of God, are groaning and travailing in pain together until now (birth pangs) and will be freed from the slavery of corruption to the freedom of the glory of the children of God. The revelation of the sons of God is the same as the adoption, the redemption of our body which Christians eagerly expect while groaning within themselves. So the Christians and the animals await the same consummation, that is, the completion of the process of the Christians salvation when, in Warfield’s words, ‘…at the Judgment day they stand, sanctified souls, clothed in glorified bodies, before the throne of God, meet for the inheritance of the saints in light’.
The Isaiah passage describes what the animals eagerly expect, one of the results of the Messiah’s reign, culminating in the prospect that ‘…they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain…’.
Colossians 1:20 lends support to the assertions made about the Romans passage. ‘All things’ probably includes the whole of sub-human nature, which, being reconciled through the blood of the cross must at some point have been alienated from God.
Therefore at some point the whole of sub-human nature has been subject to vanity, enslaved to corruption, alienated from God. Two questions: when? and, with what if any observable result? There are only 3 possible answers to the first question: from the beginning, built into the way God has made sub-human nature; at the fall of satan; at the fall of Man. On the second question it has been argued that vanity, enslavement, alienation is about relationships not physical constitution and behaviour, and so the answer is ‘no observable result’, and so there is no problem with the hundreds of millions of years of animal predation which on GAU preceded the appearance of man. In the light of the transformation depicted in the Isaiah passage I find that incredible.
In 24 February you say, ‘There is no explicit link made’ (between 9:3 and 1:29-30). I disagree. NIV has: ‘Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything’. NEB has: ‘…I give you them all, as once I gave you all green plants’. There is an explicit reference in 9:3 back to 1:30. Even if we didn’t know 1:30 existed, 9:3 would tell us that at previous time God gave mankind the green plants for food.
One of your points in 22 February post:
‘The OT never uses these creation/fall stories as foundational in the way that Christian tradition has come to.......In fact the OT never gives any impression that creation is other than what God always intended the heavens are telling the glory of God. (as does Jesus)’
The New Testament does use them as foundational: Romans 5:12-21 (I am not necessarily using the argument that ‘death’ in 12 includes the death of animals (I don’t think my case needs that view)); 1 Corinthians 15 21-22; Romans 16:20. Likewise the New Testament in the Romans and Colossians passages does give the impression that the creation has been subjected to vanity, enslaved to corruption and alienated from God. Even in this state however the heavens declare the glory of God and leave men without excuse, as Paul says in Romans, and he makes essentially the same point, when speaking of other blessings in Acts, ‘Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness’. To deny that ktisis can both be alienated from God and simultaneously declare his glory and be a blessing is the same kind of mistake as denying that God and Christ can be angry with sinners and simultaneously seek to save them.
More to follow on your 22 February posting.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Thursday 26 February 2009 - 01:30pm
It seems to me that the main Darwinian struggle is between sometimes not so well adapted but low resource consuming wildlife that appears quite frequently, and the swarms of resource demanding dominant wildlife that mutates with regularity in ways not obvious regarding the environment but that the swarm forces upon the environment. They protect themselves via dominance, but a severe environmental shift might well see the low resource demanding come through due to sheer flexibility especially as they do adapt. I mean in my environmental patch the Open Office Writer bird is now a preferred species to the dominant Microsoft Word bird swarm, and there are many preferred small creatures that support the environment and activities here that the lumbering species cannot handle as effectively.
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Wednesday 25 February 2009 - 01:49pm
Yes, David, but behind that 6 days lies years of evolving technology, mutational cul-de-sacs and, sadly, the deaths of earlier progenitors.
Posted by: DavidR
Wednesday 25 February 2009 - 12:40pm
Roger,
My experience refutes your frankly liberal evolutionary mac position.
My lap top took exactly 6 days to arrive.
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Wednesday 25 February 2009 - 12:11pm
David. Yes, I agree that Macs are part of the original goodness of creation, though I cannot see how they could have been created within the statutory 6 days of Genesis 1. I am convinced that my iMac has evolved, with some clever tweeking on the way.
Like you, I had the same cramped, unparagraphed, small font messages on these Fulcrum threads until I switched from Safari to Firefox. I broke out into natural selection here and have found the latter very user-friendly and another triumph of the evolutionary process.
Posted by: DavidR
Wednesday 25 February 2009 - 09:59am
I have just discovered that the reason my thoughtful and well laid out posts (like my theology) have been appearing on this thread in one indigestible lump minus punctuation is because the Fulcrum server has an undisclosed objection (presumably theological) to Mac computers. This is unnacceptable - not least as it is plainly evident to any Mac user that these computers are part of the original goodness of creation in Genesis1&2. (You do have to read between the lines to pick this truth up. So I have been carefully to leave some gaps - but Fulcrum keeps editing them out).
Posted by: DavidR
Tuesday 24 February 2009 - 08:26pm
Yes Peter - what chop suey recipes, pin heads and attempt to flush out Graham's real views - it is getting a bit surreal Phil - thanks for yours & You continue to put lot of weight on the significance of Gen 1.3 and Gen 9.3 and I am not convinced it can bear it exegetically.
Here's why I have my doubts ... It seems reasonable to 'hear' in Gen 9.3 an echo of Gen 1.3 - but is more than an echo? They are separated not only by the sin and expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden but the later obliteration of the entire world (bar Noah's family) in the flood. In 1.3 God (possibly) decrees a veggie diet and in the second it's now veg and meat. But what conclusions can actually be drawn from that?
Gen 9.3 is set within the account of the blessing and ordering of a new creation, post flood. The mood is expansive, generous and inclusive. As part of that God declares that plants and meat are provide for food. The mood of the passage is positive. There is no hint that meat is an addition, or a reluctant concession, a sign of a disordered world, or a change of mind by God since Gen 1.3.
If we didn't know Gen 1.3 existed we would not have known that in a previous verse God only gave plants (apparently). There is no explicit link made. Neither is verse 3 at all central to the concerns of Gen 9 where the main focus is on God's call to humanity to be guardians of the sanctity of life in the world - not part of the original commission in Gen 1-3 and arguably representing here an enhanced vocation in fact &. and, again, recorded here as a positive and important vocation rather than an attempt at problem solving in a disordered world.
Considering he has only recently wiped out the world, God sounds in a very benevolent mood to me. What do you reckon? By the way &. &. no I did not expect you to read Brueggemann and Wright (though I would not be the first person on this thread to set demand levels of home work for the rest of us if I did). But perhaps you don't realise that your comment on B and W is the first clue you have given me that you have actually read that earlier post at all. &. and yes, I too am capable of using scripture to fit my own preferred agendas. We all do it. But in this instance the project is yours not mine.
Posted by: User 1929
Tuesday 24 February 2009 - 04:41pm
Normal
0
I have been reading this discussion with interest. The link made by Daysspring to the racist/fascist website was useful for two reasons. First, those old film clips of Duane Gish (and others) are hard to find, and bring back a certain nostalgia. Gish was quite properly renowned for his ability to tell so many lies with so few seconds. In public debate, his opponents were often at a loss to even know where to begin. This technique became known as “the Gish Gallop.”
The second was that they very nicely give the lie to the common creationist claim that “Darwinism=>Nazism.” I am giving a talk on Darwin this week and the notion came to me to base the lecture on “Lies told by Creationists about Darwin.” Following the links out from the site admired by Daysspring, I found a number of racist/fascist/”Christian” sites uniformly opposing evolution and quoting biblical sources for this, and for their racism. These were very useful.
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Tuesday 24 February 2009 - 09:25am
Hello Clare. I quite agree with you that the Bible isn’t trustworthy as a guide to cosmology or chop suey and that the early chapters of Genesis are not to be read as factual history. I have had a similar debate in the past where certain Christians seem to see the Bible as a textbook for counselling and psychology. It is not that, although there are many valuable insights that add to our understanding of these disciplines and practices.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Tuesday 24 February 2009 - 08:52am
Hello Everyone
This is an odd discussion thread, what with Liddon trying to shut it down with aspersions about it becoming the equivalent of the one about angels dancing on the head of a pin, and Phil trying to pin down Graham Kings' theological views while responding to mine or David's!
Well, be that as it may, I think Phil asks some good questions. But can you live with uncertainty in the answers? And, if you ever recognised a direct contradiction between sound scientific evidence (GAU and all that) and your present understanding, would you deny the science or change your understanding?
In my wrestling with the meaning of Genesis I see in the first chapters a mixture of history, science, and myth, with the mixture very difficult to unmix if someone asks the question, Which bit is which?' Adam and Eve, for example: were they the first human beings? (Possibly, but what kind of beings were their daughters-in-law and where did they come from?) Noting the meaning of Adam as 'man' and of Eve as 'mother of all the living', do they stand for general humanity in a (so to speak) pre-historical existence? Did Eve really come from the rib of Adam (something not even hinted at in Genesis 1's simultaneous male-and-female creation)?
The disobedience of humanity is a historical and present fact. Logically there must have been a first human or human couple who knew the requirements of God and chose to disobey them. The Bible characterises that human couple as Adam and Eve. Their disobedience was an historical event!!
Posted by: Clare
Monday 23 February 2009 - 10:02pm
re 'the bible being wholly trustworthy'
one has to ask with regards to what?
is the bible a wholly trustworthy guide to how to travel from London to Leicester or how to make chop suey? No - the bible isn't trustworthy at all - tells you absolutlely nothing.
is the bible a wholly trustworthy guide to cosmology? obviously not since it assumes the earth with a revolving sun, the dome of heaven etc etc . in this regard it is even less trustworthy than for chop suey in that it positively gives us false information.
is the bible a trustworthy guide to the precise sequence of creation? the fact that this is generally understood to be no, in no way means that the bible is also not trustworthy in matters concerning salvation (as the article puts it).
as you are well aware Phil, I am a deeply unsound old lib. who doesn't believe that every bit of the bible is wholly trustworthy -but that's a different argument for a different day. It is perfectly consistent for you sound people to believe that the bible is wholly trustworthy with all matters to do with God and his will for us and to simultaneoulsy believe that is is not a trustworthy guide to the sequence of creation as it was never intended to be such -anymore than it was intended as a recipe book. Indeed, Graham's point was that the fact that the Gen 1 and 2 contradict each other as to the order of creation shows that God is pointing out to us 'don't take this theology as history'.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Monday 23 February 2009 - 08:26pm
David/Peter
David, your 18 February post:
Stated that I was not joining in the discussion….
Recommended Brueggemann on Genesis and Wright on Colossians…..
Asked me (or so I thought) what I have found helpful in thinking this through….
I tried to comment on the first and the last. Did you want me to read Brueggemann and Wright and comment? I have not got the books/articles. If you give me a summary of what they say about the passages I have put forward I will offer comments.
I agree that it is not a fudge to say ‘We do not know exactly….’. Peter’s view agrees with me on 9:3. For myself I think the Genesis passages enable us to say more than Peter says. It is clear to me that 9:3 refers back in time to 1:29-30, (do you both agree?) and so I think that the reasoning in my 21 February post is sound, leading to the conclusion that ‘Genesis 30 limits the diet of the creatures mentioned to plants. Therefore animal predation is something that has gone wrong or been made wrong in God’s creation’.
David: I’m sure you realize that your
‘But you may be in danger of starting with a position (GAU is wrong) and trying to make the texts fit it. And I think you are at least in danger of using the text for a purpose it wasn't written for’
has a mirror image. You may be in danger of starting with a position (GAU is true) and not facing up fully to the texts which, taken together, show GAU to be untrue.
I can only repeat that my agenda is to elicit the strongest exegetical and systematic theology arguments for both ‘either/or’ (GUA true or Bible wholly trustworthy) and ‘both/and’ (GAU true and Bible wholly trustworthy). You are right that I have trodden this ground before in such a debate as this and subsequently become aware reading Spanner et al of other ‘both/and’ arguments, such as the one you mention about Jesus eating fish after his resurrection, 1 Timothy 4:3, the point that Spanner makes about ‘subdue’ in Genesis 1 always being subsequently used in the OT to subdue evil, as well as points made in those debates: 1 Corinthians 9-10, Psalm 104, Job 38-40.
In my next post I will try to answer your 22 February points.
Peter Whether fallen man ate meat after the fall and before the flood is a question. Obviously the critical question in this debate is whether man ate meat before the fall.
In this debate about literal and figurative, historical and non-historical, I would like to ask both David and Peter what view they have about the fall. Whatever the mix of history and symbol (or whatever words you want to use) in the Genesis 3 account, whether Adam and Eve were two individuals or whether they represent the human race in some sense, whether the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a real tree or symbolises something else, do you agree (does Graham Kings agree) that, to put it in a very general way, at some point the human race disobeyed God and that from that point on the whole human race became alienated from God and in need of salvation? And that this disobedience and this alienation was a historical event?
Posted by: Simon Morden
Monday 23 February 2009 - 08:15pm
There was, on Radio 4 this morning, a Muslim scientist (Egyptian, I think), tackling the thorny question of why, when the Muslim world had such a head-start on science and technology over Christendom, was overtaken and near-enough completely sidelined by the European Enlightenment.
He gave the example (a common one, in his experience) of being interrupted mid-lecture by students who complain what he's teaching is contradicting the Koran, therefore he must be wrong.
Phil, is your approach to the scientific method (your GAU) any different from this man's students in any substantive way?
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Monday 23 February 2009 - 06:34pm
liddon how remiss of you. You really must consult all the relevant Bible pasages -- pronto !
Posted by: liddon
Monday 23 February 2009 - 04:02pm
Silly of me to forget, I know, but please could someone remind me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Posted by: DavidR
Monday 23 February 2009 - 10:43am
Phil,
Peter once again says it for me re your request for approaches to Gen 1.3 and 9.3. I also agree with Peter that it is no fudge to say at times 'we do not know exactly' ....
But can you see that if early Genesis is not for reading as a work of factual history (in our modern sense) then how and where we look for the detail we seek must change?
I know this is not your position. There are times I play 'as if' theologically and suspend my own preferred position in order to explore what another angle on the same story or doctrine might reveal. I invite you to do that here and that was the spirit in which I have been offering my previous posts on this thread.
I am not requiring you accept my position but my own experience is that the creation stories have become immeasurably richer as a source for profound biblical reflection when they are not shackled to the need to be 'history' in the way the Creationist position requires. But there is no tidy way of answering all the questions.
You state your intention to buld up the strongest possible 'anti-GAU case'. That is one way of proceeding, But you may be in danger of starting with a position (GAU is wrong) and trying to make the texts fit it. And I think you are at least in danger of using the text for a purpose it wasn't written for. And if that is true then you will be in a theological cul de sac demanding from these verses details they frankly aren't even interested in providing.
It is one of the more irritating features of the Bible is its tendency to omit information we think we most need!
In passing ..... you write - 'My comments on your February 18 post:' and then offer no comments at all! You have your own line of approach and agenda on this. OK -why not tell us what it is instead of by-passing our posts and requiring us to give our views on your texts before you will be willing to give us yours - and giving the impression you have already mapped out where the conversation is going to go.
Forgive me if you feel misunderstood but it may help to say this is how it reads. While I really respect your clear concern and care for thorough-going biblical integrity, as a discussion this does feel a bit one sided.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Sunday 22 February 2009 - 10:19pm
Hi Phil
Re Genesis 1:29-30 and 9:3.
These passages affirm the (obvious) primary role of plants and fruit in the food-chain of life; and Genesis 9:3 provides a story of divine permission for eating meat. It seems difficult to say more beyond that. Does Genesis 9:3 convey a picture of God giving permission to eat meat before or after the fact of meat-eating? Hopefully it is after because there is a lot of evidence for meat-eating before (whatever global event constituted) the Flood. (Just last night I was viewing a programme here in New Zealand about the ancient Haast Eagle's predilection for tasty meals of our more recently extinct Moa (emu-like bird))!
Posted by: Phil Almond
Sunday 22 February 2009 - 08:40pm
David
My comments on your February 18 post:
As I see it I am joining in the discussion by beginning to offer what I think is the strongest anti-GAU case; when (if) we get onto the Romans 8 passage I will be summarising some arguments from Lloyd-Jones and (I think) Cranfield.
Just to repeat what I have said before on Fulcrum about God ‘speaking’:
‘In a lot of places in both Testaments God and Christ are represented as ‘speaking’. Let’s call these ‘communication events’. We can leave open at this point questions about the mode of communication (in the Old Testament) (was it an audible voice? was it a ‘voice in the mind’? was it an internal impression which was correctly verbalised? etc.).’
You have given a number of reasons why you think my understanding of Genesis 1:29-30 and 9:3 is not the right understanding. Before I respond to those reasons would you care to state what your understanding of those two passages is please. I invite Peter to do the same.
Phil Almond
Posted by: DavidR
Sunday 22 February 2009 - 03:26pm
Phil
Thank you for your comments in response to posts by Peter and I. (I say response but in fact you make no comment on my own post before inviting me to engage with your own approach to the subject but OK &.)
But I appreciate your open spirit and acknowledgment that these are pastorally sensitive discussions.
Peter has already responded and outlined what is also my own position - and said it much more clearly than I could.
To your specific question about Gen 1.9 and 9.3 I have a mix of responses to offer - but they do link up I think.
1. You say - Either God said the words attributed to him in Genesis 1:29-30 and 9:3 or he did not. Well he didnt did he. Not literally - unless we really think he has a human mouth and voice box. I dont imagine you actually think that but I am not just trying to be clever here. This whole discussion is about how truth is communicated and language immediately helps and hinders. And when it comes to God we are in the realm of wonder and mystery that so easily goes missing in this debate.
2. My understanding is that Hebrew has no word/category for fiction as we understand it a story that is not factually true (so where you find John Grisham in Tel Aviv central library I am not sure). Western culture separates fact from fiction (or thinks it can). My point is that the often sharp distinction in this debate between either this is true or it is false, may be forcing the drama into a certain kind of narrow factual logic that is alien to its original literary genre. We may forcing the demand for fact into a text that is bearing truth in other ways. The key issue becomes how we read and interpret the text on offer.
(anyone know more about this than I do? have I got this right? - I forget where I read it)
3. To the Creationist Gen 1.9 reveals a pre-fall, good world that was vegetarian for all the diet of Gods original intention and will. This is taken as absolutely significant. Gen 9.3 (and 'Post-flood' is not exegetically to be directly equated with post fall actually) God allows the eating of creatures - but even this divine concession the arrival of meat eating is still taken to be a symptom of the now disordered, fallen cosmos.
This raises some interesting questions:
Would you not expect Jesus, the new Adam, to be vegetarian in the light of this and to teach veggie? But even the risen Jesus eats fish.
Would you not expect the NT church to preach vegetarianism as a core part of its kingdom lifestyle and witness to a restored creation? But even when Paul is discussing meat offered to idols being veggie is not suggested as even a preferred option (which would have solve the meat problems at a stroke). Why not?
Would you not expect vegetarian diet to have featured much more prominently in mainstream Christian communities through history for the same reasons.
Taken together this points to a tradition from Jesus onwards that does not place the same interpretive significance and meaning on these texts as you appear to.
4. One further point.
The OT never uses these creation/fall stories as foundational in the way that Christian tradition has come to. (And a much longer creation narrative is found at the end of Job, direct from the mouth of God why is this not part the same discussion?). 'The Fall is not to be found in the rest of the OT at all. In fact the OT never gives any impression that creation is other than what God always intended the heavens are telling the glory of God. (as does Jesus)
Posted by: Toby
Sunday 22 February 2009 - 01:08pm
Hi Pluralist
I'm not sure how far your post was a reply to me and how far it was making a general point. If it was a reply to me, I didn't quite follow your thinking.
Was I suggesting relativism? I didn't think so.
I don't think Calvin's treatment of Servetus, however regrettable it looks from our perspective, 'stands alongside' (?) Luther's anti-Semitism.
What, exactly, is the 'history that needs to be countered'?
'Centralism and direction' are often bad, I agree, but always? Isn't Jesus Christ 'central' for Christians? Doesn't the Bible give 'direction'?
How do 'centralism and direction' relate to anti-Semitism?
But maybe these matters might be better explored on another thread...
Toby
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Sunday 22 February 2009 - 03:29am
It's not just a matter of mores and senstivities now, nor even how one uses institutions to exercise power. We can be as relativist as you like, but the methods Calvin employed stand alongside Luther's antisemitism. They are a legacy that contribute to a history that even with relativism has a message that has to be countered - countered by opposition to centralism and direction, opposition to antisemitism. These matters create or follow precedents, adding to the sum of human misery.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Sunday 22 February 2009 - 01:33am
Hi Phil
Thanks for the clarity with which you set up the exegetical challenge, helped by being alerted to your February 14th post which I had missed.
Scripture is trustworthy. Scientific investigation leads to truth. If a combination of texts within Scripture is at variance (say) with fossil evidence suggesting animals killed other animals before the appearance of homo sapiens then Scripture may be untrustworthy.
Or (as I prefer) we may have a new challenge as readers of Scripture in possession of scientific facts unknown to the human writers of Scripture. In the case of the collection of texts you bring together (Gen 1:29-30, 9:3, Isaiah 11:6-9 etc) they may call for a new reading in which (a) we recognise God's preference for a vegetarian diet, (b) acknowledge a gap in our biblical knowledge as to whether the first human beings began to eat meat before or after the Flood, and (c) the future new creation will be vastly different to the pre-Fall creation.
In a comment this is a simplistic response; in a longer response I I would develop something substantial. But what I am not at all inclined to do is to head off in a direction which leads (among other things) to a solution in which God tricks human beings by planting misleading fossils, and/or in which the generally accepted understanding (based on good evidence) of the longevity of the universe and the fact of death at each stage of the development of life is denied.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Saturday 21 February 2009 - 07:42pm
Peter Carrell/David
This is a pastorally perilous subject.
It would take me several thousand words to set out what I see as the strongest Biblical anti-GAU case (GAU defined in my 14 February post). So perhaps I can give it in successive posts starting with Genesis 1:29-30 and 9:3. If anyone wants to we can discuss those passages and then move on to the Isaiah, Romans and Colossians passages.
Either God said the words attributed to him in Genesis 1:29-30 and 9:3 or he did not. Or he said one set of words and not the other. (I believe he said both). If he did not say them both then since we agree that the Bible is trustworthy (Fulcrum statement on the Bible) then it must be that the genre of the passages is such that the author or editor of the passages has legitimately put into God’s mouth statements which are trustworthy, just as perhaps Jesus put into God’s mouth the ‘Thou fool…..’ of the parable of the man with many barns. So, in either case, we have to ask ourselves what the right understandings of 1:29-30 and 9:3 are (we can’t just ignore them, as I am fairly sure we would all agree). Either 1:29-30 means that God gave the plants and fruit to man, and nothing else to eat and the green plants to the other creatures and nothing else; or, God gave the plants and fruit to man and the green plants to the other creatures but did not exclude man eating the creatures and the creatures eating each other; or, ‘plants and fruit’ are meant to convey both plants, fruit and animals given by God for food. Or it is a reference to the future.
Genesis 9:3 looks back to Genesis 1:29 ('even as the green plant').
The straightforward way to understand this is that just as God gave man the plants and the fruit to eat before the fall, so now after the flood he gives them also the animals, birds, fish and creeping things. A clear corollary is that the animals, birds, fish and creeping things were not to be eaten by man before the fall.
Genesis 29 and 30 are parallel statements.
So if Genesis 29 limits the diet of man to fruit and plants, Genesis 30 limits the diet of the creatures mentioned to plants. Therefore animal predation is something that has gone wrong or been made wrong in God’s creation.
In these debates I am wanting to elicit the strongest pro-GAU Biblical case. I am open to being persuaded that I am wrong in my present view that it is either/or: either GAU true and the Bible not wholly trustworthy; or GAU not true and the Bible wholly trustworthy. I am open to being persuaded that it is both/and. But having read Spanner, Blocher, Marston and others I am presently not so persuaded.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Toby
Saturday 21 February 2009 - 01:16pm
Hi Pluralist
Thanks for your prompt, and thought-provoking, reply.
I'm reluctant to get into disputes about a book written (by a non-historian) over 60 years ago. For anyone who wants to assess the quality of Zweig's argument (particularly chapter 5) for themselves, it's available at http://www.gospeltruth.net/heresy/heresy_toc.htm
To me it looks confused. The Calvin Zweig describes was a 'Protestant dictator' who could only have Servetus removed by underhand means (some dictatorship).
He was a 'tyrant' who had to dispatch 'missive after missive' in a bid to influence the various bodies of Swiss Protestantism (some tyranny).
He sat on 'the judge's seat' but wasn't, I think, one of the judges.
Servetus was condemned, in part, for 'speaking foreigner's French' - but was this different to the 'foreigner's French' that Calvin spoke himself?
And 'what unprejudiced person will believe that Calvin... should have been unable to ensure a more merciful method of execution' had he really - as he claimed and as all the (albeit limited and partial) evidence suggests - sought beheading instead of burning? Well, if he were the 'Protestant dictator', maybe. But isn't this begging the question? Mightn't the 'prejudiced person' here be Zweig himself?
You and I agree that the execution of heretics, which on this occasion Calvin supported, doesn't fit our modern mores or sensitivities. But if we must go down the path of condemning the long-dead (who might just as fairly condemn us by their standards), let's only condemn them where it's justified. Condemn Calvin for supporting the death penalty but not for sadism.
The word 'unsubstantiated' in my last post should have read 'substantiated', by the way.
Regards from Toby
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Saturday 21 February 2009 - 04:47am
I have a number of books referring to Servetus, the most detailed of which is a double of two books, Sweig, S. (1979), Erasmus and The Right to Heresy, London: Souvenir Press, of which The Right to Heresy starts with Calvin seizure of power, 186-207, discusses the discipline, 208-232, then the place of Castellio, 233-254, and the in detail handles 'The Servetus Affair' 255-272, and The Murder of Servetus, 273-292.
On page 288 it discusses that Calvin had contemplated death by the sword only if Servetus recanted, to admit that Servetus was wrong and Calvin right. 289 says that "Stubborness was faced by stubborness, fanaticism by fanaticism", and "Servetus bluntly refused to comply". Farel was given the deed, and it gives Farel's questions by which Servetus could have recanted. Between the chains and his body was inserted the book about which Servetus had asked Calvin fo comment, the one Calvin declared heretical. A crown of leaves plus sulphur was put on Servetus's head. Servetus, in the flames, called out, "Jesus, Son of the everlasting God, have pity on me." Next Sunday at his church Calvin declared the burning to have been great and just (292).
Calvin needed to counter the fact that Bolsec before had got away, and the clash with Castellio, and as the Swiss Synods did not directly approve capital punishment, they left it to higher authority (283-284), and Calvin went to Servetus's cell where Servetus begged forgivenness. Calvin says he followed the rule laid by St. Paul and withdrew from the heretic (287). And death at the stake by slow fire in this case would not be accompanied by strangulation or other help (287-288).
I've lesser references too, none of which give Calvin any leeway for the murder of Servetus. During the burning Farel checked on Servetus and any recanting.
Posted by: Toby
Friday 20 February 2009 - 05:43pm
Hi Pluralist
It's misleading to talk about Calvin 'burning people alive', since his only role in the Servetus trial was as a witness. He had no other influence over the verdict. As for the sentence, in fact he lobbied (unsuccessfully) for Servetus to be beheaded, not burned. I don't know of any other case in which he played a part in the execution of a heretic, although (of course) I'm open to correction.
As for the claim that he 'checked that they were experiencing the pleasure', I don't believe that this can be unsubstantiated. In other words, it's simply untrue and is therefore unfair to Calvin and unhelpful in any contemporary discussion.
Toby
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Friday 20 February 2009 - 03:34am
Calm down Michael. I wrote:
All Darwin did was provide a mechanism - an explanation - for a view that was growing at the time about the ages and stages of developing life.
In other words, evolution was already on the agenda but that Darwin provided a mechanism. I think this is what you are saying, in that the geologists were already on to the ages of life and the suggested tree of life.
And it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that the mechanism, which is death for the benefit of life in the context of the struggle of life and its suffering, can be a theological reflection on the Christian death and resurrection myth.
By the way, you liken yourself to Miguel Servetus. Servetus, an unusual kind of pre-Unitarian, didn't help himself in his jumping between equally vicious Catholics and Protestants, and rather placed himself into the clutches of Calvin and his ways of burning people alive and checking that they experienced the pleasure. So don't go around making enemies; don't jump into the clutches of those preparing the human bonfires.
Posted by: Michael
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 09:28pm
Now I have another poster I am not happy with!!!!
That is Pluralist who seems unaware that all the major theological issues of the age of the earth and theodicy etc were sorted out before Darwin was out of nappies.
The vast age of the earth and some kind of succession of life, with the implication of death before Adam was known long before 1800. That caused little theological modification as many accepted that animal death was not consequent on Adam's fall way before then including Aquinas.
The fixity of species was not important on this issue and thus the evolution debate has little to say about theology in general and not about Jesus, his birth and resurrection .
It is interesting Pluralist reproduces this wrong idea which John Hick made much of.
It was for this reason that most theologians from 1860 quickly adopted evolution and even Samuel Wilberforce was almost there.
Posted by: Michael
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 09:19pm
I think Simon in particular is saying the same as me when he says
'The answer to this can only ever be, "well, yes: either they are engaged in a deliberate attempt to deceive people by wilfully dressing up bad science as good science in the hope that it will convince the scientifically illiterate, or they are engaged in well-meaning but ultimately grossly flawed (for values of grossly flawed = wrong) research that wilfully ignores the vast mass of data generated by experimental and oberservational science from the development of the scientific method onwards.'
YEC makes an all-out attack on geology in particular and claims it is utterly utterly false. If they were right geologists have got it disastrously wrong for well over tow hundred years, not only deists like Hutton but godly Anglican clergy like Sedgwick, Buckland and Conybeare, whose orthodoxy was impeccable. (Sedgwick is magnificent on geology and Genesis, but this is in a private letter to Dean Close)
However every YEC attack on geology is fatally flawed. Dayspring did not like what I said about WS Gish and Parker. That was based on considerable reading of their books , seeing the WS videos and listening to Parker and Gish. In each case i was appalled by the level of misrepresetnation in what they said and wrote. I just looked at my copies of their books and it still appalls me.
You get the same in all of Henry Morris's works, which was the first author I rumbled at L'Abri and as I said so, I felt like Servetus in Calvin's Geneva. I watched the woodpiles at L'abri very carefully in case they were stacked round a pole:) This is the same Morris who said to a fellow evangelical that it is right to lie for the Kingdom of God. Sadly he wont publish it.
When we consider British creationists we get the same thing. In his Genesis for today Macintosh has an appendix on geology which is chockful of misrepresentation, as are monty white and Andrews books.On two occasions I "debated" Rosevear and Paul Garner on Premier Radio and got nowhere because both gave a distorted and untrue account of geology. Worse was John Mackay who has recently produced a video on Darwin with Rev Paul Blackham former curate of All Souls Langham Place
Much of this has been catalogued on the talkorigins website and no wonder some atheists call it lying for Jesus
As for Rom 14.12 I feel very sorry for all those I mentioned!
As you ask how I came to faith in Christ - well it was through OICCU
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 06:52pm
Thank you L. Roberts!
This is much the better resource I'd suggest against biblical literalism.
This is its discussion on the supposed prophecy of Bethlehem as Jesus's birthplace:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/mt/2.html
(2:5-6) "In Bethlehem of Judaea"
Matthew claims that Jesus' birth in Bethlehem fulfils the prophecy in Micah 5:2. But this is unlikely for two reasons.
1. "Bethlehem Ephratah" in Micah 5:2 refers not to a town, but to a clan: the clan of Bethlehem, who was the son of Caleb's second wife, Ephrathah (1 Chr.2:18, 2:50-52, 4:4).
2. The prophecy (if that is what it is) does not refer to the Messiah, but rather to a military leader, as can be seen from Micah 5:6. This leader is supposed to defeat the Assyrians, which, of course, Jesus never did.
It should also be noted that Matthew altered the text of Micah 5:2 by saying: "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda" rather than "Bethlehem Ephratah" as is said in Micah 5:2. He did this, intentionally no doubt, to make the verse appear to refer to the town of Bethlehem rather than the family clan.
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 06:10pm
Wow ! This is magisterial Pluralist and very moving.
It is great to read divinity done this way.
Posted by: Clare
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 05:03pm
Dayspring I am delighted and not surprised to learn from you that you are a charitably, compassionate and generally loving chap and I do apolgise if you thought I was casting aspersion upon your character - what I meant to say was that if you abandoned this totally unncessary defence of creationism, you would have even more energy to devote to the thoroughly necessary business loving others.
as for contradictions in the bible - here's a short and far from exhaustive list
www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 04:12pm
It is quite normal for people doing science to do science according to the overwhelming evidence presented without recourse to checking science against any scriptures of religion. As for Charles Darwin, it is sometimes said that the death of his daughter contributed to his growing disbelief in God towards agnosticism. The death of his daughter added to his moral questions about belief in God. All Darwin did was provide a mechanism - an explanation - for a view that was growing at the time about the ages and stages of developing life. This has since been modified and yet confirmed by genetics, providing a tree of life about which Darwin could only put a question mark.
The last attempt by creationists against evolution is that species cannot develop from other species, and yet this is shown with fruit flies as direct evidence. We do know that there is adequate time for development as given, and also there have been intense periods of change following environmental shift.
The problem the creationists have is that there can be no death before the fall, and that Christ has to restore what Adam lost - and that if these conditions are not met, then the whole of Christianity as a scheme of redemption is lost. Well on the basis of these ridiculous conditions they would be right, but most Christians can see the benefit of a redeeming scheme without those conditions. We know that death is a part of life from its very beginning: indeed, evolution is the means by which death produces improved living.
To my mind where the creationists are right is in how many Christians are inconsistent. They are happy to mythologise the deep past regarding these scriptures, but will not mythologise in the same way, indeed they historicise, the more recent past, such as miraculous virgin birth and miraculous resurrection. These are equally beyond science and beyond historical investigation (secondary sources which draw a blank and emphasise the importance of faith - yet many Christians still want to historicise that to which they give faith). They use Paul to say if the resurrection is not true then Christians are most to be pitied, but ignore Paul's assumptions (as would be Jesus and the rest) that the Adam and flood accounts are all they have to go on regarding the story of their past.
There is also the assumption many inherit that because Jesus is made doctrinally into God that he must be all-knowing, but this is clearly not so simply by reading and realising what he got wrong. Some say that when God took on human flesh he also took on limited characteristics, though yet produced miracles. It always ends up tying the doctrinal in knots with get-out explanations.
So the evolution debate is one reason - but I accept others might conclude differently - why the Christian scheme as it was later constructed (the creeds etc.) does not hang together. It almost seems daft to even have to say it, but Jesus is as contingently human as the rest of us, and only human: he represents, in some ethical characteristics, what the ethical character of God could be, and also in the serving and suffering represents against something of what God could be, including the weakness of God. The myth of Christianity represents the death and living of life's experience, which is one theological reflection on evolution itself. But it is, even this more limited approach, all a construction, and in the end the man Jesus, in the Jewish prophetic line, pointed to the God in which he believed rather than himself, in the context of an end time that didn't happen, but where evolution gets through its own end times (for example, 65 million years back) with some remarkable adjustments and shifts as life rebuilds.
Posted by: Simon Morden
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 03:59pm
Dayspring: you wrote "So you are now in the business of accusing your fellow Christians, brothers in Christ, as deliberately setting out to deceive the public. Hypocrites are they Michael? Well you better be right because one day you’re going to have to account for your accusation: Romans 14:12"
The answer to this can only ever be, "well, yes: either they are engaged in a deliberate attempt to deceive people by wilfully dressing up bad science as good science in the hope that it will convince the scientifically illiterate, or they are engaged in well-meaning but ultimately grossly flawed (for values of grossly flawed = wrong) research that wilfully ignores the vast mass of data generated by experimental and oberservational science from the development of the scientific method onwards.
Either way, it doesn't put creationists in a good light. They're either deliberately liars or deliberately ignorant. It's not a sin to be deceived, btw, but it is a sin to deliberately promulgate these falsehoods knowing they are false.
Before high horses are mounted - take note that that's precisely what you're accusing us of. I'm a Christian. I have a PhD in geophysics. Either I'm deliberately ignoring evidence that contradicts my research, or I'm deliberately suppressing it. It doesn't help your case to wave Biblical curses at us which equally apply to you.
As a matter of interest, and arising out of your linking to a white supramacist website (thanks for that - I shall be bleaching my computer's memory later), does your literalist interpretation of scripture encompass the Curse of Ham?
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 02:42pm
Yes, Dayspring, like others I wonder who you are. Assumedly you are ‘from on high’.
And yes, I watched the clip you suggested and found myself singularly underwhelmed.
Also, given the tone of your response to Michael, it seems that you are deeply convinced in your views. That of course is fine as long as you can be gracious towards those bible-loving Christians and dedicated scientists who seek to look unblinkered at both Scripture and the geological and biological records for the hand of God, and find that hand in the richly figurative words of the early chapters of Genesis and the richly fashioned world of the Cosmos’s exceedingly ancient history.
I suspect we need to agree to differ graciously.
Posted by: Dayspring
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 12:18pm
Michael
I wrote:
Roger take a look at this excerpt - it's only a nine and a half minutes: http://podblanc.com/origins-how-the-world-came-to-be-part-5
You said:
“I said what I thought of these videos before as I saw them on MV Doulos in Liverpool 25 years ago.”
So what? Did you not notice that this post was addressed to Roger? I’m sure Roger is capable of making his mind up don’t you?
“As I am not familiar with fossil man I cant comment,…”
Who’s “fossil man”? You can comment on the above video clip though can’t you. If you have a problem with the information contained in the above video lets here it.
“but I looked at the video of the Fossil Record with Dr Dr Dr Wilder Smith, Parker and Gish. Yet again I was appalled at their brazen misrepresentation.”
Again Michael that is your view and you are entitled to it. Be aware though that your view is not shared by everyone.
“That is a bare-faced lie…”
So you are now in the business of accusing your fellow Christians, brothers in Christ, as deliberately setting out to deceive the public. Hypocrites are they Michael? Well you better be right because one day you’re going to have to account for your accusation: Romans 14:12
The rest of your angry post lacks any real substance other than an explanation of your opinion. Again you totally rely on evolutionist theory, again you totally ignore the Scriptures and again you totally reject findings from scientists which challenges evolutionary theory and upholds the Scriptures - the very same Scriptures which talk of the Christ you believe in.
I’d be interested how you came to a faith in Christ and, I ask again, how do you justify your belief in Christ given the utter lack of scientific evidence to support your beliefs? The vast majority of evolutionists are atheists. Why do you suppose that is??
Posted by: Toby
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 11:06am
I couldn't find anything 'racist' or 'anti-Jewish' in the clip, just dodgy 1980s music and dodgier beards which, in themselves, aren't evidence of lack of scientific method or credibility.
But I too am extremely concerned about the source that's disseminating it. How can you cite this material in a post and even give a link to it without at least mentioning where on the political spectrum it's coming from? Might that not be considered ever so slightly relevant?
The shame is, I think there are fair (and scientific) questions to be asked about the uncritical acceptance of evolutionism - but I'd rather not have bedfellows like this, thank you very much, in asking them.
It was implicit in Pluralist's post and I ask the same thing: who are you, Dayspring, and what are you here for?
Toby
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 09:55pm
Well, unless I'm mistaken, because I thought this can't surely be so from someone here, it seems that we have moved from dodgy creationist rubbish as anti-evolution 'evidence' to a white racist anti-Jewish set of video clips as 'evidence' of fraud in the scientific community. Wonderful: I feel like now having to scrub clean my computer of this material and the other offerings from podblanc alongside.
Dayspring? Why are you anonymous?
Posted by: Michael
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 09:22pm
Dayspring whoever you are, You wrote
the findings (from evolutionists) with this exploration do not fit in with the Scriptures nor the results of findings from creationists. If you look hard enough you will find answers which will bridge the apparent disharmony between Scripture and science.
"And I do not deny that God can create without subjecting what he creates to process and maybe he did that in relation to angels. We have no way of knowing. And yes, he could have created human beings in that way but (and here is the difference) we have evidence to the contrary in geological, anthropological and general biological observation and analysis."
Roger take a look at this excerpt - it's only a nine and a half minutes: http://podblanc.com/origins-how-the-world-came-to-be-part-5
I said what I thought of these videos before as I saw them on MV Doulos in Liverpool 25 years ago.
As I am not familiar with fossil man I cant comment, but I looked at the video of the Fossil Record with Dr Dr Dr Wilder Smith, Parker and Gish. Yet again I was appalled at their brazen misrepresentation.
Despite his 3 doctorates Wilder Smith alleged that geological dating using fossils is based on circular argument on the assumption of evolution , therefore false. That is a bare-faced lie as fossils were used for geological dating before dear C Darwin was born (read Rudwick's Bursting the limits of time and Worlds before adam) and eveloped by geologists who were adamant that evolution was wrong.
That is a standard creationist put-you-down of geology and evolution and is utterly false.
Parker and Gish also in the video and like WS neither have any competence in geology made similar false statements.
Given time I could go through each video and point out the errors misrepresentations and at time blatant dishonesties.
This is what your creation science boils down and one finds all creationist literature has similar faults.
So much for "evidence " which supports YEC .
I first came across YEC while at L'abri in 1971 and soon sussed out the dishonesty of it. Despite reading mountains of YEC literature since I have nothing to change my original judgement of it and consider it to make mockery of Christ and to hand atheists the best argument they could wish for.
Surely , Dayspring, you do not condone this kind of distortion?
Posted by: Dayspring
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 04:35pm
Hi Roger
"And so I have no problem with a God who works and reveals himself in a general sense through natural processes. This concept of ‘General Revelation’ once more gives the mandate to explore God’s creation and observe what can be observed in the present and in the past and, as several of us have argued on this thread, evolutionary theory fits into this exploration."
But the findings (from evolutionists) with this exploration do not fit in with the Scriptures nor the results of findings from creationists. If you look hard enough you will find answers which will bridge the apparent disharmony between Scripture and science.
"And I do not deny that God can create without subjecting what he creates to process and maybe he did that in relation to angels. We have no way of knowing. And yes, he could have created human beings in that way but (and here is the difference) we have evidence to the contrary in geological, anthropological and general biological observation and analysis."
Roger take a look at this excerpt - it's only a nine and a half minutes: http://podblanc.com/origins-how-the-world-came-to-be-part-5
"And belief in Jesus’s miracles doesn’t gainsay any of this. Interestingly, he always took what was there (be it a blind man, loaves and fishes, a storm-wracked sea). There don’t seem to have been any clever tricks of working wonders out of nothing. God is a God who uses his own raw material through sudden event and/or process."
I don't think that is a sufficiently strong argument to refute these Scriptures:
1) Gen 1:26
"Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;..."
2) Luke 3
"Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli.... the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."
3) 1 Corinthians 15:45
"And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being"
4) Romans 5:12
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men
5) 1 Timothy 2:13
"For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
"Perhaps we differ too in our understanding of ‘faith’. I do not see faith, in the biblical sense, as gritting our teeth against the evidence – whether that evidence is theological, psychological, biological, geological or historical."
I promise you, look hard enough and you find evidence which will fit perfectly with Scripture. Look at the links I've posted in previous posts and don't forget the link above.
B/regards
Posted by: Simon Morden
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 03:13pm
This following quote comes from a debate over on Ship of Fools (about Calvinism vs Armenianism), but I thought it apposite enough to import here:
If I was doing a calculation, and got an answer which was obviously wrong at the end, I'd judge that I had made a mistake in one of the previous steps, and go back to try to work out where I went wrong. Why doesn't this happen in theology? This is a reductio ad absurdum AFAICS...
It seems to me that those of us who wish to reconcile the scientific understanding of how life arose on Earth with our theological understanding of the Biblical account of creation are doing a calculation. The answer that is obviously wrong is that the Earth is young, and God made the world, along with everything in it, in six days. So we admit we have made a mistake, and are striving to find out where we went wrong.
For Creationists, the answer that is wrong is an old Earth and evolution. However, it is - as the poster presciently pointed out - reductio ad absurdum. To deny an old Earth is to make an absurdity of all science on which those calculations are based, a body of knowledge which patently manages to describe the workings of the universe well enough that we can generate nuclear power, manipulate quantum effects, re-engineer genetic lines and launch spaceships out of our solar system.
It strikes me - as it has others before me - that even if the world is only 10,000 old, and everything we see was created in six days, that knowledge in itself is utterly useless. The appearance of the world is that it is fantastically old. That ancient forests once grew and became coal. That volcanoes erupted and laid down kilometres of lava. That the Earth's magnetic field wanders from north to south, leaving a memory in the rocks laid down. Creationism does nothing to help us: it cannot predict earthquakes, eruptions or tsunami; it cannot tell us where to find gold or copper or diamonds or coal or oil or any of the treasures we seek; it cannot tell us why this mountain is here, or why that valley is there; it tells us nothing of the fossils we find, or the rock we find them in. It tells us nothing, nothing at all. It is sterile, and goes nowhere.
Creationism is the theological equivalent of "tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidIt", and it's just as unsatisfactory.
Posted by: Dayspring
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 01:07pm
Clare hi.
“'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness” 2 Tim. 3:16
lets' unpack this a bit, Dayspring.”
“All Scripture - since the NT didn't exist when this was written, this must mean - all the Old testament including the Apocrypha.”
Disagee. Peter acknowledges Paul’s writings as authoritative as Old Testament Scripture:
"...and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures" 2 Peter 3:15,16
Also, Luke records Jesus' words of Paul that he is a "chosen vessel" Acts 9:15
What reason would you give that God would not inspire men to write of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ – a pivotal point in human history, in the same way He inspired the Old Testament prophets? Do you not recognise the New Testament as the word of God.
“is given by inspiration of God -inspiration can mean lots of things, from influence to dictation. We talk of people, books and pieces of music being inspried and we don't mean they are infallible - we mean something of God is speaking through them.”
I think you are making a serious mistake. Your assumption that because “books and pieces of music” originate from inspiration that it necessarily follows the Holy Bible is no more authoritative than them is totally absurd. The Koran and Vidas were inspired. Why then are you not a muslim or a hindu? After all “something of God is speaking through them”! You see Clare there is inspiration (literally – God breathed) and there is another kind of inspiration.
“ to move from the word 'inspiration' to the conviction that this means every word is infallible and deliberately willed by God is a huge move and not something 'obvious' or inhernet in the text itself.”
Then you disagree with the Bible. Fair enough you are free to do that.
i“for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness ie for these alone and not for scientific, geographical or historical education.”
Then what are we to make of prophecy, the virgin birth, walking on water, healings, resurrections, food multiplication, cleansing from sin, eternal life, angles etc etc?? How is anyone going to be saved!?
“to read 2Tim 3:16 as saying more than this is to load the text with tonnes of extra doctrinal commitments that simply aren't there and leads you to daft positions when you feel you have to assert that bits of scripture that flalty contradict each other don't in order for your extra biblical theory to attempt to hold up.”
Can you explain what “extra doctrinal commiments & extra-biblical theory” you are referring to and point out which Scriptures which “flatly contradict” each other?
“God's love for us is not dependent on us holding on for dear life to a belief in a literal bible.”
Who’s claiming otherwise? But lets be clear, anyone who refuses to take the life and ministry and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ literally will not be saved.
“Take a risk and learn to accept that you are loved by God as you are now…”,
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand how you come to believe that I feel unloved by God. How do you deduce this? Thanks for your concern, but I have no doubts whatsoever. Have you? Do you always assume anyone who takes a different view from your own needs to “take a risk”
“..and not because you attempt to placate him by being willing to believe a hundred impossible things before breakfast.”
Where did you get the notion that I’m trying to placate God by believing “impossible things”? What are these impossible things Clare? Can you clarify which god you actually believe in, because with my God “all things are possible” Luke 18:27
“Then you will be free to spend you energy on loving people…”
Am I to understand from your statement that I do not love people enough? You neither know me nor my wife, my friends, my church, the charities I support so how did you arrive at your conclusion? Lets say I’m confident they will treat your allegation as a total absurdity. Do you talk to everyone in this fashion if they hold a different view from your own. Do you consider your opinions infallible? Has anyone dared to disagree with you? Probably not I suspect!
“… something that was never intended to be a factual scientific account int he first place.”
Well you got that right!
Posted by: Dayspring
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 12:43pm
Michael hi.
“What do you mean by the biblical account?”
I mean the account contained in the Holy Bible
“… and why should YOU interpretation be right when the vast number of Chrsitasn have never held it?”
Up until Darwin, I’d say the overwhelming number of Christians did in fact hold the same opinion as I do. That makes probably several hundred million at least. If you refer to Christians now living, you might be right, but that would be hardly surprising would it given the heavy bias in favour of evolution in schools and the media.
“ Haaving looked at so much of this so-called scientific evidence from AIG ICR and british equivalaents All the evidence put forward is badly flawed, inaccurate and sometimes downright dishonest. Any argument I have looked into in the last few decades has been found to be so poor that I wonder how anyone who has any science could write such stuff”
I find this argument very unconvincing, there is nothing here which causes me to rethink. I need more than your opinion to believe an amoeba + billions of years = a person.
“On 13 february you continue and recommend Instead you accept a theory which could easily dispense with God altogether despite the plethora of evidence from Christians which upholds Scripture and challenges evolution: http://www.trueorigin.org/camplist.asp
I am familiar with that site and have found that all articles I have read are scientifically worthless.”
Even if I accept your claim that you’ve read all the articles, I still need more than your opinion to believe an amoeba + billions of years = a person.
“No Roger I didn’t. May I recommend you see ‘Origins – How The World Came To Be’. Presented by A.E Wilder Smith with contributions from 14 other scientists it’s an award winning series in 6 parts. Arthur Earnest Wilder-Smith is one of a few ever to have earned three doctorates: http://christiananswers.net/creation/people/wilder-smith-ae.html
You can get it here: http://www.christiananswers.net/catalog/or-vs.htm
Now I read Wilder-smith years ago and despite his 3 doctorates I was appalled how he misrepresented geology. I saw those films on an OM ship in the 80s and again was appalled at his errors and misrepresentations. “
Again, all you’ve given me is your opinion.
“Few of your untold numbers (in fact less than 0.002 % of scientists worldwide have any skill in the science under discussion.”
Firstly, to quote that figure with certainty as you’ve done, you would have to know the qualifications of every creationist scientist on the planet. I’m not convinced you do. Moreover not all scientists are open about their beliefs for to do so would mean professional suicide as some cases have proven.
Secondly, you’ve misunderstood what I actually said. Graham’s comment was "God’s universe is clearly and evidently more ancient than a few thousand years..." to which I responded with “It may appear "clearly and evidently" that way to you, but there are untold numbers of people from all backgrounds who will be happy to disagree.” Notice I didn’t mention people from scientific backgrounds. There are countless people who have evaluated the evidence on both sides and have come out in favour of special creation within a timeline consistent with Scripture.
The whole tone of your post is one of anger Michael. Science has not proven evolution despite your claims to the contrary. Both evolution and creation remain hypothesis. It’s all down to how one interprets the evidence. Evidence is not proof and neither is the majority of opinion. As a Christian who believes in the Scriptures I see absolutely no provision for a theory which says you can a person from an amoeba over billions of years.
I note you have not used one Scripture to uphold your argument. How do you justify your belief in Christ? Do you refer to the Scriptures? How do you reconcile your faith with the total lack of scientific evidence to support it?
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 08:24am
Dayspring, I wonder whether the difference between our approach to the early chapters of Genesis links to perspectives that the Reformers wrote about, namely Special Revelation and General Revelation. I suspect you and I agree on Special Revelation through which God reveals himself through specific times, places and people, supremely, of course, in and through his son Jesus Christ and the giving of the Spirit.
The Bible also points to a God who reveals himself through General Revelation, ‘in nature, in history, and in human existence’, to quote the Calvinist Berkouwer. We see this perspective, for example, in Psalm 19:1: ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork’ and in Romans 1:20: ‘Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made’.
And so I have no problem with a God who works and reveals himself in a general sense through natural processes. This concept of ‘General Revelation’ once more gives the mandate to explore God’s creation and observe what can be observed in the present and in the past and, as several of us have argued on this thread, evolutionary theory fits into this exploration.
And I do not deny that God can create without subjecting what he creates to process and maybe he did that in relation to angels. We have no way of knowing. And yes, he could have created human beings in that way but (and here is the difference) we have evidence to the contrary in geological, anthropological and general biological observation and analysis.
And belief in Jesus’s miracles doesn’t gainsay any of this. Interestingly, he always took what was there (be it a blind man, loaves and fishes, a storm-wracked sea). There don’t seem to have been any clever tricks of working wonders out of nothing. God is a God who uses his own raw material through sudden event and/or process.
You write, ‘If we have sufficient faith to allow that God is able to create these angels without recourse to natural processes which both Scripture and nature seem to agree on, surely God is able to create man without (if one takes a giant leap of faith and assumes evolutionary theory to be correct) having to resort to aeons of time and enormous amounts of death and struggle?’
Perhaps we differ too in our understanding of ‘faith’. I do not see faith, in the biblical sense, as gritting our teeth against the evidence – whether that evidence is theological, psychological, biological, geological or historical. As Graham so clearly argues, we need to acknowledge the disparities between Genesis 1 and 2, bringing our faith to those passages to discern an understanding of the wonders of creation without, at the same time, ignoring the value of General Revelation and what is revealed through scientific enquiry.
Posted by: DavidR
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 06:37am
Phil Almond - as always I'm afraid your line of thought is not very transparent and you issue demands on your own terms and with your own agenda, rather than join in discussion ... but if it helps I have found Brueggemann's commentary on Genesis very helpful, among others. I also recommend Tom Wright on Colossians. What would others recommend on Isaiah?
Be interesting to know what you have found helpful in thinking this through.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Wednesday 18 February 2009 - 06:08am
Hi Phil
I am not sure why a detailed exegesis of the passages you mention will forward this discussion.
Could you give us a clue?
That might assist any who then care to comment to keep the details down to a manageable length for a comment!
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 17 February 2009 - 07:38pm
Graham (or anyone who shares Graham’s view)
Would you care to give us your detailed exegesis/understanding (in Biblical context of course) of Genesis 1:29-30, Genesis 9:3, Isaiah 11:6-9 and (since it has a bearing on this debate) Colossians 1:20 (especially your view on what/who the ‘all things’ are (ta panta) whether on the earth or in the heavens which are reconciled to him by the blood of the cross)?
Phil Almond
Posted by: Clare
Tuesday 17 February 2009 - 07:03pm
'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness” 2 Tim. 3:16
lets' unpack this a bit, Dayspring.
All Scripture - since the NT didn't exist when this was written, this must mean - all the Old testament including the Apocrypha.
is given by inspiration of God -inspiration can mean lots of things, from influence to dictation. We talk of people, books and pieces of music being inspried and we don't mean they are infallible - we mean something of God is speaking through them. to move from the word 'inspiration' to the conviction that this means every word is infallible and deliberately willed by God is a huge move and not something 'obvious' or inhernet in the text itself. It is a move that comes from an a priori extra textual theological commitment.
for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness ie for these alone and not for scientific, geographical or historical education.
to read 2Tim 3:16 as saying more than this is to load the text with tonnes of extra doctrinal commitments that simply aren't there and leads you to daft positions when you feel you have to assert that bits of scripture that flalty contradict each other don't in order for your extra biblical theory to attempt to hold up.
God's love for us is not dependent on us holding on for dear life to a belief in a literal bible. that is jusitifcation by works. Take a risk and learn to accept that you are loved by God as you are now, and not because you attempt to placate him by being willing to believe a hundred impossible things before breakfast. Then you will be free to spend you energy on loving people rather than wasting it defending something that was never intended to be a factual scientific account int he first place.
Posted by: DavidR
Tuesday 17 February 2009 - 12:40pm
Graham is right. Two distinct creation stories have been brought side by side at the beginning of the book of Genesis - under the inspiration of God.
Dayspring is also right to insist that the stories belong together - though the highly literal way he tries to do it does violence to the subtlety of both. An interesting question is - where, when and perhaps why did each of these profoundly inspired stories originate? If God really was trying to provide us with literal, historical, factual account of how it all started he would surely have found a clearer, factual way of doing so. So here is my own attempt brief attempt to understand the mix here .....
Most translations provide a footnote alternative to 1.1 'In the beginning, God created &'. 'In the beginning when God began creating the heavens and the earth'. Both are valid translations but there is now a sense of movement. What was once begun still continues. Creation is still in process. It is not yet finished or complete. The Bible never speaks of that creation as something finally complete, as though all growing, developing and maturing has been completed too.
Respected theologians like Brueggemann trace the 'Bibical' emergence of these stories (through linguistic as well as theological analysis) to two distinct periods of Israel's history. Of course they speak to every time and context - but this helps to reflect on their gift and teaching.
The first story (Gen 1.1 - 2.4a) is thought to have emerged in the sixth century BC in Babylon. God's people were in exile. This experience was more than just a social and military disaster. It was a total theological annihilation. 'How shall we sing the Lord's song upon an alien soil?' (Ps 137) Can we imagine God's people struggling in the depths of grief and despair, telling and re-telling what had happened, sifting the fragments for some meaning, to express faith in what felt like a formless void? There is something very contemporary about this crisis. In the midst of all this an old story takes new shape. Who told it first? Perhaps it was sung or chanted.
The translation retains the regular rhythmic pattern it may have once had. It proceeds on an orderly fourfold cycle, day by day & 'God spoke' 'And it was done' 'There was evening and morning' 'It was very good.' There was something therapeutic in its rhythmic cycle; a firm and strong affirmation. It spoke to their longings and hopes. It was a gift for a people in dereliction and despair. The story was not told to explain some distant past. What use was that? It was told to minister to the present - to awaken new faith and to build up hope. As this song of creation unfolds, verse by verse, a new and powerful vision of God and his relationship with his world emerges.
The message is - God has not abandoned them. The people who are feeling their insignificance hear they are still the crown and image of God's creating work. And he continues to create now as he did in the beginning. He makes new out of absolutely nothing. He will bring new order and meaning out of what feels like chaos and destruction. This God can be trusted despite present evidence and the experience of chaos and abandonment.
The second story (Gen 2.4b-3, 4; 11, 1-9) is thought to date from the time of Solomon - the philosophical, theological, scientific, economic and cultural high point of Israel's history. God's people are in a very different place - tempted to be arrogantly full of its own power and achievements. This story stresses our mortal, creaturely origins - from the dust, out of nothing. It warns of the danger of denying God as the source of all life. Something very contemporary in this message too. Dust and glory - and across the spectrum of human living these amazing - stories that speak God's word with amazing relevance.
Posted by: Charles Read
Tuesday 17 February 2009 - 12:35pm
The Hebrew text of Gen. 2:8 has a straightforward past tense (imperfect plus wav consecutive if you must know) - a pluperfect is just about acceptable as a translation (if I recall my Hebrew grammar lessons of yore!) but is not required. Text literally says 'and he planted'.
Posted by: Dayspring
Tuesday 17 February 2009 - 12:31pm
Hello Graham
For me and countless others the answer is clear. Genesis 2 is complimentary to the overview of Genesis 1. There exists no controversy amongst the authors of Scripture and none existed for thousands of years. Why so? Because everyone knew how to read it correctly. Doubtless they had the original text to hand. Errors undoubtedly have crept in with the numerous translations over the years. This argument that Genesis 1 and 2 are contradictory is commonly used amongst atheists to discredit the harmony and infallibility of Scripture. But as far as the Apostles are concerned no such disharmony exists.
Paul writes: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness” 2 Tim. 3:16 And if that is the case then there definitely exists no contradiction else it be said God contradicts Himself. And I’m sure you know 1 Cor. 14:33 “God is not the author of confusion“
“Why not treat God's Word seriously?”
I notice you haven’t responded to the Scriptures in my previous post. How do you reconcile your belief that an amoeba + billions of years = a person with these Scriptures. Remember, take them seriously…
1) Gen 1:26
"Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;..."
2) Luke 3
"Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli.... the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."
3) 1 Corinthians 15:45
"And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being"
4) Romans 5:12-19
"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous."
5) 1 Timothy 2:13
"For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
6) Jude 1:14
"Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints"
B/wishes
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Tuesday 17 February 2009 - 09:39am
Graham
You are right re Genesis 2 in relation to Genesis 1 and the importance of getting Genesis 2:8 correct (even the Evangelical Standard Version does not have the pluperfect).
The whole creationist project falls over when Genesis 2 is read alongside Genesis 1. Two (hi)stories are told. In Genesis 1, humanity is the culmination of the story; in Genesis 2, humanity is the centre of the story. In both God is creator and humanity is the apex of creation. That neither offers a scientific account becomes obvious when one compares the details (plants before man in Genesis 1; man before plants in Genesis 2). That each story contributes to our understanding of theology and anthropology; and both stories stand together to deepen our praise of God is the inheritance we have been blessed with due to the wisdom of our ancestors in the faith.
It would be a pity to give this heritage away for a mess of pottage!
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Tuesday 17 February 2009 - 09:28am
Dayspring, I wonder whether the difference between our approach to the early chapters of Genesis links to perspectives that the Reformers wrote about, namely Special Revelation and General Revelation. I suspect you and I agree on Special Revelation through which God reveals himself through specific times, places and people, supremely, of course, in and through his son Jesus Christ and the giving of the Spirit.
The Bible also points to a God who reveals himself through General Revelation, ‘in nature, in history, and in human existence’, to quote the Calvinist Berkouwer. We see this perspective, for example, in Psalm 19:1: ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork’ and in Romans 1:20: ‘Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made’.
And so I have no problem with a God who works and reveals himself in a general sense through natural processes. This concept of ‘General Revelation’ once more gives the mandate to explore God’s creation and observe what can be observed in the present and in the past and, as several of us have argued on this thread, evolutionary theory fits into this exploration.
And I do not deny that God can create without subjecting what he creates to process and maybe he did that in relation to angels. We have no way of knowing. And yes, he could have created human beings in that way but (and here is the difference) we have evidence to the contrary in geological, anthropological and general biological observation and analysis.
And belief in Jesus’s miracles doesn’t gainsay any of this. Interestingly, he always took what was there (be it a blind man, loaves and fishes, a storm-wracked sea). There don’t seem to have been any clever tricks of working wonders out of nothing. God is a God who uses his own raw material through sudden event and/or process.
You write, ‘If we have sufficient faith to allow that God is able to create these angels without recourse to natural processes which both Scripture and nature seem to agree on, surely God is able to create man without (if one takes a giant leap of faith and assumes evolutionary theory to be correct) having to resort to aeons of time and enormous amounts of death and struggle?’
Perhaps we differ too in our understanding of ‘faith’. I do not see faith, in the biblical sense, as gritting our teeth against the evidence – whether that evidence is theological, psychological, biological, geological or historical. As Graham so clearly argues, we need to acknowledge the disparities between Genesis 1 and 2, bringing our faith to those passages to discern an understanding of the wonders of creation without, at the same time, ignoring the value of General Revelation and what is revealed through scientific enquiry.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Monday 16 February 2009 - 09:52pm
Thanks, 'Dayspring'. You say:
Chapter 2 [of Genesis] talks about God planting a garden toward the East and growing plants there. This doesn't mean that there weren't plants in other parts of the world, it merely means the focus of the story has shifted to man and his situation now.
It seems to me that you are misreading Genesis 2. The whole point about Genesis 2 is that the Lord God is creating something new. It really does not fit the story if you plead that there may already have been plants in other parts of the world...
You are trying to find a way out of the contradiction of the order of creation in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2 and in doing so are going against the thrust of the wonderful story in Genesis 2. Why not treat God's Word seriously?
BTW, the link you gave to a page which tries to explain the contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 uses the NIV translation of Genesis 2:8 (with added emphasis on the word 'had') 'The Lord God had planted ...'
This pluperfect tense 'had planted' is not in the King James Version, RSV, NRSV, NEB, REB etc. It seems to be a NIV translation intelligently designed to avoid the contradiction...What do others think?
Posted by: Dayspring
Monday 16 February 2009 - 07:08pm
Hello Graham
"...it really does help to use your real name on Fulcrum forum threads."
I'd prefer to use my username - apologies if you find it a hindrance.
"It seems to me, as has been mentioned on this thread before, that to force the theological heights of Genesis chapter one into the wrong categories of scientific fact and detailed history leads to unimagined contradictions with the university disciplines of theology, geology, biology, archaeology and anthropology."
Well what you call a "scientific fact" may be "in fact" controversial. As I've mentioned previously there is no shortage of academic scientific data and enquiry to challenge your assumptions. You may be on the side of the majority, but it doesn't follow that makes it irrefutable.
"God’s universe is clearly and evidently more ancient than a few thousand years..."
It may appear "clearly and evidently" that way to you, but there are untold numbers of people from all backgrounds who will be happy to disagree.
"...and his creation of human beings through an evolutionary process does not detract from his glory."
But it does detract from the authority of Scripture:
Gen 1:26
"Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;..."
Luke 3
"Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli.... the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."
1 Corinthians 15:45
"And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being"
Romans 5:12-19
"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous."
1 Timothy 2:13
"For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
Jude 1:14
"Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints"
It seems to me to attempt to fit these Scriptures in with the idea of man evolving from apes is much like attempting to force a square peg into a round hole.
"People who believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis also usually stress that God does not contradict himself in his word. If these two stories of creation, in their literal interpretation, do indeed contradict themselves concerning the order of events, then surely God does not want us to take them literally.
If the editor of the two stories from different authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was relaxed about putting them together, then we should read and ponder both imaginatively and theologically."
You'll find much more information concerning the alleged contradiction here: http://www.creationists.org/genesis1and2.html
There is in fact no contradiction between Genesis 1&2. Genesis 1 is an overview of God creating the Heavens and the Earth and life. In Genesis 2 the author takes a closer look at day 6 in greater detail. Chapter 2 talks about God planting a garden toward the East and growing plants there. This doesn't mean that there weren't plants in other parts of the world, it merely means the focus of the story has shifted to man and his situation now.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Monday 16 February 2009 - 03:25pm
Thanks, Dayspring - it really does help to use your real name on Fulcrum forum threads. See here, point 8.
It seems to me, as has been mentioned on this thread before, that to force the theological heights of Genesis chapter one into the wrong categories of scientific fact and detailed history leads to unimagined contradictions with the university disciplines of theology, geology, biology, archaeology and anthropology.
God’s universe is clearly and evidently more ancient than a few thousand years and his creation of human beings through an evolutionary process does not detract from his glory. Genesis one primarily answers the questions ‘who and why?’ rather than ‘how and when?’ It was God who created - the universe did not just ‘happen’ - and he created for his delight and enjoyment.
It may be worth rereading the second story of creation in Genesis chapter two. It has a different shape, style, vocabulary and name for God (Lord God) as well as a different order of events in which he creates, from Genesis chapter one.
In Genesis two man is made first (v. 7), then plants (vv. 8-9), then animals (v. 19-20) and finally woman (v. 21-22). This contradicts the order in Genesis one, where plants are made first (v. 11-13), then fish, birds and animals (v. 20-25), and finally human beings, both men and women at the same time, (vv. 26-27). These orders are not only different, but also contradictory.
People who believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis also usually stress that God does not contradict himself in his word. If these two stories of creation, in their literal interpretation, do indeed contradict themselves concerning the order of events, then surely God does not want us to take them literally.
If the editor of the two stories from different authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was relaxed about putting them together, then we should read and ponder both imaginatively and theologically.
Posted by: Dayspring
Monday 16 February 2009 - 01:24pm
Hello Roger
“And so, to summarise my argument, ‘all things’ have been created by God. For angels that may have been ex nihilio without an evolving process but we have no way of knowing.”
Given the angels can both possess spiritual and physical properties do you have any idea as to what in nature they could possibly have evolved from? If we have sufficient faith to allow that God is able to create these angels without recourse to natural processes which both Scripture and nature seem to agree on, surely God is able to create man without (if one takes a giant leap of faith and assumes evolutionary theory to be correct) having to resort to aeons of time and enormous amounts of death and struggle?
If one seeks to impose a “natural” process in preference of a supernatural process, despite the clear teachings of Scripture that God is able to create without recourse to natural law, then why should anyone have faith in the Scriptures concerning the miraculous? If a more natural and viable explanation is found then why should we bother with this: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” Romans 10:17? One reason I suspect there are vastly more evolutionist atheists than Christian evolutionists.
For all the visible creation, homo sapiens included, there is the wonder and mystery of process, of change, of development over long stretches of time”
Only if one dispenses with the Scripture and holds on to evolutionary theory instead. But as a former believer in evolution I now have a far greater appreciation of the ability and artistic creativity of our God.
“I wonder whether you heard the service from St John’s College, Cambridge this morning with its focus on Darwin and at which Professor Simon Conway-Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the university and a Christian, preached. He spoke well about the wonder of God’s ‘very good’ creation, its process, mystery, beauty, design and God-given intention. An altogether worshipful service, praising our glorious creator God.”
No Roger I didn’t. May I recommend you see ‘Origins – How The World Came To Be’. Presented by A.E Wilder Smith with contributions from 14 other scientists it’s an award winning series in 6 parts. Arthur Earnest Wilder-Smith is one of a few ever to have earned three doctorates: http://christiananswers.net/creation/people/wilder-smith-ae.html
You can get it here: http://www.christiananswers.net/catalog/or-vs.htm
Here's a good site with some in-depth enquiry: http://www.trueorigin.org/camplist.asp
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Sunday 15 February 2009 - 10:45am
Hello again, Dayspring.
You’ve taken me ‘unawares’ by asking whether angels evolved. Unlike human beings and the natural order, I suspect angelic beings are not susceptible to scientific enquiry – to careful observation, controlled experiments and tests to ascertain their genetic material, DNA and carbon-dating.
The Bible seems clear that these divine messengers were created, but biology, palaeontology and anthropology have to be silent before the mystery of these creaturely beings. As Colossians 1:16 has it: ‘…for in him all things in heaven and earth were created, things visible and invisible…’
And so, to summarise my argument, ‘all things’ have been created by God. For angels that may have been ex nihilio without an evolving process but we have no way of knowing. For all the visible creation, homo sapiens included, there is the wonder and mystery of process, of change, of development over long stretches of time.
I wonder whether you heard the service from St John’s College, Cambridge this morning with its focus on Darwin and at which Professor Simon Conway-Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the university and a Christian, preached. He spoke well about the wonder of God’s ‘very good’ creation, its process, mystery, beauty, design and God-given intention. An altogether worshipful service, praising our glorious creator God.
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 11:08pm
As a person of his day Jesus made the assumptions of his day that turned out, of course, to be wrong. There seems to be an assumption among some, now, that if Jesus thought something to be the case then it must be right. He didn't even get the last days right, and the immediacy of his ministry was based upon that. The Biblical account to which he had access were the wisdom of the day, and he inhabited the same world as everyone else.
Posted by: Dayspring
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 05:33pm
Roger
"Do you allow this to be poetic language ..."
Yes I do. If the Psalmist were not allowed to express himself liberally and symbolically then the use of poetry would be, lets say, extremely limited.
"I cite these examples in order to question your literalism. If truth can be expressed poetically, metaphorically and symbolically (and the clue to this links with our ‘scientific’ observation of what the sun, floods and hills tend to do or not do) then why do you have a problem where scientific enquiry (‘all truth is God’s truth’, once again) fills out and complements the biblical account and nudges us to understand that, for example in the early chapters of Genesis, truth can be figurative and representational?"
But you're assuming all scientific enquiry leads to evolution being true when this is simply not the case. As I mentioned earlier there is mountains of data available which upholds the Scriptures version of events and which challenges evolutionary theory.
As far as Scripture is concerned all references to Adam for instance are not written poetically or symbolically but factually. There is no provision for apes as our ancestors nor for that matter amoebas. In the end one has to decide which has the greater authority - evolutionist science or the word of God and creationist science.
But I'd be interested in your view of angels. Did they evolve?
Posted by: Dayspring
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 04:56pm
Mark
"You seem to be quite free in taking an issue or question and assuming you know how I would answer it."
Not quite clear Mark. Do you have an example?
"Romans 5 tells us that sin entered the world, but doen't explain how the possibility of sin came to be there."
In your initial post on this point you asked:
"You suggest that sin and death enetered a perfect world - if it is perfect where does fault come from - how does perfection beget imperfection?"
In Romans 5:12 the answer is very clear: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men..."
I don't consider the lack of an explanation as to the possiblity of sin to be essential to the discussion. Neither does it invalidate the argument that Paul recognised Adam as the first man by whom sin entered the world after abusing his freewill to disobey God.
But I might well ask the same question. Why does a perfect God allow evolution to evolve a Hitler, Stalin, etc etc.
"On St Paul's different approach to different people I would cite his letters generally, his speech at the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17) and Paul's own testimony in 1 Corinthians 9.19-23. Since Roger would probably not be convinced by an argument which depended essentially on Adam being a definite human being, I reckon Paul would have used some different argument."
Whatever we think of Paul, I think it's safe to assume he would never contradict himself. I'm not aware of any contradictory statements that undermines his teaching concerning our origins. Even in his speech at the Athenians he says: "And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,..." Acts 17:26.
"And the two texts you cite from Matthew and Luke tell us nothing directly of what Jesus thought about Adam - to assert that Jesus believed that Adam was an individual human being etc is quite believeable, and with a bit of work on intepretation and linking texts and ideas it can be made plausible on the basis of scripture. It isn't directly there, though, and depends on the application of an interpretative method or hermeneutic."
Jesus indeed makes no direct reference to Adam so we cannot with 100% certainty claim what Jesus thought of his historicity. But the apostles did. There is no controversy as to the historicity of Adam from any of the New Testament authors or indeed the Old Testament. Therefore I'd say we can be very close to 100% certain Jesus viewed Adam the same way as His apostles especially as Jesus referred to one of Adam's descendants - Noah as a historical person. Iconoclast made some excellent observations in his latest post.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 04:42pm
I hesitate to post to Fulcrum again after recent correspondence with Fulcrum but in the interests of making visible on this thread all the strongest arguments from all sides I submit the following:
As I see it there are two main questions:
1. Is the generally accepted understanding (GAU for short) of the chronology of the fossil record and life on earth true?
2. Does a wholly trustworthy Bible, properly understood, mean that GAU is not true?
By GAU is meant; the things we call fossils are the remains of creatures which lived and died before the appearance of man. And it is certain, from examination of some of those fossils, that the life and death of the creatures of which they are the remains was characterised by disease and some creatures preying on other creatures for food; which predation involved hurt and destruction of the creatures preyed upon.
The strongest challenges faced by those who believe that a wholly trustworthy Bible and GAU are both true are:
1. To provide a convincing exegesis of Genesis 1:28-30, Genesis 9:3, Isaiah 11:6-9. These, taken together, can only mean, as I see it, that animal predation is something that has gone wrong or been made wrong in God’s creation. Such an exegesis needs either to refute this assertion or to give a view on when and why the wrong happened, since it must have happened before the fall of man, and explain how that wrong can be ‘very good’. It is not enough to say that the Isaiah passage is figurative language about the restoration of human relationships, since the whole force of the figure (if the language is figurative) depends on animal predation being wrong.
2. On the assumption that the greek word ktisis (Romans 8:19ff) is correctly understood as sub-human nature (this understanding is disputed, I know), in the Romans passage Paul is saying that sub-human nature has been subjected to vanity and enslaved to corruption. Advocates of GAU and the Bible both being true have to give a view on when, why, by whom and with what if any observable effect that subjection and enslavement took place.
3. Those advocates have to recognise that a consequence of holding that the days in Genesis 1 are not 24 hour periods is that in Exodus 20:8-11 (which Ex 20:1 attributes to God) God is using the word ‘day’ in both a literal and a figurative sense.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 12:27pm
Thank you Mark for your perspectives on this debate and no, I don’t feel you are taking my name in vain since my views are similar to yours.
Dayspring, I rather agree with Pluralist’s implication that you are perhaps seeing the Bible as a text book, in the sense that you take the surface meaning and seem to believe that every statement, observation, proposition and narrative is self-evidently true in the literal sense. You do of course allow for metaphor and simile with regard to Jesus’s declarations about him being the door, etc.
I wonder though where you stand with regard to Psalm 19:4-6 where the sun is described as ‘running its course’ and talks of ‘its circuit’. Do you allow this to be poetic language or would you argue that since the Bible declares that the sun is on the move then (never mind Copernicus and friends) the sun must circle round the earth and not the other way round. And what about all those floods clapping their hands and those hills that sing together for joy, in Psalm 98:8.
I cite these examples in order to question your literalism. If truth can be expressed poetically, metaphorically and symbolically (and the clue to this links with our ‘scientific’ observation of what the sun, floods and hills tend to do or not do) then why do you have a problem where scientific enquiry (‘all truth is God’s truth’, once again) fills out and complements the biblical account and nudges us to understand that, for example in the early chapters of Genesis, truth can be figurative and representational?
Posted by: Iconoclast
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 11:01am
Mark Bennett,
No I don't think you are forgetful. I cannot find any passges in the Gospels when Jesus referred to Adam and Eve directly, but we do read for example, passages where He confirmed many of the accounts in the Old Testament, such as the destruction of Sodom and the of Lot's wife (Luke 17:29, 32), the of Abel by his brother Cain (Luke 11:51), the calling of Moses (Mark 12:26), the manna given in the wilderness (John 6:31-51), the judgment upon Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 1-1:21), and many others.
So it seems to me that Jesus believed the OT was authoratitive and trustworthy and the fact that He referred to Cain and Abel as real people who were contemporaries of Adam and Eve is by implication, evidence to me that He thought Adam and Eve were real people too. There are also of course, many references in the NT epistles where the NT writers refer to Jesus as the Second Adam and so on; and other reference to sin having entered the world though a particular individual called Adam.
But this stiil begs the question as to how do you construct an evolutionary theology that embraces original sin? In this scheme of things, was Adam a real person or not?
Posted by: Mark Bennet
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 10:34am
Dayspring
I said very little about what I myself believed or thought, and raised a number of issues with what you had said. You seem to be quite free in taking an issue or question and assuming you know how I would answer it.
Romans 5 tells us that sin entered the world, but doen't explain how the possibility of sin came to be there.
On St Paul's different approach to different people I would cite his letters generally, his speech at the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17) and Paul's own testimony in 1 Corinthians 9.19-23. Since Roger would probably not be convinced by an argument which depended essentially on Adam being a definite human being, I reckon Paul would have used some different argument - not becuase of what Paul believed, but because of what he discerned would convince Roger (whose name I am rather taking in vain here - substitute mine if you like). Mind you with Roger being a Christian, Paul would quite possibly have directed his evangelisic energy elsewhere.
If God can make descendants of Abraham apart from the natural human process of reproduction, it indicates that the word descendant can be used in scripture to mean something other than direct human lineage, for this is such a use. So when we see the word used elsewhere in scripture we have to take a little care about what it means.
And the two texts you cite from Matthew and Luke tell us nothing directly of what Jesus thought about Adam - to assert that Jesus believed that Adam was an individual human being etc is quite believeable, and with a bit of work on intepretation and linking texts and ideas it can be made plausible on the basis of scripture. It isn't directly there, though, and depends on the application of an interpretative method or hermeneutic.
Posted by: Dayspring
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 09:03am
Mark
"I'm sure your argument convinces you. Just a few points to take into account before jumping to conclusions."
Yes I'm about as sure as I can be, but I think your jumping to conclusions with your assumption about that I arrived at my conviction via "jumping to conclusions"
"You suggest that sin and death enetered a perfect world - if it is perfect where does fault come from - how does perfection beget imperfection?"
Did you miss the text from Romans 5 in my previous post? The first verse reads: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men..."
"Genesis describes creation as 'good' not 'perfect'."
So your understanding is God can create but when He does so it doesn't follow that it is perfect? Matthew 19:17 "So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God." Does Christ mean God is not perfect, after all Jesus didn't say 'perfect' did He?
"Paul is setting forth an argument to people who almost certainly read the story of Adam and Eve as quite literal. Note that Paul would not argue in the same way with Roger as he did with the Romans, but he would press the same conclusion home..."
That's a massive presumption on your part given that there is not one Scripture of Adam that does not present him as a historical figure. If you believe to the contrary, how do you explain:
1 Chronicles 1:1 - "Adam, Seth, Enosh, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth."
1 Timothy 2:13
"For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
Jude 1:14
"Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints"
Again, the authors wish the reader to believe Adam was a historical figure. Any belief in Adam as anything other than historical is contrary to the divine Scripture.
"The language of fatherhood/descendants in scripture is not always literal - there is talk of children of the devil, and of making descendants of Abraham."
As I said before, no one in his right mind Christ was a literal door or gate!? If anyone is in any doubt he has the rest of the Scriptures to affirm that Christ was a living man. Similarly, we know Adam was a historical figure because the rest of the Scriptures speak of Adam in the literal sense.
I'm not sure what you mean about "...making descendants of Abraham" Do you not believe this?
"I wonder whether you could give an account of how God came to create a world in which the possibility of genetic change in creatures to adapt to circumstances, and concomitant theories of evolution, seem so compelling to scientists who dare to investigate the natural world?"
There are many scientists who have dared to investigate the natural world and have rejected evolution. Most scientists have rejected the claims of Christ. Does that make them right?
"...I rather suspect I will be unable to persuade you that this position is possible or consistent."
And I rather doubt I could persuade you otherwise.
"You make a very strong statement that "Jesus seemed to think that Adam and Eve were real people". It would help me if you could cite your evidence for this, since I don't recall a text in which Jesus reveals his view of this matter (but that may just be me being tired and forgetful)."
Matt.24:38
"For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark..."
Luke 3
"Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat...the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,...the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Saturday 14 February 2009 - 02:31am
In as far as it can, some of the science regarding humans before homo sapiens has raised up their level of tool and symbolic manipulation. So it is possible that homo sapiens are not the only language using human species. Explanations about the demise of other human species vary, and are based on evolution: the dead end Neanderthals lacked our flexibility, homo erectus lesser versions. But if this is so, then competition suggests that homo sapiens could have simply killed off the other forms of human when in contact with them.
I wonder when some will get it that the Bible is not a science manual: it was not constructed according to careful observation, neither scientific nor historical, and these categories did not exist in the sense in which they lead to critical principles. Yes there were historians as gatherers of tales and stories and who did what, but I'm talking about historiography in the full sense.
Posted by: Mark Bennet
Friday 13 February 2009 - 08:59pm
Iconoclast
You make a very strong statement that "Jesus seemed to think that Adam and Eve were real people". It would help me if you could cite your evidence for this, since I don't recall a text in which Jesus reveals his view of this matter (but that may just be me being tired and forgetful).
Posted by: liddon
Friday 13 February 2009 - 07:07pm
Iconoclast. The short answer to your question is 'yes'.
Luckily the scholarship needed has been done, so you don't have to invent the wheel.
Posted by: Iconoclast
Friday 13 February 2009 - 06:49pm
I would be interested to know how an evolutionary theology would embrace the biblical concept of original sin: For Christians who believe in evolution, are they the ideas that:-
1. Humans evolved from much simpler organisms over long period of time?
2. Evolution eventually produced -pre-humans?
3 At some point these pre-humans became 'human ' in the moral sense and developed an awareness of God (the imago dei?) or God 'breathing Life' into them perhaps?
4. That Adam and Eve were generic - representing the first true humans and are not meant to be taken as two real individuals?
5. That this group of humans rebelled against God and 'sinned'?
6. From then on, we get human history as is revealed in Genesis?
Now the problem with this, is that Jesus seemed to think that Adam and Eve were real people, that the Garden of Eden a real place and that the Fall a real historical event. So also does the Apostle Paul and the other OT/NT writers. So if we are to accept the evolutionary account of mankind, then serious revision needs to be done to our understanding of the Genesis and NT texts does it not?
Posted by: Mark Bennet
Friday 13 February 2009 - 04:29pm
Dayspring
I'm sure your argument convinces you. Just a few points to take into account before jumping to conclusions.
John 17.17 connects 'word' and 'truth' - both of these are applied to Jesus by John (John 1.1ff, and on the lips of Jesus John 14.6) so it is far from clear that the principal referent of the text you cite is the body of literature we call the Bible (God's word written).
You suggest that sin and death enetered a perfect world - if it is perfect where does fault come from - how does perfection beget imperfection? Genesis describes creation as 'good' not 'perfect'.
Paul's argument in Romans does not become meaningless, nor do the two creation accounts in Genesis - Paul is setting forth an argument to people who almost certainly read the story of Adam and Eve as quite literal. Note that Paul would not argue in the same way with Roger as he did with the Romans, but he would press the same conclusion home - one thing we can say about Paul is that he directs his arguments to his target audience.
Allegorical etc are not words which are equivalent to 'meaningless'. In fact it is hard to imagine language functioning in any meaningfully rich and creative way if there were no metaphor etc. The language of fatherhood/descendants in scripture is not always literal - there is talk of children of the devil, and of making descendants of Abraham.
I wonder whether you could give an account of how God came to create a world in which the possibility of genetic change in creatures to adapt to circumstances, and concomitant theories of evolution, seem so compelling to scientists who dare to investigate the natural world?
I'm with Roger on this, and I don't think that my position does violence to scripture - though I rather suspect I will be unable to persuade you that this position is possible or consistent.
Posted by: Dayspring
Friday 13 February 2009 - 02:45pm
Roger
"Can't you see that 'all truth is God's truth' and that God is not at a tangent to any 'truth'..."
Indeed so. "Your word is truth" John 17:17. So anything contrary to His word is not truth is it. In Luke 3, Luke traces Jesus' genealogy from His earthly 'father' Joseph all the way back to Adam "... the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God." Now, where's the link from Adam to God? There isn't one is there other than the record of Genesis: "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness..." Gen. 1:26
"And so it is completely in accord with the rich revelation of Scripture to see the truth of the early chapters of Genesis as symbolic and representational..."
But it is not "completely in accord" with the rest of Scripture. There is no absolutely no suggestion from Scripture for instance, that Adam is anybody other than a historical figure by whom sin and death entered into a perfect world as we can see from Romans 5:12-19:
"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous."
If then Adam is merely an allegorical figure this passage becomes meaningless and so does the sacrificial death of Jesus for our sin. Moreover any references of Adam's so- called descendants are totally meaningless because they are not historical figures. All genealogies are also found to be unhistorical.
I'm perplexed as to why you think it is so incredible to accept the Genesis record of our origins. You accept by faith the witness of the New Testament to the miracles of Jesus, many of which involve special creation, without any scientific data to support your beliefs, and yet when it comes to the very same witness testifying to events recorded in Genesis you discount it and read it in a way which the authors do not intend. Instead you accept a theory which could easily dispense with God altogether despite the plethora of evidence from Christians which upholds Scripture and challenges evolution: http://www.trueorigin.org/camplist.asp
And what of the angelic realm? Did angels evolve who were made a little higher than men?
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Friday 13 February 2009 - 08:33am
Dayspring, you write, 'If you believe creationism is incredible then it follows you do not believe God can create'.
Do you really hold to that view? Can't you see that 'all truth is God's truth' and that God is not at a tangent to any 'truth', be it theological, physical, psychological, historical, scientific, symbolic or ontological? And so it is completely in accord with the rich revelation of Scripture to see the truth of the early chapters of Genesis as symbolic and representational and to feel perfectly at home with the notion of a Creator God who, wonder of wonders, has set in train this glorious cosmos whose mysteries can be plumbed by scientific enquiry, careful observation and logical theorising. The theory of evolution dovetails beautifully into this call to understand the truth of Creation and its slow, slow unfolding.
Posted by: Deleted user 1543
Friday 13 February 2009 - 08:03am
Father and Son is not to be so lightly dismissed - either as literature or as having worthwhile things to say to us today.
It is a fantastic account of living inside a ferociously constrained system of belief, and how someone escapes that. There is a wonderful scene of young Edmund's attempt to call down the wrath of a vengeful heaven by his worshipping of a chair - "O Chair" - and then waiting to see if he will be struck down. Nothing happens and he begins to doubt what he has been told is the case. I don't think Gosse claims that everyone in that part of the 19C believed in the same way, there is no hiding the fact that his own home circumstances are unusual and more constrained than others.
I think of it as not unlike Oranges are not the only Fruit. There is a real sense of regretful loss at the fading of belief, but also of the necessity of claiming your own life for survival. I never got from Gosse any sense of triumphalist rejection of what his father believed, but a wistfulness at having to reject nonsense which might contain something of value. All very much of its period - rather Dover Beach like.
I would unreservedly recommend people reading it - it is a very fine work of literature. Its setting and sensibilities are, well, over 150 years away from us now, and that means that all his struggles can't be ours. But I think the damage that bad religion can do is still with us and this book charts its consequences. I cannot see that we honour our Creator is refusing to use our rationality, or insisting that it be constrained by a system of interpretation of the Bible that drives us to believe three impossible things before breakfast each day. In fact I think that kind of thing is dangerous. Thank God for Charles Darwin!
Posted by: Michael
Thursday 12 February 2009 - 10:10pm
I cannot recommend Gosse's Father and Son except to see how bitter some sons can be.
It was written to justify himself and is inaccurate on its presentation of science and religion generally, grossly exaggerating conflict.
Yes Phillip Gosse was a literalist who wrote Omphalos (which I assume you have read):. but most Christians were NOT literalsit in 1859 and a good number quickly accepted evolution.
Let's forget this outmoded conflict thesis, and also dismiss the Young Earth Creationists who have a canny knack of distroting everything.
Posted by: Simon Morden
Thursday 12 February 2009 - 07:55pm
Dayspring - I appreciate that there are scientists who are 6-day creationists. I'm sure you'll appreciate that a list of 90 PhDs (of the random selection I clicked on, some of them had honorary doctorates, very few of them any geological training at all, and Morris, the granddaddy of them all, was a hydraulic engineer...) doesn't cut any mustard whatsoever.
I'm sure you'll also appreciate that theologians, from Augustine onwards, never took Genesis to be a literal account - in fact Augustine was rather rude about people who did, urging them to keep quiet lest they bring the Gospel into disrepute.
Also, you realise that bringing a false dichotomy of either 6-day creationism or atheistic evolution is just that - false. Creationism does not uphold scripture unless you take a literalistic interpretation throughout.
Finally, if you believe you can reproduce gravity, there are a couple of thousand people working at CERN who'd like a word.
Like I said, I have no reason to want you to change your mind on this - but to everyone else, 6 day creationism is demonstrably untrue, encourages scientific illiteracy, places an almost insurmountable hurdle in front of what should be a reasonable faith, and makes Christians a laughing stock for all the wrong reasons.
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Thursday 12 February 2009 - 07:08pm
Time to read or re-read Edmund Gosse's classic Father and Son
I rather think....
Posted by: Dayspring
Thursday 12 February 2009 - 05:37pm
Dayspring replying to Simon
Hello Simon
"Daysspring - I have no intention of changing your mind regarding evolution, but I do feel I have to counter your misinformation.
Evolution is a hypothesis that has been examined, tested and reevaluated by scientists for the past 200 years."
It has also been examined, tested and re-evaluated by scientists and found to be false. Here’s over 90 doctors of science:
http://christiananswers.net/creation/people/home.html Undoubtedly, most scientists accept evolution but to claim, as you seem to imply, that all scientists are evolutionists is misleading. Further, scientists who hold to the biblical view have experienced discrimination in the workplace and for many, to go against the tide of popular opinion, will be professional suicide and so are somewhat reticent about expressing their beliefs.
"The hypothesis has remained not just substantially intact despite intense scrutiny, but is accepted as fact since here appears to be no other scientifically valid explanation for complexity of life."
However if we believe the Scriptures and accept them as the inspired word of God then we do not need a scientific explanation of our origins any more than we need a scientific explanation for the miracles of Jesus and the Apostles nor, for that matter, any other miracle. Any hypothesis which can do away with a creator God will always be popular because: "...the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one." 1 John 5:19
"Creationism is a hypothesis that has been discredited by both the scientific community and Christian theologians, two groups of people with a surprising degree of overlap."
Again this is misleading, untold numbers of people believe in the Genesis account of creation and increasingly the scientific community. It is true that Christian theologians accept evolution but they do so against the teachings of the Scriptures. Whether or not it has been "discredited" is irrelevant. Christ was discredited and yet every knee shall bow before Him one day.
"6-day creationism offers no credible challenge to an old Earth and evolution…"
If you believe creationism is incredible then it follows you do not believe God can create. Do you believe in God? (I assume you’re a Christian, correct me if I’m wrong) If so, why do you assume God cannot create the way Genesis describes? Jesus changed water into wine, multiplied food sufficient to feed many thousands of people, resurrected dead people, healed a man born blind and indeed there is not any scientific data to support it, and yet Christians have no difficulty believing in these things.
"…and belief in it is not required to be a Christian."
Indeed so, no one is claiming otherwise. Nevertheless if one believes in evolution he does so against the wishes of the authors of the Holy Bible and also at the expense of faith: "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Romans 10:17 I’d be interested in your interpretation of Romans 5:12-19 and the other Scriptures in my previous post in the context of evolutionary theory, and also the explanation of the existence of angels.
Even so, there are untold numbers of creationists who believe the Genesis record and the apostolic testimony thereto and who also accept the findings of creationists scientists. There is a plethora of information which challenges old Earth and evolution for eg: http://www.trueorigin.org/camplist.asp
"Most Christians recognise that scripture can be inspired without being literally true at every point."
I don’t know any Christian who would disagree with you Simon. We all know the gospel authors do not want us to believe Christ was a literal piece of bread or a door for instance. But there is categorically no provision for an allegorical view of Genesis in either the Old or New Testaments. The authors of ‘ God-breathed’ Scripture intend us the reader to take Genesis as an historic event.
"Understanding scientific principles is not the same as having faith in God, and it would be helpful if you didn't confuse the two."
I don’t think I’ve stated or implied that one must have an understanding of science to have faith in God therefore I am not confusing the two. But if you find the scientific evidence for evolution more convincing than the scientific evidence which challenges evolution and upholds Scripture then you must indeed be careful to keep the two issues separate.
"Calling something a theory does not mean it is unproven. Gravity is a theory, yet it keeps me in my seat whether I believe in it or not."
But gravity can be observed, measured and reproduced at will. Not so with evolution.
Posted by: James
Thursday 12 February 2009 - 02:01pm
Daysspring, I just couldn't let this pass. You said:
...uphold the evolutionary theory than contradictory biblical viewpoint...
and I just wanted to say that as far as general evolutionary theory is concerned, evolutionary theory does not stand in contradiction to the biblical viewpoint. There are ways of course in which the Bible can be read to contradict evolution, and there are ways in which evolutionary theory can be presented or developed so as to contradict the biblical viewpoint, but there are many, many Bible believing Christians who do not have a problem with accepting evolutionary theory.
Posted by: Simon Morden
Thursday 12 February 2009 - 11:13am
Daysspring - I have no intention of changing your mind regarding evolution, but I do feel I have to counter your misinformation.
Evolution is a hypothesis that has been examined, tested and reevaluated by scientists for the past 200 years. The hypothesis has remained not just substantially intact despite intense scrutiny, but is accepted as fact since there appears to be no other scientifically valid explanation for complexity of life.
Creationism is a hypothesis that has been discredited by both the scientific community and Christian theologians, two groups of people with a surprising degree of overlap. 6-day creationism offers no credible challenge to an old Earth and evolution, and belief in it is not required to be a Christian. Most Christians recognise that scripture can be inspired without being literally true at every point.
Understanding scientific principles is not the same as having faith in God, and it would be helpful if you didn't confuse the two. Calling something a theory does not mean it is unproven. Gravity is a theory, yet it keeps me in my seat whether I believe in it or not.
Posted by: Dayspring
Wednesday 11 February 2009 - 12:51pm
Whilst the Theory of Evolution may have millions of adherents, it still nonetheless remains an unproven hypothesis despite being almost universally portrayed in the media as the only rational explanation of our origins. Thankfully, increasing numbers are becoming aware of the scientific evidence which supports the biblical account and I think the internet has made some contribution to public awareness that creationism is a viable alternative. Answers in Genesis, trueorigins and a myriad of others sites doing their part.
I think it's a shame that even Christians rather uphold the evolutionary theory than contradictory biblical viewpoint despite the Prophets and Apostles all viewed the Genesis account as a literal record of our origins. The authors of the New Testament want us to believe Genesis is a historical record:
Matt.24:38
"For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark..."
Luke 3:36
"...the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,..."
Luke 11:51
"...from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation."
Luke 17:27
"They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."
Romans 5:14
"Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses..."
Romans 5:19
"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."
1 Timothy 2:13
"For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
Hebrews 11:3
"By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible"
Hebrews 11:7
"By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith."
1 Peter 3:18-20
"He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water,... "
2 Peter 2:4,5
"For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly..."
Jude 1:14
"Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints"
In the end one has to decide whether to hold fast to the "inspired" word or reject it in favour of a greater authority.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Wednesday 11 February 2009 - 07:23am
An interesting article in The Times today, 'Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin', by Richard Owen, 11 February 2009.
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Tuesday 10 February 2009 - 01:19am
What swipes against Barth? Not from me, not on this subject. I use him as the mirror image of James Martineau, but that's all. I wouldn't be surprised if some remaining old school biblical literalist Unitarians were opposed to Darwin at publication, nor from those of stuffy east coast American Unitarianism - my response describes the English movement away from them. My sources are elsewhere and not Vidler.
This is from a lecture of a Unitarian minister, Charles Beard:
A new element has been introduced into the controversy between old modes of belief and new scientific ideas by the doctrine of evolution, which, first formulated In Darwin's "Origin of Species" twenty four years ago, has so rapidly gained aceptance. The whole cycle of ideas put forward in that celebrated book were presented at first as one of those hypotheses in which the scientific imagination seeks to anticipate the results of minute enquiry, and which investigation may either confirm or modify or reject. But with quite unexampled rapidity the idea of evolution has established itself, not only in biology, but in almost every other department of human thought. What was a few years ago a daring supposition in one branch of investigation, has risen to the dignity of a general method...
Beard, C. (1927, originally 1883), The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge, Hibbert Lectures, London: Constable and Company Ltd, 392.
Posted by: Michael
Sunday 8 February 2009 - 09:36pm
Pluralist wrote ;
A number of Anglicans, particularly Broad Church were positive about Darwin and so were Unitarian ministers; it is correct that such as Essays and Reviews and also the German sourced biblical criticism - Unitarianism moved from its own predominant biblical literalism to a general open and liturgical theism - had a greater impact on theology. However, theology was having a naturalistic turn at that time, engaging with the new subject specialisties alongside theology, and only after the First World War and Nazism did modern theologians start to do christology first and protect it before looking at academic specialities outside theology. All of which is anti-scientific, which should retain open access and not privileging a person or a book. At least some theology is changing again and becoming more open
*******
Be careful you dont follow the myth that only the Broad Church and Unitarians supported evolution. In my paper I gave a brief list of Anglicans., which included evangelicals and tractarians who agreed with Darwin on evolution. Further in the 1860s I cannot find one 6/24 creationist among the Anglicans (or any in Britain) and all those who opposed evolution accepted geology to a man ( I can find no woman!). These covered a broad spectrum from good prot evangelicasl to those fairly broad.
Further some Unitarians opposed Darwin, I forget the name of one british one , but in the USA the evolution-accepting evangelical Asa Gray was opposed by the unitarians at Harvard.
Sadly much church history is very naive about Darwin and the church's reception and even more so of the churches' involvement in geology in the previous century when Anglcan clergy like Sedgwick and many others were in the vanguard of geology.
If you get out your Vidler on the Chruch in the age of Revolution you may wish to correct me, but that book is woeful!
I dont see the relvance of swipes against Barth.
Michael
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Sunday 8 February 2009 - 07:41pm
Yes catastrophes can outpace many creatures, and we assume that has happened on different occasions. But there are also intense environments: islands with shortage of resources, where creatures rapidly become smaller. Adaptability is important, or again to quote Armand Marie Leroi, the ability not just to evolve but have evolvability: thus species have variation and even maintained redundancy that might just be the survivors at a stressful environmental shift.
Anyway, the original point was to contrast this with a religious myth and notions of eternity in the Godhead and all that. My own religious outlook is that of transience and I adopt that because transience has a better fit with something like evolution.
Quoting AML as I have, he has also done work on evolving life forms on other planets, via the modelling that matches evolution, and the creative possibilities are there within whatever form the various environmental constraints.
Cats featured greatly as inhabitors of rotting metal frame skyscrapers should the human species vanish. Eventually they come down.
Posted by: Simon Morden
Sunday 8 February 2009 - 05:21pm
Interesting. Wearing my geology (hard)hat, I'd both agree and disagree about the chaotic nature of evolution.
Certainly, Darwin was influenced by Uniformitarianism, which was the dominant theory in geology, up to the 1950s. Alvarez and Alvarez then proposed the mass extinction event at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary being caused by a meteorite strike on the Yucatan peninsular, and suddenly Catastrophism was on the map.
Catastrophism has the capability to eliminate otherwise well-adapted species from the gene pool (ourselves included...). The dinosaurs, along with other established genuses were eliminated in a tick of the geological clock. Other less well-known but equally important mass extinctions have done for other older species.
In quieter times, evolution can progress gradually. In catastrophic times - no species can evolve fast enough: they either thrive or die, entirely dependent on the bodies they have and whether their behaviours can be fitted to the new conditions.
(Adrian asks "what next?" This isn't such a difficult question as it first appears. If man were removed from the equation and all other factors remained equal, the answer appears to be cats. If most higher forms of life become extinct in another mass event - it's a race between cockroaches and ants. I'd put my money on ants.)
I would point everyone in the direction of Simon Conway Morris and his work on convergent evolution: extremely simplified, it proposes that evolution is guided by physical environments to arrive a limited number of structural solutions. This approach reduces the chaotic effect of random mutations and turns it into something that is predictable. This is why (the theory suggests) we have sharks (fish) and dolphins (mammals) looking startlingly similar: their evolution has been determined by physical factors, and that they would look like that can be predicted taking those factors into consideration.
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Sunday 8 February 2009 - 03:54pm
I see the distinction, though I'm not sure there is such a distinction. I mean, if you take a game of snooker, which is a chaotic system, in that you cannot predict where the balls will be after I think 12 goes despite trying to replicate the first hits. Neverthless, one ball hitting another can be described as the "process" and the table with rules as the system.
Recently the analogy was made - by Armand Marie Leroi that evolution is like the weather. He said it has no predictive power but may be it does in terms of the analogy with weather and climate. The environment and rules imposes contraints on outcomes, rather like the snooker game. And he most definitely likened evolution to a chaotic system. The point about climate, of course, is that it runs on an equilibrium until there is a huge shift and then runs on another. For example a change in the sun's activity can lead the earth to drop into an ice age or a warm period. Some say the effect of human activity is to shift the earth out of its present equilibrium.
So whilst I see the distinction made, that there is a mutation and something happens there, the unpredictability of it all is as a chaotic system and indeed there is no way that you can start with single cell organisms and then end up at the dominance of reptiles, and suddenly then the whole 'climate' be turned inside out and have the dominance of mammals including ourselves. It is not predictable.
If it is, tell us what's next.
Posted by: Chris Baker
Sunday 8 February 2009 - 12:18pm
I fear that Pluralist really doesn’t know what he is talking about when he talks of evolution as a chaotic system, and he seems to use it as a metaphor more than anything else. First of all evolution is not a system in any scientific sense – it is a process. The difference is important. The biosphere is a system for example, in which the process of evolution occurs. A more precise, but still not completely adequate definition of a chaotic system, is a deterministic set of relationships which shows great sensitivity to initial conditions. Even in such systems the final state very often takes on a range of quasi-determinsitic forms as the parameters of the system gather around “attractors” – depictions of which form the beautiful multi-dimensional realisations of chaos that can be found in many sources. Whether the biosphere, acted upon by the evolutionary process, is a chaotic system or not, I am not able to judge, being a humble physical scientist – but even if it were that does not preclude its final state being in some sense deterministic with some sort of final attractor state (say gathered around the existence of intelligent carbon based life forms), and not totally a matter of chance. Pluralist’s perfectly sensible description of evolution that “moves along with a general and even gentle equilibrium of mutations that matter neither here nor there in most cases, but at times of environmental catastrophe or rapid change the small mutations really matter, and development speeds up” describes a process and has nothing to say about the final state of any system which it effects. Certainly it does not lead to the conclusion that. “none of this can be predicted in advance, and there can be no plan”, even if that is the answer that his initial preconceptions wish to arrive at.
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Sunday 8 February 2009 - 03:32am
There is much that Darwin did and could not know that affirms what he discovered. Important, and often overlooked, is that evolution is a chaotic system. That is to say, it moves along with a general and even gentle equilibrium of mutations that matter neither here nor there in most cases, but at times of environmental catastrophe or rapid change the small mutations really matter, and development speeds up. None of this can be predicted in advance, and there can be no plan.
It is thus clear that humans are accidental, indeed we have been of different human species, some at a dead end and some leading to others. Neandethal's were a dead end, but homo erectus were not. But we are accidental thanks to the space given to small mammals when most reptiles could not cope with rapid change.
I cannot understand how people can have a literalist or near literalist account of salvation as a sort of plan of God when evolution undermines any planning at all. Such a God really did light the blue touch paper and retired, or never existed in any sense. The notion of an eternal Son is therefore shown to be the religious myth that it is, in other words made up by our intelligence. In this sense Darwin's view and as developed and religious doctrine are incompatible.
I am pleased that the article you quote properly identifies Emma's religious origins. For all the salvation beliefs at the time, she was a Wedgwood and of solid Unitarian background, and when in the parish church at the creeds she would turn the family around to face the rest of the congregation.
I myself have arrived at a position where I might be described as 'practising Christianity' but would not wish to be known as a Christian. Though I've never made the creeds as a marker I have stopped saying them, and if I can be relatively anonymous at the back of a church I'll stay sat down. I think my decision to stop communicating will become standard, at least in any Church organisation that requires of some members the kinds of promises clergy make.
A number of Anglicans, particularly Broad Church were positive about Darwin and so were Unitarian ministers; it is correct that such as Essays and Reviews and also the German sourced biblical criticism - Unitarianism moved from its own predominant biblical literalism to a general open and liturgical theism - had a greater impact on theology. However, theology was having a naturalistic turn at that time, engaging with the new subject specialisties alongside theology, and only after the First World War and Nazism did modern theologians start to do christology first and protect it before looking at academic specialities outside theology. All of which is anti-scientific, which should retain open access and not privileging a person or a book. At least some theology is changing again and becoming more open.
Among reactionists another and more bizarre development is the growth of anti-scientific satellite TV, pumping out a connected mixture of creationism, prosperity, end time now predictions and pro-Israel packaged nonsense. Money talks, or at least the stupidity of people who send them money on the basis that they'll get more back. To me this is a very ugly side of Christianity, though of course you don't have to reject Christianity in parts in order to be disassociated with this. I just think Darwin was right, and I don't think many a Christian has worked through the implications of Darwin being right - and Darwin did.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Saturday 7 February 2009 - 06:00pm
We have just published on Fulcrum 'Charles Darwin: a Fulcrum Appreciation' by Michael Roberts, who is Vicar of Cockerham, Winmarleigh and Glasson, in the Diocese of Blackburn, and is an authority on Darwin’s geology and author of 'Evangelicals and Science' (Greenwood Press, 2008) and book chapters and papers on science and religion and Darwin’s geology.
Note also:
Nick Spencer, 'Darwin and God' (SPCK, 2009) and his article on it in the current edition of The Church Times, 'The Window that Darwin Opened', 6 February 2009 (subscriber only section till next Friday)
Nick Spencer, 'Rescuing Darwinism', Comment is Free Belief', The Guardian site, 2 February 2009
Nick Spencer and Denis Alexander, 'Rescuing Darwin – God and evolution in Britain today’ (Theos, 2009)
Pat Ashworth, 'Rescue Darwin rows from extreme, says theology think tank', The Church Times, 6 February 2009
Add your comments on the Fulcrum Forum
|
|
Top public schools have put it in their curricula and David Cameron has even set out to measure it, now churches are embarking on a drive to teach happiness to the nation. Telegraph 18 May 2013
18 May 2013
Top public schools have put it in their curricula and David Cameron has even set out to measure it, now churches are embarking on a drive to teach happiness to the nation. Telegraph 18 May 2013
18 May 2013
The Church of England inquiry into alleged child sex abuse by former Dean of Manchester Cathedral Robert Waddington is expected to crossover with the police inquiry into historical sexual abuse at Chetham's School of Music after it has emerged that Waddington was a governor at the school between 1984 and 1993. Independent 14 May 2013
18 May 2013
Daniel's exegetical outline below makes more sense of Ephesians 5:21-23 than anything else I've seen posted here. The proposed rings make obvious intuitive sense, though I am still pondering the question what algorithm, if any, could (dis)confirm these intuitions. The rings lead one to see intimacy ...
Daniel-- I was hoping for new light on kephale, but did not expect it so soon! Your "B" ring lends support to the view of Secret Villager 4976 below who sees St Paul emphasising the unity of head and body in Ephesians 5. And as I myself note below, the coinherence of the members of the pairs {God : ...
I understand what you are saying Dave. On the issue of Bishops having day jobs, and the time constraints on attending debates, I wonder with my admitted lack of experience whether there is not a way in which a better rotation system can be worked. But also a lot of valuable people who are fully trai...
John Martin reviews Andrew Goddard's timely memoire of the Archiepiscopate of Rowan Williams
Andrew Goddard offers a positive assessment of the recent FAOC document
A comment on the most controversial funeral of the century.......
|
