A bit of a strange post for #6 when the following are 3,4 and 5. Not that you would ever do such a thing, but it almost comes off as if you are purposely skipping the context of the conversation to make a jab at my 'beloved WatchTower':
The Bible was never intended to explain how natural processes and events work, whatever desperate efforts some make nowadays to try to show otherwise for reasons of their own.
Of course it mentions obvious things like the stars and moon and the day/night cycle; of course it mentions in a naïve, ancient way natural disasters; but it does not seek to explain them. Its writers had no idea how these things come about, so had no choice but to say "works of God", which is fair if you believe God drives it all; but it does not explain or achieve anything.
Twisting both knowledge based on observation, experiment and test, and an ancient society's religious beliefs, around each other to try to find supposedly mutual corroboration, is pointless and absurd. It is neither scientific nor theological.
Worse, it misunderstands the essential philosophical difference between science and religion while demeaning both; it demeans the intelligence of the original early-Jewish scribes who wrote the Bible, it demeans their more discerning modern followers; and ultimately, it demeans the very deity it is trying to uphold.
So I am guessing that you disagree with my statement that 'although the Bible is not a science text book', 'the Bible is accurate when it touches on science'? I find it interesting that for some reasons of your own, you come off as if that is somehow demeaning to the writers while you appear to basically be saying that the writers that claim to be eye witnesses to some of the events that they wrote about are liars. Something I posted was demeaning to them? You didn't use the word cult so your comment here doesn't come off quite as derogatory as some of your comments in the past. I thank you for that. You use a form of the word demean towards what I posted a few times yet isn't it you who really demeans them? Naive and intelligent?
With verses like the following, I still feel that 'Although the Bible is not a science text book, the Bible is accurate when it touches on science: (Ecclesiastes 1:7) All the streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place from which the streams flow, there they return so as to flow again. (Psalm 104:6) You covered it with deep waters as with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. (Psalm 104:8, 9) —Mountains ascended and valleys descended— To the place you established for them. 9 You set a boundary that they should not pass, That they should never again cover the earth. Don't many scientist now agree that the universe had a beginning? (Gen 1:1)
Those may be obvious things to you but I've had some, for some reasons of their own, argue at one point that there was never enough water to cover all of the mountains and then in the same thread say that the mountains used to be a lot smaller than they are now.
I was not attacking you personally, but I criticise a postion that holds that because something is in the Bible it must be true.
I do NOT attack its authors. I do NOT call them "liars", They were intelligent people who noted significant natural events but could not have explained them as we can now, so essentially said they are God's work. Fair enough. I find that belief easy to accept, partly because it is humble enough not to try to assume non-existent knowledge.
Of course "those things" you quote are obvious to me. I don't need a Hebrew poem to tell me though, because I want to know why and how the streams and the seas are in equilibrium, not merely parrot the Ecclesiastes and so shut down the learning I desire but you denigrate. . That Ecclesiastes verse is right so far as itself - but misses how the water passes from sea to spring, a key point, yes, but because no-one knew how it did. In fact the text implies a sense of mystery, of wonderment. We know how it happens, which doesn't mean you can't believe God didn't make it happen. Accepting the author's genuine ignorance pays him a greater compliment than trying to say he was a pioneering meteorologist. He wrote of what he could see - though he accepted his ignorance, the verse gives me the impression that far from promoting selective ignorance as some would like now, he really would have liked the answer. I think it would have appealed to him theologically too, by its logical beauty. I admire its writer, because he clearly found fascinating a natural process which neither he nor any of his contemporaries could explain, and has the humility to admit that and not to make a wild guess, whilst even more importantly, not trying to deny wanting to seek the answer. Maybe there is a moral there.
Psalm 104:6 is a puzzle, and genuine geologists and geographers have sometimes pondered the Flood myth's origins. We know we cannot ascribe it to Ice Age effects because the main sea-level rise after the Last Glacial Maximum was several millennia before oral- let alone recorded- human history, with some slower rise since. Most likely it referred to very old folk-legends of some massive but purely-regional flood, locally devastating, but no-one has found any convincing support. Some say similar legends occur in other lands and societies, but there is no corroboration to speak of and co-incidence is not correlation; and anyway, over human history devastating floods are not that rare, even if the odd one is serious enough to stand out for many generations relying on colourful oral history.
Saying it happened 'cos the Bible says so won't wash - 'scuse the pun - because that is Square One. There is anyway insufficient water on the planet to cover all but its lower hills; and that's not happened recently enough for human memory even at folk level. So it's a puzzle. It may even have been invented or worked up from legend to impress and frighten the laity.
Pioneering geologists and palaeontologists tended to believe in that flood, but as knowledge increased they realised the Biblical legend was totally out of step with, and unable to explain, what was being observed more and more by close, careful study of God's ground rather than ancient priests' papyri. I think it far more likely that some folk-memory of an unusually severe but regional flood, perhaps in the Tigris/Euprates Marshes or the Nile Delta, was worked up into a colourful story to impress and frighten ditto.
P. 104:8-9 merely says God made the mountains and valleys - obviously, if you believe in God. It does not seek to explain how He made them, or when, or how He took. I have no idea if the writer thought God had made a boundary to stop the Golan Heights from walking away, so Verse 9 is odd. It is difficult to know exactly what that ancient Hebrew really meant, rather than sully the poor chap's sacred memory by foist any meaning-of-convenience of ours onto him. Perhaps, more charitably, he meant that geographical features are permanent - well, yes, from a human perspective and landslips apart, they are. We know they aren't permanent in reality, and that a valley represents a loss of mountain by erosion; and we know how they form over what sort of time spans, but we don't need either invoke or deny a god in it. That permanence is no small point of literature though, because theirs was a shifting, precarious existence in a region beset with sectarian and territorial conflicts; so establish a God-built landscape and events at least acts as an anchor, and does not need scientific validity. Stating the obvious that what you can see is God's work and won't go away, gives at least some comfort.
Gen1;1. Of course the universe had a beginning: the Genesis writer guessed so by simple logic; although obviously he could not have known that some astronomers 3000 years later argued that it is a continuum before accepting the evidence points to the so-called "Big Bang". Though of what, is another matter. To say that a tribal scribe's intelligent guess made in order to forward the religious view that it is God's work, means he was some sort of pioneering astronomer is very wide of the mark and does him a disservice by calling him arrogant. He had no idea so guessed, but sincerely tried to write something logical and sensible in the minds of a largely-illiterate congregation hungry for order somewhere, versus the precious little order in human affairs. (This was what we call the Middle East, after all.....)
That the "day" is out by a little matter of thousands of millions of years is not really relevant because though we know it is, he didn't. For all we know he may have realised God took a little longer than a week to create and populate the cosmos - only how long was something he could not have imagined. He needed a metaphor and a week was a handy one when genuinely, no-one knew better. I admire the unknown originator of that story, but only as far as the Adam myth and its unsettling implications; because up to that point it shows someone thought about it. Just as the scientists who calculated the age of the Universe, or the geologists who calculated the dates of significant parts of the Earth's history, thought about it. That scribe was NOT a scientist but he made an inspired guess instead of the intellectual mistake of merely relying on ancient, colourful myths prevalent in early human and recent, aboriginal religions. I do not admire the rejection of scientific yearning and learning merely because they show an ancient Hebrew scribe perhaps with the yearning, genuinely lacked the learning.
Your remark about people wanting to understand Nature for "some reason of their own" reads as a veiled intellectual and philosophical threat, and certainly a sneer. I'm not sure what you mean about the mountains' sizes. You know as well as I that the summits and shapes we see now are the products of the removal of vast amounts of rock by erosion of much larger massifs, but the massifs had to come from somewhere, and did so by tectonic uplift. So in a sense they are right, but that uplift and erosion take millions of years, so what we see now is not really much different from what the Ancient Hebrews saw less than 3000 years ago, or the early hominids saw 30 000 years ago. I think you've highlighted the difficulty of trying to fit physical nature as we know it, to an old society's theology, rather than simply accept the same God and respect the reliogion's founders, whilst embracing in parallel but fully, the How and When of His works.
Yes, believe in God running nature by all means. That's a purely personal choice in a free society, just as is choosing apostacy or conversion. Never though, fall into the trap some have, of abusing Judaeo-Christianity and its guide-book by using them to crush learning. Doing so is self-limiting. Worse, it echoes the spirit of the Holy Inquisition's desperation to preserve the ironically-pagan Aristotelian Geocentricity, and scriptural literalism, against the advancing face of the new Sciences.
Sciences that, assuming a belief in God, show ever more the full majesty of His works. Literalism denying that learning, thus denies that majesty, which is why I say it demeans God- I may not believe in Him but I try to put myself in the believer's mind to analyse belief itself.
Not Devil's but God's, Advocate?
This post was edited by Durdle at January 5, 2018 12:23 AM MST
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