What do we really know, how do we know it, and what does it all mean anyway?
1. Evaluating New Ideas
One of my favorite books when I was in college was Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Before reading it I’d always assumed that the acquisition of human knowledge was a linear process. Person A discovers X. Everyone around him marvels at the discovery, and uses it as a foundation to take us to the next level of discovery. It’s how gunpowder is turned into a Chinese rocket, a Chinese rocket into an ICBM, and an ICBM into a Saturn V rocket to put a man on the moon.
It’s a great way to visualize the truth about any matter, whether the subject is natural science or man-made social policy. (Taxation without representation leads to revolution, revolution to a constitution, a constitution to the hallowed protection of individual liberties). Unfortunately, as I learned from Kuhn, there was one tiny little issue that constantly got in the way of this visualization; namely, the idea of a straight-line progression of knowledge (or policy) was a complete and utter crock. The way the world really works is quite different.
Let’s stick to science for the moment to see the example most clearly. Person A discovers X. X is good enough to lay some claim to reality — that is, at least on the surface, it seems to make sense. So, for example, every time it rains tiny little bugs emerge from the now muddy soil. They appear suddenly and mysteriously, giving rise to the belief in spontaneous generation.
Person A then proceeds to build his/her entire career around enhancing our understanding of spontaneous generation. Where evidence exists to the contrary (it rains, but no bugs appear), the conclusions are explained away rather than factored into a new explanation. This paradigm lasts for a few years, decades, or even centuries until some person comes along with a different theory. He says there are microscopic eggs embedded in the soil invisible to the human eye. Where these eggs exist, they lie dormant until the life-giving rain brings them out of stasis. The cells divide, develop into multi-celled individuals, and viola! Tiny little bugs “magically appear.”
This thinking is rejected, of course, by the current Keepers of the Faith. Yes, this new fangled microscope-invention thing appears to show infinitesimally-small cells multiplying and expanding, but there’s always some reason or another to reject the leap of faith that these cells have anything to do with the mini-bugs that later spontaneously appear. So ignore what your lying eyes tell you, and continue to believe that mud and rain, in and of themselves, give rise to life. It’s the only thing that makes any real sense; and besides, if everyone was to believe what the new guy says, you’d be out of a job. Who needs an old guy who got it wrong when there’s a new guy in town who got it right? It’s the same kind of job security Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton constantly seek by focusing on the latest Don Imus-outrage to continue justifying their existence, while ignoring even greater outrages that diverge from their white-guys-are-racists template.
And so, rather than a continuing search for truth, whether it’s for the social or natural sciences, whenever someone’s pet ideas are questioned the battle begins over what constitutes a “fact,” let alone acceptable evidence, to challenge an existing theory. If the challenges are absurd (man didn’t really land on the moon because space flight is impossible, or only white people of European descent are the true guardians of all that is holy), the challenges never rise past the outer fringes of society. Today, thanks to the Internet, we have easier access to nuts of every scientific and political persuasion, but access doesn’t bestow credibility. The ideas either persuade others because they embody a truth that cannot be denied, or the authors just create a new website and continue the conversation among themselves.
However, if the questions have validity, a different trend emerges. Over time they gain converts – thoughtful converts, not people looking for an easy way to justify their own beliefs regardless of the inconsistency or inherent stupidity of their thoughts. As they are accepted, these ideas become the new paradigm for evaluating the world. Then, just as the world settles down and finally understands what is what, another new guy appears on the scene and says “you still haven’t got it right — there are missing elements that need to be factored in, or different conclusions to be drawn from the same body of evidence,” and the whole thing starts all over again.
2. Darwin vs. The Bible
I was reminded of all of this while I was watching a program the other day on The Discovery Channel about the theory of evolution. It was fairer than most, in that it didn’t portray religious fundamentalists who doubt Darwin as a bunch of raving lunatics, which I guess we can count as some sign of “progress” in this debate. However, the program made it pretty clear that Darwin’s theory was the default-correct position, and every other “creation-myth” like the story of Genesis was just that; a myth.
Now personally, all this puts me in a bit of a difficult position. As much as I dislike the kind of science that intuitively dismisses the notion that God had anything to do with the creation of the universe, I also do not believe in the literal, Biblical view of creation. That doesn’t mean that I do not believe in God, or reject the notion that God created the universe. It simply means that a belief in God is not the same thing as a belief in Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Yahweh, or any other anthropomorphized notion of The Creator of The Universe. The fact that Religion A may have gotten some (or all) of the details about God wrong doesn’t disprove the existence of God anymore than believing that lightning comes from Zeus’s fingertips tells us anything of real value about lightning. Men are by definition fallible, and will therefore make mistakes in their reasoning and judgment. The fact that they got some details wrong speaks volumes about man, but tells us absolutely nothing about the true nature of the object under study. It is what it is regardless of how well we recognize or understand it.
So, comparing the beliefs put forward by science with those put forward by specific religion(s) is not the same thing as pitting science against God. Because of this, I have absolutely no problem presenting Creationism as a theory to compete with other theories about the subject. Knowledge is not advanced by suppressing beliefs, but rather by subjecting them to scrutiny. If Creationists want to have their faith evaluated as a scientific fact, then that’s fine by me. Compare and contrast their evidence with that of Darwin and his successors, and see who’s left standing.
On the other hand, if the Biblical story of creation is more properly viewed as a matter of faith, not science — which I think is the way most fundamentalists would categorize their beliefs — then the laws of science have nothing to do with validating or debunking it. Whatever judgment science makes about the Earth being created according to the Book of Genesis is irrelevant, since the scientific method is not the standard by which the Bible is evaluated. But this also means that the concept of Creationism has no business being taught in a science classroom since a literal belief in the Book of Genesis is a matter of faith, not science.
The Bible, and Darwin, ask and answer entirely different questions. The Bible teaches us philosophically how to think about things, and in so doing, orient ourselves within the universe. This in turn teaches us how to act in relation to our surroundings, how to interact with our fellow man, and most importantly, how to recognize God and honor Him appropriately.
Darwin, on the other hand, doesn’t address the question of why we exist, but rather how we might have been created. Explaining why natural selection operates as Darwin suggests doesn’t answer the philosophical or metaphysical questions of life — who created us, what is our purpose on Earth, etc.? Rather, it only addresses the mechanics of life — what natural processes were involved in how a species changed and adapted over the passage of time?
The Bible and Darwin are two sides of the same coin, related but quite different in what they set out to do, and how they do it.
3. The Big Question
Now some might be tempted at this point to leave the discussion with a platitude about neither side having a monopoly on the truth, or some other such empty observation. Rather, I propose an alternative way of looking at the difference between science and religion. It isn’t simply that science deals with facts and religion with faith. Religion gets it wrong when it tries to answer questions that it isn’t designed to address through the wisdom contained in its Holy Scriptures. But equally important, science sometimes gets it wrong when it tries to answer the very questions it is supposed to address through the scientific method. Neither religion in and of itself, nor science when it is properly focused, tell us everything we need to know; or tells us what we need to know correctly at all times.
And when science and religion attempt to interject themselves into the making of public policy, all hell (literally and metaphorically) breaks loose. Consider all the phony, agenda-driven science behind the man-made global warming scare. We’re supposed to ignore the natural cycles of the Earth and sun and conclude that man — or more specifically, American men — are uniquely and singularly responsible for warming the planet by [insert preferred temperature rise here]. I’ll spare you all any further elaborations on this point, since I’ve already written extensively about this subject, but for anyone who wants to wade through it again, have a look at "An even more Inconvenient Truth: The Myth of Man-Made Global Warming."
As for religion, take the example of prayer in public schools. Its proponents took key provisions of the Declaration of Independence and substituted their own religious preferences for “God” so that paying homage to Jesus, not following a God-given moral code, became the focus of their efforts. Because of this approach, moral Relativists were able to seize the debate and frame their core issues in a deceitful way. Since Religion A claims to speak for God, and the Constitution forbids the state to establish an official religion, then both Religion A and the God it speaks for must be completely removed from the secular world. This logic prevailed because the Constitution is not the Declaration of Independence, and drawing inspiration and support from God is not the same thing as making laws that reflect God’s rules as expressed by a particular religion. It didn’t matter if what Christians believed perfectly matched 95% of the beliefs of every other religion. The Constitution, though inspired by God-given rights, was still man’s law. And man’s law did not permit the establishment of an official state religion.
By hijacking God and linking Him to a battle to promote their values, not only did the Christian community lose their fight, it allowed the notion of “God” – the basis for their claim – to be wiped out with it. This then led to an even more determined fight to infuse “politics with religion.” Relativists became even more relative to prevent their opponent’s success, and as the Relativists carried the fight to its relativistic extreme, atrocities like abortion on demand became the law of the land. Man-made rights, not a God-given moral code, became the basis upon which political truth was determined.
Moreover, by driving a wedge between politics and religion, it also allowed science to distance itself from the notion of God. As we came to understand how X was created through natural processes that are part of the universe God created, that somehow supposedly disproved the existence of God. If man can understand it, the logic went, then there’s no role for a mysterious Supreme Being to account for the action. This, of course, is utter nonsense. The fact that I know that bugs come from microscopic eggs instead of spontaneously generate simply makes me wiser. It doesn’t disprove the existence of God because I finally understand how something works. If knowledge, in and of itself, was all that mattered, then my knowledge of how a car actually works would somehow disprove the existence of General Motors.
To those who are focused on the details of how we got here in the first place more than what we are supposed to do after getting here, when all is said and done, does it really make any difference whether you, personally, can figure out how God did something? My two-year-old niece can’t understand Newtonian physics. That doesn’t mean Newton never existed, or that the Earth, Venus, Mars and other planets don’t orbit the Sun according to his calculations.
To those who are focused on the details of what we are supposed to do after getting here more than how we got here in the first place, does it really matter if man started out as a single-celled creature, evolved to a point where he was given a soul and became human, or whether the story of Genesis is literally correct? Neither explanation, in and of itself, can stand up to intense scrutiny, because each has major gaps or holes in the logic and evidence of its story.
But assuming for the moment that the story of Creation serves more to illustrate a moral or philosophical point and not simply to recount an actual historical fact, I ask you to consider the following. Even if you continue to believe that the Bible’s stories are literally true, they will still be metaphors on some level. The historical information the Bible contains is supposed to do more than simply provide data for social scientists to analyze earlier cultures. The Bible’s purpose is to illustrate basic moral principles, which is what viewing it as a metaphor will do. As such, religious, God-fearing people have no reason to automatically dismiss scientific explanations because they appear to conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible. That God may have done something in an infinitely-more complicated way than we previously thought doesn’t diminish our belief in a Supreme Being. Rather, it embellishes it in ways that are even more magnificent than we previously understood.
4. The Science of Religion
Which again brings us back to Darwin. People who use Darwinian notions of evolution to allegedly disprove the existence of God are as misguided as those who maintain that they, and only they (via their religion), know how God is capable of doing something, and it’s that way or no way at all. The notion of evolution has become so politicized as a debate between “religion and science” that we’ve failed to take note of another equally important fact. It’s called the “Theory of Evolution” rather than the “Fact of Evolution” because Darwin, too, got it wrong in certain cases.
This point seems to be lost on many contemporary scientists who have adopted the Darwin-default correct position. They dismiss any questions about Darwinian theory (particularly as it relates to higher level organisms) as a simple Bible-inspired scientific fallacy. But if the last 100-plus years have shown us anything, it’s that what Darwin said in 1859 isn’t exactly true. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Darwin is completely and utterly wrong, but rather that if you accepted what Darwin said in 1859 as “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” you’d be wrong. And therein lies the rub.
Just as people were getting comfortable with the way things worked as described in The Origin of the Species, along comes some guy like Stephen J. Gould who talks about “punctuated equilibrium,” which says that most species that reproduce sexually will manifest little visible change throughout most of their evolutionary history. So, we should all now believe Gould’s view of evolution, except for the fact that his theories are also under attack. Some of these attacks are more fine-tuning in nature, but others go to the very core of what Gould proposed.
Which means what? There is no difference between science and faith? Hardly. It means that science is not faith, and faith is not science. Each needs to be evaluated on its own terms, for exactly what it proposes.
Faith gives focus and meaning to our lives, but fails dramatically when it tries to become indistinguishable from science — the Earth is only 6,000 years old, fossil evidence be damned! Science tells us how things behave or come about, but errs equally when it tries to assert why — man’s appearance on the Earth is random because man can’t fully explain it otherwise, therefore there is no God! And when you apply faith or science to political and social matters, things get completely screwed up. We either end up mandating one faith for everyone, or denying the existence of God all together as the debate over prayer in public schools more than aptly demonstrates.
While science may be better at assessing facts and understanding processes than faith, it isn’t infallible. And while faith may be better than science at understanding why we exist and what we’re supposed to do with the life we’ve been given, faith by its very nature is also a matter of personal belief; and personal beliefs cannot be imposed on others. Faith must be embraced, not legislated, to have any real value to an individual.
5. So Where Does This Get Us?
There is no one, single scientific truth that will always be correct, because what we “know” today to be true may be stood on its head tomorrow by additional scientific evidence.
One doesn’t have to go back centuries to when man believed that the Earth was the center of the universe to see the validity of this statement. In the span of my lifetime alone we’ve gone from supposedly predictable laws of nature to a random quantum universe; from an expanding universe to a contracting or stable one (depending upon how much dark matter actually exists); from a big bang beginning to a four-dimensional universe to a membrane-driven universe with eleven dimensions of reality. Sixty years ago man was convinced that the speed of sound was the ultimate barrier to flight; today Mach 1 is equivalent to a lazy drive on a Sunday afternoon. Thirty years ago we “knew” we were all about to freeze; today we “know” we’re going to raise the Earth’s temperature from 1-9 degrees, in 30-100 years, depending upon which Al Gore-inspired histrionics are utilized that day.
Therefore, the immutable, unchanging answers science provides will always be incomplete. Science may guide us and even answer some of our questions. But the questions it answers are pedestrian, not philosophical. And the answers it gives are always subject to revision and change as new information becomes available, or old information is re-analyzed. What we know as a “scientific fact” today may be as ridiculous tomorrow as the knowledge of spontaneous generation was a few short centuries ago.
As for religion, Galileo’s discovery of the moons of Jupiter in 1610 proved that the Earth was not the only celestial body with satellites orbiting it, and therefore called into doubt the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe. The only challenge this presented to a belief in God, or an embrace of Christianity, was to those who demanded that God create the Earth as the center of the universe. He didn’t, and the only conclusion we can safely draw from this fact is that those who thought otherwise were mistaken. Moons orbiting Jupiter tell us nothing about the Christian faith, but they do tell us a lot about those who have a vested interest in one — and only one — expression of that faith.
An appreciation of science is not incompatible with a belief in God, unless one’s own personal prejudices demand this to be the case. And, a belief in God does not require one to reject all science that appears to conflict with our understanding of Scripture, unless one’s own personal prejudices demand this to be the case. And when either science or religion is used as a weapon to suppress the free exchange of political thought, we end up with equally unsatisfying results. A belief in God becomes a belief in Jesus and Jesus alone, and policies are made accordingly. Or, a belief in science ends up as an insistence that what cannot be measured or observed does not exist. This is fine for assessing the temperature at which water boils, but there are a lot of things in life that we know exist that cannot be directly observed or measured. If you doubt me, just tell your spouse or child that you don’t love them because love isn’t a precise scientific measurement, and therefore cannot exist.
And then be prepared to spend a lot of long, lonely nights separated from your family, who won’t appreciate the need for science to control every aspect of our lives, any more than one religion has a complete monopoly on knowledge about who God is and what He expects from all of us.
Another fine and thought-provoking article, Phil. However, as I wrote in my article on this subject (The Paradox of Secular Scientism) on americanthinker.com, I reject the idea that science and faith are and should be independant disciplines. In fact, as Rodney Stark pointed out in the Victory of Reason, modern science was begun by Christian scholars in the Middle Ages as an attempt to understand and explain God’s creation. And history’s most accomplished men of science were devout Christians: Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, etc.
Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive; they are two sides of the same coin.
Jeff:
I agree with you on an abstract level. Unfortunately, as I see it, the practice of science and religion today (all religions, not just Christianity) does not lend itself easily to this description.
I actually think in the long run science has a better shot at incorporating God into its calculations as “that which started it all”, than fundamentalists (of all religions) have of reconciling their faith with science. I listened to a 3 hour show the other day with Christopher Hitchens discussing his new book “God is not Great”. It was pretty clear to me after a few minutes that he was arguing against taking a literal view of religious beliefs, not against the existence of God. Hitchens says he is an atheist, but he doesn’t talk about the existence of God when giving examples to support his beliefs — only about what particular religions believe.
By contrast, living most of my adult life in the South with many fundamentalist friends, I’ve seen a great reluctance to accept the Bible as anything other than literal truth. I can understand this emphasis on literalism when discussing philosophical precepts (i.e. the 10 commandments mean X; and X is non negotiable), but have difficulty understanding why the Bible must be seen as a scientific document too (i.e. the Earth is 6000 years old; man and dinosaurs co-existed, etc.). When you move away from Christianity and Judaism to Islam, for example, it’s 100 times more than this, to the point of using the Koran to justify extremely cruel policies.
None of what I’ve written is meant to disparage anyone’s beliefs (except for the Islamo-fascists, who are just plain evil). The purpose was to address how religion and science intertwine in the world today, and point out the strength and weaknesses of each approach with regard to the types of questions they ask.
Take care, Phil
Hi Phil,
Good article. You’re not so bad afterall…. :)
I think science has the ability to rule out certain things which can be tested against evidence, but religion may suffer from an inability to do this. One religion may condone a certain thing and another reject it. I don’t see anything from which to measure what is right and wrong in religious beliefs except for God himself… and no one can read the mind of God.
Just my 2-cents.
Cheers,
william
William — ah, but the mind of God can be read, and quite clearly, on the subject of “right and wrong”, through the presence of a universal moral code instilled in all of us at the moment of conception. Have a look at my article in the archives “What kind of car would Jesus Drive to take his Girlfriend to an Abortion Clinic?” I illustrate through this that Islamo fascist notions of right and wrong are objectively wrong, and we can also make non-relativistic judgments about right and wrong on such subjects as the deliberate harming of an innocent human life (i.e. elective abortion).
Take care, Phil
Phil,
I can’t think of anything I’ve read in support of Darwinism that argued that Darwin “disproved” the existence of God. I can think of plenty of Darwinist arguments that claim to disprove the account of our beginning given in Genesis. But that’s not the same thing.
Most people who doubt the existence of God, be they Darwinists or not, are skeptical because they think that the burden of proof should be on the faithful to prove God exists–not on the unfaithful to prove otherwise, which would obviously be impossible. (How does one prove that unicorns don’t exist? A believer can always respond, “You just haven’t found one yet.”) There being no firm evidence of God’s existence, it seems reasonable to be a religious skeptic. At the very least, it is as reasonable to ask a religious person why he believes as it is to ask an atheist why he does not.
The fact that science has in the past been wrong about what we “know” shows nothing except that people who rely on evidence can admit that they were wrong when facts don’t vindicate their ideas. Religion is rarely put in this postion, because evidence is largely irrelevant to faith. Thus, the scientific objection to creationism: It cannot, unlike normal scientific hypothesis, even theoretically be undermined by evidence against it. It rejects evidence as a standard. It assumes itself to be true, and invents possibilities to support it that can never be disproven. Which by itself doesn’t mean it cannot possibly be true, but does mean that it cannot possibly be science.
Katzen: I didn’t mean to suggest that Darwin was an atheist — only that atheists routinely invoke Darwin to support their position. They do this by confusing that which cannot be directly known or observed with that which does not exist. The two are not always synonymous.
As for proving the existence of God, again I think this is a false debate raised by certain segments of the scientific community. “Something” started it all (and created the laws of nature under which the universe operates), and that something is by definition God. It’s only when religion assigns specific qualities and attributes to God to anthropomorphize Him that the conflict with science and religion begins to emerge. This is where I think the Bible literalists play into the hands of the atheists/relativists. All one needs to do is cast doubt on one literal interpretation of the Bible to then, by implication, cast doubt on the Bible as a whole.
If the Bible is instead seen as a metaphor for teaching us about how to live our lives rather than a competing science textbook, then such doubts cannot be raised. In effect, let science answer the “how” questions, and religion the “why”. The two then compliment one another, instead of set themselves up as competing views of reality.
Take care, Phil
Phil,
Thanks for your response. To say that “something” started it all seems intuitively necessary. We cannot conceive of something with no beginning. But I don’t see how the idea of God offers an answer to this. How did God come into existence? What was His beginning? Why should it make any more sense to think of God, rather than the universe itself, as having no beginning?
I can’t say I find the metaphorical view of the Bible very plausible. It’s not written like a metaphor. It’s written like a recitation of historical events. No one would ever think to call it a metaphor if were not proven to be false. For instance, Genesis says that man appeared five days after light originated. In light of the evidence, the natural thing to do would be to say that Genesis is wrong. You have to go out your way to avoid that conclusion. Put another way, would it be possible to convince you that Genesis says something that is flat out false? Or would you always be able to say that Genesis is always true, just not always “literally.”
I mentioned before on this site another example. Numbers 15:32-36 have God commanding us to kill those who do work on the Sabbath. Is this a metaphor for something good, or is it just evil?
I’ve come to think at this point in my life that to say, “The Bible is fine, if taken as a metaphor” is an illegitimate escape. People can say that any horrible, evil rule is simply a “metaphor” for something good. Anything is fine, if taken as a metaphor for what you already know is right. But no one says that the commandment “Thou shalt not murder” is a metaphor. The metaphor argument appears only when we read something one doesn’t like.
You might be right, as you’ve written elsewhere, that people are born with the moral code. If so, what do we need the Bible for? Why do we need it to “teach us about how to live our lives?” Why should anyone care what some book that advocates stoning people for being industrious on the wrong day says?
Katzen — to your points
“How did God come into existence? What was His beginning? Why should it make any more sense to think of God, rather than the universe itself, as having no beginning?”
** God, by definition, always existed (which is what makes God God). We run into problems conceptualizing God when we assign Him human characteristics. God is what God is, regardless of what we believe or understand about Him. I contrast this with the view that God doesn’t exist (which usually means “I think one religion’s concept of God is incorrect”). Taken literally, however, believing there is no God (i.e no Creator of the Universe) means that the Universe just magically appeared, which is the most illogical position of all. That which created everything is the Creator (God).
“I can’t say I find the metaphorical view of the Bible very plausible. It’s not written like a metaphor. It’s written like a recitation of historical events. No one would ever think to call it a metaphor if were not proven to be false. For instance, Genesis says that man appeared five days after light originated. In light of the evidence, the natural thing to do would be to say that Genesis is wrong. “
*** I say metaphor in that the “facts” of the Bible (i.e “five days”) are often metaphors/symbols themselves. A day is 24 hours, as measured by the Earth’s rotation in relation to the sun, but the sun doesn’t appear in Genesis until day 3. Therefore, Genesis isn’t a scientific account of creation, but a symbolic one that denotes a sequence, order, and supreme logic to the creation of the universe. It reaffirms that the universe was created by intelligent design, not by random accident. It’s the same thing with the story of Noah’s ark. By this I mean, if your focus is primarily on finding the actual remnants of Noah’s Ark to prove it was a historic fact, rather than trying to understand what the message the Noah’s Ark story is attempting to convey (obey God’s laws even if everyone else disagrees with them), you risk missing the broader picture. Thus, for me, the question isn’t how much of the world was actually inundated with water; which day the rain started and stopped; or how did all those animals really get onto the ark? Even if I answer every one of these questions to my complete and utter satisfaction, it doesn’t tell me everything I need to know. There’s still the question of how do we live our lives in relation to ourselves, our family, our friends, our community, the rest of the world, and to God — who gives us all the moral basis for making these decisions
“Put another way, would it be possible to convince you that Genesis says something that is flat out false? Or would you always be able to say that Genesis is always true, just not always ‘literally’.”
*** Genesis is “false” as a scientific explanation of the creation of the universe. But, since it isn’t meant to be a scientific treatise, this point is irrelevant. You can’t condemn something for not being something it was never intended to be. Genesis was meant to convey a religious precept. Religious precepts are not scientific judgments. They are symbolic guideposts that answer metaphysical questions (why are we here? What is our duty to ourselves, to others and to God? Etc.) Therefore, we don’t look at Genesis for scientific truth, but for insight and understanding (which involve personal, faith based judgments, not cut-and-dry science-based analytical observations).
“I mentioned before on this site another example. Numbers 15:32-36 have God commanding us to kill those who do work on the Sabbath. Is this a metaphor for something good, or is it just evil?”
*** You are first assuming that “kill” has been translated accurately, and in a compatible cultural context. The commandment “thou shall not kill” has also been translated “though shall not murder”, which is a related but radically different concept from simply outlawing all “killing”. I’m willing to bet that a similar counter-translation can be found for this passage. Then, once you get the words accurate, you still have to deal with their cultural context. Calling someone “gay” in 1880 is not the same as calling them gay in 1980, even though it’s the same exact word. In this regard, I’m always suspicious about an English translation of a Hebrew/Greek passage, translated a millennium after it was written, being taken on face value (i.e. literally). Therefore, I’m inclined to interpret this passage for its symbolic, rather than literal meaning.
“But no one says that the commandment ‘Thou shalt not murder’ is a metaphor. The metaphor argument appears only when we read something one doesn’t like.
*** Again, some translate this as “kill”, not “murder”. And in any case, it lacks the context I mentioned above to be taken literally. Therefore, if the Bible is to have any real meaning, it must be to guide/teach through symbolism, parables, metaphors, etc.; not as a literal story of history or science.
“You might be right, as you’ve written elsewhere, that people are born with the moral code. If so, what do we need the Bible for? Why do we need it to ‘teach us about how to live our lives?’ Why should anyone care what some book that advocates stoning people for being industrious on the wrong day says?”
*** The Bible has great value, in that it can help us connect-the-dots so as to put flesh on the meaning of the universal moral code “it is wrong to deliberately harm an innocent human life”. Some people need its guidance to understand how to act in given situations so as to act morally. The 10 Commandments give such guidance, as do the parables in the Bible. Others look to the Bible to help answer larger questions about the meaning of life (as the story of Genesis illustrates symbolically). Any book written that is compatible with the principles embraced in the universal moral code will be of value, and to many people the Bible is the most compatible book of all — thus it’s value as a teaching and/or reinforcing tool to live a proper life.
Good discussion. Phil
Katzen: you can’t say you find the metaphorical view of the Bible very plausible? It is a bit humorous that you are taking the time to humor us.
One who does not believe in flying saucers flown by little green men ought to get to his point rather than stopping short at the plausibility of whether little men can be green.
You are taking a scientific view of the Bible whenever you read it with your head rather than your heart. It’s a temptation hard to resist for some, as Mr. Jackson is trying to point out. Those who cannot resist never seem to realize that they are dressed in a football uniform and standing on a pitcher’s mound.
Faith and science are two different games, though it could be argued one is more about winning while the other is more focused on how you play the game.
This is a really good piece of writing, and exactly the type of respectful, thoughtful, questioning and enlightened discourse that this site sometimes lacks. Thank you.
Mr. Adams,
I’m not trying to be pedantic or obtuse about the Bible, nor am I playing football on a baseball field. I’m simply posing one question about the Bible: Is what it says true? Mr. Jackson and I seem to be in agreement that the Bible is not literally true. He suggested that it might be metaphorically true, and I was simply responding to him. I’ll accept mockery of my ugly sentence (“I can’t say I find the metaphorical view of the Bible very plausible” probably violates every rule of good writing), but I don’t get your analogy about UFO’s and ETs.
I take your point about reading with your heart, rather than your head. What does your heart tell you when you come to the passage about stoning Sabbath stick-collectors?
Phil,
You raise a lot of points, but I want to respond to one in particular. Regarding the stoning of Sabbath violaters, this isn’t relevent to the dispute about “kill” vs. “murder.” The English translation that I’ve read claims that God tells the community to stone the man to death for collecting sticks. I’m going to assume that this translation is reasonably accurate until someone proves me wrong. But you demonstrate my basic point–that many people will try to part the Red Sea to avoid admitting that, occasionally, the Bible tells us to do evil things. When confronted with a passage in the Bible you don’t like, you assume, without evidence, that my translation is faulty. If you were really “always suspicious” about modern English translations of the Ancient Hebrew Bible, you would be unable to say with any confidence that the Bible says anything at all (unless, that is, you’ve mastered ancient Hebrew).
As for your point about cultural context, I’m sorry, but to stone someone to death has a pretty consistent meaning. And can you imagine a social or cultural circumstance where, even using the most crude version of situational ethics, that stoning a man to death would be a morally acceptable punishment for the crime of collecting sticks on a Saturday? If you can’t, why not admit that, at least in this one instance, the Bible got it wrong?
Phil,
My only problem with this piece is that you seem to be making “God” and the Bible as relative as the relativists. If the Bible is to be interpreted as a philosophy handbook, then it is no more a reasonable moral guide than any other philosophical work. When you confer the status of philosophy upon a book that you simultaneously hold to be filled with absolute moral truths, you can easily port the same reasoning to any particular philosophy and have a whole new set of moral truths. If you hold that God is an actual entity that exists separately from our ability to perceive Him (that is if you take an objective view instead of a relative existential view), then these moral truths shouldn’t change from one religion to another either. They can’t all be right, can they? If the Bible is a philosophical work of the same cloth as Plato and Voltaire, and devoid of any historical or scientific truth or significance, then it’s no better than the mother goose tales designed to teach children important moral lessons through hyperbole and storytelling. I don’t think the Bible was designed with the intention of its reader checking his rational mind at the door in order to hear entertaining stories with a good moral lesson. Quite the contrary, the Bible is often contextual, both historically, philosophically and scientifically. For example, the creation account may not really be a true account of what happened suddenly over the course of one chaotic 168 hour week (I don’t believe that it is myself. As you mentioned, light isn’t created until the 3rd day of the account making a literal 24 hour rotational earth day nonsensical). However, it doesn’t mean that the events described are merely a concocted story meant to teach us abstractly that “God is powerful”. It could be that God actually did create all of the things described in Genesis, but that the timeline is provided as an allegory or literary device to rationalize and sequentialize something that may not have been rational or sequential by human standards. Similarly, since a huge portion of the Bible is a historical recounting of God’s relationship with the Jews, one needs to keep historical context in mind. For example, Katzen’s verse citation above was an instruction given to the Jews at a specific point in time. And yes, as a matter of fact, it was meant literally! God gave the Jews the specific commandment not to work on the sabbath. On one occasion when a man was caught gathering wood on the sabbath, he was brought before Moses, and God gave him special instructions to have him stoned to death. He made the law, so he logically got to make the consequences as well. He didn’t say “Stone all sabbath breakers to death from this day forward”. The command was given at a specific time for a specific purpose. And it wasn’t a metaphorical story designed to teach us to go to church on Sundays.
The thing about God is that he’s not falsifiable, and therefore not scientific. Unfortunately, most of what passes for science is no better, though the self-ordained god’s of science would have us believe otherwise. But there’s no reason why science and God or science and religion need to be mutually exclusive. If anything, science gives us insight into God and creation. Ironically, the most influential scientific discoveries have occurred when this was the dominant thinking in the scientific community.
Katzen:
I’m not a Biblical scholar in any sense of the word, so let me preface my remarks by saying that my judgments about the Bible are in the realm of personal conclusions informed by some limited reading and study. From what I know about the Dead Sea scrolls and pre-Christian Jewish culture, for example, I’ve come to understand that “raising the dead” meant restoring social standing to an ostracized person; “angels” were human benefactors not necessarily ethereal beings, and “virgin birth” had to do with the timing of a pregnancy not a miraculouc conception. It’s what Barbara Thiering calls “pesher”, the coding of Biblical text by giving words a second meaning. This way a passage can say one thing but mean something else.
I know this is a time-honored technique in political writings. Antonio Gramsci wrote about the policy of “praxis’ as a substitute for using the word Marxism, and there are lots of other examples in history of this (including some of Shakespeare’s works). Moreover, even when something isn’t said in code, the cultural context can give us a different meaning. There’s a famous example from the 1950s about a cross cultural survey which attempted to measure one’s love for their country. The same exact questions were meticulously translated into numerous languages, and it was found that Italians scored the lowest. The only problem was that Italians view the word “love” as a purely carnal matter, and one doesn’t have intercourse with one’s country. Had the question been about “pride”, the results would have been different.
So, going on what Thiering and others have written, and understanding a bit about the need to place something in a cultural context, I’m not prepared to concede that the English translation of that biblical passage is meant to insist that we all literally pick up stones and literally kill someone for that offense, as oppose to chastise a person severely for that offense (or, perhaps, illustrate that disobeying God’s laws for whatever reason — no matter how seemingly insignificant the offense — is a serious matter). In fact, I’d say that like the story of Noah’s ark, what we’re supposed to take away from it is the idea that we should obey God’s laws regardless of whether or not others do as well, rather than try to figure out how Noah got all those dinosaurs on the Ark. That Bible story is also pretty specific about the length of the ark, but focusing on that issue means losing sight of the story’s true meaning.
As I view the Bible, its fundamental purpose is to guide our lives. It was written at a time when people didn’t understand basic human chemistry, thought the world was flat, didn’t know what stars really were, and were by and large uneducated and illiterate. So it’s not unreasonable to think that its stories are meant to illustrate basic principles, and not always communicate concrete cause-effect commands. Some common sense has to be applied here to make the Bible timeless; otherwise it’s just a 2000+ year old prescription for living life in a primitive society. If one truly believes that the Bible is the inspired word of God, then we look to it for ultimate guidance, not penal-code type legislation. If you don’t believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, then what it says about stoning someone for a minor offense 2000 years ago is irrelevant to how we live our lives today.
As to my final point, if we keep everything I’ve said above in mind about translations and look for principles instead of focusing only on the words, I think even an imperfect translation will still help guide us. It may require additional thought and education to ultimately discern its true meaning, but we’ll be pointed in the right direction if we use the Bible to give focus and meaning to our lives, instead of singling out individual passages and objecting to the “stoning” of someone without understanding the context within which this illustration was employed.
Patrick:
I’m not sure we really disagree. By using the word “philosophical” in relation to the Bible, I wasn’t implying that it was just another work like that of Plato or Aristotle. I was trying to draw a distinction between reading it as a literal document, and using it to gain insight and understanding to bring meaning, purpose and direction to our lives.
The issue, I think, comes down to whether one thinks that the Bible is the inspired word of God. The New Testament is certainly the product of a long political compromise about what stayed in and what didn’t. That doesn’t necessarily imply that the final product is or isn’t inspired by God, because God certainly could have inspired the compromise. It only recognizes that in assembling the New Testament, and the Old Testament as well, it’s the product of human labor — not something descending from the heavens sui generis.
Ultimately, everyone has to decide for themselves whether the Bible is the inspired word of God, or just another book written by man. I’ve avoided giving my opinion on this only because I believe it is a matter of personal faith, and I didn’t want to cloud the basic premise of my article that science and religion ask and answer different questions, but are not mutually incompatible. Whether one wants to assign divine status to the Bible or not, you can still read it and come away with strong guidance for leading a good, moral life. But to do this I think you need to view the Bible as a metaphor/allegory/philosophically/etc. rather than as a literal document. I agree that some passages may be somewhat concrete, but like you refined the “stoning” example, one still needs to understand the issue in context, not simply take the words at face value.
I’m not trying to duck giving further opinions about what the Bible teaches — God knows I’m not shy about offering my opinions. But since I believe that this is part of one’s personal discovery, I’m not sure there’s any great value in having Phil Jackson teach a Bible lesson, so I’m confining my comments to higher level statements like the ones I’ve made, rather than attempting to assign meaning to individual Bible verses. My only real point here is that I think we’re better off looking at the Bible as a didactic instrument that guides and informs us at a philosophical level rather than figuring out whether there were enough cubits in Noah’s Ark to get all the animals in the world on board.
Finally, to your point that “If you hold that God is an actual entity that exists separately from our ability to perceive Him (that is if you take an objective view instead of a relative existential view), then these moral truths shouldn’t change from one religion to another either. They can’t all be right, can they?”, I agree. God-inspired morality is not the same thing as religious tenants. They may coincide, and I believe often do, but sometimes religion gets it wrong. As for the existence of multiple religions, as I wrote in “What Kind of Car does Jesus Drive…”,
“Different societies, different cultures, even different periods of history will shape an individual human being’s view of the details of life. It may very well be that multiple religions exist as part of God’s plan to let those in completely different cultures access their innate moral code and find, through the teachings of their religion, a vehicle to express it. This doesn’t argue against efforts by each and every religion to spread the word of their Faith; just against efforts to force people to convert. A person living in the orient who cannot connect with God through Buddhism may find it in Christianity, just as a Christian may find more meaning in Islam; or a Methodist may find a closer connection to God through the Church in Rome. Each of these individual and collective efforts can only bring us closer to leading a life in accordance with the universal moral code, and from that strengthening our personal connection with God. It’s only when men take it upon themselves to be the arbiters of God’s word and the official interpreter of a universal moral code that we end up with such widely divergent, but fundamentally similar brutalities as terrorism and abortion.”
Phil,
I guess where we’re differing is that I don’t believe that the Bible has to be interpreted completely non-literally. I favor a contextual interpretation, and have found little need for conflict between faith and science or faith and reality using such an interpretation. I understand what you’re saying: that the Bible’s purpose is not to teach us science lessons. And I completely agree. If you read the Bible for the sole purpose of scientific study then you will come up supremely disappointed. At the same time, I don’t think it needs to be explained away as completely metaphorical to make it palatable to secular standards. For instance, Katzen thinks it is morally repugnant to stone someone for picking up sticks. However, I don’t feel that I need to explain to Katzen the nature of Hebrew linguistics and translation and make the story non-literal so that it meets with his approval. I think it can speak for itself: God (literally) told someone not to do something, they (literally) did it anyway, and he (literally) prescribed a punishment. If you don’t believe in God or the relationship between God and the Hebrews, then obviously the story is utterly pointless. Which begs the question of why you are reading the Bible in the first place.
Patrick:
You make excellent points. My broad-brush “literal vs. metaphoric” applies only to an overall view of what the Bible is (or isn’t). The Bible does contain certain historic information which can be independently validated, such as the existence of Moses and the plight of the Israelites, Christ’s actions in the New Testament, and parables like the prodigal son. The question for me has always been, is the meaning of these passages found in the history/science of the event, or are they meant to teach us something for which we need to look beyond the exact words for a higher, more philosophical meaning?
Context is important to science only in that it makes a difference whether you are boiling water at seal level or in the mountains. It will take different temperatures to reach the same boiling state. Context matters for the Bible in a different way. I heard Dennis Praeger speak a while back about references to slavery in the Torah, which delineated a long list of obligations a master had to his slave. Praeger was chastising those who said this laundry list therefore justified slavery, when looking at it in context it did exactly the opposite. The obligations were so onerous on the master that it all but rendered slavery impractical. The purpose of the passage, according to Praeger, was to illustrate that slavery is not compatible with God’s law. Because of the times it couldn’t simply be outlawed, so instead it was rendered moot by imposing onerous moral and temporal obligations on the master. To understand this passage one has to look beyond the words to find its meaning.
This has been an excellent conversation with you, Katzen and others. In some way it underscores my original point that the Bible is a vehicle to help us understand certain things about ourselves, our relationship to others, and our relationship to God, rather than a textbook that simply provides the answers the way a science book would. The meaning of the answers that the Bible gives depends a lot on this journey of discovery, which never really ends during our lifetime. Using the Bible to access the innate moral code all humans possess will help us crystallize our general beliefs, which in turn will help us deal with the specific situations we confront.
Phil Jackson’s comments on Thomas Kuhn are very astute; Kuhn along with Karl Popper exposed some modern-day myths and detailed some rather unflattering truths about scientists which, in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, “get no respect” at the National Academy of Sciences’ annual picnic and badminton tournament. Kuhn saw scientists as embracing existing paradigms and holding on with all their might despite conflicting evidence and Popper saw scientists as “myth creators” – in other words, those who create theories to fit their philosophical prejudices as well as their facts – or, as one humorist put it about the way scientists formulate their theories: “If I hadn’t believed it, I would never have seen it.”
Neither Kuhn nor Popper were religious fanatics with an agenda or post-modern relativists for that matter, but it was understandably difficult for the scientific community to accept their sociological theories. The resulting paradox from the Kuhn/Popper viewpoint points to a fundamental truth about the nature of reality: In its simplest form, the fundamental reality of human nature may prevent us from determining underlying truths about the nature of reality. And, of course, the fundamental truth about human beings is that we are basically irrational, unconsciously controlled by our selfish emotions and prone to insisting on conformity of thought within our communities.
That doesn’t mean we can’t make limited scientific progress, but the interesting psychological process whereby we stubbornly claim to actually understand how the universe started or how life developed over the past 3.5 billion years is a revealing feature of the human psyche – which, amusingly, we also claim to understand scientifically. Why we insist on explaining what we know can never be proven reveals something about our natures which we avoid examining too closely.
Scientists will admit to mistakes in measurement, lack of sufficient data, failure to properly consider alternate explanations, etc., but bluntly admitting they lack the basic rationality to formulate theories, which they would immediately and honestly abandon when new facts or better explanations appear, strikes directly at their self-image and the cultural prestige they have worked so hard to obtain. And, implying that our selfish emotional structure would unconsciously or, worse yet, consciously control a scientist’s reasoning when examining data or interpreting measurements invokes considerable angst among its practitioners. In fact, such a reality claim, if it were proven true, veers dangerously close to the religious concept of “original sin”.
Some of the more naïve among the scientific ranks claim the scientific method is self-correcting and precludes just such a psychological flaw as Kuhn or Popper describe. Interestingly though, such a claim conveniently ignores which species developed the scientific method.
We are such marvelous creatures that we can stand outside ourselves and question our own motives. But, we’re not the emotionally-suppressed Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame when interacting within a social context. Sociologist Bernard Barber of Columbia University studied this situation and found that the scientific community may collectively resist evidence that challenges a prevailing theory. And, more importantly, the resistance comes not from scientifically based objections, but rather from loyalty to learned social concepts (“received ideas”) or due to social-structural factors (“social-status differences”).
Professor Sir Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University put it more bluntly when he said: “It is a mistake to suppose that science is an unswerving pursuit of objective truth. Partially it is, but only to the extent that the truth does not turn out to contradict what has already been taught in the educational process.” Hoyle was well aware of this dynamic when examining how evolution is taught in schools and why it can and must be taught only from a certain perspective.
Interestingly enough, the evolutionists’ defense of their various origin theories demonstrates every facet of Kuhn’s, Popper’s, Barber’s and Hoyle’s collected observations and notions about the psychological nature of scientific rationality. In almost a clinical case of paradigm defense, evolution supporters question their opponents motives rather than their facts, invoke the psychological weight of past and present opinions of “leading scientists”, make legalistic type appeals to established scientific rules of reasoning, assert charges of sloppy science on their opponents’ part and so on and so on.
Evolution may very well describe a fundamental truth about reality, but given the history of discarded scientific theories and the irrational nature of scientists as so ably demonstrated by evolution supporters themselves, the chances are good it’s just another theory on its way to extinction.
Katzen:
“What does your heart tell you when you come to the passage about stoning Sabbath stick-collectors?”
You may or may not be able to read the Bible with your heart, but in this case the head is plenty enough.
To point out the obvious, it tells me that God was not pleased with the stick collector and sentenced him to death. God has the power of life and death. He uses that power from time to time.
Quite simply, it sends an unmistakable message to humans for all time about what God thinks of working on the Sabath.
It strikes me that you are making some of the same assumptions made by others who make a hobby of descrediting or picking at the Bible, as well as those who profess to live by it – that God should be our model for behavior, that we may exercise power the way God does and that we are authorized to act in His stead.
That historically so many have done so (and arguably are guilty of blasphemy) and your ability to recognize that, establishes nothing about the worth, truth or importance of God’s word as it appears in the Bible.
Read the Bible carefully and simply, not just with your head, but with all in you that helps you process and understand things. You do not have to be a person of faith to do so.
If you do you may find that many of your concerns are are better placed and focused on the fallibility of humans rather than on the literal or metaphorical content of the Bible.
How many times have assembly problems been the fault of the instructions that came in the box? How many times have assembly problems been the fault of the person misreading the instructions?
Please read 15;32-36 again – and keep reading for a bit. God did not authorize man to enforce the law by forever carrying out death sentences for those working on the Sabbath.
Quite the contrary. He immediately created a symbolic reminder, ordering that from that point on all should wear blue fringe so that they would never forget His law.
If I may jump in, I think the difficulty we tend to have with both the Bible and science are the “hard” sayings. We can accept the “easy” things well enough, but when our sensibilities get offended, well, that’s when we get a bee in our bonnets.
For example, I have a hard time intellectually with the possibility that something came from nothing, which is what is required if there is no god. The “eternal universe” explanation is unsatisfying, because it leaves the non-theist with a functional deity (i.e., a universe with an attribute of diety, eternality).
A non-theist has a problem with the concept of god because he wants to explain the unexplainable, which simply ends up in an anthropomorphic construct that can be easily dismissed. He is left with vapid questions like, “Well, then, what created god?”, and “How could a good god allow evil?”, thereby demoting god to a quasi-diety.
The big problem with some parts of science is that it wants to assume the place of oracle and explain everything. Ironically, religion wants the same position. Some people want science to refute religion to assuage their cognitive dissonance about a defacto truth: God exists but His existence cannot be empirically proved.
On the othern hand, other people have come to distrust SCIENCE (I keep hearing that song, “She Blinded Me With Science”), the pompous, have all the answers, tell-us-how-we-all-ought-to-live kind. The thing is, it has become impossible to make the distinction between real science and politically/worldview driven junk. I would call this scientism, the worship of science.
When the news anchor begins a sentence, “Scientists say…”, that has become the flashing red light to warn me that someone is about to tell me what I can eat, what kind of light bulbs I should use, what kind of car I should drive, how I should have sex and with whom, and all other manner of moral imperatives.
That’s what most God-fearing people have a problem with. That’s why people question “science –” not because people are ignorant and superstitious (a charge often leveled at them in order to categorically dismiss them), but because there is so much that masquerades as science telling us how we ought to live.
I for one do not sellect what parts of the Bible I believe and which ones I cast off. I do believe in a literal reading of the Bible. This has made me study the sciences with the understanding that current theories are wrong. Over the last few years I have to my satisfaction found science in error. Now that I have stated my world view I will comment on the article which I liked.
There are a few fundamental assumptions made in science which the house of cards is based. The first is that all of the past can be explained using what we observe today. Since this cannot be tested it should be thrown out. In fact the data that I see shows just the opposite.
An example would be the speed of light which is assumed constant. Historical measurements show a slowing down of the speed. As you all know the light from distant sources is red shifted, but did you know it is also quantised in its red shift? This means the light slowed down in transit and the red shift is not due to the doppler effect.
I could list many basic structural assumptions in science and lead you to basic research that is showing fundamental errors. I am sure that someone else could list many sources that would disagree. But that is the issue. Our understanding of the universe is so limited. Our best minds don’t agree on the most basic issues. A concensus is junk. Something is either true or not. It is not up to a vote.
Men and women make theories. They include in them their world view no matter how hard they try not to. For man to exclude God from certain areas because we know better is a slap in the face to God. I will not go there. To bring God into the discussion is not appropriate. Let science be science and we can all enjoy the research and the human effort but don’t mix an imperfect science with a perfect God.
And yes I do believe the earth is less than 8000 years old. Fossils and all.
If anyone has questions for me I can be contacted at fbaginski
fbaginski
Not to be argumentative or unintentionally insulting to your beliefs, but how does one “literally” read a Bible that was not originally written in English, and has been translated in sometimes slightly, and sometimes profoundly different ways over the centuries (thou shall not kill; thou shall not murder)? Even slightly different word choices will not allow for a strictly “literal” reading, assuming that the rest of the translation is indeed correct. [A translation is a man-made effort, and men are by nature imperfect. If a translation is divinely inspired, how do we know which translation is the divinely inspired one, and which is the human flawed one?]
As for your assertion about the age of the earth, where (literally) in the Bible do you see this number? If it isn’t literally there, aren’t you in fact interpreting the Bible, and if so why is your interpretation the only correct one? Or, are you saying that the 8000 year number is scientifically valid, and it’s legitimate to validate the Bible by scientific analysis. If so, if there is one scientifically proven incorrect “literal statement” in the Bible, then haven’t you called it all into question — since completely, literally, scientifically-factually true does not allow for any demonstrable inconsistencies or errors.
I’d be curious to know how you address these two points, given everything you stated vs. what I wrote in my essay.
Regards,
Phil
Hi Phil
The age of the earth can be determined by following the line of people contained in it. You can piece together a time line until you get to events recorded by other documents. If you go to setterfield.org he does a great job with the time line.
Literal is a very tough issue to describe. For me with my background and constant checking of the original source language the words do come to mean something. That “something” is my way of seeing the words and how they convey a thought. For others they may see a completely different thought or idea. Still others look for buried meaning. I try not to do this unless the passage is obviously linked to other symbols. I believe the intent of the Bible is to bring people to Christ. I cannot argue with the detail that brings that about. For anyone to say that they have the true meaning and all others are wrong is to bring judgement on themselves. When I talk to people I tend to say for me I think Gen 1:1 says….. I respect any interpretation that may be different unless it interferes with, died for our sins, came back from the dead, sits at the right hand of God.
I am writing a book about my path that I followed to get to faith. It may be meaningful to others it may not. I came in through science.
About the error issue. Because the Bible is written with intent and that intent is not to supply a full story, it would be really hard to test the off subject comments for errors. Take for instance when a bowl is described in scripture. Its diameter and circumference should relate to pi. Reading the text shows a huge error. But knowing that Hebrew letters can mean a number as well as a letter we have another way of looking at the passage. In fact the verse has a mispelled word in it. This mispelled word when used as the dimension of the bowl corrects the error. The mispelled word has been copied for centuries because the scribes were told not to change a letter. So with this in mind are we to declare the text wrong or are we to marvel at the design of the words in the original text that injected the error and the fix. I tend to marvel at the text.
Any other questions?
Frank
Frank: Thanks for the reply. I don’t think were so far apart (except for dating the age of the earth and any other hard-science issues). The way you use the word “literal” isn’t literally literal, if you follow my meaning, so you use the Bible like I proposed in my essay — to find meaningful answers to life, not to turn it into an encyclopedia. It’s a teaching vehicle, not a scientific textbook. It asks and answers different questions than science. So, if the earth is in fact older than you think, it doesn’t negate the values derived from reading the Bible — which actually involves much more than just reading/memorizing the Bible, but thoughtful contemplation about what you read as you eloquently described. This process gives you the answers; the Bible is the catalyst, but the journey you take through life (where you apply what you learned from studying the Bible and living a moral life) is what generates your ultimate conclusions.
Good luck on your book.
Hi Phil
Just for a day toss out all you have ever heard about the age of the earth. Just how would you figure out how old it is with direct measurements? Some method that does not rely on atomic clocks or light speed. Something simple. There are many but let me tell you about one. Calculate the age of the mississppi river delta. Use the internet to find out how much dirt goes down the river in one year. Then look up a surface and nautical map of the delta to get a volume of the delta. When you get these numbers do the calculation and find out for yourself how old it is. The number you come up with will be the approximate age when the single continent split up. Wrap your mind around the answer you get.
Now you can embrace the answer you get or you can toss it. If you toss it you should ask yourself why.
Just for fun do the same thing for the amazon river delta.
We are surrounded by tons of data and even more opinions about the data. Selective cherry picking of the data to form “scientific” conclusions is rampant in the world. I for one choose to cast it off(the world that is). The real search as you point out is in your heart. Starting here you view the world and man. Pretty easy to conclude that man did not make the universe. Something created the universe. It could not have been to long ago or we would be in heat death due to entropy. So we are in a natural setting that is real. At least that is what our senses tell us. The next step is to look around and see if there is a supernatural side or not. I have found that looking for design preferences in nature supplies the fingerprints of God that I was looking for. So when I see a spiral galaxy, a fern leaf uncurl, the spiral pattern of seeds in a sunflower, and the spiral of a nautilus shell I see design preferences. Breaking down these designs you will find a repeating pattern of numbers and ratios of these numbers. So we have pleasing patterns in nature. The key to show a design preference is to show a bridge to unrelated sections of the creation. If we look at music and examine the freq of the notes that are pleasing to hear we see the same ratios of numbers. So a close examination of the creation is all that is required to show a supernatural origin. All of the scientific smokescreen is to muddy the water. This is why I say that you can’t mix science and faith.
Frank
“Just how would you figure out how old it is with direct measurements?”
I thought about that actually the other day. We know that certain Egyptian mummies are at least 3000 years old (we know their names and their genealogies). Their bones are dry, but not stone.
We also know that we have found massive stone skeletons in the desert (and in mountains, and under wetlands, etc.) of very large prehistoric animals, as well as stone skulls of apes (I’ll leave “human” out of the equation).
So, unless the extra 5000 years you surmise can naturally turn bone into rock through a fossilization process, then these fossils are logically older than 8000 years. Either that, or they started out as stone, which is not logical. Or after, say, 7000 years, bone literally turns to stone overnight, which is equally implausible.
There’s nothing in the 3000 year old mummies to suggest that they are starting to fossilize. Neither the embalmed ones, or the naturally-occurring ones from dying in the desert. So, my God-given logic tells me that the Earth must be older than 8000 years.
This doesn’t “disprove” the Bible in any way. It just reinforces what you said about not mixing science and faith. They ask and answer different questions.
Take care, Phil
A handful of dust…
Phil
I’m late in responding to your excellent article, but here I go anyway.
The main reason was that you made me think & reconsider fundamentals which have governed my life: what people refer to as Reasonable Science & Reasonable Religion (theology, philosophy, if you want). I am indebted somewhat to an article with that title which can be found in First Things April 2007, which I recommend to you. Anyway, most of what I have to say would agree with your article & the emendations & penumbras in your responses to commenters.
But here goes anyway.
Many scientists & many critics of school boards in red states & intimidators of school boards in Blue states conclude, on the basis of their scientific studies, that there is no God. I suggest that they would have less trouble with those whom they see as yahoo religious fundamentalists if they simply declared to these people that, from their scientific point of view, there is no proof that there is a God, and no proof that there is not a God. And ask themselves whether when they proclaim that science is diametrically opposed to religion are they (a) reaffirming their, um, devotion to science or (b) reaffirming their PC prejudice against religious believers. It would seem that it’s time for them to get over their Führerbunker mentality that everyone who believes in Creationism or Intelligent Design is simply rejecting The Enlightenment & the wonderful blessings of Modern Science.
Intelligent Design need not be taught on an equal footing with “science” in Biology class, but a teacher should be able to note, without fear of losing his job or having to go to brainwashing class, that “nothing in this Biology class is inconsistent with anyone’s faith in a divine being.” Especially if he/she is asked a question to that effect by a student. And such teacher should be able to discuss questions about what you, quite correctly, note is evolutional “theory”. It is my understanding from my reading & from looking at textbooks in the ‘90s that every attempt at inquiry into what you refer to as “the Darwin-default correct position” is squashed ab initio due to a type of self-censorship similar to that for which red-state fundamentalist religious yahoos are sneered at. Moreover in a liberal (in the non-political sense of the word) multicultural society shouldn’t we welcome a few minutes out of a year-long study to acquaint students with some of the positions of some scientists who defend teleology in nature? (One of the answers that “educators” use to defang such heresies is the put down, “consensus”. Funny, I never knew that science was based on consensus. But then, your article has set me straight in this regard.)
Science students who believe in Creationalism or Intelligent Design should not be discriminated against by the scientific community when it comes to getting an advanced degree or getting placed in the right positions. Mayor Bloomberg suggested the other day that belief in Creationism/Intelligent Design is “scary”, & hurts the country from a competitive point of view, which position may appeal to, um, enlightened voters in NYC’s UWS, but is an in-your-face for most of the country’s voters.
Finally, supporters of some form of an Intelligent Design have to be careful of the “God-of-the-gaps” (in literature, “Deus ex machina”) point of view (often sneeringly) associated with a fundamentalist religious worldview, because every time some scientist discovers something to explain the theretofore unexplainable, irreligious scientists become more & more convinced, that maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, the ol’ “God did it” explanation will, at last, at long last, be reduced to nothing.
Inwood — a great synopsis of my essay!
Regards, Phil