There are plenty of passages where a simple reading is wrong. Reading II
Sam. 1:7-10 by itself, for example, would give a false picture of what
happened, as is seen by reading I Sam. 31:3-6. Also, there are plenty of
passages that, by a simple reading, would support a flat earth or a
geocentric solar system. If we recognize that it was written in the
language of the day and not as a scientific textbook (for which they had no
need), these passages are not a problem. The distinction must be drawn
between inquiring exactly what God intended for the text to convey and
inquiring what can I get out of it and what do I want to ignore.
Unwarranted claims that the Bible endorses some position are a threat to
the credibility of Gospel, just as disregard for the Bible is a threat.
>You do realise that these shaky propositions rest on an even shakier
>foundation, viz macroevolution - which all TEs assume, but no one has
>ever observed! The truth is much more straightforward: why not believe
>the Lord when he says 'It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone,
>but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God' (Mt.4:4)?
>Those TEs who believe the Bible to be the Word of God surely have a
>problem here!
We do not know whether we have seen the formation of a new major kind of
organisms or not. It takes too long for major groups to differentiate. An
observer in the Carboniferous would have had no reason to regard the
development of novel skull configurations (especially the development of
temporal openings) as especially exciting, but one group eventually led to
mammals, the other to reptiles and birds. We have to wait a few tens if
not hundreds of millions of years to find out which lineages will diversify
into a new major group, which will die out, and which will plod along with
little change.
David C.