In a message dated 3/13/02 6:08:34 PM Mountain Standard Time,
jeisele@starpower.net writes:
> Allan Harvey writes
>
> >Inspired communication of vital truths about God and his relation to his
> creation, set in a form >appropriate to the pre-scientific understanding of
> the day."
>
> I 100% agree with this Allan. If it were mathematically possible to agree
> more,
> I would.
>
> >The problem comes in the view (which would have been totally alien to
> Moses) that truth communicated by story is somehow inferior to truth
> conveyed in scientific terms. Those with
> >that view should remember how often Jesus taught in this "inferior" mode<
>
> Sorry, Allan, but this doesn't work. Two reasons off the top of my head.
>
> Gen 1 could have just said "God created everything" and begun Gen 2.
> You're saying that
> God created a tremendous amount of confusion and distress unnecessarily.
>
Sure, it could have just said "God created everything." And Jesus could have
just said "Your neighbor is the one who needs your mercy" rather than telling
the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Sometimes the simplest communication is
not the richest or most memorable way to communicate truth. We've lost our
appreciation for that in modern times. And it only creates "confusion and
distress" if we try to ask it scientific questions that it isn't trying to
answer. That's our fault, not God's.
> What truth is communicated by "God separated the waters?"
>
That's where the part of my statement "set in a form appropriate to the
prescientific understanding of the day" comes in. The point is that God
created the entire cosmos. Including the "waters above" and "waters below"
that the ancients believed were a part of that cosmos.
Paul Seely can explain (as he has recently done with regard to the firmament)
much better than I what that passage would have meant to the original
audience, and why attempts to back-read modern science into such texts do
violence to the integrity of the Scripture.
Allan
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Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
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