From: Robert Schneider (rjschn39@bellsouth.net)
Date: Mon Sep 01 2003 - 15:49:06 EDT
Walter writes:
> Science is fine for telling us the present. However, it cannot
validly
> extrapolate to the past and ignore God's Word. God created the Universe
for man.
> It says so in the Bible. If He he did so, why waste 15 billion years when
it is
> just as easy for Him to bring it into existence in 6 days as the Bible
> proclaims? That does not dispute what science sees in an "apparent"
history.
>
Bob's comment:
YECs and other biblical literalists illustrate the problem that Bernard Ramm
described 50 years ago, the psychological problem of failing to
differentiate between inspiration and interpretation. They tend not to be
conscious of the fact that they are interpreting what they are reading, and
assume their interpretation is identical to "what God says" or "what the
Bible proclaims."
The statement that "> Science is fine for telling us the present. However,
it cannot validly extrapolate to the past and ignore God's Word," is a good
example of the muddled thinking that one often finds with people like
MacArthur. He states an assertion ("it cannot validly extrapolate to the
past ") as if it were an uncontested fact, and then introduces a
hermenutical statement about God's word. Science read the Book of Nature,
not the Book of Scripture; why should it not ignore the Bible.
Anyway, does science extrapolate to the past? The past lives on in the
present because "there is something about reality that forever fixes the
facticity of things," as John Haught writes. Scientists find what is there,
whether it be the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang,
or the skeleton of a dinosaur. Nothing "apparent" about itl. When the
astrophysicist looks out into space, she looks back into time. She sees
what happened 2.7 light years, or 13.4 billion light years ago. And if she
is a believer, I doubt, as she gazes in wonder at it all, that she thinks
God has been "wasting his time." Besides, the notion that God would not
waste his time but get right to creating man on the sixth day is a typical
YEC egocentric/anthropocentric notion, in my view.
Bob Schneider
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