I wrote:
>>> Lactantius's variation
> Would God convey to us a true message in Genesis 1-11?
> 1. He is willing and able. Thus it is a true/historical message.
> 2. He is unwilling and able. Thus He is telling us something not true and
He
> knows it is untrue. Very unGodlike; very scary.
> 3. He is willing and unable. Very unGodlike.
> 4. He is unwilling and unable. -really bad option.
You wrote of my variation of this argument for atheism:
>>Well, of course, you've stacked the deck, loaded the dice! The only
possible way you can conceive God revealing Himself is with a
"true/historical" category.<<
Of course I must disagree with having stacked the deck. :-) I fail to see how
it is stacking the deck to lay out all possible options and then chose the
one that best fits God's character. If there are any other options I don't
know what they are. If you know of some possiblity I have overlooked I really
do want to know it. My life would be much simpler if I could get past this
point.
A few days ago while reading Tipler's _Physics of Immortality_ I learned of
Lactantius who used this form of argument to say that there must be no God
because evil is in the world. He laid out the possibilities for God removing
evil from the world. In the case of evil, one can argue that there is a
logical necessity for evil by which God is constrained. For instance, the
removal of the Second Law of Thermo would make our lives impossible. How
would we walk when there was no friction?
But in the case of the message, I can think of no parallel logical necessity
that the truth should be withheld. The way out of this problem lies in
finding a logical reason by which God is constrained to not tell us the
truth. But then the obvious question will arise, what about the
resurrection?
I just realized that I have been mis-attributing the argument to Lactantius.
Lactantius attributed the argument to Epicurus (ca 300 B.C) My apologies to
Epicurus.
I would not presume on this issue to place anyone in a category on this one.
I KNOW how much you love the Lord.
You wrote:
>>Respectfully, you and I both know where your hermeneutic comes from.<<
My hermeneutic largely comes from the variation on Epicurus' argument. Only
very briefly in my YEC career did I ascribe to the "Bible must be inerrant
for the Bible's sake" view. A friend of mine told me that that came too
close to idolatry of a book. I thought he had a good point. I almost moved
from YEC at that point when I laid out all these possibilities.
You wrote:
>>Well, the "neglect theory" as Hayward deems it, must be such for some
reason. With regard to this theory you write in your book:
"The obvious objection to this outline is that the events described on
each day do not have any relationship to their order of occurrence in
history as geology, astronomy and history have determined them."
Glenn R. Morton, Foundation, Fall and Flood: A Harmonization of Genesis
and Science, p. 109.
Now Glenn, you have been vigorously (really, vehemently) arguing that it is
not God's nature to put inaccurate/deceptive statements in His word. Why
would God give us an inaccurate order of occurrence of the creation. After
all, this is a very powerful God, don't you think He could have at least got
the ordering right? He is a very powerful God, isn't He? He is a God of
Truth and not deception, isn't He?<<
I argue as hard as I can for what I believe. I see little use in arguing
weakly.
If you think that what you are writing you have not understood the Days of
proclamation view. The proclamations are in order, the fulfillment of the
proclamations are not in the order of the proclamations. Quit thinking in
YEC terms that
"one proclamation leads to an immediate fulfilment of the proclamation". The
proclamation set in motion a sequence of events leading to the thing
proclaimed. The next proclamation set in motion another sequence of event.
The fulfilment of all the events was not in the order of the proclamation. As
below (I didn't look back to see if these match the scripture, this is for
illustration ).
time====>
proc1---------fullfilled
proc2----------------------------------fulfilled
proc3------------------part fullfiled-------fulllfilled
proc4--------------------------fullfilled
proc5-------------------------------------------fullfilled
proc6-----------------------------------------------------fulfilled
(the --- are ongoing processes i.e. a sequence of events)
The proclamations are in temporal order as shown above. Fulfillments did not
occur in the same order. Light existed prior to the birth of the sun.
With this view all of those temporal problems disappear! This is what the
last sentence in the paragraph you quoted says:
"By using the proclamation interpretation of Genesis 1, these conflicts
disappear." (G.R.Morton, Ibid.)
The proclamations are in a linear order; the fullfillment does not have to
be in the same order as the proclamations were made. THis is the STRENGTH of
this view. To require that proclamation and fulfillment to be in the same
order is to require the YEC view.
Of subjectivism in choosing literary style and in geology, you write:
>>Yea, but Glenn the same can be said of your profession. It's a
science and I am sure most would call it "objective." But
just look how often you geologists disagree. And haven't you
punched a few holes in the wrong place? Using the criterion you suggest
above might find you without a job, and your profession being placed in
the humanities. I think you are being a bit unreasonable with point # 3.
<<
It is not quite the same. In geology when we drill a bad well we can always
find an objective piece of info that we did not collect or could not have
collected which explains why we were wrong. I drilled a dry hole this summer.
The seismic data showed 50 milliseconds of structure (200 feet) up dip of a
well which had produced oil. The six wells surrounding the location had
velocities to that horizon of around 7000 feet per second. we drilled the
well and found that there was NO structure--no 200 feet up dip--no
production. The well we drilled had a velocity of 8000 feet per second to
that horizon which produced an artificial structure. There was no way to
predict this possibility and if we had, no one would have believed us. That
was the weirdest well I ever drilled.
In a poem (which Jim and I agree can carry historical information) the
subjective part comes in figuring out how much historical information it
carries (I know Jim it is a bad question, but I like it anyway). If it
carries no historical informtion then it is no constraint whatsoever upon any
historic or scientific theory we choose to beleive. The document has lost its
connection with physical reality. There are two quotes from Tipler's book I
like
"Of course, the real reason modern theologians want to keep science
divorced from religion is to retain some intellectual territory forever
protected from the advance of science. This can only be done if the
possibility of scientific investigation of the subject matter is ruled out a
priori. Theologians were badly burned in the Copernican and Darwinian
revolutions. Such a strategy seriously underestimates the power of science,
which is continually solving problems philosophers and theologians have
decreed forever beyond the ability of science to solve."~Frank J. Tipler, The
Physics of Immortality, (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 7
**
"This advance of atheism can be documented in the history of
twentieth-century biology. The Cornell historian of biology William B.
Provine has pointed out that in the 1920s many, probably most, evolutionists
were religious. At that time Darwinian evolution theory was in eclipse,
having been temporarily replaced by the hypothesis of a purposive force which
was evolving life toward more complexity. The dean of the American
evolutionists, Henry Osborn, head of the American Museum of Natural History,
called this force 'aristogenesis'; the French philosopher Henri Bergson
called it elan vital; the French evolutionist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
called it 'radial energy.' The terms were different but the evolutionary
mechanism was the same: there was a nonphysical cosmic force guiding
evolution. The existence of such a force was the consensus belief of
evoluitonists in the 1920s, and it was a small step to identify the force
with God.
"The consensus opinion returned to Darwinism in the 1930s and 1940s
with the development of the Modern Synthesis, which invokes nonpurposive
mechanisms-natural selection, random genetic drift, mutation, migration, and
geographic isolation--to account for evolution. Organisms are created by
blind deterministic mechanisms combined with others that are effectively
random. (Here, I might add, is another example of science returning to a
previously rejected theory. A return for which I am glad, since the Omega
Point Theory presupposes the truth of the Modern Synthesis; indeed its truth
is essential for the free will model developed in Chapter V.) By the end of
the 1940s, all trace of God had been eliminated from evolutionary biology.
"Provine remarks, 'My observation is that the great majority of modern
evolutionary biologists are atheists or something very close to that. Yet
prominent atheistic or agnostic scientists publically deny that there is any
conflict between science and religion. Rather than simple intellectual
dishonesty, this position is pragmatic. In the United States, elected
members of Congress al proclaim to be religious; many scientists believe that
funding for science might suffer if the atheistic implications of modern
science were widely understood.' Provine's opinion is confirmed by Steven
Weinberg's 1987 congressional testimony asking for money to build the SSC, a
$10 billion device to be constructed in Texas. (Funding has since been cut
off.) A congressman asked Weinberg if the SSC would enable us to find God,
and Weinberg declined to answer. But eventually the atheistic implications
of modern science will be understood by the general public, who will
themselves become atheists. The majority of Western Europeans and a large
minority of Americans have already become effective atheists: they rarely if
ever go to any church, and a belief in God plays no role in their daily
lives. The evidence is clear and unequivocal: if scientists have no need of
the God hypothesis, neither will anyone else. Were theologians to succeed in
their attempt to structly separate science and religion, they would kill
religion. Theology simply must become a branch of physics if it is to
survive. That even theologians are slowly becoming effective atheists has
been documented by the American philosopher Thomas Sheehan."~Frank J.
Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, (New York:
Doubleday, 1994), p. 9-10
I disagree with Tipler's suggestion that Theology must become a branch of
physics but I do beleive that it must have a connection with physical
reality. Barring this connection, I agree with Tipler's prognostication.
You wrote:
>>You are right, our focus has been Gen 1. So let us look toward your area
of special concern--the Flood and its purported VCR history. Did you know
that Gen 6-9 is one long and extended palistrophe (or chiasmus)? That is, it
is structured on an "hour glass" model so commonly seen in the OT.<<
Once again we get to the heart of the issue. Does poetry rule out any
historical content? No. Troy existed an it was known only from a poem. The
problem is that while we obviously don't have all the details of the flood,
if the story has no connection with physical reality in what sense is it
true? I would contend that our job is to try to connect these things with
physical reality. If we don't they are of no more use to modern man than is
the story of Beowulf.
You wrote:
>>Yes, you are right--this is nearing death . . . time to join forces
against the horde ;-) <<
I had to respond to this one (after all you quoted. I will try to let you
have the last word in response to me if you want.
Your Texas buddy,
glenn