Reflectorites
On Wed, 17 May 2000 13:21:10 -0500, Susan Brassfield wrote:
[continued]
[...]
>>SB>no. The "atheistic spin" was put on by YOU. Science says nothing about
>>>religion. It is the religionists that decided the thing was "atheistic."
>SJ>No. Darwin himself in the end rejected design (when scientifically he didn't
>>need to) and put his own anti-design spin on the theory:
>>
>>"...In 1868, Darwin took the final step not only of
>>rejecting the design argument in a very conspicuous place but specifically
>>of linking the rejection to Gray....." (Dupree A.H., "Asa Gray:
>>American Botanist, Friend of Darwin," 1988, p339).
SB>Design is religion not part of science and Darwin knew it. So did Gray. The
>fact that "design" is not a part of science does NOT make it "atheistic."
No. At the time design was still part of science. It was Darwin's final
rejection of design in 1868 that led to science's eventual rejection of design.
>>>SJ>Besides, atheists have no option but to believe in some form of evolution.
>>SB>that's not true.
>SJ>Well, if that's the case, then maybe Susan could explain what an atheist
>>could believe in other than "some form of evolution"?
SB>panspermia? aliens did it?
Then who or what created the "aliens"?
SB>Bertvan likes that one, so does Hoyle.
Bertvan is not an atheist. And Hoyle believes in evolution, just not
Darwinism.One of his books is even titled "Evolution from Space".
SB>Atheists,
>like everyone else, can believe in any damn thing they want to--and often
>do!
Clearly "atheists" cannot believe in God, because then they wouldn't be
atheists!
The fact that Susan cannot show what else an atheist can believe in except
some form of evolution proves my point that "atheists have no option but
to believe in some form of evolution".
>>SB>How would you oblige anyone to believe anything? That's
>>>just your assumption showing that evolution is "atheist."
>SJ>I did not say that "evolution is `atheist'". I said that *denial of design*
>>(i.e. any form of design) was atheist. Clearly there are theists who are
>>evolutionists. Asa Gray for example.
SB>and the majority of the western world, for another example. However,
>"denial of design" need not be atheist if you believe that EVERYTHING is
>designed. That's all that's required.
The fact is they don't. Atheists say that "everything is" only "*apparently*
designed."
SB>However, the statement that
>"everything is designed" is a purely religious statement, not a scientific
>one.
Susan continues with her artificial "religious" - "scientific" dichotomy. The
fact is that both science and religion overlap on the topic of *origins* as
well as other topics.
If there really was a clear-cut "religious" - "scientific" dichotomy then
prominent scientists like Gould and Dawkins would not be continually
making statements about God and religion.
SB>Science is a method used to study the natural world. *Theology* is
>supposed to study the supernatural world. I agree with Gould that the two
>things address separate human issues and can't be mixed.
This is false on both counts. First, scientists in the name of "Science"
are continually making pronouncements about "the supernatural world",
i.e. it doesn't exist.
Second, "*Theology*" (especially Christian theology), makes many claims
about the *natural* world too.
>SJ>Susan's prior metaphysical assumption is that there is no God, so it
>>wouldn't matter how good the "evidence" was which pointed to God.
>>Susan would *have* to deny it pointed to God, while she maintained her
>>atheistic metaphysical assumptions.
SB>If some god appeared to me and several other people all at once--I would
>need independant confirmation of my hallucination :-)--or if there were
>other irrefutable evidence that there was a god then I would have to
>believe in him/her/it.
This is not asking for "evidence". This is asking for a private (indeed a
public) theophany! Since I can't arrange a theophany for Susan and her
friends, it just proves my point that: "it wouldn't matter how good the
`evidence' was which pointed to God. Susan would *have* to deny it
pointed to God, while she maintained her atheistic metaphysical
assumptions".
SB>(However, me being who I am, I would not
>necessarily *worship* him/her/it) But I was under the impression that gods
>didn't do that--especially the Judeo-Christian god, because you are
>supposed to believe without evidence. In fact "belief without evidence" is
>one of the definitions of "faith." I've never been physically capable of
>that, but I'm not especially bothered by people who are--all things being
>equal.
No. Christianity is about belief *with* evidence. That's why Paul and the
other Apostles continually appealed to the *evidence* of what Jesus did
and especially His resurrection, as in this `gospel in a nutshell' from Paul's
first letter to the church at Corinth which at about 55 AD, probably
predates the gospels:
And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your
faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God,
for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he
did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not
raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been
raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." (1Cor 15:14-17) .
That is in fact why Christianity alone of all religions has such a battle with
evolution. Christianity makes claims about the *real world* and lives or
dies on the "evidence" of same.
For example, if they ever dug up a grave with bones in it of a Jewish male
dated about 30AD which had an authentic inscription "Jesus of Nazareth"
on it, then I would give up Christianity. The *only* reason I remain a
Christian is that I believe (in the same ordinary sense I believe scientific
facts) that the *evidence* for Jesus and his resurrection are compelling and
all the arguments that have been tried over the centuries by critics to
explain away the evidence are less probable than the Christian explanation.
SB>For the record, I know that you can't prove there are no gods. I know that
>atheism is totally unsupported by evidence
What an extraordinary admission! If "atheism is totally unsupported by
evidence" then why does Susan think that atheism is true?
SB>and I should tell people I'm an
>agnostic (which most of my friends do) but I think most agnostics are just
>lily-livered atheists who don't want to put up with crap from the
>Christians.
If one was a true "agnostic" (i.e. didn't *know* if there is a God) one
would be neutral to theism. But most agnostic are hostile to theism which
shows they are really atheists (i.e. there *is* no God), but cannot prove
that atheism is true.
SB>Remember, I (and my friends) live in Oklahoma where
>Christianity is shoved in your face about every five minutes.
If Christians in Oklahoma did shove Christianity in peoples' faces "about
every five minutes" then I wouldn't agree with that. But I doubt that it is as
bad as all that. I would suspect that all the Christians are doing is providing
the opportunity for people to find out for themselves about Christ.
[...]
>SJ>So what is left then of Susan's claim that "the whole creationist agenda is
>>to preserve the absolute fact of the Genesis creation"?
SB>because man had to fall in order for Christ to redeem them and that's
>central.
One does not need "to preserve the absolute fact of the Genesis creation"
(i.e. in a YEC literal sense) for this. One could equally believe that Genesis
1-11 is largely symbolic as I (and probably most Christian theologians, and
in fact the New Testament itself), believe and yet still believe that man is
fallen and Christ came to redeem man.
That man is sinful and needs saving does not need Genesis 1 to be literally
true to confirm it. Just read the newspaper! As G.K. Chesterton wryly
observed: "Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only
part of Christian theology which can really be proved." (Chesterton G.K.,
"Orthodoxy," 1961, p.15)
SB>However, the inerrantists to go to the mat to preserve Bishop
>Usher's young earth
The Bible itself does not use the word "inerrant" nor does it use the word
"infallible". "Inerrant", i.e. "free from error," and "infallible," i.e. "not liable
to mislead, deceive, or disappoint" (http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary); are
human deductions about what a revelation from God would be. But the
Bible is not just a revelation from God, it is a revelation from God in and
through the words of human beings, who are themselves limited and by
their own admission fallible and sinful.
So the task of Christian theology is to discern the Divine message in the
human medium. In 99% of the time this is no problem at all, especially
since God knew about one of the cardinal principles of Information Theory
that a large amount of redundancy ensures the message will get through.
And Susan here confuses "inerrantists" with those who believe in a "young
earth". There are plenty of "inerrantists" (including me) who don't believe
that the Bible teaches a "young earth".
SB>don't seem to mind much that the bible says grasshoppers have four legs,
Susan is probably referring to Lev 11:20-23:
"[20] All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be detestable to you.
[21] There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that
you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. [22]
Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.
[23] But all other winged creatures that have four legs you are to detest."
(Lev 11:20-23 NIV).
It is obvious, even to a pre-scientific people, that insects have six-legs, so
this is unlikely to be a simple error. It strains credulity to think that the
writer of Leviticus (e.g. Moses) would make such an obvious error, and
that no subsequent copyist corrected it. It is more likely to be an apparent
error due to our misunderstanding of how the ancient Hebrews thought
about such things.
The first point in trying to understand what the ancient writer meant is that
in the original Hebrew the word "insect" in "All flying insects" is literally
'owph or "winged". Thus the King James version rendered Lev 11:20: "All
fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you". In
fact, the NIV's "winged creatures" in v21 shows that its translation
"insects" in v20 is an error.
Second, the term "walk on all fours" is in the Hebrew "going on all fours".
It probably was meant to distinguishing between flying creatures which had
four (or more legs) from those with two legs (i.e. birds). Thus one of my
commentaries on this verse says: "20 ... Going upon all four, upon four
legs, or upon more than four, as bees, flies, &c., which is all one to the
present purpose, these pluralists for legs being here opposed to those that
have but two." (Poole M., "Commentary on the Holy Bible: Volume I:
Genesis-Job", [1683], 1968, reprint, pp.221-222)
Third, it is possible that the Hebrews counted the first four legs as walking
legs and the last two as jumping legs, see v21: "jointed legs for hopping on
the ground". Various commentators, including my NIV Study Bible and
"New Bible Commentary" suggests this :
"11:20 all fours. Although insects have six legs, perhaps people in ancient
times did not count as ordinary legs the two large hind legs used for
jumping." (Barker K., ed., "The NIV Study Bible," 1985, p.159);
"Insects (verses 20-23). These are defined as all fowls that creep, going
upon all four (20) or, as in RV, 'winged creeping things'. The phrase 'going
upon all four' (lit. 'upon four legs') must mean 'those which walk or crawl
like a quadruped', since six legs are characteristic of the great class of
Insecta. All are banned with the notable exception of four classes of the
locust family which are distinguished by their long jumping legs (21). If the
RV rendering of verse 23 is followed then the phrase 'which have four feet'
cannot mean the same as 'that go upon all four' (21), i.e. it must be taken as
inferring to insects which do not have the large jumping legs. By inserting
the word other in verse 23 the AV assumes the two phrases to be more or
les synonymous. This is probably the correct meaning. The fact that a
sweeping statement i made after a definite exception to it has bees already
given should not confuse the careful reader."(Allis O.T., "Leviticus," in
Davidson F., ed., "The New Bible Commentary," 1968, reprint, pp.144-
145).
Personally I think this latter is the explanation. The section is about dietary
laws and a simple way to prohibit all insects except grasshoppers and
locusts from being eaten is to make a distinction between the latter which
have four ordinary walking legs and two large jumping legs. The section is
not meant to be a textbook on entomology but a simple rule of thumb for
ordinary people to recognise what food they were allowed to eat from
what food they were not allowed to eat.
SB>that bats are a kind of bird,
And here Susan is no doubt referring to Lev 11:13-19:
"'These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are
detestable: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of
black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any
kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl,
the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the
bat."
Again it should be obvious that the writer of Leviticus would know that
bats are not birds. And in fact the Hebrew word translated "birds" here in
verse 13 is again 'owph which literally means "winged", so it covers bats as
well as birds.
SB>that pi equals 3 and so on.
And this of course refers to 1 Kings 7:23:
"He made the Sea [i.e. large basin] of cast metal, circular in shape,
measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of
thirty cubits to measure around it."
As has been pointed out many, many times, this makes no statement about
pi but is simply a description of the dimensions of the basin. Since pi is a
transcendental number, it cannot be given as an exact number and must be
rounded to whatever decimal place is appropriate for the job. Since the
Hebrews of 1,000 BC didn't have decimals, 30/10 = 3.0 is pi rounded to
the nearest whole number, so that in itself would be an adequate answer.
But in fact, as the following letter to NATURE shows, there is another
verse further down 1 Kings 7:26, "It was a handbreadth in thickness, and
its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held two
thousand baths" which adds more information about the basin and makes the
measurements equal to pi to two decimal places:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CORRESPONDENCE
[...]
Sir-In the News story about scientists' response to creationists, the
scientists "comment that the Bible says that PI is 3, not 3.14" (Nature 398,
453; 1999).
The biblical verse quoted (1 Kings 7:23) reads in part: "...measuring 10
cubits from rim to rim... It took a line of 30 cubits to measure around it".
Indeed, 30/10 equals 3, but further on in verse 26 it says: "It was a
handbreadth in thickness..." Assuming that a cubit measured 18 inches and
a hand breadth 3 inches, the inner diameter of the bowl would be 174
inches (10 x 18 - 2 x 3), and the inner circumference would be 540
inches (30 x 18). This yields a value for PI of 540/174 or 3.10. This is
about a 1 per cent error from the typical value for PI of 3.14. Although we
do not know the exact length of a cubit or a handbreadth, this result is very
close to the actual value of PI.
Kevin Peil
Reactor Engineering Group,
Dow Chemical Company,
Midland, Michigan 48674, USA
522 NATURE VOL 399 10 JUNE 1999
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In any event, most "inerrantists" these days only that the Bible is true in
what it *positively teaches* in respect of its primary purpose. There was in
fact another meaning of "inerrant" in the Webster's online dictionary,
namlely: "incapable of error in defining doctrines touching faith or morals"
(http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary). And the classic statement of the
Bible's primary purpose is given in 2 Timothy 3:15-17:
"and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able
to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture
is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly
equipped for every good work."
So even if there were human inexactitudes in classifying insects and birds,
and mathematics (which there does not even appear to be in the above
cases), it would not matter from the perspective of the Bible's primary
purpose.
Unlike the Koran and the Book of Mormon, the Bible does not claim to be
a book dictated word-for-word by God, or an angel. The Bible is, as I have
already said, a message by God through the medium of limited, sinful,
fallible human beings. It is therefore possible, and even probable, that the
Bible in its original manuscripts does contain a small number of
inconsequential errors. But the fact is that almost all claimed errors can be
satisfactorily explained, and those that remain may be due to copyists'
errors or our ignorance.
SB>All that stuff is just not important
The doctrine of innerrancy does not have to claim that everything in the
Bible is equally "important". One example I have seen in a theological book
is the two verses: "behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron" (Deut
3:11) and "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John
3:16). Now both are equally true, but both are not equally important!
Clearly whether or not "grasshoppers have four legs", "that bats are a kind
of bird", and "that pi equals 3", is not as "important" as the teachings of
Genesis 1.
SB>and can be explained away,
These can be "explained" quite satisfactorily without them having to be
"explained away".
SB>but *Genesis* is *science*.
Again, while I believe that "Genesis" is true and it overlaps with "science"
on the topic of origins, I do not believe that "Genesis" *is* "science".
I am not even sure that the ICR believes that today (maybe Ken Ham
does), but it certainly is not a mainstream Christian position.
If Susan can quote a YEC who claims that "Genesis is science" I would
agree with Susan that that YEC is wrong and misunderstands what
"Genesis' is about.
>>SB>No part of the Bible gets to be taught instead of science.
>SJ>Who is wanting to teach "...the Bible...instead of science"? Even the
>>creation-scientists don't want to do that: ... "Creation-
>scientists emphasized that they wanted to present only the scientific
>>arguments in the schools; the Bible itself was not to be taught." (Johnson
>>P.E., "Darwin on Trial," 1993, p.6).
SB>creation "science" is religion.
I do not disagree with Susan on this. Like Johnson, "I am not a defender of
creation-science..." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial," 1993, p14).
SB>I"m working on my collection of out-of-context quotes. What do you think of
>this one? :-)
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>"One reason we evangelicals have had so little impact on secular society with
>our creation teachings is that we try to teach Genesis without presenting a
>testable creation model. We either focus all of our guns on what is wrong
>with naturalism or we duck the issue by claiming that Genesis presents no
>specific creation model. Thus, we are perceived by society as either negative
>or cowardly. "--Hugh Ross, Ph.D. , Summary of Reasons To Believe's
>Testable Creation Model
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree with Ross in principle that we should aim at positively "presenting a
testable creation model", rather than just negatively attacking "naturalism"
and evolution. That is what I am trying to do with my Mediate Creation
model.
[...]
Unless Susan has anything new to add, this is my last post on this thread.
I thank Susan for her stirring questions! :-)
Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Considering the very close genetic relationship that has been established
by comparison of biochemical properties of blood proteins, protein
structure and DNA and immunological responses, the differences between
a man and a chimpanzee are more astonishing than the resemblances. They
include structural differences in the skeleton, the muscles, the skin, and the
brain; differences in posture associated with a unique method of
locomotion; differences in social organization; and finally the acquisition of
speech and tool-using, together with the dramatic increase in intellectual
ability which has led scientists to name their own species Homo sapiens
sapiens - wise wise man. During the period when these remarkable
evolutionary changes were taking place, other closely related ape-like
species changed only very slowly, and with far less remarkable results. It is
hard to resist the conclusion that something must have happened to the
ancestors of Homo sapiens which did not happen to the ancestors of
gorillas and chimpanzees." (Morgan E., "The Aquatic Ape: A Theory of
Human Evolution," [1982], Souvenir Press: London, 1989, reprint, pp.17-18)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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