Re: concordance & genesis (edited)

Paul Seely wrote:...

>>PR: You are claiming too much. You have not shown that I ignore evidence, at least not after having been given it. But by comparing me with YEC, you ignore lots of evidence about my worldview, approach and motivation, which I have given many times on this list and in PSCF. Please try to understand what I am saying, without imputing to me things I haven't thought or said!<<

>PS: I am not comparing you with YEC. I think your worldview is sounder than that of a YEC.<

PR: Then it was just guilt by association...

> PS: I am comparing your methodology to the methodology of a YEC. YEC's regularly ignore probable interpretations of data in favor of barely possible interpretations even if all they have to support their interpretations is speculation. I see you doing the same thing regarding the question of the shape of the earth in ancient times.<

PR: My methodology is not YEC'ish. I am not hooked to interpretations,
but willing to correct them on the basis of convincing evidence. I am
just skeptical about whole-sale claims made on the basis of tenuous
evidence. Although I concede that tenuous evidence is still better than
none at all.

> PS: All of the evidence is that peoples before the fifth century and those without a Western education even after that believed the earth is flat. That sets up an historical probability that this belief was universal in ancient times. If you respect the evidence, you have to conclude that ancient peoples probably believed the earth is flat. You cannot respect the evidence and conclude "I think the belief that most of the ancients believed in a flat earth is a modern myth."<

PR: I wrote this on 13 Dec 2003. You responded by quoting some evidence
that some "primitive" people, as well as some ancient Greeks and
Ethiopians, believed in a flat earth. On 15 Dec 2003, I answered: "I
don't question the claim that there were many people in those days who
believed in a flat earth", and in response to your protest, "Your 'I
think the belief that most of the ancients believed in a flat earth is a
modern myth.' is contrary to the evidence", I wrote: "It may have been a
slight overstatement, as I qualified above." By the way, Pythagoras
lived in the 6th not 5th century.

I am not as inflexible as you charge. I appreciate that you, too, are
not completely inflexible, as in your paragraph above you now qualified
"that ancient peoples ... believed the earth is flat" with a "probably".
Apparently, the case is not quite watertight on both sides: the truth
seems to be somewhere in-between, with some ancients believing in a
spherical earth and some, maybe most, in a flat one.

But the core of this argument of mine was not even the beliefs of the
ancients, but that God probably didn't have much difficulty persuading a
writing prophet to not hook his text to a flat-earth worldview, even if,
for discussion's sake, he would have held it, and the possibility that
God indeed had a reason for doing so and did it.

Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)