Re: A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

Glenn,

Here is part 1 of a long response:

let me start out by saying on this issue I totally agree with you, that a
religion's theology can't be trusted if its history and science can't be trusted.
 I think the following statement from Jesus assumes essentially that:

John 3:11-12
11 "Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak that which we know, and bear witness
of that which we have seen; and you do not receive our witness.
12 "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you
believe if I tell you heavenly things?
(NASB)

"Earthly things" are truth claims that can be verified by observation --
things like how a person behaves when he undergoes an observable conversion
experience (what Jesus just got done describing to Nicodemus). "Heavenly things"
are truth claims that cannot be verified by observation (i.e., aspects of
theology that are out of sight). Oddly, many people claim that they do believe
Jesus in heavenly things even though they **don't** believe him on earthly things
such as history or science. How can we believe Him in heavenly things if we
can't believe Him in earthly things???? Jesus seem to think that we can't, at
least not legitimately! So I am in complete agreement with you, Glenn. The
GGS theology should be rejected, like Mormonism and Islam and others, and like
various doctrines held by Christians (like YECism). We can't believe those
religions or religious authorities in the earthly things, so we can't believe
them in heavenly things either.

However, I think you are tilting windmills, Glenn. You can't single-handedly
fix the stinking thinking of the entire human race. Why even try? "Don't
worry.....be happy." ;-)

Just kidding...I'm upset about a bunch of things, too, but I should leave
more of it with God and not worry about the things I can't change. Alas, I wish
I were doing so a whole lot better than I am!

But I think there is another reason why you are fighting an un-winnable
battle: because the people you are arguing with are partly right but you aren't
giving them any credit. I get the feeling that you are set like concrete on
what certain words and phrases mean in the Bible, and you will never be willing
to reconsider. (Of course, **I'm** perfectly correct, so I am allowed to be
set in concrete...) The prime example is your argument against a Mesopotamian
flood. I am surmising that your **original** reason to come down against it is
because geology denies a mesopotamian flood could ever have been as
widespread "as what the Bible describes." But this depends entirely on your ability to
have perfect understanding of the words and phrases in the Bible where they
describe the extent of the flood.

Personally, I'm not sure we can be dogmatic about how widespread the Flood
was from the Bible's description. We certainly thought we could be sure in the
past, but our ealier YEC ideas have been falsified by science. Maybe the
regional mesopotamian idea is falsified, too. (I won't argue it since I'm not
competent in that topic.) But when the Bible says that all the tall mountains
were covered, you assume it means all the ones that Noah could have seen. But
that is just an assumption. The YEC's have their assumption about these
mountains, too. Maybe instead of either your or the YEC's assumption, the text
meant only the highest hills in the region where Noah's neighbors would have gone
to escape a flood -- right next to the cities. The people of Mesopotamia were
adapted to frequent, localized floods and undoubtedly they had civic plans
that during a flood you get the flocks and go to the high ground. Maybe the
text is simply telling us that God took that option away from them and flooded
all their tallest hills so that nobody from Noah's city-state escaped. I can
imagine that this is a perfectly valid thing to say: that even though the
Zagros mountains could be faintly seen on the horizon, when the flood hit then the
people retreated to the hills, but **all** those people died, because **all**
the tall hills were covered. Not the Zagros, but the ones where the people
went to escape the flood.

I don't see this kind of retreat from our earlier assumptions as being
accomodationalist. It is our **DUTY** to always re-assess what the words and
phrases in the Bible actually meant to the original writer. A communication means
what the writer meant it to mean, not what the reader takes it to mean. If my
wife tells me to take out the trash, then I can't tell her "well, to me that
means have a coke and watch the game." It is always the duty of the listener
to expend effort trying to understand the meaning of the speaker. Yes, it is
the duty of the speaker to try to be clear, but after he has spoken, then the
listener can't shirk his duty either. This is true of all communication, not
just biblical interpretation. Bibilical interpretation just happens to be an
extreme example of this because of the vast distances between speaker and
listener.

continued in next post...

Phil Metzger
Orlando, FL
Received on Sat Jun 3 01:26:39 2006