Re: A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

Here is the second of my 2-part post:

Like it or not, it's just a fact that we don't understand all the language
and context of these early documents. We shouldn't think that we are the first
people since the 4th century BC to finally get it all right. We know that all
our predecessors in the church were mostly wrong in interpreting certain
parts of the Bible. Undoubtedly **we** don't completely understand the full
mindset of the Biblical writers, either. Apparently, God doesn't care if we are
wrong on a lot of these things. I think that this is a verifiable fact. God
doesn't care enough about what you think of the flood to make sure you get it
right. Either God isn't there, or else He is the type of God that will let you
believe false things about the flood. I'm sure it's the latter.

So your logical response to this will be, "Well then,wouldn't an omniscient
God give us a Bible that all people of all times can interpret? And if we
can't interpret it, then how can we know it is any better than the GGS theology."
And I believe it is an excellent question and (like I said at the outset in
part 1) I am really in agreement with you. You are raising an excellent
question.

Good epistemology includes making sure our beliefs are not formed ad hoc just
to deny what is otherwise an obvious falsification. YEC beliefs are exactly
that, to the point of being ridiculous. So are Mormon beliefs and GGS beliefs
and certain Muslim beliefs about early Christianity and Jesus. I **don't**
think the regional mesopotamian flood beliefs are ad hoc **in the least** and
here is why: because we have well attested historical documents from the
region that tell us there really was a flood in that region, and those documents
have undeniable literary dependencies with Noah's account. It was ingrained
into the mindset of the mesopotamian people, since their main literature was all
about it. If the Bible had not mentioned that flood, then the omission would
have been a huge failure to address one of the biggest religious issues of
their day. There is nothing ad hoc in recognizing this.

So the challenge isn't to understand how the flood could have been
geologically widespread by finding a part of the world to put it in. That's getting it
backwards. In fact, that is making the same mistake you see in others,
because that is denying the observational **facts** that we have in the mesopotamian
literature. Geology isn't the only honest, intellectual pursuit in the
world, you know. The assyriologists are probably quite good at what they do. So I
think the honest challenge is to find out whether the Bible is **false** in
regard to its statements about the extent of the flood (and hence untrustworthy
in its theology, too) or are we simply misinterpreting the words and phrases
of its original writers. (...again, I don't want to argue over the geology of
the flood, so I won't list that as an option here...). If I could beg you to
consider just one thing it would be this: please be willing to loosen up on
your interpretation of the Bible and consider that maybe we just don't
understand the context of some parts of it all that well. I agree with you that it is
inerrant in teaching science, but it is just hard to understand the language
sometimes.

Apparently you have answers that satisfy you regarding all the "problem"
areas (Flood, Genesis days, etc.). I'm truly glad, and it doesn't bother me if
your ideas to reconcile them with science are different than mine. God lets us
be wrong so i'm willing to let people be wrong sometimes, too, as long as they
aren't upsetting the faith of others or digging themselves into a hole.

OK, I'm going to pin my ears back in expectation of your reply. ;-) I
really appreciate your honesty.

God bless,
Phil Metzger
Received on Sat Jun 3 01:43:40 2006