Re: ANE cosmology; was : A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

In a message dated 6/3/2006 9:37:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
rjschn39@bellsouth.net writes:
Now, in God's name, what Hebrew would make any sense whatsoever of that as
the story of creation?
Let's argue this the other way around. Suppose that God communicated truth
without any accomodation, but did so in a way so that the ancient Hebrews
**would** understand. If God wanted to prove his intellectual prowess then He
could have done that, and we would not have so much reason to doubt today. But
let's go a step further. God didn't need to limit this information to a book
and work through human authors at all. He could have put a big sign in the sky.
 Or, he could have miraculously given us direct memory implants at birth so
we would all know the creation account in a scientifically accurate way.

So the question that I think would be helpful for Glenn is this: why didn't
God choose to communicate accurate scientific truth to ALL people directly
without going through prophets and scriptures and then eventually missionaries
and preachers? Glenn, you are raising very important questions about why God
would or would not give verifiable proof to the true religion (to set it apart
from the false religions). So why not just make the truth perfectly clear to
everyone? Why not write it on every rock? In fact, why bother making a
universe at all -- why not just put us in a classroom with God sitting at the front
so that we can ask Him questions directly? Then **nobody** would doubt.

In fact, I think you can say that the primary reason for God to make a
physical universe at all was so that we would be separated from Him and therefore be
capable of disbelief. I think this is the only logical conclusion. If God
exists, then He doesn't want to force us to believe, otherwise He would simply
force us to believe. And if that is so, then why would we expect God to make
too many overt proofs of the truth in the Bible, since to do so would force us
to believe and thereby undermine His purpose for creating the universe in the
first place?

I am arguing my point too strongly. To clarify my position, I **do** believe
there are observably miraculous evidences for God in Scripture and nature
(for the sake of those whose weak faith He is encouraging), but I think we should
limit our expectations about how **much** of that we will find in the
Scripture or in nature.

I think this may be a valid argument for God to dumb-down the science He put
into the Bible. I think the term "accomodation" is wrong because it is
exactly backwards. God reduces the evidences in the Bible because He doesn't
**want** to force us to believe. This is a "de-accomodation", not an accomodation.
Glenn is right that ancient peoples were not dummies and that God really
could have told them more than He did. The reason for dumbing down the science
that God told us must not have been humanity's ignorance, but rather its
intelligence.

Food for thought....

Phil Metzger
Received on Sun Jun 4 00:11:23 2006