This is for Bob Schneider, Paul Seeley, Phil Metzger
On Sat Jun 3 21:36 , "Robert Schneider" sent:
>"In the beginning God created a singularity of infinite density. Then God
>said, 'Let there be Bang, and let space--time come into existence.' And it
>was so. And a point the size of a needle with a density of 10 to the 90th
>power cubic centimeters appeared, with a temperature of 10 to the 32nd
>kelvins. And God said, "Let there be inflation.' And it was so. And the
>universe expanded beyond the first 10 x -43 of a second. Then, at 10 to
>the -10 of a second, God said, "Let radiation appear..." Now, in God's name,
>what Hebrew would make any sense whatsoever of that as the story of
>creation? Why would anybody pass such a creation story down orally for
>centuries until sometime in the very early first millenium BC someone began
>to write the oral stories down in Hebrew? The storyteller might as well be
>speaking a non-semetic language like Hittite; that wouldn't make any less
>sense.
>
>Besides, God might well expect or know that we human beings, as we observe
>the cosmos, might some day in a future distant from ours, offer a better
>cosmological model and historical reconstruction than Big Bang. What then?
I call this the ‘all-or-nothing’ fallacy. It is fallacious to think that God must
tell everything in order to have said anything true. All one needs is for God to
have indicated that the earth and universe were old and that life is related. That
would solve almost all the apologetical issues. It would be true, but incomplete.
But I get this kind of nonsensical reply all the time because people want to draw
the argument towards the ridiculous extremes in order to protect their preferred
but weak position.
I also find it odd that I have said in other notes lately that one doesn’t have to
have God write 7th grade textbooks, but this position constantly gets ascribed to
me. I don’t think people actually read and reflect on what they read. And I have
been saying this for over 10 years now, but constantly get this all-or-nothing
thing thrown back in my face. Look for the red car and blue car in each of these
posts. But the next time I discuss this, someone is going to trot out this all-or-
nothing fallacy again because people don’t listen at all. Note the dates
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199603/0193.html
http://www.asa3.org/archive/ASA/200408/0084.html
Indeed, I do believe that the Bible teaches evolution, “Earth, bring forth animals
after their kind…” That is the earth doing the creating and to me, that means
evolution. There are places in the Bible where the hills are called old and the
word used is the same one used to describe how old God is. See
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/olam.htm
Those things satisfy my needs, but the ridiculous all-or-nothing fallacy continues
to come out, and it will next time and the time after when we discuss these things.
>
>I've just finished reading the first chapter of Peter Enns' book,
>_Inspiration and Incarnation. Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old
>Testament_. He states that the rootedness of the creation/flood episodes in
>the ancient mythic tradition of ANE "is precisely what it means for God to
>speak to his people."
>
>"This is what it means for God to speak at a certain time and place--he
>enters _their_ world. He speaks and acts in ways that make sense to
>_them_..This is surely what it means for God to reveal himself to people--he
>accomodates, condescends, meet them where they are. The phrase _word of God_
>does not imply disconnectedness to its environment. In fact, if we can learn
>a lesson from the incarnation of God in Christ, it demands the exact
>opposite. And if God was ready and willing to adopt an acient way of
>thinking, we truly hold a very low view of Scripture indeed if we make that
>into a point of embarrassment. We will not understand the Bible if we push
>aside or explain away its cultural setting, even if that setting disturbs
>us. We should rather learn to be thankful that God came to them, just as he
>did more fully in Bethlehem many, many centuries later. We must resist the
>notion that for God to enculturate himself is somehow beneath him. This is
>precisely how he shows his love to the world he made" (p. 56).
>
>I cannot imagine that God would inspire the ancient writer to a narrative
>that brought the message that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob created
>the world without using the cosmology familiar to those hearing the word.
>Does that make God a liar? I think not. Let's give God credit and not
>insist that he reason the way we do.
In the eyes of many today, that does make God a liar. He knew the truth but didn’t
tell it and told something else. As I have When my children were little, I told
them not to do that sort of thing. Why should I excuse God for doing what I tell my
children not to do?
For Paul Seeley
On Sat Jun 3 22:02 , "Paul Seely" sent:
>PHS: I agree that a propositional statement is either true or false. I also
>agree that an accommodated statement can be false, and often is. But, the
>words "prevaricate" and "lie" imply immoral willful deception. Divine
>accommodation has no intent to deceive. Accommodations are NOT even
>revelations from God.
>
>When God says, "God made the solid dome of the sky" (Gen 1:7), the
>revelation is Who exactly made the sky. That was a disputed question. But,
>no one disputed that the sky was a solid dome. Everyone believed that long
>before Moses came on the scene. It was their science, and it was embedded in
>their hearts and minds. The fact that God accommodated his revelation of Who
>made the sky to their scientifically immature view of the sky does not make
>God a deceiver, a prevaricator, or a liar. It makes him a father concerned
>to communicate a theological lesson in the most effective way possible,
>while allowing mankind to continue their God-ordained task of increasing
>scientific knowledge without God giving corrective scientific revelation.
>
>As to the illustration, I am not convinced that in all of Africa there are
>no tribes which know about trucks but not about large boats with rudders.
>But, even if the story is fiction, the point remains: there are ethical ways
>of saying things which are false without making a mistake, lying or
>prevaricating.
>
>Paul
>Yes, it was fun to meet you last summer.
I hope your eyes haven’t gotten worse. Age gives us all bad things to deal with. I
think what you got was worse than what I got, although I wouldn’t recommend
either.
The problem with absolving God in this manner, which I interpret as giving the bad
stuff to man and the good stuff to God goes back to my post on the ASA on SHannons’
noisy channel theorem. When you are transmitting a series of 1’s and 0’s in a
communication channel, there is noise. Noise changes a transmitted 1 to a received
0 and vice versa. How many bad transmissions have to take place in order for zero
information to be communicated? Well, the number, it turns out, is 50%. You can
have 50% of the data received correctly, but you have totally failed to communicate
your message because there is no way to tell which bits are true and which are
false at the reception end. If God is transmitting information to us through an
early writer who is acting like a noisy channel, if he gets 50% of the stuff wrong,
we have no real communication from God.
This is from a discussion I had back in 2004 which no one seems to think applies,
but it simply has to:
It really doesn't matter where the noise arises from. If you have a
perfect source, transmitting perfectly, but you send it along a set of
wires that has a lot of cross-feed, induction etc, the noise will affect
the signal and if there is only a 50-50 chance of the information
getting to the receiver correctly, then the noisy channel theorem states
that there is zero communication occurring.
A 10% error in the transmission channel means that only 50% of the
communication actually gets across!
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/200409/0104.html
You can’t tell me how much noise is in this human communication channel and thus,
you can’t be sure how much is true and how much of the Bible is false. So, if God
isn’t lying about ANE, He becomes incompetent to communicate the truth with man and
that IS problematical for Christianity. Which do you prefer—an incompetent or a
deceitful God?
Phil Metzger wrote:
>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.
Let’s not fall into the all or nothing fallacy. God could simply have said life
evolved. He could also have made it clear that the earth is old. That is enough. I
am not asking for text books, although this comes up all the time.
And for about the tenth time I wish people would quit using the word proof. I have
said repeatedly that proof is impossible here. I am not even looking for proof—
just supporting evidence. Proof only exists in mathematics. It doesn’t exist
anywhere else.
>
>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?
This is similar to Debbie Mann’s view that God made the world look like it wasn’t
made so that man could have doubt. I don’t really like the view, but if God did
this, then he doesn’t really care if we come to him.
>
>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.
I have studied anthropology with a passion. I have probably read more anthro than
a Master’s candidate has to. Because of that, I know how smart the ancient people
were; people who lived long before the Hebrews. To have modern apologists always
talk about how they couldn’t understand this or that is simply modern snobbery. I
am glad you understand how smart those people were.
Phil, you also wrote something I hadn't responded to in the Yak butter thread. I
will take this opportunity:
>I'd say that God **does** let us believe false theology. Some of His followers
>believe infant baptism is wrong, while others believe that NOT doing infant
>baptism is wrong. So some of those Christians must be wrong -- I don't know which
>group, but they can't both be right!
God lets us believe falsehood, but he doesn't have to be the instigator of it. That
is what I object to.
Received on Sun Jun 4 10:49:29 2006
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sun Jun 04 2006 - 10:49:29 EDT