Re: [asa] Slug

On 6/15/06, Glenn Morton <glennmorton@entouch.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:* Iain Strachan [mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, June 15, 2006 8:46 PM
> [Glenn Morton]
> Glenn,
>
> If you'd stop shouting in captial letters like you do and actually read
> what I said, you will see that I said:
>
> unless you have a Bible that provides a complete scientific revelation,
> and I think we're all agreed that the Bible isn't supposed to be that.
> [Glenn Morton]
> Sorry, to be shouting, but you didn't say exactly "I think we're all
> agreed that the Bible isnt' supposed to be that"
>

Yes, Glenn, I did exactly say that. What I put there was an exact quote
from my previous post. It looks to me like you didn't read that bit for the
first time. My literal, verbatim words were "I think we're all agreed that
the Bible isn't supposed to be that".

How can you then say I didn't say exactly that when that is exactly what I
said?

You wrote:
> "If any sacred writing gives any account of creation, unless it either
> says "God made all this", or it gives a perfect revelation of the science
> that actually happened, it will be vulnerable to inferences being made (
> e.g. about the age of the earth), which might later turn out to be
> factually wrong."
>
> Frankly, I don' t quite know how to take it other than the all or nothing
> fallacy even after I re-read it. If the only way to avoid the problem is to
> give a complete science book, as you say, then why on earth is this not the
> all or nothing fallacy?
>

No, because ANY incomplete statement, such as "life came from slime" is an
(admittedly incomplete) scientific statement that could be as ludicrously
wrong as the Great Green Slug. And equally, even if the FACTS are wrong,
the truth behind them is still what convicts, because we don't know the
facts. You have said why can't God have told us the earth is old. Well,
then what do you mean by old? Some people would say 6000 years is old.
It's a heck of a long time for someone who only lives threescore years and
ten. So maybe it does say the earth is old. The problem is that "old" is a
term that requires quantification. If, as you say, it doesn't have to give
the figures and be a modern science book, then you can't complain that it
doesn't say the earth is old. The notion of "Young Earth" is only in
comparison to the timescales of modern science. It doesn't say in the Bible
that the earth is young. And the inference that it is young is only made
when you equate "man" created on day 6 in Gen Ch 1 with "Adam" in Gen Ch 2 -
an inference disputed by many scholars who say these are different accounts.

One last try, consider one of my favourite poems, "Futility" by Wilfred
Owen, which contains its own allusions to the origin of life.

Futility Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seed -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved -still warm- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

In the poem, a soldier laments over the dead body of a comrade in the first
world war. The emotions are raw, heartbreaking, and a true representation
of what the poet felt. What is the point of life if it comes to this?
Three syllables give you the whole of the origins of life and evolution
"clay grew tall". But wait a minute, "Woke, once the clays of a cold
star". What is this? Absolute nonsense, as far as I can see; the early
earth was neither cold, nor a star. We're not asking Owen to give us a
scientific account of the origins of life, but surely he didn't have to give
us this falsehood! Owen knows as well as we do that the sun isn't "kind",
nor is it "fatuous" (silly), nor do its beams "toil".

But none of these fatuous complaints about scientific accuracy distract from
the message of absolute despair and loss that the poet wished to convey, and
indeed the imagery enhances the message.

Michael Roberts has memorably described Genesis Ch 1 as a "Hymn to
Creation", and I think if one views it as that, and quit worrying about
whether what it conveys are accurate facts, then perhaps you can get it
"straight in the guts" just as that Wilfred Owen poem with all its
scientific absurdities gets me in the guts.

Iain

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Received on Thu Jun 15 19:51:43 2006