RE: [asa] A parable of three investors

>>I imagine this is falling on your favorite topic of Gen 1-11. :-)<<<

Yep, the unfortunate thing is that the post which started the parable never
made it to the list so everything now is out of context.

>>>If we can find a way to reconcile Biblical accounts, descriptions
etc. with historical or archeological data, then yes, that is
certainly easier. Nevertheless, even given we could reconcile everything
and
feel quite satisfied at what we see, the choice of discussion material, the
delivery,
the purpose, and the style are all part of the issue too. It is important
to know
the intent of the author, and for those of us who believe in God, indeed
God, in
the production and survival of any of these rare writings of antiquity.<<<

I actually have come to disagree with the concept that the intent of the
original author (or more correctly his understanding) is important. If it
is, then clearly we can't change the interpretation. What that guy believed
is what we must believe, no matter how stupid that is. Since I believe in a
strong form of inspiration, in which God inspired the writings to tell us
something of a concrete nature, then it is His intent which is important,
not the understanding or intent of the original Hebrew writer.

This view that the original intent of the Hebrew writer is what has made the
status quo so bad. It limits our choices and makes it impossible to actually
come up with a solution.

>>>I find in these writings more than one dimensional. They could be just
simply
journalistic accounts of events from occurred in antiquity, and certainly,
given that being their sole purpose, it would be nice to find some evidence
for the facts that these accounts purport. However, I sense there is a much
deeper poetic side to much of this writing that was somehow survived
long.<<<

If it is just poetic with nothing in fact, then I go back to my overly tired
argument that there are lots of false creation stories. Just pick one and
go with the God that comes along with it. They are all equally false and so
one could chose his god based upon which one he liked. But, like you, I
find more dimensions to the account, but not in the sense I think is your
intent. I keep mulling over how a Deity could communicate something to
humanity and have it be seen as true throughout the generations with
increasing knowledge. If I were the Deity I would inspire it in such a way
that as knowledge increases, people could see it as true. The fact that the
firmament comes from a root word with the meaning 'stretch out' is curious
given our current understanding that the sky really IS stretching out. We
call it cosmic expansion. I find it curious that the Hebrew says "Earth!
Bring forth living creaturs after their kind..." Which is, of course,
evolution. I even find it interesting that if one looks at consciousness
and language (a subject for a future post), that these seem to require
enculturation. Enculturated apes can do things that no ape does in the
wild--communicate, even if primitively. The Bible describes an
enculturation process when God brought the animals to Adam. A book I am
currently reading on the evolution of consciousness notes that even today
people who miss this enculturation period in their childhood are unable to
self-generate symbolism and language. We don't have a language instinct. We
have to learn it. I find it curious that one cause--a growing head size,
creates 3 of the curses put upon Adam and Eve. I find it curious that there
is little in the Bible which absolutely requires a recent Adam--baked bricks
may be about it.

Of course, the whole thing is never meant to tell us anything about physical
reality, right?

>>>I don't argue with the value of "facts"in my reading of creation
accounts.
Nevertheless, the accounts seem to have their main purpose on getting
us to recognize that all is the work of a creator --- regardless of whether
of whether life emerged from a bubbling pond of chemicals or by the first
investor's belief in a dramatic "poof" (just push the "on" switch: off
switch?
Oh!). So certainly, there is value to trying to see if there is some way to
reconcile what we know with what is written. <<<<

I fail to see how the story, as traditionally interpreted actually does
that. Thousands have left Christianity because they believe the creation
event is a bunch of hokum and tells a false story. It is truly an odd way of
doing business to tell a false story to point out how the Creator created
the world.

If the only purpose of the creator was to tell us that he created, but not
HOW he created, he, or the Hebrew writer, went about it in an entirely
inappropriate way. He told us a story of HOW he created which we are not
supposed to take as an actual account of HOW he created. This makes no
sense to me. The purpose was to tell us more than just that God created. If
that was all there was, then why didn't he just say, God created the Heavens
and the earth, and move on to Abraham?

>>>On the issue of Adam and Eve, the Garden, sin & death, Cain & Abel, Noah
and the tower of Babel, I never had much attachment to those as being
real accounts. If any of them are, fine, it's interesting, but if they are
_mere
stories_, I would lose no sleep over it. They speak loudly to me about my
own
nature, my sinful nature, and my arrogance to make their point very clear.

Even if the accounts are historical, and maybe they are, I would be just as
satisfied that it was some Neanderthal who took the Lord's name in vain
after stubbing his toe. We're all "Neanderthals" from time to time. It
happened
somewhere, and to get stuck on the details, in many ways, misses the real
point
of these writings in our spiritual life.<<<

There are religions which don't believe in sin. What if they are the True
religion? Would you feel so sanguine? To utterly spiritualize the accounts
can be done with just about any document whatsoever but I can't for the life
of me see why take one document as true and another false. And since they
are all hopelessly mutually exclusive, they can't all be true at the same
time and have logic hold up.

There are several religions throughout the ancient world which held that a
God had been killed and then resurrected. Why is ours the correct one? To
claim that the resurrection is the proof ignores Horus and lots of other
ancient resurrection religions. I ran into this several years ago:

"Easter Pathology
by William Edelen
The image of a god, buried in a tomb, being withdrawn and said to live
again, is thousands of years older than the Jesus stories. Of all the
resurrected savior gods that were worshipped before and at the
beginning of the Christian myth, none contributed so much to the
mythology developing around Jesus as the Egyptian Osiris. Osiris was
called ""Lord of Lords,"" ""King of Kings"" and ""the good Shepherd.""
He was called ""the resurrection and the life,"" the god who made ""men
and women to be born again."" He was the ""god man"" who suffered,
died, rose again and lived eternally in heaven. They thought that by
believing in Osiris they would share eternal life with him. Egyptian
scripture reads: ""As truly as Osiris lives, so truly shall his
followers live also.""
The coming of Osiris was announced by Three Wise Men. His flesh was
eaten in the form of communion cakes of wheat. Only through Osiris
could one obtain eternal life, they believed. The much loved 23rd Psalm
of the Bible is a modified version of an Egyptian text appealing to
Osiris, ""the good shepherd,"" to lead the dead ""to green pastures and
still waters,"" ""to restore the soul"" to the body and to give
protection in ""the valley of the shadow of death.""
http://www.banned-books.com/1997archive/124_1/81_edelens.html
accessed 8-19-04

Should we be worshipping Osiris? The only way I could tell is via
observational data. Nice poetry won't tell me.

>>>I don't like your attribution that we "prefer the Bible to be false".
The Bible is a book. The way I came to God was because God was
gracious enough to try to reach me, a sinner, and I must find a
way to understand more about this. So the bible is an important
guide to me, but at the end of the day, it is a book. The best
I can do is try to glean out what the book is trying to tell me.<<<

No one likes that, but when I offer concordistic solutions, I get lots of
criticism for doing it. I believe actions more than words. Words are cheap,
actions tell what is really the case.

In an exchange last June, I asked Paul Seeley this:

>How do you rule out the alternative possibility that the Bible is simply
>false? Or do you just assume that it is true and work from there?

To which another gentleman replied in part:
>Of course the Bible is false.

  That taught me that there are some people here who do not want to see
concordism work. But without it, I have no rational basis upon which to
believe in Christ rather than Osiris. Both arose, both have Lord's
suppers.Both descended into Hell. Both claim to be our shepherd etc.

It seems to me that when people oppose concordims, they are saying they
don't want verification of their belief system. Because to claim that one
shouldn't seek or doesn't need any physical evidence means that verification
is not important. It isn't important if the account is utterly false,
factually. So, how would we know if we are worshipping a false religion? I
see no way except THROUGH verification.

But opposition to concordism does place people as opposing the bible being
factually/observationally true, and that is the sense in which I use the
term.

>>>Why are we surprised that atheists ignore and disparage such
writing? Israel's kings ignored scripture when it was fresh; long
before it was compiled in a printed bible and long before there was
any systematic form of science we know today. <<<<

I am not surprised. When we christians say the Bible says nothing
factually/scientifically/historically true about creation, why should the
atheist defend the Bible? He just draws the proper conclusion, that it is
false and leaves it at that!.

>>> Warnings about
judgment were read out loud, sliced off, and tossed in the
fire. How is that any different from what we see today?
The heavens and the earth speak to the glory of God, but
somehow, one still needs eyes to see and ears to hear. <<<

Genesis isn't about warnings. It is about HOW God created. To claim that is
is only about the bare, scraped to the bone, claim that it is about the fact
that he DID create makes all the detail we are given useless and
unnecessary. Why talk about trees before the sun? Why, for that matter, talk
about Adam being shown the animals? If ALL the writer wants to show is that
God created Adam, there simply is no reason to talk about Adam naming
animals. That part of the scripture either has a purpose (which isn't to
show mere creation) or it is superfluous fluff, which also happens to be
false.

>>>I don't deny the value of facts, but I think there is a lot
more going on in these matters than facts: no matter how
many, how accurate, how predictable, or how far reaching
they may (or may not) be, as it were.<<<

Genesis 1 is not about sin; it is not about resurrection. It makes specific
claims about things spoken by God in relation to the work of creation. Per
se, it doesn't say when God's statements were made in relation to when they
were fulfilled.

>>Spiritual matters are not things we can control.<<<

Nor are they things we can verify. A religion which has no means of showing
that it is consistent with facts can be believed, but only by risking a
massive self-delusion. Which is why factual verification of events is so
important. Verification doesn't constitute proof, but it does constitute
consistency with known facts. Falsification does constitute disproof. If the
Bible is factually false, why does that not constitute falsification of the
claims contained therein?

>>By Grace we proceed,

Indeed!

glenn
They're Here: The Pathway Papers
Foundation, Fall, and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm
  
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 3:26 PM
To: glennmorton@entouch.net; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] A parable of three investors

Glenn wrote:

I would ask, when faced with a choice, one interpretation makes the Bible
capable of matching archaeological and scientific reality and the other
demonstrably makes the Bible false, why on earth do we WANT to chose the one
which makes it factually false? Do we like investing in theories which
makes it false? I suspect we too often do. For the life of me, I can't
figure out why. If one applies such a strategy to life (like investing
where bad decisions lead immediately to great pain), one will lose money.
Maybe we don't have any real skin in the game (there is that word 'real'
again)

I imagine this is falling on your favorite topic of Gen 1-11. :-)

If we can find a way to reconcile Biblical accounts, descriptions
etc. with historical or archeological data, then yes, that is
certainly easier. Nevertheless, even given we could reconcile everything
and
feel quite satisfied at what we see, the choice of discussion material, the
delivery,
the purpose, and the style are all part of the issue too. It is important
to know
the intent of the author, and for those of us who believe in God, indeed
God, in
the production and survival of any of these rare writings of antiquity.

I find in these writings more than one dimensional. They could be just
simply
journalistic accounts of events from occurred in antiquity, and certainly,
given that being their sole purpose, it would be nice to find some evidence
for the facts that these accounts purport. However, I sense there is a much
deeper poetic side to much of this writing that was somehow survived long.

I don't argue with the value of "facts"in my reading of creation accounts.
Nevertheless, the accounts seem to have their main purpose on getting
us to recognize that all is the work of a creator --- regardless of whether
of whether life emerged from a bubbling pond of chemicals or by the first
investor's belief in a dramatic "poof" (just push the "on" switch: off
switch?
Oh!). So certainly, there is value to trying to see if there is some way to
reconcile what we know with what is written.

On the issue of Adam and Eve, the Garden, sin & death, Cain & Abel, Noah
and the tower of Babel, I never had much attachment to those as being
real accounts. If any of them are, fine, it's interesting, but if they are
_mere
stories_, I would lose no sleep over it. They speak loudly to me about my
own
nature, my sinful nature, and my arrogance to make their point very clear.

Even if the accounts are historical, and maybe they are, I would be just as
satisfied that it was some Neanderthal who took the Lord's name in vain
after stubbing his toe. We're all "Neanderthals" from time to time. It
happened
somewhere, and to get stuck on the details, in many ways, misses the real
point
of these writings in our spiritual life.

I just find it so difficult to understand why people prefer the Bible to be
false to having at least a hope that it contains some history--real history.
As I said to Iain in the discussion about Yeled in Chapter 5. Atheists too
want the Bible to be false. For us to play their game is insanity. Like
Henry or Bob

I don't like your attribution that we "prefer the Bible to be false".
The Bible is a book. The way I came to God was because God was
gracious enough to try to reach me, a sinner, and I must find a
way to understand more about this. So the bible is an important
guide to me, but at the end of the day, it is a book. The best
I can do is try to glean out what the book is trying to tell me.

Why are we surprised that atheists ignore and disparage such
writing? Israel's kings ignored scripture when it was fresh; long
before it was compiled in a printed bible and long before there was
any systematic form of science we know today. Warnings about
judgment were read out loud, sliced off, and tossed in the
fire. How is that any different from what we see today?
The heavens and the earth speak to the glory of God, but
somehow, one still needs eyes to see and ears to hear.

I don't deny the value of facts, but I think there is a lot
more going on in these matters than facts: no matter how
many, how accurate, how predictable, or how far reaching
they may (or may not) be, as it were.

Spiritual matters are not things we can control.

By Grace we proceed,
Wayne

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Received on Sun Oct 29 21:39:00 2006