Re: [asa] RE: Conrad Hyers essay [WAS: (much better than) Jonathan Wells essay

Jim,
Of course the line goes dead. "I don't know" is barred by a reflex
action. I recall Doc Moon of MIS noting that a scientist, asked about
something in his field, is more likely than not to say he doesn't know.
But a pastor, asked anything in any field, will have a definitive answer.
Look out for the preacher who will tell you that Adam was made, mud pie
style, by the hands of the preincarnate Christ, who then practiced what
now we think of as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation--but no"re-" then. You
just have had the advantage of hitting them with a new question.
Dave

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:11:16 -0700 Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
writes:
I've said something like this before, but the question I entertain with
respect to 5 is, "What exactly did this 'coming from dust' look like?"
Did it look like a whirlwind that consolidated into a living person? Or
was it a flash/bang now-its-absent, now-its-not event? Did it rise up in
form and function from the dust of the ground? Where did water come into
play? What exactly did those transformations of substance and form look
like? In the absence of a good answer to these sorts of questions, there
would seem to be at least a semblance of an argument that one cannot then
say with certainty how it DID NOT occur. Oddly enough, I seldom get any
response to this line of thought. The line just sort of goes dead. JimA

Ted Davis wrote:
My comments inserted below.

ted

  
"Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu> 01/31/07 10:41 AM >>>
        
Thanks Ted. Based on my admitedly limited experience, here are the
scientific issues associated with a theistic evolutionary POV that seem
hardest to stomach for my literalist friends, even the ones who can kinda

sorta maybe visualize an old Earth and common descent of organisms
(except

maybe humans). In no particular order

1. Death before the Fall (I'd say this was #1 among the 2005 summer
course

particiapnts, Ted)

T: Exactly. Anyone who pays attention to my posts here knows this is my
view. For a great rejoinder from the early 19th century, check out
Edward
Hitchcock on my webpage. http://home.messiah.edu/~tdavis/texts.htm

Several nerdy friends of mine (it takes one to know one) are planning a
book on just this issue. I hope it comes to be.

2. Women not literally being made from men (hence students coming to
college
wanting to believe they have different numbers of ribs)

Yeah, I've heard stories like this rib thing. Pretty funny, when you
think
about it. Not much more to say on that one.

3. No literal world-covering, most-life-wiping-out flood (people around
here
enthusiastically embrace flood-geology related arguements like dinosaurs
on

the ark, [& possibly still in Africa today!] and the flood carving the
Grand
Canyon.

A very serious objection, unless one is prepared to put all or most of
pre-Abrahamic Genesis in the same boat (to throw in a pun), as I probably
am. The Dinosaurs in Africa thing is another hoot, generally, though we
do
know of course that some really old animals are out there, like
coelocanth
and crocodiles and some other stuff.

4. Jesus with his perfect knowledge (and Paul, supernaturally protected
from
error) speaking as though they believe the NT is literal history.

A very serious objection, until/unless one realizes the degree to which
Jesus borrows from/alludes to a big parcel of Hebrew literature, which
many
modern readers wrongly interpret all on the same level. e.g., he calls
himself "Son of Man," almost certainly a reference to First Enoch (I
think
that's the correct extra-canonical book), where that phrase is used to
mean
a special servant of God, instead of humankind generally as it typically
did
in the OT. We don't take Jesus' use of this metaphor, indeed his use of
it
to refer to himself, as an endorsement of the divine authority of First
Enoch. But this type of thing -- the relation between canonical and
non-canonical literature -- is also likely to bother many YECs. It's
extraordiniarly rare, IMO, for conservative churches to talk about this
type
of thing in a serious way. It's as though the decisions made about
canonicity were given to the Pope on stone tablets.

5. No special creation of Adam from dust.

The deepest, rock-bottom objection, I think. A bright student once told
a
colleague in one of our humanities departments, "I refuse to believe I'm
nothing but pond scum." ie, if evolution is true then I'm just a bunch
of
worthless (or nearly worthless) chemicals. Harry Emerson Fosdick, whom I
don't always agree with (to put it delicately), hit the nail on the head
with this one. "Origins prove nothing in the realm of values."
Fosdick, Evolution and Mr. Bryan (1922), 14

But it can be very tough to convince people of this, even though the
Bible
expressly says that we came from "dust," which isn't exactly an
auspicious
beginning. I'm fine with my students all believing in special creation
of
humans (as most of them do, if not all), since it's a lot easier for them
to
see value in that, and value is more important than scientiifc truth in
any
case. But I do try to get them to see Fosdick's point. Nature hardly
teaches us that "all men are created equal," to borrow Mr Jefferson's
enlightened white male language; indeed, if anything it says just the
opposite, both in terms of genetics (we don't all start on the same page)
and common descent, which has often encouraged evolutionary racism (as
Bertrand Russell once observed, evolution and democracy don't mix very
well). Jefferson needed a creator to get equality (even if a limited
notion
of it), and I don't think we've improved on that subsequently.

ted

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Received on Wed Jan 31 15:32:20 2007