Re: [asa] Evolution in the Bible

  Mike wrote: All this trying to force the semantics of so sacred a work as the Bible into the rational specifics of our current cosmology is doing a disservice, in my estimate, to its real message. What happens if you wangle yourselves a beautiful new interpretation of Genesis that is one to one concurrent with everything we think we know right down to the big bang and then we find out the same thing we always find out about the largest structure we can see (IT AIN'T THE LARGEST STRUCTURE)
   
  There is no reason the Bible should have to do that as it is clearly not Gods way of teaching us advanced cosmolgoy. The Genesis story may have simply begun with our Solar system. Why not? Once our star began forming, the rest of the universe is of little importance to the development of mankind.

Every time we look hard enough, we find out that what we thought was the largest structure was neither the largest structure nor the only one of it's kind. From a Bayesian perspective, it is nearly inevitable that the Big Bang will turn out to be a little pop (Local Monster Black Hole Goes Bang) in a broad field of little pops that in turn combine to form a bigger structure just like every material object/system we ever examined from Quarks to Galaxy Cluster in all 40 orders of spatial magnitude we have discovered so far. No exceptions.
    That is now unlikely as the observable universe is finite. It is very likely to be ~ 13.3 billion lightyears radius from us. It is likely larger, but beyond hope of direct observation.
   
  
Every human cosmology we ever devised was in fact refuted in exactly this the same way. What we thought was everything there was to see, turned out time and again to be just one of many of the same class of object forming bigger structures in a yet larger context.
  When has science ever stated that everything had been observed? The end of the 19th century claimed to have had things almost wrapped-up. Planck's father advised his son not to get in physics for this reason, but admitted that there were two minor issues outstanding: light and gravity. :)
   
  The flat earth was one of may objects in a much larger Ptolemaic structure.
   
  It was well known by Aristotle that the Earth was spherical based on their seeing stars slide south as they traveled north, and the round shape of Earth's umbra as the Moon traveled through it during a lunar eclipse.
   
  Why do you say flat?
   
  I don't think any philospher ever claimed to know the distance to the stars, so it was always an open question. Admittedly, it was inconceivable by many that no parallax was observable if one took Copernicus seriously. It was perhaps more inconceivable to those who opposed it for religious reasons, of course.
   
  The round Earth turned out to be one of many smaller structures orbiting a much larger Copernican Sun. The Copernican Soloar System turned out to be many star systems in a much larger galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy turned out to be one of many galaxies in a much larger expanding Big Bang system. Get some Vegas odds maker to give you the spread and let your grandkids go to college on it, the big bang is not the end of the line.
    The Greeks 2000+ years ago knew the Sun was larger than the Earth. Big Bang is not on the same theoritcal level as Ptolemy or Copernicus. It must be judged on its many tested merits. It's close to jam-up, jelly tight, armor platted, and bullet proof. But, there is a chance you are right. Science hopes you are, but they understand the objective evidence better than many realize.
   
  So after you get your new interpretations of Genesis all hammer into place, you'll just have to start all over again trying to torture the beautiful prose of Genesis that lets us know that God is the beginning and the end of all things as well as you will ever see it written, to fit YET ANOTHER cosmological attempt to describe all of infinite Creation as some tidy new finite model (this time for SURE). It ain't gonna happen. This is the new, open ended Bayesian data profile facing modern humans, which we need to formalize in lieu of constantly thinking we have it all but figured out. Science is not transcendent. Science is a finite set of local relationships couched in an infinite and infinitesimal context the full extent in either direction of which we will never figure out. Humans cannot rationally describe Creation EVER. We can only describe spatially local relationships over a finite span of time, nothing more. That's the best fit the data shows.
 (www.thegodofreason.com)

  Seeking the truth is all we can do. Certainly, it is laughable to presume we can reach some level on a par with God who any meaning we can give to the word infinite. But there are finites we can work with. Oceans must have looked near infinite to the earliest sailors, but it is obvious today how finite they really are.
  
You can interpret the Bible just fine for how you should live your life without trying to mangle it into some specific, rational compliance with our constantly changing, eternally provisional, rational world view.
   
  Yes, since the Bible is not about science. However, allowing the Bible to be seen as silly or equivalent to Greek myths, and faith will suffer. Genesis makes strong statements that suggest scientific scrutiny has some say in its credibility. Seeking the truth is what must be continued, and not ignored in hopes science will leave it alone.

  GeorgeA

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Received on Tue Dec 4 22:06:00 2007