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To be honest I don’t really care what mainstream science says, if what it says is based on the assumption that neither the creation of the world, nor any other event since then, involved anything supernatural. As a Christian who believes in a powerful active God, that assumption is simply wrong. The science they build on that assumption could be perfect, but it would be meaningless if that assumption is wrong.

The assumptions you hold about science’s assumptions are wrong. I know plenty of Christians in science — even in geology and evolution and other ‘old earth’ sciences — who believe in both the miraculous events of the bible like the resurrection, some form of massive Middle Eastern flood, and all manner of other miracles — and yet still accept evolution and accept the Hebrew scholars saying Genesis is creative polemic.

You have just prescribed that the philosophy of science — which of course is about trying to measure the mechanisms by which God does things in nature — has to also be a metaphysical approach precluding divine intervention. You’re mixing atheism with empiricism, and it does not have to be that way. You’re setting up a false dichotomy.

One last fun question: if God created life via evolution, and God finished doing creation work from the seventh day, then why is evolution still observed? Isn’t he still creating exactly as he was in the first six days?

Most Creationists would scream at you for this! They would clutch at their chests and arms, turn purple, and keel over. They’d scream “WHAT EVOLUTION!?” and deny that we could see any.

But having said that it’s a silly red herring, more circular logic. Because you assume the creative narrative of Genesis 1 to be a literal account of *how* God made the world, you are just setting up another problem from that perspective. But if this is a piece debunking the reigning myths with a provocative counter-narrative, then it’s saying God blessed the 7th day because enjoying rest was the purpose of God’s good creation — RATHER THAN JUST BEING BECAUSE THE WAR WAS OVER AS IN THE ENUMA ELISH WHICH WAS WRITTEN CENTURIES EARLIER! Remember, Genesis is not the ONLY creation narrative that has rest on the 7th ‘day’ (or 7th ‘Act’ as is the case in the Enuma Elish, probably even on the 7th tablet of the 7 tablet Enuma Elish!)

Dave, if I understand what you’re saying, for science to be valid you must make certain things in the Bible non-miraculous, including creation and the flood. You can believe that, but I don’t think it does the text justice.

Let me put it another way: science has no way to model anything that breaks the laws of thermodynamics. Under God’s providence those laws never will be broken. But God can of course break them when he chooses to do special creative work. So God can create matter and energy, breaking the law of conservation of energy. If when God created light it meant he created some isolated photons, then science would only be able to say that those photons had always existed, and had been traveling in a straight line for all time past. That’s valid science, but it’s not true reality. Because I believe the whole of creation is as miraculous as that (by God creating other things from nothing, or from reversing entropy like when he made a fully functioning human body from dirt) there is no way for science to accurately model it. The only model it will be able to produce will be wrong because it will state that everything God had created had been there longer than it actually had been. It’s no surprise to me that science gives us long ages - it’s what I expect it to do.

I’m asking that question from what I believe is your perspective: the days aren’t literal, and the seventh day continues to now, to be the rest that is talked about in Hebrews. If you believe God is resting from his creative work, then how can you also believe that evolution is still occurring?

False dichotomy. One is theologically true, the other scientifically true. One is a creative narrative polemic given once-for-all-time, one is a scientific theory that is not yet fully developed and progressing with new data, new medical and archaeological discoveries. It’s not comparing apples and oranges which are both fruit, but poetry with quantum mechanics and chemistry sets!

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

All I can say is that if God had ‘finished’ creating the way you seem to suggest, then humans wouldn’t have babies, seasons wouldn’t change, continents wouldn’t drift, stars wouldn’t go supernova, and things wouldn’t change. They’d be static. It’s too literalistic and legalistic a reading.

The MAIN problem is that you talk up the science and plonk scientific issues from 4000 years later all over the text, and talk down the hermeneutics of what was happening at the time. EG: Enuma Elish, what’s that?

Your deliberate avoidance of the hermeneutics of the time and flippant sweeping aside of Dickson’s brilliant paper tell me this is going nowhere. Like many creationists you’ll avoid the hermeneutics and keep erecting scientific strawmen.

I’m too busy to keep repeating this. Go well mate, but I’m done.

All I can say is that if God had ‘finished’ creating the way you seem to suggest, then humans wouldn’t have babies, seasons wouldn’t change, continents wouldn’t drift, stars wouldn’t go supernova, and things wouldn’t change. They’d be static. It’s too literalistic and legalistic a reading.

Not at all! All of those things continue under God’s providence. God never rests from his providence, only from special creation.

I guess you could argue that evolution too is part of God’s providence, but if that is the case, then God was never doing special creative work, and so his rest doesn’t make sense. If Genesis 1 talks about nothing other than God’s providence, then what do you believe the theological truth of God resting means? When you have said that his rest continues to now (via Hebrews) I have always thought you mean he was resting from special creative work. Have I thought wrong all this time?

The MAIN problem is that you talk up the science and plonk scientific issues from 4000 years later all over the text, and talk down the hermeneutics of what was happening at the time. EG: Enuma Elish, what’s that?

Your deliberate avoidance of the hermeneutics of the time and flippant sweeping aside of Dickson’s brilliant paper tell me this is going nowhere. Like many creationists you’ll avoid the hermeneutics and keep erecting scientific strawmen.

I believe that the main issue explained by Genesis 1-3, the issue that both readers 4000 years ago and readers now both need this text for, is to explain humans and the existence of sin. If it is a deliberate polemic of the EE (which I think is likely), then that is what it is doing - correcting false pagan beliefs about humans and sin. It is a historical issue of core gospel importance. If you make the text ahistorical then you can learn nothing about that issue, because we can never know if the event that explains the issue ever happened.

Also, I edited my last post and added a big section on thermodynamics. Not sure if you saw it or not.

If it is a deliberate polemic of the EE (which I think is likely), then that is what it is doing - correcting false pagan beliefs about humans and sin. It is a historical issue of core gospel importance. If you make the text ahistorical then you can learn nothing about that issue, because we can never know if the event that explains the issue ever happened.

(Sighs at myself looking back here out of sheer morbid curiosity — against my better judgement — and now look. I’m posting again! Oh boy.)

Dannii, we’ve been over this ground already haven’t we?

I’m tired of YEC’s demanding I read early Genesis their way or I’m contradicting the gospel.

Don’t you remember all the biblical parables and images and metaphors describing Jesus death and resurrection? Do I HAVE to read Jesus as being a 7 horned 7 eyed Lamb, or can I look for other evidence as to HOW Jesus was executed and who he was and what might have happened? Do I have to believe that God literally draws out the stars as a drape at night? But I do believe the point of the verse which is that God controls the universe that the stars are in.

Do I have to believe God made the world in a literal 6 days to believe human beings rebelled against God? WHY? You have never once proved this, but duck behind elusive find sounding idealised language above — that never concretely demonstrates WHY early Genesis has to be read literalistic-ally to still communicate the truth that we sinned.

Yes I believe God made the world, yes I believe human beings sinned, yes I even accept that our spiritual and physical death results from this sin. So I believe the gospel. But I still believe Genesis teaches us these truths in a polemic against the ancient world and does not expect us to read it literalistic-ally.

If you make the text ahistorical then you can learn nothing about that issue, because we can never know if the event that explains the issue ever happened.

Was a literal Lamb slain for us? Were Israel ‘baptised’ in the Red Sea, or did they cross on dry land? But Paul says the crossing of the sea was their baptism! Indeed, while we are discussing core gospel issues, the mystery revealed because of Jesus, did Jesus HAVE to be a Lion to open and show us the gospel?

Revelation 5:5

5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

So maybe what you meant to say was…

“If you read the literature in its original metaphorical context then you can learn heaps about that issue, and understand what the text is actually claiming and what it is not claiming, and distinguish between theological images — that God made the world, and at some point humanity rebelled against God — and a historical narrative.

Dave, when you deliberately use the word literalistic to describe my position it shows you have no interest in attempting to understand what I’m saying! I have said before that you don’t have to believe it took 6 x 24 hours! What you have to believe is that no human died before a human sinned. If you believe that then believe whatever else you like - it’s your responsibility to sort out that out.

ALSO: metaphor would be great. But metaphor and allegory are very different things! You can use metaphorical language to describe historical events, and non-historical events. Allegory however is usually an ahistorical narrative written to describe some other truth. The problem I have with Dickson is not that he wants to make Genesis 1-3 metaphorical, which is good and appropriate, but that he wants to make it allegorical -> non-historical.

If Genesis 1-3 is historical then what is says is that sin was not always around. It says that even if it has lots of metaphorical language.

If it is ahistorical then we cannot know if there was a time without sin. If you believe it is an allegory that is used to describe history, then please explain more about what you believe, because I have not seen anyone say that before.

What you have to believe is that no human died before a human sinned.

Depends what you mean by human. Packer has a synthesis that I’ve shared with you before, which basically says we evolved — with all our junk DNA and potential for illness built into the code — until we reached a certain point, and then God ‘woke’ us up. We became not just smart, not just sentient, but aware of him. When was that? Don’t know. How did that look? Don’t know. What about all that genetic junk and aging and disease built into our code? Postponed by direct contact with the living God.

For if we truly walked in the garden with God — whatever that looked like — then nothing could hurt us, not earthquake or volcano or aging or disease or death.

I have heard this synthesis proposed (off the record) by a number of theologians over the years. The current hysteria coming out of America seems to be preventing sensible discussion on this topic — there’s just too much heat. But the proposal relies on the metaphorical language of the ‘tree of life’ which acts as picture language for the source of our perpetual youth. It is imagery more familiar to us in modern movies as the fountain of youth. (Yes, I had to take the kids to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. Man it was awful!)

So basically I guess evolution up to a certain point — and then God ‘wakes’ us up — and then we rebel.
Packer explores the themes here, remember this one?
http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/media/audio/creation_evolution_problems/

But you’d probably be happier with J.I.Packer’s written explanation below. I’m not saying it’s my preferred solution… but it’s getting there.

Though telling the story in a somewhat figurative style, Genesis asks us to read it as history; in Genesis, Adam is linked to the patriarchs and with them to the rest of mankind by genealogy (chs. 5, 10, 11), which makes him as much a part of space-time history as were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All the book’s main characters after Adam, except Joseph, are shown as sinners in one way or another, and the death of Joseph, like the death of almost everyone else in the story, is carefully recorded (Gen. 50:22-26); Paul’s statement “In Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22) only makes explicit what Genesis already clearly implies.

It may fairly be claimed that the Fall narrative gives the only convincing explanation of the perversity of human nature that the world has ever seen. Pascal said that the doctrine of original sin seems an offense to reason, but once accepted it makes total sense of the entire human condition. He was right, and the same thing may and should be said of the Fall narrative itself.

http://www.monergism.com/the_fall_by_packer.php

Allegory however is usually an ahistorical narrative written to describe some other truth. The problem I have with Dickson is not that he wants to make Genesis 1-3 metaphorical, which is good and appropriate, but that he wants to make it allegorical -> non-historical.

Well, I’d say 90% allegory — because it is. But a description of a fall that actually occurred? You bet. Satan as a snake? Picture language — or why don’t we see heaps of talking snakes?

I have said before that you don’t have to believe it took 6 x 24 hours!

So what *do* you believe? The world is only 6000 years old? God made the world in “6 stages” or something equally as trite? Come on Dannii, stop dancing around the bush, it’s time to fess up and get real. Let’s not get too loco. (Sorry, just watched Derek Zoolander).

we evolved — with all our junk DNA and potential for illness built into the code — until we reached a certain point, and then God ‘woke’ us up.

 
It’s important that it should be God doing the waking up, rather than humans themselves ‘achieving’ God-consciousness - which is the way I’ve heard this sort of process popularly portrayed.  But the backing for this part of the theory seems very tenuous, considering it is an important point theologically.

I’m not so sure that distinction — or the way I phrased it — really is that important Ros. The bible says God made the world and everything in it, and I agree. But did God literally breathe into the dust to make us, or is that picture language to describe a much more important theological point — that God ‘breathed’ a spiritual consciousness into us somehow — while not necessarily describing the workings of neurons and neurotransmitters and atoms and quarks and electrons?

At some point, in some way, we woke up from the dust. Whether this was from some built in evolutionary laws that God employed through his work in sustaining the universe, or a more direct miraculous intervention, I do not know. Now any Creationists reading this would be squirming inside at seething at my apparent doubt, but it’s not that. It’s that I believe every word Genesis says, I’m just reading it for what it is; a polemical theological narrative acting as an antidote to the rather disgusting pagan creation myths of the time.

I’m not so sure that distinction — or the way I phrased it — really is that important

Really?  The Bible consistently portrays God revealing himself to and reaching down to us, not us reaching up to or finding God.  That’s my line of thinking here.

God ‘breathed’ a spiritual consciousness into us somehow

  I’m fine with that.

Depends what you mean by human. Packer has a synthesis that I’ve shared with you before, which basically says we evolved — with all our junk DNA and potential for illness built into the code — until we reached a certain point, and then God ‘woke’ us up. We became not just smart, not just sentient, but aware of him. When was that? Don’t know. How did that look? Don’t know. What about all that genetic junk and aging and disease built into our code? Postponed by direct contact with the living God.

I’m not so sure that distinction — or the way I phrased it — really is that important Ros. The bible says God made the world and everything in it, and I agree. But did God literally breathe into the dust to make us, or is that picture language to describe a much more important theological point — that God ‘breathed’ a spiritual consciousness into us somehow — while not necessarily describing the workings of neurons and neurotransmitters and atoms and quarks and electrons?

I don’t like that, I don’t think it does justice to Genesis 2:7, where when God makes the man he becomes a “living being”. The Bible does talk about spiritual life and spiritual death, but not using those words: these words refer to physicality. The Hebrew for “living being” is also used for animals, so if this verse is describing a change of any sort it is between that of a physically non-living thing to a living thing. If you want to say God woke us up from being the non-human monkey things we were before, then what does 2:7 refer to?

Well, I’d say 90% allegory — because it is. But a description of a fall that actually occurred? You bet. Satan as a snake? Picture language — or why don’t we see heaps of talking snakes?

I think that the snake could be a symbol, or it could just as well refer to Satan indwelling a snake, or manifesting himself as one. Why aren’t there more talking snakes? Who knows. One thing is for sure though - the fall has already happened so there’s no need to repeat those events!

And I am genuinely happy to see you affirm a historical fall, even if we don’t agree on all the details. :)

So what *do* you believe? The world is only 6000 years old? God made the world in “6 stages” or something equally as trite? Come on Dannii, stop dancing around the bush, it’s time to fess up and get real. Let’s not get too loco. (Sorry, just watched Derek Zoolander).

What I said was that other people don’t need to believe it took 6x24 hours - it’s not an issue which I’d reject someone over. If I wrote a creed or confession it wouldn’t be on it, though belief in a historical fall would be.

I do personally believe the world is only about 6000 years old, though I also believe it sometimes appears older than that. Because I believe God has revealed to us both the reasons for the creation as well as the barest basics of the how of creation, and because apparent age is unavoidable if you believe in supernatural creation, I reject the idea that apparent age implies deception. No one calls God a trickster for making Adam a fully grown man, or for turning water into wine! Neither should they call him a trickster for making the whole earth appear older than it is.

I don’t like that, I don’t think it does justice to Genesis 2:7, where when God makes the man he becomes a “living being”. The Bible does talk about spiritual life and spiritual death, but not using those words: these words refer to physicality. The Hebrew for “living being” is also used for animals, so if this verse is describing a change of any sort it is between that of a physically non-living thing to a living thing. If you want to say God woke us up from being the non-human monkey things we were before, then what does 2:7 refer to?

In a passage of unbelievable literary structure and imagery you’ve decided God actually, literally breathed into the dust to make it living?

You’ve also decided the world is 6000 years old based on your reading of the bible?

Wow. Now that it’s out there, it’s even worse than I feared. I personally don’t believe in “God the trickster” who plants evidence to make the world look older than it is. Good luck with that when you’re a bit older, and maybe make good friends with an evolutionist or astrophysicist or climatologist or nuclear physicist who eventually convinces you of all the scientific evidence for an old earth. You believe in Coyote, not the God of love and honesty I believe in.

Coyote has been compared to both the Scandinavian Loki, and also Prometheus, who shared with Coyote the trick of having stolen fire from the gods as a gift for mankind, and Anansi, a mythological culture hero from Western African mythology. In Eurasia, rather than a coyote, a fox is often featured as a trickster hero, ranging from kitsune (fox) tales in Japan to the Reynard cycle in Western Europe. Similarities can also be drawn with another trickster, the Polynesian demigod Māui, who also stole fire for mankind and introduced death to the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_(mythology)

No I don’t believe he literally breathing into the dust… that would just make the air dusty! What I’m doing is reading the passage carefully and noting that the result of God breathing his spirit into the man, is that he becomes a living being. Genesis could easily have said that God grabbed one of the animals and breathed into it his spirit making it become spiritually alive, but it doesn’t say that. What it says is that the man became physically alive.

Dave, so for God not to have been a trickster then Jesus didn’t actually turn water into well-aged wine? How do you explain that passage?

I believe in honesty too - that’s why I trust God’s revelation more than my very fallible observation.

I understand creationist use of that passage as a poor and utterly irrelevant attempts to try and justify ignoring science. Yes wine normally takes time to ferment. Yes Jesus on that occasion created the wine ‘old’ — otherwise it wouldn’t be wine. But are we to wonder at the scientific importance of that passage or the theology? Are we to write 666 books on it, about how that wine WAS OLD even though it WAS NEW!? Are we to insist that other people read our version of the WINE incident or they’re not really reading the gospel properly? Are we to go and build a $25 million dollar WINE museum which shows how wine can be made in a moment, and write angry anti-wine letters to today’s wine experts insisting that wine can be created in a moment instead of needing to mature over months and years?

Creationists grabbing hold of this tiny wine miracle are like a drowning man clutching at straws to save them. It’s a really lazy attempt from one very particular instance to try and justify writing off almost EVERYTHING we learn about our universe being incredibly, incredibly old, from the speed of light to the decay of nuclear particles to the expansion of the universe to the placement of various species in the fossil record, we live in an OLD universe on an OLD planet with a LONG history of life culminating in our creation. This is the peer reviewed science. This is the science that dozens of my Christian scientist friends have all studied. This is not the quackery of creationism, but the stuff that cross-checks from dozens upon dozens of disciplines. It checks out. It confirms and backs up everything else. For example, Milankovitch cycles (wobbles in the earth’s orbit) cause changes in climate. This is measurable by atmospheric physicists calculating how much solar energy would change at various points in the earth’s tilt. This is then also confirmed by ice cores from Antarctica confirming that as the massive ice-sheets advanced in a glacial period, more Co2 was locked under the new ice sheets. This corresponds with a measurable retreat in the Co2 trapped in the ice cores. And that’s just one example where the OLD implications of atmospheric physics of a wobbling planet are confirmed in OLD ice in Antarctica. But that’s peanuts. That only goes back about 800 thousand years.

And it is just one example. I’m not going into all the others, I’m not a scientist. I just find it incredible that — on the basis of one little passage like the wine — Creationists try to justify “God the trickster”. If we go too far down that route, couldn’t God have created us nano-seconds ago with complete life memories intact?

Creationists apply the wrong part of their brains to early Genesis, the wrong disciplines are invoked. They are like an engineer reading a construction manual rather than a historian / theologian like John Dickson reading the literary and theological intentions of the passage. It’s time to bring out the right disciplines, and let science be science and theology be theology. Where the two intersect, I humbly submit that we can only ever have theories, as the bible does not answer our scientific questions and science does not answer our theological questions.

If God made a single photon from nothing, it would be impossible for him to have made it in a way that didn’t look like it had been there long before. God can break the law of the conservation of energy whenever he likes, but whenever he does that it will always look as though he hadn’t. Science can’t model the laws of thermodynamics being broken. Apparent age is inescapable. Ask your scientist friends to confirm if I’m right or wrong: ask them if there is a way for science to model God breaking the first law of thermodynamics. Ask them what it would look like if God had in fact done just that. Will you do that? I’ll listen to whatever they tell you.

It is valid to extrapolate from a single photon to the universe. God could of course create a galaxy from nothing in an instant - but he could not do so in a way that would appear to us as if it appeared in an instant. Instead it would appear as if it had been there a very very long time. There’s no way for science to model a galaxy just appearing, instead it would appear as if it had slowly formed. This is why I don’t have a problem with the big bang theory.

If our God did not love to communicate with us, then the inescapability of apparent age would be very uncomfortable. Without God’s revelation of what he has done we couldn’t be sure that we hadn’t actually come into existence last Thursday. But we have no need to fear, because our God does love to reveal stuff to us. His revelations defeat any notion of him being a trickster - only someone who ignored his revelations could ever be tricked!

but he could not do so in a way that would appear to us as if it appeared in an instant.

Absolute rubbish! Have you ever read Peter F Hamilton’s “Night’s Dawn” trilogy? Do you read sci-fi? This trilogy has some particularly challenging assumptions about death and the afterlife and “zombies” — so although it was brilliantly conceived and executed, and had a really interesting future, I hesitate before recommending it to Christians. (Also a few bedroom scenes that I think were quite unnecessary). Anyway, it involves FTL drives and computers knowing the co-ordinates of hundreds of human habituated star systems.

Anyway, I hesitate to continue in case you want to read it, spoilers ahead!

SPOILERS!

The climax of the trilogy involves all the human inhabited star systems being moved, as a WHOLE chunk, way outside of our galaxy! God-like power just grabs our quadrant and plonks it so far away that our FTL drives don’t enable us to spread to the rest of the galaxy. It is the ultimate time-out! One scene I will never forget is this father and daughter attending a party where they will see another star appear in the night sky. This is because they knew where the stars were relative to each other, but the light did not have the time to move between all star systems yet. In other words, they could predict to the hour when the light would finally arrive and hit that planet and hey-presto, a new star would appear in the sky!

The reality is if God had literally only made our universe 6000 years ago we wouldn’t even see across the quadrant of our own galaxy, let alone see galaxies on the other side of the known universe 13 billion light-years away!

If our God did not love to communicate with us, then the inescapability of apparent age would be very uncomfortable. Without God’s revelation of what he has done we couldn’t be sure that we hadn’t actually come into existence last Thursday. But we have no need to fear, because our God does love to reveal stuff to us. His revelations defeat any notion of him being a trickster - only someone who ignored his revelations could ever be tricked!

Can you even begin to glimpse the epistemological nightmare you are unleashing here?

This is very funny.

If you saw, and were properly horrified by, the recent vid interviews with Miss USA contestants answering the question ’Should Evolution Be Taught in Schools?” (a discouraging number said no ) — you’ll appreciate this spoof.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBv2CFTSWU&feature=share