Would The President of C.O.P.E. Please Stand Up?

**phank** · June 27th 2012, 06:28 PM

alex-ro,

Might I suggest that you have tried to cover too much ground in a single post. I'll try to respond to the tiny bits of it that were responses to me, however.

If what you want to know is about the stars, you wrongly conclude that all people would want to know that. Others would instead like to know about who they are, or who they will be (the afterlife, or should I say the actual LIFE).

I agree with you entirely, but you aren't addressing what I had intended to say. I was saying that scripture is NOT a science text, and will not tell you when or why a star will form, what its lifecycle will be, etc. I certainly didn't conclude that all people would want to know that - probably very few do. I was saying that for those who DO wish to know that, scripture is the wrong source.

What about the afterlife? Someone saying a thing or other (like there is none) doesn’t actually make it so – only God’s Word has such powers.

I contend that whether or not there's any such thing as an afterlife is a question not everyone cares about. I have noted with interest that those who take some aspect of study to heart and invest a great deal of time at it, tend to assume that everyone else shares their interest. But I suggest this is not the case. I could probably go on at boggling length about stuff you have zero interest in even knowing exists.

Also, you seem to confuse what you call “full and satisfying lives” with what other people call life (let alone “full and satisfying”). You certainly didn’t make the life, to be able to call it fully…

I admit I don't know how to interpret this comment. I know people who are happy, fulfilled, satisfied with their lives, feel content, etc. and have never read a single word of anyone's holy texts. One can feel happy and satisfied with life without such experience or knowledge. We all have goals, and some of us reach their goals or even exceed them, which makes them very content. Not everyone's goal has anything to do with anyone esle's religion. I think few people regard their life as something measured against some interpretation of someone else's scripture.

You seem to miss the point. Anyone would want nothing other than do as they please, in regard to all things and at all times. But Christians KNOW that it would be wrong. It is not “know” (known) from science (although the scientists have failed to address the issue of right and wrong, which CANNOT be relative), it is “known” as in given by God.

Hopefully, you understand that you are preaching the tenets of your own personal faith, and that others can legitimately hold different faiths. My personal working model of how reality works includes no gods, not yours or anyone else's (and others believe in THEIR gods as fully as you believe in your own.) But my model very much includes right and wrong, in considerable detail. My notions of right and wrong may derive from such things as the golden rule, game theory, evolved orientations toward behaviors necessary within a gregarious species, etc. But my personal morality is still very strong and very restrictive despite the lack of any gods. I personally believe morality defines your god's will, and the wills attributed to all other invented gods. The morality came FIRST, I think. Probably evolved into us several species-branchings back.

Nor should had been, as God was with the faithful people. No need to explain ANYTHING in such a circumstance. And the OTHER people had no input to the Bible (they were only mentioned as bad example, and in regard to what happened to them).

I'm not sure what you intend by this either. Your god WAS invented, at least partially, as an "explanation" for what was urgent but not understood at the time. Why did my baby die? God's will. Why won't it rain? God's will. How do we know we'll be successful in battle? God's will. See how easy that is - a one-size-fits-all explanation for everything.

But this misses the point I was trying to make, which is that societies faced with unknowns or problems have to place their TRUST somewhere. In today's First World, that trust is placed in science - science will find the answer, science will bail us out, science will make our lives better, since will shine light in the dark corners of ignorance and confusion. In the biblical days, you could substitute "god" for "science" in each of the above clauses. And the only functional difference is that very often, science DOES do what it is trusted to do, by people with no better understanding of science than they have of God's Will.

Originally posted by phank

Perhaps it would be better to say that the current First-World presumption is that there IS a material explanation for everything, that the processes of science can figure out how it works, and that the resulting explanation is sufficient.

Not quite. Some quick examples: dark matter & dark energy.

Not only scientists don’t know what any of those is, but also WHERE it is. I have a recent link if interested.

Again I failed to make myself clear, so I'll try again. I was careful NOT to say that science HAS an explanation for everything. Science actually has an explanation for very little. The presumption, the trust, is that there IS such an explanation, whether science has it now or not, and that science WILL find it, given time. The parallel I was trying to emphasize here (not very well, I admit) is that science has again substituted for "god" as a repository of faith and trust. Yes, "god" created all that stuff, so of course He knows all about it - but He isn't telling! He never does. Science, on the other hand, didn't create it and doesn't YET know all about it, but WILL know someday, and when science learns, science will TELL us, every time. And so far, science has been RIGHT in nearly every case.

So I'm saying people in the First World have been trading away CERTAIN knowledge (god's knowledge) which nobody has, nobody knows, and nobody can access, in favor of knowledge which is uncertain, incomplete, and often not timely but AVAILABLE, knowable, accessible, and pretty reliable.

Originally posted by phank

Theism is active, atheism is passive.

Actually, it is a very active way of “living”. One removing any opposition from its path…

What does "it" refer to here?

You would say that only from most classrooms, and I would have to remind you about nazism, communism*, humanism, eugenism, and perhaps other –isms too,

Remind me of what? Nazi's were very Christian, and their belt buckles said "God is with us". Communism regarded religious faith as a political threat, because as a political philosophy it saw everything as political just like a religious believer sees everything as religious faith. Humanism, as far as I can tell, means making lives better for people without reference to any gods one way or another. So I see no particular pattern here, and therefore can't parse your meaning from your examples.

* check out the number of victims of this alone; yes, it exceeds ww2’s;
and I have some personal stories about communism you don’t want to know…

Apparently the asterisk intends this as a footnote, but there is no asterisk anywhere else to relate it back to. So I don't know what "this" refers to, and while "it" is said to exceed ww2's, I don't know what "it" refers to either. As for "communism", this has always been a political misnomer. It's often (and IMO accurately) been said that if Karl Marx had returned to life under any "communist" rule (in USSR or China), he'd have been put straight to death! The point is that the political structure of "communism", in practice, has absolutely nothing to do with Marx's politics or economics. However, I will grant that totalitarian states do in fact feel threatened by religious, because religions are organized, funded, focused, and widely followed, which makes them serious political threats.

Freedom of religion (meaning freedom for ALL religions) is a truly essential hallmark of a free nation. (And note carefully here that where there is an Offical State Religion, even if it happens to be YOUR religion, this is NOT a free nation. If I can't follow MY faith, it's not all that important to me whether that's because it's the WRONG faith or because it's ANY faith. If I can't follow it, I'm not free.)

**phank** · June 27th 2012, 06:31 PM

Originally posted by pancreasman

You don't allow for the possibility that his perception and retelling may not be the whole story?

Uh, DeHart was a creationist. He could claim to have been sabotaged by intelligent green cheese from the moon, and HE would believe it (because creationists can believe anything), and Jorge would believe it (and attack the green cheese as "evolutionist").

**rogue06** · June 27th 2012, 09:47 PM

Originally posted by Jorge

*****************************************************************

As is a common practice of you people -- the Evo-Faithful -- you have
rewritten history. Why don't you contact DeHart? I believe that there's
a website where he may be contacted. Get the story straight from
the man himself and STOP spreading falsehoods, rogue06. I've heard
him speak ... he was screwed by the Pro-Evo establishment - period!

Jorge

Sorry if I popped your balloon Jorge but DeHart conveniently skips over the part where he ignored the agreement he made with the principal and kept doing what he wanted to do when he does his sob sister impression.

The fact is back during the Summer of 1999 he asked for permission to use portions of "Of Pandas and People" from the district's Instructional Materials Committee after being told to cease using it. The committee denied him permission but the school's principal interceded on DeHart's behalf and gave him permission to use a few pages from it.

As the Seattle Times reported on June 14, Principal Vanderveen said, "He's introducing 'irreducible complexity'... He also has to have a supporting theory of how evolution addressed complex things."

So he got permission to present both sides. Something YECs have long claimed was all they wanted. So how did he respond to this long sought after opportunity? By, for all practical purposes, crapping all over it.

A review by the District Superintendent revealed that did not present both sides but continued doing as he had before.

0000txt.gif

So he "conveniently" just happens to skip over the part about how he refused to teach the convential, scientific view and continued to only teach Intelligent Design/Creationism. He was dishonest when he made an agreement in that he never planned on keeping his side of and he was dishonest when he recounts what happened by skipping over this little detail.

And as I noted earlier not only did he refuse to "teach both sides" when given the opportunity aside from "Pandas and People" he also used the movie “Inherit the Wind” and even gave tests based upon the movie!

00000test.gif

Why this is ironic is that you even started a thread complaining about this particular movie being used in classrooms and now you're defending someone who not only did that but based tests in his science class upon it. In fact this is how you put it to me:

Originally posted by Jorge

I think you're completely confused here regarding what my objectives are. Suffice it to say that to this very day Inherit the Wind continues to be shown in public schools as an "educational" aid. Yeah, right ... "education" in the NCSE sense of the word (which is anything but education).

Tell you what, since you are also of the view that Inherit the Wind "mangles history", then why don't you join us YECs in trying to get the stupid thing barred from being shown to our kids at tax-payers' expense?

**phank** · June 27th 2012, 10:04 PM

Hopefully, we all recognize that "high school science teacher" is considered a plum missionary position by creationists. I have little doubt that DeHart regarded his "agreement" as a fairly simple hurdle he had to leap to do his missionary work. Just promise whatever the evos want - after all, they are subhumans so promises to them don't cout - and then continue the missionary work. The law is kind of like the traffic cops - just another road hazard to be navigated in the interests of Doing It Right.

And if he was fired for breaking his word, violating his promises and the law? Well, since he was doing God's Work, lying and cheating don't count and he was EXPELLED for his religious faith!

I wonder how Jorge (or even rogue06) would feel about a Sunday School teacher "expelled" for telling kids that all gods are imaginary. Would they be up-in-arms offended by someone losing his job for telling the truth?

When one takes a job, one agrees to abide by the requirements of that job. Breaking the agreement means firing. This is not that hard to understand.

**rogue06** · June 27th 2012, 11:12 PM

Originally posted by phank

Hopefully, we all recognize that "high school science teacher" is considered a plum missionary position by creationists. I have little doubt that DeHart regarded his "agreement" as a fairly simple hurdle he had to leap to do his missionary work. Just promise whatever the evos want - after all, they are subhumans so promises to them don't cout - and then continue the missionary work. The law is kind of like the traffic cops - just another road hazard to be navigated in the interests of Doing It Right.

And if he was fired for breaking his word, violating his promises and the law? Well, since he was doing God's Work, lying and cheating don't count and he was EXPELLED for his religious faith!

It appears that the principal was sympathetic to DeHart in that she helped him after the Instructional Materials Committee turned him down only to be stabbed in the back by him and left looking the fool for supporting him.

Originally posted by phank

I wonder how Jorge (or even rogue06) would feel about a Sunday School teacher "expelled" for telling kids that all gods are imaginary. Would they be up-in-arms offended by someone losing his job for telling the truth?

Every church that I'm familiar with the Sunday School teachers are volunteers so it would hardly be a case of losing a job. And I agree with you that there are no gods -- but we diverge over where there is a God.

**phank** · June 27th 2012, 11:36 PM

Originally posted by rogue06

It appears that the principal was sympathetic to DeHart in that she helped him after the Instructional Materials Committee turned him down only to be stabbed in the back by him and left looking the fool for supporting him.

In her favor, she may not have known he was a creationist, and assumed he was making an agreement in good faith. 'Creationist honesty' is otherwise both notorious and extremely consistent.

Every church that I'm familiar with the Sunday School teachers are volunteers so it would hardly be a case of losing a job. And I agree with you that there are no gods -- but we diverge over where there is a God.

I suppose you could say that I only believe in one fewer god than you do, so we're THAT close. But I will repeat that jobs come with duties and responsibilities. Even if the jobs are voluntary. If I were to teach to Sunday School classes that gods are delusions of the demented, I would certainly expect to lose that job instantly, paid or not. Of course, I would never seek such a position anyway.

(And while I'm at it, I think that EVEN IF DeHart were honest enough to keep his word, the principle made a poor agreement. There simply ARE NOT two scientific sides here. If DeHart had been teaching comparative religion, it might have been different (assuming of course that DeHart is NOT known to be a creationist and therefore GUARANTEED to be lying). But even then, I'd watch that class very very carefully - NOBODY requests permission to teach "intelligent design", without the purpose of religious proslytizing. ID is not a religion, not even comparatively. Its simply an attempt to preach creationism without directly offending all current court decisions.)

**Jorge** · June 28th 2012, 06:23 AM

Originally posted by pancreasman

You don't allow for the possibility that his perception and retelling may not be the whole story?

****************************************************

Sure I do. DeHart is merely a man and as all men is capable of lies / sin.

But based on all that I have learned / seen / heard from him, my impression
is that he is being sincere and truthful.

Why? Do you have any solid evidence that he is lying? If you have no
such evidence then you are merely engaging in ad hominem or worse.
That is typically the standard M.O. of you people.

Jorge

**Jorge** · June 28th 2012, 06:26 AM

Originally posted by rogue06

Sorry if I popped your balloon Jorge but DeHart conveniently skips over the part where he ignored the agreement he made with the principal and kept doing what he wanted to do when he does his sob sister impression.

The fact is back during the Summer of 1999 he asked for permission to use portions of "Of Pandas and People" from the district's Instructional Materials Committee after being told to cease using it. The committee denied him permission but the school's principal interceded on DeHart's behalf and gave him permission to use a few pages from it.

As the Seattle Times reported on June 14, Principal Vanderveen said, "He's introducing 'irreducible complexity'... He also has to have a supporting theory of how evolution addressed complex things."

So he got permission to present both sides. Something YECs have long claimed was all they wanted. So how did he respond to this long sought after opportunity? By, for all practical purposes, crapping all over it.

A review by the District Superintendent revealed that did not present both sides but continued doing as he had before.

0000txt.gif

So he "conveniently" just happens to skip over the part about how he refused to teach the convential, scientific view and continued to only teach Intelligent Design/Creationism. He was dishonest when he made an agreement in that he never planned on keeping his side of and he was dishonest when he recounts what happened by skipping over this little detail.

And as I noted earlier not only did he refuse to "teach both sides" when given the opportunity aside from "Pandas and People" he also used the movie “Inherit the Wind” and even gave tests based upon the movie!

00000test.gif

Why this is ironic is that you even started a thread complaining about this particular movie being used in classrooms and now you're defending someone who not only did that but based tests in his science class upon it. In fact this is how you put it to me:

[indent]

**********************************************

Are you well? Would you like me to dial a number for some help?

Jorge

**pancreasman** · June 28th 2012, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by Jorge

****************************************************

Sure I do. DeHart is merely a man and as all men is capable of lies / sin.

But based on all that I have learned / seen / heard from him, my impression
is that he is being sincere and truthful.

Why? Do you have any solid evidence that he is lying? If you have no
such evidence then you are merely engaging in ad hominem or worse.
That is typically the standard M.O. of you people.

Jorge

This 'you people' was merely asking a question. See the question mark?

**JonF** · June 28th 2012, 07:57 AM

Originally posted by Jorge

Do you have any solid evidence that he is lying? If you have no such evidence then you are merely engaging in ad hominem or worse. That is typically the standard M.O. of you people.

Originally posted by Jorge

<snip long discussion and evidence of lying>

Are you well? Would you like me to dial a number for some help?

The juxtaposition of these two messages is quite amusing.

**Cerebrum123** · June 28th 2012, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by oxmixmudd

A few comments before I respond to you post.

You are dealing with this issue like I would expect you to, but incorrectly. You do not understand how the Bible can still be the word of God and have God allow the writer to communicate in his cultural vernacular as regards the time frame or structure of creation. As a result, it really doesn't matter what the facts are, what reality is, it must not be so, and therefore it is not so.

How can it be the word of God if it contains blatant falsehoods? Also, accommodation to human finitude, does not entail accommodation to human error. God is NOT the author of confusion, nor does He lie. If we go with the "Genesis is a pagan polemic", then you have God inspiring falsehood to dispel falsehood, why not just use the truth? God is a God of truth, and that is EXACTLY what He has done.

This is very much the wrong approach. God IS God, and can chose to reveal however He wishes. You should be more concerned about what God actually did and then understanding Him, seeking Him for understanding, than doing whatever you can to force fit scripture into your own thought patterns and concepts of what 'must be so' that allows you to retain your current conception of what the scriptures are or how God works. And why is that so? Because WE must learn of God from His word, not the other way around. And if our conception of how God works or how God reveals is flawed, we are likely not to have a good grasp of who God is in general. And as followers of His we must be submitted to Him, not to concepts, not to ideas. He is our Lord, not these other things.

Yes, God is God, and He has revealed His character, and His methodology in the Bible, and in the person of Jesus Christ, had He not, we wouldn't know anything about Him. In fact, you are accusing me of doing the exact opposite I am trying to do, I am trying to figure out what is really being said, and not what I want the text to say. Also, of course He reveals how He wishes, and He has already done so, so if something we think we know is in opposition to what He has revealed, then we need to revise what we think we know.

Am I saying that any old concept of God will fly? No. Am I saying the Bible is not the inspired word of God? No. What I am saying is that by refusing to allow the scriptures to be what they are, you make them flawed in ways far more important than what you fear I am saying. You give every reader of the text familiar with the science that tells us how old the Earth is and what the structure of the universe is reason to dismiss the inspiration of the scriptures based on the facts, If the scripture were inspired, and this text should be taken as non-figuratuve or metaphorical, then God should have been able to get the facts right but didn't. If, OTOH, God reveals through the writer without overriding their cultural conceptions of nature, then we have no reason to dismiss scipture's inspiration on the grounds it reflects those same cultural conceptions.

I have seen no reason, scientific or otherwise that indicates that Genesis 1-11 should be read as anything other than history, with very small amounts of "poetic flourish" mixed in. God is completely capable of revealing that which is without error, and still being able to communicate correctly, even today it is rather easy to simplify things so that even a child can understand, so why couldn't God do the same? Adult humans are FAR more intelligent than human children(on average, and without medical problems anyway), so why couldn't God have simply given a simplified account? God does NOT reveal by error, and God does NOT perpetuate error, He CORRECTS error, and Jesus did this a lot while on earth.

Again, it is like those folks that condemn others for not believing God for healing when they go to the doctor. You can look reality in the face and say it isn't so, and make a mockery of the Gospel by claiming the scripture teaches that which is obviously false, or you can accept reality and seek God for wisdom and understanding and walk in truth.

No, Jim, not like them at all. I simply want to know what is really written, and start from there, not go in with preconceived notions about what is there.

Ancient Hebrew of course - to the extent to which we can know it. This section of scripture was written over 3000 years ago.

Good, and how good is our knowledge about ancient Hebrew, and how their etymologies worked? Also, with such a big gap, we are still very likely to be missing things, don't you agree?

Well, your example sort of fails doesn't it? For submission [to God] would be directly related to peace. Or are you unaware of the correlation between true inner peace and submission to God?

But that is a rabbit trail. In this case there is ample evidence that raqia is in fact a word which implies an extended (solid) surface. Not the least of which is the official definition of the word itself. Only in the more modern lexicons do you find any definiton of raqia other than the arch or dome of the sky. For example, consider Gesenius's lexicon:

: the firmament of heaven, spread out like a hemisphere above the earth, like a splendid and pelucid sapphire (Ex 24:10, Daniel 12:3), to which stars are supposed to be fixed, and over which the Hebrews believed there was a heavenly ocean,

Or the definition found in Strong's:

1) extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament
a) expanse (flat as a base, support)
b) firmament (of vault of heaven supporing waters above)
1) considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting 'waters' above.

Yes, but you are overlooking the fact that God specifically referred to the raqiya, and then decided it's name should be the shamayim, and if you try to apply this solid notion to shamayim, then you get some rather ridiculous verses. You end up with birds flying inside a flying object, and things like that.

Yes, I've read both articles - and Holding makes all the same mistakes you are. In fact, though you've accused me of 'eisogesis', it is in fact you are the one reading into the text what you want to see. As you can see above, the word simply means a flat and likely solid expanse. I accept that as what it means. You are the one fighting to find some other non-biblical, non-historical, non-ancient Hebrew way to read it.

Wow, I think I will show him this part of your post, and maybe the two of you could have a debate on it, I would certainly find it interesting to see that.

What do you say to that idea? He would be better qualified for such a debate than I am, and since he runs the Tektonics section of TWeb, I bet he would be fine with it if you both have the time to do so.

You are missing the point. First of all, raqia and shamayim have very different meanings. The raqia refers to a specific element of the heavens and is used correspondingly less frequently. Shamayim encompass all the heavens, not merely the surface of the sky which separates the waters. In the text of genesis it is describing the construction of this very specific element of heaven, the separator of the waters. The stars are placed in it, but the birds fly before its face. This is very different from the birds flying in the general heavens (shamayim) which encompass all the space above the Earth, the raqial, as well as the raqia and all that is above the raqia.

If they are so different, then why did God decide that the name of the raqiya would be shamayim. You are jumping to conclusions on a preconceived notion that Genesis 1 DOES teach a solid sky, when that is simply not the case.

First of all, read verse 1:6 and 1:7. The firmament (raqia) divides the waters, above and under (thus the raqia is between them and serves to divide them). If there is any question about the waters below, read 1:9 where the waters BELOW or UNDER the firmament are gathered together to form the seas. So the waters ABOVE it are something other than the seas. But again, also between these two waters are the sun moon and stars, as they are place in the firmament.

It is not until Genesis 7 that we see that God opens the sluices of heave to allow these heavenly waters to make their contribution to the flood.

As for Genesis 1:26, the word here is shamayim, not raqia. However, if you look back at Genesis 1:20, here we find the word raqia used, and (in spite of the tendency of modern translations to 'fix' this), it says that the "birds fly above the earth before the face of the raqia". This is literally is said - and it implies this raqia is a surface, a structure.

Again, the ancient conception of the sky is a surface. The scriptures are 100% consistent with this - if one simply translates them directly and doesn't try to force fit them into the modern conception of the sky and heavens.

Again, you are using not only a preconceived notion of what raqiya means, but you are using the myths of ancient cultures to judge God's word. These things just don't mix. As for the "waters above" being the source of the Flood, that is eisegesis. There is nothing that says that the waters that caused the Flood were indeed those same waters, you have inferred that from the text, but I certainly don't see the implication there at all.

No - it doesn't just mean that. Any more than sunrise didn't just mean the appearance of the sun rising as viewed from a spinning globe. You can't impose the modern understanding on the ancient writer. Just as they thought the sun literally rose and set (and rushed under the earth to return for day), then thought it meant literally that there were openings in the sky that let the waters of heaven flow down to the Earth. Just as these same openings allowed angels to traverse from heaven to earth, or allowed manna to be carried from heaven to the Earth.

Two words. Phenomological language. Also, I would like the reference where the angels have to use this window to enter Earth, and the one where it references manna having to pass through these windows in the way you speak.

Yes I am. Do words have special meanings in visions that make it impossible for us to learn about this word from Ezekiel's use of it? Is there a 'divine vision' tense for every noun? No, the words used describe what is seen. And thus we can understand more about the ancient meaning of raqia from how Ezekiel uses the term.

In this vision Ezekiel uses the word raqia to describe a dome like crystal structure. This is the only example of use of the word apart from Genesis. And the use in Genesis implies some kind of surface, but if there was any doubt as to what the word means, its usage in Ezekial should settle the issue. It is not describing the open air, it is describing a fixed surface, strong enough to support the heavenly waters and hold the stars.

Again you are taking a vision, and you are making them to be 100% parallel to things that are physically literal. Do you really believe that God literally sits on said throne near a literal solid crystal dome?

The issue is not what God CAN do, but what He in fact did. Who are you to question the purposes and deeds of almighty God? Who are you to tell God what form and type He must use to be 'truthful' in his communication to us of His creative act? I'm just reading the text and submitting to God's sovereignty as He chose to reveal. It is not my job to tell Him how to do it, but rather simply to understand what He did.

Yes, that is ONE of the major issues, another one is can we trust what He said He DID do? Considering that God has revealed His characteristics, and that He is a God of TRUTH, it would be against His nature to reveal blatant falsehoods, merely for the purpose of trying to dispel a foreign pantheon. If the major purpose of Genesis 1 was that God created everything, you could have stopped at Genesis 1:1, but it doesn't stop there, it goes on to describe the order in which He created, and it tells other specifics about the natural world(that would NOT have been needed at ALL if the only reason to reveal it was to dispel other gods). Such as the fact that both people and animals were only allowed to eat vegetation before the Fall, or that there was no death before the fall(specifically of nephesh chayah animals. which would be vertebrates). You also have prophecy that is intimately tied in with Christ just after the Fall.

It helps us to understand what the common conception of the heavens was. And it stands to confirm the plain meaning of the text of Genesis referencing raqia is in fact what it appears to be - a strong extended surface.

What the common conception was for other people, may not have been the same as what God taught, and the same goes with other things such as morals. This is an appeal to the majority, and when we are dealing with what God has revealed, I would rather rely on His authority.

No - this is simply your fear making itself known. God is trustworthy and sovereign. If He chose not to 'fix' the understanding of the ancients as He chose to inspire the text, that is of no matter to me. In fact, it is your lack of faith that jumps into view here. For you have made conditional the inspiration of scripture on your ability to directly see in it evidence of His inspiration. This is walking by sight, not by faith. Gods revelation to us first is in His Son. If the son is raised, if Jesus is in fact God in the flesh, then His reverence for the inspiration of this text is all we need to know that it is the inspired word of God. It's status as the word of God is not determined by whether or not this text is figurative or literal, by whether is speaks in ancient metaphors of a sky that is a fixed surface or in modern terms of an atmosphere and a vacuum.

Fear? Hardly. Like I said, I am going by what the Bible teaches, not pagan cosmology. God IS entirely trustworthy, so when I see mankind disagree with what He has revealed, I reject what mankind is saying. This is a matter of authority, not fear. Also, how is trusting what the Bible says rather than man's "science" equal to "walking by sight, and not by faith"? I didn't say that inspiration relied on figurative or literal, otherwise I would have to reject a great deal of the Bible, but I am saying is that when something is INTENDED as literal, then it should be TAKEN as literal, regardless of what the world might think. I for one am not "ashamed of the Gospel" or any other part of the Bible for that matter, even if you feel the need to allegorize where it is not warranted.

However, food for thought. Why would God distract the intended audience (The ancient Israelites) with terms concerning nature that ran contrary to the common conception of the day? Would they not all sit around debating these affronts to their sense of the world and miss God's message concerning the fact the common deities of the day (the earth, the sea, the sun moon and stars etc) are in fact things He made - making Him Lord of all? This is of course speculation as to WHY God did what He did. In the end - it doesn't matter. He revealed as He revealed.

Ok, if that's your point, then why would God reveal something that ran counter to the common conceptions of morality and purity of the Israelite's? Also, there are plenty of ways of introducing historically accurate information that is simple enough for even the ancient Israelite's to have understood. They were not stupid, and this particular paragraph seems like chronological snobbery to me. Yes, He revealed how He did, and you do not trust that, and I can't help you on that one.

[QUOTE]No - this is exegesis. This is simply what the words mean and what they say. eisegesus would be ignoring their meaning and trying to impose a modern rendering when in fact that is NOT what they say.[QUOTE]

You have been trying to compare God's revealed word, with ancient false religions, and you have somehow concluded that God MUST have left what they falsely believed to be true intact. But not only have you done that, you are implying that God INTENTIONALLY PERPETUATED the error in His revealed word. This makes Him into something He has claimed He is not, the author of confusion. I don't understand why you can't see that that is the logical conclusion of what you are saying.

Wrong. There is nothing 'wrong' with this text, unless you are trying to use it as a science text. That is not its purpose. The only error being made is trying to see if you can prove to yourself it is inspired by making assumptions about the purpose of the text. This is in general the mistake of YEC itself. The refusal to accept God could have legitimately chosen to do something with this text other than give literal history and science.

That's another misconception you have, I am NOT trying to use the Bible as a science text book(mine were more out of date than something like the Epic of Gilgamesh),
I am however taking what is taught as history in the Bible, and applying it as history. Again, that is NOT what YEC is about, it's about sticking to what the bible ACTUALLy teaches, rather than trying to make it fit our preconceived notions. You just have those preconceived notions in reverse of what a YEC would believe(meaning that you are starting with the assumption that Genesis teaches that which is flawed, so you are trying to find a way not to be embarrassed by it).

You kind of missed my point. The point is that the implication of the text for heavenly waters that were source waters for the flood is seen in the attempt by earlier YECS to provide a construct that would fulfill that implication.

They might have seen such an implication in the text, but I certainly don't, and I don't know anyone that does either(in my personal life anyway).

The point is that the modern claims are that somehow it is silly to assume the text means what I'm saying it means. But the REALITY is that this is in fact the most direct meaning of the text, and this is evidenced historically by the fact that until modern times it was the common conception of the text. Without a strong reason to see something different, what it means is effectively obvious - the sky is an extended firm surface with waters above and waters below. Trying obfuscate the obvious meaning of the text with claims of 'mistranslation' and 'undue influence of the Greeks' is a smokescreen, and motivated by the temptation to engage in eisegesis to 'fix' the 'problem'.

Jim

It's ridiculous to try and say that I am trying to "fix the problem", when there is no problem to begin with. If anyone is trying to "fix" the Bible, it is you, and with your denial of what is clearly meant to be taken as historical(through looking at the grammar and history of the text, along with what the rest of Scripture says about the subject). Also, I didn't think I would run across an evolutionist using the "plain reading of the text" as an argument, when they so vehemently(although wrongly worded in this case) fight against what they think is only about "the plain reading of the text". Also, the "Greek influence" is not a "smokescreen", at least not in any way that I can see. Do you really think that the Jews remained unaffected by their encounters with Gentile nations, and didn't absorb anything? They would often descend into idolatry, and you don't think that maybe common misconceptions of the day might have affected a translation? After all, inerrancy only applies to the ORIGINAL documents, and not subsequent copies. Otherwise we would still have perfect copies of the original still today, and this would likely lead to problems in and of itself.

**phank** · June 28th 2012, 01:04 PM

Cerebrum's discussion with Jim is delightfully enlightening. What emerges is that the God of Genesis said a whole lot of things, which can be conceptually separated into two lists. One list is strictly theological claims which one must either accept or reject on faith. But the other is a list of strictly scientific claims (basically, lots of details of Babylonian cosmology) which are easily subject to test and validation. And what we find is that while the theological claims remain as imponderable today as ever, the scientific claims have turned out to be a pile of pure bunk from top to bottom.

It doesn't seem to occur to either Jim or Cerebrum that if every testable claim is bunk, this should at least suggest some degree of skepticism about the claims that can't be tested, but even so we have a problem. IF we accept all of the theological claims (which we must, if we wish to retain God), just exactly how should we deal with all that bunk? As Cerebrum points out, most of it could have been easily corrected with notions so simple even a child can understand. Even if we regard the theology as what's really important and the bogus cosmology as simply a handy vernacular to provide a minimum of theological context, this still leaves us wondering why God couldn't have used CORRECT cosmology to the same purpose.

So here we have the two basic approaches to this problem. Cerebrum takes the high road (and the logical road), holding that IF we accept the theological claims (and therefore accept God in the first place), we can't honestly discard, disregard, or reinterpret the rest away beyond all recognition. God did not tell half-truths, and if reality as understood over the next millennia by people from every culture on earth, however consistent, conflicts with the scientific claims of Genesis, then everyone on earth is WRONG. They MUST be wrong.

And Jim takes the other road, also retaining the theological claims as Truth, but needing to go down the list of bogus scientific claims applying appropriate special pleading to each one to force-fit it into modern cosmology, or find plausible excuses for God's apparent mendacity. Both Cerebrum and Jim agree that God tells no untruths, but it sure SEEMS like Genesis is cram-packed with nothing BUT untruths, to the extent anything is testable. If God said the sky is pink, Cerebrum's position is that the sky is pink, period, and if it LOOKS blue to everyone on earth, we are all fooled and mortal and prone to error but God is not, because the sky IS pink. Jim's position is that, well, yeah, the sky is blue and God said it's pink, BUT that's how people thought back then, and language can be funny, and blue is kind of pink if you look at it just right, and we must give scope to poetic imagery, and so on.

(And it might be worth mentioning that the basic problem lies with accepting the OTHER list, the theological list, without question. If instead we simply regard Genesis as people of the day writing what they think they know, what they desire, what they believe, these problems never arise in the first place. They did the same thing as other ancient cultures, and we look at those writings today, sensibly, as fascinating anthropological artifacts.)

**Ansgar Seraph** · June 28th 2012, 02:48 PM

Originally posted by phank

Cerebrum's discussion with Jim is delightfully enlightening. What emerges is that the God of Genesis said a whole lot of things, which can be conceptually separated into two lists. One list is strictly theological claims which one must either accept or reject on faith. But the other is a list of strictly scientific claims (basically, lots of details of Babylonian cosmology) which are easily subject to test and validation. And what we find is that while the theological claims remain as imponderable today as ever, the scientific claims have turned out to be a pile of pure bunk from top to bottom.

It doesn't seem to occur to either Jim or Cerebrum that if every testable claim is bunk, this should at least suggest some degree of skepticism about the claims that can't be tested, but even so we have a problem. IF we accept all of the theological claims (which we must, if we wish to retain God), just exactly how should we deal with all that bunk? As Cerebrum points out, most of it could have been easily corrected with notions so simple even a child can understand. Even if we regard the theology as what's really important and the bogus cosmology as simply a handy vernacular to provide a minimum of theological context, this still leaves us wondering why God couldn't have used CORRECT cosmology to the same purpose.

So here we have the two basic approaches to this problem. Cerebrum takes the high road (and the logical road), holding that IF we accept the theological claims (and therefore accept God in the first place), we can't honestly discard, disregard, or reinterpret the rest away beyond all recognition. God did not tell half-truths, and if reality as understood over the next millennia by people from every culture on earth, however consistent, conflicts with the scientific claims of Genesis, then everyone on earth is WRONG. They MUST be wrong.

And Jim takes the other road, also retaining the theological claims as Truth, but needing to go down the list of bogus scientific claims applying appropriate special pleading to each one to force-fit it into modern cosmology, or find plausible excuses for God's apparent mendacity. Both Cerebrum and Jim agree that God tells no untruths, but it sure SEEMS like Genesis is cram-packed with nothing BUT untruths, to the extent anything is testable. If God said the sky is pink, Cerebrum's position is that the sky is pink, period, and if it LOOKS blue to everyone on earth, we are all fooled and mortal and prone to error but God is not, because the sky IS pink. Jim's position is that, well, yeah, the sky is blue and God said it's pink, BUT that's how people thought back then, and language can be funny, and blue is kind of pink if you look at it just right, and we must give scope to poetic imagery, and so on.

(And it might be worth mentioning that the basic problem lies with accepting the OTHER list, the theological list, without question. If instead we simply regard Genesis as people of the day writing what they think they know, what they desire, what they believe, these problems never arise in the first place. They did the same thing as other ancient cultures, and we look at those writings today, sensibly, as fascinating anthropological artifacts.)

This makes sense only if a person determines that there is one category of truth: that which is subject to empiricism. Anyone who looks to find truth in a song or a poem or a grand tale knows that such limitations are unnecessary and silly. You are merely treating the Creation account the same way as Cerebrum and Jorge are treating it, determining it to be a historical account made with strictly historical intent.

Such a reading is unnecessary and, moreover, would be completely foreign to the authors, as the clear line between history and myth is a modern invention.

—Sam

**rogue06** · June 28th 2012, 02:59 PM

Originally posted by Ansgar Seraph

This makes sense only if a person determines that there is one category of truth: that which is subject to empiricism. Anyone who looks to find truth in a song or a poem or a grand tale knows that such limitations are unnecessary and silly.

It's like demanding the atomic weight of an idea. Somethings can't be quantified scientifically.

**alex_ro** · June 28th 2012, 04:22 PM

Originally posted by alex_ro

I already learnt quite a few things I didn’t know. I’m really not sorry to be here.

Sorry to have to correct myself again, I meant: I HAVE already learned quite a few things I didn’t know (thus not excluding present and possibly the future learning). Hopefully, you will all forgive me, since English is not my native language. Thank you.

[quote=Cerebrum123;3427983]Do you think that Job's friends were inspired in what they were saying in that account?[/quote

I do. I mean, I have so far not seen any solid argument against that.

Please remember that those people were initially entirely correct, and only after Job corrupted them, they started to think that God somehow was unjust to Job (which, again, CANNOT happen; if any of us arrive to such a conclusion in regards to what’s happening to us, then we CERTAINLY miss some parts of the full picture, and this is not a far stretch argument, as we indeed ALL THE TIME miss some parts of the entire “picture”).

And that’s the point where Elihu starts his talk.