|
gluadys -> RE: Scientific Challenges to Christianity. (7/12/2008 7:24:13 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: evry1needsgod
quote:
But it is the position of many creationists that their literalistic understanding of scripture is a scientific reality.
The effects are, the cause is not.
Yes.
quote:
A creationists DOES NOT decide to interpret the Bible literalistically (I made that word up just now[;)]) by the science they observe.
John Dickson beat you to it. See the second section of this essay.
http://publicchristianity.org/genesgenre1.html
quote:
The literalistic interpretation is a theological, doctrinal debate, not a scientific one.
I agree.
quote:
I do not interpret God's Word literalistically because science somehow proves it right, I interpret it that way because of various doctrinal, logical, theological, and philosophical reasons, all of which are supported by Scripture (which if you DON'T interpret literally, mean absolutely nothing).
I agree. Your reasons for choosing a literalistic interpretation have nothing to do with science. But if you are a typical creationist you still insist, as you began this post, that the effects are a scientific reality. In fact, if you were convinced that it was not scientific fact that the universe was made about 6,000 years ago in 6 ordinary calendar days and that Adam was not created directly from dust, separately from all other animals, you would consider the biblical text to be untrue.
It is essential to YECism that these things be not only true, but that they be true in the sense that the empirical observations studied by science are true. That is the only sense in which the Genesis account can be true or real. If it is not scientifically true, it is a lie.
It is not acceptable in YECism that Genesis 1-11 be poetically true or morally true or mythically true. It must be what people call "really true" and that means "scientifically true".
Now creationists are not unique in subscribing to this scientific determination of truth. This is one of the bedrock assumptions of modernism---the philosophical paradigm that emerged from the Enlightenment. Almost everyone in this age thinks of "truth" and "reality" in this way. Unless they have moved on to post-modernism. (And some creationists are moving in that direction too.)
The point is that creationism is thoroughly modernistic in its understanding of how one decides if something is real or true. Therefore, no matter how far Genesis is removed from actual scientific theory, and no matter what the theological and doctrinal reasons for adhering to literalism, the bottom line is that "literally true" means "empirically true" "historically true" "physically true". It means that if Genesis is to be considered true, the creative days must have been days in history, not days in a story about creation. Adam must have been for a moment before God breathed life into him, a clay statue, and for sure he must have been an actual individual who lived an actual singular human life.
And if these things are not historically, empirically true in a way that a time-travelling scientific observer might be able to verify--then, for the creationist, they are not true at all. (The atheist, of course, has already agreed they are not true at all, for the same reason.)
I do not think I am that far off in saying this is the claim of creationism.
This is the claim that is rooted in the notion that science sets the criteria of truth.
What we need to learn is that the bible was not written by people who subscribed to these criteria of truth. The notion of "scientific truth" did not exist then. Only when we relinquish the notion of scientifically verifiable empirical observation as the sole determinant of truth can we begin to look at how the biblical writers understood truth and reality.
quote:
Science has NOTHING to do with a creationists interpretation of Scripture. This is the battle theistic evolutionists fight, not creationists.
Well, you accuse me, probably with some justice, of not understanding creationism. But if you think evolutionary creationists are fighting this battle, you have no understanding of our position either.
We hold that one must not attempt to understand the bible on scientific grounds. That doesn't mean we reject science. Quite the contrary. But we reject the idea that the bible can pass judgment on science or that science can pass judgment on scripture. We reject the notion that a Christian must accept the literalistic reading of Genesis as a genuine depiction of empirical history. We also reject the notion that if it is not empirical history it is false.
We try to get out of the modernist mind-set entirely and enter into the mind-set of the biblical authors so that we can understand what they intended. They were not scientists. They were not reporters. They were not dispassionate observers. And they did not have the example of reportorial writing as a model to follow.
The literature they knew--the literature of their culture--was mythical and imaginative. It was a basically oral, story-telling culture that kept many of the conventions of story-telling in the newly-developing written literature. And that is the type of literature they wrote. To understand them and the truths they were conveying, one needs to understand how myth is used to teach truth.
|
|
|
|