Sorry, Poly, but it says “God created the heavens and the earth,” not created the heavens and created the Earth 7 billion years or so later. Saying that Genesis accurately describes the Big Bang is really pushing it.
Well, when I read it in Hebrew School, in Hebrew, it did not stress my rather pitiful vocabulary. My Hebrew teachers also never tried to justify the words as literal truth. We also don’t speak of the evening and the morning of Abraham’s day. This, added to the crucial observation that God’s resting on the Sabbath meant that we should rest on the Sabbath, shows that the authors almost certainly were referring to literal days. Yeah, we can explain away things, but we can similarly explain away all evidence that Sherlock Holmes didn’t really exist. Fun, but just that.
As for the OP, dividing several billion year by 7 gets you some very funky dates for the origins of various plant and animal species - not to mention the order is all wrong.
You can jump through all sorts of hoops, but the simplest explanation for Genesis is that those who wrote it were going on the legends of the time, and had no divine inspiration. This says nothing about whether any sort of a god exists or not.
I read an interesting book on the growth of unbelief in the US in the 19th century. The reason that Darwin made such a stir, according to the book, was that religious leaders had jumped on the science bandwagon at the beginning of the century. Science had become very popular, and they truly believed that science would confirm the truth of the Bible. (Not really an unreasonable belief.) So, when Darwin showed that something so crucual as the origin of man was not a result of special creation, this whole movement got undercut, and the religious leaders who were more literalist (and thus never really trusted science) gained in popularity. Thus the split we see today, between those who say that the Bible, with the proper interpretation, confirms or even predicts whatever science finds, and those who flat out say that science is wrong.
The closest thing to this I can think of today would be to find the body of Jesus. I’m sure that there would be a split between those who’d deny it was really the body, and those who’d reinterpret the NT to mean that the resurrection was spiritual and not physical. I’m sure Christianity would survive such a discovery.
So, Voyager, what if the ‘dates’ and times in Genesis are totally arbitrary?
I agree, 7 / 4 billion comes up with some funky dates that don’t gibe with either Biblical studies or carbon dating of stuff. But why does our definition of ‘day’ have to coincide with God’s (or Yahweh’s or Allah’s or Cthulu’s)?
And just cause the Bible doesn’t specifically speak of Dinosaurs doesn’t to my mind mean it is untrue either way; lots of other species of animals, even those alive today, aren’t mentioned in the Bible.
Note how this points out that there are 2 different, and conflicting creation accounts in the first 2 chapters of Genesis. In particular, humans in Gen 1 are created after the lower animals, but in Gen. 2 humans are created before the lower animals. Science could not possibly prove the Genesis account of creation, because Genesis is internally contradictory. I am doubtful many religious leaders were looking for science to prove the Genesis creation myth. (Although, I can imagine they’d have hoped science could prove a great flood that destroyed almost all of humanity long ago. And if Noah’s Ark existed, scientists might possibly have been able to find it somewhere.)
Indded. And these guys would not have taken the Bible literally. If you’re going to say that every time your religion and science come into conflict, then science is correct, there will be no need for reconciliation.
As you have posted:
'I’m pretty sure that the sun did not stop to let Joshua wage a longer battle and I am fully persuaded that The Flood never occurred as described."
“As long as the believer does not attempt to impose religious doctrine in place of scientific knowledge, I do not see a conflict between the two.”
It depends what limits you place on religion. Can it teach us anything scientific?
Just a misunderstanding!
You are confusing the thread definition of ‘hard core’ with ‘serious’ or ‘devout’.
As I said, I’m using the OP definition that “Hard-core Biblical scholars believe that the Earth was created 6000-some years ago in 7 days by God.” You will not find any exception to this.
Incidentally your prime rule is an example of a human belief, isn’t it? And it’s universal.
Therefore it’s wrong.
OK on the first part, as that basically is truth by stipulation by the OP. Perhaps the OP should have phrased that “Some Biblical scholars, which I’ll call “hard core”, believe that the Earth was created 6000-some years ago in 7 days by God.” This would have made it more clear.
And you are right about my prime rule. I should perhaps add in there “almost certainly”, which could mean that my belief is the sole exception. Or just rephrase it “There is no human belief that is universally held as true of false.”
If you recall, it was you who brought up remission of certain illness as being of possible devine intervention. I never suggested that you claimed there was “constant intervention”. I just asked why, IF you accept infrequent intervention, is that any more tenable than “very frequent” intervention (which you seem to scoff at)?
Actually, I noted that belief that it was Divine intervention that caused mysterious remissions could not be refuted as long as science could not provide an explanation.
My actual interest in this part of the thread was simply to understand how religion and science were not compatible (since you appeared to object to the notion that they were compatible). If they address wholly separate aspects of human interest, I do not see that they are incompatible and I did not understand the issue with a claim that they were compatible.
Certainly there are religious people (and a small number of scientists) who make a fetish of “debunking” the other’s knowledge, but I do not see that such a (vocal) minority should be allowed to set the tone for all discussions.
If science does not provide an explanation, then NOTHING can be refuted as the cause.
My interest in this thread is why anyone cares whether religion and science are compatible. I actually don’t think it even makes sense to ask that question. Why SHOULD they be compatible?
If you want to just agree to disagree, that’s fine with me. However, you seem to be hinting that I shouldn’t continue to post in this thread. Feel free to not respond, if my posts don’t interest you. I’ll take my chances with anyone else who might want to debate.
I guess by hard-core, I meant dedicated or devout. Literalist maybe. That goes for both sides, because there are Christian scientists (note the capitalization, please!) that straddle the fence, and there are Christian Scientists (again, please note the caps) that likewise straddle the fence - those are not the ones I am referring to.
The fence being the disconnect between literal Biblical timelines and realizing that the timelines aren’t backed up by science (for example, carbon dating of human remains found in various places). Also, the ‘fence’ is some tricky little issues like evolution, which all agree is a theory that is backed up by scientific research. Theory might be wrong, and has definitely been updated many times to reflect newly discovered facts, but has yet to be definitively and scientifically disproved.
Where, o where do we get this idea that biblical literalists are more “serious” or “devout” than the rest of us, who are apparently just playing silly games and pretending to be Christian? IIRC, St. Augustine was pretty clear and explicit in the 3rd century CE that the Bible is not a science text. The idea that “day” in Genesis was not a literal 24-hour period, and that the whole text is poetic-allegoricaly anyway is at least that old. Augustine was also clear and explicit that God is not a “Big Person” and that human imagery of God (where not refering to Jesus Christ) is purely metaphorical. If St. Augustine can’t be seen as a paradigm of seriousness and devotion in Christian living, I don’t know who can be. If by “devout,”,we mean anything like “attempting to live by the teachings of Jesus,” I don’t see any correlation whatsoever between devotion and literalism.
Alan Smithee - I never intended questioning anyone’s faith, and I do NOT want this thread to devolve into ‘I’m as devout as they are, I’m just not a literalist’.
Perhaps a poor choice of words on my part, and if so please consider me spanked, but it always seemed to me that the most devout followers of any particular philosophy treat it as the literal truth, not subject to any interpretation. That seems to me to hold true whether that philosophy be political, economic, religious, or scientific.
I’ve never thought the presence of absence of dinosaurs and other extinct beasties in the Bible said anything for or against its validity. However there is an (incorrect) timeline for when existing species came into being, and that does have something to say about it.
What God thinks of as a day is irrelevant - he was supposed to be talking to us. The correlation of the day God rested and the day we are supposed to rest is very important, in Judaism, at least, which is one reason to consider the days as literal days. However, if you want to say the first, second and third days all last different periods, you might as well say order means nothing to God. If a believer in Genesis just assumes it is true, and has no limit to the bizarre explantions for contradictory evidence, there is no use continuing. Heck, pork to god might mean chicken for all we know, and to lie might mean to tell the truth. Hell of a way to run a religion.
Well, I agree with you, and Tom Paine agreed with you, but since fundamentalists have all sorts of arguments why this is no problem today, I doubt there would be a problem if science had confirmed at least part of the story. Consider the historical record - since some of it in the Bible is confirmed (the later parts) it becomes reasonable to say that some of the history in the Bible matches what we have found, and some, like the Exodus and the Davidic Empire, do not.
Back then science was not as well understood by the general public, and seemed to be producing wonders and miracles all the time. I’m sure the religious leaders would have been happy to have one of the two stories confirmed - and I think they were expecting it, since they well and truly believed that the story was mostly correct.
Here’s why I think it is important. Religion backs its claims in two ways: by faith and by evidence. I hope no one disagrees that faith is adequate for private belief and actions. If I have faith in Santa, and my faith in Santa makes me put out cookies Christmas Eve, it doesn’t affect anyone but me. But if I decide that there should be a law that everyone puts out cookies, or that we should face the North Pole at the start of a school day, or that Santa told me that being nice means doing this, and being naughty means doing that, and we need laws against being naughty, then I think I should move to the evidence backing. And that is where the conflict is. If they were compatible, then the scientific evidence should support the religious evidence found in the Bible. If they are not, and since the scientific evidence is reproducible, then we must conclude that the religious evidence is incorrect. That doesn’t affect faith-based religion at all, and perhaps someones devotion is stronger being fully faith-based.
I think a lot of religious Americans know this, and are afraid deep down that faith will not be enough for them, and so just assume by default that there is evidence. (See the polls.) That’s why they react so badly when science rubs their faces in evidence that goes against this. In my experience you are far more likely to hear the statement “evolution disproves god” from a fundamentalist than from a scientist or even from an atheist. Believing that, they have no choice but to reject science.
The sanest theists I know understand that they believe on faith, and maybe that is why they have trouble seeing why the compatiblity is an issue. It doesn’t affect their faith, and they don’t see why it should affect anyone else’s. If only all were so sane.
Or just rephrase it “There is no human belief that is universally held as true of false.”