Re: paleonet Faith and skepticism
Dear Paleonetters,
I have been thinking about what has
happened since my first letter of 12th of January. It seems to me that
I have just about started a wildfire of words and meanings. I think if
I try to answer everything I will soon be in hot water.
I started out trying to say that the
creation/evolution problem was caused by confusion resulting from
misunderstanding of words. I think to understand what anybody is really
saying we have to know what that person means by the words he
is using.
I think some of my readers have
disregarded my definitions of some of the words I used which makes it
impossible for you to understand what I am really saying.
I said that as I understand it the
God of the Bible is truth and I defined truth as the laws of nature
plus space and time. Taking this into consideration it seems to me that
the existence of God and that 'He' is the creator is indisputable. As I
understand it scientists devote their lives to searching out and using
this truth. I think some people have become biased against some
concepts and would like to throw out things like God and belief and
faith but I don't think we can do that without loosing more than we
gain. What I think we need to do is understand them and get them in
their proper places and order in our minds.
The use of masculine pronouns in
referring to God as I see it is not because He is a sexual being but
because of the imagery of the Bible which pictures men as images of God
and women as images of God's church. This is a spiritual relationship
and results in 'concepts' developing in the mind. I see the Bible as a
book full of illustrations of truth not as a history book.
Teachers and preachers today use both history and fiction to express
what they are on about so it doesn't bother me if the stories of Adam
and Eve are fictional. The four rivers that went out of the Garden of
Eden are many miles apart where is the evidence that they were ever
connected together? I suppose that these rivers were chosen for their
symbolic significance of which I am totally ignorant at this stage and
that that is the only connection they ever had. I think we should have
sense enough to realize this and not try to make out that everything in
the Bible is literal history. If you don't believe there is fiction in
the Bible just look up what a cockatrice is! Seeing the Bible this way
seems to me to remove all the problems without giving up anything of
practical value.
Note for Sandy-- I say you shouldn't
regard the Bible as absolute truth. In the last column I wrote for our
Church program sheet I said 'words are not truth, even Bible words are
not truth they are merely symbols that represent truth'. As I
see it truth is an abstract thing that existed before there were men to
invent words I think truth never changes. You may be aware of the
principle of uniformitarianism on which I believe paleontology depends.
As I see it the truth that the Bible represents is the principles that
we are supposed to derive from the stories in it. I think the Lord and
His disciples later have given us many examples of this.You might like
to consider this in your search.
I think allegory would have been a
vital part of education before writing was invented. Some may not like
to think that organized education existed before writing but it seems
to me that because it is so important now it must have played a big
part in the evolution of our bigger brains. I am not pretending to be
able to prove any of this. It just seems logical to me and I submit it
in the hope that it will be of interest to someone.
Peter
-----
Original Message -----
Sent:
Thursday, February 17, 2005 5:47 AM
Subject:
RE: paleonet Faith and skepticism
Folks -- just some passing
thoughts. I also had a problem with the "creation of man/woman" section
in Genesis. And had an even larger problem with the story of Noah &
the survivors. We are all Jews, right, since the Jews were the only
people in the Ark? But just a little bit further in the Bible, the
Egyptians are introduced. Where did they come from? Another non-Jewish
ark? Myself, I have never had any problems with "out-of-Africa"
theory of evolution. But perhaps the creationists do.
I will continue to try to figure
out why I should take the Bible as absolute truth. But have little
faith that I will resolve my quandary!
-- Sandy Leo
A Californian Stratigrapher
& a firm believer in the the theory of evolution
To those who are still interested,
This thread is turning out to be
pretty long. I won't have much to say about Peter's last message. Bill
C. has already answered to a few of Peter's points. What I do agree on
with Bill is that a deity cannot be part of your scientific paradigms,
but from this doesn't follow that believing in God is invalid (hard to
imagine for some, but I'm not the only one who can argue that this is
possible). Just keep Him out of your scientifc theories. When you say
"a human has an appendix because God put it there, or 'designed' it
this way" you have obviously left a framework of scientific thinking.
Peter said in his last mail that since creationists don't trust reason,
it's very hard to get anything across to them. The problem is
aggravated by this that they THINK they are reasonable, because they
are convinced they do science! Sigh. But by educating the masses, we
can at least reach the ones who are undecided, who still have a door
ajar to reason. Or we should start at school, where children are still
shaping their own opinions. The problem, creationists seem to be aware
of it. Think of the 'evolution is only a theory' stickers. But let us
not give up. Just a last point for Bill C.: the Bible is not a
scientific book, and shouldn't be regarded this way. For religious
books, 'discrepancies' such as the two creation stories can be
explained and still accepted. If two scientifc works say different
things, often it is thought that one must be wrong and the other must
be right (though sometimes the truth may prove that neither is
completely right!). A discussion about this could go on and on and on
needlessly, so I'll just concentrate on one point. One Genesis story
says that both A and E came out of the dust. Another says that A came
out of the dust, and that E came out of A. So eventually E still came
out of the dust, right? (Don't worry, I don't believe in these stories
in a literal sense!)
Ken
***************************************************************************
Dr. Kenneth A. Monsch tel +48-71-3754017
Department of Vertebrate Zoology fax +48-71-3222817
Institute of Zoology
University of Wroc³aw
ul. H. Sienkiewicza 21
50-335 Wroclaw
POLAND