Art not life

Question in a study on Genesis:

5. Read Genesis 3.7-24. In these verses we see the consequences of human sin in the breakdown of relationships between people and people and God. In this highly symbolic section we see a reality that is still with us today. What area of brokenness troubles you the most?

As soon as a part of scripture is identified as symbolic, I get wary. To regard something as a symbol threatens its dereification. It makes it 'art' not 'life'. Art comments on life and relationship, it is replete with symbols and representations, but it is not, in itself real life; its a type of decorative communication about real life.

So when something in the Bible is declared to be symbolic, one first has to ask, symbolic of what? Of what concretely is it a symbol (and if we can't say, then its hard to declare it to be symbolic; maybe we should instead say that as modern Westerners we are just uncomfortable with it). Perhaps of 'a reality that is still with us today'. But if it is our reality, why would we need a symbol?

What the passage does is give to us the source of the current reality. Is the source a symbol of the source? How would we know? Has the current reality been always with us? In which case it doesn't need a source, but is inherent in the creation (as the problem only emerges when the face reading of Genesis 1-3 is denied, then the word 'creation' may be erroneous, and we should just say 'cosmos' or 'reality' as something that is unbound from God's creative acts that we've just denied).

And if it is a symbol what is the connection with our non-symbolic experience of the world as a subject? Where does symbol stop and concrete start?

I doubt that there is an independent epistemic basis for the declaration when our topic is a type of 'first philosophy' topic; that is, about the start of it all, so perhaps we are all just symbols of something else, our relationships are symbols of something else, and our concrete experience of death, pain, suffering and frustration is not due to actual estrangement from God, but is a mere symbol of some other actual thing.

No, it just doesn't wash.

So what is so symbolic about the passage? I think it is just that we have trouble with a talking snake (maybe all animals talked pre-fall...and how would we know they didn't...or did), and an actual tree being a reminder of a covenant. And what a simple gracious reminder. Nothing complicated to do, just remember the God-man relationship by your action of not taking the fruit. A fruit! Nothing to interfere with an enjoyable life, and it self demonstrating the mercy, graciousness and love of God; actually!

Theistic evolution

I was discussing with a friend the notion that God might have used evolution to complete the creation.

We were talking about Wilder-Smith’s wonderful book God: To Be or Not To Be and came to the conclusion that for God to have used evolution he would have had to make it do that which it is not able to do.

That is, he would have to use change processes not to produce chance outcomes, but purposed outcomes. He would have to inject teleology into that which is purely stochastic.

But that means he would have made a thing (chance) which could not achieve his ends (a creative purpose) and so work against the thing made (chance); which is to say, that he couldn’t have used chance at all, because chance leads to dissolution, not creation!

So God could only conceivably use chance to create by not using chance at all, but by over-riding (guiding, people might like to suggest!) it. The very notion breaks down under the weight of its own incoherence.

Chiasm

Some claim that because of the chiastic structure of Genesis 1, etc. that it cannot be history. I guess that rules out Matt 13 as being teaching, then.

Law 2

Granville Sewell has copped a lot of flack for offering this article on the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The detractors have said the usual thing: that he fails to understand that energy coming into an open system overturns the 'law'.
However, the critics beg the question and fail to explain what they assume...and fail to provide the probability-increase-engine that turns high probability states into low probability states.

What does evolution tell us?

Let Will Provine open the box:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear...There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation of ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.

in Origins Research 16(1):9, 1994.

What is evolution?

According to Michael Ruse:

Its practitioners promote evolution as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion--a full fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality...Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning and it is true of evolution still today.

Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians, National Post, 13 May 2000