I'm sure you are as turned off as I am by the routine of many American media award winners who want to 'thank Jesus' for their gong. Now, I don't want to decry their faith, but it sometimes seems like hollow sloganeering.
We do it differently in Australia. Here's the ending of Kerrie-Anne Kennerely's 2017 Logies acceptance speech:
"Darwin said it's not the strongest or the most intelligent species that
will survive, it is the most adaptable to change. So thank you TV WEEK,
thank you mum, thank you audience."
Not only no mention of God, but, our theistic evolutionist friends might note that her reference to Darwin does not conduct any hint of the creation being out of love and by God using a 'method' that is congenial to modern materialism.
Indeed, being completely oblivious to any hint of a loving creator it didn't lead her to praise her him in any way, nor did it suggest that the final reality is nevertheless
persons in fellowship; nup, it was self centred (she is the one 'adaptable to change') built on random physical
events that seem to presume a reality where the material is final.
I think the theistic-evolution project is a dead end idea running off the main street of materialism, and too weak to mount any criticism of said materialism.
25 April 2017
11 February 2017
What's the chance?
Often we talk about the probability of things in evolution, of life forming by natural processes, for example. Murray Eden put the nail in this with a paper he gave at the Wistar Institute many decades ago on the mathematical challenges to evolution.
But, what does it mean to have a probability of a 'one-off' event?
Some quotes from the very much pro-evolutionist book A Beautiful Math by Tom Siegfried (pp. 206-7). Emphasis mine.
But, what does it mean to have a probability of a 'one-off' event?
Some quotes from the very much pro-evolutionist book A Beautiful Math by Tom Siegfried (pp. 206-7). Emphasis mine.
So here's a clue about what to do when you know nothing about the probabilities in the system you want to study. Choose a probability distribution that maximizes the entropy! Maximum entropy means maximum ignroance, and if you know nothing, ignorance is by definition at a maximum. Assuming maximum entropy/ignorance then is not just an assumption; it's a factual statement about your situation.And, there's the rub. When we talk about the 'probability' of life evolving by chance, it must be a type of 'blunt instrument' probability because it remains to be established that there is anything possible in the story of life evolving by known processes. Life is a very low entropy phenomenon and needs a mechanism to overcome the comparitively high entropy equilibrium of the environment and then to keep it there as it 'evolves' the components, inter-dependent sub-systems and dependent machinery to do the job.
...
But what, exactly, does it mean to 'maximize the entropy'? It simply means choosing the probability distribution that would result from adding up all the possibilities permited by the laws of nature (since you know nothing you cannot leave out anything that's possible).
4 February 2017
Paley's watch
Paley's watch remains one of the most famous arguments for design being produced by a designer. Of course the world and creationist discourse has moved on, but there are those who keep running the arguments of previous centuries and thinking they are cool in so doing.
The typical pro discussion runs this way.
But there's more:
I wonder if a watch is truly complex. It is ordered, no doubt, but it is fairly simple even as machines go: cogs and springs, essentially. Although the dependency chains from any component would be staggering, let alone the interactions between the chains to produce a watch.
However, I think the issue is that coming across a watch in a field we come across something that is not in equilibrium with its environment and that could not be produced by any local equilibrating process. It has very low entropy and very high specified information producing a radical disequilibrium in an artifact with strongly specified function. A mechanism/s is required to achieve this state in the absence of disequilibrating process.
The heart of Paley's argument is that this state is typically and reasonably achieved by a designer; that is, one who applies intelligence to the organisation of materials and processes, rather than the stochastic interplay of 'natural' factors which produce equilibrium even in the short run.
The typical pro discussion runs this way.
But there's more:
I wonder if a watch is truly complex. It is ordered, no doubt, but it is fairly simple even as machines go: cogs and springs, essentially. Although the dependency chains from any component would be staggering, let alone the interactions between the chains to produce a watch.
However, I think the issue is that coming across a watch in a field we come across something that is not in equilibrium with its environment and that could not be produced by any local equilibrating process. It has very low entropy and very high specified information producing a radical disequilibrium in an artifact with strongly specified function. A mechanism/s is required to achieve this state in the absence of disequilibrating process.
The heart of Paley's argument is that this state is typically and reasonably achieved by a designer; that is, one who applies intelligence to the organisation of materials and processes, rather than the stochastic interplay of 'natural' factors which produce equilibrium even in the short run.
29 January 2017
Creation by God...or was it Hayden?
I was amused to hear the announcer on ABC FM intro The Creation by Haydn, explaining that the problem for the librettist was that there was no story!
Unlike those who would have us believe that the creation account is (merely) a story, an arts person can see the blinding obvious: there's no story here folks, just facts; move along now.
Thus, of course, Haydn's librettist had to use his imagination to make a story out of the bare account he had to work from.
Unlike those who would have us believe that the creation account is (merely) a story, an arts person can see the blinding obvious: there's no story here folks, just facts; move along now.
Thus, of course, Haydn's librettist had to use his imagination to make a story out of the bare account he had to work from.
25 January 2017
Scientist-satirising sense of humour
Creation issues pop up everywhere.
I came across this reference in Wheels Magazine from late 2015, by Stephen Corby (reviewing the Lamborghini Huracan; nice car too).
He even had a graphic of some fossils on the page too, just so we would remember what he was talking about.
Aside from getting it wrong (his view quotes an idea that was around centuries ago), and not understanding that fossils are evidence of rapid flood-like burial, he did have one observation, bottom, that shows how the average person views the history of death that evolution requires.
I came across this reference in Wheels Magazine from late 2015, by Stephen Corby (reviewing the Lamborghini Huracan; nice car too).
He even had a graphic of some fossils on the page too, just so we would remember what he was talking about.
Aside from getting it wrong (his view quotes an idea that was around centuries ago), and not understanding that fossils are evidence of rapid flood-like burial, he did have one observation, bottom, that shows how the average person views the history of death that evolution requires.
23 January 2017
How do I tell my minister #2?
Using an illustration can be helpful.
Eg. Anyone could build a suspension bridge, but an engineer will do it quickly, efficiently, economically, safely and fit for purpose. Or would you prefer an evolutionary approach: almost endless mistakes, dead ends, death and disaster?
Perhaps you'd like to take your car to an evolutionary mechanic? He'd use any old part on any old location, may try water in the petrol tank...just trial an error for a couple of years, instead of an expert service that would have your car back in a day.
Contrast Proverbs 3:19-20: The LORD by wisdom founded the earth, By understanding He established the heavens.
People will talk of using 'evolutionary' processes: I quip "oh, full of waste, frustration, dead ends, delay and mistakes; how is that good?"
Compare Romans 4:17b: there's no foolish delay here, but God creating through his call.
Creation is full of purpose; evolution is devoid of it.
Eg. Anyone could build a suspension bridge, but an engineer will do it quickly, efficiently, economically, safely and fit for purpose. Or would you prefer an evolutionary approach: almost endless mistakes, dead ends, death and disaster?
Perhaps you'd like to take your car to an evolutionary mechanic? He'd use any old part on any old location, may try water in the petrol tank...just trial an error for a couple of years, instead of an expert service that would have your car back in a day.
Contrast Proverbs 3:19-20: The LORD by wisdom founded the earth, By understanding He established the heavens.
People will talk of using 'evolutionary' processes: I quip "oh, full of waste, frustration, dead ends, delay and mistakes; how is that good?"
Compare Romans 4:17b: there's no foolish delay here, but God creating through his call.
Creation is full of purpose; evolution is devoid of it.
21 January 2017
How do I tell my evolutionist minister about creation?
Firstly, I'd ask why he or she sees a difference in the Scriptures between God's action in respect of the physical world, and his action in the spiritual world when God integrates the two from the start.
If God can't tell us what really happened and the factual basis for relationship with him (and each other) and what his love 'really' did, then how can we have any faith, given that God as creator is the basis and starting point of faith? The creation account demonstrates our link with God, it doesn't merely assert it in story-book fashion, or as an illustration with a tenuous link with the real world, but tells us how it came about, with objective clarity and detail that dismisses any attempt to 'paganise' it.
Many ministers split the two, in a move that has more to do with philosophical Idealism than the 'concrete realism' of the Bible. This allows them to follow pagan philosophy and split the 'world' into a 'really real' spiritual world, and an unimportant physical world, where God is not as serious as he is in the spiritual world. But, they have to tell us what the real really is: is it as per evolution, where material is the final basis for reality, and love, relationship, and moral meaning are just stuck onto it for no particular reason, or is it as per creation, where the personal God: wisdom acting in loving relationship is the starting point of all being and the one in whom all being makes sense and coheres together.
The Scriptures belie any attempt to graft the personal onto the material, but turn this over and make the material reliant on the personal God. The Genesis creation account, aside from anything else, puts God's creative intention in the very physical world where his spiritual intent plays out. The two are intertwined.
If God can't tell us what really happened and the factual basis for relationship with him (and each other) and what his love 'really' did, then how can we have any faith, given that God as creator is the basis and starting point of faith? The creation account demonstrates our link with God, it doesn't merely assert it in story-book fashion, or as an illustration with a tenuous link with the real world, but tells us how it came about, with objective clarity and detail that dismisses any attempt to 'paganise' it.
Many ministers split the two, in a move that has more to do with philosophical Idealism than the 'concrete realism' of the Bible. This allows them to follow pagan philosophy and split the 'world' into a 'really real' spiritual world, and an unimportant physical world, where God is not as serious as he is in the spiritual world. But, they have to tell us what the real really is: is it as per evolution, where material is the final basis for reality, and love, relationship, and moral meaning are just stuck onto it for no particular reason, or is it as per creation, where the personal God: wisdom acting in loving relationship is the starting point of all being and the one in whom all being makes sense and coheres together.
The Scriptures belie any attempt to graft the personal onto the material, but turn this over and make the material reliant on the personal God. The Genesis creation account, aside from anything else, puts God's creative intention in the very physical world where his spiritual intent plays out. The two are intertwined.
2 January 2017
What's it all about?
I've just finished reading Evolution's Achilles' Heels (Robert Carter, ed.); much there of interest, of course (with the usual detractor websites springing up). The last chapter was the most interesting for me, but the least well done. It is entitled "Ethics and Morality" and gives a fair tour of that topic, but one that ends up, despite a disclaimer, tending to make Christianity look like a system of ethics; back to the past of 'do this...don't do that' Christian life.
It is far more, of course: the challenge of the Bible to the modern world is that of how one structures the world. The World's basic or first philosophy could be characterised as simple materialism, which courts the naturalistic fallacy: that one can somehow derive an 'ought' from an 'is' (the world is thus, so therefore you ought to do 'x'), and must contend with not only a biological information code (whence 'information' in a materialist world?), but an immaterial language that makes the code meaningful as a crucial constituent of it materialism. The Bible's first philosophy is what might be called 'theistic personism'. Basic to it all is that God in community of persons (the trinity) is, loves, and acts with wisdom. This makes our shared echo of his personhood unavoidably basic to being (i.e. ontologically basic).
This feature of the Real drives all else. It gives the person significance over and above material; whereas the materialist world makes the person derivative of an arbitrary material assemblage with no claim to any particular value, status or substance.
Love between persons is therefore the fundamental aspect of us as persons in community (and in existence) and 'information', wisdom and communication are sourced in this: not 'epiphenomena' of matter, but real in their own right.
The 'ethics and morality' chapter should have built on this, with the point made of us not being able to live consistently humanly (and raising the question of the source of that value) being isolated by our own will from basic being (God) and needing to rejoin community with him through his extension in love towards us to become whole.
It is far more, of course: the challenge of the Bible to the modern world is that of how one structures the world. The World's basic or first philosophy could be characterised as simple materialism, which courts the naturalistic fallacy: that one can somehow derive an 'ought' from an 'is' (the world is thus, so therefore you ought to do 'x'), and must contend with not only a biological information code (whence 'information' in a materialist world?), but an immaterial language that makes the code meaningful as a crucial constituent of it materialism. The Bible's first philosophy is what might be called 'theistic personism'. Basic to it all is that God in community of persons (the trinity) is, loves, and acts with wisdom. This makes our shared echo of his personhood unavoidably basic to being (i.e. ontologically basic).
This feature of the Real drives all else. It gives the person significance over and above material; whereas the materialist world makes the person derivative of an arbitrary material assemblage with no claim to any particular value, status or substance.
Love between persons is therefore the fundamental aspect of us as persons in community (and in existence) and 'information', wisdom and communication are sourced in this: not 'epiphenomena' of matter, but real in their own right.
The 'ethics and morality' chapter should have built on this, with the point made of us not being able to live consistently humanly (and raising the question of the source of that value) being isolated by our own will from basic being (God) and needing to rejoin community with him through his extension in love towards us to become whole.
5 December 2016
Wisdom
The smarties of this theological world seem to wonder as to God's method of creation (I know, this is meant as a rhetorical question to we biblical creationists to challenge our view with an implied lack of method in the Bible). Reading right past Genesis 1, they grasp putative evolution as The Method. Odd, because they elect to defer to a method asserted to destroy God's relation to his creation, denying God's own statement of his 'method'. It is detailed in Proverbs 3:19-20.
Of course, it is very difficult for a fellow traveler with philosophical materialism's nostrums to understand that in a creation produced by a person of spirit (in love and by wisdom) this is The Method.
Locked into materialism, perhaps unwittingly, and certainly uncritically, they loose their Christian grasp and think that a method is necessarily a physicalist sequence. But where God is basic, not so. QV most of the NT miracles. Where there is 'method' it is set out. Mark 7:33 is an example of this.
Of course, it is very difficult for a fellow traveler with philosophical materialism's nostrums to understand that in a creation produced by a person of spirit (in love and by wisdom) this is The Method.
Locked into materialism, perhaps unwittingly, and certainly uncritically, they loose their Christian grasp and think that a method is necessarily a physicalist sequence. But where God is basic, not so. QV most of the NT miracles. Where there is 'method' it is set out. Mark 7:33 is an example of this.
18 November 2016
Mike the robot
In Heinlein's book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Mike the robot is asked "What do you know?" Being a logical robot he starts with the beginning of what he knows, saying:
"In the beginning was the heaven (sic) and the earth. And the earth was without form and void: and darkness was on the face of the deep"...
On the other side of the world, and at another time, Kirsty Birkett teaches in her book The Essence of Darwinism, that it wouldn't really matter how God actually created, but that at least we know that he did create.
Idealist tosh from a Christian academic (with a PhD in history of science, mind you).
The only information that we have that tells us God created is that by which he steps us through his actions in creation, in definitive terms; in effect, showing us his creative process and not just 'telling'.
Set this aside as having concrete meaning in the one and only real world (I think of Putnam), and we know nothing in fact about God and his creative relation to the same real world. Set aside the ' method' and one sets aside the proposition and the rug is pulled from under the epistemological and ontological foundation God gives us as the formative basis of our being-in-relationship with him!
Heinlein demonstrates this exact thing. In his book the quote from Genesis 1 is an ontological dead end. It is irrelvant in the philosophical materialism, and the existential loneliness of his book. Its basic proposition, that God who is love extended his love in creation as he set it out (and if we set aside the significance of the word of God, we turn our back on his love) has no part of Heinlein's world. It is void of God in practical terms.
So, it would seem, in Birkett's.
"In the beginning was the heaven (sic) and the earth. And the earth was without form and void: and darkness was on the face of the deep"...
On the other side of the world, and at another time, Kirsty Birkett teaches in her book The Essence of Darwinism, that it wouldn't really matter how God actually created, but that at least we know that he did create.
Idealist tosh from a Christian academic (with a PhD in history of science, mind you).
The only information that we have that tells us God created is that by which he steps us through his actions in creation, in definitive terms; in effect, showing us his creative process and not just 'telling'.
Set this aside as having concrete meaning in the one and only real world (I think of Putnam), and we know nothing in fact about God and his creative relation to the same real world. Set aside the ' method' and one sets aside the proposition and the rug is pulled from under the epistemological and ontological foundation God gives us as the formative basis of our being-in-relationship with him!
Heinlein demonstrates this exact thing. In his book the quote from Genesis 1 is an ontological dead end. It is irrelvant in the philosophical materialism, and the existential loneliness of his book. Its basic proposition, that God who is love extended his love in creation as he set it out (and if we set aside the significance of the word of God, we turn our back on his love) has no part of Heinlein's world. It is void of God in practical terms.
So, it would seem, in Birkett's.
23 October 2016
17 October 2016
When Gaia leads
Theistic evolutions entertain the naive view that somehow the unmixable can be mixed: a personal creator and a random material process.
This is where it gets you:
Peter Berger, "The Other Face of Gaia" First Things, Aug-Sep 1994
This is where it gets you:
As soon as we look carefully, nature is neither nurturant nor benign. She is immensely indifferent to suffering and immensely profligate in the expenditure of individual existences. Vast numbers of sperms are wasted so that one ovum may be fertilized. Countless weaker animals are sacrificed to feed the few stronger ones. The evolutionary process as a whole wastes thousands of species as it selects the very few who will survive. It is this understanding of nature that we must appropriate. We will then also understand that, in the final analysis, life and death are one and the same, and nothing matters beyond the endless thrusting of the (Gaia) divine energy.
Gaia has another face. It has been revealed most fully in India. It is there given the name of Kali-Durga, consort of Shiva, the goddess who both gives and destroys life. She manifests herself naked, four-armed, her mouth gaping to show bloody fangs. In her four hands she holds a noose, a skull-topped staff, a sword, and a severed head. She is dancing on a mountain of corpses. Many people, perhaps even you, think they are not yet ready for this vision. But I assure you it is the future to which she calls us; it is the future that we have already embraced.
Peter Berger, "The Other Face of Gaia" First Things, Aug-Sep 1994
13 September 2016
Big universe...small me...
One of my nephews sagely advised me "When you have worries, just think of
how big the universe is and how small we are and your worries will go
away."
I later told him that I prefered to think how wonderfully powerful and loving God is that he made all that we see and know, and that makes my worries go away.
This is not just a cute bit of theologising, but betrays an unarticulated and probably unconsciously absorbed materialism in the first statement; the second deals with it, but I'm concerned that we've so disconnected God and creation (now its God and 'the universe') that he drifts out of our framing of our experience; thus the importance of allowing the words of Genesis 1, etc. to confront us, discomforting our incipient materialism.
I later told him that I prefered to think how wonderfully powerful and loving God is that he made all that we see and know, and that makes my worries go away.
This is not just a cute bit of theologising, but betrays an unarticulated and probably unconsciously absorbed materialism in the first statement; the second deals with it, but I'm concerned that we've so disconnected God and creation (now its God and 'the universe') that he drifts out of our framing of our experience; thus the importance of allowing the words of Genesis 1, etc. to confront us, discomforting our incipient materialism.
4 September 2016
Eyes wide shut!
A friend directed me to an essay by Richard Rorty from 1992: "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids".
Read with a little thought it is scary. Not for its content, but for its indicators of a church that collectively fails to bring to a questioning mind the answers that only come in the Bible: not the John 3:16 answers...we have to get to that. But the philosophical answers that can only be formed from a sound and responsive theology of creation: of a God who made all in a loving immediacy, who is directly involved with a concrete reality and communicates in terms of that reality; who shows in his acts the primacy of personhood in community, of love, and of relationship; all of which evaporates when the church leans over to philosophical and ethical materialism, no longer able to answer anyone.
Some quotes:
Also interesting that love power and justice come together in equal measure in God who created (setting the parameters of our approach to being, ethics and knowledge), loved and redeemed.
In avoiding a real time creation account, and fussing about obscure readings of 'days' instead of taking Moses' lead and building an assertive philosophy on this ground, the church talks to no issue of moment for any thinking person.
Real world effects only result from real world causes; if the creation account is not accurate to the real world of event and order, then it doesn't tell us what really happened and it is something else that really happened. It is this something else, then, and not the creation account, that is the real cause of the effect we experience and can only be the real basis for our approach to being, ethics and knowledge. This fact de-basing what would be built on a real-time creation as Moses has taught us, and been affirmed by the word of God in Exodus 20:1 and 11. So, what would this 'something else' be? As far as we could tell, it is akin to Dewey's position, leaving us in Rorty's dilemma, or equally in Sartre's...where nothing finally hangs together, no integration point, no final relationship, no final love, but everything an outworking of random material interactions: all that we have is...power. Not love, not hope, existentially alone in the universe and adrift.
Read with a little thought it is scary. Not for its content, but for its indicators of a church that collectively fails to bring to a questioning mind the answers that only come in the Bible: not the John 3:16 answers...we have to get to that. But the philosophical answers that can only be formed from a sound and responsive theology of creation: of a God who made all in a loving immediacy, who is directly involved with a concrete reality and communicates in terms of that reality; who shows in his acts the primacy of personhood in community, of love, and of relationship; all of which evaporates when the church leans over to philosophical and ethical materialism, no longer able to answer anyone.
Some quotes:
I wanted to find some intellectual ... framework that would let me ... hold reality and justice in a single vision.
To say that truth is what works is to reduce the quest for truth to the quest for power. Only an appeal to something eternal, absolute, and good -- like the God of St Thomas, or the 'nature of human beings' described by Aristotle -- would permit one to answer the Nazis...
...even if there were no such thing as 'understanding the world' in the Platonic sense -- an understanding from a position outside of (sic) time and history...
Dewey now seemed to me a philosopher who had learned all that Hegel had to teach about how to eschew certainty and eternity, while immunizing himself against pantheism by taking Darwin seriously.
...the whole idea of holding reality and justice in a single vision had been a mistake...I decided that only religion .. only a nonargumentative faith in a surrogate parent who, unlike my real parent, embodied love, power and justice in equal measure -- could do the trick Plato wanted done.
The two will, for some people, coincide -- as they do in those lucky Christians for whom the love of God and of other human beings are inseparable.Interesting to note that Dewey was not attracted by the theistic-evolutionist artifice...he saw no need for it's 'god' at all.
Also interesting that love power and justice come together in equal measure in God who created (setting the parameters of our approach to being, ethics and knowledge), loved and redeemed.
In avoiding a real time creation account, and fussing about obscure readings of 'days' instead of taking Moses' lead and building an assertive philosophy on this ground, the church talks to no issue of moment for any thinking person.
Real world effects only result from real world causes; if the creation account is not accurate to the real world of event and order, then it doesn't tell us what really happened and it is something else that really happened. It is this something else, then, and not the creation account, that is the real cause of the effect we experience and can only be the real basis for our approach to being, ethics and knowledge. This fact de-basing what would be built on a real-time creation as Moses has taught us, and been affirmed by the word of God in Exodus 20:1 and 11. So, what would this 'something else' be? As far as we could tell, it is akin to Dewey's position, leaving us in Rorty's dilemma, or equally in Sartre's...where nothing finally hangs together, no integration point, no final relationship, no final love, but everything an outworking of random material interactions: all that we have is...power. Not love, not hope, existentially alone in the universe and adrift.
28 August 2016
8 years old
If an eight year old read Genesis 1, he or she would understand that the world was created in 6 days; or at least would agree that the text said that.
A typical Christian adult, one who read books, would hum and har, and say maybe this, or maybe that, or 'it could be read that way' or 'you have to understand the genre', and so on.
So, what happened between 8 and 28?
A typical Christian adult, one who read books, would hum and har, and say maybe this, or maybe that, or 'it could be read that way' or 'you have to understand the genre', and so on.
So, what happened between 8 and 28?
24 August 2016
Genesis: the text.
There's an interesting section in Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament, in the chapter on Eternal Life (regarding the fourth gospel), called "Truth in the Old Testament."
It deals with the difference between the Greek idea of truth: basically the correspondence theory, which is, to my mind easily Platonised, and the Hebrew idea: trustworthiness and reliability.
Now, take this dichotomy to Genesis 1, noting its being the source of many points of reference throughout the Bible, and consider the difference between a Greek, (neo)Platonic view of truth; which allows the easy Idealist slide into all sorts of non-truth variations: the framework hypothesis, Genesis 1 as 'impression', rhetorical counter to ANE myths (meaning Enuma Elish, invariably). Could a Hebrew think in that fashion?
I think not. Truth as trustworthy conduct, or words: seems to sit with Genesis 1 being an event narrative, immune to the pressure of Western thought that would undermine it; words God has spoken to Moses, and God saying as much (see below).
This makes arguments about 'genre' trivial in their missing of the point so egregiously. Particularly the point reinforced in those reliable people: Jehovah and Moses! The question of taking the Bible 'seriously' without taking it as proceeding from the mouth of God in the detail that we are given undoes the seriousness instantly.
Particularly as one considers God speaking directly to Moses in Exodus 20, attempting, for the cool crowd, to put aside the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis and its kin, and consider the text in terms of the Hebraic understanding of truth as relational, not as something apart from the God who authors it, apart from people (creator and creature) in loving (and therefore trusted) relationship (which is one of the major implications of the text, in grand recursive fashion). From Exodus 20:1
And that's it for Bird.
It deals with the difference between the Greek idea of truth: basically the correspondence theory, which is, to my mind easily Platonised, and the Hebrew idea: trustworthiness and reliability.
Now, take this dichotomy to Genesis 1, noting its being the source of many points of reference throughout the Bible, and consider the difference between a Greek, (neo)Platonic view of truth; which allows the easy Idealist slide into all sorts of non-truth variations: the framework hypothesis, Genesis 1 as 'impression', rhetorical counter to ANE myths (meaning Enuma Elish, invariably). Could a Hebrew think in that fashion?
I think not. Truth as trustworthy conduct, or words: seems to sit with Genesis 1 being an event narrative, immune to the pressure of Western thought that would undermine it; words God has spoken to Moses, and God saying as much (see below).
This makes arguments about 'genre' trivial in their missing of the point so egregiously. Particularly the point reinforced in those reliable people: Jehovah and Moses! The question of taking the Bible 'seriously' without taking it as proceeding from the mouth of God in the detail that we are given undoes the seriousness instantly.
Particularly as one considers God speaking directly to Moses in Exodus 20, attempting, for the cool crowd, to put aside the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis and its kin, and consider the text in terms of the Hebraic understanding of truth as relational, not as something apart from the God who authors it, apart from people (creator and creature) in loving (and therefore trusted) relationship (which is one of the major implications of the text, in grand recursive fashion). From Exodus 20:1
Then God spake all these words, saying...for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.Ending with Exodus 20:11.
And that's it for Bird.
22 August 2016
Bird's hermeneutical frame
Having looked briefly at the results of Bird's thinking about the Doctrine of Creation and its source in scripture, let's touch on his hermeneutical policy.
Its a great confusion.
Not only does it introduce the arbitrary into the practice (so which bits of Genesis 1 are to be taken seriously? the days? Clearly not; God speaking? Maybe; God doing? Don't know; God?), but it assassinates the perspicuity of scripture; one needs to be a specialist to read and understand it. You need the Bible, but you need other books.
Should we take that seriously? I know the JWs do: they must have their 'other books' to gain their bizarre understanding of scripture. Mormons similarly.
And so theistic evolutionists, or interpretive readers, or framework hypothesists, or scriptural impressionists, like Bird, must also do.
And what guides the metaframe of though that compels this take on Genesis? Nothing in the Bible, but only what comes from outside the Bible: at root materialist ideas that have everything in the Bible as a mere epiphenomenon of matter; and not, 'so to speak' the other way around. And there goes their ability to confront a lost world with a comprehensive gospel of God's comprehensive totalising love at work in his son, our Lord.
21 August 2016
Seriously?
My (almost) last piece on Bird on taking the Bible seriously, not literally (in the case of Genesis 1, etc.).
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
Seriously?
My last piece on Bird on taking the Bible seriously, not literally (in the case of Genesis 1, etc.).
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
What is it to take this passage seriously?
For a start, it is to take it literally; taking it seriously without taking it literally substitutes for its account of creation, and the ontological context it provides, an alternative account, and an alternative ontology: perilous.
If the passage does not set out what happened, then clearly something else that we don't know from the text happened. How, then is it possible for the text to convey anything to us about the theological implications of creation, if all we have is an impression of what we know not.
A substitute will spring up instantly, the current substitute displaces God; not only in the popular mind, but in the critical mind too. It is only in the minds of some theologians that the displacement is innocuous.
So, what is the creation account, theologically?
The centripetal significance starts with it being God's credential for our worship. As with passages that remind Israel of historical events that signpost God's relationship with them, so the reminders of who God is, being creator.
These passages point only to one place: Genesis 1. God's chief credential in relation to us is this passage. That the passage sets out an ontological basis for real life, is fundamentally important; and this is, contrary to the pagan speculation from Plato on (arcing out in Hegel, most recently); we are told that the world is basically communicable and God's relation to it is in concrete acts that have effect in the world that we know. The framework of our existence is set out in these terms. Thus is provided our metaphysical bearings, our ethical epistemology, and our existential location. Sweep this aside and we look to, for instance Mr Darwin and his 'neo' followers for these; and they then start not with the God who communicates, loves and draws relationship, but with mute matter; all else being a random chemical epiphenomenon.
The trace that starts in Genesis 1 (and with a profound physical fact in light being created first: light...energy, then arguably, the expanse of space), tours through the huge milestones of our relationship with God: the fall: another actual real event; the dispersion of Babel, the flood; and the trajectory of redemption that is grounded with Abram. Indeed, Christ points back, centripetally to the cluster of events of creation in some of his basic teaching. He speaks as though the account refers to something that happened and is meaningful for our understanding of who we are.
To reiterate; absent that grounded (concrete) location; we drift...and mostly, we drift away from our Creator.
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