Just reading Knox's The Everlasting God. What a wonderful accessible book. And, rarely for Sydney these days, one that sticks to the biblical teaching on creation and distinguishes it from evolution. A pity that the idea of chance has overridded the biblical implication of purpose in creation. But then, with Genesis 1 regarded as figurative (it would do Barth proud), the fallback positon is that evolution is the real explanation of life the universe and everything, with the revelation of God a mere chance event within that paradigm.
8 October 2017
The Everlasting God
Comment to Matthias Media on this book
6 October 2017
How to be pagan
A few prize quotes, for those who deny a link between evolutionary doctrine and Christian theology:
"...I myself have little doubt that in England it was geology and the theory of evolution that changed us from a Christian to a pagan nation."
F. Sherwood Taylor, ‘Geology changes the outlook’, in Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians, Sylvan Press Ltd, London, p. 195, 1949.
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."
Provine, W. B., "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life." from 1998 Darwin Day address.
"Now what, I ask, was the first lesson given to the indoctinees (by Chinese communists)?...The first, the fundamental, lesson given was man's descent from the ape---Darwinism! Darwin negates God, the human soul, the after-life. Into this vacuum Communism enters as the be-all and end-all of the intellecdtual slavery it has created"
O'Gara, C. M., The Surrender to Secularism, Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, 1967.
O'Gara witnessed the communists in China running indoctrination 'education'.
"...I myself have little doubt that in England it was geology and the theory of evolution that changed us from a Christian to a pagan nation."
F. Sherwood Taylor, ‘Geology changes the outlook’, in Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians, Sylvan Press Ltd, London, p. 195, 1949.
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."
Provine, W. B., "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life." from 1998 Darwin Day address.
"Now what, I ask, was the first lesson given to the indoctinees (by Chinese communists)?...The first, the fundamental, lesson given was man's descent from the ape---Darwinism! Darwin negates God, the human soul, the after-life. Into this vacuum Communism enters as the be-all and end-all of the intellecdtual slavery it has created"
O'Gara, C. M., The Surrender to Secularism, Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, 1967.
O'Gara witnessed the communists in China running indoctrination 'education'.
Playing games
Often I find evangelicals playing games with the first half of Genesis. But if you remove a true, historic, space-time Fall, the answers do not exist. It is not only that historic, biblical Christianity as it stands in the stream of history is gone, but every answer we possess in the area of man and his moral dilemma is also gone.
Schaeffer, F. A. 1972 He Is There and He Is Not Silent
3 October 2017
Escape from absurdity
Reading Schaeffer: The God Who Is There. (Crossway Complete Works)
p 164
FS lists the brokenness of man as: man separated [himself] from God, man separated from himself [no longer an integrated being], man separated from himself [no longer in integrated community], and “Fourthly, man was separated from nature”.
I came to a halt with the fourth separation. The word ‘nature’ suggests an independent ‘natural’ reality. But, not so. The non-human world is not ‘nature’, with its hint of autonomy from the creative acts of God, but The Creation, fallen as it is, due to the first separation. This makes the pain of our position even more sharp: we separated ourselves from God and as a result...we are separated from his creation which we were to be stewards of and live in in enjoyment and God’s company.
But FS goes on to some great analysis.
Page 168-9
“The beginning is simply that God exists and that He is the personal-infinite God. Our generation longs for the reality of personality, but cannot find it. But Christianity says personality is valid because personality has not just appeared in the universe, but rather is rooted in the personal God who has always been.”
Page 183
“...The heart of the rebellion of Satan and man was the desire to be autonomous; and accepting the Christian faith robs us not of our existence, not of our worth (it gives us our worth), but it robs us completely of being autonomous. We did not make ourselves, we are not a product of chance.”
The final sentence caps it all very well.
The alternative to being made and that through the purposeful love of the infinite-personal God is the ironic ‘autonomy’ of chance where purpose is absent, and we live a perceived absurdity of being people full or purpose and intent, and indeed, love, but in a universe, a reality, we imagine has none of this as basic. This man looks back to his roots in meaningless (purposeless) chance and sees a black absence of personality, love and purpose.
To joint the two, as theistic evolution does, for example, compounds the absurdity and evacuates the gospel of credibility. It would tell us that God 'used' purposelessness/chance on purpose, to produce a world of purposeful beings (in his image) that gave no evidence of his purpose! More than absurd because it destroys the fellowship of beings founded in the creation as described in Genesis 1 where God's acts and our being share contiguous objective space-time causality as persons in communion.
p 164
FS lists the brokenness of man as: man separated [himself] from God, man separated from himself [no longer an integrated being], man separated from himself [no longer in integrated community], and “Fourthly, man was separated from nature”.
I came to a halt with the fourth separation. The word ‘nature’ suggests an independent ‘natural’ reality. But, not so. The non-human world is not ‘nature’, with its hint of autonomy from the creative acts of God, but The Creation, fallen as it is, due to the first separation. This makes the pain of our position even more sharp: we separated ourselves from God and as a result...we are separated from his creation which we were to be stewards of and live in in enjoyment and God’s company.
But FS goes on to some great analysis.
Page 168-9
“The beginning is simply that God exists and that He is the personal-infinite God. Our generation longs for the reality of personality, but cannot find it. But Christianity says personality is valid because personality has not just appeared in the universe, but rather is rooted in the personal God who has always been.”
Page 183
“...The heart of the rebellion of Satan and man was the desire to be autonomous; and accepting the Christian faith robs us not of our existence, not of our worth (it gives us our worth), but it robs us completely of being autonomous. We did not make ourselves, we are not a product of chance.”
The final sentence caps it all very well.
The alternative to being made and that through the purposeful love of the infinite-personal God is the ironic ‘autonomy’ of chance where purpose is absent, and we live a perceived absurdity of being people full or purpose and intent, and indeed, love, but in a universe, a reality, we imagine has none of this as basic. This man looks back to his roots in meaningless (purposeless) chance and sees a black absence of personality, love and purpose.
To joint the two, as theistic evolution does, for example, compounds the absurdity and evacuates the gospel of credibility. It would tell us that God 'used' purposelessness/chance on purpose, to produce a world of purposeful beings (in his image) that gave no evidence of his purpose! More than absurd because it destroys the fellowship of beings founded in the creation as described in Genesis 1 where God's acts and our being share contiguous objective space-time causality as persons in communion.
1 October 2017
Its all continuous
This morning at church we had a rather wonderful sermon with this quote from Barth:
It reads wonderfully well. It reads as though Barth could be an author on this blog.
But not so.
Barth is famous for putting into different compartments scripture and the contiguous objective space-time causality that we inhabit, that scripture seems to speak to and in which terms scripture is delineated; making nonsense of one or the other!
Because: the creation account is presented in terms of the categories and the contiguous causality that we live in. Recursively, this makes the account congruent with the world that it describes and the world whose terms we share in our existential experience. So, we can make sense of it and take real meaning from it. It gives us a confidence that God has revealed truth to us, and we are not left to the winds of chance.
The world of the account is reflected in a world that has identicial causality with no break in the objective causal continuity between the two, otherwise, one would not make sense in terms of the other and the account would not tell us anything real about this world or God. Which is where Barth is.
The end result would be that the account would have no Real meaning in this world and we would have to seek elsewhere to know not only what really happened, but what is really real, in a basic sense, and how this world, us and god (whose identity is now obscured from us with no place for fellowship...more like Allah than Jehovah) inter-relate. And where would we go? Barth, Dawkins, Enuma Elish? Then, who would we be?
Or, in short:
The nub of it is: if the creation account is not about events (objective causality) in this space-time world, then it is about something else, and the real time-space world is otherly denominated...for which info we have to go elsewhere...where?
‘The
goal of creation, and at the same time the beginning of all that
follows, is the event of God’s Sabbath rest and Sabbath joy, in which
man, too, has been summoned to participate. It is the event of divine
rest in the face of the cosmos completed with the creation of man – a
rest which takes precedence over all of man’s eagerness and zeal to
enter upon his task. Man is created to participate in this rest.’ Karl Barth, Dogmatics III/I, 98.
It reads wonderfully well. It reads as though Barth could be an author on this blog.
But not so.
Barth is famous for putting into different compartments scripture and the contiguous objective space-time causality that we inhabit, that scripture seems to speak to and in which terms scripture is delineated; making nonsense of one or the other!
Because: the creation account is presented in terms of the categories and the contiguous causality that we live in. Recursively, this makes the account congruent with the world that it describes and the world whose terms we share in our existential experience. So, we can make sense of it and take real meaning from it. It gives us a confidence that God has revealed truth to us, and we are not left to the winds of chance.
The world of the account is reflected in a world that has identicial causality with no break in the objective causal continuity between the two, otherwise, one would not make sense in terms of the other and the account would not tell us anything real about this world or God. Which is where Barth is.
The end result would be that the account would have no Real meaning in this world and we would have to seek elsewhere to know not only what really happened, but what is really real, in a basic sense, and how this world, us and god (whose identity is now obscured from us with no place for fellowship...more like Allah than Jehovah) inter-relate. And where would we go? Barth, Dawkins, Enuma Elish? Then, who would we be?
Or, in short:
The nub of it is: if the creation account is not about events (objective causality) in this space-time world, then it is about something else, and the real time-space world is otherly denominated...for which info we have to go elsewhere...where?
30 September 2017
ESV Study Bible
A review that I am much in agreement with, although in enthusiastic disagrement regarding a few points.
My big 'likes':
Additionally, a possible “gap period” is supposed to exist between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, during which a Satanic rebellion occurred. The gap generally is perceived as possibly lasting millions of years, thus accommodating uniformitarian geology. Amazingly, it is argued: “None of these views requires denying that Genesis 1 is historical.” Supposedly, “each of these readings can be squared with other biblical passages that reflect on creation” (2008, 44). How in the name of common logic can the mutually exclusive views of “literal days” and “non-literal days” be harmonized with a biblical narrative that professes to be the inspired word of God?
The author of the introduction is careful to point out that some of the Bible’s genealogical records do not contain strict father-son relationships, and that is true. But if this is intended to suggest that a human longevity of possibly several million years can be accommodated by an elastic genealogy, then the hint is nefarious. Evolutionary chronology flagrantly contradicts Jesus’ statement that humanity existed “from the beginning of the creation” (Mark 10:6), and Paul’s declaration that God’s magnificent universe has been humanly perceived “since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:20). Scripture must not be twisted to conform to pseudo-science.
The ESVSB contends that the biblical text “does not necessarily mean that the flood had to cover the whole earth” (62). The author supposes that it is “questionable” that the flood explains the geological strata, the fossils, etc. (44). This leaves the matter wide open for evolutionary uniformitarianism as opposed to biblical catastrophism.
My big 'likes':
Compromising the Creation Account
In the “Introduction to Genesis” there is an inexcusable compromise with evolutionary chronology. It is alleged that “faithful interpreters” have explained the days of the creation week in a variety of ways. For example, there is the “ordinary days” view that sees the creation days as six periods of twenty-four hours. Others argue that the days represent “geological ages.” Then there is the “work week” of so-called “God days” (whatever those are).Additionally, a possible “gap period” is supposed to exist between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, during which a Satanic rebellion occurred. The gap generally is perceived as possibly lasting millions of years, thus accommodating uniformitarian geology. Amazingly, it is argued: “None of these views requires denying that Genesis 1 is historical.” Supposedly, “each of these readings can be squared with other biblical passages that reflect on creation” (2008, 44). How in the name of common logic can the mutually exclusive views of “literal days” and “non-literal days” be harmonized with a biblical narrative that professes to be the inspired word of God?
The author of the introduction is careful to point out that some of the Bible’s genealogical records do not contain strict father-son relationships, and that is true. But if this is intended to suggest that a human longevity of possibly several million years can be accommodated by an elastic genealogy, then the hint is nefarious. Evolutionary chronology flagrantly contradicts Jesus’ statement that humanity existed “from the beginning of the creation” (Mark 10:6), and Paul’s declaration that God’s magnificent universe has been humanly perceived “since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:20). Scripture must not be twisted to conform to pseudo-science.
The Flood Narrative
The Bible is perfectly clear that the great flood of Noah’s day was universal in its devastation. The Mosaic language could not be plainer concerning the extent of the deluge: “[A]ll the high mountains, that were under the whole heaven were covered. . . . And all flesh died that moved upon the earth” (Genesis 7:19, 21). While it is true that occasionally comprehensive terms are employed in a more limited sense, the context must demand such, and that factor does not obtain in the flood case. For a further discussion of this matter, see Questions About the Genesis Flood.The ESVSB contends that the biblical text “does not necessarily mean that the flood had to cover the whole earth” (62). The author supposes that it is “questionable” that the flood explains the geological strata, the fossils, etc. (44). This leaves the matter wide open for evolutionary uniformitarianism as opposed to biblical catastrophism.
25 September 2017
24 September 2017
Frittering creation
As I was reading it, and reflecting on the frittering of culture as chance, I drew a line from the work of the early evolutionists and their supporters in long age geologists who chorused for random chemical action, chance, as causal of the world we have today.
This instantly invites Rorty’s despair (based on a quote from Yates yearning for justice and truth to be drawn into a single vision, something inevitably absent in a material world defined (?) by randomness).
If this long line sprang from an evolutionary conceptualisation of the Real, then what is the disjunction with Creation? What light does Genesis 1 thrown onto it?
Why, it contradicts it at the first step.
The account tells us not of a universe where chance interactions deliver order, thought and love, but where these come from one who orders in love and wisdom, by his very nature. From one who is person (in community) and who has made us to bear that image.
Creation does not allow room for a chance impersonal universe, but reveals a universe of purpose internally, and intention externally: out of wisdom and love. Two very personal attributes of action.
But, this is thrown over of we hold that the words of purpose and wisdom obscure the reality of chance. Something that figurative views of Genesis 1 invite, and theistic evolutions, their typical end result, entails.
This must be the case, this overthrowing, if the words of purpose and wisdom are not congruent with the acts (events in contiguous time-space) that make sense in the world we inhabit, as image bearers of the creator, and relate the purposeful move of the creator in creating. This is so because if the creation is sensible in terms that have meaning for the image-bearer in their relationship to the image-maker, in terms that are real within and to the creation in which is set their fellowship in meaningful terms (giving life in the relationship of love and purpose), then something else is really true, and really sets the structure of the Real.
The frittering of epistemology into chance events reflected in contemporary culture presumes the chance structure of an evolutionary reality. The Creation is fundamentally not like this and so the run of chance will push us further from the real world in though and action, with the end result being some form of intellectual, if not political tyranny.
The two are not joinable. Thus Rorty’s despair, Paul’s warnings and the imperative to rely on the creation account as being grounded in events dimensioned as are any event sequence that we, the image-bearers, have existential familiarity with (‘existential’ as congruent existence, not mid 20C philosophy).
26 August 2017
I blame Aristotle
Here ends the popular modern misattribution of terracentricity and fixity of the species to the Bible. No, it was Aristotle.
Below a relevant page from Copleston's History of Philosophy.
Below a relevant page from Copleston's History of Philosophy.
8 August 2017
Genre
You've probably been in a discussion in a Bible study group, where one of the sage ones, patiently explains that understanding Genesis 1 starts with its 'genre'. A fancy word for literary type. Why they don't say 'type' I don't know.
But what is the 'genre' of Genesis 1?
It's not peotry...we can look at the psalms and see what Hebrew poetry is.
It's not symbolic...we get that lesson in Ezekiel...and a bit more in Revelation.
It's not quite history either: compare to the later pentateuch or Acts...a little different.
What are we left with?
Chronicle!
That is, a time-ordered list of events.
The writer has driven the point of 'time' and 'sequence' home in every possible way while retaining literary elegance.
Time markers are prominent:
We start with 'in the beginning', then after a set of events: set with chronoligical grammar (the 'waw' consecutive: 'then this happened' recurs through out the creation passage.
Each day is numbered and delineated so that we know what type of day is meant: an evening-morning type day, of course!
Numbers 7 has a similar structure, and it is clearly a chronicle as well.
Compare this with a snippet from Enuma Elish; a pagan theogony that some have the gall to compare to Genesis 1.
Quite the opposite to Genesis 1.
On history: despite this, there are clear historical elements in Gen 1. History compared to chronicle adds meaning, if not analysis. It is not only 'that' something happened, but 'why' and the consequences. It puts events into an existential coherence that Gen 1 certainly does.
The point I want to drive, tho' is that the objective chronological markers of sequence frame this narrative with unmistakable self-conscious precision.
But what is the 'genre' of Genesis 1?
It's not peotry...we can look at the psalms and see what Hebrew poetry is.
It's not symbolic...we get that lesson in Ezekiel...and a bit more in Revelation.
It's not quite history either: compare to the later pentateuch or Acts...a little different.
What are we left with?
Chronicle!
That is, a time-ordered list of events.
The writer has driven the point of 'time' and 'sequence' home in every possible way while retaining literary elegance.
Time markers are prominent:
We start with 'in the beginning', then after a set of events: set with chronoligical grammar (the 'waw' consecutive: 'then this happened' recurs through out the creation passage.
Each day is numbered and delineated so that we know what type of day is meant: an evening-morning type day, of course!
Numbers 7 has a similar structure, and it is clearly a chronicle as well.
Compare this with a snippet from Enuma Elish; a pagan theogony that some have the gall to compare to Genesis 1.
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven,Here and throughout EE uses the chronological imprecession of pagan myth: time markers are not important to myth, in fact, not having them is the important thing to de-historicise the myth and place it beyond enquiry.
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being...
Ages increased,...
Then Ansar and Kisar were created, and over them....
Long were the days, then there came forth.....
Quite the opposite to Genesis 1.
On history: despite this, there are clear historical elements in Gen 1. History compared to chronicle adds meaning, if not analysis. It is not only 'that' something happened, but 'why' and the consequences. It puts events into an existential coherence that Gen 1 certainly does.
The point I want to drive, tho' is that the objective chronological markers of sequence frame this narrative with unmistakable self-conscious precision.
3 August 2017
The Gumbel Error
My previous post on Nikki Gumbel's removal of 'when' from history and giving it to science (he means, of course physical science, as history is a 'science' in that it seeks knowledge) left a gap: the gap was about time itself and its place in the Genesis narrative. I've already dealt with this from one perspective, but there is another I want to bring here.
The presumption that the time markers in Genesis are not germane to the revelation derives from an implicit physicalism: an ontological error that parts company with both the dualism of the Bible, and its concrete realism. Because it presumes that time is a 'given' its action within creation is not recognised and thus the error also parts company with time's existential dependence: that 'word' has priority. Moreover, 'word' strictly in the John 1:1-3 sense. Not a logos of the Greek kind, but the word as going out from the love of God as triune communion of unified will.
Time is integral to the revelation as a created thing, and the markers of time in the creation passage show not only that God orders within time, but uses time to bring order; he using time as the domain of fellowship within the creation (I don't know how the new creation will work in this connection...we'll have to wait and see) where it provides a shared constraint-space definitional of event sequence. Time forms the event-space in which we can join in relationship. Indeed, in which we are shown that the event-space is God's and is where he joins us in relationship.
To put this to one side is firstly a hermeneutical arrogance, then it treats time as an 'accident' of material, almost putting it behind God and not an essential part of the revelation. If God use the time markers as simply symbolic of something else ('what' is never canvassed), one would have to wonder at the specificity of the markers, the deliberation of the pace of creation, the connection formed by his people Israel reflecting his creation and use of time having their life pattern reflect God's.
But, time has to be signficant, and more than symbolic theologically (because the language denies a symbolic role and requires a concrete role for it), as time is our universal constraint: it dominates everything that we do and think; it is inescapable.
Physicalism evacuates time of its theological significance. The proponents fall back to the implicit materialism. Their reference to a paganised framework of understanding (that there are universal givens apart from God) this entails is a theological embarrasment.
The presumption that the time markers in Genesis are not germane to the revelation derives from an implicit physicalism: an ontological error that parts company with both the dualism of the Bible, and its concrete realism. Because it presumes that time is a 'given' its action within creation is not recognised and thus the error also parts company with time's existential dependence: that 'word' has priority. Moreover, 'word' strictly in the John 1:1-3 sense. Not a logos of the Greek kind, but the word as going out from the love of God as triune communion of unified will.
Time is integral to the revelation as a created thing, and the markers of time in the creation passage show not only that God orders within time, but uses time to bring order; he using time as the domain of fellowship within the creation (I don't know how the new creation will work in this connection...we'll have to wait and see) where it provides a shared constraint-space definitional of event sequence. Time forms the event-space in which we can join in relationship. Indeed, in which we are shown that the event-space is God's and is where he joins us in relationship.
To put this to one side is firstly a hermeneutical arrogance, then it treats time as an 'accident' of material, almost putting it behind God and not an essential part of the revelation. If God use the time markers as simply symbolic of something else ('what' is never canvassed), one would have to wonder at the specificity of the markers, the deliberation of the pace of creation, the connection formed by his people Israel reflecting his creation and use of time having their life pattern reflect God's.
But, time has to be signficant, and more than symbolic theologically (because the language denies a symbolic role and requires a concrete role for it), as time is our universal constraint: it dominates everything that we do and think; it is inescapable.
Physicalism evacuates time of its theological significance. The proponents fall back to the implicit materialism. Their reference to a paganised framework of understanding (that there are universal givens apart from God) this entails is a theological embarrasment.
Alpha boob
I saw the second video of the new Alpha course where Gumbel tells us that Jesus is the creator walking on earth. Good. Then, opps, 'I've mentioned creation, I'd better hose down that one straight away'. So he moves onto science and assets its non-connection with history (the Bible).
He tells us that science is about how and when, but the Bible tells us about who and why. He gives us the analogy of a birthday cake.
Now, when did 'when' slip into the domain of science? I don't remember that happening!
Nikki clearly wants to offset any recourse to the timing of early history in Genesis 1-11, and let us slip comfortably into the idea that Genesis' timing is something to do with 'who and why' isolated from science and its 'how and when'. Thus letting science appear to take the lead when it comes to the understanding of time in ancient texts, Genesis in particular.
But 'when' is always history, my friend, and in early Genesis (1-11) reaches far more into our relationship with God, and God's relationship with his creation than a bare 'scientific' fact. It carries profound implications for who God is in relation to us, and how the Bible positions itself as revelation.
Gumbel fails to tease out the ontological issues that Genesis 1-11 deals with and the setting that God thereby delineates for his fellowship with us, his creation-in-his-image.
Gumbel also fails to deal with the evidence in the text (a fail for an ex-barrister, let alone a theologian): its form of language (consecutive narrative), its time references (natural days delineated in two ways, just to make sure we follow), its style (unadorned fact), its reference by other parts of Scripture (Exodus 20:11, for example, and note God's direct speech in this passage), its parallel with other passages of historical narrative (Numbers 7 springs to mind), and its 'first philosophy' of word, not matter (John 1:1-3, Hebrews 11:3).
So Alpha carefully places the train of developing belief on tracks that lead through the dark tunnel of pagan confusion before it ends at the precipice of materialism's emptiness.
Thus The Gumbel Error.
He tells us that science is about how and when, but the Bible tells us about who and why. He gives us the analogy of a birthday cake.
Now, when did 'when' slip into the domain of science? I don't remember that happening!
Nikki clearly wants to offset any recourse to the timing of early history in Genesis 1-11, and let us slip comfortably into the idea that Genesis' timing is something to do with 'who and why' isolated from science and its 'how and when'. Thus letting science appear to take the lead when it comes to the understanding of time in ancient texts, Genesis in particular.
But 'when' is always history, my friend, and in early Genesis (1-11) reaches far more into our relationship with God, and God's relationship with his creation than a bare 'scientific' fact. It carries profound implications for who God is in relation to us, and how the Bible positions itself as revelation.
Gumbel fails to tease out the ontological issues that Genesis 1-11 deals with and the setting that God thereby delineates for his fellowship with us, his creation-in-his-image.
Gumbel also fails to deal with the evidence in the text (a fail for an ex-barrister, let alone a theologian): its form of language (consecutive narrative), its time references (natural days delineated in two ways, just to make sure we follow), its style (unadorned fact), its reference by other parts of Scripture (Exodus 20:11, for example, and note God's direct speech in this passage), its parallel with other passages of historical narrative (Numbers 7 springs to mind), and its 'first philosophy' of word, not matter (John 1:1-3, Hebrews 11:3).
So Alpha carefully places the train of developing belief on tracks that lead through the dark tunnel of pagan confusion before it ends at the precipice of materialism's emptiness.
Thus The Gumbel Error.
26 July 2017
How to start a conversation.
Many years ago in a Bible study I was asked for my thoughts on Genesis 1. I gave the direct non-pagan view, which seemed to evoke some surprise.
Now I would start in one of two ways:
In an essay on Wittgenstein, the writer points out the split in Wittgenstein's work of the use of langauge to talk about a chair: a brute fact; and a subjective 'event'. He has to say that these are different; but cannot live as though they are...
Or
In a wonderful essay by Richard Rorty, he approvingly quotes Yates' yearning to be able to capture reality and justice in a single vision. He cannot. He cannot see how to, he cannot integrate his delight in the beauty of orchids with his desire for justice. His world, which he experiences as an integral continuity, fails his own explanatory program...
The only place these seemingly disparate (but only because of entrenched philosophical mistakes endemic in modern thought) elements of the world are brought together is in Genesis 1, and its elaboration in John 1:1.
I leave the rest to you, dear reader.
Now I would start in one of two ways:
In an essay on Wittgenstein, the writer points out the split in Wittgenstein's work of the use of langauge to talk about a chair: a brute fact; and a subjective 'event'. He has to say that these are different; but cannot live as though they are...
Or
In a wonderful essay by Richard Rorty, he approvingly quotes Yates' yearning to be able to capture reality and justice in a single vision. He cannot. He cannot see how to, he cannot integrate his delight in the beauty of orchids with his desire for justice. His world, which he experiences as an integral continuity, fails his own explanatory program...
The only place these seemingly disparate (but only because of entrenched philosophical mistakes endemic in modern thought) elements of the world are brought together is in Genesis 1, and its elaboration in John 1:1.
I leave the rest to you, dear reader.
22 July 2017
The eye!
Dick Dawkins is well known in some circles for his story of the evolution of sight, or 'the eye'. It starts with a light sensitive spot on a worm, and goes from there.
His story is what I call a Victorian gross morphology fantasy. It considers only the macroscopic anatomy, has some vague inferences about underlying bio-chemical processes, and that's it.
Now let's think about the human eye and its orchestration of quasi independent sub-systems that all had to come together to give us what we have today.
Let's start with the eye itself.
Its shape, various membranes, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, chemical supplies (to maintain light sensitivity) and differentiated rods and cones all had to come together to work together. Any single element by itself would have been eliminated as biologically useless.
The eye-brain system would have to be functional. Nervous connections to the appropraite part of the brain would have to form in step with the formation of the eye as an anatomical component. The 'software' would have to keep step with the 'hardware'. All the eye does is create an image optically on the retina. This then gets decomposed into electric impulses that go to a part of the brain that then assembles these impulses into something that is mentally meaningful for the organism (us). Each step requires substantial 'evolution': optical accuracy and control, translation to electrical impulses, transmission to the brain, some form of re-coding, formation of the mental impression of an image, and then this impression's meaningfulness to us! The orchestrated systems then keep track of the images as they change, smoothing them into a stable continuous image of the scene around us. None of this complex processesing, no use for the eye. No eye.
Now this system has to coordinate information that comes from the eye muscles, that point the eye, and those that focus it. They also have to coordinate with the amount of light coming in as the pupil changes size due to movement of the iris.
This enables the eye-brain system to maintain its stability of orientation, focus and illumination as it assembles moving images.
The body also moves on its axes. The eye-brain-ocular feedback system needs to coordinate with the balance mechanism and its whole system: detection organs and a processing centre in the brain. This helps to maintain a stable image as we move, lean over, turn around...
While the eye as a sense organ is 'evolving' its controlling muscles, blood supply and ancilliary nervous network need to keep up with it.
The eye's housing and accessories need to 'evolve' in line with this: facial bone structure, eye socket, skin, and surrounding (non-occular) muscles and their control system have to keep in step. The external apparatus, and eye lubricant system needs to be there: tear ducts, detector and triggering mechanisms, eyebrows, eye lashes, the lids and blinking system have to happen.
This doesn't even touch on the complexity of the eye's internal anatomy and its fine visual control features.
Then there's hand-eye, foot-eye coordination where major systems of systems interact to enable us to write, play tennis, produce sculptures and do the washing.
I've not mentioned the integration of the eye's lubrication system with another meta-system: emotions. The connection between feelings of supreme joy or suffering, or pain (physical or emotional) and the production of tears!
Genetic information drives all this, and not a simple change in DNA 'letters' here and there, randomly. Because the genetic information system is multiplexed several 'letters' have to change in concord. And groups of multiplexed letter sets need to change in 'super-concord' to bring chemical, nervous, interpretive facility and musculo-skeletal anatomy to the party.
As Dawkins might assert: 'simple'!
His story is what I call a Victorian gross morphology fantasy. It considers only the macroscopic anatomy, has some vague inferences about underlying bio-chemical processes, and that's it.
Now let's think about the human eye and its orchestration of quasi independent sub-systems that all had to come together to give us what we have today.
Let's start with the eye itself.
Its shape, various membranes, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, chemical supplies (to maintain light sensitivity) and differentiated rods and cones all had to come together to work together. Any single element by itself would have been eliminated as biologically useless.
The eye-brain system would have to be functional. Nervous connections to the appropraite part of the brain would have to form in step with the formation of the eye as an anatomical component. The 'software' would have to keep step with the 'hardware'. All the eye does is create an image optically on the retina. This then gets decomposed into electric impulses that go to a part of the brain that then assembles these impulses into something that is mentally meaningful for the organism (us). Each step requires substantial 'evolution': optical accuracy and control, translation to electrical impulses, transmission to the brain, some form of re-coding, formation of the mental impression of an image, and then this impression's meaningfulness to us! The orchestrated systems then keep track of the images as they change, smoothing them into a stable continuous image of the scene around us. None of this complex processesing, no use for the eye. No eye.
Now this system has to coordinate information that comes from the eye muscles, that point the eye, and those that focus it. They also have to coordinate with the amount of light coming in as the pupil changes size due to movement of the iris.
This enables the eye-brain system to maintain its stability of orientation, focus and illumination as it assembles moving images.
The body also moves on its axes. The eye-brain-ocular feedback system needs to coordinate with the balance mechanism and its whole system: detection organs and a processing centre in the brain. This helps to maintain a stable image as we move, lean over, turn around...
While the eye as a sense organ is 'evolving' its controlling muscles, blood supply and ancilliary nervous network need to keep up with it.
The eye's housing and accessories need to 'evolve' in line with this: facial bone structure, eye socket, skin, and surrounding (non-occular) muscles and their control system have to keep in step. The external apparatus, and eye lubricant system needs to be there: tear ducts, detector and triggering mechanisms, eyebrows, eye lashes, the lids and blinking system have to happen.
This doesn't even touch on the complexity of the eye's internal anatomy and its fine visual control features.
Then there's hand-eye, foot-eye coordination where major systems of systems interact to enable us to write, play tennis, produce sculptures and do the washing.
I've not mentioned the integration of the eye's lubrication system with another meta-system: emotions. The connection between feelings of supreme joy or suffering, or pain (physical or emotional) and the production of tears!
Genetic information drives all this, and not a simple change in DNA 'letters' here and there, randomly. Because the genetic information system is multiplexed several 'letters' have to change in concord. And groups of multiplexed letter sets need to change in 'super-concord' to bring chemical, nervous, interpretive facility and musculo-skeletal anatomy to the party.
As Dawkins might assert: 'simple'!
7 July 2017
Time is the hero
‘Time is in fact the hero of the plot … given so much time the “impossible” becomes possible, the possible probable and the probably virtually certainly certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles.'
Wald, G., The origin of life; in: Physics and Chemistry of Life, p. 12, 1955
Of course, this is nonsense, and Wald probably knew it. Stochastic chemistry does not make the impossible possible. That which is impossible will not happen. All it does is allow the less likely to occur. No matter how long we wait, people will not grow younger and water will not flow up hill.
However, this view does up the ante for Theistic-evolution. Time is given agency, and Wald gives it the honour of creating, in effect.
Contrast this with Paul in Colossians: 1:6 For by him [Christ] all things were created...2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
Time as agent could well be one of those principles.
And consider this in the light of Hebrews 11:3:
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
The primacy of word and not time, ‘chance’ or ‘the “impossible” becoming possible! What are theistic evolutionists doing? Implicitly they are placing the material outcome prior to the creating word of God who is love!
The timing of creation in Genesis 1, etc. obstructs pagan conceptualisations of ‘creation’ or ‘origins’ more generally. There is inevitably a timelessness to these conceptualisations, with what Eliade (in The Myth of the Eternal Return) refers to as a sacralised, or mythologised use of time, to disconnect us and the world of gods; time here is vague, allusive, cannot be pinned down...read Enuma Elish carefully. Its time references avoid being pinned down, and are unclear...like a liar in a police interview, attempting to make a case by being unclear. Of course, it does not and cannot work. We see through it immediately.
In the creation account, many things are being done theologically that don’t often get explored. One of them is that the use of concrete time references brings the creation into the existential frame that we occupy. God in making concrete time the one that he acts in, sharing his domain of action with us: he forms fellowship between us and himself, and starts the long process of establishing his credential for being worshipped by his successive acts in history (in the history that defines our worship of him). Denials that mutate the timing of Genesis 1 into something other than concrete timing that we understand destroys this: symbolic time, a 'framework' of events, the general theistic evolutionary reconfigurations of creation destroy the primary credential that God presents to us: that he created, and in terms that are congruent with our experience of time, space and 'extension'. What 'god' then does this leave us with? How is his action giving sense to our experiental engagement with history?
In this context it is critical to note that the Jewish sense of time was different from the symbolic or mythically indeterminate time, or the ‘sacred’ time of paganism that has to keep its ‘gods’ away from the real world, because they in fact have no place there. Theistic evolution takes us to this empty room. But for Jews time was unilinear rather than pagan cyclical. Even the repeated lapses of Israel into idolatry did not dispel belief in God’s overall movement with and orchestration in events. Had he not led his people to the promised land, and saved them repeatedly?
The Jewish God expressed himself in time. Nothing would ever be the same as before. That was the nature of time, and it starts with God embarking on creation by working in the flow of history as we do: forming a common experience, a common existential ground in the common days of working then rest. It is the start of God’s tabernacling with those he created in his image...in concrete acts that occurred in real time with real extension, as the word as prime went out to form the material world, the setting of our fellowship with our creator.
If we reject this: that the word was God and with God...etc, then we are left with Wald's time that can do anything...and an unworshipable ‘god’ who has left us for a vague untimed ‘sacred’ world...the world we are not in and cannot be in, the world where we have no fellowship with our creator.
Wald, G., The origin of life; in: Physics and Chemistry of Life, p. 12, 1955
Of course, this is nonsense, and Wald probably knew it. Stochastic chemistry does not make the impossible possible. That which is impossible will not happen. All it does is allow the less likely to occur. No matter how long we wait, people will not grow younger and water will not flow up hill.
However, this view does up the ante for Theistic-evolution. Time is given agency, and Wald gives it the honour of creating, in effect.
Contrast this with Paul in Colossians: 1:6 For by him [Christ] all things were created...2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
Time as agent could well be one of those principles.
And consider this in the light of Hebrews 11:3:
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
The primacy of word and not time, ‘chance’ or ‘the “impossible” becoming possible! What are theistic evolutionists doing? Implicitly they are placing the material outcome prior to the creating word of God who is love!
The timing of creation in Genesis 1, etc. obstructs pagan conceptualisations of ‘creation’ or ‘origins’ more generally. There is inevitably a timelessness to these conceptualisations, with what Eliade (in The Myth of the Eternal Return) refers to as a sacralised, or mythologised use of time, to disconnect us and the world of gods; time here is vague, allusive, cannot be pinned down...read Enuma Elish carefully. Its time references avoid being pinned down, and are unclear...like a liar in a police interview, attempting to make a case by being unclear. Of course, it does not and cannot work. We see through it immediately.
In the creation account, many things are being done theologically that don’t often get explored. One of them is that the use of concrete time references brings the creation into the existential frame that we occupy. God in making concrete time the one that he acts in, sharing his domain of action with us: he forms fellowship between us and himself, and starts the long process of establishing his credential for being worshipped by his successive acts in history (in the history that defines our worship of him). Denials that mutate the timing of Genesis 1 into something other than concrete timing that we understand destroys this: symbolic time, a 'framework' of events, the general theistic evolutionary reconfigurations of creation destroy the primary credential that God presents to us: that he created, and in terms that are congruent with our experience of time, space and 'extension'. What 'god' then does this leave us with? How is his action giving sense to our experiental engagement with history?
In this context it is critical to note that the Jewish sense of time was different from the symbolic or mythically indeterminate time, or the ‘sacred’ time of paganism that has to keep its ‘gods’ away from the real world, because they in fact have no place there. Theistic evolution takes us to this empty room. But for Jews time was unilinear rather than pagan cyclical. Even the repeated lapses of Israel into idolatry did not dispel belief in God’s overall movement with and orchestration in events. Had he not led his people to the promised land, and saved them repeatedly?
The Jewish God expressed himself in time. Nothing would ever be the same as before. That was the nature of time, and it starts with God embarking on creation by working in the flow of history as we do: forming a common experience, a common existential ground in the common days of working then rest. It is the start of God’s tabernacling with those he created in his image...in concrete acts that occurred in real time with real extension, as the word as prime went out to form the material world, the setting of our fellowship with our creator.
If we reject this: that the word was God and with God...etc, then we are left with Wald's time that can do anything...and an unworshipable ‘god’ who has left us for a vague untimed ‘sacred’ world...the world we are not in and cannot be in, the world where we have no fellowship with our creator.
20 May 2017
6 days...really?
In The Economist:
Or, perhaps it is a counter-story to rebut the stories of Islamic supremacy that abound in the Islamic fairy story, the Koran
No, perhaps it is a type of the Temple Theology that points to Jewish wishful thinking for the old days...
Or, perhaps it is the account of something that happened.
If I believe an Israeli solder about this, I believe God about his 6-day story.
Doing so I can resist the pressure around me to start with a materially framed reality and proceed with a God-first ontology.
- In the beginning they destroyed Egypt’s air force on the ground and knocked out the planes of Jordan, Iraq and Syria. That was Monday.
- Then they broke Egypt’s massive defences in Sinai. That was Tuesday.
- Next, they took the old city of Jerusalem and prayed. That was Wednesday.
- Then they reached the Suez Canal. That was Thursday.
- They ascended the Golan Heights. That was Friday.
- Then they took the peaks overlooking the plain of Damascus. In the evening the world declared a ceasefire. That was Saturday.
- And on the seventh day the soldiers of Israel rested.
Or, perhaps it is a counter-story to rebut the stories of Islamic supremacy that abound in the Islamic fairy story, the Koran
No, perhaps it is a type of the Temple Theology that points to Jewish wishful thinking for the old days...
Or, perhaps it is the account of something that happened.
If I believe an Israeli solder about this, I believe God about his 6-day story.
Doing so I can resist the pressure around me to start with a materially framed reality and proceed with a God-first ontology.
30 April 2017
Could have...
I love the way people claim that God 'could have' 'used' evolution.
I don't know what 'used' is supposed to mean;do we posit a mechanism, and what is it; how are the links made in absence of God telling us...but what are we to do with 'could have'?
He either did or didn't; if he 'could have' show us how; give us an argument that understands evolution's historic contempt for the idea of a relating god from Epicurus onwards; let's see how the modern development of the idea intersects with a concrete actual God in a concrete actual world...'could have'?
I could have bought out BHP...if I had the money...I could have swum naked to Chile...if I could have...this phrase is an embarrasment of absence in argument and stands for nothing but an intellectual black hole: everything enters, and nothing comes out.
If this is merely a logical 'could have' it gets us nowhere, particularly as it pretends that the logic is patent, which it is not, and leaves it to the listener to imagine what the proponent's logic is and insert it. Its a bluff; God could not have used evolution, because he told us that he didn't. God doesn't deal in hypotheticals.
But there's more to it:
God 'could have' used evolution, but only if we rob both of their meaning. An easy error that is made is to think that 'evolution' is a real thing in the world; it is not! It is a theory that exists in the human mind. It was made up expressly to eliminate God. So 'evolution' and 'creation' (or 'design') are only 'compatible' if we talk about two things that didn't happen, two things that seem to float in an ill-considered make believe.
In the real world Evolution = not by God; creation = by God. So to put them together is to claim that God used 'not by God' to create, celebrating Epicurus' separation of the 'gods' and the world in a most peculiar fashion.
Why would we follow a pagan?
Moreover, the small changes have to be 'evolutions' small changes from ooze to humans; there is no way this has been, or seemingly could be, explained in the real world (not the imagination of materialists who seem to think that it could have happened...).
So God could not have 'used' 'not by God' as the idea evaporates in a puff of meaninglessness.
I don't know what 'used' is supposed to mean;do we posit a mechanism, and what is it; how are the links made in absence of God telling us...but what are we to do with 'could have'?
He either did or didn't; if he 'could have' show us how; give us an argument that understands evolution's historic contempt for the idea of a relating god from Epicurus onwards; let's see how the modern development of the idea intersects with a concrete actual God in a concrete actual world...'could have'?
I could have bought out BHP...if I had the money...I could have swum naked to Chile...if I could have...this phrase is an embarrasment of absence in argument and stands for nothing but an intellectual black hole: everything enters, and nothing comes out.
If this is merely a logical 'could have' it gets us nowhere, particularly as it pretends that the logic is patent, which it is not, and leaves it to the listener to imagine what the proponent's logic is and insert it. Its a bluff; God could not have used evolution, because he told us that he didn't. God doesn't deal in hypotheticals.
But there's more to it:
God 'could have' used evolution, but only if we rob both of their meaning. An easy error that is made is to think that 'evolution' is a real thing in the world; it is not! It is a theory that exists in the human mind. It was made up expressly to eliminate God. So 'evolution' and 'creation' (or 'design') are only 'compatible' if we talk about two things that didn't happen, two things that seem to float in an ill-considered make believe.
In the real world Evolution = not by God; creation = by God. So to put them together is to claim that God used 'not by God' to create, celebrating Epicurus' separation of the 'gods' and the world in a most peculiar fashion.
Why would we follow a pagan?
Moreover, the small changes have to be 'evolutions' small changes from ooze to humans; there is no way this has been, or seemingly could be, explained in the real world (not the imagination of materialists who seem to think that it could have happened...).
So God could not have 'used' 'not by God' as the idea evaporates in a puff of meaninglessness.
25 April 2017
An atheist tells us
Theistic evolutionists wax lyrical about the compatibility of the biblical doctrine of creation, and materialist ontology.
One atheist is unmoved (a comment on the Andrew Bolt Herald Sun blog):
One atheist is unmoved (a comment on the Andrew Bolt Herald Sun blog):
Atheist1
Within a materialist framing, of course, I don't see where 'incredible' fits in though.
La La Land
Theistic evolutionists live in a different world to you and I. They live in La La Land. A world where belief about what is basic has no influence on all derivitive beliefs.
You and I and Peter Singer live in the real world. Singer is mistaken...he accepts evolution as explanatory of the real world. I do not. My belief springs from the word of God and leads where God lays out the path; Singer's belief leads elsewhere, as shows the quote below from his book Writings on an Ethical Life (Fourth Estate, 2000). TE-ers attempt to combine these 'worlds' into one; but it doesn't work, and leads (ill)logically to Singer's position. If the world truly is as Darwin (and Singer) believe, then it is so; if not, they are mistaken. There is no bridge between them.
Singer is mistaken about Coperncius and Galileo, who overturned not the biblical world, but the Aristotelian one...and good thing too; trouble is, TE-ers have their feet stuck in Aristotle, and not Moses.
You and I and Peter Singer live in the real world. Singer is mistaken...he accepts evolution as explanatory of the real world. I do not. My belief springs from the word of God and leads where God lays out the path; Singer's belief leads elsewhere, as shows the quote below from his book Writings on an Ethical Life (Fourth Estate, 2000). TE-ers attempt to combine these 'worlds' into one; but it doesn't work, and leads (ill)logically to Singer's position. If the world truly is as Darwin (and Singer) believe, then it is so; if not, they are mistaken. There is no bridge between them.
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