God is transcendent. We know from Isaiah 55:9, or we might think that we do!
This must be read in the light of Gen 1:2, 27, Gen 2:15-17 and Gen 3:8-11.
There is an intimacy here: communication, fellowship (reinforced in God's creating in our time setting), love. God is of course above as as per Isaiah, but he is also with us. The creation tells us that he is with us with an intensity and closeness that goes beyond mere pagan transcendence.
23 April 2018
Fish
In an episode of Rick Stein in Asia, he commented on his love of fish that we came from fish...obviously one doesn't go to a cook for information on origins, and I note that he's gone even deeper into mythological past to get to fish, rather than stop at the shared precusor to modern apes and humanity!
Yes, man came after fish, and indeed, man was made from dust...but that's only half the truth.
Satan's deception is always subtle. As his 'temptations' of Yeshua, he distorts rather than outrageously fabricate.
Thus we go from Adam made from dust and enlived by God (Gen 1:27, with the method God used explained in Gen 2:7) in the Bible, to moderns disregarding God's word, indeed, the method he used to create man, saying that sure, we are made of the dust of the ground, but not with any intention, purpose, design or intelligent objective, rather it was the meandering of chemical accidents that led to us. Presumably the same random accidents led to ideas...which can be no more reliable on that basis than any other random accident.
Yes, man came after fish, and indeed, man was made from dust...but that's only half the truth.
Satan's deception is always subtle. As his 'temptations' of Yeshua, he distorts rather than outrageously fabricate.
Thus we go from Adam made from dust and enlived by God (Gen 1:27, with the method God used explained in Gen 2:7) in the Bible, to moderns disregarding God's word, indeed, the method he used to create man, saying that sure, we are made of the dust of the ground, but not with any intention, purpose, design or intelligent objective, rather it was the meandering of chemical accidents that led to us. Presumably the same random accidents led to ideas...which can be no more reliable on that basis than any other random accident.
21 April 2018
20 April 2018
How many species are there?
In
How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? Camilo Mora, Derek P. Tittensor, Sina Adl, Alastair G. B. Simpson, Boris Worm
Published: August 23, 2011
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127
From the abstract:
How many pre-historic species are there? Wikipedia has a few pages of them. Nothing, compared to the current estimate, so it would appear that we know nothing about them as well!
How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? Camilo Mora, Derek P. Tittensor, Sina Adl, Alastair G. B. Simpson, Boris Worm
Published: August 23, 2011
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127
From the abstract:
[The] approach was validated against well-known taxa, and when applied to all domains of life, it predicts ∼8.7 million (±1.3 million SE) eukaryotic species globally, of which ∼2.2 million (±0.18 million SE) are marine. In spite of 250 years of taxonomic classification and over 1.2 million species already catalogued in a central database, our results suggest that some 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description.Thus, between 7.4 and 10 million species! We've catalogued 1.2m. So, we know next to nothing about species!
How many pre-historic species are there? Wikipedia has a few pages of them. Nothing, compared to the current estimate, so it would appear that we know nothing about them as well!
Natural Selection = a spin of the wheel.
You've heard Natural Selection described as 'the survival of the fittest'? Of course! But it ain't so.
The fittest! The fittest, the very bestest fit of all the fits there could be? How do you measure that? It is completely unparameterised and given the variability of ecological communities and their change over time, is unparameterisable. The fitest is the most fit possible in all relevant circumstances. Not even the second most fit which is one 'fitette' less fit than the most fit gets a guernsey.
Rubbish.
The roulette wheel of natural selection means at worst survival of the luckiest (but even that contains an implicit teleology and is a hindsight evaluation), and at best, the survival of the least unfit at the time and place in the conditions that prevail on the day.
In the end, all one can say is that what survives is that which has survived. It is a meaningless 'go nowhere' concept.
It only means that the characteristics that only and expressely benefit bare survival are important...so fruit could be slightly less delicious to an animal, and it would probably have insufficient selectability to be selected out; this might or might not relate to survival fitness, but we find that fruit is just so delicious! And so on. For everything. What about human thought, art, technology? Not essentail for bare survival, so comparatively not selected for: all are the mere result of the least best fit surviving. Its like public works: the least costly gets the job with the lowest tender.
The fittest! The fittest, the very bestest fit of all the fits there could be? How do you measure that? It is completely unparameterised and given the variability of ecological communities and their change over time, is unparameterisable. The fitest is the most fit possible in all relevant circumstances. Not even the second most fit which is one 'fitette' less fit than the most fit gets a guernsey.
Rubbish.
The roulette wheel of natural selection means at worst survival of the luckiest (but even that contains an implicit teleology and is a hindsight evaluation), and at best, the survival of the least unfit at the time and place in the conditions that prevail on the day.
In the end, all one can say is that what survives is that which has survived. It is a meaningless 'go nowhere' concept.
It only means that the characteristics that only and expressely benefit bare survival are important...so fruit could be slightly less delicious to an animal, and it would probably have insufficient selectability to be selected out; this might or might not relate to survival fitness, but we find that fruit is just so delicious! And so on. For everything. What about human thought, art, technology? Not essentail for bare survival, so comparatively not selected for: all are the mere result of the least best fit surviving. Its like public works: the least costly gets the job with the lowest tender.
17 April 2018
13 April 2018
Genesis vs myth
When you are challenged, usually by an evolution booster (whom you can refer to Mary Midgley's book Evolution as Religion), that the Genesis account is merely another ancient 'creation myth'. Here's fuel for your reply.
It is nothing like myth (read Eliade's Myth of the Eternal Return), rather:
If you want the three big ones, for an easy rebuttal:
It is nothing like myth (read Eliade's Myth of the Eternal Return), rather:
- it is personal and personally involved in the creation sequence
- it is ex nihilio and makes no implict assumption that a cosmos 'just is'.
- it has specific timing and place that is continuous with our real world experience
- it uses concrete defined time units, the ones we live by and dominate our lives
- it uses real-world categories for the results of the creative words
- its creation episodes are ecologially patent
- it communicates in terms that make sense in the real world
- it identifies the critical difference between man and animals: rationality.
If you want the three big ones, for an easy rebuttal:
- it is personal: God has a clear identity, will and purpose
- it is particular: no vague generalities or symbols
- it is real: its set here and then, continuous with our world-experience here and now.
12 April 2018
God and David Attenborough
David Attenborough's work is uniformly wonderful. The photography and locations amazing and the portrayal of the creation sometimes almost brings welling tears of joy and the greatness of God.
But DA himself doesn't see cause to glorify God, in whom I doubt he believes, rather his words are an almost constant paean to Evolution!
I wonder at this when Christians in the typical reflexive fit of ill-considered (usually) opining, regard evolution as God's method of creation. DA certainly doesn't see it this way, indeed his belief in evolution bolsters his denial of God. Evolution never points to God. Always away, always displacing him as creator, which is his chief office in our world.
I was reflecting on these thoughts as I read Isaiah 42:8, today:
But DA himself doesn't see cause to glorify God, in whom I doubt he believes, rather his words are an almost constant paean to Evolution!
I wonder at this when Christians in the typical reflexive fit of ill-considered (usually) opining, regard evolution as God's method of creation. DA certainly doesn't see it this way, indeed his belief in evolution bolsters his denial of God. Evolution never points to God. Always away, always displacing him as creator, which is his chief office in our world.
I was reflecting on these thoughts as I read Isaiah 42:8, today:
I am the Lord, that is my name;And then read vss 5-7 preceeding: God once again lays down his trump card: creator and lover of his creation.
I will not give my glory to another,
Nor my praise to graven images.
Thus says God the Lord,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and its offspring,
Who gives breath to the people on it
And spirit to those who walk in it,
6 “I am the Lord, I have called You in righteousness,
I will also hold You by the hand and watch over You,
And I will appoint You as a covenant to the people,
As a light to the nations,
7 To open blind eyes,
To bring out prisoners from the dungeon
And those who dwell in darkness from the prison.
5 April 2018
1 April 2018
28 March 2018
Time as agent
It's even hit TV documentaries:
Michael Portillo in his Irish railway series, in commenting on the Irish v British troubles in the early 20th c. commented on Q. Elizabeth II's visit to Ireland:
To be accurate: the beauty of time passing is that the actors change, circumstances change, peoples' perceptions and motivations change and what was impossible in the past becomes, because of these social and political changes, possible.
Michael Portillo in his Irish railway series, in commenting on the Irish v British troubles in the early 20th c. commented on Q. Elizabeth II's visit to Ireland:
The beauty of time passing is that the makes the impossible possible.Now, where have I heard that error before?
To be accurate: the beauty of time passing is that the actors change, circumstances change, peoples' perceptions and motivations change and what was impossible in the past becomes, because of these social and political changes, possible.
25 March 2018
Genesis a science text?
In a post on science in Genesis, there is a link to Eric Snow's article on www.rae.org:
“Christianity a Cause of Modern Science?: The Duhem-Jaki and Merton
Theses Explained”. In this is a fascinating quote from a 14th century
scholar, John Buridan.
The remarkable thing here is that, as I read it, Buridan [Perhaps the most influential Parisian philosopher of the fourteenth century, according to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy] starts his reflections on the created world with God’s revelation: he therefore uses Genesis 1 directly as a ‘scientific’ textbook. By this Buridan made the great break away from paganism and opened the path to the development of modern ‘natural’ sciences. Note, the Bible is directly used to illuminate this break and make the created world intellectually available for rational examination!
““The first key steps in totally discarding Aristotle's physics were done by…the medieval Christian Catholic [Jean/John] Buridan, [who] in a crucial passage, anticipated the idea of inertia...through his discussion of impetus. Notice the reference to God not directly making the laws of nature operate:
Also, since the Bible does not state that appropriate intelligences move the celestial bodies, it could be said that it does not appear necessary to posit intelligences of this kind, because it would be answered that God, when He created the world, moved each of the celestial orbs as He pleased, and in moving them He impressed in them impetuses which moved them without His having to move them any more except by the method of general influence whereby He concurs as a co-agent in all things which take place; 'for thus on the seventh day He rested for all work . . .' [Gen. 2:2] And these impetuses which He impressed in the celestial bodies were not decreased nor corrupted afterwards, because there was not inclination of the celestial bodies for movements.
Also note this additional statement as a nascent form of the idea of inertia:
But because of the resistance which results from the weight of the [waterwheel of the] mill, the impetus would continually diminish until the mill ceased to turn. And perhaps, if the mill should last forever without any diminution or change, and there were no other resistance to corrupt the impetus, the mill would move forever because of its perpetual impetus.
While these passages are only halting steps on a long road to repealing Aristotle's physics, they do show a move to break out of his conceptions of how moving bodies move. These men show that the Church never uncritically accepted the Greek classics as many in the Islamic world had done earlier. True, it tied itself and lent its authority to the Greek classics excessively, which set the stage for its eventual disaster resulting from it using force that made Galileo recant his belief that the earth moved. With the later discoveries of Galileo, Hooke, Kepler, Torricelli, Boyle, Newton, and others, Europe's science took a vast qualitative leap, but we should not overlook its origins and these men's predecessors in the Middle Ages.””
The remarkable thing here is that, as I read it, Buridan [Perhaps the most influential Parisian philosopher of the fourteenth century, according to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy] starts his reflections on the created world with God’s revelation: he therefore uses Genesis 1 directly as a ‘scientific’ textbook. By this Buridan made the great break away from paganism and opened the path to the development of modern ‘natural’ sciences. Note, the Bible is directly used to illuminate this break and make the created world intellectually available for rational examination!
““The first key steps in totally discarding Aristotle's physics were done by…the medieval Christian Catholic [Jean/John] Buridan, [who] in a crucial passage, anticipated the idea of inertia...through his discussion of impetus. Notice the reference to God not directly making the laws of nature operate:
Also, since the Bible does not state that appropriate intelligences move the celestial bodies, it could be said that it does not appear necessary to posit intelligences of this kind, because it would be answered that God, when He created the world, moved each of the celestial orbs as He pleased, and in moving them He impressed in them impetuses which moved them without His having to move them any more except by the method of general influence whereby He concurs as a co-agent in all things which take place; 'for thus on the seventh day He rested for all work . . .' [Gen. 2:2] And these impetuses which He impressed in the celestial bodies were not decreased nor corrupted afterwards, because there was not inclination of the celestial bodies for movements.
Also note this additional statement as a nascent form of the idea of inertia:
But because of the resistance which results from the weight of the [waterwheel of the] mill, the impetus would continually diminish until the mill ceased to turn. And perhaps, if the mill should last forever without any diminution or change, and there were no other resistance to corrupt the impetus, the mill would move forever because of its perpetual impetus.
While these passages are only halting steps on a long road to repealing Aristotle's physics, they do show a move to break out of his conceptions of how moving bodies move. These men show that the Church never uncritically accepted the Greek classics as many in the Islamic world had done earlier. True, it tied itself and lent its authority to the Greek classics excessively, which set the stage for its eventual disaster resulting from it using force that made Galileo recant his belief that the earth moved. With the later discoveries of Galileo, Hooke, Kepler, Torricelli, Boyle, Newton, and others, Europe's science took a vast qualitative leap, but we should not overlook its origins and these men's predecessors in the Middle Ages.””
13 March 2018
Are we pagans or what?
One of the challenges faced by attempts to regard both evolution and the biblical creation account in Genesis 1-2 as explanatory as to origins, and thus, the nature of the world and its ontological basis, is that the heart of the creation account is removed.
It was encapsulated in a sermon I recently heard where the speaker claimed that the cosmos 'just is' while endorsing its creation by God.
So, it is not 'just is', but created! One cannot have it both ways or Paganism is given a toe in the door.
Above all else the creation account in Genesis is personal. It starts with the personal as being basic to all that is (both Genesis 1 and Colossians 1 treat this) and emphasises this in the G1 account firstly, in God's real personal agency in creating by speaking and it having immediate effect: no long, nebulous, impersonal processes (the hallmarks of paganism with its determinedly impersonal or a-personal framing).
Secondly the personal is demonstrated in God working in our 'time-space'; thus the reason for the delimination of effort by days. This represents the first move of fellowship between creator and his image-bearer creature: that we share agency in discrete time. God knows what our work is like, and we reflect his in our work. This is the first move of fellowship, and enshrines our image-bearer-ness in the very good creation, not in the disaster that followed in the degredation of creation, which we now suffer from.
Other origin proposals are diffuse, nebulous, as I've said above, and fundamentally de-personalised. The personal in itself, and in our possible connection with it, is lost in their unlocatable and ill defined event that occures in a discontiguity with our experience of the Creation. The door is opened by taking such a framing to Genesis to deism: the remote God. God in Genesis 1 is the highly involved, engaged one in concrete relationship with the very concrete cosmos and its events in time and space.
And there's the clue. It is strikingly odd that our experience of the creation would not be the terms in which creation is explicable to us. In G1 it is very much this. The tangibility of our lives in contiguous objectively causal time-space is the very tangibilty of the creation and the terms in which it is communicated to us. Thus we don't live in a pagan or an idealist (paganism converted to the complicated words of philosophy) denominated world/cosmos/existence. Rather we live in a personal, concrete, discrete things happen in explainable time type of cosmos, denominated in direct connection between actor and event, in time and space locations that are communicable and that establish the event existentially.
It was encapsulated in a sermon I recently heard where the speaker claimed that the cosmos 'just is' while endorsing its creation by God.
So, it is not 'just is', but created! One cannot have it both ways or Paganism is given a toe in the door.
Above all else the creation account in Genesis is personal. It starts with the personal as being basic to all that is (both Genesis 1 and Colossians 1 treat this) and emphasises this in the G1 account firstly, in God's real personal agency in creating by speaking and it having immediate effect: no long, nebulous, impersonal processes (the hallmarks of paganism with its determinedly impersonal or a-personal framing).
Secondly the personal is demonstrated in God working in our 'time-space'; thus the reason for the delimination of effort by days. This represents the first move of fellowship between creator and his image-bearer creature: that we share agency in discrete time. God knows what our work is like, and we reflect his in our work. This is the first move of fellowship, and enshrines our image-bearer-ness in the very good creation, not in the disaster that followed in the degredation of creation, which we now suffer from.
Other origin proposals are diffuse, nebulous, as I've said above, and fundamentally de-personalised. The personal in itself, and in our possible connection with it, is lost in their unlocatable and ill defined event that occures in a discontiguity with our experience of the Creation. The door is opened by taking such a framing to Genesis to deism: the remote God. God in Genesis 1 is the highly involved, engaged one in concrete relationship with the very concrete cosmos and its events in time and space.
And there's the clue. It is strikingly odd that our experience of the creation would not be the terms in which creation is explicable to us. In G1 it is very much this. The tangibility of our lives in contiguous objectively causal time-space is the very tangibilty of the creation and the terms in which it is communicated to us. Thus we don't live in a pagan or an idealist (paganism converted to the complicated words of philosophy) denominated world/cosmos/existence. Rather we live in a personal, concrete, discrete things happen in explainable time type of cosmos, denominated in direct connection between actor and event, in time and space locations that are communicable and that establish the event existentially.
7 February 2018
20 January 2018
Where are we?
Comment on a creation web article about theologians who de-reify Genesis 1 etc.:
If theologians want to cut God's creating out of real communicable history, then where do we go to find the framing of relationship between God and humanity that occurs in real history? If the creation account in Genesis doesn't tell us what did happen in space and time, and therefore what really is, we have to ask then, what is 'really' there? What tells us how reality works? Plato, Aristotle, Darwin? If these people define what really is; then reality is other than the scriptures tell us and we have a faith not planted in this world that we experience, but some other world that we don't know...the world of platonic fantasy, of nature red in tooth and claw?
If theologians want to cut God's creating out of real communicable history, then where do we go to find the framing of relationship between God and humanity that occurs in real history? If the creation account in Genesis doesn't tell us what did happen in space and time, and therefore what really is, we have to ask then, what is 'really' there? What tells us how reality works? Plato, Aristotle, Darwin? If these people define what really is; then reality is other than the scriptures tell us and we have a faith not planted in this world that we experience, but some other world that we don't know...the world of platonic fantasy, of nature red in tooth and claw?
19 January 2018
17 January 2018
Walking the dog
While my nephew and I were walking my dog, I noticed a small statue in a neigbour's front garden. A
piece of paper with "Penelope" written on it along with an apple and other fruit were lying in front of the statue, which was decorated with feathers where the head would have been.
A woman and childwere in the garden and the woman noticed me looking at the scene.
She came over, asking, 'lovely, isn't it?" I asked what it was. She told me that it was 'Maisy's offering to peace'. I asked about the statue. She said that it was an Indian god [it looked like a headless Buddha to me] that would bring peace.
I replied, nicely, that it wasn't a god, it was a piece of shaped stone. She smiled, and said, we like to say it’s a god because it’s a nice story, and peace is something I want to teach Maisy.
A story and a piece of stone can bring peace, really?
If we regard Genesis 1 as just another story, we are at the level of the latter day heathen who think that a made up story about a piece of stone can have some real connection with actual lived lives. But it can't. It's a fantasy.
Despite all the fuss about 'genre', asserted 'compatibility with science', which I first heard from a friend in year 4 of primary school, and symbolism displacing realism, if this is all Genesis 1 is, just a story, then we make God no more than a piece of stone: an invention in our minds and not related to us in the real world where we grow apples and limes.
We back ourselves into a corner where a story about God's action in some 'story world', becomes the basis for our worship of God here in the real world. But, there can be no real connection, if it is merely a story.
A woman and childwere in the garden and the woman noticed me looking at the scene.
She came over, asking, 'lovely, isn't it?" I asked what it was. She told me that it was 'Maisy's offering to peace'. I asked about the statue. She said that it was an Indian god [it looked like a headless Buddha to me] that would bring peace.
I replied, nicely, that it wasn't a god, it was a piece of shaped stone. She smiled, and said, we like to say it’s a god because it’s a nice story, and peace is something I want to teach Maisy.
A story and a piece of stone can bring peace, really?
If we regard Genesis 1 as just another story, we are at the level of the latter day heathen who think that a made up story about a piece of stone can have some real connection with actual lived lives. But it can't. It's a fantasy.
Despite all the fuss about 'genre', asserted 'compatibility with science', which I first heard from a friend in year 4 of primary school, and symbolism displacing realism, if this is all Genesis 1 is, just a story, then we make God no more than a piece of stone: an invention in our minds and not related to us in the real world where we grow apples and limes.
We back ourselves into a corner where a story about God's action in some 'story world', becomes the basis for our worship of God here in the real world. But, there can be no real connection, if it is merely a story.
15 January 2018
Broughton Knox on origins
The doctrine of God the Creator is vivid throughout the pages of Scripture. The gods of the nations are not creator gods and, as the interesting little Aramaic insertion in Jeremiah puts it, the gods that did not create the world will perish, as indeed they have (Jeremiah 10:11). In our own times idolatry, which was a universal substitute for the Creator God, has been replaced by the widely held theory of evolution. Both the ancients and the heathen today deified and worshipped the creature as the creator, modelling images of man, or birds or animals or reptiles and worshipping these, so for Western secular people the modern theory of evolution deifies nature and acknowledges it as creator of all we see around us. All the beauty and intricacy and all the marvellous arrangements of the natural world are supposed to have been evolved by a thoughtless, purposeless mechanical operation of nature, and in this way the God who made the world is as effectively shutout of the minds of those who are enjoying the blessings of his creation as he was by the false religious of idolatry. Just as the idolaters could not see the foolishness, indeed the stupidity, of worshipping gods of wood and stone, which have no life nor purpose nor mind, so modern believers in the theory of evolution cannot see the foolishness of that theory, which not only lacks evidence to support it, but also runs counter to such evidence of origins as is available.(Knox, The Everlasting God, p. 32, MatthiasMedia 2009)
Creation implies purpose. In contrast, impersonal evolution is purposeless—things happening by accident without plan. But creation is a personal activity of an almighty, supreme God. Personal action implies purpose, and this in turn implies assessment. The doctrine of judgement is closely related to that of creation. The Scripture are full of the truth of the judgement of God. One of the oldest passages of the Old Testament, the song of Deborah, proclaims how turning away from the true God brought inevitable judgement: “New gods were chosen; then war was in the gates” (Judges 5:8).
(Knox, The Everlasting God, p. 36, MatthiasMedia 2009)
Knox was principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia 1959-85. The book these quotes come from is based on a series of lectures he gave at Moore College in 1979.
14 January 2018
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