Thanks for your reply Dwight. In my response I reordered a few of the things you said to group them by topic, to help me respond in a more concise way.
dwight92070 wrote:As far as I can tell, there is no place in scripture where God, assuming it is God's word, speaks symbolically unless it is: 1) Identified as such, like the parables or 2) Obvious from the context. Examples of the latter are Revelation, said to be a vision, and the many dreams throughout scripture, and possibly some prophecies and some poetry in scripture. So, since God does not identify Genesis as a vision or a dream or a parable or any of the aforementioned and the context does not preclude a literal interpretation, I take it literally. It's interesting that Steve Gregg spoke about this on his radio show today, i.e. when to take scripture literally and when to take it figuratively. He specifically mentioned the early chapters of Genesis, and even more specific, the genealogies. He said that since the author went to such great pains in giving exact years and ages and in connecting Adam and Eve to Noah and Noah to Abraham, that if he (Steve) found out that it was all symbolic, he would accuse the author of being deceptive. I would agree 100%. In fact, this brings me to your next point and mine.
dwight92070 wrote:Mark 10:6 tells us: "But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female." So Adam and Eve were created at the beginning of God's creation, not thousands or millions of years later. It is interesting that the Jewish calendar TODAY shows the year 5778. They believe Adam was created 5778 years ago. Even the Jews accept the genealogies of the Bible. Yet another piece of evidence in conflict with evolution.
I see no reason to make literal interpretation the automatic default. I think every book of the Bible needs to be interpreted from the viewpoint for the original audience for whom it was written. I think the necessity of the protestant reformation shows us that as Christians, we can lose sight of the original meaning of Scriptures and get lost in our traditions and institutions. My own philosophy is to always dig deeper, taking what we learn about the world from which the Bible came, and try and get to the original meaning. The learning never stops. And as I said, it is as literal and scientifically accurate as ancient Israelites could understand given their worldview. As far as the genealogies are concerned, many have questioned whether they are to be taken literally. Here’s a brief article by Hank Hanegraaff:
http://www.equip.org/bible_answers/gaps ... s-genesis/
The author was using literary devices common to his day. If you reduce the options to it being literal, or else deceptive, I think leaves little room for the nuance needed to interpret accurately, and really dismisses the broad range of viewpoints on creation without really addressing them.
Here's a very helpful discussion on the matter which offers at the beginning a discussion of a literary or symbolic understanding of Genesis 1, and the second part a young earth creationist is brought in to contrast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oZK1nJJg5E
dwight92070 wrote:In my opinion, there are great differences. If this is God's word, and I think we both agree on that, and the creation story and the chapters through chapter 11 are largely symbolic, then God, in my sincere understanding, is deceiving us. More bluntly, He is a liar. I know you do not believe that, but I can't see it any other way. When parents think they are doing their kids a service to tell them that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are real, I believe they are deceived and are deceiving their children. So then when they tell their kids about Jesus, why should they believe that that is anything more than a fairy tale? In fact, if I found out that Genesis 1-11 were simply symbolic, I would seriously consider dumping my faith, because if God isn't telling the truth there, why would He be telling the truth anywhere else?
I just don’t agree at all. The viewpoint I presented is that God presented the ancient Israelites with the truth of creation as they could understand it, as people who lived 3500 years ago. In Scripture God always speaks through the lens of his human authors, and speaks to the culture for whom the author writes. To suggest that my viewpoint makes God into a liar is just not accurate. The irony here Dwight is that when I found out that hundreds of millions of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Methodists, even some Bible believing evangelicals take Genesis 1-11 symbolically, I found an apologetic that offered a solution to my crisis of faith and it was like a massive burden was lifted off my shoulders, and I found my way back to my faith. I found God revealed truth, I just had to look at that truth through the lenses of those ancient peoples and see that there was no conflict of fact, but only a conflict of living in completely different eras of time, and the distortion of understanding caused by ancient peoples having literary devices and an understanding of cosmology really quite far removed from a modern understanding.
dwight92070 wrote:What about the doctrine of ex nihilo, i.e. God created all things our of nothing? I'm pretty sure evolution teaches that matter already existed. What about the doctrine of marriage? Does evolution teach that? Genesis does. It tells us that marriage is between one man and one woman and that the 2 shall become one flesh. What about the doctrine of capital punishment? I don't remember evolution saying anything about that? Genesis 9:6 says "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed." What about the doctrine of sin and death? We learn from Genesis and the New Testament that through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin. (Romans 5:12) Evolution teaches that death was happening long before man ever showed up. What about the doctrine that man and woman alone were created in God's image? No animal was ever created in God's image. I understand, Si, that you believe in God, but all of these doctrines, in my opinion, cannot be explained or even subscribed to, by evolution, whether you believe in God or not.
These are Biblical doctrines revealed in Scripture. Science and evolution do not reveal these things, because that is not their domain or purpose. Many Christians differ in how literally or symbolically they take Revelation. That doesn’t change the fact that Christians believe in a second coming, a final judgment, and resurrection. Similarly even with a non-literal understanding of Genesis, the core doctrines you speak of are present.
The big bang suggests that the universe began as a singularity and expanded outward from there. Science doesn’t know what came before. Philosophically speaking I ascribe to the argument that since everything has a cause, that we need a first cause, an unmoved mover, which would necessitate creation ex nihilo by God.
dwight92070 wrote:Who was the audience that Genesis was written to? Well, since Moses was the author, or possibly the compiler, at least, apparently God intended that His people, the Jews, would be the primary audience. I suppose it is possible that godly men handed some of Genesis down to Moses - history and genealogies and records could have come through Adam, Enoch and Noah, etc. Today, the church of Jesus is the primary audience. Although pagans can read Genesis, I don't think God wrote it for them. (1 Corinthians 10:11) "they were written for our instruction ..."
Again, I see the word of God being written for His people, not for pagans. Jesus said, "Don't cast your pearls before swine."
I didn’t say it was written for pagans, clearly it was written for God’s people. But it would have been read by the broader culture just like today literature is shared across cultural boundaries. This continued into New Testament times. As far as we can tell the Jewish Neo-Platonist Philo spoke of the Logos as a creative principle of God before John. Philo was also highly influential in Gnosticism. But through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John identified the Logos the pre-incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ. In the history of special revelation, God has appropriated the literary genres and terminology of pagan peoples as a polemic against their own systems. They were adopted by God’s people in the writing of the Holy Scriptures. This was a remarkably effective way of undermining the pagan religions. The Bible offered a sober, coherent response to the sensational and outlandish stories of fickle and unpredictable gods of ancients.
But aside for being written primarily for God’s people, are the Scriptures not also a witness for the world? For example, when an unbeliever reads the scriptures they are exposed to fulfilled prophecy that can lead them to belief.
dwight92070 wrote:Exactly, those transitional forms are what I have called half-ape, half-human. I don't see how you can get around that. Evolution, in my understanding, requires those transitional forms. In fact, they were the missing link in the fossil record, according to Darwin, and still are.
To the contrary, there are transitional forms between the ape-like ancestor and humans. Jon provided some examples in his Smithsonian link. Click around the site to look at them. Here's another link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ ... n#Primates
Dwight, you admitted above, "No, I have not studied evolution". I have attempted to answer this question, and you are going to have to do some further research to grasp my answer.
dwight92070 wrote:Generally not if they were homeschooled or went to a Christian school, as our 5 kids did.
That doesn't account for the vast majority of people.
dwight92070 wrote:Again, we differ here. I do not see the young earth apologetic rejecting any science, modern or otherwise. We do not consider evolution to be valid science.
Why did that not work?
I would have no issue with that, if it was real science.
To clarify, I should have used the word mainstream. Young earth creationism rejects mainstream science. It did not work because personally, I find mainstream science to be much more convincing in explaining the physical universe. Concerning what is real science, we are going to have to agree to disagree. I think mainstream evolutionary science is real science.
dwight92070 wrote:The issue is not what apologetic is more effective, but what apologetic is true, because, in my understanding, there is no conflict between scripture and modern science, but there is great conflict between scripture and evolution.
If they are won to Christ because of evolution, then that is very shaky, because I believe that is a false pretense. For me, it was a package deal. I believed and received Jesus. He accepted a literal creation, a literal Adam and Eve, a literal Satan, a literal doctrine of marriage, a literal flood, a literal Jonah, etc. If I ever found out that all of that was not literal, then I would sincerely lose my trust in God, because He always tells the truth.
When it comes to defining what is truth or what is not, I think it is long past time that we as Christians define what is core doctrine, and what is peripheral. I think a good starting point is if there are issues Christians have debated and divided about for 2,000 years, maybe we should accept that to force agreement is futile, and that the issues actually are unclear enough to warrant diverse opinions. I think the fact that the Church is split up into tens of thousands of denominations in direct violation of 1 Corinthians 1 pretty clearly illustrates that we have our priorities in disorder. We can’t make our doctrines into prerequisites for the gospel, and we can't confuse our doctrines with God revealed truths.
It seems to me the package deal of becoming a disciple of Christ is repentance, faith, submitting your life to him, and obeying his teachings, which primarily have to do with behavior and not doctrine.
That being said, I think we also need to allow for a broad range of apologetics to address the concerns of different people who have different presuppositions, and whom come from different cultural backgrounds.
dwight92070 wrote:Thanks for your time and input. God bless you!
Dwight
God Bless!