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Author Topic:   Are Creationists shooting themselves in the foot?
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 26 of 80 (511208)
06-08-2009 1:46 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by Nuggin
06-08-2009 12:10 AM


Let's put it more directly. We observe creationists repeatedly making contrary-to-fact claims which are blatantly false. We are told by the creationists themselves that if those claims are wrong then Christianity itself is false and God does not exist.
It is not so much that they are making themselves look foolish (though they most certainly do that, and with surprising enthusiasm). They have placed a disproof of the very existence of God on a silver platter and handed it to atheists. What greater service to mankind could anyone imagine than to dispell all belief in the Judeo-Christian god?
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Edited by dwise1, : word choice

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by Nuggin, posted 06-08-2009 12:10 AM Nuggin has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 49 of 80 (511395)
06-09-2009 3:46 PM
Reply to: Message 39 by slevesque
06-09-2009 1:00 PM


Actually, if we ignore the advent of heliocentrism then that trend started in the early 1800's as examination of the geological evidence revealed that the earth was vastly older than the prevalent interpretation of the Bible had had us believing and that there was not only no evidence for Noah's Flood, but the evidence indicated against it. That was when theologians started scrambling to find ways either to reconcile their interpretations with the fact or to ignore and to explain away the facts.
What this topic is concerned with is that the choice of ignoring and explaining away the facts is counter-productive, that it in effect has the creationist shooting himself in the foot. Rather, the more productive approach to take is to realize that one's theology is wrong on this particular point and to find some way to correct it.
If science proves this to be wrong, then the Bible is not the word of God, it is the word of faillible men.
So, do you only follow the Bible, or do you in fact follow a theology?
That is almost a trick question, because it is impossible to follow the Bible without creating a theology, a way of interpreting it. So you are actually following a theology, not the Bible itself.
And is a theology "Word of God" or "Word of Man"? "Word of Man", obviously, since it is the fallible efforts of fallible humans to try to study and understand and interpret God. Theology is supposed to include Revelation, but the vastly greater portion of a theology still consists of fallible humans' fallible attempts to understand and to interpret that Revelation. And it can be argued that Revelation is only Revelation to the individual receiving it, because that individual cannot himself transmit that Revelation to others, but only his interpretation of it, a theology.
And when a theology or doctrine is received by a student, then like anything else a person learns that student will misunderstand it or only partially understand it. I trust that you do realize that we all, yourself included, build our own theology. Even though you believe that you adhere to a particular theology, you really only adhere to your incomplete understanding and misunderstanding of your teachers' own incomplete understanding and misunderstanding of their own teachers' incomplete understanding and misunderstanding, etc, of the actual original doctrine (which itself was developed by fallible humans' incomplete understanding and misunderstanding of what they think was Revelation).
The point of all that is that theology is fraught with error and miscomprehension. That doesn't mean that they are completely wrong, but it's inconceivable that any of them could be completely correct. It's like the argument about there being all these different religions and sects, but only one of them can be the right one. I would say that none of them are right, but at the same time all, except for a few, are also right. IOW, the vast majority of religions do have teachings that are correct, but they all get something wrong, especially their details.
In the scientific method of hypothesis forming and testing and refining, we end up with a model that describes the phenomenon in question. But no model is perfect nor complete. So we test it and find where it is in error and we try to correct that error. It's an iterative process that never ends, but it results in models that are highly accurate, albeit not perfect, and in which we can have a high degree of confidence.
So if you find your theology to be in error about something, shouldn't you try to correct it? Finding your theology in error does not diminish God and correcting a misunderstanding on your part should also improve your understanding of God, n'est-ce pas?
Historically, there has been one way of interpreting the creation account.
Well, yes, I guess you could say that since for much of the post-Schism history of Christianity the Catholic Church has dictated what the interpretation had to be, and then the Protestants largely inherited the interpreations of the Catholic Church, which diverged as they began to interpret the Bible for themselves (as we can see in the rapid splintering of the Protestent movement into a multitude of sects). Of course, we haven't heard from the Orthodox churches.
But also, since the vast majority of theologians remained ignorant of the facts, then they had no reason to question or examine the nave ignorant interpretations that they had been taught.
The new ways of interpreting genesis came in the early 1900's when churches started compromising with the scientific facts.
"compromising with the scientific facts". Are you saying that when your fallible and quite probably erroneous theology makes real-world pronouncements that are contrary-to-fact, then your theology takes precedence over fact? You may believe that you are infallible, but I cannot.
Or another way of looking at it is that God wrote the universe, so those scientific facts are direct observations of "The Word of God" in action. Your theology is "Word of Man". Are you saying that you believe that the "Word of Man" takes precedence over the "Word of God"?
When you try to correct errors in your theology, is that compromising? Or just good sense?
The question is now, why would have God hidden the truth of Genesis for over 1800 years to his church ?
The "Word of God" has always been laid out before us, to read at any time. It wasn't until the rise of science that any but a very few of us had bothered to even try. Instead, they buried their noses in a book which they interpreted through their ignorant theology; that is what had kept the truth of Genesis hidden from them for so long. And there are those who continue to hide the truth from themselves.
I personnally think that every theologian up to the 1900's had the correcte interpretation of genesis.
Hopefully, you've started to think about that.
If science proves this to be wrong, then the Bible is not the word of God, it is the word of faillible men.
I will reveal my signature this time, since it includes a quote from a filk song:
quote:
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
Your theology teaches you that if any part of your theology is wrong, then it is all wrong and must be discarded. Don't you think that maybe that part of your theology is also wrong? That you can indeed detected and correct errors in your theology without having to throw it all away?
It is also your theology that tells you what the Bible is and must be and that you must throw it away if any single part of it proves to not be literally true and infallible. If your theology has be wrong about other details, couldn't it also be wrong about that?
Obviously, the Bible has indeed been written by Man, copied by Man, compiled by Man, editted and redacted by Man, translated by Man, interpreted by Man, taught by Man, read by Man, and misunderstood by Man. So how does that diminish the importance of the Bible to your faith?
The problem for fundamentalists is not science. Rather, their problem is certain parts of their theology which teach them what the world must be like or else their religion is completely false and they might as well be hedonistic atheists -- you can see, they don't understand anything about atheism either. And because their claims about how the world must be are contrary-to-fact, then they end up disproving their own religion. That is how they are shooting themselves in the foot.

{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)
Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)
Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)
It is a well-known fact that reality has a definite liberal bias.
Robert Colbert on NPR

This message is a reply to:
 Message 39 by slevesque, posted 06-09-2009 1:00 PM slevesque has not replied

  
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