Thank you, Young Earthling, for a very thoughtful and well-reasoned post. It's refreshing and encouraging to see the kind of consideration you've shown.
Young Earthling writes:
Think about when the various authors of the various portions of the bible wrote the bible (over the period of thousands of years). There were numerous contributors who were all human living in various eras and locations on earth. Each wrote what the Holy Spirit inspired them to write and they wrote from the perspective that they understood life at their times in history...
... The understanding in the various bible authors' day until even semi recently in relation to the bible authors, was that the world was flat. As they were writing their portions of what the Lord required that man write, for the benefit of present and future generations and for the glory of God, they did write in the perspective of their understanding of life and the world.
If I'm not mistaken, there seems to be some agreement between you and Granny about the explanation of why certain passages in the Bible seem to profess the notion that the earth is flat.
And it would seem, from what you've said, that you have already made accommodations in your own reading of the Bible, to recognize a difference between "the Bible says ... because this is the Word of God and it is TRUE" vs. "the Bible says ... because that is how people spoke/thought/behaved in those days, thousands of years ago, and those expressions/thoughts/behaviors are not to be considered as binding or applicable or sensible today."
The ability -- or the refusal -- to make that distinction is the crux of the Evolution-vs-Creationism debate. It is the issue of discerning which phrases in the Bible should be taken as literal TRUTH and which should be taken as "context-dependent" or "not literally true." Where does a believer draw the line? When does evidence override scripture?
For folks like Granny and me, it's not an issue. Evidence always holds sway when it's available, and when it's not, a healthy and reasonable skepticism is the best guide.
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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