Owen,

I’m afraid to some degree I have to agree with Danni - If one doesnt take a literal view of the Bible, then the whole sin/redemption doctrine makes little sense.

But then, our scientific understanding of the world makes such a view untenable.

As you’ve noted on the ‘Does God know Everything...” thread, and as Dawkins extrapolated, for God to be both Omniscient and Omnipresent is a logical contradiction. But if you can accept that - then isn’t anything acceptible?

Evidence is irrelevant - truth is what you determine it to be.

That’s the post-modern way isnt it?

Rob

Actually Rob
Another problem I have with the whole YECS thing is, if it is to be taken literally I have to assume that one person, making a daft choice caused everyone to fall. That strikes me as odd. Now, the view that the Genesis myth speaks to me about my own fall, this makes sense.
But, whatever science’s failures and flaws, there is still not much choice but for an old earth and old universe. You can dress the arguement up about science’s many problems etc, but you really can’t do that to the extent that the earth is about 6,000 years old.
Nor can you take away evolution. We can certainly argue about the mechanism, just not the trail it leaves behind.

and
I prefer evidence as a basis for belief.
and {quote]As you’ve noted on the ‘Does God know Everything...” thread, and as Dawkins extrapolated, for God to be both Omniscient and Omnipresent is a logical contradiction. But if you can accept that - then isn’t anything acceptible?

I didn’t claim these as contradiction.I think God does know everything and is everywhere and that He is outside of our reality. I also think he is able to be everywhere in it and to be frank I don’t understand any of it… which is really cool.

Owen, I’m saying you can ignore YECS, and OECS too. There are many people on this forum who I agree with completely about sin and death, but who are in no way YECS.

Another problem I have with the whole YECS thing is, if it is to be taken literally I have to assume that one person, making a daft choice caused everyone to fall. That strikes me as odd. Now, the view that the Genesis myth speaks to me about my own fall, this makes sense.

Owen, this problem really has nothing to do with YECS, it’s a problem with Romans. You have it exactly: sin is ridiculous, daft and odd. It’s the stupidest thing anyone could do. But we all sin, and it’s just as stupid now.

The mythical interpretation does have value, and that value shouldn’t be dismissed. But is that mythical interpretation really a fair interpretation when you consider what Romans has to say? You know what I’ll say, so I won’t, but I will say that deciding for yourself whether your view is consistent with Romans is probably one of the most important decisions you’ll make.

As I have said before, the insistence by YECers that the young earth, no evolution stance is necessary to true Christianity is a surefire way of compelling people to reject Christ.

Please don’t repesent me (and I think you’ve misrepresented some others too). What is necessary to true Christianity is a proper understanding of sin. Without that proper understanding everything we think we know about God, his son and us is wrong. Once we have that proper understanding, we may or may not need to reconsider our other beliefs.

Apologies for that last paragraph mate. In fact I had, very much in mind the rather more formal YECS ers I have encountered. The character who came to our church was exactly one of those. Much of what I have read gives lip service to “you don’t have to be a YEC toi be a Christian” but talks a lot about why theirs is the only real stance.
The statement by one bloke “I didn’t even know you could be a Christian and believe in evolution” kind of summed it up for me.
As for Romans
Yeah I know.
One day I shall make good sense of it all.
As for sin being ridiculous… well yeah. That’s an appealling concept to someone who rather finds most things funny sooner or later.

The statement by one bloke “I didn’t even know you could be a Christian and believe in evolution” kind of summed it up for me.

Sadly, as with everything, there are people who only have a shallow understanding of creationism. Well that’s more a shallow understanding of christianity.

Owen, you wrote

Much of what I have read gives lip service to “you don’t have to be a YEC toi be a Christian” but talks a lot about why theirs is the only real stance.

We could substitute a whole lot of other words or phrases for “YEC” in that sentence and it would be true of many Christian groups.  For example, “teetotaller”, “believer in male only elders”, “believer in adults only baptism”, “believer that marriage after divorce is adultery”, and so on.

Is it the fact that people tend to believe their own understanding of Scripture is the correct one and will argue for their beliefs that you dislike?  Or is it that you find YECers arguing for the correctness of their beliefs particularly annoying?

As for “original sin” I don’t think the issue is that, “one person, making a daft choice caused everyone to fall,” if you mean that we have Adam’s first sin attributed to us merely by virtue of being his descendants.  As far as I can tell the Orthodox regard the Fall as having resulted in a sort of infection that is transmitted to all children, the Catholics regard it as having cut us off from grace and Protestants regard it as having somehow altered us such that we are naturally rebellious against God.  Whichever it is (and I think these explanations all have something going for them, more or less) the result is that we are born loving ourselves more than God and, as a result, we sin.  If you’ve ever studied the psychological development of infants you’ll know that we are born narcissists and have to learn, by painful experience, that the rest of the universe is not under our control. 

I can understand this,

Now, the view that the Genesis myth speaks to me about my own fall, this makes sense,

but at the same time I can’t help but think that if the story of the Fall is just a mythological explanation of our own individual falls then it explains far too much.  Does an explanation of our own individual falls into sin require the serpent’s subtle, lying, ambiguity, or the curses on motherhood and work, or the descriptions of men’s subordination of women and women’s willingness to put up with all that due to their longing for intimacy with their husbands?  That there is so much detail speaks to me of true cause and consequence, i.e., of real history.  Either that or whoever made up this myth was an absolute master of human psychology, sociology and history and, quite frankly, I find that much harder to believe than that the Fall really happened, as written, and God ensured that the story was written down for our edification.

Good points Janice.  Yes, Owen, is there something about YEC in particular that provokes more of a reaction in you than any other issue such as those Janice instances?  Why?

Owen Atkins - 24 August 2008 09:32 PM

The internal evidence also concerns me. eg; the conflicting order in the two Genesis myths.

I meant to respond to this but it slipped my mind.  Something else I read jogged my memory, so here it is.

I’m continually amazed at how often people trot this one out.  There is only one point at which they even seem to differ, viz. the order of making man and land animals.

Even this is resolved by treating the past tense in Gen. 2:18 as a pluperfect, as though the clause were in brackets, referring back to something already done.  So the NIV.

sAID dAN

Yes, Owen, is there something about YEC in particular that provokes more of a reaction in you than any other issue such as those Janice instances?  Why?

Truth!
Mostly it’s the way that the YECS movement operates. It’s constant attempts to wheedle into science curriculums drives me nuts. It has no business there at all.
But more recently I keep encountering it infiltrating christian groups and churches. When it gets a majority it gets aggressive. A very good friend complained to me of how, when saying she wasn’t a YECS person, was immediately attacked for being anti-YECS.
More recently, one of my own kids has been going to a Bappo church group (and I am most grateful for this) but the twaddle he has been trotting out about how no scientist can be a Christian and believe in evolution etc etc ....
Actually the phrase “believe in evolution” which I have quoted twice I think in this thread, is one that makes my teeth grind. Coming from a Christian it has a particular resonance. The sentence is a near reflection of “Believe in God” or “Believe in Christ”. It’s one of the things that drives me nuts about YECS. The use of weasel words is not something I swallow easily. I dunno if you can imagine me watching TV? I sometimes drive the family nuts when I laugh or scathe at politicians and other sorts when they manipulate language in seemingly benign ways but the spin takes us into other places. John Laws used to irritate the hell out of me. So do YECS writings, and for exactly the same reasons.
As a counsellor/ hypnotherapist (somewhat out of practice now) I use many of the same techniques. Most taught during my NLP training. The difference is this; when a person came to me for therapy, there was a contract that I would operate to discover the client’s goals, use my skills to achieve those goals and leave the rest untouched. But weasel words/ spin or plain deliberate obfuscation as an attempt to change mine and other opinions is something I despise. I think I always have. Dawkins does the same thing, in a very simlar manner. When I hear or see him I just want to scream each time he trots out his generalisations, his distortions and his deliberately unsaid stuff. Both Dawkins and the majority of YECS literature/ vids etc I have seen are similar in structure to each other. They share their style with the JW’s. (although it has been a while since I have read new JW literature)
But I react most to YECS cos they are constantly setting up in my places and the presupposition that they are right is less than pleasing.
Janice’s point that the same can be said of other sub-groups is so true. CS Lewis called such cliques “Christianity and..”
In the past I have battled sacramentalists (and I am one!) who wanted to make tradition more important than the Bible. Evo’s who wanted to make doctrine more important than people and charos who insisted that without Baptism in the Spirit you’re only half a Christian.
But
With YECS I hear stuff I know not to be true. eg; “There have nevere been Pre-Cambrian fossils found.” That one stunned me! Oz is a major source for Pre-Cambrian fossils.
Misquotiong scientists (esp. Gould and his ilk). You know, stuff. I’m the sort who, after hearing a sermon will go and research what was said if I have a query or have heard a claim. I usually have a note pad in church. (I used to count bullets in Westerns!) So, when I hear such things said and find out they aren’t true… well that bothers me. The sacramentalist who overstates his case is stretching the truth or over emphasising one point of view. As is the Charo and the Spirit. But hearing or reading lies or simple misleading but innocently repeated untruth drives me nuts cos it means folks are falling for a lie and, by default are allowing lies to prevail.
One minister, a few years ago, told me that evolution couldn’t be true cos it had been proved that the speed of light had changed. As far as I know the only change in the speed of light was in the first nano seconds of the Big Bang. Since then it has been constant. You might disagree with that assumption, but you cannot agree that the speed of light has been proven to have changed… or that this is some sort of accepted fact. That isn’t true. But it still gets trotted out as a sort of proof.

One more example- non-YECS of my reaction against such things. A very devout and wonderful person, when I was the local Drug & Alcohol counsellor, asked me if I had heard of a programme called “Drug Proofing Your Kids” (or something similar to this). At that stage I hadn’t- although be told, I researched it pretty shortly afterwards. She said it had been proven to prevent kids getting involved in drugs. I aksed how she knew this and she told me that the pamphlet had said so. My response was “Mary, that’s just marketting!” (her name wasn’t Mary BTW- changed to protect the innocent). She was stunned at this. As it turned out I discovered that the programme was well known to target middle to upper middle class kids with some positive outcomes. Not particularly effective but not at the time considered detrimental. Also not really worth the effort. Dunno much about it now, that was yonks back.
I do not assume that just cos it’s been said or run y Christians it is OK. Nor do I believe I shouldn’t criticise. Nor do accept that it will somehow be better than a secular thing.

Right, I have blahed on enough. I need to sleep. Got a few days of meetings in Sinney agains.

Owen, you wrote,

it’s the way that the YECS movement operates. It’s constant attempts to wheedle into science curriculums drives me nuts. It has no business there at all.

There is no monolithic YECS movement.  There’s just a whole lot of disparate individuals and organisations who don’t believe we are one of the end results of random variation in biological information being acted on by natural selection.  The most high profile of the organisations (AiG and CMI) do not support compulsory teaching of creation in schools.

Furthermore, the Discovery Institute (not a YEC or an OEC organisation) opposes the teaching of intelligent design in schools because,

most teachers at the present time do not know enough about intelligent design to teach about it accurately and objectively.

I can find reference to only 4 court cases (from the USA) that relate to either creationism or intelligent design (which some people think is creationism but is not).  These were Daniel v. Waters (1975), McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (1981), Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) and Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005).  Earlier this year the Louisiana state legislature passed a bill,

designed to “create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

I mention the Louisiana bill for completeness, because I know there will be some people who will assume that this bill is also a sneaky attempt to get creationism taught in schools.  However, I think fair-minded people will see that that is not the purpose of the bill.  Only if there are flaws in (macro)evolutionary theory will its adherents have anything to worry about.

But going back to the 4 court cases (including one related to intelligent design); they have occurred over a period of 33 years which averages out at one every 8 and a bit years.  If you take out the intelligent design one they average out at one every 11 years. I hardly think either case can be described as, “constant attempts to wheedle into science curriculums”.

You also wrote,

But weasel words/ spin or plain deliberate obfuscation as an attempt to change mine and other opinions is something I despise.

I agree entirely.  People who coolly lie, by omission or commission, in an attempt to change others’ beliefs are displaying as little respect for those they are trying to persuade as any psychopath displays towards the target of his or her manipulations.

As far as I know the only change in the speed of light was in the first nano seconds of the Big Bang. Since then it has been constant.

It’s not that it’s constant because it has always been travelling at the same speed.  Rather it’s a constant because it was declared a constant.  In 1983. Did you know that?  I didn’t.  Puts a bit of a different spin on what the constancy of the speed of light means, don’t you think?

Here’s another discussion of the Fixed-by-Definition Argument from someone with a beef against “crumbling Relativity”.  That’s just to show you that it’s not only YECers who are prepared to argue against the speed of light being actually constant rather than a constant.

Linked next is an interesting paper by Barry Setterfield on The Vacuum, Light Speed, and the Redshift.  I’m not a physicist so I can’t judge the truth of the paper.  However, the fellow who owns the site is a physicist, formerly at Stanford University, so I suppose it’s not complete codswallop.

Finally, I don’t understand why the phrase “believe in evolution” bothers you so much.  I understand that the phrase includes the words “believe in”, in common with phrases such as “believe in God”, but how about, say, “believe in anthropogenic global warming”, or “believe in infant baptism”, or “believe in ghosts”?  Do these get you grinding your teeth?

Something interesting about the speed of light is that it’s impossible to measure it in a single direction, but only as a return trip (ie, to a mirror and back.) Now it’s probably a fair assumption that the speed is the same in both directions, but it hasn’t been proved. I’ve read some theories in which the speed is taken to be different in different directions, but with the same net speed. Very interesting stuff.

Dannii Willis - 30 August 2008 12:07 AM

Something interesting about the speed of light is that it’s impossible to measure it in a single direction, but only as a return trip (ie, to a mirror and back.) Now it’s probably a fair assumption that the speed is the same in both directions, but it hasn’t been proved. I’ve read some theories in which the speed is taken to be different in different directions, but with the same net speed. Very interesting stuff.

It would seem to have been proven experimentatlly that any directional variance in the speed of light is extremely small. The experiment is written up here.

Hmmm it’s nice to discover a dead horse thread that’s not err ... ahh dead.

A dead horse lives!

Interesting discussion, and I appreciated Owen sharing something of what is behind his views on YECS. I too have had a journey in figuring out what I believe about all this - at this stage I see macroevolution as quite unproven (and counter human experience which shows things break down when left to their own devices) but I am unsure about dating issues.

As for origin of sin in people, it seems most people on this thread accept that all people are affected by sin. It makes sense to me that there is a common origin for this. Thus the bible claim tracing it a single human couple is perfectly consistent with logic.

I do think it is hard to make sense of the bible if we reject that Adam was historical. Questions like Who are we, What is the meaning of being human, of being a man or woman, Why is there suffering and sin today, and other questions I can’t think of are answered (at least to some extent) by early Genesis.

Just running around and kicking equine carcasses when I read this (addressed to me.)

Janice asked

Finally, I don’t understand why the phrase “believe in evolution” bothers you so much.  I understand that the phrase includes the words “believe in”, in common with phrases such as “believe in God”, but how about, say, “believe in anthropogenic global warming”, or “believe in infant baptism”, or “believe in ghosts”?  Do these get you grinding your teeth?

In response to my grinding of teeth over YECSers using the phrase “Believe in Evolution”
The only one there that annoys me is “believe in ghosts” for similar but not identical reasons.
YECS writings make a big to do about claiming evolutionary theory being a religeon. This distortive claim is made alongside the use of the phrase in question. That is, by use of weasel phrasing, they are trying a strawman game out. If they can’t “beat” evolution at science, they can try to haul it over into their territory and angage it as a religeon.

I get annoyed by “believe in ghosts” cos I know people for whom this is close to their religeon and strikes me as silly at best and possibly dangerous at worst. Mostly sad, silly and a strange exercise in wishful thinking.
“Aunt Beatrice told me that all is well with our Gladys on the “other side” and that they will welcome me there in due time.”

Tosh.

Owen Atkins - 17 December 2008 11:18 PM

YECS writings make a big to do about claiming evolutionary theory being a religeon. This distortive claim is made alongside the use of the phrase in question. That is, by use of weasel phrasing, they are trying a strawman game out. If they can’t “beat” evolution at science, they can try to haul it over into their territory and angage it as a religeon.

Well, various scientists have made statements to the effect that they’re committed to evolution because they’re first of all atheists or materialists.  That’s where we see the discussion shift from the strictly scientific over to the metaphysical.

Something caught my eye in an earlier post of yours, viz. that we can see the trail evolution left behind even if we don’t understand the mechanism.  By that trail I suppose you mean the fossil record?

If someone finds a track in wet sand on a beach, and says I made it, that claim could be refuted by pointing out that the print and pace lengths don’t match mine.  So that particular ‘mechanism’ goes out of the window, and it may be that they are left with no idea who did it, even though there’s still a trail.

Now if every conceivable evolutionary mechanism can be shown to be inadequate to account for certain features, that doesn’t change the fact that there’s still a general order of fossils in the rocks, but it does mean that it would be sensible to give up, at least for the time being, the idea that evolution accounts for it.