Conflict with Science

[krkey1]

My intent with this isn't to argue that science disproves the notion of God or that is disproves souls ( I honestly think consciousness studies seem to support dualism in all honesty) or to claim that historically Christianity has hindered science ( probably some of it has but many, many things have hindered science) but to tell why I think their is a conflict between the claims of Christianity and a modern scientific understanding of the world.

The Bible in particular the Old Testament teaches a Flat Earth Cosmology. This article explores that fact. www.infidelguy.com/heaven_sky.htm I am more reluctant to claim that the New Testament teaches a Flat Earth Cosmology but I think the evidence seems to indicate that it might.

a.) Jesus descended from Heaven and he ascended into it
b.) Jesus went to a mountain top to see all the Kingdoms of the Earth.
c.) The Book of Revelation discuss the four corners of the Earth

I think those are enough reasons to be suspicious of a Flat Earth Cosmology being present in the NT. This would seemingly work a monkey wrench into many views of the NT. It would certainly make one more suspicious of the miracles of the Synoptics Gospels, because the Temptation of Satan is obvious fiction. If one supernatural piece of fiction is there, how many other pieces of supernatural fiction are there?

I realize someone is going to point out by the time period the NT was composed, it was accepted the Earth is a Sphere. However we can look at the existence of Creationism to understand that ideas accepted by intellectuals are rejected by people for religious reasons, or just plain ignorance. I cannot imagine things were different 2000 years ago.

The Bible teaches that Humans came to exist appropriately 10 thousand years ago. How modern anthropology shows that modern humans have been around for over 100,000 years. Obvious this is a great difference between Biblical Claims and Modern Scientific Claims. More importantly the fossil evidence clearly shows death before the existence of humans and it shows that humans seemingly have always been subject to death. So how can one accept Paul's notion that because of Original Sin death came into the world. I hate to sound mean but without Adam, without Original Sin and Death Jesus seems to be out of a job as a savior.

Last to consider is things such as Noah's flood covering the entire world to the top of the highest mountains. Obviously this never happened, truth be told it is highly unlikely there was ever a historic Noah in the first place. Also we have the story of the Tower of Babel but this seems to be a very absurd explanation for the origins of languages.

My argument isn't that science disproves God but I am saying how does one reconcile many of the views of the Bible with science. I obviously consider it to be myth, how else should one view it?

[eckadimmock]

These things are only a problem if you regard the Bible as literal and inerrant. Most of us (on this board) are not 6-day creationists, and do indeed regard large parts of the OT as myth (in a good way, a representation of a deeper truth). Some may have an inkling of actual events, such as the great flood: maybe one ancestral figure managed to save some farm animals on a boat? These legends are rather like the King Arthur or Robin Hood stories, not to be taken literally but as a context for later events.

As for the NT, the writers were witnesses to something extraordinary, but this does not mean that we must accept their first century notions of cosmology as well. The "four corners of the earth" stuff may well be a figure of speech, or a reference to Jesus's status (because the Earth was visible to God does not mean anyone can see it from that mountain).

The temptation of Jesus? I would think that anyone in possession of great power would be tempted to misuse it. The miracles are a matter of faith: if they were explicable by naturalism then they would not be miracles. However, the literary style of the NT is unlike the OT, it is a straight narrative of historical events recorded by either eyewitnesses or those close to them. This was in the days before the historical novel, remember.

I'm not discounting the possibility that there may be embellishments: the mass resurrection of the dead at the end of Matthew, for example, isn't mentioned elsewhere and would seem to be more literary hyperbole than an actual observation. However, If none of it happened, why did the legend arise so quickly, based on so many public events, and attested to by so many people?

[unkleE]

Apr 30, 2009 22:21:27 GMT krkey1 said:

My intent ..... to tell why I think their is a conflict between the claims of Christianity and a modern scientific understanding of the world.

Fair questions, and ones which will undoubtedly get more (and probably better) answers than mine, but here's my thoughts on some of them.

The Bible in particular the Old Testament teaches a Flat Earth Cosmology. This article explores that fact. www.infidelguy.com/heaven_sky.htm I am more reluctant to claim that the New Testament teaches a Flat Earth Cosmology but I think the evidence seems to indicate that it might.

It may be that the NT writers had a flat earth worldview, or it maybe that they used language that had developed with that view and still unconsciously reflected it. But let's assume you are correct .....

CS Lewis was a christian with considerable learning in ancient history and literature. I recall him saying that we need to distinguish between the mental image a person has and the truth of what they say - I can have a wrong mental picture of New York because I have never been there, but I may still know accurate facts about the city. Likewise, he argues, if it is true that the NT writers had a flat earth mental view, that doesn't mean their teachings about God were wrong. He suggests that if Luke had the opportunity to go to Alexandria and have a philosophical education and learn that the world is round, it wouldn't have made any difference to his understanding of God or Jesus. Finally, Lewis says, how else was Jesus to leave the earth in a way that they knew he had gone? Disappearing, or sinking into the ground would have even worse connotations!

So the whole thing is no problem to me.

I think those are enough reasons to be suspicious of a Flat Earth Cosmology being present in the NT. This would seemingly work a monkey wrench into many views of the NT. It would certainly make one more suspicious of the miracles of the Synoptics Gospels, because the Temptation of Satan is obvious fiction. If one supernatural piece of fiction is there, how many other pieces of supernatural fiction are there?

How can you say that the temptation by Satan is "obvious fiction"? There are surely at least 4 possible views: (1) all literal and physical, (2) true but the physicality is a metaphor, (3) the whole thing is metaphor, or (4) fiction. I would feel quite comfortable with something between 1 & 2. And I hardly see how a flat earth view affects this matter.

Again, we need to understand that there are more truths than literal physical ones. Even if the Good Samaritan story didn't actually happen (it is after all called a parable), surely we can all agree that it presents truth, and very effectively? Even if Jesus was not the son of God in a physical sense of God producing him by sexual intercourse, we can still believe the concept of "Son" means something important. And even if Jesus used the language and concepts of his day, errors and all (and I'm not saying he did, only admitting the possibility), that doesn't mean that his teachings about forgiveness are faulty.

The Bible teaches that Humans came to exist appropriately 10 thousand years ago. How modern anthropology shows that modern humans have been around for over 100,000 years. Obvious this is a great difference between Biblical Claims and Modern Scientific Claims.

To be pedantic, the Bible doesn't put any date on the beginnings of humanity - that was done by people who assumed that "Fred begat Charlie" and Charlie son of Fred" mean simple father-son relationships when they may not. But obviously the OT and scientific accounts differ. But read Genesis with an open mind and it seems that, at least up until chapter 12, it looks more like myth as a literary form than history or science. And myth can teach effectively, just as parable can. I don't think we can expect God to have revealed string theory to Moses!

More importantly the fossil evidence clearly shows death before the existence of humans and it shows that humans seemingly have always been subject to death. So how can one accept Paul's notion that because of Original Sin death came into the world. I hate to sound mean but without Adam, without Original Sin and Death Jesus seems to be out of a job as a savior.

I have pondered this myself. I think you are mistaken that without original sin, Jesus is unnecessary - I commit enough sin myself without worrying about original sin! I think the concept of original sin is much less taught in the Bible than most claim. Sure David said that he was conceived in sin (Psalm 51) but he was talking repentance, not theology. And Paul says sin and death came into the world (which is true) and that death spread "because all men sinned" (Rom 5:1), not because they inherited the punishment for what Adam did.

Again, you need to understand context. Jewish argument and Biblical interpretation was a little different to ours - they were far less literal, and willing to draw metaphors and analogies which weren't in the original text (see John 10:33-37 for an example of Jesus doing this to confound his critics). Paul is doing the same thing, when he says Adam is a "figure" (Rom 5:14 - i.e. he's making a matephor).

Last to consider is things such as Noah's flood covering the entire world to the top of the highest mountains. Obviously this never happened, truth be told it is highly unlikely there was ever a historic Noah in the first place. Also we have the story of the Tower of Babel but this seems to be a very absurd explanation for the origins of languages.

Let me again reference CS Lewis, possibly the most influential English speaking christian of the 20th century. He believed, 60 years ago, that chapters 1-11 of Genesis were myth, though God's myth and containing God's truth, and not necessarily literally true or untrue. I doubt anyone on this forum believes those stories are literally true, though they may contain some basis in fact.

My argument isn't that science disproves God but I am saying how does one reconcile many of the views of the Bible with science. I obviously consider it to be myth, how else should one view it?

I deal with these issues by accepting that I don't know anything, never will, and in fact can't possibly. So I go with what I do know and do believe is true, and accept there are unanswered questions. So I believe the historical evidence for Jesus is good, and I believe he told the truth and did indeed come from God to save us. I believe God's existence is confirmed by it being the best answer to the questions like: Why does the universe exist and why are the laws and processes so amazingly finely-tuned? What is humanity and how come we have rationality and free will and can know right and wrong? How can I best make sense of people's apparent experience of God, including my own?

Having decided God and Jesus best explain all those things, I am left with Jesus treating the OT as coming from God (though, as we have seen, not necessarily literal in the way we mean the term). I have problems with that, but I just have to deal with them the best I can, because the rest of the evidence all adds up.

I think there are real intellectual difficulties in being a christian. It's just that I find much greater intellectual difficulties in believing anything else. And when I read and discuss with unbelievers, I find they have to ignore many of the arguments I find significant, or find what seem to me to be ways out rather than genuine answers. I find they have to live inconsistently with their beliefs. So I cannot give their views the respect they are able to, or which I can give christianity. So I believe, despite the difficulties.

Hope that helps in some way. I think asking questions is almost always good, and that you find satisfactory answers. Best wishes.

[humphreyclarke]

Galileo - Letter to Princess Christina

bertie.ccsu.edu/~dsb/naturesci/Cosmology/GalileoChristina.html

The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still. Since the Bible cannot err, it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes an erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun is inherently motionless and the earth movable.

With regard to this argument, I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth--whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify. Hence in expounding the Bible if one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error. Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies. Thus it would be necessary to assign to God feet, hands, and eyes, as well as corporeal and human affections, such as anger, repentance, hatred, and sometimes even the forgetting of things past and ignorance of those to come. These propositions uttered by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. For the sake of those who deserve to be separated from the herd, it is necessary that wise expositors should produce the true senses [182] of such passages, together with the special reasons for which they were set down in these words. This doctrine is so widespread and so definite with all theologians that it would be superfluous to adduce evidence for it.

Hence I think that I may reasonably conclude that whenever the Bible has occasion to speak of any physical conclusion (especially those which are very abstruse and hard to understand), the rule has been observed of avoiding confusion in the minds of the common people which would render them contumacious toward the higher mysteries. Now the Bible, merely to condescend to popular capacity, has not hesitated to obscure some very important pronouncements, attributing to God himself some qualities extremely remote from (and even contrary to) His essence. Who, then, would positively declare that this principle has been set aside, and the Bible has confined itself rigorously to the bare and restricted sense of its words, when speaking but casually of the earth, of water, of the sun, or of any other created thing? Especially in view of the fact that these things in no way concern the primary purpose of the sacred writings, which is the service of God and the salvation of souls--matters infinitely beyond the comprehension of the common people.

This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature's actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible. Perhaps this is what Tertullian meant by these words:

"We conclude that God is known first through Nature, and then again, more particularly, by doctrine; by Nature in His works, and by doctrine in His revealed word."

But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience[184] or necessary demonstrations. This must be especially true in those sciences of which but the faintest trace (and that consisting of conclusions) is to be found in the Bible

[humphreyclarke]

I realise quoting a large segment from Galileo is a bit of a cop-out. To be honest the scientific inaccuracies in the Bible, along with the clearly mythical elements in certain passages do not overly trouble me. There are three reasons for that.

1) Ancient authors simply do not think about history in the same way as we do. They usually use myth, allegory and miraculous occurrences in their narratives, particularly when events of great significance occur. So, for instance, we are told by Suetonius in De Vita Caesarum that:

'When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself, as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colours like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo.

The idea of writing history 'as it happened' is a comparatively new concept (I would trace it to Von Ranke in the 19th century). The good thing with the gospels is there are several separate accounts that can be cross checked against each other to distinguish the kernel of historical truth. Its no good shouting at the disciples across the centuries to try and get them to write 'proper' history, they simply didn't think the same way we do. That's why NT scholarship is so important for getting a proper understanding (the good stuff I mean)

2) The bible does not purport to be the direct word of God, instead it is written by a number of different people for different purposes across many centuries. Scientific inaccuracies will inevitably occur because these people did not have the 'enlightened' view of the universe we do. That doesn't invalidate what they said. For instance Aquinas's Summa Theologia with its five proofs is still pretty sound in my opinion, all this despite the fact that its is based on defunct Aristotelian physics. The psalms are still beautiful despite saying that the earth is fixed to its foundations.

3) The bible was never supposed to be a scientific textbook. It does something much more valuable in that it establishes the equality of souls before God; the image dei (the foundation of human rights); the idea that human history has a direction; that the highest commandment is to love God and one another; that all human persons, including the meek, the disabled and the dispossessed have value ; the idea that marriage could be a sacred sacrament ; the conquest of death (the main weapon of the tyrant); and lastly the idea of a lawlike universe ruled over by a creator God who is the source of beauty, goodness and value - this is the foundation of the scientific worldview to which we have assimilated all our cognitive disciplines.

[unkleE]

Humphrey, I must thank you yet again for this historical information. I have virtually no background in history apart from some NT history, so I really appreciate having this useful information.

I think the apologetic challenge that follows from information like your first point, is the answer the unbeliever's objection: "Then how can we know what's true by our standards and what isn't?" To answer that good Biblical scholarship helps is not sufficient, because not every reader has access to that scholarship, or bothers to read it, or understands it.

But one has to ask how much harm is done if someone believes in a literal Adam & Eve or the literalness of the dead walking around in Jerusalem in AD 30 (or whenever)? Outspoken creationists may indeed be giving christianity a bad name in the US right now, but I hardly think quiet creationists are doing much harm, and it was never much of an issue until Darwin.

I find atheists - more accurately, scientific naturalists - seem to have as one of their core values the importance of knowing things. They seem to really have problems with being unable to explain something, and hence resort to reductionist explanations (e.g. the mind-body problem or freewill) or total antipathy (e.g. God, faith) to things that cannot at present, and perhaps ever, be fully explained. I expect to not understand things, even though I try to find out when I'm interested.

I often think that the main difference between believers and unbelievers is not the assessment of evidence, or even faith, but a willingness to consider believing something that isn't 100% known. (Of course we all do that all the time in less important matters, but God seems to be the area some are unable or unwilling to do it.)

[Al Moritz]

May 1, 2009 22:52:34 GMT unkleE said:

I often think that the main difference between believers and unbelievers is not the assessment of evidence, or even faith, but a willingness to consider believing something that isn't 100% known. (Of course we all do that all the time in less important matters, but God seems to be the area some are unable or unwilling to do it.)

Unbelievers are just as much believers as believers are, or even more so. They are willing to believe that nature itself (our universe) has a naturalistic origin, without any evidence, without knowing. Believers can at least cite divine revelation as evidence, apart from reasonable arguments for God.