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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Re. Bishop Ussher and the age of the earth,etc.
Message-ID: <366@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Mar-85 13:04:44 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.366
Posted: Fri Mar 15 13:04:44 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Mar-85 02:25:54 EST
References: <1041@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 40
Summary:
In article <1041@decwrl.UUCP> arndt@lymph.DEC writes:
>
>The same sort of bosh is put forward by no less (he should know better!) than
>Ethan Vishniac when he asks if Christians wish to defend a flat earth and a
>geocentric universe because HE says that a literal reading of the bible leads
>to those ideas. Please. Spare me, Ethan. Perhaps, your lack of liberal arts
>training is showing, perhaps you are being flip, perhaps you really believe
>Christians believe those things, perhaps you are silly. But 'literal' reading
>MEANS reading the document through the eyes of writer and his times!!!!!!
>At the time the Old Testament was written the earth appeared flat to a great
>manny people. And geocentric too. Just how would you EXPECT someone from the
>tenth century BC to describe the earth???? And if God gave an ACCURATE
>scientific description of things, who would understand them????? Tenth
>century people, us, in the future???? The point is of course that as Calvin
>(of Geneva, not Klein) said "God lisps" when talking to man. Otherwise we
>wouldn't know what he was talking about, eh? The bible is not a scientific
>explanation of the world. But it does describe accurately what men saw and
>heard. We do the same today. Talk about things in not a strickly 'accurate'
>way. One MUST be less than entirely accurate to communicate! Now, I'm not
>jumping on you Ethan, really, I respect your mind and views and have enjoyed
>your postings to net.physics.
>
I think this is in fact the very point Mr Vishhniac was trying
to get across in a facetious way. Has it not occured to you that the
creation accounts in Genesis are the same sort of thing as the references
to a flat earth? After all if the early peoples could not be expected
to understand a heliocentric(or even acentric) cosmology how could they
POSSIBLY understand something as subtle as evolutionary theory!? Thus
the point, if you insist on reading the creation accounts as literal
*history* rather than as an explanation of God's creative power from
the perspective of a "primitive" culture, then you should logically
also treat the cosmological statements in the Bible as literally true
in a *physical* sense rather than a perceptive sense. This is why I
have no trouble with believing both the Bible and evolutionary theory.
--
Sarima (Stanley Friesen)
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