Time Immortal

Charles Tysoe writes, in response to this article:

That’s unfortunately the approximate level of dishonesty one has come to expect from young earth creationism these days

Ken, Not very scientific. Arent’t you going to give them a chance to lie first on this one, before you convict them?

As a wag once observed “Do you always know what you know, before you know it?”

Regardless of decay rates, the radioactive dating of the earth is based on several unprovable assumptions.

For myself, I like to think of the earth as about 49.9 billion — give or take a billion or so — and the universe, say, 125 trillion years old.

Sarcasm aside, that’s a very unfair slander against folk, who like you believe in Jesus Christ. Any guild one cares to name has its share of liars and cheats as well as honest men.

You should retract your statement.

cheers,

C. Tysoe

Charles is right: the statement of mine which he has quoted isn’t exactly the most scientific, is it? But then, that is because it was not meant to be.

Just for a refresher, however, let’s quickly re-capture the context of the quote. In remarking on the emergence of a paper which noted that the rate of radioactive decay in elements varies based on distance from the Sun, rather than remaining constant (as was previously thought). This, of course, has a few implications for the accuracy of those geological dating methods which make use of radioactive decay, although the probable variance in the dates that such methods report probably won’t be that much. The distance between Earth and the Sun does indeed vary…but not all that much in the grand scheme.

Radiometric dating will still show, even with the adjusted calculations, that the Earth is billions of years old, in other words.

But, in noting the emergence of this new discovery concerning the precision of radiometric dating, I observed that such a development “will no doubt be touted as proof, in some quarters, of the complete unreliability of radioactive dating, and as proof that the whole science of geology is invalid. That’s unfortunately the approximate level of dishonesty one has come to expect from young earth creationism these days, in which even slight variances in the data or data-collection methods get amplified into comprehensive rejections of the science itself, and the basis for yet more “proofs” that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.”

Charles thinks I am being…uncharitable?…for suggesting that such a development might be siezed upon by certain elements in the YEC movement prior to the emergence of evidence that they have actually siezed upon it. Personally, I prefer to let the record of the YEC movement’s most significant apologists stand for itself.

Is it polite to suggest that my fellow Christians, in their misguided zeal to defend the authority of Holy Scripture, might resort to dishonesty? No, it’s not polite. But then, politeness is not always useful or warranted, is it? Are we not supposed to, as Christians, point out when our brothers and sisters have fallen into error?

I’ve said, repeatedly, that I cannot fault the faith of Young Earthers; that remains true. But do I think for one moment that they are not engaged in all manner of dishonesties where evidence and scientific uncertainties are concerned? No, not at all.

And the statement, then, will stand. Because the statement was a comment on an overall trend, not one specific incident.

As to radiometric dating specifically: yes, it is not a wholly proven thing either. But this gets back to what I said before: the slightest uncertainty gets magnified into a comprehensive rejection, which is (I submit) a totally unwarranted action, in addition to being dishonest. Even if one takes the most extreme error ranges possible in radiometric analysis, one still comes to one inevitable conclusion: young earth creationism doesn’t have a leg to stand on where evidence for the age of the Earth is concerned.

Two billion, three billion, or five billion…it’s more than 6,000 any way you slice it.

From The Deeps of Time:

Uncommon Descent calls our attention to this paper which indicates that radioactive decay rates are not constant, but seem to vary with distance from the sun. The assumption that radioactive decay rates are constant is key to the use of radioactive decay as a dating technique. The variations don’t affect the million-to-billion year age estimates obtained by decay rates by very much, but it does indicate a need to research the unknown cause of this variation and evaluate its implications for dating techniques.

This will no doubt be touted as proof, in some quarters, of the complete unreliability of radioactive dating, and as proof that the whole science of geology is invalid. That’s unfortunately the approximate level of dishonesty one has come to expect from young earth creationism these days, in which even slight variances in the data or data-collection methods get amplified into comprehensive rejections of the science itself, and the basis for yet more “proofs” that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.

Because as we all know: if geologists can’t quite be certain whether the Earth is 4.5 billion or only 4.49 billion years old, this clearly demonstrates that geologists are just plain wrong about the age of the Earth in general, and that the world must clearly be 4.499994 billion years younger than the most commonly accepted estimates suggest.

The problem with a book like Denis O. Lamoureux’s Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution is that it is proposing something which is at once radical and entirely normal. It proposes that evolution and science can be fully reconciled with Religion, and especially with the Bible. Not only that, it further proposes that science and religion actually work together, in a kind of harmony or companionship, to bring God’s revelation to humanity, though each in different ways. This is not a proposal which many Christians and non-Christians are willing to accept, in part because they are caught up in a false dichotomy that unnecessarily assumes that science — and in particular the theory of evolution — and religion are mortal enemies which must, by definition, contradict each other.

Dr. Lamoureux’s view is not simply a syncretic one, nor is he attempting to simply establish a synthesis between disparate concepts. His conjecture, rather, is that in looking at Scripture and then at science, we are looking at different forms of revelation of the same one God — science and religion, then, are not simply bridged by the idea of Evolutionary Creationism, but treated as a kind of unit whole, each effecting the revelation of the Lord by a different means.

Because this concept is above the grasp and reasoning of so many who are caught up in the unnecessary conflict that infests the origins “debate,” Evolutionary Creation can’t simply start by jumping in head-first into an explanation of its core philosophies and the justifications for them. Instead, Dr. Lamoureux must begin at the very beginning of reasoning itself, by discussing and establishing categories.

In a nutshell, categories are the foundations upon which we base how we look at the world, and how we think about the world. Evolutionary Creation uses the example of how our eyes are programmed to perceive the spectrum of colours in visible light to illustrate this point, noting that our brains are wired to perceive the issues which we face in a similar, ranging manner that is rarely ever “black and white.” Yet at the same time, Dr. Lamoureux notes that many view the origins “debate” in a very “black and white” way. Even referring to it as a “debate” suggests a conflict model that pits a secular and godless science against a Christian, Biblical view of creation. This very limited category set thus forces people to make a choice between science and religion, “faith” and “reason,”
God or the various things which humanity has discovered about the nature of the world and the processes which formed it.

This dichotomy, incidentally, is seen on both sides of the debate, and it’s almost impossible to ferret out who fired the first shots in the war. Atheists who promote the dichotomy present atheism as the bastion of reason and wisdom, and portray Christians as mental dullards and uninformed fundamentalists. Christians who promote the dichotomy denounce evolutionary theory as misguided or, worse, Satanic, and discard the substantial body of evidence in support of an old Earth as “circumstantial” whilst simultaneously clinging to threadbare evidence which purportedly justifies their own positions.

Even worse, both sides turn on like-minded folk who dare to step outside the conflict model. Atheists or skeptics who step outside the model and propose that empiricism and research are not a sufficient basis upon which to base a rejection of the existence of God, or who themselves admit to even weak agnosticism, are derided as being senile or simply in error. Christians who afford even a handful of scientific discoveries are denounced as liberals, heretics, cafeteria Christians, or proto-secularists.

At the same time, however, these two warring sides actually agree on at least one thing: whatever the exact nature of the origins of the world, human Morality and ethics are intimately connected with the view of origins one is informed by. This gives the origins “debate” special relevance, because our beliefs about who we are and where we come from directly influence and inform our believes about how we should relate to one another, and how we should order the societies in which we live. Christianity and secular humanism alike concede this point…and for as wrong as both sides may be about the topic of origins, both sides are at least correct in noting this important connection.

The key contributors to the false dichotomy (Greek: dicha - “in two”, temno - “to cut”) are, in Dr. Lamoureux’s opinion, two related factor. The first is what is that both sides tend to adopt “popular” understandings of terms like “evolution,” “creation,” and “theory.” This logical error is compounded by the second contributing factor: conflation. When a Christian hears the word “evolution,” she immediately associates the term with atheism, with a worldview that postulates a godless, chance-driven reality. When a secularist hears the word “creation,” he immediately associates the term with the (false) notion that the world was formed in six 24-hour days. And whether both sides realize it or not, this immediately prohibits any progress in the dialogue between them; both sides are trapped in their thinking.

So the question must be asked: is their thinking accurate?

Dr. Lamoureux begins his analysis by looking at the popular categories and conflations involved in how both sides view “evolution.” He begins by unpacking the term a bit, and by moving past the conflation: he proposes that the idea of evolution must be re-categorized thusly:

• Teleological: has a plan and a purpose (reflects an intelligent designer)

       ↑
Evolution
       ↓

• Dysteleological: has no plan or purpose (reflects random chance, not design)

The Greek term telos indicates the presence of an end or a goal; dysteleology is a term coined first in German which was intended to refer to the absence of said same. The two terms refer as much to the actual nature of the evolutionary process as they do to the views each of us has concerning it: we either view evolution as a process which was set in motion — and which may be reflective of some influence of — a designer or creator, or we view it as a the result of purposeless, random chance.

It should be noted that the teleological category actually can be broken down into a few different sub-categories, which roughly correspond to the range of religious opinions evident in the world today (theism, deism, paganism, etc.). This is an important point to keep in mind in light of what follows its articulation in the book.

The most powerful argument that Dr. Lamoureux makes in this section is based on a survey done about a decade ago that, taken to its logical conclusion, deals a death blow to the idea many Christians have that scientific researchers are predominantly atheistic and trying to impose a godless worldview upon millions of hapless schoolchildren.

In 1997, Karry Witham and Edward Larson issued a report called “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith,” in Nature (a prominent scientific journal). To a large sample group of scientists and other researchers, the following question was posed:

I believe in a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind, i.e. a God to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer. By ‘answer’ I mean more than the subjective, psychological effect of prayer.

40% of those polled expressed belief in God as defined above, 45% expressed that they did not believe in God so defined, and 15% expressed no definite belief.

Let us come back to the teleological sub-categories mentioned above, because something important must be noted about the respondents who answered in the negative to the given question. Deists, pantheists, and other pagans — despite not being atheists — would have been caught up in the negative-responding group, despite the fact that all accept teleology to one degree or another. Deists are, as I understand it, given to believing that God is not intimately involved in the day-to-day function and structure of creation…but still generally accept that He had something to do with it, and that He may have had an eye toward its design. Pagans believe in various divine forces, or pantheons of gods, who exert varying degrees of control over the course and shape of creation. Pantheists believe that creation is itself divine, and thus reflective of a will and a design.

And of course, 15% of the respondends expressed an agnostic view. Here again, categorization is important: agnosticism and dysteleology are not synonymous. As such, an interesting conclusion emerges from the results of this admittedly limited survey: a majority of scientists are probably teleologists, or at least are not dysteleologists.

Which is more than a bit of a shot in the arm to the notion that scientsts are part of some atheistic cabal or conspiracy seeking to undermine the good faith of the world’s youth.

This brings us to the end of the first part of my review of Chapter 1. It should be noted that the above all comes out within the first 7 pages of the book, which, overall, starts slowly and yet covers much ground as it goes. Thus far, Dr. Lamoureux’s presentation is written in an engaging and accessible manner, but readers will nevertheless likely be surprised at the steady stream of information coming at them as they progress up to, and past, even this early point in the book.

Stay tuned for Part 2, which looks at — and debunks — popular notions concerning creation.

Andrew Lamb writes in with a response to this article.

Hi (Kenneth ?)

In your posting on the biblical Flood you briefly mentioned geological evidence.

The sedimentary strata of the world have features that are highly consistent with rapid deposition by a global Flood, but hard to reconcile with slow-and-gradual scenarios.

These features include deep cross-bedding, uneroded interfaces between strata, the regional and even continental extent of some strata, the presence of fossils (without deep rapid burial dead organsims are scavenged and decay), the roughness of the constituent grains in many sandstones, etc.

One especially telling feature is the tightly bent yet still parallel strata in many mountain ranges. This indicate that the thick layers of sediment were wet and soft at the time they were deformed.

Other geological evidences for a global Flood include the ubiquitous phenomena of ‘water gaps’ and ‘underfit rivers’.

For details on these are other geological evidences of the global Flood, see the articles listed under the topic “Geology” in the Frequently Asked Questions index on the Creation Ministries International website, at http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/21.

Andrew Lamb

With apologies to both Andrew and Inigo Montoya, let me begin by saying: this evidence does not mean what you think it means. The plain fact is, while Andrew has furnished us with a wealth of evidence, he has ultimately furnished us with evidence that supports the conclusion that the Earth is old; it is only by twisting, misrepresenting, or misunderstanding the evidence presented that we can arrive at the conclusion that the Earth is young.

Let’s look at the different pieces of evidence provided, and see if they actually demonstrate what Andrew asserts that they do.

Extent of Strata

I’m not sure how the fact that some geological strata are very expansive is supposed to help the Young Earth position — if there were only one such layer, then that might be an argument for a flood deposition layer depending on the composition of it. Or, it might be an argument for, say, a fallout layer from a meteor impact long ago, again depending on the composition of it.

That more than one layer exists, however, and that these layers are often separated by other, more localized layers, actually argues against a global flood theory.

Fossils

The presence of fossils certainly doesn’t prove that the Earth is young. While it is more or less true that fossils can only form when creatures are rapidly and deeply buried, this hardly implies that a global flood is the cause of all or most fossils. Local mudslides would have a similar effect, as would other catastrophes in which large amounts of earth were suddenly shifted about. Many environmental catastrophes can set up the necessary conditions for fossilization.

What is more, other Young Earth arguments are imperiled by the argument Andrew makes above. If, for instance, the many dinosaur fossils we have discovered are the result of rapid sediment deposition during a global flood, then why do we not find human fossils in the same geological layers, apart from a handful of intances where a burial ceremony has resulted in a body being embedded, much later, in an ancient geological layer?

The fossil evidence argues — strongly — against the Young Earth position, and Young Earth fossil theories are often mutually contradictory.

Water Gaps

Water gaps are narrow openings or notches in mountain ranges through which a river once flowed.

A water gap is usually an indication of a river that is older than the current topography. The river likely established its course when the landform was at a low elevation, with a very low stream gradient and a thick layer of unconsolidated sediment. The river therefore established its channel without regard for the deeper layers of rock.

A renewed period of uplift caused increased erosion, removal of the overlying sediments and exposure of the underlying rock layers. Rejuvenated drainage caused streams to follow weaker layers of rock, but larger watercourses, as long as the uplift did not exceed the rate of erosion, were able to cut through the harder rocks which generally became ridges. Water gaps are common in the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians of eastern North America.

Alternatively, a water gap can be formed through headward erosion of two streams on opposite sides of a ridge, ultimately resulting in the capture of one stream by the other.

This is a process that would play out over a long period of time. As I previously noted: the evidence of water gaps does not mean what Andrew thinks it means. The presence of these gaps — the products of millions of years of erosion — is actually an argument for a very old Earth. A quickly-receding global flood could not have carved these gaps; there is simply no means by which water could displace that much rock and sand in such a short amount of time, unless we are to assume that the entirety of the world’s surface was essentially loose soil and sand a few thousand years ago.
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I’ll come right out and say it: I hope that none of my Readers take the Book of Genesis 100% literally.

I mean that. But I should also clarify.

I hope, for instance, that my Readers take Genesis literally where the messages of faith it delivers are concerned. I hope that my Readers believe what is taught in Genesis about how all the world, and all the Universe, is the creation of God, and that life arose on Earth through the ordination and sustenance of God. I hope that my Readers believe that creation is “very good,” and that human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creation, made in His image and likeness. I hope my Readers believe that the complementarity of male and female, of men and women, is a part of the design of God, and is intended to give image to His love for the world by the unique unity it is designed to evoke.

I hope that my Reader derives very strong affirmation for his or her faith from Genesis, in other words, and that the book itself imparts important messages of faith to the Reader.

On the other hand, I do not hope that the good Reader looks to Genesis as a historical account. In fact, not only do I not hope this, I actively hope against it. I hope that none of my Readers thinks the world is only a few thousand years old, that humanity preceded all the other creatures, or that dinosaurs and humanity co-existed for a time. And I hope that my Readers do not look to Genesis for their cosmological model of the Universe.

The Cosmological Model of the Ancient Hebrews

It’s this last point that I’m going to focus on in today’s discussion, because it serves as an example of a few things. First, by looking at the cosmological model presented in Genesis, and by comparing it against what we know today about the structure of the heavens, we can see that the descriptions of the structure of the world, and of the Universe, that appear in Genesis are not meant to be taken literally, as they are reflective of an Ancient Near Eastern understanding of such things only. Even more importantly, however, we will see that even most Christians are not total Biblical literalists, not even the most ardent Young Earth Creationists.

Because if they were completely, totally, 100% literal in their interpretation of the text of Genesis and the cosmological model presented therein (and through the whole of the Bible, as well), they would assert that the Universe is structured like this:

This is an earlier draft of an image I re-constructed in Photoshop for Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux’s book Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. The published version is a bit different, but this version contains all the important elements, and so will suffice. Let’s review what we see in this image.

First off, we have the firmament (Genesis 1:6-8,14-17,20, Psalm 19:1, Psalm 150:1, Ezekiel 1:22-26, Ezekiel 10:1, Daniel 12:3, Sirach 43:1,8), which separates the waters above it from the waters below it (Genesis 1:7).

Embedded in the firmament are the Sun, Moon, and all the stars — the lights of the heavens which separate day from night (Genesis 1:14-15,17). And the heavens are contained within the firmament; they are of the firmament (Genesis 1:20, Psalm 19:1).

This firmament, incidentally, is a hard dome, a fixed cosmological structure. The very word — firmament — implies (and, in Hebrew, actually means) something solid, something fixed. If one is completely literal in one’s interpretation of Genesis, there is no room whatsoever to argue that the firmament can be explained away as the great expanse of space; the word itself has a different meaning.

Excursus: What is the firmament? As noted previously, this is a cosmological structure which appears all through Scripture. The word is rooted in the Hebrew word raqa, which means “to flatten,” “stamp down,” “spread out,” or “hammer out.”

Notice a common theme there? Flattening, stamping, spreading, and hammering are all actions one applies to a physical object, and then a solid one. This is especially true of hammering and stamping. The nuance of the Hebrew word raqia (which we translate as “firmament”) is thus one of something solid, rather than of something expansive.

We see this elsewhere in Scripture, it should be noted.

“Exodus 39:3 and Isa 40:19 use raqa for pounding metals into thin plates, and Num 16:38 employs riqqua (broad plate) in a similar context. The verb raqa is even found in a passage referring to the creation of the sky, which is understood to be a firm surface like a metal. Job 37:18 asks, ‘Can you join God in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?’ (c.f. Exod 24:10, Job 22:14, Ezek 1:22)” (taken from: Denis O. Lamoueux, Evolutionary Creation, pp. 123)

Let us also remember: “firmament” is an English translation of the Hebrew term. Its root, ‘firm,’ implies solidity and hardness. The very word itself implies a solid structure. Something like is all well and good for referring to the firmament as “an expanse,” but that simply goes to show that Strong’s Concordance is hardly infallible: the Hebrew word which translates into “firmament” — raqia, implies something solid, and has always (until relatively recently) been understood as such by the Church.

And this same principle, it should be noted, can be applied to Strong’s treatment of “foundations” — in which the Concordance attempts to whitewash the solidity implied by the Hebrew words that we translate as such. Job 26:11 and 2 Samuel 22:8 refer to the pillars or foundations of the heavens, while other passages (Deuteronomy 4:32, to name but one) refer to the “ends of the heavens”. Likewise, well over a dozen references to the Earth having solid foundations can easily be found in just a few books of the Old Testament, as will be seen shortly.

What else is present, then, in the diagram?

We see the foundations of the heavens (2 Samuel 22:8,16) and the foundations of the Earth (Job 38:4, Psalm 18:15, Psalm 82:5, Psalm 102:25, Psalm 104:5, Proverbs 8:29, Isaiah 24:18, Isaiah 40:21, Isaiah 48:13, Isaiah 51:13,16, Jeremiah 31:37, Micah 6:2, Sirach 10:16, Sirach 16:19). The sea is also present, as is the land of the world (Genesis 1:9-10). Hades, the underworld, is also depicted (Tobit 13:2, Wisdom 1:14, Wisdom 2:1, Wisdom 16:13, Wisdom 17:14, Matthew 11:23, Luke 10:15, Luke 16:23, Acts 2:27, Revelation 1:18). The “Heavens of the Heavens” — the Highest Heavens (Psalm 148:4) — are represented, as is the dwelling of the Lord in the Highest Heavens.

This, then, is the view of the Universe of the people of the Old Testament, and would have been shared by all the Hebrews. It is also the cosmological model that the writers of the Old and New Testaments would have used when speaking about the Universe in any capacity. And if, O Reader, you profess the belief that Genesis is meant to be taken as a completely literal historical account, then this must be the cosmological model you profess as well…or else, you’re not a complete literalist.

You can’t profess this view of the solar system:

You can’t profess this view of the galaxy:

You can’t profess this view of the Universe:

If, O Reader, you are a Young Earth Creationist who insists on treating Genesis as a literal account of history, you must profess the belief that the Universe is structured as depicted in the first image in this posting, the image I drew. And, if you profess the doctrine of sola scriptura, you are especially obligated to reject the cosmological model presented in the latter three pictures, which is (more or less) the cosmological model presented to us by modern astronomy.

Reciprocally, if you argue that the cosmological model presented by modern astronomy is correct, you are not in adherence to the doctrine of sola scriptura, nor are you interpreting Scripture 100% literally. You are, in fact, augmenting your understanding of Scripture with scientific evidence, and shifting your interpretation of Scripture to match the empirical evidence that scientific inquiry into the structure of the Universe has discovered.

Either way, something must here be acknowledged: there exists a discrepancy between the description of the Universe, as presented in Scripture, and the shape of the Universe as has been observed by mankind.

Implications of this Discrepancy

The difference between the cosmological model presented in the Bible and the observed shape of the Universe is profound. They are not, in any significant way, similar.

On the face of it, at least, Scripture is simply incorrect about the shape of the Universe. That’s the main implication of this massive discrepancy: that Scripture is not inerrant and infallible.

So how, as Christians, do we address this problem, if in fact we believe that Scripture is inerrant and infallible? Well, if we believe that the Book of Genesis contains a literal account of creation, and that it is intended to be read as a historically/scientifically accurate work, we can’t address this problem. And in fact, this problem is one of many that utterly defeat our viewpoint. Faced with the overwhelming evidence that the shape of the cosmos is vastly different than is described in Scripture, there are only two options left open to a literalist:

1. Admit that Scripture is in error, OR
2. Denounce science, research, and empirical study as demonic

It should be obvious to the Reader, I hope, that the second option — though often indulged in by Christians — is fundamentally irrational, and also out of alignment with Scripture. The Bible tells us, quite plainly, that the natural world reveals the glory of God (c.f. Psalm 19, Job 12), and so shall be for humanity a source of truth and revelation. God Himself is not revealed in the study of the world and of the heavens, because God is not empirically observable. But the heavens and the Earth tell His glory and are a testament to His might and his ordinance of creation. So we cannot dismiss the study of the world and the heavens — science, essentially — as demonic, for God Himself, through the Spirit which inspired the authors of Scripture, assures us that this is not the case.

The strict literalist, then, is left with no choice but to admit that Scripture is in error.

Moving Past Literalism

To this point, we’ve only looked at the interpretation of Scripture from a strictly literal perspective, which Young Earth Creationists claim to do. Of course, in making such a claim, Young Earthers commit a hypocrisy of sorts, since it is clear that most Young Earthers accept a non-Biblical cosmological model to be valid. Were they really literalists, 100% of the time, their cosmological model would be the same as was used by the ancient Hebrews, which was also reflected in other cultures of the ancient world.

Let’s be realistic: ancient cultures did not have the sophisticated tools and rigorous methods that modern researchers employ. They did not have the means to analyze the world and the Universe in as much detail as we do in this modern era. Indeed, they had only their eyes, and what could be observed with them.

We see this reflected in Scripture. Every aspect of the ancient cosmological model presented at the beginning of this writing is explicable when one considers the ancient context of its promulgation. It made sense for ancient scholars to assume that the position of the Earth was fixed, and that the world was set upon firm foundations; can any of us feel the Earth orbiting around the Sun, and can any of us topple the Earth from its position in the heavens? Of course not.

Likewise, it made sense to assume that the sky was a fixed dome, in which the Sun, Moon, and all the stars were fixed — or, at least, it was a reasonable conjecture that this was the case. Likewise, it made sense to assume that a great sea was held back by the great dome of the sky, for how else might it come to pass that water should precipitate down from on high? And why else would the sky have such a sea-like blue hue?

This was the ancient understanding; the early Hebrews knew nothing of the vast distances that separate the stars, or of the nuclear fusion that drove the Sun, or of the fact that it was the rotation of the Earth — and not the movement of the Sun — which caused the cycle of days and nights. And the authors of Scripture — especially Genesis — would have understood the world and Universe through the cosmological model of their day. Their scientific understanding of things, if it can be called that, was an ancient one.

Is it possible, then, that we are meant to interpret Scripture in a less-than-completely literal way? Is it possible, then, that when we interpret Scripture, we must do so in the understanding that the science contained therein is the science “of the day,” and that it may not have been intended, by the Spirit, to be understood as a literal explanation of the ordering of the world and Universe? Is it not also possible, then, that we are not meant to interpret as literal what appears, at first glance, to be a historical account in Genesis?

As to a Child

When we explain complicated things to small children, we often have to use simpler examples drawn from the realm of the child’s understanding in order to illustrate our lesson to them. And additionally, we have to obfuscate. Think for a minute of, say, a song that is sometimes taught to children:

…the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone.
The knee bone’s connected to the shin bone.
The shin bone’s connected to the ankle bone…

It’s not a bad learning tool, and a decent introduction to basic skeletal biology. And yet: which thigh bone? Which ankle bone? In both cases, there is more than one bone present in the actual human skeleton. But how do you explain that to a small child? The ankle more or less looks like it’s made of one bone, and feels as though it is — how do you explain to a small child, in a way that the child will understand, that there are actually many bones in the ankle?

And also: is it even important, for the purposes of the basic lesson you are attempting to impart to the child, to do so?

Accommodation

When we speak to children, we accommodate to their level of knowledge. We don’t bombard them with facts (or, at least, we shouldn’t) and precise details. We teach by using simpler examples, and by simplifying the concept being taught…for the moment. As children get older, we can teach them the finer details and more complex aspects of the lesson.

Is it possible, then, that God took this approach with humanity, his children? When the Spirit sought to inspire the ancient authors of Scripture to communicate a message of faith — that God is creator of all things — is it possible that instead of bombarding the authors with exhaustive explanations of atoms, amoebas, and astronomy, that the Spirit instead opted to accommodate to the ancient understanding of the author, and use the extant cosmological model of the day as a metaphorical vehicle for a theological teaching?

Could God not have opted to keep the Bible simple for us, that we might come to discover the more complicated aspects of the world and of creation when we were ready to do so…when we were older?

I don’t just think this is possible; I think it’s likely.

Humanity, at the time that many of the books of the Old Testament were written, was as a child in its understanding of the world and Universe. Humanity “thought like a child…reasoned like a child.” And even into the time of the New Testament, that understanding of the natural world had not advanced very much; still, we only understood as a child does.

Now, though, we have become something else. Humanity has grown; is it possible that we should begin to “put away childish things,” including the ancient understandings of the world and its origins?

The purpose of the Bible is not to tell us about the structure of the heavens, but to tell us about Heaven itself, about God, about humanity’s need for God, and about the glorious plan of salvation that God has effected and made manifest in Christ Jesus. The Bible, as Galileo so ably put it, tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.

Perhaps it is time that we respected the Bible enough to admit this.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!