We believe the Bible (the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments) is the Word of God, written. As a "God-breathed" revelation, it is thus verbally inspired and completely without error (historically, scientifically, morally, and spiritually) in its original writings. While God the Holy Spirit supernaturally superintended the writing of the Bible, that writing nevertheless reflects the words and literary styles of its individual human authors. Scripture reveals the being, nature, and character of God, the nature of God's creation, and especially His will for the salvation of human beings through Jesus Christ. The Bible is therefore our supreme and final authority in all matters that it addresses.Ross is very thoughtful and his cosmological arguments are as convincing as the geological ones of Davis Young. Enjoy.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Reasons to Believe Added
A reader correctly castigated me for not having Reasons to Believe as a link on the left side. Reasons is a site run by physicist Hugh Ross, who wrote the book The Fingerprint of God. Ross came to the University of Tennessee in the early 1990s and gave a lecture based on his book. By virtue of being an astrophysicist, he focuses on the arguments against the young earth position as they relate to astronomy. This is the opening section of the belief statement on the scripture:
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Even through Ross is an Old Earth Creationist, I do respect his work. My journey from YEC to accepting evolution included the reading of several of Ross's books. I have read of several others whose minds were opened by Ross to the age of the universe on their way toward acknowledging evolution. I appreciate your honoring him!
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting about his position in regards to the authority of Scripture is that he extends its authority beyond what Scripture itself says is it's area of authority (2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.) The Bible limits itself to "teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness". It doesn't say anything about it being authoritative in all areas of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteSadly, his arguments against evolution are just as silly and misguided as the YEC crowd.
ReplyDeleteYou know how creationists laymen don't seem to actually know what their own creation scientists really believe, just as long as it counters EVILultion? I remember telling my pastor the Behe accepts common descent and my pastor didn't believe it. Well I had a similar experience with followers of Hugh Ross. I accidentally let the evolution thing slip, and one person picked up on it that I was looking to be convinced creation was true. So he invited me to a debate Hugh Ross was having with an "atheist". I will not be attending, it will not be good for my faith to go and agree with everything the atheist says (since it is on evolution). We talked briefly about Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe, and I learned that he was part of a local Reasons to Believe chapter or study group. And yet, he didn't know Hugh Ross was old earth. And after I told him, I couldn't convince him. People here what they want to hear.
ReplyDeleteI am going to have a conversation with my pastor in a few weeks about the controversy also. I have no idea what to expect. He said he has never "seen a dog give birth to a cat" so my suspicion is his biology education stopped in early high school.
ReplyDeleteYour statement about the followers not knowing key tenets of who they are following makes me think of the Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin, who spouts non-evolutionary nonsense routinely seemingly without knowing that Michael Behe, one of the key players at the institute, accepts evolution and common descent. The disconnect is amazing.
I am going to tackle one of the papers in a post shortly.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good point, Daniel. I had not considered that. Sometimes I focus so strongly on the science side of things that I miss the scriptural mistakes.
ReplyDeleteIt really was an oversight to not link his site. His arguments are very convincing and he writes very well.
ReplyDeleteI have started reading Hugh Ross's book "The Genesis Question." While I am glad that Ross affirms an old age for the earth, I am a little uncomfortable with his interpretations of the creation account in Genesis.
ReplyDeleteRoss writes, "The observer's vantage point is clearly stated: "the surface of the deep... over the waters." Yet the vast majority of Genesis commentaries mistakenly proceed as if it were still high in the heavens somewhere in the starry realm above Earth. This one oversight accounts for more misunderstanding, more attacks on the credibility of Genesis, than all other interpretive errors combined. The problem glares from the page at anyone slightly aware of how nature works. If the storytellers' vantage point lies in the starry realm above, plants (created on Day Three) appear before the sun even exists (Day Four)."
Ross then goes on to explain that the perspective of the author changes during the story, and therefore the sun doesn't "appear" to be created until after the plants because the early earth would have had a thick layer of clouds, preventing the sun from being seen until they cleared.
Ross also claims the, "Choosing six twenty-four hour days as the "correct" literal interpretation for the Genesis creation days, as opposed to six long time periods, places dozens of Bible passages in contradiction with one another."
He cites some work in his book "Creation and Time," which I then pulled off the shelf and began to read through. I was not particularly convinced... while the Hebrew does not have to be translated as "one day," that does not mean that it shouldn't be translated thus. From the context of the story itself, I think that it should be translated as "one day."
What bothers me with the approach that Ross takes is that he is attempting to use modern science methods to understand a document from an Ancient Near Eastern culture. Also, I think that the people of ancient Israel probably thought that the creation story took place over six 24hr days, and that we shouldn't re-interpret that story to mean something else.
But this doesn't mean that I think that the Bible is flawed... I just think that it is important to understand what God is really trying to communicate through the book of Genesis and to understand that literature in the same manner that the culture that wrote it would have read it.
Luskin is an interesting individual. He gets berated by the more outspoken in the scientific community all the time but it doesn't seem to phase his confidence in the (nonsense as you put it) that he writes. Anyway, obviously he must know what Behe believes. Indeed, I saw an article with Behe where the journalist raised this issue. Behe said that they had all agreed to disagree (and seem to imply the other side wasn't terribly happy with Behe over it). I might have been reading into the last part. It doesn't appear it matters to Behe that for the most part DI denies common descent, nor does he seem to educate them on the evidence for it.
ReplyDeleteAdam, the principle problem that I have with concordism is that, well, it doesn't fit. As Carol Hill points out, in Genesis, the plants were formed before the sun was visible. Then it talks about plants bearing seed-bearing fruit, which didn't show up until the Cretaceous. Then there in the inverted sequence of birds, reptiles and mammals. As she writes: "When the Genesis 1 “days” are carefully scrutinized with respect to the fossil record, the correlation is superficial at best." I know that Ross has explanations for these things but, like you, I don't find them convincing. The only way that it would work is if the describer (Adam?) looked around and starting ticking off the things he saw in order of perceived complexity and then wrote that down but that is still quite a stretch.
ReplyDeleteJason, that raises the question of what Michael Behe is getting out of the venture. He clearly supports a great deal of what the DI is trying to do, to the point of criticizing evolution as "an icon that cannot be questioned." He also, like Dembski, Johnson, Luskin and several others, wants to redefine science. This came back to bite him on the rear end during the trial, though, when his definition of "science" also included astrology. That was one of the turning points of the trial. He seems to be caught between two position: practicing conventional science and yet wanting conventional science to be something other than what it is.
ReplyDeleteAdam, the principle problem that I have with concordism is that, well, it doesn't fit.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. To make modern science and scriptures concord, you have to do violence to science or scriptures, or both. Look at the spectrum of creationism: Flat Earthism, YEC, OEC, ID. As you progress through them, the tendency is less violence against science and more against scripture.