That's definitely true, but I think it's a necessity. In order for scientific theories to change, it has to be corroborated and retested time and again. In the case of science the debate is healthy because it encourages people to question. Religion by its nature insists you DON'T question, making it impossible to be jammed into the model of scientific discovery, and why so many wars are fought over religion.
Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham
- Thread starter Mathias
- Start date
Respecting other people's beliefs is one thing, having them believe the world is of a certain age when clear evidence contradicts it and they still won't budge leads you to two things :
1. Losing their respect for them and laugh at their face for being dumb savages.
2. No, I was wrong, there's only one option.
1. Losing their respect for them and laugh at their face for being dumb savages.
2. No, I was wrong, there's only one option.
Okay, so here's the thing.
I say this as someone who has a Masters in Theology with a focus on the Old Testament and I can back everything I'm about to say with good, highly regarded scholarly work.
The first 11 chapters of Genesis are Ancient Near Eastern literature and a belong to the "Myth" literary genre. Now, here's the deal with "Myth" as a literary genre and Ancient Near Eastern literature: a) Ancient Near Eastern literature was written for people who were part of Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Not modern, American western culture. That means there are a LOT of hindrances to even begin to understand the way literature like that should be interpreted in our modern language. Think of it like this, take, uh, Enders Game as it's written with all the concepts and ideas familiar to our culture, now translate it into ancient Hebrew and send it back in time 3 or 4 thousand years and ask an average person to read it and understand the ideas found in it.
With a lot of work would they understand the concepts and ideas presented in it? Maybe. But they might also just assume we all flew around in spaceships and military blahblahblah and never understand the major concepts the author was trying to convey. Thats how written works work. They generally are far more difficult to understand when translate and removed from any cultural concept. Obviously it's not impossible but it's HARD. So when we open up the Bible or ANY ancient text from another culture we shouldn't expect to be able to just "GET IT" because is' in english. One of the biggest failings of the christian church, IMO, is that they have failed to teach christians how to read the bible in it's appropriate context and instead taught people to just randomly pick out passages and ask, "What does this mean for me?" instead of "What did this mean to a hebrew person living 3000 years ago?" So, it's easy to understand that as this sort of reading of the Bible has become more normal in the church over the last hundred years it's easy to see why people like Ham have come about. They read Genesis 1-3 and see a literal, scientific account of creation. Why wouldn't they? Why would the compare it to other pieces of literature at the time it was written? Why would they bother to ask what the Jews thought it meant? Outside of scholarly circles (and a few churches, mine included thank God our pastor is a brilliant theologian with a crazy love of science) no one really does that anymore. So thats how they get there.
Now, lets deal with "Myth" as a literary genre. We hear "Myth" and we think "Fairy Tale" or "Greek Mythology". Thats how we apply our cultural ideas to it. That is wrong. Myth as a genre merely means that it is explaining concepts between God (or gods) and humanity. Creation accounts exist in every language and many of them are eerily similar. In fact most of the Genesis account was taken from The Epic of Gilgamesh. Thats just how it worked back then. To a Hebrew person living back then they understood why it was unique next to the creation accounts it was similar to. In most of those accounts the gods created humanity to be slaves or servants. They were created to be footstools. In the Hebrew account God made humanity to be co-rulers.
This is a HUGE concept. It completely changes the dynamic of both the reason for creation and for HOW humanity was supposed to interact with God.
It was, in this respect, different from every other creation account since it gave humankind worth that other account did. Thats why it's amazing to people of faith both now and back then. God didn't create us to be his slaves, he created us to be in relationship with Him and to take care of this works He made for us (which sadly, also has been tossed aside by much of the modern church in favor of politics that argue for us to do whatever we want with the earth instead of taking care of it as we are supposed to).
No Hebrew person hearing this story would hear it as a scientific text. It's as scientific as the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's about WHY God created us. Not a literal "HOW".
Now does that mean you can't think it as a literal account if you want to? Of course not. Go nuts. But realize that you are reading something into the text the authors certainly never intended for you to get out of it. You can still do it. I can't stop you and I honestly don't care because there is NOTHING involved in being a christian that requires belief in literal 7-day creation in order to follow Jesus. I would argue that if one does feel like literal 7-day creation is a requirement then there are some SEVERE problems with both ones theology and how one reads and understands the Bible and I would worry that the desire to be "right" is causing one to miss the real point of these things. If you are able to hold to a literal 7-day creation but still allow for others to have different takes both theologically and scientifically then rock on, we can all be friends and have a beer (root or other) together.
Does that mean evolution is "true"? Man I don't know, I'm not a scientist but I tend to lean towards the idea that God made the universe and the Bible tells us "WHY" and science reveals the "HOW" portion (which so far, seems to be the theory of evolution). I think it's time Christians stop being afraid of science and instead look at Science as merely a way for God to reveal things to us.
Whew. Sorry. I get worked up about this.
I say this as someone who has a Masters in Theology with a focus on the Old Testament and I can back everything I'm about to say with good, highly regarded scholarly work.
The first 11 chapters of Genesis are Ancient Near Eastern literature and a belong to the "Myth" literary genre. Now, here's the deal with "Myth" as a literary genre and Ancient Near Eastern literature: a) Ancient Near Eastern literature was written for people who were part of Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Not modern, American western culture. That means there are a LOT of hindrances to even begin to understand the way literature like that should be interpreted in our modern language. Think of it like this, take, uh, Enders Game as it's written with all the concepts and ideas familiar to our culture, now translate it into ancient Hebrew and send it back in time 3 or 4 thousand years and ask an average person to read it and understand the ideas found in it.
With a lot of work would they understand the concepts and ideas presented in it? Maybe. But they might also just assume we all flew around in spaceships and military blahblahblah and never understand the major concepts the author was trying to convey. Thats how written works work. They generally are far more difficult to understand when translate and removed from any cultural concept. Obviously it's not impossible but it's HARD. So when we open up the Bible or ANY ancient text from another culture we shouldn't expect to be able to just "GET IT" because is' in english. One of the biggest failings of the christian church, IMO, is that they have failed to teach christians how to read the bible in it's appropriate context and instead taught people to just randomly pick out passages and ask, "What does this mean for me?" instead of "What did this mean to a hebrew person living 3000 years ago?" So, it's easy to understand that as this sort of reading of the Bible has become more normal in the church over the last hundred years it's easy to see why people like Ham have come about. They read Genesis 1-3 and see a literal, scientific account of creation. Why wouldn't they? Why would the compare it to other pieces of literature at the time it was written? Why would they bother to ask what the Jews thought it meant? Outside of scholarly circles (and a few churches, mine included thank God our pastor is a brilliant theologian with a crazy love of science) no one really does that anymore. So thats how they get there.
Now, lets deal with "Myth" as a literary genre. We hear "Myth" and we think "Fairy Tale" or "Greek Mythology". Thats how we apply our cultural ideas to it. That is wrong. Myth as a genre merely means that it is explaining concepts between God (or gods) and humanity. Creation accounts exist in every language and many of them are eerily similar. In fact most of the Genesis account was taken from The Epic of Gilgamesh. Thats just how it worked back then. To a Hebrew person living back then they understood why it was unique next to the creation accounts it was similar to. In most of those accounts the gods created humanity to be slaves or servants. They were created to be footstools. In the Hebrew account God made humanity to be co-rulers.
This is a HUGE concept. It completely changes the dynamic of both the reason for creation and for HOW humanity was supposed to interact with God.
It was, in this respect, different from every other creation account since it gave humankind worth that other account did. Thats why it's amazing to people of faith both now and back then. God didn't create us to be his slaves, he created us to be in relationship with Him and to take care of this works He made for us (which sadly, also has been tossed aside by much of the modern church in favor of politics that argue for us to do whatever we want with the earth instead of taking care of it as we are supposed to).
No Hebrew person hearing this story would hear it as a scientific text. It's as scientific as the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's about WHY God created us. Not a literal "HOW".
Now does that mean you can't think it as a literal account if you want to? Of course not. Go nuts. But realize that you are reading something into the text the authors certainly never intended for you to get out of it. You can still do it. I can't stop you and I honestly don't care because there is NOTHING involved in being a christian that requires belief in literal 7-day creation in order to follow Jesus. I would argue that if one does feel like literal 7-day creation is a requirement then there are some SEVERE problems with both ones theology and how one reads and understands the Bible and I would worry that the desire to be "right" is causing one to miss the real point of these things. If you are able to hold to a literal 7-day creation but still allow for others to have different takes both theologically and scientifically then rock on, we can all be friends and have a beer (root or other) together.
Does that mean evolution is "true"? Man I don't know, I'm not a scientist but I tend to lean towards the idea that God made the universe and the Bible tells us "WHY" and science reveals the "HOW" portion (which so far, seems to be the theory of evolution). I think it's time Christians stop being afraid of science and instead look at Science as merely a way for God to reveal things to us.
Whew. Sorry. I get worked up about this.
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All those students loans have to be worth something.
You're the Halforums Preacha. What could be more rewarding?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHHHHAHAHHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA
I'm so pleased it's still there!I can't help myself. It's also the same sentiment like 5 other people said above.
It's impossible to talk like adults with anyone that ignores basic scientific facts (i.e. literal creationists)
Necronic
Staff member
Yeah but that attitude makes you guys look like you are more interested in being right than in changing opinions. This issue has a lot more importance in the grand scheme of things then stroking the egos of self-righteous people who know what smart person to quote. Getting literal creationism out of schools is a serious issue, and being a dick doens't help that.
Well, if you accept scientific truth as actually true there's no discussion to be had, is there? Science says what it says and that's it. But starting from this controversies you can discuss many interesting things, such as what can or can't be known, about what can science say anything, or talk about misconceptions on one side or the other (for instance, 'many scientists believe in literal creation', 'evolution is just a theory', what evidence is for or against it, to name some on 'my side')
Necronic
Staff member
I understand, I was actually replying to Charlie halfway up the page with my first comment then it got ninja'd.
Anyways really all it says is that you have some serious social issues. I work with people who are literal creationists. Should I laugh at them in the face when this comes up in conversation? Of course not. So that either makes people who do that online cowardly hypocrits or the extremely socially inept. In fairness both of those reasonably describe a lot of the internet....[DOUBLEPOST=1391625993,1391625748][/DOUBLEPOST]
/rant over
Anyways really all it says is that you have some serious social issues. I work with people who are literal creationists. Should I laugh at them in the face when this comes up in conversation? Of course not. So that either makes people who do that online cowardly hypocrits or the extremely socially inept. In fairness both of those reasonably describe a lot of the internet....[DOUBLEPOST=1391625993,1391625748][/DOUBLEPOST]
Also, its totally reasonable to talk to people this way seeing as most people know so few scientific facts. Most scientists spend their days listening to people say things that are innacurate or misconcieved. We don't spend our days laughing at everyone. The people that do this are those that got there through shortcuts and think that repeating knowledge is the same thing as understanding it.
/rant over
Something that has always surprised me is how creationism seems to be much more pervasive in the US (and Canada? The only creationist scientist I've ever met was a Canadian) than in most of the developed world. I mean, I understand that the religious makeup of society is different there, also religion is more important, etc., but I still can fathom how this happens in the country that lead's the world's science. I also wonder if this scientific illiteracy/opposition will have consequences in the short-medium term or scientific production and quality is so strongly dependent on economic power in your case that it can remain mostly unaffected by this phenomenon.
Welp, so much for that. But then again, it's @Charlie Don't Surf, who is completely incapable of tact, respect, genuineness, or even talking or thinking like an adult.
Thanks for that rant, @Espy. I honestly didn't know until know that you were a theologian. As you say, there's nothing wrong with reading a religious text as literal, but there are some extremely big consequences to that. Like I said, I grew up Catholic and thus, on the Bible, so I generally know my stuff. I also studied religion myself and have the course equivilant of a minor in Religious Studies. I don't think God ever intended us to take everything literally. The Bible is meant to teach us morality through its multiple stories. God didn't just hit a lightswitch and the universe went click. As I said, who's to say he works on our same timeline?
Something that is hard for folks to get is that the bible is literature. It is not just 1 genre, like Enders Game or Dracula or American Gods is. It's MANY books and letters and individual poems put together with a unified and overarching narrative. To read it as anything else is doing a serious disservice to the authorial intent not to mention ones own theological understanding.
Out of curiosity, have you ever read AJ Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically? For a whole year, he tries to live according to the Bible by taking it as literally as possible. Some of the extremes he takes are hilarious, like not sitting where a woman has sat during their time of the month because they're considered "impure." It's a really interesting read if you haven't.
Kind of the point I made a bit earlier. It's all part of the -My Book is right and your book is wrong..... because.- Especially when it has zero factual basis for it's stance as -right above all others-
No! It sounds great though! Rachel Held Evens (who I think you would really like her stuff) did a similar book that was pretty hilarious.
I mean, then it sounds like he missed the part about not... having... to follow the law as laid out in Leviticus anymore? The debates on circumcision, diet, etc in Acts and Letters?
Usually people who do this kind of thing are doing it more to play off the idea that there are folks who cherry pick some of the old covenant laws to still enforce but ignore everything else. Also, because it's funny.
Well, fair enough.
If I was his wife, I'd just sit on every chair in the house when I had my period. WHERE WILL YOU SIT NOW, ASSHAT
This is something that's perplexed me about creationists. Core to their religion is the belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing entity who can do anything besides things it has decided it cannot do.
Insta-creating the universe sounds like nothing. It's unimpressive. But for that entity to have been pushing atoms in countless number across vast stretches of space, having some of those elements forming stars where an invisible force of attraction pulls other elements into rotation around them, and then on one of those worlds in one of those systems, letting that world cook until some of those atoms coalesce into their own small systems, those molecules forming cells, those cells swimming and devouring each other, and in time working together, spawning more of themselves, reproducing over eons to form multi-cellular organisms, to develop senses of taste and sight, for that entity to influence the climate and promote change and death and more reproduction, each generation just a hair different than the last, focusing these millions of generations by species, by family, across the world, and after billions of years, when if one part had been thrown off, the whole project would be ruined, and yet the entity did it, the goal is reached--a creature in the entity's image.
I don't believe that, but that sounds far more godlike than just blinking it all into existence.