tlijy@cc.curtin.edu.au (12/25/90)
G'day, I have many friends who are christians. We have had a lot of conversations (argument to be exact) over the issue: Is the Holy Bible 100% correct? (excluding the errors due to translation) ================================ They said yes because their faith is all based on the Bible and they said the Bible is God's word and was written by men who had holy spirit with them. I do not think the Bible is error free. If it is written by men, then those people must be limited by the level of knowledge at their time which was very primitive. For instance, in Genisis, the universe is said to have been created in only seven days. Well, everything is possible for almighty God and he could have created the universe in 7 days (if 1 day = 24 hours). But according to scientific observations and the physical laws which governs the observable part of the universe, the universe is certainly not formed in the way which is described in the Bible. My friends' argument was: Bible is not a scientific book. Can any one comment on this? Thank you and merry Xmas to you all ! Jason Li ================================ Department of Applied Physics Curtin University of Technolog Perth, Western Australia [As usual, let me note that I am not going to accept responses that take up the scientific acceptability of creationism. That should be dealt with in talk.origins. However the interpretation of Scripture is certainly appropriate for this group. My first reaction is that Jason's friend seems to be getting at something very much like the Catholic concept of Biblical inerrancy. As I understand it, the Catholic view is that the Bible has no errors in what it is trying to teach. But the Biblical authors may not have had a complete understanding of science, etc. This would allow one to say that the point of Gen. is God's responsibility for creation, etc. But since what it was trying to teach was not science, one might conceivably say that the views on cosmology shown in Gen. are not guaranteed to be true, and a Christian can consider evolution, etc. Outside the Catholic Church, if someone believes that the Bible may contain errors on scientific issues, they normally just say that they reject Biblical inerrancy. --clh]
davego@polari.UUCP (dave oliphant) (01/03/91)
It is a moot point whether the Bible is 100% correct or not. Let's assume that the Bible is 100% correct, with no errors whatsoever, even translating errors. It would take a perfect person to understand the perfect bible. Since we are not perfect, it would be impossible to understand the Bible perfectly without the divine assistance of God. If I received this assistance and now understand the Bible perfectly, there is still the difficulty in passing this understanding to others. To understand, or come to a greater understanding of, the Bible, requires the Holy Spirit of God. If I receive this Spirit, it doesn't matter if the Bible is perfect or not. I do not believe that the Bible as written is "perfect", but I guess we would have to define what "perfect" means first. If God does not intervine to prevent a man from sexually molesting his son or daughter, (or pick any great evil thing that men or women might do) what makes anyone believe that He would intervine in preventing a wicked person from changing a perfectly delivered message into a lie? I don't dwell on the imperfections I perceive in the Bible, rather I should seek to rid myself of my imperfections while seeking for a greater under- standing. See Matthew 7:7-8 Happy Holidays.
djdaneh@pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes) (01/03/91)
Jason Li writes, asking: >Is the Holy Bible 100% correct? (excluding the errors due to translation) >...I do not think the Bible is error free. If it is written by men, then those >people must be limited by the level of knowledge at their time which was very >primitive. For instance, in Genisis, the universe is said to have been created >in only seven days. Well, everything is possible for almighty God and he could >have created the universe in 7 days (if 1 day = 24 hours). But according to >scientific observations and the physical laws which governs the observable >part of the universe, the universe is certainly not formed in the way which >is described in the Bible. Hello, Jason, and thank you for asking! As a note to the fore, let me say that though I _am_ a Christian, I hope I can respond without trying to convert you and -- equally important -- without you feeling that I am pressuring to convert. Such pressures destroy honest communication, and while I certainly _do_ hope that you will eventually come to Christ, I know that if you do it will be in your own time and in your own way, and that evangelism, as it is practiced today, does more to hurt than to help Christianity. That out of the way, let me try to explain one Christian's view of the Bible. I do not speak for any Church -- I am not a member of any Church at this time, because I disagree to some extent with all of 'em -- but I believe that it is a responsible and reasonable attitude toward Biblical truth. Yes, I believe that the Bible is true. But "truth," as you will know if you've studied any of the epistomology of science, is a very slippery concept. I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who observed that not only the Bible, but the world itself was the Word of God; at least, God created it by speaking. (As in Genesis: "God said, Let there be light; and there was light.") We have at least two sources of revelation of the Divine will, then: revelation by the Word and revelation by the World. (There is also a third, revelation by direct inspiration, but this can't be relied on for all of us.) I personally don't recall ever being addressed by God other than by the Word and the World -- and the World _does_ address us: I have had my life changed when God spoke to me by putting a flower in my path just when I needed to see it. I also take it as a given that God does not lie, in any of the two (or three) modes of revelation. When the Word and the World seem to be at conflict, then, it can only mean that we have misinterpreted one or both of them. Let's take that Creation story as an example. It was a story set down by a people with no knowledge of what we now think we know about the origins of the Universe, or of life on Earth. Whether God dictated the story, or it was set down by Moses, or some scribes took a Babylonian creation myth and "updated" it to go with monotheism (and it was then collated with another document) is not important to my purpose. What matters is, that this is the Creation story God wants us to have. Not as a technical manual on the design and implementation of Universes, but as the introduction to the epic of our souls' journeys through life. But before I get to that, which is a more complex question, I think it only fair to address the literal level of the story. No, I do not believe that God created the world, as described in Genesis, in seven days of twenty-four hours' duration. I _do_, however, believe that God created the world, and that the order in which God made things was pretty much as described in Genesis. I also believe that the _mechanism_ by which God made things was, by and large, through the creation of natural forces, and by then allowing natural processes to take their course. Thus, there is no conflict, for me, between the Creation story and the cosmological model, or the evolutionary hypothesis of modern biology. I don't even need to assume that God intervened to cause Man to evolve: since that was clearly one of God's goals in creating the Universe, God set it up from the first in such a manner that Man would evolve through the natural processes installed in the Universe. This is not, by the way, a new idea. The idea that a day may not refer to a period of twenty-four hours' duration is encountered in the Bible itself (as when "a day in Heaven is as a thousand years," or vice versa); and Christian thinkers as far back as St. Augustine have proposed an evolutionary model for interpreting the Genesis story. And, in modern times, the Pope of the Catholic church issued a bull in which he declared the cosmological model and evolution entirely compatible with Genesis, and declared that literalism was anathema because it attempted to limit God's options in creation to what Man thought they should be, whereas God, omnipotent, is free to create in any way They choose. As a secondary historical note: after the initial conflict between "science" and "the Bible" -- really a conflict between inflexible, literal-minded partisan adherents who didn't really understand either -- it is amusing to note that the cosmological model actually bears a great deal of resemblance to the Genesis account. That is, all is formless and void (what used to be called the monobloc, and is now thought of as a primal black hole -- even more formless than the old monobloc conception); then there is light (the Big Bang, during which and for some time after which there is nothing _but_ light; matter does not coalesce for a significant period of time after the Event); then the stars and planets are formed; then plant life, animal life, and, finally, human life. The only difference is that the Biblical account (a) includes a number of terms, such as "day," which -- when taken literally -- are rather distracting; and (b) presumes the presence of a guiding Intelligence, which hypothesis the cosmological model neither confirms nor denies. But each new derivation about the model seems to me to resemble more and more a different viewpoint of the same events related in Genesis -- thus confirming that the Word and the World are both Divine utterances. Anyway, on with the show... Since it isn't necessary, or even necessarily a good idea, to read Genesis as a literal account of creation, then, what do we mean when we say that it is "true?" I mean that it is intended to nourish the spirit, and to teach a number of true things that have nothing whatever to do with the kind of truth with which science is concerned. Among these truths: -- Whatever the _mechanism_ by which the world came to be, that mechanism was not blind, but was guided by an intelligence who cared about the outcome, to Whom we refer as God. -- One outcome about which God particularly cared, was the evolution or creaton, on Earth, of humankind. -- This is indicated by the gradual focusing from the grand cosmic scale ("Let there be light") to the details of life on Earth, and finally the specific attention to the creation of humans. -- This neither indicates nor precludes special interest in other lifeforms on other worlds; it merely indicates that _here_, God's interest was focussed on humans. -- Humans were created with something called "free will." This is not literally stated in Genesis, but it is implied in the Fall. -- This "free will" includes the ability to do things that God would rather we did not. -- In doing these things, we have become isolated from the Divine will. This isolation, which many of us feel as a sense of loss, we refer to as "sin." -- Because of this sin, we are incapable of perfecting ourselves or our environment. Thus, we have been "cast out of Paradise." All this meaning, by the way, would be agreed with, I believe, even by those Christians who believe in the literal seven 24-hour days. This agreement on the basics is what makes us all Christians even when we disagree about details of the literal level. My advice to you, Jason, not to convert you, but to help you make an honest evaluation for yourself, is this: read a few passages from the Bible -- I would recommend Genesis and Exodus, then skip straight to the New Testament and read one or two Gospels (if only one, make it Matthew, Mark, or Luke; if two, read one of those three and John). Read them not for the literal stories -- though those can be interesting in themselves -- but instead, thinking about what the stories _mean_, in the way I have illustrated above with the Creation story. Then, ask questions of Christians whom you trust not to try to convert you, and try to understand what it is we believe, and to decide for yourself -- not because of what we Christians tell you, and not because of what your scientific training tells you, but in the depths of your heart -- whether or not you believe what this Christianity thing is all about. Some of my fellow Christians would advise you to pray, as you are reading and thinking, that God will give you the gift of faith. I do not give you that advice; to pray to a God in whom you do not believe is hypocritical, unless you think you _might_ believe and feel you need help deciding. I don't get the feeling that this is your problem at this time. I think reading with an open mind and searching heart is closer to the spirit of true prayer than any mouthed request to God, anyway. I hope this helps you. I pray that you find whatever truth you need. Welcome to 1984! Are you ready for the Third World War? You too will meet the Secret Police -- We'll draft you and jail your niece, so come quietly to Boot Camp. We'll shoot you dead, make you a man, but don't worry, it's for a _cause_... --Dead Kennedys "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now" The Roach
x7mx@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (01/07/91)
[tlijy@cc.curtin.edu.au asked about the BIble. It seems to him that that according to scientific observations, the universe was not created as described in the Bible. A friend of his, who believes the Bible is correct, responded to this that the Bible is not a scientific book. He was interested in comments on this. --clh] The classic "7 days of creation" dilemma is far from being the only problem you must have encountered: why did you just mention this? If it was just the creation story then the answer would be trivial: in those days a "day" is not defined by a 24 hour period but rather, by sunrises and sunsets. Since such a "day" did not exist for the first 3 "days" it is up to our imagination to guess how long such a day is. Read as a whole, however, the book of Genesis certainly does not lend itself to literal interpretations. Silly questions pop up such as who Cain and Abel married. It certainly is no laughing matter for those who insist on using the Bible as a scientific text. I do not think, however, that Christians differ much on what the passages were trying to say. My opinion: don't take things literally, the Bible is not wrong in what it intends to communicate. Chris
vm0t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Vincent Paul Mulhern) (01/07/91)
> Excerpts from netnews.soc.religion.christian: 24-Dec-90 Is the Holy > Bible 100% corr.. tlijy@cc.curtin.edu.au (2265) > For instance, in Genisis, the universe is said to have been created > in only seven days. Well, everything is possible for almighty God and he > could > have created the universe in 7 days (if 1 day = 24 hours). But according > to > scientific observations and the physical laws which governs the > observable > part of the universe, the universe is certainly not formed in the way > which > is described in the Bible. Yes. A few moments' thought...if God is creating Light and the Heavens (& etc. celestial things) before He created the earth, how could the "1st day" be 24 hrs long? A 'day' is the time for the earth to rotate on its axis. But if there's no physical earth yet... I looked up that Hebrew word for 'day' and other things it means / implies are 'time period' and such. If each of creation's "days" is thought of as that, and not "24 hours" the passage gains a lot of credibility. General guidelines to follow in this sort of situation...when there's a scientific fact that you can't reconcile with the Bible, one of the two is being misunderstood. The Bible has withstood a lot, and, as time passes, improbable things it has said are turning out to be so. (A lot of OT prophecies, for example). Jesus is Lord! Vince Mulhern