That is true to an extent.Audie wrote:Observing from outside the loop, one gets the impression that most feel Gods word is what they say it is.
At the same time it isn't really a "free for all".
There are exegetical rules to follow, similar to scientific rules if you will...
I don't know if my following message will interest you much, but it should at least provide some insight to you as an outsider.
Some main rules for Christians who believe in the truth of Scripture would come under the "historical-grammatical" method.
This interpretative method attempts to understand what the original authors and hearers would have understood.
Such a method does have its weaknesses, but I'll be elaborating on this in another thread hopefully sooner rather than later.
If you asked me whether YEC is a valid interpretation of Scripture though, I'd answer that it is an acceptable interpretation.
I do see some confusing Scriptural aspects like the Sun not being created until day 4 and yet we have "evening and morning" for the first three days.
What does the author then mean or intend by the phrase "evening and morning"?
YECs might then say that the first three "days" are to be taken as symbolic time i.e., 24 hours.
OECs would obviously reason otherwise.
Now where I see a YEC interpretation as a fairly acceptable interpretation of Scripture, YECs will often reject the Day-Age (an OEC) interpretation as being invalid.
Ironically, when charged with the accusation that we compromise God's word YECs often submit into the debate that are extra-biblical (outside of Scripture).
For example, "it was never a traditional view", "it is a modern century evolvement", "you're reading science into the text", "early Christian thought never believed in an Old Earth", etc.
Such thinking commits the genetic fallacy. These extra-biblical arguments are irrelevant to what is or is not an acceptable interpretation.
If everything ever known about Christianity or Scripture should be found in the past, why then Christians ought to just stop practicing theology.
The way I see matters when reading text, is that there a many ways we can interpret words -- whether talking Scripture or even just a letter from someone.
As I take Scripture seriously, I cast out a net to work out what possible interpretations could be had around a particular text.
YEC and Day-Age interpretations treat the text most literally, and are most often debated here since there are many YECs and GodandScience.org advocates a Day-Age interpretation.
But, then there are other interpretations like the Framework hypothesis that may also be acceptable to me (as long as one can justify their method of interpretation I'm fine with that!).
What I would reject is just a treating a message to mean whatever regardless of any true rules or methods of interpretation.
That is what I mean when I say finding meaning in Scripture is not a "free for all".
After discovering some possible interpretations, I then look to other sources of truth.
This might be other passages in Scripture, it might be logical reasoning, it might be what previous authorities in the past thought, it might be what I intuit to be the case, but it could also be knowledge about the natural world.
Based upon the physical world, it seems there was lots of carnivorous activity long before humanity arrived.
We also know a lot of our natural resources like oil and the like are due to organic matter being compressed and heat and the like over millions of years.
There are many dating methods used to try and determine the age of Earth and the universe.
Many arguments based upon nature and reason rule out the YEC interpretation.
OEC interpretations are the only other alternatives.
Such an approach I believe takes both Scripture and Science seriously on their own terms.
What I'm not doing is taking outside evidence and reading it into the text as many YECs would claim.
Rather I am reading in the text the range of positions allowable, and then taking that to what we know about the world.
In fact, in my own personal life I came to a non-YEC position based upon Scripture alone.
This was prior to having any real Earth science knowledge or really caring much about science.