August wrote:Equally respectfully, I think there is a pretty big "so what" in there. The relationship between science and religion is currently somewhat strained, and I think we need to carefully assess how to make sense out of that complex relationship.
I personally also believe in an old earth, based on the fact that I cannot find any Scriptural support for a young earth. we are delaing with origin science here, which is similar in nature to evolution, which is why I conflate the two.
The best tool I have come across to help me navigate through this is in this little schematic.
.............................................God
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..................................Bible......=......Nature
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..................................Man's Interpretation
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.................................Theology...//....Science
The schema shows that God is the source of Special Revelation (the Bible) and General Revelation (Nature) and as such we should expect that where the two overlap, they should be in complete agreement. I believe by faith that that is the case.
The problem is that we as humans do not deal with the "Bible" and "Nature" directly. We deal with it through the lens of our understanding, our culture, our language, our teaching, our learning, our experiences etc. etc. In coming to the Scripture with all of this we form an understanding or interpretation of what the text says. Or we accept what others teach us the text says and make that understanding our own. That is our theology.
We do the same thing with nature. The primary methodology in a formal sense to do that is the scientific method. That ultimately only deals with the physical elements, but as a methodology we are tempted to extrapolate and infer more and come to some conclusions. This is where "science" and "theology" begin to overlap and we find there is not the agreement we would expect between the Bible and Nature.
Why? Our interpretation is infused into BOTH.
Young Earth Creationists, tend to minimize this process in terms of their theology and thus confuse their theology as equating to the Bible itself. They correspondingly see science as a threat and are prepared to reject it as they cannot make it reconcile with their theology.
In fairness, while I think Old Earth Creationists do this to a lesser degree, it would be fair to say, that there is a temptation in our attempt to reconcile the two, to be too quick to accept science and thus leap to modify our theology.
More to the point, those who accept science primarily have a tendency to look at theology and the Bible and presume that because there are theologies from the Bible that conflict with their presumed knowledge that the Bible itself must be wrong. You even have some that look beyond science to nature itself and deify it as in pantheism. Obviously its a small portion and this existed before science did, so it's just an observation.
The issue for me in terms of an OEC position is not evolution. It is a simple matter of how old the earth is based upon measurements based primarily, if not exclusively, in physical measurements of such things as:
1. The speed of light, measured distances and red shifting within the spectrum of that light.
2. Ice core drillings that correlate with volcanic trace markers from similar cores in other locations that provide physical evidence going further back than the 10,000 years postulated in YEC teaching.
3. Radiometric measurements based upon set decay rates and half-lives.
I agree that we see confirmation of the age of the earth from these, and other, measurements. But what would your position have been if the criptures clearly stated that the earth was thousands, rather than billions of years old, while these measurements remained consistent?
Obviously a hypothetical. I don't believe the scripture states either way, how old the earth is, nor do I believe it ever intends to do so. There's certainly nothing in scripture that places a measurement. Frankly, the Hebrew mind would not have even asked the question.
But for the record, I accept on faith what the Bible says and as I believe it to be the inspired, inerrant word of God, I would accept any such statement made regardless of scientific information to the contrary.
The corollary of that is that I believe nature to declare the glory of God and to testify to His power and creation. The Bible is entirely true. However, not all truth is in the Bible. Where the Bible remains silent on an issue, I believe it is a perfectly legitimate practice to examine nature to discover the truth about it.
You're quite right that the further removed we get from hard evidence of something and apply our thinking, reasoning, interpretation of the facts etc the more we need to be aware that we are consciously or unconsciously arranging and building those facts to fit within our preconceived framework. We can modify that framework if we choose, but it is human nature to resist any such change in favor of maintaining a certain level of comfort within our sphere of belief and presumed knowledge.
Right, that is the creative leap. I am somewhat afraid that we are so conditioned to rely on the empirical and further very comfortable to either accept or creativly induce our own theories, that we tend to first do that and then seek for ways to fit that in a Biblical framework. As I mentioned before, I view theistic evolution in that light.
There is that temptation. However, as I've illustrated above, there is that element too within our theology. We can take a theological premise and then seek to force all of Scripture into that Systematic approach. There should be, in my opinion, some level of flexibility and openess on both fronts to adjust where good reason exists to do it.
This more than anything else is why I've determined in my Christian walk and understanding to embrace a certain level of mystery. It stems from my belief that God is infinite. I am finite, and there are some things that will remain beyond my complete understanding until God Himself chooses to increase my understanding.
The issue I see in this narrow application, is that you have a broad base of scientific professionals, across many disciplines, who represent a multitude of world-views and beliefs, (including incidentally Christianity) who have overwhelmingly come to the conclusion that the earth is old.
Without descending into a swamp of skepticism, I hardly see the popularity of a theory as evidence of its correctness. There have been many popular theories that have been spectacularly wrong. I would rather say that we can, via deduction from our absolute source of the truth about origins, understand that the earth is indeed old, that there is no credible Scriptural framework that describes a young earth, and that the induction from observations seem to confirm that.
I can agree with that. Popularity is not absolute proof. Galileo's experience proved that and unfortunately at that time, the popular majority position was rooted on the theology side of the spectrum.
Set against them, you have a relatively small number of Young Earth Creationist scientists (and these scientists are for the most part not the primary promoters of YEC teaching and interpretation) who start with the presupposition that the earth is young, because they have a felt need for it to be right based upon their world-view and interpretation of Genesis.
Agreed. And the burden of proof for their worldview and assumptions lie with them. I personally think it may be an evangelical perspective, that if somehow it can be shown that the earth is young, it will prove the existence of God.
I think you've hit upon the major issue.
By drawing this line in the sand however, they have surrendered the ability to learn and modify their position, as they've created a paradigm that God Himself has not deigned to reveal Himself to men by.
Further, you have many within that group who either are not aware or are not willing to admit that their position is based upon their interpretation of the text. Those many equate their hermeneutic with the text itself and in effect proclaim themselves as the defenders of orthodoxy and relegate any who disagree with them, including Christians who agree with them on all other cardinal points of orthodoxy such as the inerrency and inspiration of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the Trinity, etc. etc. as heretics and have proactively sought to remove any such from ministry, teaching etc and then further have elevated this to a social and educational issue which has, in my opinion resulted in the alienation of many from the cause of Christ who otherwise might be inclined to listen to the message of the Gospel.
Yes, but I hardly think that the power of the gospel can be undermined by something as relatively trivial as the age of the earth. You are right though, it may put some roadblocks in the way.
Agreed. The world will always point to the Gospel as foolishness regardless of Christian's efforts. It behooves us however, to not create barriers where none need exist.
I'll concede that any human has bias, presuppositions and that it is arguable that any truly nuetral position from the perspective of the person making it, may be unattainable.
Ok.
Despite that, you have hard data, from multiple disciplines, being interpretted and observed by multiply trained people, with a broad spectrum of world views, all coming to similar conclusions.
Again, this is where the crunch comes in. No-one disputes the hard data, but we have many different conclusions from the same data. I will also argue that the prevailing theories influence worldviews, so that it becomes a series of self-fulfilling "truths". Kuhn was the one who forst confirmed that, concluding that it takes something akin to a religious experience to change the existing scientific paradigms. So while there may be similar conclusions reached across a broad spectrum, it is all within the the same pre-existing paradigm, which may or may not be true. How do we determine the truth value of those theories?
Further, the primary objection against such a consensus is a particular hermeneutic of passages of scripture which when examined in terms of history and validity today has been interpretted prior to these scientific findings as allowing for greater periods of time.
Yes, but what came first? Good thing we know that form the earliest days an old earth was accepted.
There is no question that science by its very nature often raises more questions than it answers.
At some point however, you have to be willing to set aside the ambiguity and philosophical use of uncertainty issues to accept some hard facts and evidences.
This is an area where I believe the physical evidence is overwhelming is several different areas of science.
In view of the fact that Scripture is silent on the actual age and allowance exists within the text itself for an old earth understanding and such an understanding was indeed present well before such scientific developments, I see no conflict and no reason to raise significant doubts on this issue.
Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin. ~ Dan Allender
