There is a well known line from the movie The Princess Bride where the villain continually declares things to be inconceivable. Despite his declarations, everything he claims to be inconceivable is not only conceivable, but in fact comes to pass. This leads the swordsman Inigo Montoya to utter his famous line ‘I do not think it means what you think it means’. (more…)
Let me be clear, I do not see this as a battle between science and religion, I see it as a battle between truth and a patent misconception of what the bible is saying.
There are many students of the bible who read Genesis Chapter 1 to be an account of the creation of the earth and take one of the following approaches to science 1) Genesis matches perfectly with science 2) Our knowledge of the ancient past is still evolving and although it does not match science now, it will soon 3) Science is wrong and any theories promulgated by the scientific community that does not match up with the bible is inspired by the devil. (more…)
Salvation is free according to Paul. Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast”. That may be true, but just because something is free it does not absolve us of any responsibilities. One of my daughters took piano lessons and she did not have to pay a single penny. No amount of practicing on her part would compensate me for the money I handed over to her teacher. It was a free gift. What she did with the gift, however, was entirely up to her. The degree to which these free piano lessons blessed her life was dependent upon how much she worked. (more…)
In the early chapters of the Book of Genesis we have people living for a very long time. Adam lived 930 years (Genesis 5:5), Seth for 912 years (Genesis 5:8), Methuselah lived 969 years (Genesis 5:27) and Noah lived 950 years (Genesis 9:29). I’m not even 50 yet and I am getting aches and pains, I cannot image living 20 times longer. The problem is no matter how you work the science, humans just do not live that long and they never have. I have heard all kinds of arguments for these remarkably long lives. The atmosphere was different soon after the earth was created so people were healthier, there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, or the closer you were to Adam the more pure your DNA and hence you lived longer. These are all stabs in the dark to support a very literal and concrete interpretation of the scriptures. The concern these so-called literalists have, it seems, is if the numbers are figurative then the story is fiction and therefore the bible is all made up, but this is not true. Figurative does not equal fiction. (more…)
In the New Testament we find numerous parables that have become part of our popular culture over the centuries. Jesus taught almost exclusively in parables (Mark 4:34) in order to veil the meaning from the uninspired (Mark 4:12). A parable is a short story through which Jesus taught gospel principle. A parable is referred to as a didactic story because it is intended to teach a moral concept. Many of the parables are hyperbole which means they are an extreme exaggeration to prove a point. I suspect that the original audience would have found great humor in the message, a humor that has been lost over the centuries. The greatest teachers use humor and if Jesus is to be considered the master teacher, we should assume he used humor a fair bit. The Jesuit Priest James Martin explains in a special article to CNN that “one difficulty with finding humor in the New Testament is that what was seen as funny to those living in Jesus’ time may not seem funny to us.” And “Too many Gospel stories have become stale, like overly repeated jokes.” (more…)
I have argued that we should not look at Old Testament stories as either true or fiction. Ancient writers did not look at their environment with the scientifically literate perspective we enjoy. They focused on function. We do this to a degree in our modern language. The term ‘dozen’ does not always mean 12; it is often a function that represents a fairly large group – not so large that you need crowd control, and not so small that they could fit into a smart car. At least not comfortably. Likewise the expression ‘I have told you a thousand times’ – well, you have not told me anywhere close to a thousand times, but the amount ‘1,000’ is used as a function to express the idea that you have told me something more times than any reasonable person should expect to be told. (more…)
Last week I proposed that Genesis 1 is telling a literal story using figurative language, and that this story is expressing the formation of the cosmic temple and not about the formation of the universe and the emergence of life on earth. It is not talking about the material origin of the earth, but the functional origins. How Gods creations bless our lives. Consider how the different days relate to each other: (more…)
When reading Genesis 1, the Creation story, interpretations of the story can generally be classified into three groups:
There is, I have been told, a 1% difference in DNA between humans and Apes. Apes are, arguably, the most intelligent animals on the planet next to humans. I say arguably because hamsters are freaking brilliant Houdinis. Apes have been studied for their ability to use simple tools and can be taught to communicate through basic sign language. Their limitation is that they cannot see beyond themselves. They are not able to ask questions about the world around them because, as far as they are concerned, everything they observe is exactly what everybody else observes. Humans, up until the age of about 4, have the same limitation. It does not occur to them that someone else has a different perspective. (more…)
