Many of you are aware of my preoccupation with Genesis. It is both a blessing and a curse, but a good kind of curse.
Said preoccupation, naturally, results in my reading a lot about Genesis. I am forever grateful to the publishers who have provided books for me to review at my request, and I am especially thankful to those who have taken the initiative to ask me to review books related to Genesis.
From much of this recent reading, several thoughts have emerged (most are obvious):
Efforts to reconcile the “creation” account in Genesis with “science” are futile, if fun to read. There is far too big a gap between the ancient Israelite culture and language and present-day Western culture and English to even know all that is meant by Genesis 1 & 2, much less prove what we cannot know. Absent a Mosaic or Pauline revelation from the Lord Himself (which I am still anxiously anticipating, whereafter I will immediately post all the answers), I’m afraid we will always be left wondering.
We shouldn’t stop wondering. The futility in seeking answers to ultimately unanswerable questions is no reason to stop asking. There are plenty of lessons to be learned short of, but probably more important than, the actual who’s, what’s, when’s and where’s (why’s deliberately excluded because we should know the why’s).
Fighting about it is also pointless. And we should stop that. Honestly, has anyone ever been converted by argument. Christian’s bashing anything or anyone acknowledging scientific evidence as such doesn’t help our cause.
No theory is exactly right, but maybe none of them are entirely wrong either. And isn’t that really the beauty of the Bible, generally, and Genesis, particularly. Do these ideas have to be exclusive of the others? Certainly not. The array of plausible ideas is perhaps the best evidence of a God worthy of our praise and His multi-dimensional Word worthy of our study.
#1 by Jason on July 14, 2010 - 4:48 pm
That your preoccupation with Genesis is both a blessing and a curse is rather funny, considering that both are major motifs throughout the book!
#2 by Peter on July 15, 2010 - 10:56 am
Indeed.
#3 by divinelogos on November 17, 2010 - 2:01 am
Ultimately people are going to believe whatever they’re going to believe regardless of arguments. I enjoy a lively discussion and I do feel compelled to be persuasive (2 Cor 5:11). I personally believe the creation account in Genesis is a divine revelation, not merely one story among many created by purely human invention. I understand that there’s a gulf of time, language and culture between us and Moses, but I don’t believe that gulf is so large as to be unbridgable. Also I’d like to mention that I do not believe science is in conflict with Genesis. I do believe that the naturalism philosophy of evolution (microbe to man) is not science at all nor do I believe real science can prove or disprove either Creation or evolution. Both are past, both unrepeatable, and both are unfalsafiable. Science is about cause and effect. Scientists are humans who apply the scientific method within the limits of their philosophies – whether naturalists or creationists. It becomes a religious problem when naturalism is presented as science and people are told to choose between “reason” and religion. That’s a false choice because naturalism is not reason, it is philosophy. Scripture and the biblical creation account are completely reasonable. If they were not I would have abandoned my faith long ago. Many others have because they were persuaded of the lie that scripture is no more than moral allegory or fairy tale. Real science – study of cause/effect relationships – provides far more “support” for belief in a relative young planet in accordance with Genesis than it does for millions or billions of years. Anyway, I look forward to reading more of your posts on this topic and commenting where I feel led. Thanks for this thought provoking post.