Science, the Bible, affirmation, and accomodation to culture

Psalm 104:5 He laid the foundations of the earth,
    that it should not be moved forever.
13b The earth is filled with the fruit of your works.
19 He appointed the moon for seasons.
    The sun knows when to set.
24 Yahweh, how many are your works!
    In wisdom have you made them all.
    The earth is full of your riches. (World English Bible, public domain)

This is from probably the greatest nature poem ever written, Psalm 104. Poetry is often not meant to be taken literally. That doesn’t mean that it is in error. It can speak truth, often in ways that straightforward prose cannot.

The Old Testament accommodated the culture of the day. If David had said, in verse 5, “The earth is in a stable orbit around the sun,” instead of “it shall not be moved forever,” he, nor others of his day, would have understood that. But David accommodated the culture of his day*. The Bible even accommodates the culture of OUR day. The sun really doesn’t set (verse 19). The earth rotates so that the sun appears to set. God knows that, of course, but He didn’t make David write that, and doesn’t correct us if we talk about the sun setting or rising! 

This post owes a lot to one by John Walton,  “Does the Bible Contain Errors?” Walton doesn’t think so, because, to him, an error would be some wrong thing that the Bible affirms.The Bible doesn’t affirm that the earth has four corners. It's not trying to teach geology and astronomy. The Bible just makes poetic statements which had meaning to the culture and beliefs of the time.

Walton writes: “Throughout the Bible, we find constant accommodation to the way that people thought in the ancient world. In the realm of science, the Bible makes no claims that transcend what someone in the ancient world would have thought and believed. They believed in a geocentric universe with a flat earth at the center, and the Bible speaks in those terms; but the Bible does not affirm this particular cosmic geography.”

*Other examples: Isaiah 11:12 and Revelation 11:1 say that the earth has four corners.

Sunspots 466

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Health: From the Guardian, an article about how homeopathy, and various other non-traditional medications, may not work, but they give patients the feeling that someone is paying attention, and cares, which they may not get from the regular medical community.
 
Science: From Science, a report on how an amoeba, or ameba, can live inside you and eat your cells.

From US News and other outlets, a report on how women who "lacked or had an underdeveloped vagina and uterus" were treated with a lab-grown replacement, cultured from their own tissue, and the resulting replacement vaginas worked normally. Amazing.

Yes, your eyes (and brain) do influence how much you eat, and National Public Radio reports on some experimental evidence for that.

Wired sets forth the case for the earth revolving around the sun, rather than the reverse. (Lest you think than no one acts like the earth is the center of the universe, how long has it been since you said that the sun "rises?" (or "sets?") That's language suggesting that the sun travels around the earth.

Sports: Sports Illustrated notes that Breanna Stewart, perhaps the best player in women's college basketball, signed her letter of intent to play at Connecticut (who just finished an undefeated season, including the national title) on the hood of her car in a parking lot. She's not one for fanfare, for sure.


Image source (public domain)

Al Mohler's argument for a young earth

Some Christians say that most, or all, ancient theologians believed in a young earth. He Lives pokes some serious holes in that argument, this time as given by Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler.

I'll repeat the arguments in my own words.

Mohler: Ancient theologians believed in a young earth, and so should we.

He Lives: So what? They had no reason to believe anything else. And, not only did ancient theologians believe in a young earth, but they believed that the earth was the center of the universe. By Mohler's logic, we should also believe in geocentrism, which Mohler presumably does not believe.

Read He Lives. Thanks.

A report on the Geocentrism Conference

I previously noted here that there was to be a Catholic Conference on Geocentrism, which latter is the idea that the planets rotate around the earth, not the sun. (And probably more non-standard ideas, depending on which flavor of geocentrist you are.)

Todd Wood attended that conference, and has been reporting on his impressions over the past few days. (See here for final report, with links to the previous ones.) As I (and he) expected, he was not convinced, but he did give the conference, and its speakers, a respectful hearing. Most modern scientists would never have attended, let alone been respectful. Based on Wood's report, some of the supposed scientists who are geocentrists don't seem to know what science is all about.

Even though we say that the sun rises in the East, it doesn't. The earth rotates, so that the sun appears to rise. Let's not forget that. There is abundant evidence for it. There is no compelling reason to believe that the Bible is trying to teach anything contrary. It does, as we still do, use language that seems to be geocentric.

Thanks for reading. Read Wood's blog.

Sunspots 280

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Science:  In case you want to know, CNN tells us what to do if  body parts become detached.

I wish this was in the humor category, but it isn't. There's to be a conference on geocentrism -- the view that the earth is the center of the universe. The headline on the main page says "Galileo was Wrong."

NPR reports on the largest, strongest spider web known. (There's a photo.)

Image source (public domain)

The sun does NOT revolve around the earth!

You may have thought that the title statement was unnecessary. So did I. But not so, I'm afraid.

It has come to my attention that there is a conference, planned for November of this year, which conference has an on-line flyer that begins thus: "Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right." Oh?

There are some scriptures that can be taken to indicate that the earth does not move in space, and everything moves around it. These include the story of Joshua's long day, and also Psalm 93:1 and 96:10, which say that the earth cannot be moved. (However, Psalm 99:1 says that it can be moved.) For a more complete list of Bible passages which have been taken to support Geocentrism, the idea that the sun revolves around the earth, see the Wikipedia article on Modern Geocentrism.

The Bible was written for people who believed that the earth was the center of the universe. It would have been strange, in the days when it was written, to proclaim that it wasn't, in the Psalms, or in other places. Many of the verses that say that the earth is fixed are poetic, and, hence, should be taken as literal only with great care. The rest of them can be taken to mean that the earth is fixed in its orbit around the sun, or as being written to be compatible with the scientific views of the day. When Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, God knew what Joshua wanted, and, somehow, made it happen. Joshua would never have said "Earth, please stop rotating!" He didn't know that it does rotate. (I don't claim to know what actually happened when Joshua prayed as he did. Something miraculous must have occurred.) Galileo, and, since his time, many other astronomers, have shown, by many kinds of evidence, that the earth is not the center of the solar system (or of the universe). The Catholic church, which, at one time, officially disagreed with Galileo, has come to accept that he was right about this. (See the Wikipedia on Galileo, and also here.)

One of the ways God reveals Himself to us is through nature. (See Psalm 19:1-4, Romans 1:20). Much of what we know about nature is through the findings of science. If scientific findings tell us that the earth is not the center of the solar system, we'd better take that seriously, even if the Bible seems not to agree. In this case, most Christians have come to see that there is not a real disagreement. Unfortunately, not all of them have.

Thanks for reading.

Concordism, a barrier to Christian acceptance of science

Steve Martin writes an important blog, entitled "An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution." A recent post, by guest writer Jordan Mallon, strikes me as particularly important.

In this post, Mallon considers the idea of what he calls concordism, namely that "God revealed to the authors of Scripture scientific facts about the universe that could not otherwise have been known to them at the time." Mallon does not believe this, although he says it is an unexamined presupposition of many conservative Christians. Instead, he believes that the writers of the Bible were limited to their own knowledge, the scientific knowledge of the time, when writing. Why does Mallon think this? His main evidence is the question of geocentrism, the idea that the earth is the center of the universe. This was the common belief for centuries, perhaps millenia, until the 16th century. One reason that it was believed, beside the fact that the earth does appear to be fixed, and other things, such as the sun and moon, revolving around it, is scripture. Mallon lists 11 passages, all from the Old Testament, that appear to have been written by persons who believed in geocentrism.

Perhaps the most frequently discussed of those passages is one from Joshua, wherein Joshua is said to have commanded the sun and moon to stand still. I don't know what happened then. Whatever it was, it was a miracle. As the link in the first sentence of this paragraph will show, no less than Answers in Genesis, an organization that is often accused of taking the Bible too literally, does not believe that this passage teaches geocentrism. (I have posted here on the unfortunate false rumor that NASA has proved the story in Joshua is true. The fact that NASA hasn't proved it doesn't mean that it didn't happen.) Mallon's point, of course, is that the ancient writers did not write as if they had been given special scientific knowledge. As he says, "we now appreciate that God sometimes accommodates His message to the limitations of human understanding." He calls this accomodation.

Mallon draws a conclusion, namely that the first part of Genesis may also be coming to us through the filter of the scientific knowledge of the writer, and the the knowledge available to the hearers or listeners that Genesis was first presented to, and, therefore, a belief in speciation by natural selection, and perhaps even the origin of larger groups of organisms by this mechanism, may not really conflict with scripture at all.

The post by Mallon covers two other topics, almost as important. I suggest that you read his post. Thanks for reading this one.

See my next post, for a concrete Biblical example.