Does the "clear meaning" of the scriptures trump science?

If you posted a response which was deleted, it was not deleted by me—and I never saw that response.

Are you sure? Their meaning has been debated within the church for centuries. Indeed, one of the frustrations I hear regularly from seminary students and even experienced pastors is that theologians have yet to provide a clear description of what the Imago Dei (Image of God) means.

The Bible says that humans and all other animals are made from dust (aka soil.) Indeed, the Bible and modern science agree on that. Every person who ever lived was made from dust.

It sounds like you have assumed what has been depicted (or implied) in various Hollywood movies: That formed from the dust describes hands molding clay into a shape—and then some sort of divine mouth-to-mouth resuscitation process. I think that is a actually beautiful imagery but is not the only way theologians have understood the passage. Does God have literal lungs and respiratory anatomy such that he literally breathed life into HAADAM? Or is that simply a literary means of describing the gift of life?

The Bible speaks of NEPHESH animals having “the breath of life”. Does that mean that God simply breathed into them also? Ecclesiastes says that animals were made from dust. So does that mean that they were formed similarly to HAADAM?

Once again you are assuming that your tradition-based interpretation is the only “clear” one.

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Flood Geology, Again

A post was merged into an existing topic: Flood Geology, Again

So God is basically shaped like a primate? God is a bipedal mammal. Right? If that’s not what that means(I of course expect you to disagree), tell me what you think it means and tell me how you know that is what it means.

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The literal interpretation of this is that God picked up dust from ground he was standing on, sqeezed it into the shape of a man, held the man-shaped clump of dust up to his mouth and literally blew the contents of his lungs into the nostrils of the lump of dust, and then this made the dust become alive.

How much of a literalist are you, and how sure are you your degree of literalism is correct? If you think I’m wrong about what that is supposed to mean, please describe how you envision it is to be correctly understood(and again, how you know that is the correct meaning).

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Flood Geology, Again

Good question. After all, if God literally breathed into HAADAM, that implies God has respiratory anatomy—and that stands in contradiction to scriptures which claim that God is a transcendent spirit and not a biological organism. (Indeed, does such a “literal” interpretation run the risk of blaspheming God by reducing him to something far less than he is? Yes, that is a question and not a claim.)

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Of course, one might speculate that when God created Adam, He literally took human form like He is thought to have done when He was Jesus. Then God’s creation of Adam in his own image implies that is why our species looks the way it does.

Now this interpretation is of course compatible with a literal interpretation of scripture. But you know, how much are we allowed to read into things the Bible doesn’t say?(It doesn’t say in what sense “in the image of” or “our likeness” is supposed to be understood, so either way you end up having to read something into it that it doesn’t literally say). It doesn’t say this isn’t how it happened. So why can’t I understand it this way? By what right is this perhaps blasphemous, and some other understanding is not?

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Then you are not being very clear. What, then, is the deception and who is it coming from?

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Yep! If God created logic and reason, He did create me with a mind to figure out the ways in which science may be right and wrong. As @John_Harshman says, the Bible as inspired is not hard to understand…(except if you do not believe - that “fall into sin” part) :wink: I like John; he holds Christians to consistency.

How does that apodosis (the then-clause) logically follow from that protasis (the if-clause?) Seems like a giant leap to me. Not logical at all. (And I know that because God created logic and reason, and he created me with a mind to figure out the ways in which some claims on PS may be right and wrong.)

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This, I suppose, is what I meant:
Spiritual wisdom gives you the ability to discern human wisdom.

1 Corinthians 2

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.[d]

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Psalm 111

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!

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This is more an argument of why an atheist cannot reasonably argue scriptural truth, not why a Christian can argue for or against a scientific principal

This is clearly not the case, spiritual wisdom gives you the ability to discern spiritual truth…not human wisdom. I would argue that spiritual wisdom understands that there is no human wisdom, depending on what human wisdom means. I mean it in biblical terms that there is no wisdom of man that is greater than the wisdom of God.

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I’d agree with you. Thank you for stating it better than I did.

I don’t understand why science and faith are so mutually exclusive. I have not run across any scripture that refutes science. When I was first saved it struck me funny that many of the early “laws” were regarding proper safety and sanitation requirements for food (I was a chef in my former life). So, it seems to me that scripture doesn’t trump science, but rather supports it (specifically in regard to food safety science). There are many instances of the bible stating that something is “bad” in the eyes of God and it turns out science (once it does all the appropriate tests) agrees.

Likewise, I have not seen any science that refutes scripture reasonably. I’m sure you will all throw a bunch of scripture at me and say, “see, what about that.”…to which I will probably provide a reasonable alternate interpretation. My point is that the only reason we find anything contentious is because we don’t understand it fully yet. The truth is found in both science and faith. Neither can trump the other because they are both based on truth.

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Well it depends on whether you’re asking about the particular facts of the matter, or the methods by which those facts are known. The findings of science might conflict with certain scriptural interpretations, so if you insist on the truth of those interpretations, then clearly they are mutually exclusive.
There’s also something to be said about method. How do you determine if what scripture says is true? Well you might do that by doing science. But then you’re doing science, not “faith”.

What is the faith-method anyway? To just believe no matter what? To insist on “scripture is true by definition”? To forever seek alternative interpretations when conflicts arise, and if so, when do you decide to stop doing that? How many synonyms of words will you go through, and how stretched are you going to allow the allegories and metaphors to become, to preserve the consilience between empirical facts and religious texts?

How could it? Suppose you do an observation, or perform some measurement, and then obtain some value. Then you read scripture and it says (or at least implies) something else than what you observe. How could scripture then “refute” the observation? Scripture might perhaps contradict something you’ve observed or measured, but then what do you do? Do you just take scripture to be correct by definition, and disbelieve your lying eyes? Do you now go searching for an alternative way to understand what scripture says?

If you do the latter, how far will you go? If you allow yourself to keep going forever in search of an alternative interpretation that is consistent with observation, have you not then in effect defined scripture to be true no matter what? You are searching for other interpretations because you *then in essence take scripture to be true by definition?

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I am not wrong, and here are your answers.

Joshua (10:12-13),
“The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.”
“The sun and moon stood still in their habitation…”
In Psalms 19:4-6, Ecclesiastes 1:5
“set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs his course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them;”
“The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.”

Response: All of the foregoing verses deal with the earth as a coordinate frame of reference for its inhabitants, a well-established property of physics. With the advent of heliocentricity, the physical coordinates were simply moved to a different frame of reference in the solar system. Both frames of reference are equally valid.

1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, Psalms 96:10
“the world stands firm, never to be moved.”
“Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved,”

Response: In context, these passages make reference to nature rejoicing and flourishing due to the earth’s fixed location. The clear meaning is that the earth will “never be moved” from its orbit around our star as the third terrestrial planet in our system, thus ensuring that days, years, and seasons will remain just as God promised.

Bible has multiple references to
“the foundations of the world,”

Response: The earth was founded just like any building today is established on a foundation. God created it as a differentiated terrestrial planet with a core comprised of a nickel-iron alloy, then built differentiated layers on top of that. Of course, “foundations of the world” also refers to the earth’s established location in our local star system and universe proper.

But of course. Who would have ever thought otherwise?

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Right. This, of course, did not actually occur. If we know anything at all, we know this.

So what do we do? Do we say that I’m wrong and we should totally just believe those two sentences simply because we find them in a book that also contains stories of talking snakes, demonic possessions, and infinite loaves of bread? Or do we say they must mean something else than what they appear to say?

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