YEC Appeals to Anti-religious Atheist Hermenutics

Continuing the discussion from Rauser: What’s Wrong with YEC:

This happens often enough that perhaps it’s unremarkable. Still, a YEC appealing to an anti-religious atheist on hermeneutics? That’s jumping the shark.

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I appealed to him as a hostile witness; he doesn’t think the Bible is correct, but he’s willing to say “yes, this is clearly the intended meaning of the text.” I don’t think it’s jumping the shark at all, and he’s certainly by no means the only hostile witness out there saying the same thing.

Yup. And perhaps that’s why you should not mirror their understanding of the text. That’s a good sign you missed something big.

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It certainly is.

Ken Ham does it regularly. He loves to quote Richard Dawkins and how he and the atheist biologist agree that the Book of Genesis totally contradicts the Theory of Evolution and renders “theistic evolution” and “evolutionary creationists” utterly ridiculous. Ham has looked to Dawkins for hermeneutics reinforcement for years now.

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Such disrespect. Tsk. Perhaps atheists, having no vested interest in any particular interpretation, can be more objective in their judgments of the meaning of Genesis that a Christian who assumes a priori that Genesis must be true, whatever the interpretation needed to make it so.

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I was discussing anti-religious atheists, not all atheists :slight_smile:

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I’m an anti-religious atheist. Perhaps you’re talking about me?

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Are you? We seem to get along just fine. You have quite the interest in religious things for being so anti-religious If that is what you are.

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Why not? Hate the sin, love the sinner.

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What city do you live in? Hope we get a chance to meet in person some day :slight_smile:

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San Jose. Feel free to look me up when you’re in the neighborhood.

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I’m 25 minutes north on 880. Go figure

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I have a fun God’s providence story about when I was in San Jose. (Maybe later… it’s early a.m. here. :slightly_smiling_face:)

Maybe you should describe what you think it means to be “anti-religious”? I am not a priori anti-religious. You seem to be insinuating that I can’t be trusted to give a reasonable interpretation of religious scriptures because I am somehow inclined to give it the most uncharitable interpretation one can think of. Which is just wrong I’m sorry to say. Rather, I just happen to have realized how religious people allow themselves almost infinite leeway of rationalization to maintain the “truth” of scripture even in the face of rather obvious contradictions with the real world. I realized that is how I myself maintained my religious belief long after I should have admitted it was without merit.

If there was good evidence some particular religion (or at least some claims made by that religion) was true, I’d be pro-that-religion, or at least that claim.

When the Bible describes the existence of the city of Babylon, I am not anti-Babylonian or anti-the-Bible merely because the Bible mentions that city. There happens to be really good evidence that Babylon existed, and indeed still does. If I was anti-religious in the sense you are implying, should I not perhaps be trying to come up with some way to interpret Biblical mentions of the city of Babylon in ways that are not consistent with archaeological evidence?

Some things depicted in the Bible are entirely reasonable and accurate, other things are unreasonable, and some things are inaccurate, and I have no particular stakes in which parts of it are as such. I don’t think it’s all bullshit just because it’s in the Bible. But I’m also not socially and emotionally invested in trying to find less reasonable, alternative ways of understanding and rationalizing scriptures when I find that they contradict real-world evidence.

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