That’s so cool you met Stephen Hawking. He is a truly brilliant man. I can’t help but wonder why he would have changed his mind during the past 25ish years.

Rick:

Science is wrong about evolution? Since when? It has been demonstrated correct thousands of times. And, while we’re at it, abiogenesis has also been demonstrated as possible.

Is it a sin to believe that Jesus was just a wise man, not even a prophet? Is it also a sin to believe that all religions (Christianity included this time) are wrong and evil? Is it also a sin to enslave people, putting them on ships to work for years, until they die? How about outright killing people who join your religion then leave? If so, being a Scientologist would be a sin. In fact, it would invoke the only unforgivable sin (Mark 3:28–29). So, using the bible, we have determined that Scientology is a sin. By a similar token, so would almost every other religion on the planet, including Islam. Yet, despite the fact that all these religions are growing and Christianity is waning, the world’s population is seeing an increase in the overall average life expectancy. This is especially true in Europe, where the BBC reports Islam to be its fastest growing religion and Christianity to be in a state of definite decline. We must then pose the question:

If sin is accountable for a “short” lifespan, why are we seeing an increased life expectancy throughout the world, directly proportional to an increase in the numbers of sinners and heathens?

Now, to make one more point, I’d like to show that you state the bible is to be taken literally. I’d also like to show you a couple of bible verses:

Matthew 5:17
Deuteronomy 21:18–21

I chose to give a general search that displays multiple translations because I want you to have your preference in version as reference. Feel free to look these verses up in your own hard-copy, if you like. If the tool I used isn’t working properly, please do look it up in your preferred method.

In the first verse, Jesus states that he is not there to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. So, the old Jewish laws, according to Jesus, still hold solid (except for the one where he is the final–and ultimate–sacrifice). I then pointed to one of those old laws. It states that unruly children who disobey their parents should be taken to the edges of town and stoned to death by the community. Therefore, this is still an acceptable practice. Here’s another fun one:

Gen. 24:34–35
Leviticus 25:44–46
Exodus 21:1–32
1 Tim. 6:1–2
Eph. 6:5–9
Luke 12:41–48

So, we can plainly see that it is alright, perhaps even encouraged, to own other people, especially people from other lands. Furthermore, there are numerous occasions where slaves should be beaten, killed, tortured, branded, or sold (at a decent price, I might add). We’re talking about owning another human being, beating another human being, branding another human being, and killing another human being. Are you proposing that this is still good behaviour that we should admire and long for? I propose, from logical deduction, that Jesus thinks it was wrong to abolish slavery in the US (and many other countries that abolished slavery). I also propose that taking the bible literally 100% of the time, without ever bending one’s own will about the book, is a terrible practice with even more horrid consequences.

Dave, Stephen Hawking briefly attended St Andrews Street Baptist Church in Cambridge during the late 80s where I was a deacon and went to a housegroup. The sons of his then-new wife, Elaine,were at school with my son. Ther’s only one Stephen Hawking in Cambridge …

I apologize for assuming incorrectly (though partially correctly) in statements regarding your first post. Thank you for your very well-written merger of science and religion, admitting that science works and may be used to describe how biblical creation works.

Now, for your account of Stephen Hawking…I find it difficult to believe. This is one area where I am a skeptic. Although it is possible you did meet him in church and that he does have theistic ideas, he has previously stated himself to be a deist. Here is a concise article showcasing the opinions of which I was aware: http://www.everythingispointless.com/2007/01/what-does-stephen-hawking-believe.html

Are you sure it is the same Stephen Hawking? I don’t mean to sound condescending or rude. It is possible that he is a man with a similar device (and appearance), claiming to be Hawking.

As for if you are in the Legions of the Damned, I’m fairly certain most would consider me to be in their numbers also. Perhaps we can have coffee and discuss our wrongdoings after the rapture (a la the “Left Behind” series of books).

Science is wrong about evolution; it can be wrong about the age of the Earth. I find it far more likely that the supposed age of the earth is the result of the rapid degradation of creation due to the curse of sin — the same effects which cause us to die off at ~70 years when in the early days of Genesis lifespans were many times longer than that.

We also don’t see an “evolution” of belief in the Old Testament; it is mistake and folly to expect the earliest Jews to have had a full understanding of Yahweh — as full as can be expected, anyway. If they already knew everything, there would have been no point in continued revelation, now would there?

And I find it telling that you’re willing to interpret Scripture based upon false religions. That sort of twisting and misinterpreting of God’s Word has been present ever since the Garden of Eden, so I’d be careful with it.

It is interesting that Satan attacks the literalness of God’s Word; it’s almost as if he wants us to not take God at face value. That’s quite a contrast to Jesus’ steadfast adherence to the literalness of Scripture without any hint of it being anything less. Why let scientists — even Mr. Hawking, who I greatly admire — or (worse) liberal theologians tell us what God really meant when the Scriptures and the church down through the ages have given no other indication other than God’s Word being true as is?

I’m approaching this from a different position from both of you. I didn’t say, Rick, that God ripped off pagan religions; I said that the Jewish writers absolutely and deliberately did when writing Genesis in order to make a polemical point about whose God rocks! You have to take literary history seriously; when you’ve got a piece of writing (Genesis 1) that refers so closely to an older text (the Babylonian creation story; when that older story has a 9 day creation and the biblical one follows the same literary formula (‘God said, “Let us make …” So God created … and God called … then there was evening and morning, the nth day …”) but compresses it into 7 days, then you surely have to conclude that something deliberate is happening here. What is that? It’s the affirmation that Yahweh is the author of creation, not the Babylonian gods! And furthermore, the 6 days + sabbath rest is Yahweh’s order of things for the whole of created reality.

We need to take the Bible seriously as it is and not try and force it into some foregin mould — however well-intentioned. The Bible is the Word of God as it is, and not because it conforms to some 21st century theory of what any book claiming to be the Word of God has to exhibit. Taking Genesis literally is not being faithful to the Bible; it is imposing an anachronistic scheme on it. If we take it literally, we would have to conclude that the world was created 6,000 years ago, when we know it is, in fact millions of years old. We can’t ‘cherry pick’ with science ie make full use of computer technology and Thesis hooks etc when we want to, but write it off as ‘wrong’ or satanic when it doesn’t conform to a creation story that is told as a political and theological polemic against another religious/political power!

Science (and in this case cosmology) doesn’t undermine the Bible because the creation story is a piece of literature, not a textbook on cosmology. I have discussed this with Stephen Hawking (whom I know from church); he says ‘I can tell you how the world was made through science; science cannot tell us who made it! The Bible does.’

We need to recognise that the Old Testament spans some 4,000 years. Within those texts, we see an evolution in belief from the belief that each tribe had its own god, who was pitted against rival gods through earthly battles, to the realisation that there is only one God, Yahweh, and that all the other ‘gods’ are human creations. Interestingly, we see that the belief in the afterlife came very late in the Old Testament period; for most of the time covered there, people believed that this life was all there was.

The problem with fundamentalism is that it tries to squeeze the Bible into an alien framework and make it say things very different from what it actually does.

Here’s the test, Rick: if I’m right (and with me, generations of scholars who have devoted their lives to the study of the Bible as the Word of God), would that shatter your faith in either the authority of the Bible or in God? Would God be diminished? If so, it seems to me a sign that you’re on shaky ground, and that open, honest enquiry into the Bible would be very dangerous for faith. I prefer to think that that sort of faith is misplaced; it doesn’t, for my money, take the Bible seriously on its own terms, for all the heat and invective about ‘believing what the Bible says’.

Hope that clarifies what I’ve been trying to say. Or does it relegate me to the ‘legions of the damned’?

Now, I’m not one to put words into someone else’s mouth; I will give my own. In regards to your interpretation of Lawrence’s comment, I don’t believe he was saying that god ripped off any pagans. The Bible refers to The Elohim, which is an old Hebrew word for “God”. However, what people often overlook is that this term is plural. Hence, it is entirely possible (in conjunction with the first of the ten commandments) that Yahweh was there at the creation with other Gods. Apologists usually turn around and say that “Elohim” refers to the trinity. However, since it is a Hebrew word, in a Jewish text, we can infer from their disbelief in the trinity that it is intended to mean other gods. The bible doesn’t say everything about everything. It is far too short to be absolutely complete on every detail. Hence, it is also possible that these other gods were created by Yahweh. It is also possible that they were created separately. However, it is clear that the bible acknowledges the existence of other gods. Since the general idea is that god is omniscient, we can assume that he would have known about these other gods and could have inspired writings about them. It is pure speculation, but it is a logical conclusion.

My response was assuming that you were an apologist who acknowledges the historical evidence showing that the bible was once much larger and that many sacred teachings were never put into writing. Evidence shows that, when the Jewish people compiled their texts, as when the Christians compiled theirs, they reviewed the books first. They put it into context of what was being preached most in the synagogues, cults, and churches. The anthology was then bound as a general guidebook of what to talk about. Meanwhile, the other texts (which often do a great deal of explaining holes people point out) existed in libraries, still part of the sacred writings, but not part of what people speak most often. While they used to be accepted heavily, most people never heard of them, and dismiss them out of hand without giving it a second-thought. This gives the illusion that they aren’t accepted. Yet, they are still technically valid.

An example of the clean explanation given by some of these books may be seen in The Book of Enoch. It answers the question “Where did giants enter into the picture?” (Nephilim, if you prefer that translation). The fallen angels (still holy angels at the time–called “Sons of God” in Genesis 6) were led by the angel Azrael to rape the women of Earth. God cast them out of Heaven and to the Earth, as well as other punishments. Some became fallen angels. Some were known as demons. And, the women bore their children, making the giants. This is commonly accepted amongst many modern churches, since the discovery of the Book of Enoch. Yet, most people have never read it. It gets quite dry at points, I assure you.

But, please. Do not accuse me of using dusty old tomes of fiction to back my point. You, sir, are the one appealing to an ancient book for the origin of humans. I am simply trying to make your apologetic make more sense and less of an appeal to incestuous offspring and broken covenants. It makes more sense that god would create many people in many lands and Cain would be banished to their lands than it does that the entirety of the 6 billion people on the planet were the products of many generations of extremely close incest, the kind that has destroyed small tribes in the past.

“Inbreeding” wasn’t a sin until the giving of the Law of Moses. There was no reason why it needed to be; the human genome was pure and there was no risk involved to the offspring. Only after a few generations did sin start to take its toll on the genetic code.

Likewise, we have no idea how many children Adam and Eve ultimately had, and we’re not even told that Cain and Abel were their first two. Cain feared retribution from his family, plain and simple. No need to go digging up uninspired, pseudopigraphical books to defend a position which fails to pass muster when tried against God’s Word.

Furthermore, if you delved into the writings left out of the Bible (and the books left in the bible but for other Christian denominations), as well as reading the book of Genesis, you will realize that the story states other people living outside Eden.

Genesis 4:13–15 states that Cain was afraid he would be killed by others while wandering (as his punishment). God marked him so that others would know not to kill him.

So, Cain’s wife was obviously from these other people not mentioned in the Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth, et al. Other texts point to Cain’s wife being Adam’s first wife, Lilith. These texts were removed because people didn’t like talking about them and hearing them. They wanted to hear and believe that all humanity started in one small place with two people, making us all the products of inbreeding.

If you’re going to write an apologetic of the bible, why not dig up some of the old books that were removed before being satisfied with the tired idea that god created all humans to be inbred?

:)

It’s a funny thing about parables in the Bible; they’re usually called out as being such. We know Jesus told parables, and we know that no one then referenced back to the events of the parable as historical facts. The creation account is different; it was reported without any indication of it being in any way false or untrue, and it was later referenced by numerous people (not the least of which being the author Moses and Christ) as historical event, as historical precedent for Law, for marriage, and so on.