D
Duder
Guest
Greetings, All -
A young man reported in another thread how his education in science challenges his faith in God. The universe he is learning about, with its unfathomable size, mind-boggling numbers of galaxies and cosmic history ancient beyond reckoning, seems far different from the Bronze Age understanding of the Bible writers, and possibly of the elders who taught him religion. The universe is far, far larger and stranger than anyone knew in ages past or than non-scienfically literate parents guess.
My question to such a young person who feels his faith challenged by all this is, why? The Bible teaches that nature testifies to the majesty of God. If nature turns out to be more awsomly majestic that men in past times ever guessed, then perhaps God is greater than men ever knew.
The ancients had an oral tradition that told how God formed man out of the clay of earth and then breathed his own spirit into the clay figure, making him a conscious, living being. This story was finally written and handed down to us in Genesis. That story is correct in its essential points, even if the ancients had not yet learned the details of how man was formed out of the clay of the earth.
The ancients thought that the world was a flat plane with four corners, and that not too high above that plane was blue-colored dome covering it. And so naturally, they wrote in these terms. That does not mean the Bible was not inspired, it simply means that God's inspiration was filtered through the worldview of Bronze-Age men who had no grasp of the true shape and scale of the cosmos. How could their ancient cosmology not imprint itself on what they wrote?
I have never understood why modern Christians cling to a Bronze Age cosmology, and even present it to their children as part and parcel of the Christian faith. When these children learn better, they are apt to throw out the Christian faith along with the Bronze Age cosmology.
The observable universe has a radius of 15 billion light years, and the entire universe is many times larger. There are black holes, colliding galaxies, strange quantum mysteries, and maybe even technical civilizations living in other cosmic neighborhoods. None of this contradicts what the Bible has to say about who God is, who man is, and how these two relate to one another.
To present the Christian faith and the manifest universe as if they were in conflict with one another makes a very bad witness.
My $.02
A young man reported in another thread how his education in science challenges his faith in God. The universe he is learning about, with its unfathomable size, mind-boggling numbers of galaxies and cosmic history ancient beyond reckoning, seems far different from the Bronze Age understanding of the Bible writers, and possibly of the elders who taught him religion. The universe is far, far larger and stranger than anyone knew in ages past or than non-scienfically literate parents guess.
My question to such a young person who feels his faith challenged by all this is, why? The Bible teaches that nature testifies to the majesty of God. If nature turns out to be more awsomly majestic that men in past times ever guessed, then perhaps God is greater than men ever knew.
The ancients had an oral tradition that told how God formed man out of the clay of earth and then breathed his own spirit into the clay figure, making him a conscious, living being. This story was finally written and handed down to us in Genesis. That story is correct in its essential points, even if the ancients had not yet learned the details of how man was formed out of the clay of the earth.
The ancients thought that the world was a flat plane with four corners, and that not too high above that plane was blue-colored dome covering it. And so naturally, they wrote in these terms. That does not mean the Bible was not inspired, it simply means that God's inspiration was filtered through the worldview of Bronze-Age men who had no grasp of the true shape and scale of the cosmos. How could their ancient cosmology not imprint itself on what they wrote?
I have never understood why modern Christians cling to a Bronze Age cosmology, and even present it to their children as part and parcel of the Christian faith. When these children learn better, they are apt to throw out the Christian faith along with the Bronze Age cosmology.
The observable universe has a radius of 15 billion light years, and the entire universe is many times larger. There are black holes, colliding galaxies, strange quantum mysteries, and maybe even technical civilizations living in other cosmic neighborhoods. None of this contradicts what the Bible has to say about who God is, who man is, and how these two relate to one another.
To present the Christian faith and the manifest universe as if they were in conflict with one another makes a very bad witness.
My $.02