When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up–for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground– then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Gen 2.5-8)

I am unconvinced with the literal version of Genesis one and two. There are lots of issues here, none of which I want to explore here in depth, at least in the post. There is no way that the earth was created in six 24-hour periods about six or seven thousand years ago. The empirical evidence simply does not support that conclusion. The particulars do not make sense either. Where did the light come from in Gen 1:3? It was not from Sola, because Sola is formed several days later in Gen 1:14, nor was it from God, because it would have always been there. Then there is the minor issue of there being two creation stories back-to-back. In the first one, man is formed after the plants are brought forth; while in the second, man is crafted before the plants. In addition, in the Gen 2 creation story, the text says that the creation of the heavens and earth only took one day.

There have been many a word typed and shouted in trying to formulate a picture of science that admits a young earth and a consistency between the stories in Genesis one and two. However, I have not heard a version that can successfully do this. What is my larger worry here? That, by maintaining these views, the church is driving people away from the good news of Jesus Christ.

In light of this, the first two stories in Genesis, in the whole Bible are myths and not literal word-for-word accounts of what physically happened. What do I mean by myth? I am not typing of a made up story that are completely false. Instead, I refer to a story, not an historical account, one that is true on one or several levels, even though it is not a historical “video-camera” account of what happened.

Ok, if the two stories are logically inconsistent and, based on the empirical evidence that we have, also not consistent with the leading theories of the origin and development of the universe and earth; then what do we do with them?

As I have stated before, I favor the divine fiat theory. I came across five other views over at Open Source Theology. Here are the five other ways to view this problem: Open Source Theology:: Genesis 1 as “True Myth”.

1. Genesis 1 fits within a literary genre of creation myths, but only Genesis 1 gets the story right.
2. Genesis 1 is a myth that eventually proves to be verifiable as truth.
3. Genesis 1 is a myth whose truth is to be found in the moral and metaphysical lessons it teaches.
4. Genesis 1 is a myth written by God.
5. Genesis 1 is part of an all-encompassing myth created by God that includes not just the Biblical text but also the “real world.”

They discuss these alternatives and talk a lot about the notion of real myth and what that means. I would recommend checking the article out and I hope you either share how you view the creation stories here or over there. I think this issue is of tremendous value and needs to be reconciled with our larger world-views. I maintain that both the earth is as old as it seems and that God inspired a true writing of Genesis one and two. Now, how exactly that works out, I don’t know - but damn I want to know.

LINKS:

• Open Source Theology:: Genesis 1 as “True Myth”.
• Answers in Genesis
• Institute for Creation Research
• Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look

This is cross posted at Theology for the Masses.

The answer: No… well, sort of. Here is how I got there. So, are Science and Religion opposed? No, they are not. In fact, they often work(ed) together. Religion is very much in the business of explaining reality. In doing so, they co-opt the science that makes the best sense to them. For example, Aquinas used Aristotle and Christianized him to the point to which the Catholic church made his science official Church dogma. Recent creationists try to use science that seems to agree with their aims to refute the science that does not. Hubble’s discovery of the motion of the galaxies was a boon to the hopes of creationists in general because the subsequent Big Bang theory implied there was a creator behind it, whereas the Steady State theory needed no such “ummph” to get it started. Now, the question is, are the creationists and atheists doing good science? I’ll leave this one with a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

I hear often the complaint that Science presupposes Naturalism. This is because Science simply does not concern itself with God. It measures; it devises theories; it explains. Science does an excellent job telling us:

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• How?

What it does not do is tell us why. Whats that? Do I hear an objection?

Wait a second Henry. Science tells me why water boils when it reaches 100°C!

Well, you see, it does not give us the meaning of why water boils when it does. Instead, it really tells you how water boils. Take any scientific question - or historic, for that matter. The same thing applies every time. The historian can assign meaning or significance to his or her narrative, but at that point, they are not really doing exact and pure history. They are grafting interpretations onto the text. Not that doing that is bad, but it is not pure history.

Religion, on the other hand, gives us this why that Science lacks by Science’s very nature.

So, are Religion and Science opposed? Yes. But only in their subject matters. Sir William Bragg put it best:

“Religion and science are opposed . . . but only in the same sense as that in which my thumb and forefinger are opposed - and between the two, one can grasp everything.”

This is how I can have a keen interest in both Religion and Science. I yearn to understand how the world works and why the world works.

Growing up in the current government run education system, the history of science is presented as a grand accent up the slope of knowledge, with only one grooved path traveled. However, when looked at outside of the popular story we are told in our youth, the picture diffuses. At first glance, nothing clear comes into view. At times it seems that our current body of accepted knowledge is indeed an accumulation of previous thoughts; at other times, the path seems to twist and turn, split off into multiple segments only to unite later, and sometimes the path even backtracks. This is hardly the glossed-over golden staircase of one’s youth. What does it matter, the nature of the path? Why can we not be satisfied with where we are and continue upward? |inline

This post is an attempt to flesh out Edward Said’s postcolonial theory of Orientalism:”(When set off in italics, the term “Orientalism” will refer to the book by Said, when merely capitalized; it will refer to Said’s theory.)”:. It has drawn from Said’s best-known work, Orientalism and incorporated several articles written in response to or are reviews of the work. These articles included “Orientalism Reconsidered” by Edward Said, and “Review of Books: Orientalism” by C. Earnest Dawn. These articles were utilized to help add clarity to a complex theory.

The four central claims of Orientalism are as follows. First, while Orientalism presents itself as an objective field of study, it was used to justify the political domination of the East by the West. Secondly, Orientalism was actually more about defining itself through the mirror of the East than it was about objectively studying it :”(The very terms “East” and “West” are rejected by Said as valid descriptions; however, they will be used as terms of convenience for the purposes of this paper.)”:. Third, points one and two are produced and reinforced by viewing the Orient as a homogenous group. This essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups and their culture. Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident, but employs them because this is how the argument has been framed by the Orientalists:”(Edward Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” Cultural Critique, No. 1, 1985, p. 90. )”:. Lastly, the Orientalist scholars are the product of the system they come from. Due to this, they cannot help but to misrepresent the “Other.” Therefore, what is needed is for the subaltern to speak for itself. Continued…

In the latest issue of Discover they did a little proof that 0.99999… does equal 1. This is how they did it.

1. Take .999999 (repeating) to equal x.
2. Take x times 10 equals 10x
3. So 10x = 9.9999999
4. 10x - x = 9x
5. 9x = 9 (9.999999…. - 0.99999…. = 9)
6. Therefore, x = 1 and .99999….

Crazy, no?

The following is a sketch of Revolution, as presented by Anthony Alioto in my Philosophy of Revolution class at Columbia College.

What is Revolution? Some maintain that is it a new change, a return to an older system. Others maintain that is a clean break with the past. Many revolutionary leaders have taken the second view.

It is necessary to distinguish rebellion from revolution. Rebellion is remembered as an event within a system, while revolution fundamentally changes the system. A paradigm shift, if you will.

6 Traits common to revolutions:

1. The Idea and the faith in it.
   • i.e. the sun is the center of the system.
   • from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.
2. The faith is first held in the minds of the intellectuals and it sounds almost like a religious faith.
   • Marx
   • Galileo
3. Simple message and slogans - the revolution spreads through effective propaganda.
   • Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
   • Peace, Land, Bread
   • Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to loose but your chains and the whole world to gain!
4. Heavy use of symbols
   • Fire - burns the old system away and provides the energy for the new system. There is a bit of the phoenix myth present here.
   • The circle - used in the revolutions that talk about bringing about a return to the old utopia.
5. The Prometheus myth - the primal act of throwing off the unjust authority.
   • Prometheus brought fire from the gods to man. This was against the will of the gods and Prometheus was eternally punished for this.
6. The Pythagoras myth - a secret society of revolutionaries. They alone see the reality beneath the surface.
   • Smoke filled rooms filled with men discussing the needs of the revolution

Scotsman.com News - International - Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.  Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Well said. Religion and science are not opposed to each other. Science helps us learn about the phenomenumenal world and religion talks about the noumenal world. To quote Sir William Bragg:

Religion and science are opposed … but only in the same sense as that in which my thumb and forefinger are opposed - and between the two, one can grasp everything.

P.S. This post was cross-posted at Hundie Jo dot com and the Mass Theology.

I came across a very interesting article on Physics Web:”Physics Web”:http://physicsweb.org/ today. It was entitled Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts:”Physics Web(Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts)”:http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/9/2/1?rss=2.0 and it was on the personal religion of Einstein. Yes, that was a pun and read on to find out why.

There are many quotes on religion from Einstein. Here is a sampling:”Stanford.edu(Einstein Quotes)”:http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html :

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The following is my writing sample submitted for my application to the Religious Studies Master’s Program at the University of Missouri Here is the link to the PDF file: The Structural Analysis of Christianity.

In 1615 C.E. the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany received a letter from a friend of hers. The letter sparked off one of the great confrontations between the thinkers of Christianity and those of science. It was one of the major battles between two ideologies that had been diametrically opposed since their respective conceptions. At least that was the way it was seen for many years afterward. Such a view is called the Conflict Theory:”(Wilson, David. The Historiography of Science and Religion. Science and Religion. 2002. John Hopkins University Press. p.14)”:. It states that religion and science have always been opposed to each other’s ideas and are in a state of perpetual conflict. Was the Trial of Galileo only a flash point in an old, unending war between two veins of thought? It is the purpose of this paper to argue that the conflict theory is wrong and to put forth an alternate structure to the conflicts between science and Christianity. The two most famous conflicts between Christianity and science, Heliocentrism and evolution, will be examined and compared to see what patterns emerge.

Continued…

�When I speak of objects in time and in space, it is not of things in themselves, of which I know nothing, but of things in appearance.�
� Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Part Three, The Cosmological Ideas.

With all that the human race has learned since Kant’s day, some of his maxims still ring true. There have been many realizations that have shaped humanities understanding of how the universe operates. Throughout it all, the majority of man’s believes about what is beyond their world has not matched pace. In the years following Kant, the West thought that it was about to reach an endgame in regards to science. All that was left were a few clouds on the horizon. Those clouds quickly grew to become massive hailstorms that completely altered the way one views nature and even the very nature of reality.

The majority of these storms one can trace their origin to the late, great Albert Einstein. The ideas that he cultivated helped to lead to one of the great revolutions in science. It even lead to the birth of cosmology as a science. His paper on the photoelectric effect lead to Quantum Mechanics, the most successful theory on describing the behavior of matter and energy on the subatomic level. His papers on relativity vastly changed the way one views space and time. His ideas showed that there was no actual distinction between time and space, they are both merely different dimensions of the fabric of reality, called space-time. The fourth paper published in 1905 entitled Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content? gave rise to the famous equation E=mc2. This equation meant that energy and matter are equivalent; they are merely different forms of the same thing. Continued…