If you've got a spare 45 minutes and an interest in evolution and Christian thought, you might like to listen in to the first lecture of two by Sir Lloyd Geering. Geering is in his eighties now, and has been causing havoc and consternation in fundamentalist circles since the 1960s. Evangelicals tend to loathe him, apologists go into conniptions at the very mention of his name, and certain pallid academics - unworthy successors - try to ignore him, but he's still the sharpest mind in the public arena of New Zealand theology. Recorded on December 26.
Friday 4 January 2013
Evolution: The Real Genesis (Part 1)
If you've got a spare 45 minutes and an interest in evolution and Christian thought, you might like to listen in to the first lecture of two by Sir Lloyd Geering. Geering is in his eighties now, and has been causing havoc and consternation in fundamentalist circles since the 1960s. Evangelicals tend to loathe him, apologists go into conniptions at the very mention of his name, and certain pallid academics - unworthy successors - try to ignore him, but he's still the sharpest mind in the public arena of New Zealand theology. Recorded on December 26.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Funny how some people can know all that and still believe that there is a GOD...out there...somewhere, maybe above and beyond the "big bang" and behind the whole evolution of biological life on this insignificant planet.
ReplyDeleteNow, in the bible, heaven is just above the clouds. We know this because Jesus ascended into heaven in a cloud. Of course, that was before we had airplanes that flew up there above the clouds - removing the necessity of building a tower to heaven, right?
It's heaven "above", right? Not "out there" from the earth in space or beyond space. All you have to do is "look up" because there is only up or down, right? Except it's not true and the writers (God?) of the "holy scriptures" didn't know that. Strange that the "creator" of it all wouldn't know that, isn't it?
Seems the creator was more concerned about the proper way to make blood sacrifices and which animals to eat and how much a female slave was worth and which days of the week, month and year to observe. But then, along comes God's son and ends all that because it was all our schoolmaster that pointed to him. I haven't figured out what the price of female slaves have to do with Jesus but, hey, maybe it's just me.
Though Geering is a theologian by education he is also an avowed atheist. One could have a look at the article "Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution" by Dennis Lamoureux on the Biologos website. This article provides a counterpoint to Geering's view.
ReplyDeleteI only listened to snippets of Geerings talk. This is a quite common line of reasoning among atheists. The only thing I would add to the Biologos article I mentioned above is that there is an arrogance in the atheistic argument that the Bible is scientifically inaccuarte. The Genesis view isn't mythology, it is genuinely what people believed based on observation at that time. This was the scientific understanding in ancient Middle Eastern Cultures. Many atheists contend that Genesis should read like Nuclear Physics 101. Tne science of our time rather than the science of that time. Because it does not sound like a university science text, there can be no God.
But isn't it arrogant to think that our current science is the final destination? Might not scientists 3,000 years from now regard what we believe currently to be profoundly naive, just as naive as the ancient Middle Eastern view of cosmology? So if God were to write Genesis in terms of what is now taught at MIT, it would become dated and superseded. And the scientists 3,000 from now would find Genesis laughable because we actually believed in electrons, neutrons and protons back in the ancient Twenty First Century. God can use the ancient Middle Eastern cosmological model or our current state of knowledge to expose principle. It really doesn't make any difference.
Also, Peter Enns has written an excellent article on an incarnational model for the Bible. It is also on the Biologos website. It is worth reading.
What is god? And isn't it arrogant to think you know?
DeleteThe comment that mentions Peter Enns was mine. I forgot my signature.
ReplyDelete-- Neo
Thanks for posting this audio. I found it quite interesting.
ReplyDelete