Scott,
I think I’m going to break this up into at least a couple of responses. Otherwise it may take quite a while to get this out.
Let me start with a little background. That may help you to understand where I am coming from and where I am on the journey. I have gone to church for as much of my life as I can remember. As a young man, preparing to leave home, I accepted Jesus as my savior and lord. Most of the next 30+ years were rather uneventful. But throughout that time I have been a Bible teacher in the churches I belonged to (Southern Baptist) and have held to a fairly literal interpretation of the Bible. I have never been particularly dogmatic about issues of creation or evolution but was pretty content to believe in a 144 hour creation, a global flood and all of the other things that are in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. But I was unwilling to make that a test of the faith. I was willing to work with other believers irregardless of where they stood there.
About 2-3 years ago I read the book “Bruce & Stan’s Guide to How it all Began” by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. This was a book written by Christians that accepted almost all of science, with the exception of evolution. It was a very interesting book and one that really opened the floodgates for much of what has followed. I easily accepted the notion of a very old universe and earth but still drew the line at evolution. Many other books I read supported both of these conclusions and I again reached a comfortable place in my beliefs. I started on talk.origins about 6 months ago with that mindset but quickly realized that there was more to evolution than I had been led to believe. I discussed the issue online and began to read again, and this time, books by evolutionists. The first couple of books were not too effective in convincing me. The third one was a jewel.
“Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller helped me to see things from an entirely different perspective. He is a Christian, a cellular biologist teaching at Brown University, and an evolutionist. What you might call a Theistic Evolutionist (TE). I spent several months working through his arguments and praying about it but have finally accepted it as true. And it has been good. It has given me a whole new perspective on God and what he has done here. By no means do I even begin to understand it all but I am continuing to work through it all. I really do appreciate this opportunity to communicate with you because it does give me a forum to try to solidify and express some new ideas.
Let me close this first part of my response by talking about the Bible. That seems to be a big issue for you and one that I am working to resolve as well. The one passage that I am focusing on most right now is 2 Timothy
3:16-17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” This passage tells me three things. First, all of scripture is inspired of God. There are a lot of different opinions as to what that means, but to me it means that he has given us the Bible and that it contains what he wants it to have. That includes stuff like the genealogies, the Old Testament dietary laws and the gospels. This also includes the first 11 chapters of Genesis. I do not believe that it means that it is all to be taken literally. Some parts are obviously symbolic while some are obviously intended to be taken as literal history. Sometimes, though, it is a challenge to make that distinction.
And I am presently working on how to understand the first eleven chapter of Genesis. A literal, face value, rendering in English seems to be at odds with many schools of science. But I still believe it is true and inspired by God, but maybe not in the literal fashion I have seen it in the past.
The second thing this passage says is that the Bible is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Notice that no mention is made of intellectual pursuits like biology, physics, chemistry, etc. It is useful for righteousness; bring me into a relationship with my creator and helping me to grow in Christ likeness. I believe that is a distinction that is all too often missing when folks fight over the Bible and science.
It’s not comparing apples with apples or even apples with oranges. It’s more like comparing apples with cars, two totally unrelated subjects.
The third thing this passage tells me is related to the second. The intent is to prepare me for every good work, helping me to grow in maturity as a Christian and in relationship to God. There is no conflict between good science and the Bible. The biggest problem now is not bad science. It is an incorrect understanding of the purpose of scripture, trying to make it something that it is not.
Yes there is a lot of question about many of the Old Testament books. Who wrote them and when. Even a few of the New Testament books have that same problem. But does it really matter? If the scripture that we have is what God wanted it to be then who the human authors were and when it was actually written is not really all that important to me. That being said, it is very useful to know the culture that produced the writings to help in understanding what was written. For example, our scientific western culture is very big on precision in recording events. The ancient Hebrew culture was not. The story was important but the details and sequences were not.
That makes it very difficult to understand much of the Old Testament today.
We need to take off our precision filter and replace it with one that is less precise but very much concerned with expressing truth. I am afraid that much of the conflict today is because we have not done that. And that really applies to both sides of the argument.
I will pick this back up in a while and continue the discussion about our soul/spirit. I know very little Hebrew or Greek either but I do have access to a lot of resources.
BTW, you may eventually see some of this same material on talk.origins as the opportunity arises.
Oldman