the singularity of being and nothingness
Posts tagged Creationism
The (Failed) Literalist Interpretation of Genesis
Dec 6th
I recently listened to a lecture by Keith Ward entitled “Misusing Darwin.” In this lecture, Ward makes a very compelling argument about what he sees as the unfounded assumption that scientific methodology de facto requires (or presumes, at least) a commitment to philosophical materialism.
While there is a lot of ground covered in this lecture, one section was particularly interesting to me. Here, Ward launches into a discussion about some common misconceptions about the compatibility of science and Christian theology. As a background, Ward notes the [potentially] unfortunate state of modern, popular Christian theology about “origins” in the West and its commitment to a literalist interpretation of the Genesis accounts of creation. As a means of contrast, Ward notes (rightly) that this theological position is actually quite a modern development: historically, theologians have classically interpreted the Genesis accounts allegorically–or at least not “literally.”
So from where does this often rabid allegiance to a literalist interpretation of the Genesis account come? Ward suggests that such a hermeneutic is precisely associated with the rise of scientific methodology.
And this is not surprising. The advent of scientific methodology was borne out of a radical shift in philosophy in the West. The Enlightenment brought with it a deeply More >
Two Levels of Creation…?
Dec 28th
Over the last several weeks, loyal readers of this blog (if any remain…) will note that the focus of the majority of my posts have centered around web application coding techniques. While part of the reason for this is that I have been improving exponentially in my coding abilities over the last several months (not hard when one is going from zero to somethng…), the major impetus for these posts is simply that I post about what I am thinking as well as that to which I am devoting my time. Frankly, while I love theology deeply, I have not been devoting much time to it lately, partly out of necessity, partly out of lethargy.
The last week, however, I have been on vacation and, more importantly, sick. During this time I have had a lot of restless hours to quiet my thinking and devote mental energy to things other than web application code (even though that has still managed to creep in). In these hours of contemplation, I have come across what I believe could be a major diffusor of objections to big bang cosmology (BBC) and evolutionary biology (EB) in re: the relationship of God's activity to the More >
