Disclaimer: Currently there are three evolutionists involved in this thread: Edge, nwr, and myself (correct me if I am wrong), and some of those may not be getting any more involved.
I really only wanted to comment on this:
nwr writes:
For myself, I see the Bible as the word of man. It was written by man. Only a relatively small portion claims to speak directly of the words and actions of God, but even in those parts it reads as a narrative written by men. But men are fallible, and some of what was attributed to God in the Bible might be mistaken, much as some people today are mistaken in what they attribute to God.
To which I agree. What is written by God Himself into the very rocks which He created, the very universe He crafted with means that would no doubt be incomprehensible to many men. However, since we ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and thus became as God in this respect, I believe we are capable of learning how God created the universe by doing what comes natural to us...investigating the world and coming to conclusions...something which has been formulated into science...which is fallible, but coming ever closer to truths.
The Bible on the other hand is not the word of God, nor ever claims to be (though some parts do). The books are written by sinners and fallible men (and the writers will even admit this, on occasion, within the Bible). As Faith put it:
conducted by the fallen mind of fallen humanity
They are often Holy Men and prophets, inspired by God but themselves not divine and not perfect.
Not only that, but much (indeed perhaps all) of the original writings by the prophets or their aides are long lost. As such we have only the copies of copies of these documents, which were not necessarily copied by holy men and we have no way to know how these men were affected by the fall and what evil ideas they may have sewn into documents the transcribed. I doubt there are many actual evil ideas of course, but it's accuracy and inerrency cannot be assured.
So rather than looking at the fallible writings and copying of a fallen mind of men, inspired by God as they may be, we should look to that which God himself wrote for us.
This message has been edited by Modulous, Sun, 11-September-2005 05:11 PM
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