tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28797351240227503242012-02-16T16:19:47.192-08:00A sometimes overgrown, wildgrown, natural reserve of reflections on and explorations in: things of God; the creative evolution of this universe, and scientific studies in general; anthropology, history, peoples, and cultures; independence and human individuality ... as well as any other related or tangential topics that may sprout up in this wild reserve.Roger the shrubberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17268212241161163047noreply@blogger.comBlogger41100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2879735124022750324.post-89944120698931737242007-03-19T01:46:00.000-07:002007-04-06T03:57:51.263-07:00

Galileo and the terrible, horrible, awful, really bad daySo the understanding of Genesis cannot be dependent on a literalistic reading of its early stories. That implies, for its flip side, that its early stories simply need not be taken at face value, their events literally as they seem to be described. Christians often have balked at such a suggestion, supposing that if certain events in

Roger the shrubberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17268212241161163047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2879735124022750324.post-47758315550492046752007-03-18T23:14:00.000-07:002007-04-05T22:44:19.595-07:00

Understanding what God meansSo we can gain some "understanding" on ways that the ancient records could have been compiled; but next we need to try to understand how "accurate" (at least, in our information-driven, Western sense) the records were, especially the earlier ones. Even a cursory reading of Genesis will make it obvious that the earlier accounts tend to get shorter and shorter (the

Roger the shrubberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17268212241161163047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2879735124022750324.post-76903385724241416822007-03-16T23:51:00.000-07:002007-04-05T22:32:21.072-07:00

Growing in wisdom and understandingThe poetic literary forms in Job, then, provide another challenge to Western ideas of accuracy. But taken in light of what those cultures, at that time, viewed as "valid" or meaningful records (especially when compared with what many other cultures around the world view as valid history), it's not so hard to see how ancient Israel could have recognized the

Roger the shrubberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17268212241161163047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2879735124022750324.post-7103167369536018922007-03-16T15:22:00.000-07:002007-03-18T02:37:05.445-07:00

To create, or not to create ..."By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day .... he rested from all his work of creating that he had done" (Gen 2.2-3). A lot later on, however, "Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working'" (Jn 5.17) ... which, incidentally, took place on the seventh day of that week,

Roger the shrubberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17268212241161163047noreply@blogger.com