Posted on 01/27/2009 10:41:55 AM PST by smokingfrog
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."
Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was "terrible" when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. "It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Thank you for the lengthy reply!
"...claims to be...", "...ascribed to...", "...said to have uttered...", "...said to have written down..."
I think that I understand. This can all be summed up under "legend has it."
And Joshua's alleged authorship of the last portion of Deuteronomy? I take it that it is "widely assumed" or "inferred."
You may take me to task for "splitting hairs," or accuse me of being argumentative, but I sincerely believe that it is useless to discuss the authenticity and thus legitimacy and credibility - let alone the validity and/or bindingness - of these writings if something as fundamental as their authorship is in dispute.
Thanks anyway!
Regards,
Better than having one’s brain dirtied.
how superior of you(sarc).
No - it would deny the particular interpretation of Scripture that you subscribe to.
Perhaps using the example of God allowing a mans entire family to be destroyed to prove a point to Satan isn’t the best of examples?
It all boils down to whether you believe what Jesus had to say, or you don’t.
The particular interpretation of Scripture that I subscribe to is: It’s true.
I don’t think it’s that particular.
Start in with higher criticism, positing that some of it may be untrue, or uninspired, or mistaken, and you can have a ton of interpretations. Hey, you could pick and choose! Keep the stuff you like, question that stuff you don’t. Every man his own arbiter of right and wrong.
Just like Satan said in the Garden.
I do think the basic need is to decide whether or not it is true.
Once you have a couple of people, or a group of people, who agree that the Bible is true - as long as they are honest about it, and not playing semantic or “gotcha” games, but are really trying to interpret it - you will find the truth.
God gave us our intellect as a tool. But it is not God. It is important to keep in mind that our intellects can be totally off. One could point to a myriad of examples from history, where extremely intelligent people have made terrible, serious errors.
I don’t think you need to interpret Scripture in the “light of modern knowledge.” I think you need to interpret the “light of modern knowledge” in the light of Scripture.
In all things, Christ must have the pre-eminence. And we know of Christ, who He is, what He expects, etc., through his revealed Word, the Bible. So, where “modern knowledge” and Scripture contradict, I stick with Scripture.
That doesn’t mean I check my intellect at the door. I just keep it in its proper place.
Psalm 90:4 states: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."
Second Peter 3:8 amplifies this with: "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
God's sense of time is not man's sense of time. Since the creation of man is the last act of creation, the time before man was measured and kept by God. Therefore the creation may well have taken more than 6 Earth days. It may have taken billions of years.
I don't need to deny either the Bible or modern science. Maybe my intellect has led me astray. But, by the same token, yours might have also. Or we may both be wrong. If misunderstanding -- even an honest misunderstanding -- of scripture is a sin, then I'm sure everyone of us is guilty.
Whatever the case, you can no more separate your intellect from your understanding of the Bible than you can separate yourself from God's creation. Even faith is the intellectual decision to trust in the Lord, despite what might raise doubt.
I understand that God transcends time. I also understand that He communicates clearly.
“Day” means “day” throughout Scripture. It doesn’t suddenly mean “epoch” in the one area we are uncomfortable with it. To say so is intellectually dishonest, I think.
I could understand your analysis if the Hebrew word for “day” meant different things throughout the Old Testament. But no one even tries to say it does. Except in Genesis, where we don’t like it.
Also, I don’t think you need to deny all modern science to embrace Scripture as the true, inspired word of God. True science, proveable science, does not contradict God’s word.
For example, my son believes God created the earth in six days, and all very good. He also has a Physics degree from UCLA and works in his field. There is no contradiction.
Many active, well educated, respected and employed scientists reject evolution as a theory.
Genesis 1:5: "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."
That's two different meanings of "Yom" in one verse. God called the light "day," as differentiated from night. And the period of light in a 24-hour day is less than 24 hours.
Genesis 2:4: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."
Only heaven was created on the second day and earth on the third. Therefore "day" (and yes, it's the same Hebrew word, "Yom") means at least two separate days here.
Rashi, like a lot of people, has made a simple mistake: that the "introduction" to any body of work must correlate temporally with the body of work that is to follow.. That is, since the introduction comes first, then all the information therein must necessarily happen before the story actually starts to unfold in the main body of work.
The Bible, like any other book, also has an introduction, and the part that Rashi cites is within this introduction. I'm not saying that Rashi's theory is wrong, or, that I agree with it. Only that his reasoning for reaching that conclusion is seriously flawed, and in a word, useless.
“Day” doesn’t mean “epoch.” It means “day.”
Believe otherwise if you like. You seem to intent on believing this. Why? Why not just accept the word of God for what it says? This is not a complex passage.
“”...claims to be...”, “...ascribed to...”, “...said to have uttered...”, “...said to have written down...”
I think that I understand. This can all be summed up under “legend has it.””
This is historical scholarship. Analyze any document that is thousands of years old. What can you say about it? You have no video, no audio, no living eyewitness. So you look to other recorded history to corroborate, to archeaology, to ancient manuscripts, etc.
What does your disputation prove? Are you trying to assert that the Old Testament was written hundreds of years after the life of Jesus? Or that the New Testament was? No honest scholar, Christian or not, would take you seriously. We all know that the Bible was completed within a hundred years’ of Jesus’ resurrection. The last books were written by apostles who were His contemporaries. No credible scholar refutes that.
Now, whether this is the word of God or not, that has been disputed since the beginning of time. It was Satan himself who asked Adam, “Yea, hath God said?”
There is only a contradiction if you believe that the "death" referred to is a cessation of bodily function. Throughout the Bible, "death" is used to refer to spiritual death and separation from God -- Jesus' promise of eternal life is not one of never-ending bodily life on Earth.
How is my understanding incorrect?
Did God allow his family to be killed or not?
That’s hardly a convincing “point”. Socialists use the same “point” to argue the superiority of central planning.
Whomsoever shall say ‘thou fool’ shall be in danger of hell fire....
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