From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Evolution implied by the Bible
Date: 6 Jan 93 15:57:15 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <C0Cn67.4BD@news.cso.uiuc.edu> rmg53668@dcl-nxt53 (Ryan Martin Grant) writes:
>[extensive stuff on how long a day is deleted]
>
>Well that's fine, but there's another point mentioned in the bible where
>one family procreates to fill the rest of the world.  Noah and the ark.
>Wasn't his lineage traced in all those boring chapters of so and so having
>begot so and so?  (If not please correct me)  Anyway, I think it would be
>hard for any bible believer to place that event millions of years ago.
>
>Can someone give it a time period?
>I think human evolution sounds like a good anti-OT argument so far, but 
>the OT is already pretty easy to throw away.  
>
>- Ryan Grant

I'm not sure which post you are responding to.  The "boring" passages
about begats do not need to be taken literally any more than the idea
of 24 hour days.  The language of Genesis, especially the first chapters,
is very mythical.  It is possible to see myth not simply as a kind of
fantastic fabrication, but as a pictorial expression of concrete spiritual-
physical realities.  They originated at a time when human consciousness
was not the same as it is today -- rational, logical, almost totally
dependent on what can be physically perceived, measured and weighed.
Reading these myths is not a straight forward matter, and translating
this meaning into concrete scientifically verifiable numbers is also 
not a straight forward matter.

My point, again, is that with the mythical mode of perception, numbers and
dates and years are not necessarily to be taken literally.  The same thing
is true of the vedic stories that Kalki posts.  There is truth in them
too, and even in the numbers, some of which seem to be there simply to
give an impression of very large orders of magnitude.  Other numbers 
may have symbolic meaning.

If you want to confine your dismissal of the Bible as anything but a pack
of fantastic tales or willful lies to the arguments against a creation date
of 4000 BC, then welcome to it.  But not all "Bible believers", i.e. those
who take the Bible seriously, find it necessary to subscribe to the literalism
that forces you to either accept such a date or reject the whole thing as 
illogical and false.

As for time scale, I believe that the process of creation/evolution of the
earth and man unfolded over vast periods of time.  Where it differs from
conventional Darwinism is in the cyclical nature of the process, actually,
in my view, something like what Kalki proposes, although he too falls into
a kind of literalistic interpretation of ancient Indian scripture that does
not map directly into modern scientific processes of logic and measurement.
A better analogy might be the process of growth of a plant over many
generations.  So that there is a seed like phase, a germination, growing,
leafing, flowering, and dying, and a period of rest, then a new birth, but
in the case of creation/evolution, also the emergence of new forms and
capabilities.

The Genesis account shows a number of cyclical stages - the seven "days" of 
creation, another phase showing the creation of Adam and Eve, then the
fall and the emergence into a new kind of existence and the beginning of
the "generations".  Then there are the pre-diluvian patriarchs, who live
for a long period of time (hundreds of years).  There are some vague indications
of divisions within this period.  Then there is a large break with Noah and
the Deluge.  Then you have the emergence of Abraham, which suddenly comes
into what we can perceive as historical time.  The begats and years notwithstanding,
everything before Abraham comes out of an age where time and place seem to
float in a different kind of existence, i.e. mythical time and place.

Whether "hunan evolution sounds like a good anti-OT argument" begs the question
of the validity of the Darwinian or neo-Darwinian hypothesis.  This probably
belongs in alt.origins.  I guess what I wanted to say is that the literalist,
fundamentalist argument about sudden, instant special creation a few thousand
years ago is a kind of straw man that is easy to knock down.  By all means, 
throw the Old Testament away if you really think it is nonsense, but the darwinist-
creationist argument does not by any means exhaust the possibilities.

I will recommend one book that puts forward a possible interpretation in terms
of geological/physical anthropological data.  It is "Man and Animal: The
Essential Differerence", by Hermann Poppelbaum.  It does not attempt to interpret
the Old Testament, and possibly doesn't mention it at all, but it lays a concep-
tual foundation for evolution/creation that would apply to an attempt to reading
Genesis from the point of view I have been advocating.

Gerry Palo(73237.2006@compuserve.com)