The Creationist Debate: The Encounter Between the Bible And the Historical Mind

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 228 pages
• Published by: Continuum July 10, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0826480020
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0826480026
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 12.8 ounces

Product Description
This book places the present Creationist opposition to the theory of evolution in historical context by setting out the ways in which, from the seventeenth century onwards, investigations of the history of the earth and of humanity have challenged the biblical views of chronology and human destiny, and the Christian responses to these challenges. The author's interest is not primarily directed to questions such as the epistemological status of scientific versus religious knowledge or the possibility of a Darwinian ethics, but rather to the problems, and various responses to the problems, raised in a particular historical period in the West for the Bible by the massive extension of the duration of geological time and human history.

Reader Reviews
The argument between fundamentalist Christians and historians is much older than the modern science of Darwin and Newton. Explorers of the 16th century already realized that the histories of some peoples were much older than permitted by the story in Genesis. By the early 17th century theologians realized the Hebrew text of the OT was the interpretation of 5th and 6th century rabbis, and that we do not possess a complete or accurate text of the Bible. "By the end of the seventeenth century the labours of the Chronologists and biblical critics had seriously undermined the claims of biblical exceptionalism by amassing considerable evidence for two unsettling claims: that the Bible is a book with a history and that the history of the world vastly exceeds in length and scope the limits of sacred history."(p. 38-39) In the18th century age of enlightenment educated people increasingly learned the Bible was unreliable in regard to history and scientific fact. Even in judging moral and ethical action, man must rely on his common sense and on accepted truth. Thus, the fathers of our Nation justified rebellion and a republican government not from the Bible, but from the common sense philosophy and ethics. The science of Newton, the geology of James Hutton, the "deep time" of Lyell, and finally the evolution of Darwin showed just how unreliable the Bible is on explaining the working of the world. Most educated Christians could and did accept that science explains the earth, while the word of god tells us its meaning and instructs us in ethical behavior. McCalla has written an excellent history about our use of the Bible. He does address fundamentalism in America and the Scopes trial in later chapters. This is not a conflict between science and religion, but rather an argument between liberal Christians who accept the Bible as a historical document and simple minded believers who insist on a variety of quite confused literal interpretations.