positive: He doesn't try to argue with pseudo-scientific arguments.
negative: He doesn't seem to have any background on current scientific theories whatsoever. I certainly hope that "he cannot explain how the sun comes up and goes down" was more a poetical argument in a universal context (The arguments he uses are long-standing metaphors for the unexplicable), since I'd expect every child that finished a school to know that the earth is revolving and that that is a pretty sound explanation for that particular phenomenon.
His argument can, perhaps, be phrased in a more scientific manner: "Why are the laws of physics such that angular momentum is conserved, so that the Earth continues rotating and rotates with a predictable, constant period, so that we can predict when the sun will rise and set?"
It's somewhat of a layman's statement of a questionized version of the anthropic principle: "Why is the universe such that we are able to inhabit it?"
Of course, the anthropic principle is a weak argument for either side of the debate, and has been used by both.
sad: This is really a missed opportunity to point out Hawkings surrender to the metaphysical in his last book, where he has no other explanation to offer for the existance of our particular universe than the multiverse hypothesis, which is about as much scientific a concept as is God himself (since it sin't falsifyable nor proovable). If the man would keep taps on science and take it seriously, he should have noticed that. So he mumbled around with (I hope) metaphors instead of making the one argument that would expose some degree of hypocrisy in Hawkings last book.
Indeed.
There's not much that can be said against that. As long as you're not trying to get "scientific" arguments out of your hat to prove it (which you didn't, but many creationists nowadays are doing it), since that's basically accusing God of sloppy workmanship. As it stands, the assumption "God magically aged the earth,
It doesn't even need to be magical aging. It could be that, if the universe was brought into existence in six days, the effects of the various miracles that did it are such that when we try to reconstruct the history of the universe according to the current laws of physics, we see patterns that aren't really there.
therefore any analisis we make of it must show that it is way older than it actually is" makes perfect sense as a statement of faith, as noone will be able to find any proof for or against it.
Anyways, the debate wasn't really around creationism, but rather around the fact that the man gives the impression of not knowing that the earth is revolving, and not knowing that scientists indeed can offer pretty sensible explanations where the earth comes from (although, as already stated, Hawkings last argument where the whole universe came from was somewhat of a facepalm moment too). I really, really, really hope O'Reily was being poetical. If not, that would be reason for major concern about the educational system...
Yes, but O'Reilly was trying to make an argument for creationism, so it can be hard to talk about the one without talking about the other.
As for concern for the educational system, that's why epistemology needs to be taught in schools. If kids are taught according to a philosophy their parents don't trust, then their parents will pressure them not to believe anything they hear in that class, which some might take a bit overboard. By going over what different philosophical systems say about how we gain knowledge, and teaching science in terms of "When we apply empirical epistemological assumptions, we see this picture of the universe", you can probably do away with some of that overreaction.
Noticing that the universe in Genesis is still surrounded by water pretty much solved that question for me. If that isn't metaphorical or mythological, God's just asking too much of me. Luckily for us, it's not a question our salvation depends upon! :lol:
Part of the problem is that Genesis seems to have a really fuzzy boundary between the historical and the symbolic. Whereas the transition between the two is generally clearly marked in the rest of scripture (The prophets tell us the circumstances they were in, and then say "I received this message from the Lord" or "I saw this vision", and then proceed with the vision. The Gospels tell us what situation Jesus was in, and then they say that he started to tell a story beginning with the words "suppose a woman has ten silver coins..."). In Genesis this boundary is not so clearly delineated. Certainly I agree that if every word of the creation account is literal, the universe at that time was something we would now consider very strange.
Another issue is that language is always symbolic. Even this very sentence you are reading, while quite literal in meaning, already contains two layers of symbolism. The first is the symbolism of strings of sounds (spoken words) for concepts, the second is the symbolism of written letters for sounds and written words for spoken words. In getting to you this message was encoded as a series of bits and that bitstream was encrypted and decrypted at least once (going to my wireless router, if not yours too), which entails at least another two layers of symbolism. This makes terms like "literal" and "symbolic" dangerous. From my computer's point of view, the "literal" interpretation of this sentence (the meaning of the sentence in the form my computer sees it) is a rather long binary number. So what we're really asking about the creation account is "how many layers of symbolism is it wrapped in, and are all parts of it wrapped to a consistent 'depth'".
But yes, fortunately it is our belief in and reaction to the death and resurrection of Jesus that saves us, not our doctrinal correctness on every inch of scripture.
