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Reading Sandy Grant - Feedback
By Duane | April 30, 2008
[Originally posted on August 14 2007. Reposting due to NEW comments.]
“Oh my God they found me. I don’t know how but they found me.”
Dr. Emmett Brown - October 26, 1985
One thing that I have learned since beginning my blogging experience is to make sure that I verify whatever it is I am about to publish. One, because I want to present accurate information to readers - all three of them. And two, because you just never know who might pop in. Like, for example, the author of the article you critiqued. So it’s important to be sure you get your information correct. That is why these days I tend to spend much longer preparing posts.
As a novice blogger - first starting this blog back in October 2006 - one of the first articles I published was based on an article written by Sandy Grant in that month’s ‘The Briefing’, titled ‘Reading Genesis’. Now ten months on, Sandy - who likely stumbled across the blog via a Google search? - has been kind enough to take the time to comment. However being that this is a blog and not a forum, comments made as far back as October are unlikely to ever see the light of day. So in fairness to Sandy I am publishing his criticisms here and will follow with my response.
Thank you for saying my article was your favourite part of October 2006’s Briefing magazine, even if I detect a touch of irony!
You misrepresent me when you say above that I do not believe the days of Genesis 1 are literal 24 hour periods. Nowhere did I say this. Rather the burden of my article was to indicate why some sincere Bible-beliveing [sic] Christians do not think we can be totally dogmatic in saying this is the only possible way we can legitimately interpret the text.
You also wrote in your blog, “Here Sandy confuses interpretation of evidence with raw data. And so this appears to be the reason he cannot take God at His Word? But what is this evidence? Well Sandy does not say?”
I am happy for you to evaluate the evidence differently from me. However again you are misrepresenting my article when you say I gave no evidence for my views on the days of Genesis 1.
People who read the article can judge for themselves. You can get it from Matthias Media. But in the absence of that, your readers will be left with the impression that I only asserted that days were not literal, without bothering to supply evidence. However my article gave a number of reasons within the text of Genesis for pausing before insisting that the only possible way to take the days is as literal 24 hour periods.
My reasons included:
* The highly stylized literary structure of Genesis 1, atypical of ordinary historical genre;
* The example in Gen 2:4 where ‘day’ refers to a period other than 24 hours, even if the numbered days of Genesis 1 do not;
* The perceived improbability of Man naming all the livestock and the birds of the air and every beast of the field in one part of one day, and this before God made the Woman as Man’s helper, on that day;
* The difficulty of accounting for the existence of literal days before the creation of the sun and the moon on day four;
* The hint from Gen 2:5 that God used at least some natural processes in his work of creation.I realise many people find these reasons unconvincing. Fair enough. I am not here to debate that, and I respect your convictions on the matter.
What I find disappointing are Christians who misrepresent other Christians, whether deliberately, or because they cannot be bothered to understand the subtlety of what they are saying.
Comment by Sandy Grant — August 8, 2007 @ 11:26 am
Sandy,
Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback on my blog.
Given that you’re not here to debate the reasons you have listed above for NOT taking the days as literal, it was not my intention to enter into that right now. But for the sake of readers who may not have been exposed to the points you raised, I will have to cover them in a separate post.
It concerns me that I may have misrepresented your argument, and I would never knowingly do so. Although I do believe that my conclusions were warranted and could be derived from the article due to lack of information or qualification. It is not uncommon or unfair for someone to conclude that another is anti, when that is the only argument they have put forward.
Your first charge is that I misrepresent you when I say that you do not believe the days of Genesis 1 are literal 24 hour periods.
There appears to be a misunderstanding here. I have three observations to make in light of your objection. When a person provides many reasons for why the days cannot be literal days - as you did in your article - and does not provide a balance by also providing reasons to the contrary;
- It gives readers the impression that these are good arguments against the literal view - some may even consider those arguments straw men? - when in fact there is a vast amount of literature against the reasons you gave that are not cited in your article. Not even a footnote?
- In failing to cite possible objections to the reasons you provided above, you are effectively making a case against the ‘24-hour period’ position.
- As far as I know there are no proponents of the 24-hour period that are making statements such as, ‘this certainly contradicts a massive amount of evidence accumulated by scientists as to how the world developed - over a period of millions or billions of years’, [yet you did make such a statement?]
Now I could be wrong, but by strong inference, this does not sound like someone who holds to a 24-hour-day of Genesis 1. I would be surprised if you were to say otherwise, but perhaps you would feel more comfortable supporting this statement by Pattle Pun?
So I have to ask, is it normal for someone who holds to the ‘24-hour period’ view to fail to provide points in favour of that view? Seriosuly Sandy, what else are readers supposed to think? Are you of the opinion that you left that option open to readers as a view that you hold? The closest you came to it in my opinion is,
But this is hardly representative of comments that legitimate advocates of the 24-hour view would make.
Your second charge is that I misrepresent your article when I say you gave no evidence for your views of Genesis 1.
You are apparently referring to comments I made which followed this quote from your article:
‘…this certainly contradicts a massive amount of evidence accumulated by scientists as to how the world developed - over a period of millions or billions of years.’ (pg 11).
In my comments that followed, where did I say that you gave no evidence for your views on Genesis 1? If you read my blog in context, when I ask ‘what is this evidence?’, I am asking, ‘what is an example of the evidence that scientists have accumulated to show that the world developed over such a long period that would force one to re-examine their exegesis of scripture in Genesis 1?’ Did you provide such evidence? I’m sorry, but I don’t think you did.
I am happy for you to provide biblical arguments that might cause us to closely consider the literal six-day position - and I will deal with those in a separate post - but I must sincerely object to claims that I have misrepresented the article with regard to your above claims.
I would also like to reiterate your earlier comments in encouraging readers of this blog to read your article and judge for themselves if my comments are unjustified.
The article is available here.
I hope we can continue a friendly and open dialogue, and many thanks for your contribution.
Topics: Christianity, Theology |
April 30th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Sandy wrote: “I realise many people find these reasons unconvincing. Fair enough. I am not here to debate that, and I respect your convictions on the matter.”
But Sandy and his crowd NEVER want to discuss their beliefs. When it is pointed out that their arguments aren’t supported by any evidence and are in fact overturned by other evidence they end the conversation.
Take his point about literary devices etc and a passage being ahistorical, in a recent 2 part article of mine published in CMI’S technical mag I show that this is not supported by data and that ancient historians did use literary devices in their writings.
[Edit April 30, 2008: Marc's two part article is available by purchasing Journal of Creation, Volume 21, Issue 2 & Issue 3 - Ed]
[Update November 2, 2008: Part 1 now available via PDF download here - Ed]
More damaging are the data that show John’s Gospel contains a chiastic structure at the crucifixion and resurrection account.
Sandy needs to tell us what research he’s undertaken to conclude from ancient literature that devices = non-history. My guess he’s listened to John Dickson’s unsubstantiated lectures because John never gives evidence either.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Thanks Marc,
I sent a copy of my comments above (including the link) to Sandy via email on the date of the original post.
He has not responded.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am
In fairness to Sandy too. If someone were able to point out that my arguments were not supported by evidence and are in fact overturned by other evidence, I can’t imagine that I could continue the conversation further either. At least not until I had a chance to think about it some more. That seems like a reasonable approach to me.
A dignified response in that situation might even be, “That’s a good point. I hadn’t considered that. I’ll need some time to think about it.”
May 5th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Marc Kay said:
As an alternative, there is DeYoung’s ‘Thousands Not Billions’ that includes an entire chapter devoted to a statistical study of the literature in Genesis. The conclusion: It’s not “proto history”, but history.