.
When I was a little boy, my dad bet me that he could make a dollar bill
stand on edge. Well, I passed on the bet because I didn't own any money at
the time. So my dad proceeded to fold a dollar bill in half into a vee and it
easily stood on edge like that. When I protested, he replied: You didn't say I
couldn't fold it.
We have a really interesting museum in the Portland Oregon metro area
called OMSI with lots of interesting exhibits, a real Navy submarine (it had a
brief role in the movie Red October) and some brain-busting puzzles too.
One of the puzzles consists of maybe five large jig-saw looking wooden
pieces that when correctly arranged depict a jockey riding a horse. Try as I
might, I could not make those pieces come out right. Well, a museum
volunteer came by and asked me if I had tried stacking the pieces. I replied
by telling him that the instructions don't say I can stack the pieces. He
responded by asking me: Do the instructions say you can't stack the pieces
one on top of another? No, they don't, and that's the secret to the puzzle.
My mind assumed all the pieces had to be arranged side by side but in
reality, the instructions don't say one way or the other.
As a follow up to reinforce the reality of the human mind's propensity to
make assumptions; the volunteer told me he had two coins in his pocket
adding up to 55¢ and one of them wasn't a nickel. He then proceeded to
extract a 50¢ piece and a nickel from his trouser pocket. When I protested
that he said one of the coins wasn't a nickel, he calmly replied: That would
be the half dollar. You see; he said "one" of the coins wasn't a nickel, rather
than neither coin. The volunteer then proceeded to lecture me on the
importance of paying attention to words and grammar.
Moral of the story: It's just as important to discern what words do say, as
well as discern what they don't say; thus avoiding false conclusions derived
from a so-called "argument from silence" which is a kind of logic which
essentially believes that if something isn't clearly stated, then it's inferred
from the silence that there was nothing to state.
It was a humiliating experience, but a valuable one too because in time; I
began applying that principle to the Bible in regards to what it does say, and
in regards to what it doesn't say; and one thing it does not say right from
the outset is that creation's six "days" consisted of twenty-four hours each;
but most of us assume the terms evening and morning insist upon it; when
even those terms only define daytime rather than daytime plus nighttime.
This has been a chronic problem for just about everybody who takes Genesis
seriously. We assume the "days" of creation consisted of twenty-four hours
apiece; so we end up stumped when trying to figure out how to cope with
the age of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic,
Mesozoic, Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass
extinction events. It just never seems to occur to us that it might be okay in
some cases to go ahead and think outside the box. When we do that-- when
we allow ourselves to think outside the box --that's when we begin to really
appreciate the contributions science has made towards providing modern
men a window into the Earth's amazing past.
Cont.
/
When I was a little boy, my dad bet me that he could make a dollar bill
stand on edge. Well, I passed on the bet because I didn't own any money at
the time. So my dad proceeded to fold a dollar bill in half into a vee and it
easily stood on edge like that. When I protested, he replied: You didn't say I
couldn't fold it.
We have a really interesting museum in the Portland Oregon metro area
called OMSI with lots of interesting exhibits, a real Navy submarine (it had a
brief role in the movie Red October) and some brain-busting puzzles too.
One of the puzzles consists of maybe five large jig-saw looking wooden
pieces that when correctly arranged depict a jockey riding a horse. Try as I
might, I could not make those pieces come out right. Well, a museum
volunteer came by and asked me if I had tried stacking the pieces. I replied
by telling him that the instructions don't say I can stack the pieces. He
responded by asking me: Do the instructions say you can't stack the pieces
one on top of another? No, they don't, and that's the secret to the puzzle.
My mind assumed all the pieces had to be arranged side by side but in
reality, the instructions don't say one way or the other.
As a follow up to reinforce the reality of the human mind's propensity to
make assumptions; the volunteer told me he had two coins in his pocket
adding up to 55¢ and one of them wasn't a nickel. He then proceeded to
extract a 50¢ piece and a nickel from his trouser pocket. When I protested
that he said one of the coins wasn't a nickel, he calmly replied: That would
be the half dollar. You see; he said "one" of the coins wasn't a nickel, rather
than neither coin. The volunteer then proceeded to lecture me on the
importance of paying attention to words and grammar.
Moral of the story: It's just as important to discern what words do say, as
well as discern what they don't say; thus avoiding false conclusions derived
from a so-called "argument from silence" which is a kind of logic which
essentially believes that if something isn't clearly stated, then it's inferred
from the silence that there was nothing to state.
It was a humiliating experience, but a valuable one too because in time; I
began applying that principle to the Bible in regards to what it does say, and
in regards to what it doesn't say; and one thing it does not say right from
the outset is that creation's six "days" consisted of twenty-four hours each;
but most of us assume the terms evening and morning insist upon it; when
even those terms only define daytime rather than daytime plus nighttime.
This has been a chronic problem for just about everybody who takes Genesis
seriously. We assume the "days" of creation consisted of twenty-four hours
apiece; so we end up stumped when trying to figure out how to cope with
the age of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic,
Mesozoic, Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass
extinction events. It just never seems to occur to us that it might be okay in
some cases to go ahead and think outside the box. When we do that-- when
we allow ourselves to think outside the box --that's when we begin to really
appreciate the contributions science has made towards providing modern
men a window into the Earth's amazing past.
Cont.
/
