The Tree Of Knowledge

Farrell Till  discovers a little problem for biblical inerrantists. From the Errancy Discussion list, Nov. 12, 1995.

RH 

It is not correct to say that in order to sin, you have to know the difference between good and evil. To sin requires that one disobey God which itself only requires that one know what God has commanded. Knowledge of good and evil doesn't enter the equation. You cannot say that Adam and Eve did not know what they were doing. They knew. Eve stated what God had commanded to the Serpent. Adam and Eve knew the consequences.

TILL 

When the spies that Moses sent ahead to Canaan returned with a report of giants being in the land, the people were afraid (Num. 14). Yahweh punished the people by decreeing that they would wander in the wilderness until they were dead, but he made an exception for Joshua and Caleb, who had not believed the report of the spies. He also made an exception for the children (v: 31). Deuteronomy 1:39 explains why Yahweh made an exception for the children: "Moreover, your little ones that ye said should be a prey, and your children , *that this day have no knowledge of good or evil,* they will I give it, and they shall possess it." Hence, we can only conclude that the Bible teaches that children are not guilty of sin if they have no knowledge of good or evil. The Genesis story of the "first sin" clearly states that eating of the tree of knowledge would make one know the difference in good or evil (3:5). After Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, Yahweh said, "Behold the man is become as one of us, *to know good and evil*; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, therefore Yahweh God sent him forth from the garden of Eden" (3:22).

Sorry, Roger, but you have a lot of explaining to do. The Bible teaches that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was what made Adam and Eve to know the difference in good and evil. Yet Yahweh punished them for something they did before they ate of the fruit that gave them this knowledge.

F. Till

God's Name

Adapted from a post by Farrell Till on the Errancy Discussion list 5-8-97:

...Ex.6:2-3 has Yahweh saying very clearly to Moses that he was not 

known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by his name Yahweh, yet there are

numerous examples in Genesis that dispute this:

Genesis 22:14 states that Abraham named the place where he was 
going to offer up Isaac Yahweh-jirah, which meant "Yahweh will provide." 
How did Abraham know to call the place this if he did not know that the 
name of his god was Yahweh? 

Genesis 24:25-52 certainly shows that Abraham's servant, who was sent 
to find a wife for Isaac knew Yahweh's name. When he encountered 
Rebekah, he "knelt bowing to Yahweh"(v:26). He said, "Praise Yahweh, 
the Elohim[God] of my master Abraham. Yahweh has led me on this 
trip to the home of my master's relatives."(v:27). Several more times 
in this passage, Abraham's god was called Yahweh. It is certainly 
strange that Abraham's  servant knew the name Yahweh, but Abraham, 
despite evidence to the contrary, presumably didn't. 

Genesis 26:22 says that Isaac dug a well and called the name of it 
Rehoboth and said, "Now Yahweh has made room for us, and we will 
prosper in this land." How could Isaac have said this if he did not know 
that his god's name was Yahweh?

Genesis 26:23-25 says that Isaac went to Beersheba and "That night 
"Yahweh appeared to Isaac, and said 'I am the Elohim of your father 
Abraham.' Isaac then built an altar and "worshiped Yahweh." I guess 
we are supposed to believe that Isaac worshiped a God that he didn't 
even know.

Genesis 28:10-13 says that Jacob saw Yahweh on the way to Haran, 

and Yahweh said to him, "I am Yahweh, the Elohim of your grandfather
Abraham and the Elohim of Isaac." I guess Jacob was hard of hearing 
and didn't catch the name Yahweh.

Genesis 28:20-21 Says that Jacob made a vow that if Yahweh would take
care of him on his way back to his father that he would make Yahweh his
Elohim [God]. How could Jacob have made Yahweh his God if he didn't 
even know the name Yahweh? 

What About Scientific Foreknowledge in the Bible?

From *The Skeptical Review*, July-August 1990:

by Farrell Till
Any challenge to the Bible inerrancy doctrine will sooner or later encounter the scientific-foreknowledge argument. "If the Bible is not the inspired word of God," the inerrancy spokesmen ask, "then how do you explain the many examples of scientific foreknowledge in it?" The claim implied in this question is that men writing in an age of relative ignorance indicated in various passages of the Bible that they understood scientific truths that were completely unknown at the time. The response the question seeks is that these scientific facts could not have been known to Bible writers without God's having revealed them during the verbal inspiration process. They see this as a compelling argument for the inerrancy doctrine.

A basic problem with this argument is the same as the one found in the familiar harmonious-content, unity-of-theme, and fulfillment-of-prophecy arguments so often presented in the Bible's defense. It is based more on speculation, imaginative interpretations, and wishful thinking than on verifiable facts. As I write this, I am engaged in a written debate with a Church-of-Christ preacher who, in trying to use this argument, threw a volley of speculatively conceived questions at me in his second affirmative manuscript. How did Moses know of woman's seed being involved in the conception of children, (Gen. 3:15)? How did Isaiah know in his day that the earth is round, (Isa. 40:22)? How did Job know that the earth rests on no material foundation, (Job 26:7)? How did Moses know that life is in the blood (Gen. 9:4), when medical science didn't know it until a late date? How did David know of the moon's bearing witness (Ps. 89:37) to the sunlight on the other side of the earth? How did David know that there are paths in the seas (Ps. 8:8) long before oceanography and Matthew Maury's work found it so?

These are the questions exactly as he fired them at me. Not once did he take the time to explicate scripture references to show reasonable proof that the writers meant what he was interpreting them to mean. He just tacked the references onto his questions as if this alone were enough to establish that the writers had intended the meanings he was attributing to them. Any verbal communication, however, whether oral or written, must be interpreted before it can be understood, and this is doubly true of written statements. 

Scientific Boo-Boos In The Bible

From *The Skeptical Review*, January/February 1991 issue:

By Farrell Till

Bibliolaters claim that the Bible is inerrant in every detail, in matters of history, science, geography, chronology, etc., as well as faith and practice. It is a claim that has won wide acceptance among fundamentalist Christians, but, as is true of most zealotic tributes that have been paid to the Bible, it has no basis in fact. As past articles in TSR have clearly shown to anyone who really wants to know the truth, the Bible is riddled with mistakes. Many of those mistakes were scientific ones.

The creation account in Genesis divided time into days and the days into evening and morning for three days before the sun was even created (1:1-19). "There was evening and there was morning," we are told, "one day... a second day... a third day," but as any astronomer knows, evening (night) and morning (daylight) result from the earth's rotation with respect to the sun. With no sun, there would have certainly been evening or night, but there could have been no morning.

On the fourth day when God created the "two great lights" (the sun and the moon), he created the stars too. This creation of the rest of the universe was treated by the Genesis writer(s) as if it were little more than an afterthought: "he made the stars also" (v:16). To the prescientific mind that wrote this, it probably made sense. To him (her), the earth was undoubtedly the center of the universe, but today we know better. The solar system of which earth is only a tiny part is itself an infinitesimal speck in the universe. Surely, then, the creation of the stars would not have occurred so quickly and suddenly if six days were needed to create the world. Scientists now know that the creation of stars is an evolutionary process that is still ongoing. Matter coalesces; stars ignite, shine, and eventually burn out or explode. From the existence of heavy elements in our solar system, astronomers generally agree that it formed from debris left over from a supernova that occurred billions of years ago. The prescientific Genesis writer knew none of this, however, and that is why he viewed the creation of the universe as an Elohistic afterthought. No modern, scientifically-educated writer would have made that mistake.