Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible by James W. Sire

Author:James W. Sire
Language: eng
Format: epub

Misreading No. 14: Ignoring Alternative Explanations

Just as we can select evidence to justify our preconceived ideas we can ignore the alternative explanations for that evidence. We see a strange glowing light outside our window and if we have been susceptible to recent movies or television, we may suddenly conclude that we are seeing a flying saucer-maybe a space ship complete with extraterrestrial beings. But lots of things glow strangely in the dark-the full moon seen with your glasses off (well, at least, as seen by me with my glasses off), the headlight of a car seen through a torest, a campfire, it flashlight, the running lights of a commercial airliner and so on. To say you have just had a close encounter with the extraterrestrial without exhausting the other more ordinary explanations would be irresponsible if not irrational.

So, too, it is a fallacy to adopt an eccentric explanation when an ordinary one fits the data. At least, it is a fallacy to adopt it with a sense of certainty. Withholding judgment is required.

Case 1. Von Daniken opens his chapter, "Was God an Astronaut?" as follows: "The Bible is full of secrets and contradictions. Genesis, for example, begins with the creation of the earth, which is reported with absolute geological accuracy. But how did the chronicler know that minerals preceded plants and plants preceded animals"'"

A number of things strike the wary reader about. this passage. First, the Bible has almost nothing to say about geology. Does von Daniken mean biology (it doesn't say much about that either)? Second, von Daniken declares the writer of Genesis achronicler. But is Genesis 1 and 2 a chronicle or a poetic description of genuine cosmic events?

But our main interest here is in von Daniken's rhetorical question: "How did the chronicler know ... ?" Well, a Christian suggests, Genesis is revelation; it has been so understood by the ancient Hebrews, Jesus himself and the church down through the ages. The writer of Genesis, probably Moses, received his information from God: "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets" (Heb. 1:1). If divine revelation is taken as possible, then any degree of accuracy is at least in theory possible.

Von Daniken continues by quoting Genesis 1:26, "'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,'. . . Why does God speak in the plural? Why does he say `us,' not `me,' why `our,' and not `my'? One would think that the one and only God ought to address mankind in the singular, not in the plural." 13 A quick look at almost any Bible commentary will produce at least two answers not involving God as a group of astronauts: (1) that "the Creator speaks as heaven's King accompanied by His heavenly hosts" or (2) that the plural prefigures the doctrine of the Trinity expressed more explicitly in the New Testament.14 Both of these alternatives are consistent with the literary character of the text; von Daniken's implicit suggestion is not.

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