Computer Consciousness, Part 2

I’ve decided that there is more to say about the irreducibility of consciousness.

How could the consciousness of something be tested? The Turing test was proposed this way; if I am having a discussion with a person and a computer, but I cannot tell which is the person and which is the computer based only on the discussion itself, then the computer must be a person.

I think there is a fundamental problem to this test; at most, it establishes epistemologically possible personhood, but certainly not ontological personhood. If I believe I meet a person, then at most I believe I meet a person, and short of tearing them open to see what they are composed of, I wouldn’t know whether or not they are a person or not (currently with our technology, its simply extremely unlikely that they wouldn’t be a person, but in the future, this could be a problem).

Ontologically speaking, what would need to be proven? My mere inability to know based on only one consideration (or even several) of the ontology is not enough for me to conclude about the total ontology; that’s quite a non sequitor. At most, the object’s ability to hold a discussion in such a way that I think its a person establishes that the object has the ability to hold a discussion such that I think it is a person. If it really is a person, then the explanation is granted.

To see why I would hold that the ability to discuss does not lead to personhood, see this thought experiment.

I design a “Chatbot.” This Chatbot is meant to hold discussions with people by figuring out their topic of discussion (say, by picking out some keywords) , do a google search for that topic, and then summarize a part of the first link on the cogent issue. It would also have some relevant programming on conversational courtesies.

I decide to demonstrate my Chatbot by holding a conversation with the Chatbot in front of a crowd. I say “Hi.” The Chatbot recognizes my “Hi” as a salutary greeting, and based off of stock replies programmed into it, replies “Hello.” I offer a hand, and say “My name is Bryce, what is yours?” The Chatbot offers out its hand (because of the program) and says “My name is Chatbot 1.0. Nice to meet you Bryce” (again, because of the program).

This entire sequence here on the part of the Chatbot has been determined by its programming; its done nothing outside of its programming through its own volition. All that it did is essentially comparable to the mechanical “programming” of a mechanical calculator, only of a more complex manner.

Think back to the Turing test. How can it be concluded that the computer must a person, when it could also be concluded that it is no more than my thought-experiment Chatbot?

How then could the consciousness of an object be proved, then?

First, consider humans. What proves our consciousness? I would say that it is our feeling of consciousness; that I would feel free will but not really have free will seems an absurd idea to me. Further, I feel qualia, and qualia is irreducible to to matter as well.

So what proves our consciousness? An irreducible component to our thinking and feeling. There are some parts of us that are undeniably reducible; for instance, I feel hunger because evolution found that it is better for a creature to feel hungry when it hasn’t eaten for such-and-such time, etc. However, there are parts of me that are irreducible as well; the feeling of hunger in the first place, or my feeling of free will. Any attempts to trace these back to material processes ultimately backfire and lead to absurdity (either by leading back to a denial that we have qualia in the first place or that somehow the determinative process can include creatures who feel non-determined).

Computer consciousness could never be proven because there is no computer that exists that isn’t programmed. Any computer that displays an aptitude for discussion or the ability of analyzing colors is really not doing so out of any un-programmed ability, but leads back to the program which tells it what outputs to give to certain inputs, essentially comparable to the input-output of any other mechanical device.

The Turing test then fails because if I were allowed to take into consideration other data, then I would be able to see that the computer’s ability to discuss is based on a complex program, not because of any irreducible component.

Computer Consciousness

The idea of computer consciousness; that a computer could think and feel like humans (provided the proper instruments) is, to put it philosophically, bullshit.

Why is this? Well, before I explain computers, allow me to explain machines in general.

Take a piano; the keys are attached to hammers in such a way that upon pressing the key, the hammer strikes a chord of a certain tension and thickness, producing a note. This process is essentially mechanical. The input produces the output. What I will note here is that the piano is in no way “conscious” of its involvement with the production of the sound, but is totally “passive” and “unfeeling,” totally lacking the ability to perceive its use, or even itself for that matter.

Now, take a car engine. It is essentially a machine in the same way that the piano is, though designed to a different use [note: my use of the word design has nothing to do with Intelligent Design]. You press your foot down on the gas pedal, and so more gasoline is allowed into the engine, which is exploded and so turned into mechanical power that turns the wheels that move the car. It is more complex than the piano, though this complexity doesn’t grant the engine any more consciousness than the piano. It is just as inert as the piano.

Let us increase in complexity and take a very specific example of machinery; Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2. This machine is essentially a mechanical calculator. You give it an equation, and it will produce an answer. However, this is done in the same way that a car engine and a piano work. The machine is inert, without consciousness. Despite the fact that it gives answers meaningful to people, the Difference Engine itself cannot make any meaning of the input nor of the produced output. It is like a watch; it is a mechanical process meant by humans to produce meaningful references (i.e. what time it is) that works like, well, “clockwork.” This knob turns that gear turns that pendulum turns that… and so on. However, this doesn’t amount in any way to consciousness, no matter how complex it may be, even of incredible magnitudes in comparison to a piano.

Now, let us “turn” our mind to computers. I put “turn” into quotations because thinking about computers and mechanical processes is not really anything different. There is a difference between brass machines and computers in that computers are composed of silicon and plastic and use electricity, but other than that, they are not substantially different.

How is this so? Computers operate by programs, which are literally no different than the mechanical complexity that goes into engines or mechanical calculators. A program takes an input which produces an output in the same way that the input into the Difference Engine produces an output. The entire process lacks any conscious thought behind it. Quite literally, in the same way a car engine isn’t suddenly going to start thinking about the world, a computer isn’t going to start thinking, no matter how complex it is. Computers are just machines, and machines don’t think. They are inert processes designed by humans to produce meaningful outputs for humans based on inputs that are meaningful to humans. The output is never other than what the program designed the output to be.

So a certain sense of naïvety can be explained by people who posit that “If you give a computer a video camera, it would be seeing.” Well, no, not really, if we are talking about the qualia “seeing,” which is essentially irreducible and cannot be explained by explaining the objective phenomena that underly the instruments of seeing. So, as much as a blind man might understand eyes and lightwaves, this will not help him to conceive of the color RED. The only way to explain RED is to directly experience it. The computer, because it is only a machine that operates without consciousness, can’t have any sort of experience in the first place, so it couldn’t see, because seeing is definitionally experiential.

The reply “But if I give this computer a video camera, and place a red apple in front of it, and ask it what color the apple is, and it tells me it is red, then it must be said that the computer is conscious.” No, not at all. Based on what we talked about, the computer would only be able “identify” not for-itself, but for-us, because of a program that we (or at least some sentient conscious being) gave to it to be able to “identify-for-us” colors. This is possible because there are objective facts related to the color red, but, remembering our blind man, these don’t amount to conceiving of the color RED as it is experienced. In the same way that pressing a key on a piano produces a sound is the computer operating, only in a much more complex way and using electricity.

Another form of this reply might be in the form of proposing a Turing test. The Turing test states that if I were to have a discussion with someone who I thought displayed consciousness based on its ability to converse with me, then that must be because it did have consciousness, implicating that if it were a computer who I had a discussion with, then that computer must have consciousness. However, I think this is simply ignorant of the very mechanical nature of computers. The ability of the computer to have a discussion with me is simply due to the (admittedly genius) programming that went into the computer, not because of any natural latent ability the computer had for consciousness. Its input would be what I say, and its output would be what the program told it to say (i.e. something cogent to the topic), just like my pressing a key on a piano produces a note. The programming would be very complex, but that doesn’t amount to consciousness of itself.

What is the point of all this?

I simply want to demonstrate the irreducibility of consciousness to material phenomena. Materialists, who say that everything that exists is material, are committed to being able to reduce everything to nothing more than matter, even apparently non-material things like “truth” and “consciousness” to being nothing more than “emergent” properties inherent in matter.

So, if materialism is true, then it follows that consciousness is nothing more than an emergent property of matter. However, no amount of complexity ever produces consciousness, because the complexity of the machine will only operate based on the preconditions present, just like the car engine.

So, our conclusions are that;

1) There is no consciousness

This is proven false through experience.

2) There is no free will

But then you wouldn’t expect there to be any consciousness of free will, at which you wouldn’t expect any consciousness, because the experience of consciousness reveals autonomity, meaning that this just resolves down to saying (1), which is proven false through experience.

3) The ability of consciousness to arise from matter just hasn’t been proven yet

This doesn’t refute the fact that I think it has already been sufficiently disproved in the above consideration on mechanic operation and input-output, so consciousness won’t be proven to arise from matter simply because it’s already been proven not to.

4) Consciousness is materially irreducible and has an immaterial component

This is, I think, the most veritable conclusion of the above considerations. This amounts to saying that humans, because they have consciousness, are more than material, and include an immaterial component that could not have arisen from matter, meaning evolution is insufficient to explain the totality of human composition (though, I will note, it can explain bodily function. makeup, and origin, just not more than that).

Now, if there is an immaterial component to humans, then the groundwork is laid for arguing for the ability of man to have an immortal soul.

Theistic Evolution and Scripture, Part 4

My good friend Josh gave me this question in the comments;

Questions that now arise in my mind based on the approach you are taking:

Would each event/story [in the Bible] then need to be taken on its own terms and with its own evidence/apologetic/archaeology or are these stories necessarily interconnected as history?

To first be able to answer this question, I would like to recapitulate what has been developed so far in the preceding posts [part 1, part 2, and part 3];

• the theological truth and historicity of a story in Scripture are not necessarily necessarily coextensive
• the truth of Christianity rises and falls with the truth of the doctrines of the person of Christ (i.e. the actual historical occurrence of the Resurrection, His actual divinity and manhood, the Virgin Birth, etc, all being tied together and essentially coextensive)

Proceeding from these I’d like to introduce a new logical corollary;

• the theological truths concerning Christ must be historical, because they are historical statements

To expand, allow me to clarify that by “historical” I mean that it happens “in time, in our world, in our history.” I am as a person a historical being, because I exist within time, within this world, and within our (mutual) history. The theological doctrine of the Incarnation states that the divine person God the Son took on manhood in 1st century Palestine, born of Mary. If any of these affirmations about time and place and object are wrong, then the doctrine would be decisively refuted. There is this additional amount of scrutiny that can be made because these are not “mere”metaphysical statements about the nature of God apart from the world, but statements about actual actions and events about God entering into the world and becoming one of its beings. Additional facts offer additional facts that can be checked and inquired into.

Now, prima facie, being Christians and not “Biblians,” our faith in Christ could actually exist apart from the particular Scriptures we accept as inspired, provided we have sufficient historical documentation and testimony of the person of Christ in other forms to even know about Him in the first place. However, since I as a Catholic affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, this isn’t the route I’m aiming to take (mind you, it would be much easier).

Testimony to the person known as Christ who is the Son of God was established through the Apostles who were sent by Christ (at least this is the veritable historical record) to establish the Church. This seems to make sense; what would be the point of God coming to die for our sins only for there to be no possible way for anyone to find out about it? Hence the establishment of the Church by God to spread the “Gospel” about the Incarnation. In this I would like to point out that the Church must necessarily be as eternal as Christ, for otherwise it would be deficient in testimony to Christ who is Himself eternal. However, the Church exists as a “tool” of God as the primary method of re-lating Christ, both in missionary effort and in performing the sacraments.

Part of her missionary effort is to explain what it means to be Christian in the first place. Within this context we can place Scripture; but Scripture cannot be placed outside of the context of the Church or even prior to it, for the Scripture exists at the Church’s behest and canonization. I don’t wish to make a lengthy aside, so I’ll just refer to this post if you’re interested in seeing my reasoning on this.

With this knowledge in head, it would be right to ask the question What is the purpose of Scripture?

Like all things that originate in God, it is meant to reveal His love. Indeed, this is why the Incarnation is the most perfect image of God the Father on earth, because God the Son is the most immediate in being uncreated and proceeding directly from the Father to the Father. Further discussions on the Trinity can be had elsewhere, but let us consider this image of revelation.

Now, as the Son is revelation of the Father to the Father, so all things from God are necessarily revelation [disclosure] of Himself. Creation mirrors God, for the simple reason that God couldn’t create unlike Himself, and the essence of God is to love, which is to reveal Himself (think of how a married couple is to know each other well, in fact, better than anyone else save God).

Now if Creation mirrors God sufficiently to be general revelation of Himself, any other acts of additional revelation are special, as these revelations happen within the context of the rest of revelation. They deserve special attention and can be meditated upon in a way unlike what general revelation offers.

Considering Scripture, we must consider what it is.

First, Scripture is literature. This means our method of analysis will be different than, say, how we analyze the material world around us.

Second, Scripture is composed of different kinds of literature. There is historical narrative (Kings), spiritual treatise (Paul’s letters), philosophical meditation (Ecclesiastes), laws (Deuteronomy), etc. Each of these would have to be analyzed as they are meant to be; you wouldn’t read poetry the same way you would read a science textbook.

Third, Scripture is to the service of the Church, which is to the service of Christ. Therefore, Scripture is Christocentric. Not only must we read each text within Scripture according to its style, but also as being revelation of Christ (which, in my Theodramatik method, further implicates that it is revelation both of God and man).

Lastly, based primarily on the fact that the Scripture has been canonized for the service of the Church, and that is has been canonized as a whole, it is interconnected. All stories relate to all other stories, because if they all relate to Christ, then because they all in some way talk about the same thing, and because this one thing must be singular in set of properties, they must also be in agreement. This means they talk about each other. Genesis relates to John relates to Ecclesiastes relates to Jonah relates to Revelation.

In my next post, I’ll discuss the nature of this interrelation found in Scripture.

The No-Reason Argument for Atheism

A positive argument for atheism as formulated by Scott Adams (the writer of the Dilbert comics) looks like this;

1) A maximally perfect God has no need for anything other than Himself

2) Therefore, God doesn’t need the universe

3) A maximally perfect God wouldn’t create without need

4) The universe exists

5) Therefore, God doesn’t exist

The argument seems to me rather ingenious, not because it seems to have any real persuasive power (the logic is valid, but the unsound premise is 3), but because it presents a mystery to theism. Why did God, if He is perfect, create? The answer from process theology and Islamic philosophy is that God created as part of a process to perfect Himself (Averroës would say that God’s creating is superaddition; God adds to His infinite self). This would deny God’s omnipotence, and so deny God’s perfection, and so Christianity rightly regards this as heretical. While I don’t mean to answer the question here (mostly because I don’t think it needs to be answered), I still think its worth bringing up for contemplation.

Now, what’s wrong with the purported proof? Premise 3 is false. Properly speaking, there can be logical necessities, for instance, if I want to be able to truthfully say I’ve read Dante’s Inferno, I’ll need to read it first), but it doesn’t seem that there is really such a thing as a “moral” necessity. (I call it a “moral” necessity for lack of a better word; if you have one, please tell me.)

A moral necessity would be, say, the absolute metaphysical necessity to live. The problem is, there is no such necessity. I don’t need to live; I could just stop eating, and eventually I would die from starvation. I don’t need to go to school, I don’t need to wear clothes in public, I don’t need to do anything (what my body makes me do isn’t being considered here). The reason I don’t need to do anything is because I don’t need to want to do anything. I don’t need to want to live, I don’t need to want to be logical, etc.

Conversely, I don’t need to not want either. There is a choice offered to me.

Now, speaking of a maximally perfect God, if I don’t need a reason to do anything, why does God need a reason to do anything?

Ockham’s Razor and the Contingency of the Universe

Consider this argument for God’s existence;

1) There must be something necessarily existent

2) The universe is contingent

3) Therefore, God is this necessarily existent thing

The easy atheist reply is to assert that, per Ockham’s razor, this has more variables than necessary; why not just say the universe is the necessarily existent thing?

I think that this sort of reply commits an error that can also be shaved away. The new atheist argument looks like this;

1) There must be something necessarily existent

2′) The universe is this necessarily existent thing

However, while I understand the logic behind this, and see that it is an easy mistake to make, this new axiom makes another new assertion. This assertion is that the universe as a whole is ontologically different than just the sum of all its parts, which are undoubtedly contingent (for instance, why this hydrogen atom and not another one?). Of course, it could be accepted that the universe really is no more than the sum of all its parts, but that the whole of the parts are necessarily existent, but this is yet another new assertion.

Thus, the atheist reply doesn’t conclusively defeat the argument from contingency, because it posits just as many new features. In fact, it seems the reply is empty, because all our experience tells us that the makeup of the universe is contingent, and if all the parts of the universe are contingent, and the universe is nothing more than the sum of all its (contingent) parts, then the universe is contingent as well. Its more intuitive to posit that the universe is contingent than that it is necessary, especially in light of modern cosmology which can be easily interpreted as telling us that the universe didn’t need to “Bang” at all.

I don’t think that this conclusively leads to the argument from contingency being sound, but it does seem to have a lot of intuitive headway going for it, especially considering there to be no strong atheist reply that doesn’t commit just as many unverifiable postulates. In hand with Bryce’s Wager, it would only seem that we should argue for the universe’s contingency.

Process Theology isn’t Theology

Theology is about God. Process “theology,” because it emasculates what they call ‘God’ and make ‘him’ into less than God, is not about God, therefore, it is not theology.

Theistic Evolution and Scripture, Part 3

This post will be dedicated to laying out the necessarily Christocentric nature of any reading of Scripture, giving a common foundation between theistic evolutionists and creationists.

First, I would like to reference a certain mistake I find predominant in arguments creationists make for creationism to theistic evolutionists. They often make the argument that;

If you don’t believe in the literal historical narrative of Genesis, then how do you believe that the Resurrection of Jesus is literal? It seems that by ridding of the necessity for the historicity of the Creation account, you would also be ridding of the necessity of the historicity of the Resurrection. There is an inconsistency present between your view of Creation and the Resurrection.

This is, I will grant, not an entirely irrational question or premise to suppose. After all, both the account of Creation and the account of the Resurrection are in Scripture; if I admit that Scripture doesn’t need to be historical to be theological, then why can’t the Resurrection be read as a ‘myth’ the same way as I would read the Creation story?

The problem with such equivocation is that the Creation and the Resurrection (referring to these as accounts of Scripture) are different things, and Christianity makes different emphasis of them. To make this most eminent, consider that we call ourselves “Christ“-ians, not “Creation-as-related-in-Genesis”-ians. Our faith is rooted in Christ, not in Creation. Creationists are a subset of Christians, not Christians a subset of Creationists.

This is an important note to make. There is an order to what we believe. I believe in Christ, therefore I believe in the Church, therefore I believe in the Bible. It doesn’t work the other way; in fact, such an order of belief is incoherent. As Christians, our religious beliefs are rooted in Christ. Christianity is Christocentric; the truth of Christianity rises and falls with the person of Christ.

As I pointed out in my last post in this series, if Christ did not really rise from the dead, then there is no proof that He really was God. If Christ was not really God, then our sins could not really have been forgiven. If Christ was not really man, then again, our sins could not really have been forgiven.

On the other hand, if Jonah never really existed, then there is no real consequence to our belief in Christ.

In this way there is an asymmetry. If someone denies that this asymmetry exists, then they can’t claim to be Christocentric in their Christianity, at which point they would be missing the point of Christianity.

Circularity and Infinite Regression

Assuming foundationalism, which states that there are certain things that are true because they “just are,” an argument can be made against infinite regression based on the fact that circular reasoning could be validated by the fact that at the beginning of the circular reasoning, the foundation is laid in one of the two circularly confirming premises.

To expand, circular reasoning to be proved requires an infinite series to be validated. How does one know P? Because Q is true. How does one know why Q is true? Because P is true. So, P -> Q -> P -> Q…

Unless one denies the validity of infinite regressions, then one must accept that circular reasoning is true, because if we’re allowed to assume the possible actual expansion of the circularity above to a beginning (which is possible if infinite regressions are possible), then the reasoning is successful despite its requiring a circular mode of logic. This is because circles of reasoning are also infinite regressions; if infinite regressions are possible, ergo, circular reasoning is possible.

I’m just wondering about this, and there seems to be something fundamentally mistaken in my analysis. Is there some additional element to circular reasoning that makes it different from ‘mere’ infinite regression? Infinite regression of proof has the form of Xn > Xn-1… -> X2 -> X1 -> X. Circular reasoning has the same infinite regression, albeit the X’s are more specific and occur in a pattern.

Perhaps it is the problem of the square-rectangle. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. But, then, aside from the pattern (and this doesn’t seem to be a problem, because allowing the expansion of an infinite regression, the pattern has a beginning) what is different about circular reasoning such that circularity is infinite regression but infinite regression is not circularity?

Theistic Evolution and Scripture, Part 2

In my last post, I developed the law of Scripture interpretation that I call the “Principle of Necessary Historicity,” which says;

• the theological truth and historicity of a story in Scripture are not necessarily necessarily coextensive

Allow me to clarify this principle before I continue so there won’t be any confusion.

The assertion that Scripture is inerrant does not lead to Scripture being true in every possible sense. This is not only prima facie absurd, but impossible. Scripture in several places makes not only geologic mistakes* (i.e. “windows” in the heavens through which rain comes, or that the earth rests on pillars) but also blatant theological mistakes* that no studious theologian† would accept as being literal (i.e. the assertion that God placed the stars in place with His ‘fingers’). So the claim that the Bible is inerrant must be qualified to mean that every statement or passage is truthful in some sense, but not necessarily all possible senses.

* I think its a misnomer to characterize the anachronisms as “mistakes” per se, but just literary license.

† I have discussed the problem of anthropomorphism in conjunction with the problem of God having emotions, in order to point out that my reading of passages where it says “God was angry with Israel” as metaphorical claims about the ‘emotions’ of God was in line with their reading about passages where it says “God’s arm” as metaphorical in the same way. Rather than concede the point, however, these Christians just backed up to saying God really does have arms, as the overtly literal reading of Scripture would say.

If we’re allowed to make such a qualification about how Scripture is inerrant, then it must be admitted it isn’t necessarily wrong to read an otherwise literal passage in metaphorical terms, giving grounds to my principle. This is because there are more senses of truth other than the theological and historical; there is also the literal, hyperbolic, etc. The possible disjunction between the literal and hyperbolic begs to be applied in the same way to the disjunction of the historical and theological. However, an important caveat must be granted; there are certain times when the literal reading is the theological meaning of Scripture, and so it would follow that there are certain times when the historical reading is the only foundation possible to any theological meaning (i.e. the Resurrection).

In terms of Christianity, there is essentially no use to Christianity if the Resurrection didn’t occur. If Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, then He isn’t proved to be the Son of God, meaning He isn’t proved to have died for our sins, meaning it isn’t proved that our sins have even been forgiven yet or even could be forgiven! If you take away the Resurrection, you are precluding any coherent meaning to Christianity, unless you want to reduce Christianity to some solidarity rooted in the obsession over a mere man who accomplished nothing.

It follows that other things are also necessary; if you take away Jesus being God, then you preclude our sins having been died for and actually forgiven (meaning, yet again Jesus accomplished nothing even if He was God!). If you take away the necessity of forgiveness for sin that can’t be earned, then you take away the coherence of any act of the supposed God-Man called Jesus.

Since there are actually quite a lot of necessary foundations for any meaningful Christianity, I’ll just say that I will be relating to these doctrines;

• Jesus is truly God the Son Incarnate, Savior of man, born of the Virgin Mary
• Man is in need of forgiveness from God for his rebellion (sin) against God
• Man is fallen and so he will tend away from God without grace
• Man is a special creation, being individually created by God in hypostases of body and soul

Now, I will note that some of the above I will be reconciling to evolution, and some I will be using as a foundation to plant my interpretation of Genesis apart from its historicity.

Next post; Can the theological meaning of Genesis 1-3 be founded apart from its historicity?

Theistic Evolution and Scripture, Part 1

Running off my last three-part series of posts on my view that Christians cannot reject evolution without being forced to resort to dubious theological premises, I’ve decided to make a reply to my friend Josh on how Scripture is to be interpreted. Before I get around to giving an interpretation of Scripture, I want to give a theological framework for the interpretations.

My interpretive method I call the “Theodramatik.” To put it concisely, by this I simply mean that Scripture must be interpreted as a source of special revelation in continuity with the rest of (general) revelation. Scripture, being special revelation, has specific interests, so it can’t be held as more than what it is intended to be. General revelation furnishes us with compelling arguments for, say, the existence of God, the Oneness of God, the personality, eternality, omniscience, etc, of God. As such, the purpose of Scripture will not be primarily to demonstrate the existence of God. It is special revelation for a special reason; it fills in what theological truths we should know that can’t be gleaned from general revelation alone.

So, if God is going to go through the trouble of finding a person willing to write about Him, inspire Him, protect those writings so that they will be delivered to the Christian Church, He’s not going through all this to tell us something we could already know without the Bible telling us. His intent is revealing what otherwise couldn’t be known. Yes, I will grant that not all of what is found in Scripture couldn’t be known otherwise (i.e. the declaration to Moses that God is the I AM THAT I AM, implying God’s eternality and uncaused-ness), but I will say that the specific character of Scripture is to be a vessel of those truths that are necessary in Christian doctrine. The Scriptures, taken as inerrant by the Church [and the Church established by God], can only be accepted as inerrant, otherwise the meaning won’t be properly derived.

Now, this special character of Scripture leads to the possibility of deriving interpretations in which the text is, in fact, seen as a theological text, treatise, or parable. This doesn’t lead to a denial of inerrancy, for it can’t be denied that theological truth is still truth, and the theological is the primary point of Scripture. Going back to the point on Scripture’s specificity in intent as being especially towards those truths which otherwise couldn’t be known, I would place those specifically revealed theological truths to be the apex and binding of Scripture.

My conclusion here on this account is that the theological truth and historicity of a story in Scripture are not necessarily necessarily [not a typo] coextensive.

There are many instances in which the historicity of something related in Scripture is necessary for the theology related, such as the Resurrection of Christ. But on the other hand, there are stories in which the theological truth can be laid upon Christ and the Church apart from the historicity. In particular for this series, I will be talking about the Creation accounts related in Genesis and how they are used throughout the rest of Scripture.

How then shall I be taking the Creation accounts? It should be obvious that I will be doing anything but defending any form of Creationism; in fact, my entire reason for this series is to demonstrate that the Creationist interpretation of Genesis is not only unnecessary for a sound Christian theology, but that it distorts it and leads to dubious theological claims about the ability and goodness of God.