You are wrong about the mustard seed. It was the smallest seed that the people who he was talking to dealt with. He didn’t have to know everything in the universe in order to not make an error. I don’t recall him saying that the continents were not moving. We call them ‘falling stars’. That doesn’t mean we don’t know what they are. I don’t recall Jesus saying falling stars are the same thing as a stationary star. They both fit the word star as a good description. Adding the word falling shows that you are distinguishing it from other stars, as men have done for a long time. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that they knew it was a meteor if they happened to see it land and find the remains. I don’t recall Jesus saying the sun is not a close star. He could have if it was important to do, but we are not told that God deemed it necessary to impart the knowledge about those details. However, all these objections fall apart since he proved he was God by rising from the dead.
All science since the Bible is without error. Biology, geology, etc.
Based on the clear reading of the text. God didn’t make his word so that nobody could understand it. You appear to me to be reaching for straws to find any way you can to get away from what the text obviously says.
The plain truth of the Cosmos agrees with the Bible 100%.
So you agree with the geology that says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old?
The text of Genesis 1 is obviously Hebrew Poetry. Do you agree?
The Bible says nothing that disagrees with science. It isn’t trying to teach you astronomy, but since God wrote it through men it doesn’t have any mistakes in it.
We disagree on both the meaning of the Bible and on the meaning of Christianity. Your ideas on what the Bible says and what a Christian is are of no practical difference with someone who denies both. The Bible clearly teaches that if you do not believe that Jesus is God, you are not a Christian.
I have a question for you. Why do you believe Christianity is true? Do you have any evidence to support that belief?
A lot of geologists say that, but geology shows it to be about 6000 years old.
No. It is obviously prose in my opinion.
The geological evidence shows the earth is older than 6,000 years. Some geologists may interpret that evidence differently but it doesn’t change the facts.
For a very long list of this evidence see 100 Reasons The Earth Is Old
You can make the determination on your own authority - - what do you think is most likely true?
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You are grasping at straws, using whatever old excuse anyone has ever offered in order to defend a position that cannot be defended; or
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It is relatively easy to find one in a situation where the Bible text must be interpreted… which is something very few YEC’s can actually admit point-blank.
I think I’m done pointing out your various inconsistencies … you will simply look in the mirror and say: “my hair isn’t gray, that color is just a divinely ordained color highlight signifying the silver value of the thoughts inside my head…”
You can dispute your further points with someone who has not yet had the chance of banging their head against the YEC brick wall.
As you probably suspect, I have read many of the old earth arguments. They are unconvincing to me.
Everyone has to interpret it for themselves. However, some interpretations are logical and close to the true meaning, and some are not. The consequences of your interpretation and how you receive it will determine whether you spend eternity in heaven or hell. John 3:16
Have a nice day.
You will have to help me out here. Where is the part about believing in a young earth?
Do you have both eyes and hands? Or are you sinless? Because the clear reading of the text strongly implies you’d be missing an eye or a hand.
The “clear reading of the text” has resulted in much interpretational butchery over the years:
- God would not prefer you to be either completely for or against him (despite the “clear reading” of hot and cold over lukewarm in Revelation).
- Rather, in Laodicea, there were sources of both hot and cold water nearby with desirable properties, but by the time they reached the city via aqueduct, they had been rendered lukewarm and thus impotent. Hot=good. Cold=good. Lukewarm=useless. The “clear reading” is misleading. But I’ve heard many a sermon based on the “clear reading.”
- God does not require us to accept violence unquestioningly (despite the “clear reading” of Jesus’ command to “turn the other cheek”).
- To smack someone in the face was not about violence, but about insult. You would tolerate that (and more, as in Jesus’ other examples) from family, but not from a stranger or outsider. Jesus’ point is that his family is open to all, not just people from your family or village, and we, as his family, are to treat “outsiders” as family members (as God does–sending sun and rain on the just and unjust). The “clear reading” is misleading. But I’ve heard many a sermon based on the “clear reading.”
- We are not required to tie up certain people or things and free others, so that the same thing can happen in heaven (despite the “clear reading” of “binding and loosing”).
- “Binding and loosing” was rabbinic terminology about law interpretation–how do “we” interpret the Law (Torah) when it comes to areas to which the Law does not specifically apply? For example, what does scripture say about internet usage and how do we establish standards about that? Jesus is authorizing his disciples to interpret and set standards for the community (obviously being guided by the Spirit). The “clear reading” is misleading. Now, to be fair, I haven’t heard too many sermons about this one.
- God does not forbid raffles in the church foyer (despite the “clear reading” of Jesus throwing out the money changers).
- The Jewish people were facilitating their worship using the “outer court,” the “court of gentiles.” You could not pay the temple tax in denarii; you had to pay it in shekels. So in the “outer court” they were making it easy to “get what you need” for appropriate worship. But…they were betraying the purpose of the outer court–access to God for gentiles. “My house will be a house of prayer…for all nations…”, but the gentiles had no access because the Jews had taken it for themselves. “You have turned it into a den of robbers”–the context of this statement, from Jeremiah, strongly implies God’s impending destruction of the Temple. No wonder Jesus ticked off the religious rulers in Jerusalem! The “clear reading” can be misleading (especially when we ignore the Old Testament contexts of Jesus quotes!). But I’ve heard many a sermon based on the “clear reading.”
So…you were saying?
The real question is if any evidence would convince you, or is your belief in a young earth a dogmatic belief.
I would echo T-aquaticus and would ask what argument outside of your interpretation of scripture supports a young earth? While there are a few things that are quoted that are not incompatible with a young earth, I have truly seen no arguments or evidence that leads one to consider a young earth, outside of a specific type of biblical interpretation.
Based on the St. Augustine quote from @T_aquaticus, perhaps we could use your turn of the phrase, @jpm, to identify when someone is engaging unprofitably in interpreting the bible?
If pagans expert in the natural world are being contradicted only by what the Bible says, instead of what Pagan science says about the natural world, they are bringing shame and embarassment upon Christianity !
I actually prefer the question coming from the other direction. What wouldn’t be evidence for a young Earth, in the eyes of Bill_Smith? What features would a geologic formation need in order to falsify the idea of a young Earth or a recent global flood? What features would a fossil need or a genome need in order to be inconsistent with a young Earth? If YEC’s can’t explain the criteria they use for determining what is and isn’t evidence for a young Earth, then they can’t claim to have evidence or claim to be interpreting evidence.
Everything everyone believes is a ‘faith statement’ to some extent. I just think you should believe(have faith) in things that have evidence behind them. I believe the fact of all science agree with the yec position. I believe those who are arguing against my position just have blind faith with no reasons to support their position, while my position has the facts to back it up.
There are obvious some passages that are harder to understand than others, although the ones you quoted aren’t that tough. More importantly to our current discussion, there is nothing hard to understand about the 24hr days in Gen 1.
The scripture is so clear, I doubt that you are going to be able to show it doesn’t say what it clearly says. As I stated in my proof, the fact that Jesus is God is pretty unbeatable evidence. The evidence for the resurrection is much stronger than some flakey theories by man extrapolating backwards several degrees of magnitudes greater than the data they have.
In addition, the old earth arguments have holes all through them in my opinion and many of the young earth evidences sound reasonable.
I hope I would be honest enough to change my opinion if presented with enough evidence that contradicts it, but it is going to take a lot to beat the resurrection. The evidence is too strong.
St. Augustine specifically mentions a category of embarassment for the religion that it appears you fall into. You insist that the sure and certain knowledge of nature and its processes should be ignored. And you have not produced any evidence from the fields of Geology or Archaeology or even the studies that involve core samples from the Arctic regions.
As Augustine specifies, Christians who attempt to convince their audience of the falsehood of demonstrable natural philosophy are an embarassment to the Christian community and a hazard to those who reject Christianity because they think it breeds anti-scientific and other fringe ideas.
I think it’s time you reduce the cant of your refutations from purely scriptural ones, and refutations that are based on objectdive scientific evidence. I’m not quite sure how you would intend to do that. But it’s pretty clear that your “scripture-only” refutations don’t have much traction.
There are a lot, but here are a few interesting ones. The Dorchester vase found in rock supposedly 500-700mya, the iron pot found in coal, and the bell found in coal supposed to be from 300mya. ICR recently had a lab date grand canyon rocks and they had the date of the top rocks older than the bottom rocks. They date volcanic rock in Hawaii that is something like a hundred years old and the dating methods give 100s of millions or billions of years old(I don’t remember which). There ARE fossils. They should rarely form because they rot and get eaten like the American bison on the plains. The flood left vast fossil graveyards covering large portions of states with fish obviously buried before they could be eaten or rot. They find carbon 14 on dinosaur fosssils that they can only try to explain away as contamination.
It is utter nonsense to believe that things just put themselves together. If you drop a bunch of pickup sticks they do not form a log cabin on their own. That is not science to believe everything luckily put itself together. Science describes our observation of how the world works and we don’t see things putting themselves together. The world doesn’t work that way.