The methodology of science is precise and singular… but limited. The methodology of Christianity is imprecise, highly varied and a little too lacking in limitations. Obviously it is far from likely that all the different variations Christianity are correct. Therefore it only makes sense that the middle ground between science and Christianity is to exclude those variations of Christianity which are not compatible with science, and accept that as a good limitation, at the very least. Other limitations are also advisable… such as excluding things which are contrary to social well being (a hard determination that only time can prove).
hmmm…i think that such a position has merit however, unless one has a sound knowledge of biblical writings and a sturdy grounding in the correct way to determine bible truth…it becomes a matter of opinion on which are to be excluded.
My assumption is that you are taking aim at YEC…however, i can assure you that theologically that is the wrong group to aim at. I have spent a great deal of time studying various doctrines from a wide variety of denominations in the Christian movement.
It is fairly easy to poke significant holes in any groups who for starters, worship on Sunday. That’s the first group to chuck out the window as the usual claim of “we are under a new covenant” and are therefore not under the law is absolutely flawed and wrong.
Aside from the above, the main reason why i would argue Sunday worshiping churches must be thrown out is that they cannot use the 4th commandment in defense of YECism…and that is a major blow to their cause in my opinion. It also restricts their use of the relationship between the Sabbath and the Redemption unto God at the Second Coming…how can non-believers in the ongoing legitimacy of Seventh Day Sabbath worship “enter into Christ’s rest”? They don’t believe in it!
So that means we are left with a rather small minority of Sabbath-keeping groups.
I would remind you that your claim about “the methodology of Christianity is imprecise” has a flaw in and of itself. The bible isn’t SDA, Catholic, Baptist, JW, or Mormon…the bible has its own theology. The only way around that apparently imprecise claim is to look at bible doctrine rather than interpretations of men.
Even science cannot do what you demand because science in and of itself does nothing. Science study in its entirety must be implemented and interpreted by intelligent minds. The difference here is that the bible has many thousands of years of actual written history and artifacts that support its story. Old age earth science does not have this…it has only calculations that make it seem like the most plausible answer is billions of years old…but where is the historical evidence from eyewitnesses to support such a view? (and this is a major difference between the two views…even in a court of law, eyewitnesses are a significant weight of evidence). I can think of some eyewitnesses however these are problematic for evolutionary science because they show images of dinosaur type creatures living in times of men!
Given the nature of the flood account, and the massive techtonic upheaval that is said to have caused globally, i do not accept that this cannot drastically influence what we observe around us thus producing errant results and even worse conclusions. I find it interesting that the “contamination argument” is thrown at YEC so much and yet when it comes to some of the very shady secular science conclusions, there is no such thing.
Anyway, back to the O.P. We are now arguing halfway through the story and we need to go back to the beginning. If we are going to keep reverting back to the flood issue over and over again, the same stalemate will result. It may be that this is an irreconcilable differences problem as i am sensing that no thought of a potential solution has been considered on this forum because its not forthcoming.
I openly admit, i dont have a solution in mind. Im simply throwing it out there to see if the forum has any workable ideas?
The workable idea would need to accept a literal 6 day creation and millions/billions of years of evolution. Its a big ask i know, but who knows, perhaps a solution may present itself.
I know that a second creation has been put forward in the past…thats just plain wrong biblically and i do not think it helps the evolutionary view in any case…so we need to move beyond that one.
You have it backwards. There is no single theology present in the Bible. The reason there are all these varieties of theology is because all theology is based on the interpretations of men. So when you look at the Bible through your particular doctrinal lenses you see what you think supports your doctrine. So yes, to you, there is one single theology but to anyone else who uses a different interpretation yours is wrong and theirs is right.
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There is absolutely no incompatibility between worshiping on Sunday and science or social well being. Yes YEC is clearly the most incompatible with science. but other anti-evolutionist positions are also contrary to the scientific evidence. Incompatibilities with social well being might include snake handling and anti-vaxers. A case might be made for polygamy also.
But this getting hung up on the day of worship looks to me like a serious legalism very much opposed to the spirit of Christianity. And I at least wouldn’t want to have anything to do with people like that.
So what you are saying is that the Bible cannot be understood as compatible with science/reality and I should thus treat it as fantasy. I can do that. I did so when I was in high school and younger. But I see no evidence of these “rules” you claim and it looks to me like this is one of your many additions to the text. Instead I see evidence to the contrary, even when we are talking about the 10 commandments – in what Jesus said about the commandments and particularly the Sabbath. What I see is Jesus speaking against both the literalism and legalism you are pushing. And I believe Jesus is God not the writers of any OT or NT texts, so it is Jesus I will put first and make His words the lens through which all of the Bible is to be understood.
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But that’s exactly what YEC does: it ignores the original setting of the Creation accounts and replaces it with a modern scientific worldview. The “literary rules” of the several types of literature the opening Creation account have nothing to do with science no matter how much YECists insist that account is scientifically correct.
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This brought to mind how many ancient scholars considered the six days right up to the creation of the first humans to be “divine days”: God was the only one present and so it would be His perception of the passage of time that counted.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
I tried to figure out an illustration and came up with this: science is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. First the edges are assembled, and then pieces are sorted by colors or patterns. Guesses are made about what piece fits with another piece, and slowly the puzzle gets assembled.
The sorting by colors and/or patterns represents the current state of knowledge; the portions of the puzzle that are already together represent the established body of knowledge over which there is no dispute. So what Adam says “regularly changes” is the sorting of pieces before they get attached to the puzzle, and what doesn’t change is the portion of the puzzle that is assembled.
Of course in terms of scientific knowledge it’s not always clear what “pieces” have been assembled into the “puzzle” recently, but it’s not hard to understand what has been in the puzzle for a long time.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
But the Bible makes no claims about the age of the earth – that is a false conception that arises from thinking the scriptures were written from a modern scientific materialist worldview. In reality nothing in the scriptures was written from a modern worldview.
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That’s a good example of “substituting silliness”.
Actually it doesn’t. The statement that knowledge will increase is neutral. In fact a case could be made that it is a positive statement, that the book must be sealed until the end because in the end times there will be enough knowledge to understand it.
Except that doesn’t apply to the speed of light – shine a light forward inside an aircraft and both those in the aircraft and those outside will all agree that the beam is moving at the speed of light, never more than that.
It actually doesn’t even mean that; it should be “survival of the fit enough”.
Except that people do in fact come to Christ because they understood that science does not contradict the scriptures, recognizing that the claims of a 6,000-year-old earth are not actually from the scriptures, nor is a global flood. And there are people who see the elegance of evolutionary theory and conclude there must be a Designer, and some of those end up coming to Christ. They also don’t ascribe power and majesty to the Adversary as YEC must in order to account for the evident deception necessary to claim the earth is young.
Yes, the logic is incorrect. Why? Because it fails to recognize that the ancient people to whom and for whom the scriptures were written did not view truth that way. In the period when the oldest scriptures were written the truth of a divine story had nothing to do with being historically or scientifically accurate but had to do with it coming from a deity. So the lessons of the opening chapters of Genesis never depended on being historically or scientifically accurate but rest on the trustworthiness of YHWH-Elohim.
Good point. And then it compounds the error by imposing Enlightenment and modern thought, specifically the tenet of scientific materialism that in order to be true a writing has to be scientifically and historically accurate.
Yes! YECists don’t seem to ever bother asking the question, “What did the writer understand by the words he chose?” Without dealing with that question a person can’t actually claim to be working from the actual text.
You’ve got that exactly backwards. How do we enter Christ’s rest? Through His resurrection. What day was He resurrected? The first day of the week! That’s why all early Christians gathered on the first day of the week, as attested both in the scriptures and by observers at the time.
The Sabbath served the same function as everything else in the Old Testament, to lead us to Christ, which is why early Christians honored both days; the Sabbath was for contemplation of the scriptures (especially those that would be read in the gathering the next day) and the First Day, the Lord’s Day – also regarded as the eighth day – was for celebration of the Resurrection.
This is illustrated by the fact that Orthodox liturgies since at least the fourth century include ‘readings’ (they tend to be chanted) about the Resurrection every single Sunday – that’s a relic of the oldest Christian worship. Many Orthodox churches have a Sabbath liturgy that focuses especially on those departed in Christ.
Yes – it was supposedly requested by a pagan king. It was also because there were Jews living all across the lands that Alexander the Great had conquered, and they along with most other educated people learned the Greek language of the conquerors, and since Hebrew was no longer a living language they wanted the scriptures in a language they knew and used.
The story in the so-called letter of Aristeas has a number of glaring problems. First is the request for elders from “each tribe”, since at least some of the tribes had vanished, and if the “ten lost tribes” still had any members they would have been scattered across the Persian Seleucid empire which was a rival of the Ptolemaic empire (I’m not certain who controlled Jerusalem at the time since there is no certain date for the translation; if it was actually Ptolemy II Philadelpus who requested a Greek version, then Jerusalem was part of his empire).
Various books/scrolls had already been translated from Hebrew to Greek earlier, almost certainly the entire Pentateuch, most of the Writings, and definitely the major Prophets, which would have made the translation of the entire Tanakh easier; gathered scholars would only have had to reconcile any existing differences and then translate any of the books not yet translated.
Only after getting permission from God – and that assumes that Job is historical (an interesting question).
The text doesn’t say that – you’re adding to it.
Giving Satan credit for things we don’t know if he did is dangerous because it borders on exalting him.
But that’s what YEC is based on! It ignores the actual biblical worldview.
Unless you have grappled with the worldview and literary genre of the various scriptures, you can’t know if you agree with them or not!
LOL
No, it doesn’t – it just means they were making a faithful translation.
Maybe in your narrow YEC pond. Actual biblical scholarship recognizes that the only way to know the genre – not “styes”! – of a particular piece is to study the ancient literature of the period so we know what kinds of genres there were, and then see which if any of them fit that piece of scripture.
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You continue to deny the words of the Holy Spirit, and of Christ!
The Holy Spirit reduced the entire Old Testament to four guidelines, and Jesus declared that we are under a New Covenant. And Paul informs us that anyone who decides to be under the law is under a curse. He also explicitly says that we are not under law, that we have died to the law, that we have been released from the law.
Absolute rubbish. You make the Sabbath an idol above Christ.
Christ’s rest began with the Resurrection. That resurrection happened on the first day of the week, so Christians have always celebrated the Resurrection on that day, calling it “the Lord’s Day”.
The flood account says no such thing.
You love to claim to follow scripture, but you lie about it over and over!
Your blindness is showing again: your proposal was considered, then weighed and found wanting. You can’t claim no potential solution has been considered just because people don’t agree with you.
Why? That’s contrary to the actual text of the scriptures. A “workable idea” has to start with actually examining the scriptures, and that begins by asking what the literary genre is – not what it looks like in a translation, but what it was when the writer decided how to present his message.
That is one sloppy video and has very little of Penrose in it. It’s also claiming more than is actually the case; his view is disputed by more than a few heavy-duty cosmologists, especially when it comes to his claim that spots in the cosmic microwave background that are slightly hotter than the rest are the result of black holes left over from the previous universe.
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Indeed, now thaat I look at it again. Meanwhile, I’ve deleted my post mentioning it.
Adam begins this long, long thread with a confused, but simple idea.
Well, if Adam is interested in comparing two valuations of a time period, we don’t need to look at bullets or other material objects, but at light. When we discovered that light does NOT act like bullets to which you must add the speed of the container in which it is emitted, but in fact goes the same speed when measured by all observers, both those in the traveling container, and those outside it somewhere, we were forced to see something very strange about TIME. Now this IS relevant to the question of how long creation took. No two observers will find time to go at the same rate. The strength of the gravitational field in which a clock is operating will change how fast that clock ticks. They have instruments so precise today that they can measure the difference between clocks on different shelves in a lab!! The fact that our GPS is run from a satellite high above the earth’s center of gravity means that the clocks on that satellite go faster than our clocks here on earth. For that reason, Einstein’s equations are used in order to calculate where your car is on the road. Similar equations are used to deal with the slowing of time caused by the satellite’s speed relative to your car. So the fact that time varies based on gravitational force and speed is well understood. It’s not just crazy stuff from nerdy physicists. So. Seeing that the time required for a set of events to occur will be different based on where the observer is located means that how long creation took is different based on where the observer is located.
In the 1st chapter of Genesis, we hear the voice of an invisible historian telling us what God is doing and what results from his acts. There are no humans around, and at first, there is not even an earth. So I’m guessing the time that is passing during these events, the time passing between each “evening and morning” is being seen from God’s perspective. So where is God while he is making the universe? We don’t really know. How much gravitational force was operational? We don’t really know; maybe the gravitational force of the entire universe, which would steadily decrease for any individual location as things spread out.
The exact relationship between God’s time and our current time could be figured out if we knew everything, but we don’t yet. How fast did the universe expand? How much gravity does the universe actually contain? We’re still puzzled by these kinds of things. But we don’t have to know the details to see that 7billion years could, at one time and place be seen as one day; perhaps. 3.5 billion years could only take one day at some other time and place. Gerald Schroeder in The Science of God divides the temperature of the nascent universe by the temperature of the cosmic background radiation and gets 5 days and a fraction of a 6th day. Quite astounding. But I have many doubts about many of the details in his calculations. I don’t think it is that easy to convert one perception of a period of time to another perception of that same period of time, especially when we are talking about something so long ago and far away as the big bang. It’s got to be much harder. Perhaps we will never be able to do it to the exact day. But God calling the first day of creation 24 hours does not mean that that day will measure 24 hours for us. It certainly won’t.
I have thought about this a lot. I am certain that Genesis 1 tells us how the universe was created, step by step. We haven’t seen it so far, because we have only recently understand the stretchiness of time. And we are stuck on traditional interpretations of the text that are just wrong. Look how long people held onto the “vapor canopy” interpretation. Yikes. The one we’re stuck on now is that the earth was created in the first verse. It wasn’t. The fist verse is a preview of coming attractions. The second verse, “now the earth was…” does not tell us that the earth existed; it says :the earth had no shape and no substance; it tells us it was not physical yet, just a concept in God’s mind. And so on. I won’t tire you with the rest. But it all fits. Just let your mind relax out of all those kinks and try on some new ideas. 
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If you listen to John Lennox he will say the word Yom in Genesis can reflect different periods of time, according to the Hebrew scholars he has talked to. In my own church, our pastor insists on a literal 6 day creation. Either/Or, doesn’t matter all that much to me, except when Christian brothers and sisters argue about it in an ugly way out in the real world. I like to think the Resurrection is the key to everything, the Rising of our King from death is what I place my trust in. If that didn’t happen then, as the Apostle Paul says, we are of all men most to be pitied. But the Resurrection answers it all, it tells me who cares if a donkey talked, or a big fish swallowed Jonah, if the walls fell outward (evidence now shows they did), or any of a number of controversial stories in the bible, my faith does not rest on those issues. My trust and faith rest solely in the cross of Christ, and His Resurrection. Without that, we have nothing, there is nothing, and after death there will be nothing. At the end of the day, my trust is in Him, and what He did for all of us on Calvary.
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No that is false. The bible very much does have its own theology and doctrine…you just are not willing to allow it to speak to you. And thst should come as no suprise…TEism is a veiw that i think is driven from an outside world view…its infected by secular conclusions from scientific study. Nothing you read in the bible can be contrary to that and therein lieth the reason for your claim above.
I do not take what i see around me as absolute truth…as long as you are unable to satisfy the dilemma of Christ physical death on the cross as atonement for a sin you claim is allegorical, then you are left with a major theological problem. Christs death on the cross proves that very basis of your entire world view is false (that Adam and Eves death was only spiritual)
The corruption of the world around us (and i think our ability to study it) is the biblical position btw.
Actually heres a problem id like answered in this context…
If the bible is a satisfactory guide to religion, and science can be reconciled with it, how do you bridge the divide between science saying man came from water and the bible saying he was moulded from the dust of the ground?(this isnt a challenge…im just interested in your view of it)
Bill could say the same thing right back at you.
LOL
And secular scientists will complain that TE is driven by an outside worldview, that it is infected by religious ideas.
Are you ever going to stop lying about this? No one here is using the word “allegorical” about sin except you. You’ve invented this “theological problem” and falsely apply it to people who disagree with you.
Doing this over and over just strengthens the conclusion that YEC is completely dependent on lies.
I don’t know about Bill, but the answer here is that back then saying that a creature came from the dust of the ground was a semi-poetic way of saying that creature is mortal – it isn’t a description of how that creature was actually made. So regardless of what science may say, the Garden story isn’t giving information about how man was made except that it was by God’s personal attention.
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What compounds the offense is that a Sabbath-keeper raised the lesser lie. Pray tell how can a Sabbath-keeper intentionally and knowisgly ask a YEC-based question when the Sabbath-keeper dismisses all Sunday-worshipers as confused and/or mistaken and/or theologically and biblically incorrect.
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The seafloor has to extend from one side of the ocean to the other, because the ocean structurally has to have a bottom. My point was that, even though seafloor is only being made at about 1 to 10 cm per year, a YEC position would hold that the seafloor extended all the way across the bottom of the ocean, because the ocean has to have a bottom, but has been built some at the midocean ridges and squashed away some at the trenches since creation. It would not seem misleading if God had recently created seafloor which, since its creation, is following a pattern of slow creation, movement, and destruction. But it is not necessary for God to make the seafloor have all the structures that it should if it were entirely built very slowly, in the centimeters per year range, over hundreds of millions of years. The seafloor has exactly that.
YEC like to use “uniformitarian” as a label to excuse ignoring the scientific evidence. But this is neither accurate nor valid. Young-earth arguments, and for that matter, all historical claims, rely on uniformitarian assumptions. It is depressingly common to see someone claim that uniformitarian arguments are no good and then immediately make a uniformitarian argument for a young earth. If I read the Bible and draw conclusions about what happened in the ancient Near East, I am making uniformitarian assumptions, rejecting the possibility that words have abruptly changed their meanings and assuming that basic laws of nature have not changed. Of course, it is necessary to determine what really are unchanging, fundamental laws and what does change. The original uniformitarianism of Lyell was too inclined to assume that geological processes did not change rates, for example. Many bad young-earth arguments claim that some trend was constant into the past when there is good evidence that it wasn’t, or the supposed trend is fictional. Setterfield’s claims about an increasing speed of light into the past, for example, include misrepresenting Roemer’s first measurement as faster than the modern accepted value when it was actually slower than the modern accepted value, besides failing to solve all the problems that a much higher speed of light would cause.
Current plate motion has a maximum speed of about 11 cm per year. It is quite plausible that with more energy from the earth’s interior in the distant past that it could have moved somewhat faster, perhaps several tens of centimeters per year. But flood geology requires the plates to be moving around 45 mph, which requires enough energy to destroy the earth.
Why should we expect natural laws to be unchanging? Because Genesis 1 tells us that they are all part of God’s creation. There are no rival gods or monsters or uncontrolled forces out there, unlike in polytheism. The laws of nature do not just happen to exist and maybe they will keep working the way they have, as as an atheist has to assume. Laws of nature are parts of the plan of a God who doesn’t change. Genesis 1 likewise tells us that taking care of the creation is part of our job. But we can’t do that if we can’t predict how the creation will behave. We need regular patterns in how the world works. Drastic changes in basic natural laws of physics and chemistry would generally destroy life and are not tenable claims.
Of course, the fact that natural laws are consistent does not mean that miracles don’t happen. But we can’t recognize that a miracle is noteworthy if we don’t know that there is a normal pattern.
Thus, a uniformitarian approach is actually biblical; modern “scientific” creationism is not biblical because it does not take Scripture seriously, imposing a modernistic, scientific reading on selected passages while ignoring others and because it does not deal honestly with either scientists or scientific evidence.
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Then explain the vast, and I mean really vast, numbers of different theologies and doctrines over the entire history of Christianity. The vast majority of which predates evil evolution. If the Bible truly contained only one theology I would expect to be able to find it in the early Church Fathers, but sadly I don’t. Your particular theology has only been around for 160 years so why do you think “It is the one!”
First, you are painting with a very broad brush.
Second, Christ’s physical death on the cross is very much a part of my world view.
Third, there are two deaths, physical and spiritual.
And yet we are told we are held responsible for failing to see God in His creation. See Romans 1:20. If the world has been corrupted doesn’t that give us a Get Out Of Jail card?
The person who wrote Genesis was using an idea common in the ANE. It isn’t the first time an origin story says we came from dust. I don’t think God would have to use a mud pie to create so I don’t take this, need I say, literally.
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??? How can they claim TEism is infected…the name is already blending of science and religion?
The claim is TEists have infected evolution with crazy religious beliefs. The reason why is well known…
“Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation,” he said. “What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.” (S Hawking)
“The human invention of god is the problem to begin with. The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.” (Hitchens)
“The new “socialist man,” Stalin argued, was an atheist one, free of the religious chains that had helped to bind him to class oppression” (Stalin)
Ah…where did the physical death come from such that it required an atoning sacrifice from mosaic tradition (sheep and goats) and finally, Christ on the cross?
How do you theologically rationalise that doctrine
Light in transit is just as difficult. For example, Supernova 1987a that is 168,000 light years away. Astronomers have photos of the star before it went supernova in 1987. This would mean that they were looking at a star that never existed. In fact, the supernova itself would have never happened.
The light we get from stars is as much a fossil as the permineralized remains of organisms.
First, what function does light from stars serve? None, from what I can see. Additionally, why implant a false history into those lights? Why give us light from a star that never existed?
I am saying that if we assume God created starlight in transit then we also have to conclude that God embedded a false history into that light. I am starting from the assumption that God created starlight in transit and seeing where that assumption leads.
It’s a bit of a rabbit trail, but there are reasons why the laws we see now can be extended backwards. We see the results of those laws in starlight that is billions of years old. For example, type Ia supernovae go through the same evolution no matter how far away they are, and the evolution of those supernova require the same laws we see now. There are many, many examples where we can predict what we should see in starlight if uniformitarianism is true, and those predictions hold up.
What does that even mean? Why would stars behaving outside of known laws be unordered?
Would the newly created bread have places missing with tooth marks consistent with mice? Would we be able to extract DNA from around those nibble marks and trace it back to local populations of mice? Would the bread have holes from meal worms eating through it? Would the bread come in a package from a local bakery?
Would the fish have healed scars in their mouth from fishing hooks they escaped from? Would the fish have healed scars from parasites? Would scales have growth rings even though those rings are the result of growing? In the same way, would a newly created Moon be covered in craters from impacts that never happened?
Appearance of history is not the same as appearance of maturity.
I would think Jesus would be dishonest if the newly created bread had mouse nibble marks, complete with mouse DNA.
Where does God say that he implanted a false history into creation?
What logic?
What do you mean by order? How is it order when we see light from a star that never existed? Why is it order if Jesus puts fake mouse nibbles in a loaf of bread? How is it order to create the Moon with craters already present, even though those impacts never happened?
I suspect they mean whatever they need to mean when the need arises. Whatever ad hoc explanation is needed is the one that is chosen.
That isn’t the case. We are necessarily seeing photons from stars that never existed if we assume God created starlight in transit.
Maturity is not the same thing as history.
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No creationist is claiming God put non existent light there or played pretend with a phantom supernova. I dont know why you would want to make this link?
If God creates a mature universe (ie all parts functioning)…the mere fact even a TEist accepts God, tells us they have no problem with the idea He can make something from nothing using either model (YEC or TE).
I would be far more concerned that someone believes God can create, but he cant create a functioning system! To be honest its not the YEC view that is illogical here…TEism is the side restricting God.