Answers in Genesis admits: still no solution to the heat problem

Faith & Science Conversation
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No, it doesn’t – to make that claim shows a total failure to understand geology and physics.

Exactly: YECism does not ground people in the faith, it grounds them in a human philosophy about a book. I watched this play out repeatedly as a university student; almost every single person who turned from the faith had been brought up YEC and so had no foundation to stand on when it became clear that the YEC position is not sustainable. YECism makes people put their trust in a perfect text that never existed rather than in Christ.

Or when parts of the Bible are mangled by making them something they aren’t, which includes ignoring what they are – ancient literature.
Trying to read Genesis as though it’s a good friend’s great-grandfather’s diary of events results, and can only result, in “extremely poor theology”.

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LOL
He may be able to “read the old manuscripts we have”, but if he disagrees with what I wrote above then he is like a chess player who only knows how the individual pieces move but has no grasp of how they work together. There are literary types in both Testaments’ documents that have no parallel in modern literary types, and failure to recognize that and thus force those portions to fit modern literary types makes it impossible to get the message the writer intended.

Given that I read Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek (among other languages) I’m not ignorant of any such thing.

As my grad school professors pointed out to us, Strong’s is both theologically biased and weak, so anything it says should be treated as lacking – p;us it is out of date, a fact that is forty years more true now than it was then!
But more significantly, Strong’s doesn’t say anything about literary types, and looking at the rest of the scriptures doesn’t help with that because the scriptures don’t bother announcing what literary type is being used; the writers didn’t have to say that because their audiences automatically recognized what type they were hearing. The only way to discover the literary types is to do what Dr. John Walton and Dr. Michael Heiser do: learn about the literary types of the ancient near east and compare the biblical texts with those. You can dig through Strong’s all day and never get close to understanding a text the literary type of which you do not know.
At the very least a person ought to be using the one-volume (and thus extremely limited) version of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [which is free online]), not something a century and a quarter out of date.

No – with reference to my paragraph immediately above, I’m saying that we need tools the ancient original audiences did not need because what was written and spoken was done so within the world views and literary genres they understood because they grew up with them, We need those tools in order to climb out of our worldview(s) and escape the trap of forcing our worldview onto the text.
Trying to make the text fit our worldview(s) today is no different than when the Roman Catholic church in the past has tried to force the scriptures to fit the worldview of their times, whether it be clinging to a Ptolemaic system of astronomy or twisting verses to fit Aristotle: it always results in foolishness or error or both, and also invariably results in some form of idolatry that makes faith fragile.

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Too true, hence young people from Christian homes rejecting the faith.

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I haven’t encountered any that would require either a miracle, turning the planet into a ball of plasma that emits more high-energy photons than the rest of the galaxy combined, or destroying all protons and neutrons.

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Your worldview is to ignore any facts that contradict your reading of scripture. People who value reason and logic are not going to want to follow your worldview. If you tell them that they have to choose between reason/logic and being a Christian, what do you think they will conclude?

Why would a “founded and grounded faith” require someone to deny basic observable facts that anyone can see? As Collins states, it’s like telling someone they have to believe 2+2=5 in order to be a Christian. This isn’t a question of faith. This is a question of brainwashing. You are asking people to believe things that are demonstrably false.

If we can’t trust our own judgment to understand how old the Earth is then we definitely can’t trust that same wisdom to interpret the Bible. Your interpretation of Genesis is a product of men just as much as science is.

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Thats what we get as soon as we take away the theological claim that God miraculously created everything by speaking it into existence (with the exception of Adam and Eve whom he personally formed out of the dust of the ground and bent down physically breathing the breath of life into their nostrils).
Your refusal to accept what is very plainly written in the opening pages of the Bible (which is the same in any manuscript btw) this is why you are not Christian driven on this, you are secular science driven.

There are an ever increasing number of Christian scientist views on this that stay true to the exact words of the Bible…you refuse to accept this even though they are in harmony with the biblical text. Instead, you choose the majority secular world view and twist scripture to apparently harmonise with it. Unfortunately, that is not possible to do theologically…for a start it does not align with Revelation 14:12

Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

The 10 commandments are those found in Exodus 20 (and one must keep all of them exactly as written). These are not merely Mosaic laws for Israelites, they existed long before that time and we know this because Cain and Abel offered sacrifices to God to make atonement for their sins, and Cain broke one of the commandments when he murdered Abel. Clearly everyone knew that murder was wrong look at what Cain says in response to God…

10“What have you done?” replied the LORD. “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. 11Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12When you till the ground, it will no longer yield its produce to you. You will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

13But Cain said to the LORD, “My punishmentd is greater than I can bear. 14Behold, this day You have driven me from the face of the earth, and from Your face I will be hidden; I will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

The facts you speak of are a construct of a secular world view. The vast majority of modern scientists…especially those who subsribe to darwinian theory, are not christian. The very roots of their world view is based on the premise “there is no God”. Without any belief in God, they have no option but to attempt to illustrate an alternative that has no miracle, no intelligent design and that is where the alternative model comes into play. It has to take millions of years because miracle of creation is a unbelievable fairytale (despite more than 2000 year of written history that consistently support the Biblical timeline and story)

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You’re missing something. By an ex-YEC heretic :grin: (he has three earned doctorates, btw):

Struggling with God & Origins: A Personal Story, Denis O. Lamoureux, p.123-24

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I have worked my career in engineering, and my discipline focused on measurement. I have enough expertise in that area to recognize that the YEC “Christian scientists” are being dishonest concerning measurement - about the data, about the evidence, and about the interpretation. I’m sorry, but I cannot live my life pretending the Earth is young when that I know that is not true.

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Do you know what the word “fact” even means, Adam?

Facts are statements about objective reality that are true for everyone, regardless of their worldview. They are true whether you are a Christian or an atheist, whether you take the Bible or the Humanist Manifesto as your authority. They are true whether you are Ken Ham or Richard Dawkins, whether you are Donald Trump or Joe Biden, whether you are the Dalai Lama or the Pope, whether you are Adam J Edgar, Ron Sewell or James McKay.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is a word for insisting that facts are not true. The word in question is “lying.” And there is a word for people who denounce facts as “constructs of a secular worldview.” The word in question is “cult.”

WRONG.

Christian or not, the very roots of science are NOT the premise “there is no God.” The very roots of science are measurement. And you know fine what the Bible says about measurement. I’ve pointed it out to you here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Adam, why do you keep repeating the same falsehoods over and over and over and over and over and over and over again even after having repeatedly been told not only that they are falsehoods but why they are falsehoods? Are you approaching these discussions in good faith?

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The ironic thing is that there is no heat problem to begin with in the Biblical flood story. Water gushes from springs familiar to the Near East. Rain falls from the sky. No heat there. The heat problems all derive from the YEC extra-biblical attempts to frame the mechanisms of the flood, evade obvious objections to the quantities of water required, deal with the lack of geological and historic support, and compress the timeline of natural processes that have nothing to do with it. The heat problem is a trap that YEC has constructed and sprung on itself.

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Obviously, the human imagination evolved to occupy itself with fantasy.

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It isn’t a majority secular world view. It’s demonstrable facts. This is what you either can’t understand or refuse to understand. You might as well say that it is the majority secular world view that 2+2=4, and then tell people that they have to believe 2+2=5 in order to be Christian because you have to reject the secular world view.

They ignore the facts.

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Hi Dale,
I do not personally believe that there was anything here prior to Gen 1:2

God spoke on each day and something happened on that day…that is the account of Genesis Ch1.

What we can know from a scholarly perspective, is that Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 seem to get separated by a lot of individuals however, this is not in fact how it reads in the original language.

Genesis 1:1-3 originally should read in one group as part of Day 1 of the creation story. The difficulty is, we separate them when we shouldnt.

The Bible often makes a statement, then goes on to elaborate on that statement in subsequent verses and even other chapters. The book of Revelation steps backwards and forwards through the prophetic timeline explaining and ellaborating on statements. One great example found in Revelation is the description of the War in Heaven in Chapter 12. It appears to the untrained eye that this is a future event (because Revelation is a book that speaks a lot about prophetic timeline in the future). However this war is very clearly talking about the war that resulted in Lucifer being cast out of heaven and down to this earth referred to in Genesis.

On the topic however, an excellent example is found in the fact that the explanation of how Adam and Eve were made in Chapter 2 appears to be after the creation week was finished. Some interpret that as completely separate creation accounts of mankind…however, it is not the case. Chapter 2 is definately an elaboration on Chapter 1 day 6.

i suggest reading the following passages to help interpret Genesis 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3.

Romans 4:17 “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not yet exist.”

Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the stars by the breath of His mouth.”

2 Peter 3: 5 “They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water. Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood.”

Revelation 21:1 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

The apostle John is an interesting one because in Revelation 21 he has mirrored the introduction of Genesis 1:2. John says that after the fire and brimstone falls from heaven destroying all sin, the sea is no more. This is the complete reverse of God creating the waters and His Spirit hovering above the surface of the deep in Genesis 1:2!

TEism already scoffs at the apostle Pauls writings that refer to creation, now we have King David, the apostle Peter, and Apostle John also confirming Paul, and these are all supporting the Mosaic account of Creation. Are TEsist going to also discredit these writers too?

So according to TEism, the following significant writers of the bible have to be discounted:
Moses = 5 books
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Job
King David = about 75 Psalms
Paul = 13. letters across 7 books.
Peter = 2 (however there is disagreement as to whether he wrote them)
John = 5 (although again there is debate on this number)

We also have the following books containing passages supporting the Genesis creation (i can list every text as well if you want to check those):
1 Samuel
2 Kings
1&2 Chronicles
Nehemiah
Job (a large number of texts in this book about creation)
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Isaiah (again a very large number of creation texts in Isaiah)
Jeremiah
Hosea
Amos
Jonah
Zecheriah
Malachi
Matthew
Mark
John
Acts
Romans
1&2 Corinthians
Ephesians
Colossians
1 Timothy
Hebrews
James
182 Peter
Revelation

I wonder…do you have many pages left in your bible after removing all of the above “porky tellers” With a quick 10 minute search?

i have just eliminated more than 34 books out of the entire Christian Bible because they tell porkies about or in support of, the creation account of Genesis Ch 1!

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You would be mistaken in your personal belief. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Period. And the earth was, past tense, formless and void. Then God spoke in verse 3.

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

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The operative word is “rebukes,” not “scoffs,” Adam. And it is not the Apostle Paul’s writings, nor King David, nor the Apostle Peter, nor the Apostle John that are being rebuked. It is young earthists who add to those writings—and whose additions consist of nothing but science fiction, wilful ignorance about scientific subjects, false accusations against professional scientists, and conspiracy theories.

Gather round, kids. This is an example of typical example of young earth reasoning.

  1. Any verse of Scripture that refers, no matter how tangentially or how cursorily to creation, is by definition an affirmation of the idea that the earth is young, that the Flood created the fossil record, and that Noah had sauropod dinosaurs on board the Ark, even if it does not explicitly or even implicitly assert any of those things.
  2. Any challenge to the idea that the earth is young, that the Flood created the fossil record, and that Noah had sauropod dinosaurs on board the Ark, is not just mocking those verses themselves, but the entire books in which they are found.
  3. Any verse of Scripture that challenges the idea that the earth is young, that the Flood created the fossil record, or that Noah had sauropod dinosaurs on board the Ark, is by definition taken out of context.

Theologians have a word for that kind of thinking. The word in question is “eisegesis.”

Let’s take a look at the verses of Scripture you’ve quoted, Adam.

This may refer to creation, but it says nothing whatsoever about the age of the earth, the fate of the dinosaurs, or the origin of the fossil record.

This may talk about creation, but it says nothing whatsoever about the age of the earth, the fate of the dinosaurs, or the origin of the fossil record.

This may talk about creation, but it says nothing whatsoever about the age of the earth, the fate of the dinosaurs, or the origin of the fossil record.

This does not even say anything whatsoever about creation at all, let alone the age of the earth, the fate of the dinosaurs, or the origin of the fossil record.

Remarks such as this remind me a bit of Kurt Wise’s tale about the time when he took a Bible, went through it with a pair of scissors, and cut out every verse that he thought would be untrue if evolution or an old earth were true, and ended up with what was left falling completely to pieces like confetti. It makes me wonder (a) what on earth he was cutting out, and (b) whether he even did such a thing in the first place. If I were to carry out such an exercise, I could probably count on one hand the number of verses I’d end up cutting out, even if I were reading it with the kind of wooden literalism that YECs demand.

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Dale, I have already explained that your interpretation of that verse is incorrect.

The correct interpreation, and this is from biblical scholars btw, is that Genesis 1:1 is the introduction of the narrative and then Genesis 1:&3 go onto begin to explan on the statement of verse 1.

So again the above is as simple as follows:

  1. I bourght a jeep
  2. it was built in a factory by chrysler
  3. it came from my local jeep dealership in my country (where i got it from)
  4. the salesman who sold it too me was female and she is the manager
  5. it has 4 alloy wheels, is white
  6. has a 2" lift kit with 33" tyres
  7. i got a winch installed…

you see, what you on the other hand are trying to do, is manufacture an interpretation of Genesis that does not fit with the narrative of the rest of the Bible.

There are many many other statements in the bible that refer to the creation account.

When we also read these we cannot make the theological claim that there is a gap of millions or billions of years between 1:1 and 1:2…it simply does not work.

Also, one is left with the impossible task of trying to explain that physical incarnation, life, and physical death of Christ on the cross. Given that the Old Testament Sanctuary Service initiated in the time of Moses also points to the crucfixion, and illustrates why Christ died physcially on the cross, its clear the only way to define that event is because of the phsical consequences of the sins of Adam and Eve and subsequently, all humanity!

Also note, the sacrificial system is not a Mosaic tradition…Cain and Abel offered sacrifices as did Abraham. The covenant was made with Eve and again with Abraham…the same covenant (that out of Eves seed and out of Abrahams seed, God would raise a great nation and through this nation he would send the Messiah who would save the people from their sins), that covenant was given to the gentiles after the cross but it remains the same…taking the gospel to the world that through the blood of Christ…

“the patience of the saints are those who keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus” (Rev 14:!2)

That includes the 4th commandment:
Exodus 20: 8Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates. 11For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

It is theologically hopeless to attempt to say Genesis and all the books of Moses are an allegory…that takes out more than 33 books of the bible that also refer to creation (as i have already shown in another post on these forums)

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You have many times tried to justify your false interpretation and attempted to force the physical reality of God’s creation into fantasy, and this effort(?) is no more successful that all the rest of your vain repetitions.

It is hopeless, theologically or otherwise, to shrink the reality of the antiquity of the earth and cosmos into six 24-hour days because you are obsessed (as in idolatry) with your badly flawed eisegesis. The days in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 are analogous or figurative days (adjectives thalt seem to be missing from all YEC’s vocabularies). They may still be ‘24-hour days’, as were the days (actually workdays) in The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) as far as the Lord’s Day of rest is concerned, however.

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“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four

Adam, if I were to tell you that the Bible demanded that we believe the earth is flat and covered by a solid dome, that it was theologically hopeless to argue otherwise, and that you were rejecting the Bible in its entirety if you were to do so, would you think I was defending the Bible against the onslaught of “secular science”?

Or if I were to tell you that Isaiah 55:12 demanded that we believe that trees have physical hands, and that it was theologically hopeless to argue otherwise, and that you were rejecting the Bible in its entirety if you were to do so, would you think that I was defending the Bible against the onslaught of “secular science”?

Of course not! You would view such arguments as attacks on the Bible itself. You would rightly tell me that by failing to recognise allegories and anthropomorphism and genre and other literary conventions and cultural and historical context, and in so doing placing the Bible in head-on conflict with indisputable, objective reality, that I was not being fair to the Bible, but that I was describing a straw man cartoon caricature of it.

Why is that? Because there comes a point at which the evidence in support of something becomes so overwhelming that it is no longer possible to fob it off as either a “secular” or “atheistic” worldview or as merely “man’s fallible wisdom.” It becomes so overwhelming that to deny it means completely losing touch with reality. It becomes so overwhelming that anyone who would demand that you deny it becomes like the Party in Nineteen Eighty Four, making your rejection of the evidence of your eyes and ears its final, most essential command. It becomes so overwhelming that those who demand that you deny it can only be described as dictators or cults.

We reached that point with millions of years two centuries ago. Since then, the evidence has only mounted up higher and higher and become even more and more overwhelming. The evidence that the earth is old is every bit as overwhelming and every bit as independent of “secularism” as the evidence that the earth is a globe.

For that same reason, to argue that the Bible cannot be reconciled with millions of years is not an argument against “secular science”; it is an argument against the Bible. By failing to recognise allegories and anthropomorphism and other literary conventions, you are not being fair to the Bible, but you are describing a straw man cartoon caricature of it.

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it is only vain because you are incapable of using logic and common theological sense in order to let the bible verses you read explain themselves.

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Firstly, the bible does not make the claim that the earth is flat…what verses are you using for that claim?

Second, Isaiah 55 is “An invitation to the needy” …that is the overall premise of this chapter of Isaiah. It is calling people to God to quench their thirst and fill their tommies. It is not talking about earthly quenching or hunger, its talking about spiritual connection with our maker!

Jesus Himself tells us in the Gospels, “I am the bread of life”!

Verse 12… I have to say, I am rather suprised that you would take this as meaning what you claim, it very obviously does not

Let me give you another example that should help you understand how the text in Isaiah should be read…

Luke 19:36-40

36As He rode along, the people spread their cloaks on the road. 37And as He approached the descent from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully in a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen:

38“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”c

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”d

39But some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!”

40“I tell you,” He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”

Is Christ saying the rocks are going to literally cry out, or is he simply outlining how eager the earth is for its creator to be among His creation and celebrate His nearing triumph over evil (ie pay the wages of Sin is death)? Now sure, many of the people did not fully understand what Christ was about to do, many of the jewish people thought he was coming to kick the Romans out and take the throne in Jerusalem…we know this, but we also know that what many of the Jews thought was not what was prophesied. They allowed their affliction at the hands of the Romans, to cloud their judgment despite being taught by the prophets of old that Christ would die on the cross for the sins of the many.

This same thought process should be put into the theological understanding of Isaiah 55:12!
if you read the whole chapter 55, you will clearly see its not to be read the way you are claiming…ie that trees will wave their hands (that is a metaphor clearly)

BTW, verse 3 of Isaiah 55 is also referenced by Acts 13:34