@rsewell didn’t say operational science, he said conventional science, so you aren’t agreeing with him, you’re misrepresenting him.
If your views had any merit you wouldn’t need to be so dishonest.
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Precisely.
There are things that people miss when they try to draw a distinction between “operational science” and “historical science.” First of all, the same rules apply to both of them. “Were you there?” is not a free pass to cut corners, misrepresent evidence, fudge measurements and calculations, make things up, hand-wave about assumptions, or dismiss legitimate peer review and correction as “accusations” or “persecution.”
Secondly, the distinction between the two is not clear cut. “Historical science” just like “operational science” has situations where getting it wrong has real world consequences. Oil exploration is the classic example, but there are others too, such as in mining and civil engineering. You need to understand the history of the area you are working in to predict in detail what geological layers and faults you are likely to find.
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I’ve patiently ignored the never ending misrepresentations, unsubstantiated insults and accusatory words from you.
I have a couple of free minutes, and having a quick look at this forum, I see yet another quote mine from you.
You call yourself a saint yet I don’t know how you sleep straight in bed at night!
The Truth is plain for ALL to read for themselves: what I wrote, that is the full paragraph, not being cut off where it suits, to create your deception, is below:
Please, take a long hard look at yourself mate and be honest for once.
God Bless,
jon
Dear All,
it’s become ever so clear to me after reading through many of the posts on this forum that are little more than childish, petty misrepresentations and/or outright deceptions by some that altogether is nothing more than pedantic bickering, constituting endless arguments that ultimately do not edify anyone.
As a consequence, I see no reason whatsoever to continue contributing here, and will leave you all to your beliefs, whatever they may be, they are between you and your Holy Maker, our Lord, Jesus Christ.
May God Bless you All,
jon
Barr would have been wrong if he’d written that, but that wasn’t actually what he wrote.
It’s not even close.
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Truth. Mining geologists must understand the history of a formation to ensure safety and operability. There is no kidding around here, people can and do die underground, so the responsibility is real.
Geological Disturbances In Illinois Coal Seams
Coal miners always face obstacles in their struggle to win coal from the earth. Coal beds-normally thick, level, and continuous-sometimes pitch sharply up or down, split into layers too thin t o follow, fill with veins of clay or masses of stone, or end abruptly against solid rock. Unexpectedly, the roof may become almost impossible to support. Volumes of water or deadly gases may rush in a t the face. The risks and the costs, especially in lives, are great for miners, mine owners, and mining communities. Locating, predicting, and controlling geologic hazards in coal seams depend upon knowing how they formed: What combination of climate, landscape, and vegetation produced coal seams and the disturbances associated with them, such as channels, splits, rolls, limestone bosses, clay and igneous dikes, and coal balls?" According to geologists, most of these disturbances developed while the coal itself was forming-during the Pennsylvanian Period, approximately 315 to 280 million years ago.
Note the absence of “but, but, but what about a young Earth???”
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I’m reminded of periods where Cedarville University students used to post to the talk.origins newsgroup on a yearly cycle. They did this over a number of years. We would wonder, was there a particular course that got started or was it new students starting their school year?
Their repetituious assertions were part of the impetus for creating the ‘Frequently Answered Questions’ FAQ at The Panda’s Thumb website
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This is no surprise, considering your posts in this thread, @Burrawang.
It’s fine to hold a view that a literalistic reading of the Bible is the best, even when the only reason to do so is your own reading of the text. We all bring ourselves to the texts.
It’s a problem when you mistake your reading of the text for the inspired word of God. And a greater problem, when you put yourself in the position of prophet, condemning others for not accepting your reading as the inspired word of God.
That takes a lot of pride.
It’s fine to hold to a literalistic reading of the Bible that is in conflict with the observable world around us. If that works for you, carry on.
Again, though, your literalistic reading is not holy or the word of God itself. Jesus never told us, we need to do that. He actually pointed to observable nature and drew lessons from it. If that is good enough for Jesus, don’t condemn his followers who are studying the natural world according to the rigorous rules scientists abide by in doing their work.
Likewise, you should make sure you really know the science you are arguing against. You claim others have been pedantic in this thread, when they have been providing the important details that show the point they are making. What they demonstrate is that there is a lot of information to know and understand in order to really grasp the conclusion. And this is the case for each topic. The experts here acknowledge when they are speaking out of their field. They have that much humility and sense.
You haven’t bothered with scientific accuracy, details or knowledge. It takes a lot of nerve to call the precise, detailed work of others “pedantry”.
You complain of bickering and also poor treatment. You got better than you gave. You have no reason to feel sorry for yourself. Your uncontrolled compulsion to argue in bad faith while condemning others is your responsibility. No one else’s.
Finally (for now) you claim no one has been edified. You are simply wrong there.
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I have learned a lot about the natural world and haven’t had time to read half the great information from the scientists here.
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While I am not personally interested in arguing with young earthists, I have a catalog here of some of their greatest hits and why those are wrong. I can read responses from real scientists addressing the matters in their fields and learn a little more about the things they said and how their replies relate to wrong claims that keep coming up.
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I have a better idea what kind of opposition real scientists, many of whom are Christians, face from Christians who don’t know what they are talking about. As a librarian, I see this on my sphere, too.
While you claim not to have been edified, this thread resides alongside a great many others like it as a record of good responses to ridiculous accusations. That IS edifying to anyone who is willing to read with open eyes and ears.
God bless you with socratic humility and wisdom.
Kendel
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Hi Marshall
Does your new book cover the ‘fall’? Although I accept evolution, I have a hard time reconciling it with the idea of humanity’s fall, where death then comes in. The apostle Paul seems to understand that literally, and Jesus is the one who reverses it. Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman, who also accepts evolution, argues Genesis is figurative and theological in nature, but that it is still a representation of real events. He views the ‘fall’ happening not long after humanity became moral beings, by disobeying God.
Thanks, Peter
Thanks
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Which just means that within the account and for its purposes a day is to be treated as a day. My first Hebrew professor slammed his fist onto the table hard enough our pens bounced in response to a student trying to say the days had to be ages – yet he also firmly noted that the type of literature involved does not say that the Creation was accomplished in six days because those days are literary devices.
Oh, that’s rich! That source tosses the grammatical-historical method in the trash with such consistency a fan driven by it could fly a kite!
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I’m sorry that you find the truth about you to be insults.
But I will not stop calling you out when you lie about other Christians, especially those here.
And just above you called fellow Christians here atheists.
And you repeat that later in your response.
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That’s putting it politely.
From my perspective, he needs to actually know the text he is arguing about! As with all YECers, he makes up definitions and ignores the rules of grammar and pretends that he has God’s authorization to do so.
No kidding. I thought I knew a lot about the opening of Genesis, but between others and pursuing some of what I already knew I have learned a lot and come to see Christ more clearly.
A lot of theologians have read the Garden stories as figurative, and while that is better than treating them as “real history” it’s still lacking. I still tend to see the Garden stories as mythologized history, and Adam as a real individual who was the federal head of all humans, but it may be ANE mytho-theology with no “real historical” hook to it. Longman’s position as you described it sounds like he regards it as “mythistory”.
This strikes me as being related to the video posted here somewhere recently where a lecturer argued that the soul/spirit is real. If humans are indeed an animal body with a spirit/soul from God, then a real Fall would have happened with the first pair to whom God gave spirit/soul.
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Glad you enjoyed it! It’s a draft of two sections of a chapter of a book I hope to someday publish, but it’s nowhere near done. I’m a very slow writer, and it’s a side project rather than my main gig.
Yeah, it’s only about halfway done. I don’t want to even try to get it published until I’m much closer. Even then, I’ll likely self-publish, both due to the long odds at traditional publishers and because I have some background in publishing. My main job for decades was graphic design, so when writing isn’t progressing I like dolling up the text in a pretty new draft so I can admire the look of the words and hopefully be inspired to add more of them. It sometimes works.
Yes, partly due to your advocacy of that view here!
Yes, though the chapter that deals with it most extensively is only disjointed notes so far. An earlier chapter that’s mostly done also deals with different understandings of the fall.
In that chapter, I start with two traditions about Adam: the historical Adam who we all come from, and the prophetic Adam that shows us who we are. I trace how both continued through Augustine, though he united them by showing how we were really in Adam (as invisible seeds in his loins) and that is why we descend from Adam. In later times various parts of the church ditched Augustine’s synthesis and lost the prophetic Adam. Everything came to focus on how Adam changed human nature; Adam’s sin was real, and due to him we’re sinners even before we really sin.
Because of how those views normalized sin and evil, there were a series of reactions where different people and groups insisted that Christians needed to take sin more seriously. Often they overcorrected, such as Pelagius or some Anabaptists or some of the Wesleyan Holiness movement. Perhaps the clearest expression came out in Germany in the 1930s. While the established church, both Catholic and Protestant, followed modifications of Augustine that proved limp in the face of encroaching evil, the confessing church held a different anthropology. Bonhoeffer was especially influential. He didn’t take the Eden story as literal history, but he recaptured its prophetic voice. He wrote, “I myself am Adam – am ‘I’ and ‘humanity’ at the same time. In me humanity falls.” Rather than pushing the blame for our sinfulness back on Adam and seeing even Christians as powerless to resist sin, he saw the church’s complicity with evil as a stain on each Christian and called for more active resistance.
My main point is that churches who reduce Adam to history tend to preach a salvation of no earthly consequence. Sanctification becomes something God does for us after we die, fixing the problem we inherited from Adam. When the prophetic Adam is brought back into the mix, we get a church that can actually be yeast in dough and a light in the dark. Not perfectly, but not zero. It’s also the case that when we see both dimensions, we’re less likely to force the historical Adam into conceptions that don’t fit reality.
Anyway, I got a bit more into some of these things in book reviews here and here. I also dealt more directly with Paul in posts here and here, though since one is replying to you, you’ve probably already seen it.
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I’m sorry if you feel you’ve had a rough time here, Jon. However, you do need to realise that what you refer to as “pedantic bickering” is simply the community telling you what standards you need to meet if you want to establish a case for your position.
If young earth creationism is to be taken seriously, it needs to be presented with as much care and attention to detail, honesty and accuracy as any other theory. We are not asking anything of you in this respect that we do not also expect to see in arguments made in support of the theory of evolution or old-earth geochronology itself. Checking sources, asking for evidence, clarifying details and expecting you to justify your assertions is not pettiness or childishness—it’s just making sure that the conversation is fair and edifying for everyone. To dismiss these expectations as pedantic bickering is to demand a free pass to claim whatever you like, and I’m sorry but neither you nor anyone else should expect to be granted that.
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If given Burrawang’s premise here to be true, what would it predict? If we wake up in a world actually created 6,000 years ago, having undergone a global deluge 4,500 years ago, what should that really look like?
All the fossils ever found should represent living species such as left the ark and are around today. Fossils of dinosaurs and trilobites do not exist. Biogeography would be centered from Mount Ararat; marsupials, and mammals such as lemurs, should be found represented roughly evenly thoughout the world. There should be no highly developed ancient civilizations or history prior to about 2,000 BC, with far smaller populations. Genetic diversity and haplotypes would far more constrained reflecting the singular family of Noah. Neanderthals and Denisovans never existed. Carbon dating would work, but nothing older than 6,000 years would ever be measured. Uranium decay series would be essentially non-existent. Tree ring and varve counts would only extend back 4,500 years. Why would the moon and other solar system bodies be blemished with craters? Why would stars not be created mature instead of at end of life and set to promptly explode? The heavens, meant as sign posts to seasons, would look much different.
Of course, much more could be added. But THAT is what a six thousand year old earth consistent with a simple, literal interpretation of Genesis, would actually look like. If we really woke up in that world, a young Earth would have credibility.
So why is the YEC picture so vividly different, with foreign extraneous tenets such as baraminology, heterozygosity, accelerated nuclear decay, and dinosaurs on the ark? The answer is that YEC as promoted by apologetic organizations is not an outgrowth of accepting what the sacred Holy Scriptures tell, but has entirely developed as a reaction against scientific discovery. None of YEC as it exists today would be there if not for the threat posed by the progress of knowledge. The essence of YEC is not so much pro Bible as it is anti Science, and almost nothing that defines modern YEC comes out of a study of scripture itself.
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YEC is refuted by evidence, not by atheists. Your inability to even address this evidence only further cements this conclusion.
If you want to change minds you are going to have to tackle the evidence that has led Christians to accept an old Earth and evolution. Telling them they don’t believe the Bible doesn’t make this evidence go away. You also have to offer something other than dogma. “Because Burrawang says so” isn’t a very compelling reason to believe something. Just a google search for “evidence for evolution” demonstrates how hollow your arguments are.
“Professor Darrel Falk has recently pointed out that one should not take the view that young-earth creationism is simply tinkering around the edges of science. If the tenets of young earth creationism were true, basically all of the sciences of geology, cosmology, and biology would utterly collapse. It would be the same as saying 2 plus 2 is actually 5. The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines. Is it any wonder that many sadly turn away from faith concluding that they cannot believe in a God who asks for an abandonment of logic and reason?”–Francis Collins, “Faith and the Human Genome”
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My view is similar, but I don’t believe early humans disobeyed a direct command of God. Rather, they reached moral maturity and chose selfishly, violating their own consciences. (It takes a great deal of brain and language development to be capable of having a conscience. But that’s another thread.)
Anyway, the short version of my view is here:
The (too long) academic version is here:
Umm, the article was about using genealogies as a chronology. It said nothing about Genesis 1 or yom/day. If you have the time, you should read the full article posted above.
Amen
Okay, since the thread is derailed, I have some advice. Submit the manuscript to Wipf & Stock before you self-publish. I can ask someone to put in a good word for you there. They have three imprints: Cascade (more or less traditional), Pickwick and Wipf & Stock. The latter two are pay for play, so basically self-publishing. Check out their website FAQ.
My first career was in publishing. You remind of a friend who was an art director at an ad agency who wrote science fiction on the side. I edited his books and he laid them out. He was determined to self-publish (this was the early 2000s), so I showed him how to create a publishing company, obtain ISBN and UPC codes, and get the book on Amazon and into bookstore distribution. It’s actually not hard, and when the book doesn’t look or feel self-published, you have a lot better chance to sell some copies. Here’s my buddy’s website. Shoot me a PM if you want to talk about it some more.
Great stuff!
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I heard a commentary on Bonhoeffer where this phrase was expounded on in a metaphysical way, that “human nature” is a sort of Platonic form that we all share in and thus when one falls that taints the entire human nature – and thus each and every one of us is as responsible for the Fall of the race as any other.
I’ve noticed that on occasion and it always struck me that this is actually bad Christology: the “problem we inherited from Adam” was fixed on the Cross, and if that does not begin to shape our lives differently in this life there will be no change in the next, either.
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The irony being that the measure of what the Holy Scriptures tell is a MSWV that says that in order to be true, something must be 100% scientifically and historically accurate – it’s a reaction against scientific discovery that rests on the premise that science is the proper measure of things!
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YECs often act as if it’s just a choice to believe in an old Earth and evolution as if there wasn’t mountains and mountains of data that lead to those conclusions. It’s on the same level as just deciding to accept Heliocentrism over Geocentrism, as if those are equal choices. YECs act as if its a choice between the Bible and atheism when it is a really a choice between biblical interpretations and objective data. Speaking of Geocentrism, even those who argued vociferously for biblically based Geocentrism still understood it wouldn’t stand in the face of objective data.
But to want to affirm that the Sun, in very truth, is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without traveling from east to west, and that the Earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves very swiftly around the Sun, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures….
. . .
Third, I say that, if there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true.
–Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615
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