If by “interpreted” you mean “analyzed with the assumption that the laws of nature are constant”, then sure, they were interpreted. But that interpretation was no different than a carpenter taking a measurement with his tape measure and calling out to an assistant who then cut a piece of lumber using his own tape measure: the assumption is that the tape measures are constant, that is that they do not change from one moment to another and that they both use the same units.
For a simple example: consider the case where the “tape measure” was crystals and the “inches” were the degree of deformation in crystals in the rock. Those “inches” tell time because by lab measurements we know how fast various crystals can deform without snapping, so if there is deformation x then we know that the fastest they could have deformed is x * K, where k is the rate at which that crystal can deform without snapping. So yes, the measurements are in units of time because that’s how rates work.
So either the measurements are accurate, or the scripture is wrong when it says that God is faithful.
So the only worldview involved is that God is faithful, the secular version being that the laws of nature don’t change.
Where in the scripture does it say it intends to teach science?
That scripture teaches science is the foundation of YEC. Where in the scriptures is that foundation located?
I’ve done such measurements in the lab for rocks, and watched the analysis of what turned out to be sun-hardened brick, so no, I’m not ignorant here. In all those cases it was physical analysis, since that was what the lab was capable of. Sadly the brick lacked any carbon, but it did contain volcanic ash from a known eruption, which dated it to not long after that eruption – and that eruption can be dated in a number of different ways that all agree . . . and since it happened 7k years ago then that brick was about 7k years old.
Rubbish. No assumptions were involved in any of the lab work I did except that the laws of nature are constant, which is what the Bible tells us – God is faithful, not whimsical; He is constant, not mercurial.
Where does the scripture say that it is “eyewitness historical accounts”?
You claim to be Bible-believing, so if you can’t find that claim in the Bible you have a problem: you aren’t using a biblical worldview.
Moses took the Egyptian creation story and edited it to give a theological message – that’s a fact, and the response to a fact shouldn’t be to deny it but to ask, “Why is that so?” In this case, the question is why Moses did that (the answer should be obvious given where Moses was educated).
What is the theological significance of the phrase “evening was, and morning was”?
That’s not in the text, either.
For someone who claims to be Bible-believing, you sure throw in a lot of things that aren’t in the Bible!
So does almost everyone here – and that is your problem: you are unable to accept that any view but yours can be right, so you can’t accept that others trust the Bible at least as much as you do if they disagree with you. And since you have to cling to your interpretation, you fail to see how often the disagreement arises because you are adding things to the text.
And the text is what I care about, because that’s what the Holy Spirit gave us. I tend to fly off the handle when someone mangles the text by adding to it because I was taught that the text is holy. I apologize for going overboard in zeal sometimes, but emotionally to me, adding to the text is little different than opening a copy of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and urinating on it – indeed worse, because urinating on that book would only show that the person doing it is a fool, but adding to the text and pretending that’s what the text says is an actual attack on the work of the Holy Spirit.
Which being interpreted means, “YECers”. I read the text as you describe, though you can’t accept that.
Sorry, but I have seen it. I have watched with shattered heart as people raised YEC turned from the faith when they recognized that they had been lied to – and that is the very thing many of them said, that their pastors had lied – and then followed the YEC logic that if any detail in Genesis is wrong then the whole Bible is worthless. It happened by the hundreds where I went to university, over and over.
In our informal intelligent design club, it was evolution that primarily brought people to conclude there is a Designer, and most of those ended up as Christians. And only rarely did someone who had been raised YEC even mention evolution as a reason for abandoning the faith, what they said was they had been lied to by pastors and elders, and often that they were just doing what those pastors and elders said, concluding that the Bible was worthless because there were scientific errors in Genesis.
The tragedy is that they had been taught to worship an idol – science – as though it had the power to overturn scripture. No one had taught them that scientific accuracy didn’t matter because Christ still arose from the dead, and so they left the faith.
I never saw a single instance of that, though I saw the opposite – evolution making theists out of people.
Yes, because of what I have seen and heard – YEC treating the scriptures with cavalier disrespect, making the Bible look foolish, and driving people from Christ. Yet also because you continually reference sites that are known to lie about not just science but more importantly about the scriptures.
