Friendly reminder that we have a “new subtopic” button. Just click on the timestamp on any post, and you can link it to a new topic of discussion.
but but… see, it’s all part of the same overarching topic which is, “a fascinating conversation with Greg about why he seems to think we evolutionary creationists all have our heads in the sand, and why we respectfully disagree.”
I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, Greg, what you have described is an evolutionary creationist view of Genesis. Did you realize that as you were writing?
Let’s apply the principle that you and evolutionary creationists agree on to the opening chapters of Genesis 1:24 (NIV):
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so.
Let’s put this in context. The book of Genesis has 11 “stories,” each one summarized by an opening verse that speaks of “generations” or “beginnings.” The generations dealt with in Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 are the generations of the heavens and the earth, as we read in English translation:
“In the beginning of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.”
The point of this first account of beginnings is to describe how the heavens and the earth (and the life upon the earth) came into being–by God’s command. “Let there be…” stands in stark contrast to the Babylonian account (Enuma Elish) in which the god Marduk slays the goddess Tiamat and splits her body into the waters above the dome of heaven and the waters below the dome of heaven.
An important aspect of bringing form and order out of nothingness and chaos (“the earth was astonishingly empty”) is that God creates order everywhere:
- It is in the heavens: the sun rules over the day and the moon rules over the night.
- It is in the realm of biology: kinds reproduce after kinds.
- And it is in the realm of the man’s purpose: man is commissioned by God (i.e., created in God’s image) to rule over the earth and its creatures.
The Genesis account (1:1 - 2:3) to which the “kinds” passage belongs has a message about God’s majesty. His majesty is seen in how the heavens and the earth have order.
That the universe has order is quite true; the speed of light in a vacuum has remained unchanged since the universe was formed, for example. So I wholeheartedly affirm the faith statement of Genesis. However, Genesis’ description of God’s majesty carries some faulty understandings of how the universe works.
Just as the celestial objects revolving around the earth makes perfect sense to someone who doesn’t have a telescope, the “kinds after kinds” view of biology makes perfect sense to someone who doesn’t have access to fossils and DNA analysis and microbial life. Calvin’s view of a geocentric universe and Ken Ham’s view of life created without evolution are both the products of a “faulty understanding of how the universe works” expressed in the Scriptures of the ancient Israelites and handed down to us today.
Today we use telescopes (not available 3000 years ago) to observe that the earth revolves around the sun. The science of astronomy helps us get the right view of Scripture and rightly divide it. Astronomy helps us respectfully disagree with John Calvin by interpreting Psalm 93:1 and Psalm 104:5 as non-scientific, poetic statements of God’s majesty.
Likewise, today we use fossils, DNA analysis, the observation of evolution in microbial life and whole slew of other scientific observations (not available 3000 years ago) to observe that all of life evolved from very simple single-celled organisms billions of years ago. The sciences of biology, paleontology, and geology help us get the right view of Scripture and rightly divide it. These sciences lead us to respectfully disagree with Ken Ham by interpreting the early chapters of Genesis as non-scientific, poetic statements of God’s majesty.
I understand that you have not spent decades studying biology, paleontology, and geology, so you are understandably reluctant to agree with us on the scientific questions. I say I understand your reluctance because I too was once a young-earth creationist, and I expressed the same skepticism about science that you have been expressing. A resource that you would find extremely helpful, I think, is Paradigms on Pilgrimage. The authors are brothers-in-law, one a scientist and the other a pastor/biblical scholar, who each ran into very strong evidence from their fields of study that made them reconsider their skepticism about evolution and the age of the earth. The book is a quick and clear read, too–a real gem on the topic of origins and Scripture. If you are interested in the book but do not have the means to obtain it, send me a private message with your address and I will ship a copy to you free of charge. Early Christmas!
Blessings,
Chris Falter
Hello Greg,
Just wanted to add my 2 cents to this discussion.
For myself, I don’t blindly follow any scientist but as a believer studied evolutionary biology at a graduate level (didn’t accept evolution at the time) and, to my surprise, saw how clear and abundant the evidence was. And not all scientists are atheists and the vast majority that are aren’t trying to promote it through their endeavors (including Darwin).
You also said in another post that you don’t accept the evidence for macro-evolution. I’m wondering how much independent study you’ve put into it, for I’ve noticed that those who come here and don’t accept evolution generally haven’t studied it much, if at all.
Also, science isn’t secular wisdom, it’s interpretations of accumulated knowledge of God’s creation. Secular wisdom says things like, “I’ll cheat just enough to get ahead and not get caught, everyone does it, who cares?”. Science helps us live, travel, get rid of cancer, etc., and the same scientific method that led to those advances has developed the theory of biological evolution. I’m wondering if you’re sceptical of the scientists who developed the last plane you flew on.
Lastly, I’m wondering if you can consider the possibility that you’ve misinterpreted Genesis 1, and that the Hebrew, “asah” and, “bara” don’t necessarily mean instantaneous creations, as they don’t anywhere else in the OT. And that maybe you’re being a little to technical in interpreting the passages on, “kinds”.
Thanks.
Richard
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I have the advantage of not having studied this in depth minus a dozen or so books and many articles from multi perspectives. Many educators in the secular arena are not calling a spade a spade. My opinion is that they are becoming indoctrinators not educators. And young earth creationists do believe in evolution but evolution from a point where God created the kinds. I do not buy how fossils or dna or microbial life can disprove that God created KINDS that then evolved. I just don’t buy it. I have already mentioned how I learned in college in the few history courses I took that history is NEVER to be considered a list of facts. NEVER. It is always to be read in a way that considers that the author is an interpreter of the facts and when we see great authors of recent history getting their presuppositions mixed into the recording, so writers of the history of the world should be much more cautious…they need to ask themselves over and over and over if the results of a test tends to support the already supposed hypothesis, or can they fit the results into an entirely different model.
Most universaries will never go there. You and I know that.
Research groups will not go there.
We have seen paleontologist groups fake fossils to pose the smoking gun to prove their point…why do they do this? $
The advantage that I have is that without indoctrination to the degree that secular schools have it of molecules to man evolution, I can better place a “reasonable” vs “unreasonable” tag onto options.
A demonstration about a bird running and flapping wings up a log that is slanted at certain degrees is just not sufficient evidence for how a land dwelling creature grew in design from no feathers to feathers…then from no wings to wings. and from dense bones to hollow bones. What I think is going on is the tendency for secular universities to conform the evidence to fit the presupposition and the presupposition is almost always without God. .
For some reason, I believe God has me on a pathway of learning about this subject and for whatever reason, I feel more and more uneasy about so many theistic evolutionists to stiff arm God creating “kinds” For goodness sakes, there are not some honest biologists who are turning away from the thought that birds evolved from reptiles towards a different model. In the same thought, my hunch is that theistic evolutionists who are Christians and worship a holy God in Spirit and in True consider changing their thinking away from molecules to man evolution towards God creating kinds that then have the ability to develop into the varieties we have today.
you have not offended me. Sorry if I missed a reply back to you. And sorry if I have sounded offensive. I won’t read that book because after learning a bit from reviews, I believe I know exactly where it goes…evidence to prove what already is believed about the world…they are a dime a dozen. Sorry again.
And You are right about Ken Hamm…I have had direct links to Him through friends where I have specifically voiced my concern about the damaging disagreements between young earth and theistic evolutionists. He has humbled and tapered the jargon, most importantly towards a point that defines salvation as Christ on the cross and less on convincing folks to subscribe to his exact analysis of Genesis.
I have had a richly blessed Christian life with our Great God. He has blown me away with miracles and actions that I could never attribute to anyone but He. I wish I could write a book. The one thing I notice about Him is that He seems to make it very apparent that He is not a distant celestial clock maker in the sky who does not interact with His children, but is caring and active…but here is the hitch-He does not conform to a pattern that we expect and never seems to act the same way twice. He is beyond reasoning and wholly different and I believe that He has confounded the human mind with things we are not capable of understanding when it comes to how we got to the way we are today. But when He says something in the Word, we should be cautious in how we interpret it. For me, perhaps there is some leeway in early Genesis, but not so much that we call it poetry then buy the exact theory from naturalistic evolutionists either.
The principles that theistic evolutionists subscribe to that would suggest that God started the time clock with a couple of cells billions of years ago and then caused a “natural” environment in which creatures to develop from non flying to flying for example is not rational, it is not orderly, it is not sensible, it is confusing and it does not conform with what I see in His character. When I as a general contractor find it necessary to find a solution to a problem in a project, I have to sometime experiment with options before coming up with the solution. Heaven forbid that we come to the belief that God had to work that way in process of designing life as we know it. The molecules to man evolution is the model that anti God folks supported who then conform evidence to fit the worldview. We are told in the Scriptures that we are without excuse because we see His handiwork in creation and naturalistic changes from non flying to flying, to me, are less His handiwork and more evolutionary chance. Sorry if this is bitter to you all but this is my deep seated honest accessment.
If one starts with a worldview that suggests that God did not create kinds and then does some dna analysis, they may go out of their way to conform the evidence to support that worldview instead of finding willingness to consider other worldviews. That is what we do as human beings…we assume and when we assume you know what this makes out of u and me (ignore that if you don’t know the joke. ) This is unfair and unscientific. I on the other hand, I think that Ken Ham has come across arrogant and perhaps will one day be humbled in heaven when he realized how he stood firmly on things not worthy…He knows this from guys like me. But I conclude that theistic evolutionists who buy into the worldview borrowed from naturalistic evolutionists that then have a human tendency to translate the results of analysis of data to conform to that presupposed worldview are worse. If DNA strands from different species are 98% alike for example, this is UNRELATED to confirming that what we will call macro evolution to be true. That is faulty logic. Even my daughter who is homeschooled and taking a course on logic would say the same! This presupposes that God could have not made kinds using similar dna patterns.
Just acknowledging that God exists who is so beyond us should absolutely shake and rock and destroy any firm presuppositions about how we came to be. Right. God stands outside of nature as the supernatural. If we are a Christian, and believe this, then we have to conclude that God could have and most likely intruded within the parameters of the natural at any point in the spectrum of life that should create a pause in theorizing with too much certainty what actually happened those many years ago. I don’t sense that pause in theistic evolutionists. I sense it more in guys like Kurt Wise who learned under Jay Gould I think, whom I have exchanged emails with years and years ago, who have seen evidence but are not over inclined to interpret evidence within a naturalistic mindset because of His reverence towards a Holy God who is outside of nature and could have very well intervened within it at any point that would necessarily skew any scientific evidence that relies on the senses and human rationale.
I think that there are some who are afraid of what the secular scientific community will do to them if they admit this…this is understandably human but not Christian. In the same light, Jesus seemed to support the thought that it was worry and fear of man was the very reason that the Pharisees became the fakers that they became during Jesus lifetime. fear breeds hypocrisy. Please do not take this as a judgement of any of your characters. I am just being open and honest to the hilt.
When I have stood in the gap in faith that is fueled by His Word with less concern about appeasing the crowd and more reverence to God whom I know I can trust, He has responded with power and heaven forbid that I even flee from His goodness in this way. I am going to pray deeply over this issue because for some reason, He has me here.
I will just have to leave it there for now folks. I will spend time seeking His face on this issue and pray that you all do the same…If God calls for more discussion after this, perhaps we re open the discussion.
It is my impression that “kinds” is a made-up classification that has no real meaning, used solely because the English translation of Genesis said that “every kind” rather than “every variety” and that there is no real taxonomic division called a “kind” except in the imagination of Ken Ham and company. If you have information to the contrary, I would be pleased to hear it.
Also, I would like to hear of who the paleontologist groups are that fake fossils. There have been a few isolated incidents of fraud mostly decades ago, and which were exposed by the scientific community, with the fraud mostly by individuals who did so for the usual sinful reasons: pride, self-gradification, etc. but I am unaware of any widespread rogue paleontologist groups. The nature of science is to expose any flaws and misrepresentations (unfortunately the same cannot be said of religion- but that is another subject for another board…)
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In the past there have been a few fake fossils. Some are fabricated by the local workers hired to labor at the dig site, who think they’ll get more work if fossils are found. But science is self-correcting. Now paleontologists are present at the dig sites and supervise all operations themselves. That’s why some of them look like cowboys with weathered faces and hats.
I went to a talk by Neil Shubin at the American Museum of Natural History once. He showed some slides from his dig on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic where he found the famousTiktaalik. He and his crew lived in tents and carried shotguns in case the polar bears got out of hand.
btw, there is a rumor that the adventurous Roy Chapman Andrews was the inspiration for Indiana Jones.
[quote=“grog, post:63, topic:5941”]
Is it not true that most evolutionary biologists have declared with certainty that reptiles evolved into birds?[/quote]
Birds are dinosaurs. Their group is an offshoot of reptiles. You don’t seem to grasp the notion of an evolutionary tree.
Why did you answer my challenge to your claim with an orthogonal question, Greg?
No evolutionary biologist AFAIK has ever hypothesized that wings began as stubs. If you disagree, perhaps you could name 10 such biologists.
Would you mind? After all, if you’re so certain, it should be easy to do instead of evading.
Not by people who understand evolution, no. Natural selection is the antithesis of chance.
Are you beginning to realize that you are grossly misrepresenting evolutionary biology?
And I am pointing out that you can’t name a single person suggesting this to be the case. Against whom specifically are you arguing, Greg? A straw man?
[quote]And if you are talking about the “extant” cave dwelling fish with non functioning eyes-…
[/quote]I am not. Perhaps you should ask sincere questions instead of rhetorical ones? Perhaps you should stop putting words into the mouths of others with no justification for doing so?
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Hi Greg,
You do not understand the first thing about how science works, my brother Greg, because you think that the criticisms of history apply to science. As long as you maintain that attitude, there is no possibility of progress in our discussion.
We have also seen young earth creationists fake fossils in an attempt to prove their point. I hope you will inform yourself by reading the page I just linked to.
I am astonished at your statement. After taking pride in not having studied the evidence…
…you nevertheless feel confident that you know what all the evidence really is and what the best explanation for it is.
This is a truly astonishing attitude, my brother. Having bragged about not studying the evidence in depth, you nevertheless feel more qualified to describe what that evidence is and how to explain it than professional scientists, many of them Christians, who have spent lifetimes studying that evidence.
Without any training or serious efforts at research, you know more about science than Christian scientists. Wow. That’s all I can say. Wow.
Are you really trying to learn, Greg? Many of us have invested hours in hearing you out and responding to you.
Are we worth paying attention to?
Do you think you can learn anything from Christian scientists? If you do, I’m still willing to ship that book to you.
Blessings,
Chris Falter
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Wow. Talk about arrogance![quote=“grog, post:78, topic:5941”]
…minus a dozen or so books and many articles from multi perspectives.
[/quote]And which of them told you that wings must have started as stubs, instead of the modifications of forelimbs we know them to be?
Which of them told you that evolutionary biologists describe evolution as simple chance?
[quote=“grog, post:80, topic:5941”]
If one starts with a worldview that suggests that God did not create kinds and then does some dna analysis, they may go out of their way to conform the evidence to support that worldview instead of finding willingness to consider other worldviews.[/quote]
Maybe you’re projecting.
[quote]That is what we do as human beings…
[/quote]That is what the scientific method, which you clearly reject, is intelligently designed to prevent.
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I am sure isolated incidents. kinds are defined in the passage…some that fly, some that swim, some that walk on the earth. I am a bit perplexed on how theistic evolutionists think…do they believe that God intervened miraculously at the beginning where He planted some cells and an environment where it was capable for the cells to evolve into what we know now or is He a God who actually miraculously intervenes in every step of the way in the evolution of the species?
If the former, then I would hastily suggest to you that this seems silly and I could suggest that this is the very type of thing that liberal theologians do that waters the gospel so much towards sociology or psychology.
If the latter, then I would suggest to you that adherence to the idea that God made Kinds of living things such as those that walk, fly and swim is not very out of reach for you. You and Ken Ham are very closely related. The reason I suggest this is that if you include a God who is outside of the natural, then anything could have occurred and for this science is a weak source for best interpretation because science goes crazy when the miraculous intervenes. I demonstrated this in a couple of examples of God doing miracles in my own life against the better judgement of science…and the gospel is miraculous. Daniel saw the miraculous. Moses did. The apostles did, Hosea did, The whole of the Scriptures is so full of outside of the natural that an over focus on natural explanations through the eyes of the scientific method are vain.
I have to let this go for a time and pray over this.
Thanks for your patience with my statements and hope that you do not sense me judging hearts, but rather attempting to solidify the church in unity about the Truth in Him.
I think that is a good question, and my observation is that there is a spectrum of belief among the EC crowd. I tend to agree with your last statement, but do not understand exactly how that works. I believe the bible when it states that God is not only the creator but the sustainer of creation. My thought is that somehow God is big enough to have guided all creation from the Big Bang until now, even though it is subject to the physical principles and restraints that God also put into place from the beginning. I also believe that God intervenes in that creation, when it suits His purpose, with the ultimate intervention being the resurrection.
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Yup. They are. They are clinging to the only god that the atheists can subscribe to because their worldview prohibits them from accepting any other. This in total contradiction to the very clear and easily understandable word of the bible in Genesis 1. God created EVERYTHING is 6 human understandable days.It’s so neatly spelled out even a child can understand it: It was evening, it was morning, the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth day. What is so difficult to understand about that?
Also clearly spelled out in Exodus 20:8-11. Same days that God used in genesis are the same days that humankind are to work.
One simply has to already have made up ones mind that it’s really the god of the atheists that created everything to deny the words that are so clearly spelled out in the bible. This is the essence of idolatry - having another god before the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
All this from the wonderful human intellect that refuses to bow down to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that, Prode. There is also the fact that the literal six-day young-earth creationist interpretation of Genesis 1-11, which you are so adamant is the only valid interpretation of Genesis 1-11, simply can not be reconciled, in any way, shape or form, with the physical evidence that God has created.
As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, your claim that the evidence for an ancient earth is atheistically motivated is simply not true. Much of it comes from oil exploration. The number one consideration for petroleum geologists is that the ages that come back from the radiometric labs need to be correct, not ideologically convenient. If radiometric dating really were so unreliable that it couldn’t tell the difference between a few thousand years and hundreds of millions of years, then oil companies would waste a fortune drilling in the wrong places only to find nothing, the geologists would all get fired and end up flipping burgers in McDonald’s, and the radiometric labs would get sued out of their insurances. Atheism simply doesn’t enter into it. Neither does “building an idol out of human reason.”
All we’re trying to do here is to be honest about this. If you believe that a faithful reading of the Bible demands a young earth, then your only option is the omphalos hypothesis – the idea that God created vast amounts of evidence for a lengthy history of events that never happened. If that’s your conviction, then God bless you, but please bear in mind that there are other faithful Christians who disagree there. As I’ve said before, 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4 allow for flexibility regarding the age of the earth, but there are no verses of Scripture that allow for omphalos.
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Hi prode,
Hope you are doing well by God’s grace today. You say that scientists are misinterpreting data because of their preconceived notions. You need to offer a little bit of evidence yourself if you want us to believe such a bold assertion, especially when tens of thousands of those scientists are godly Christians like you and love the Lord Jesus Christ passionately.
So here’s some evidence from the scientists. You can tell us how they are misinterpreting it:
We are seeing light in telescopes today that has been traveling through space for 13 billion years. The reason we know how long ago it first shone is that the light exhibits the red shift that happens due to the Doppler effect. Astronomers have discovered through careful study that the farther away the source of light, the higher its red shift. Some of the light being seen today has a red shift indicating that its origin is at a distance of 13 billion light-years from us.
So that’s the evidence. Where have the scientists gone wrong, @prode?
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Well, I think something that is pretty simple is that Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 are pretty hard to define if the Sun doesn’t even yet exist! Below is a discussion of the “days” topic by “Old Earth” Creationists… I think you will find it helpful to read from co-religionists:
“Biblical Hebrew has a very limited vocabulary (approximately 3,100 words) compared to the English vocabulary (estimated to be 1,000,000 words). Hebrew words often have several literal meanings.5 Linguistic scholars acknowledge the Hebrew word yôm (translated “day” in English) has several literal meanings: a period of daylight, 12-hour day, 24-hour day, time, period of time with unspecified duration, and epoch of time.6 While modern English has numerous words to describe a long time-span, no word in biblical Hebrew adequately denotes a finite epoch of time other than yôm.”
“Young-earth creationists such as Kenneth Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, claim “day” (yôm) attached to a number or “ordinal” (1st, 2nd, 3rd “day”)necessarily means 24-hour days. However, noted Bible scholars dispute that assertion.”
"Holman QuickSource Guide to Understanding CreationHebrew linguist Gleason Archer writes, “On the basis of internal evidence, it is this writer’s conviction that yôm in Genesis could not have been intended by the Hebrew author to mean a literal twenty-four hour day.”9 Dr. Norman Geisler states, “Numbered days need not be solar. Neither is there a rule of Hebrew language demanding that all numbered days in a series refer to twenty-four hour days. Even if there were no exceptions in the Old Testament, it would not mean that ‘day’ in Genesis 1 could not refer to more than one twenty-four-hour period.”
"Note, however, there are Old Testament verses where yôm attached to a number actually does refer to long time periods. Here are two examples: "
• Hosea 6:2, He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day. This refers to Israel’s ultimate restoration hundreds or thousands of years in the future.
•Zechariah 14:7, describing the Day of the Lord, contains yôm echad (translated “unique day”), which is identical to yôm echad of Genesis 1:5 (translated “one day”). The context of Zechariah 14:7-8 suggests yôm echad will be a period of time spanning at least one summer and one winter, obviously longer than a 24-hour calendar day."
[END OF QUOTED MATERIAL]
[more Creationist anlaysis at the link below!]
http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/old_earth_creationism.html
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I see @gbrooks9 has made peace with Old Earth Creationism. That is nice =). Keep reading there stuff. Much of it is quite good.
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