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.
I am astonished at your statement. After taking pride in not having studied the evidenceâŚ
âŚyou 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. Thatâs 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, Iâm still willing to ship that book to you.
Wow. Talk about arrogance![quote=âgrog, post:78, topic:5941â]
âŚminus 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=âgrog, post:80, topic:5941â]
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 youâre projecting.
[quote]That is what we do as human beingsâŚ
[/quote]That is what the scientific method, which you clearly reject, is intelligently designed to prevent.
I am sure isolated incidents. kinds are defined in the passageâŚsome that fly, some that swim, some that walk on the earth. I am a bit perplexed on how theistic evolutionists thinkâŚdo 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 scienceâŚand 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.
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.Itâs 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 itâs 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.
Iâm afraid itâs 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 Iâve 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 couldnât 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 McDonaldâs, and the radiometric labs would get sued out of their insurances. Atheism simply doesnât enter into it. Neither does âbuilding an idol out of human reason.â
All weâre 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 â the idea that God created vast amounts of evidence for a lengthy history of events that never happened. If thatâs your conviction, then God bless you, but please bear in mind that there are other faithful Christians who disagree there. As Iâve 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.
Hope you are doing well by Godâs 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 hereâs 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 thatâs the evidence. Where have the scientists gone wrong, @prode?
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 doesnât even yet exist! Below is a discussion of the âdaysâ topic by âOld Earthâ Creationists⌠I think you will find it helpful to read from co-religionists:
âBiblical 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 yĂ´m (translated âdayâ 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 yĂ´m.â
âYoung-earth creationists such as Kenneth Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, claim âdayâ (yĂ´m) attached to a number or âordinalâ (1st, 2nd, 3rd âdayâ)necessarily means 24-hour days. However, noted Bible scholars dispute that assertion.â
"Holman QuickSource Guide to Understanding CreationHebrew linguist Gleason Archer writes, âOn the basis of internal evidence, it is this writerâs conviction that yĂ´m in Genesis could not have been intended by the Hebrew author to mean a literal twenty-four hour day.â9 Dr. Norman Geisler states, âNumbered 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 âdayâ in Genesis 1 could not refer to more than one twenty-four-hour period.â
"Note, however, there are Old Testament verses where yĂ´m 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 Israelâs ultimate restoration hundreds or thousands of years in the future.
â˘Zechariah 14:7, describing the Day of the Lord, contains yĂ´m echad (translated âunique dayâ), which is identical to yĂ´m echad of Genesis 1:5 (translated âone dayâ). The context of Zechariah 14:7-8 suggests yĂ´m echad will be a period of time spanning at least one summer and one winter, obviously longer than a 24-hour calendar day."
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