BioLogos: House of Heresy & False Teaching (AiG says the nicest things about us)

Faith & Science Conversation
189

I have always had this nagging thought about people claiming to be Christian yet going full-tilt against what stands so clearly written in the bible. Are these people really Christian, I thought?
Last night I finally got clarity on this issue - having been on The Biologos Forum in the discussion area and seeing ( once again ) that bible believing Christians are accused of being liars for claiming that the earth is only about 6000 years old, and then being condemned to hell for that supposed lie - the answer at last popped into my mind.
The question is not really whether one needs to be a Young Earth Creationist in order to be saved. The question is really whether a true, believing Christian can refuse to believe in a young earth and carry on proclaiming that it is billions of years old?
I propose that the answer is a clear and definite NO!
This is my reasoning.
How can we know what is the truth regarding this matter? If I believe that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is God in nature and that Jesus speaks the truth then I will naturally want to follow exactly what He says. Jesus says in John 17:17 “Sanctify them by the truth. Thy word is truth”. So there we have it - the word of GOD is truth. Now what is the word of God? We read it everywhere in the Old Testament - “The word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah/Isaiah/Ezekiel/Samuel/Haggai/Abraham/Moses etc.” In short - it’s the written word of God because God told those to whom it came to write it down!
So we now know what is truth and are then therefore able to discern what is false and therefore a lie. God ( through his word ) says clearly that He created everything ( heaven and earth and all that is in them ) in six days (Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:8-11, Exodus 31:17) and hence from that and the history (genealogies etc.) recorded in the bible we determine that the earth is only around 6000+ years old.
That then is the truth. So anything that runs counter to that is false and anyone proclaiming anything else is proclaiming falsehood and LYING. Anyone who claims that the earth/universe is billions of years old (from a human perspective here on earth) is also making God out to be a liar.
Therein lies (no pun intended ) the crux. Anyone claiming to be a born again Christian cannot keep on LYING. Lying is a sin and when it is pointed out to you that you are sinning you must repent of that sin and this is why:

  1. No deceitful person will dwell in my house and no liar will stand in my presence Psalm 101:7
  2. Therefore, putting away lying, let every man speak truthfully with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Ephesians 2:25 - Bible Gateway
  3. Nobody who has been born of God continues to commit sin, because God’s seed remains in him. He cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 1 John 3:9 - Bible Gateway
  4. … and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Revelation 21:8 – Bible Gateway
    In other words, whilst it’s not a direct salvation issue it is definitely a …well…salvation issue!!! If you keep on sinning it shows you have no part in Christ, especially if you keep calling God a liar ( where he clearly states that He created in 6 normal human understandable days ). How can you call yourself a Christian whilst simultaneous calling God a liar? That is the crux of the matter.
    I believe that CMI and AIG and any other defender of truth should not make excuses for those who oppose God - and let’s face it - the billions of years story is directly associated with the unbelieving atheist and hence with Satan who calls God a liar. CMI and AIG and anyone else should do exactly the same with this BOY story as has been done with the lgbtq+ agenda - call sin a sin and save people from the eternal flames by telling them to repent from their sin.
    I now have reached peace over this matter - it’s simply a matter of having to repent of sin. Warn a divisive person once/twice then have nothing further to do with them.
190

This rationale is all that is necessary to maintain a cult. Those who don’t or won’t agree either don’t exist or don’t matter. That seems on the face of it unChristian.

4 Likes
191

Well precisely, Kevin. But I’ve made this point over and over and over and over again to you and it seems to have gone in one ear and out the other.

You must have accurate and honest weights and measures. Whatever your small-b bible says, the Capital-B Bible makes this demand clearly and unequivocally in Deuteronomy 25:13-16, among other places. Any creation model, any interpretation of Genesis 1, any challenge to the scientific consensus on the age of the earth or evolution must obey those verses. If you have to fudge measurements, cherry-pick data, misrepresent evidence or scientific procedures, or exaggerate or downplay the significance of errors in order to support a 6,000 year old earth, that is lying, and that is what must be repented of.

If you’re not happy about YECs being accused of lying, then you need to justify their approach to measurement. You need to respond to specific examples and explain how they could be considered to be honest.

For example, how is it honest to claim that rock formations are not fractured when photos on your own website clearly show that they are, and the particular photo you are showcasing to back up your claim is badly focused and contains people in it in front of the fractures that you claim do not exist?

Or how is it honest to claim that dividing the amount of sediment on the deep ocean floor by the rate at which it gets deposited on the continental shelf tells us anything about the age of the earth?

Or how is it honest to claim that soft tissue in dinosaur fossils contains actual red blood cells and fresh dinosaur meat, or that the soft tissue was unpermineralised, when it had to be soaked in a demineralising solution for a week to get at it, the round red microstructures were only the long-decayed leftovers from what once was red blood cells but isn’t any more, and no sequenceable dinosaur DNA from the samples has ever been recovered?

Or how is it honest to dismiss contamination as a “rescuing device” when the measured levels of radiocarbon in ancient coals and diamonds are so low as to be indistinguishable from contamination, and if you dismissed contamination as a “rescuing device” in any other area of science, you would kill people?

If you don’t want YECism to be referred to as lying, Kevin, you need to come up with some pretty good answers to questions such as these.

4 Likes
192

Isn’t this the same God Who so loved the World thar He sent His own Son Jesus Christ to suffer and DIE for our sins?

Humans are created in the Image of God as God created us via evolution through the Logos, Jesus Christ. See John 1:1 - 3, 14

@Sam, if Jesus conquered death, then people must no longer die by your thinking, but they surely are dying, so your thinking must be wrong.

193

Good thing no one is saved through your reasoning, then. I confess with my mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart God raised him from the dead. That’s all you need to access God’s boundless grace and be adopted into God’s family, and to claim otherwise is to add to the gospel, a serious thing Paul took issue with over and over again. Read Galatians and substitute in “believe in a 6000 year old earth” (or “accept evolution” if you like) every time it mentions circumcision or works of the law and you’ll quickly get the idea that conditioning acceptance by God on things other than the gospel preached by the apostles is a perversion of the gospel.

The Jewish Christians of the early church were hung up on circumcision and dietary restrictions and holy days. They thought that made them special to God and more Christian than the Gentile believers. They were told they were wrong. The fundamentalist Christians of today often believe they are the most Christian and most special to God. They impose rules about what men can do and what women can’t do and what you have to believe about peripheral things that are very parallel to Jewish law-keeping like avoiding alcohol or birth control, denouncing yoga, having certain hairstyles and wearing certain “modest” clothes, and only listening to certain kinds of music. They also impose rules about how you have to interpret the Bible and say your Christianity depends on things like accepting a young earth. This is just legalism. Paul had some choice words for people who turn others away from the gospel and enslave them to human rules.

Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your examples. The word of God in the Bible is always God’s revelation. It was often not written, as in your own example. It was spoken through the prophets and apostles. The Bible hadn’t been canonized when those verses you quoted were recorded so it makes no sense to say that by “word of God” they meant the Bible. The texts of the Bible were not dictated to people and written down verbatim. If you believe that, you are just demonstrably wrong, but we don’t have time to get into it.

You have equated your interpretation of the meaning of the text with “what God said.” Sorry, no. Don’t confuse your understanding of an ancient text translated from an ancient language and cultural context with the inerrant word of God. It isn’t. It’s your fallible human interpretation. When I reject a 6,000 year old earth, all I’m doing is rejecting your human interpretation of the meaning of the first part of Genesis and some genealogies, I’m not rejecting God’s word. I’m calling your interpretation of his word a lie, I’m not calling God a liar. Not at all the same thing. Since we are talking logic here, do you follow?

Nope, not if we don’t attribute the source of the idea of a 6,000 year old earth to God, we attribute it to people like Bishop Ussher and Ellen White and George Price. They were all misguided humans and it’s perfectly fine to make them out to be liars. Though I don’t think they were always lying, per se, I think they were just wrong.

Not true. Lying is being intentionally deceptive. It’s knowing what you are proclaiming is not true, but trying to get people to believe it is true. Being deceived is different. If you are proclaiming something false, but doing so in all sincerity thinking it is true, you aren’t lying, you are wrong. I’m okay with the possibility that I’m wrong about a lot of things. But as I said above, Jesus is Lord and God’s grace will cover the things I have tried to comprehend and failed. I’ve done the best I can with the mind I was given.

10 Likes
194

That one was mentioned in another thread:

195

The scientific answer is: “We can’t know.” There is no way for us to tell, scientifically.

No, “evolution” refers to the theory, first proposed independently by Darwin and Wallace, that all organisms are related by descent, and that changes over time are due to inheritable changes.

What you defined is conflating abiogenesis with evolution, which are completely separate theories, whatever many people seem to claim.

3 Likes
196

Do you believe that the earth doesn’t move?

2 Likes
197

That is a ridiculous question.

Are you honestly going to use that as evidence to prove YEC wrong and Evolution right? Im sorry but the views you would then be claiming as supporting evidence are those that the vast majority YEC’s simply do not even believe!

198

No it isn’t. I want to see if you really and truly take the Bible literally. So again, do you believe that the earth doesn’t move?

2 Likes
199

There’s nothing ridiculous about it whatsoever.

If you believe that the earth is young but you don’t also believe that the earth is flat and covered with a solid dome, you are applying two different standards to how you interpret the first chapter of Genesis.

Don’t believe me? Answers in Genesis published a takedown of flat earth arguments a couple of years ago, which can be turned into a takedown of young earth arguments by doing a simple find and replace of just five words.

So which is it? Is the earth young and flat, or ancient and a globe? Because trying to argue for anything else is trying to have your cake and eat it.

5 Likes
200

Crickets 

201

A question is not ridiculous just because it poses an inconvenience for you. As I replied to you in the other thread…

The valid point here, to spell it out for you, is that the Bible does in fact reflect the flat earth and domed firmament cosmology of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Scholars would agree. The only reason that you argue otherwise is that the Greeks have established that the earth is spherical for two millennia and half a millennia ago Galileo successfully argued against the then prevailing geocentric theology, and established that the earth revolves around the sun.

So over that past hundreds of years, theology has made its peace with the counterintuitive but scientifically established fact of heliocentrism. You do not feel the ground move, yet it does rotate and revolve. You can thank science for that understanding, or choose to ignore it at the cost of joining the looney flat earthers, many of whom base their belief, with solid textual justification, on the scriptures you yourself referenced.

In his letter to the Duchess Christina, Galileo spoke of those in the church who on the basis of these verses held fast to heliocentrism:

First they have endeavored to spread the opinion that such propositions in general are contrary to the Bible and are consequently damnable and heretical. …To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. …Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense. … For Copernicus never discusses matters of religion or faith, nor does he use argument that depend in any way upon the authority of sacred writings which he might have interpreted erroneously. He stands always upon physical conclusions pertaining to the celestial motions, and deals with them by astronomical and geometrical demonstrations, founded primarily upon sense experiences and very exact observations.

These words are amazingly relevant to the YEC debate. You cannot dismiss @jammycakes point that measurement, “very exact observations”, is required to honestly present reality. Science first established that the earth moves, and it is science which has demonstrated that the earth is ancient.

5 Likes
202

Without event reading all of your reply…I have to lost this question to you beagle…

If the flat earthers were correct, how could they have proposed the earth being the Center of the universe when the very Bible narrative they follow says “in the beginning God”?

Clearly the problem there is that God is the Center of the universe…not the earth.

So no, your claims are not inconvenience to me, they are just plain wrong!
Also, using posts that I do not agree with are not supporting evidence so I feel that your posting them in a manner that appears to provide scholarly support for errant views is wasted on those of us intelligent enough to see through them.

203

I would then, what is the explainatiom for the very obvious fibres that should simply not even be there in those samples?
Your argument about soaking in a solution is absurd…PCR COvid test magnify the viral payload in order to detect the virus more readily when the sampled payload is so small it is not detect by RAT…your point is valid.

204

that should be center of the physical universe

How can God, who is not physical, be the center of a physical universe?

You want to rewrite this so it makes sense?

2 Likes
205

If you had bothered to read the original article you would have seen this is what was actually done.

2 Likes
206

What measurements do you have that tell us that the “very obvious fibres” should “simply not even be there in those samples”? The “very obvious fibres” were stuff such as collagen, which does tend to last a very long time. The stuff that really shouldn’t have been there in 68 million year old samples, but that should have been there in 4,500 year old samples, such as sequenceable DNA, wasn’t.

No Adam, it’s your analogy that is absurd. PCR Covid solutions and demineralising solutions are completely different things; please do not insult our intelligence by claiming otherwise.

The point, Adam, is that before you can make any claims about what should or shouldn’t have been there, you need to make sure your facts are straight about what actually was there. The fact that it needed to be soaked in a demineralising solution meant that, by definition, it was not “unpermineralised,” and to claim that it was, as I’ve heard YECs do time and time again, is lying.

Yes, precisely.

207

Did you get that from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier?

Anyways, you “In the beginning God” is not relevant to the verses referencing a stationary earth.

208

from a Christian perspective, it absolutely is relevant…if there is a creator, wouldn’t that logically coincide with his residence being the center of all things? How then can one possibly claim the center of the universe is the earth exactly?

Stationary earth is not consistent at all with the narrative we are presented within the first few chapters of Genesis or the last book of the Bible Revelation where God is the center of all things.

What does place the focus on the earth is merely the explanation of the fall of man, the initiation and implementation of the plan of salvation, and the final restoration of the world back to its former glory before the fall (a new heavens and a new earth). That is the focus of the bible, however, it does not mean the earth is the center of the universe and all other things revolve around it.

I do not subscribe to the idea that simply because the catholic church made a series of errant doctrines that we now know were aimed at nothing more than a power and money grab, that should be considered the appropriate understanding of the scriptures from where they apparently got said doctrine. You have to also keep in context, this is the same organization that burned bibles not written in Latin…only allowing the publication of Latin bibles that by and large the majority of people could not read!

EDIT…
here are a couple of questions that i would ask evolutionists…

let’s say that natural selection is truth and that, humanity progresses from a lower form of life to a higher one. That would i think also means that our intelligence grows as well which is i think is fairly self-evident. This would then mean in my world that sexuality grows via the process of natural selection as well.
so i would expect that anything that does not fit the model of survival should die out yes?

Ok, so explain the following…how then can homosexuality be something that has seemingly expanded in the last few decades rather than declined?
Also, shouldn’t homosexuality be a human condition that predates heterosexual behavior and that those individuals who are not capable of naturally procreating would therefore die out?

Another question…how do evolutionists explain rape? Shouldn’t rapists also have died out by now because this behavior should pre-date a consensual intimacy? I think we even have medical references where this behavior may be biological rather than social. It seems to me that in fact the opposite has happened here also.

The bible truth is that these behaviours are the result of sin…they have always been part of the fallen mans nature and that without God, they will continue.

1 Like