The big bang and evolutionary history is not repeatable, but the evidence is observable and cosmology and geology are certainly science. Resource exploration is applied science and is successful because the underlying science is correct.
The biology around us today is just a snapshot of evolution. Evolution is just biology over time.
God is also absolutely Holy and Just and He will send unrepentant liars to hell, no mistake about that.
Of course, lying means intentionally stating something with the intent to deceive. Not all that hold a position are being intentionally deceptive, be it on biology, geology, theology or Covid conspiracy theories. Some are the deceived, some ar just parroting what they heard without thinking, some are quoting people that they trust. All are covered by grace. Those intentionally deceiving bear special responsibility, however.
No, most are just misled.
In science, the hypothesis is not observed nor is it repeated. Rather, the hypothesis is tested using repeatable observations. The whole point of science is to understand what we can’t directly observe.
Actually no, Kevin. What I’m doing is simply holding up a mirror to people who insist that YEC is a salvation issue. By telling me that YEC is a salvation issue they are telling me that anyone who is not believing and telling others that the earth is young is going to hell. If YEC is a salvation issue then so too is telling the truth, because the Bible is far more explicit about that. And that means that you need to make absolutely sure that anything you cite in support of your YECism consists of honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information. In other words, you need to know what the rules of honesty and factual accuracy are and stick to them. Romans 2:12: “All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.”
And no I don’t believe that all YECs are lying. I believe that YECs with no scientific qualifications simply don’t have the skills and experience necessary to fact-check their claims. YECs with science degrees, on the other hand, are a completely different matter altogether. They do not have the luxury of that excuse.
ah yes but it is attempting to answer epistemological questions…so I dont quite agree with that point.
What do you mean science is attempting to answer epistemological questions? Epistemological questions are the realm of philosophy. I have a pretty good vocabulary, so you aren’t going to be able to obfuscate the issues at hand just by throwing seven-syllable words around, you actually have to know what you are talking about.
aw come on, i can discredit that statement with ease…
The foundation theory of all science says energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed. So i ask you, where did the energy and matter come from that fulfilled the theory of the Big Bang?
The very foundation of all science is a porky and yet, highly intelligent people who are also proponents of evolutionary theory quite happily accept the authority of those exact scientists in forming the supposed inerrancy of Evolutionary science. Its an absurd position!
Even Stephen Hawking admitted when asked this very same question about the origin of energy and matter for the big bang, “we do not know yet”!
If i were abseiling and my anchor point is non-existent, i very much doubt the sport would be called abseiling…it would in fact be called “Base Jumping”! Trouble is, abseilers dont carry parachutes!
So what we have here (with the big bang theorists) are a group of abseilers, who are in fact base jumping, but dont have any parachutes! That is your science!
I do not know. Among many other ideas, it may have been at that point God commanding “let there be light”. What we do know is that the universe has been around for billions of years. There are astronomical photos where you can see for yourself processes which had to been going on for millions of years given the distances involved.
this is certainly likely, however, iI wonder if there is a looming problem for secular science in the area of the origins of the universe…if modern science says “the universe is endless” which is what i understand is being discussed these days, then i have to ask, what then of the background radiation discovery by Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias in 1964?
My understanding is that it was universally accepted that the discovery of background radiation proves a singular point of origin. If that is the case, then i would have to argue if the universe has a point of origin, then it must also have a point opposite that of origin. Now science appears to be saying its limitless…how than can it possibly have a point of singularity? Surely this must create irreconcilable problems.
It seems to me that no matter what those with errant world views attempt to explain away, the minute they do not follow the biblical explanation literally, things start to get very messy and even contradict. Science cannot explain the big bang…Christianity most certainly can explain it…the Bible literally says in Genesis 1 we read…
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”
Chapter 2: Moses writes…
" 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 And by the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on that day He rested from all His work."a
If we believe God created…why then must we ignore what comes next? Either Genesis 1:1 is followed by a literal interpretation of exactly how he created…or the whole bible is a fable…it is not possible to read it any other way because all of the theology of the Bible hinges on the epistemology of Genesis 1:1.
Actually, this brings me to a question…i think i will ask it on a new thread though.
I disagree - my observations run counter to this statement. The word “evolution” embodies the idea that life sprang up spontaneously in the form of a single-cellular organism which then served as the progenitor of all life forms we see around us via millions of generations of upward functional gain. That is plainly absurd given what we know about the workings of biology today.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
That one was mentioned in another thread:
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.
Do you believe that the earth doesn’t move?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.