Exposing deception masquerading as science is a right and proper thing to do. However, you need to make sure you are going about it the right way, and that it really is deception masquerading as science, and not something that really is science.
If something, such as deep geological time or biological evolution, is studied according to the rules of science, it is science.
If you want to expose it as “deception masquerading as science,” you must provide a satisfactory explanation as to which of the rules of science it violates, and how.
If you are not able to do so, then you are attacking science, period, and it is dishonest to claim otherwise.
Oh, and one of the rules of science is that you don’t get to make up your own additional rules. Not unless you can also provide satisfactory evidence that those rules are fit for purpose and actually do what you claim that they do. That is why, for example, the distinction between “operational science” and “historical science” or “forensic science” (aka the “were you there?” fallacy) does not wash.
I’d suggest you first make sure that you know how to challenge a scientific theory. Start here:
The first thing Don Batten says is that “science advances by failed predictions”.
This is false. Science advances far more by successful predictions, i.e. failing to disprove things.
Don Batten then describes the white swan fallacy (though he uses brown horses instead) as a case of ‘affirming the consequent’.
While the white swan fallacy can be expressed formally in such a way, it’s not necessary to do so.
Next Don Batten says he has five failed predictions of “cosmic evolution” - but none of the predictions he mentions have anything to do with cosmic evolution.
Batten’s fifth prediction is that “convergence shouldn’t exist” - but that’s not only not a prediction of cosmic evolution, it’s not a prediction of biological evolution either. Biological evolution actually predicts the opposite - that convergence should exist, because similar environmental and ecological conditions affect the evolution of organisms regardless of their ancestry.
Apart from the minor problem that there probably haven’t been nearly that many examples of coal being carbon-dated, because that would be a waste of an expensive process, there’s an obvious reason for this.
All coal is too old to contain any remaining natural atmospheric C14. So all coal will give the same result when carbon dated, and that result is ‘too old to provide a date’. They will all have roughly the same concentration of C14 because they’ll all have roughly the same amount of uneliminatable contamination.[1]
That all coal has roughly the same concentration of C14 is the expected result of the Earth being ancient. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply wrong.
Some coal may have a bit more due to C14 being generated by subsurface sources of radiation. ↩︎
There’s nothing in the Biblical account about the planet being reshaped - it only describes heavy rain and the fountains of the deep opening. Nor does flooding usually result in tectonic forces.
So there’s no reason to think Noah’s flood would have led to huge tectonic forces or a reshaping of the planet.
Dear Roymond,
the actual reality here is that unfortunately, the only one making claims that the Holy Bible’s profound and easily understood description of the Creation and the Global Flood means something other than what is ever so clearly and succinctly written, is you.
Our wonderful God is omniscient, He knows the end before the beginning. He designed the amazing biological nano-machines and unsurpassed genetic code, the galaxies, the heavens that declare His majesty. Do you really believe that He is incapable of inspiring the words of the Holy Scriptures to be meaningful to only the ancient first people that recorded the text?
It is clear that God through the Holy Bible speaks to each one of us in a profound manner, that changes lives for the better.
I know because that is exactly what happened to me through my own personal experience.
I believe in faith that God teaches us through the Holy Bible what each of us needs, and as He is the One best placed to lead us into greater knowledge of Him, we all should listen and obey.
It is misleading to claim that the precisely worded descriptions in the Holy Bible:
1.) of the Creation, of all that has been made in 6 normal days,
2.) the fall,
3.) the first entry of death into the creation (after Adam disobeyed God), and
4.) the description of the catastrophic Earth reshaping Global Flood of Noah’s day, do NOT mean what they so obviously do mean.
Your much repeated practice of obfuscating the clear truth written in the Holy Bible, by constantly reinforcing a counter intuitive message that the Holy Bible does not mean what it so clearly does mean; is dishonest and appears to be executed at every opportunity, whenever any Christian stands up for the Truth revealed to us all in the Holy Bible about the Creation and the Global Flood, and no doubt many other matters that are not as yet apparent to me.
Really? What utter nonsense.
You can call it what you will, but in my way of thinking a concise description of profoundly important events that occurred thousands of years ago, qualifies as a faithful description of what actually occurred. The Bible faithfully and HONESTLY informs us about how the creation was made, when it was made, how long it took for God to make it, and also informs us about what occurred when evil practices, idolatry and obscenities of evil that were continually within the heart of man at that time, i.e., God was sorry He had created and He utterly destroyed the creation here on the surface and crust of the Earth He had made and gave a new start for the only righteous people left on the face of the Earth under Heaven, by bringing a flood that destroyed all life upon the land under heaven.
Very well then Roy, please inform us precisely which Scriptures tell us that ‘deep time’ is real. I am very interested to hear your answer.
Nowhere have I ever said that :“Genesis now contains satanic deception”, those are your words and are most unfortunately yet further grossly deceitful misrepresentation of what I have said.
Do you deny that a spiritual war is waging unseen here on Earth, that is being fought for the hearts and minds of the worlds peoples?
More of the same, practice of obfuscating the clear truth written in the Holy Bible by constantly reinforcing a counter intuitive message that the Holy Bible does not mean what it so clearly does mean!
Yet again unfortunately, further misrepresentation of what I have said.
The statement you made that, “Uniformitarianism is the logical conclusion from God being faithful.” really misses that mark that the philosophy of ASSUMING that the present is the key to the past as Lyell postulated in the 1850’s now has people extrapolating current rates of geologic processes backward in time, that does not take into account catastrophism or any number of presently unknown events that may affect rates of change. I suspect the real rates will turn out to be considerably different to uniformitarian assumptions made by many current researchers.
My opposing uniformitarian philosophy has absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with the trustworthiness of God, unfortunately, that is yet another deceitful fabrication from your own inner man, i.e., your heart.
Please? Yet more egregiously false accusations. No laboratory in the world could possibly come anywhere near reproducing such a planetary scale tectonic geological event!
What basic physics are you inventing and holding as more authoritative than the Holy Bible?
The Holy Bible faithfully informs us that during the Flood catastrophe the floodwaters rose until they covered“all the high mountains under the whole heaven”Genesis 7:19
After that “the waters receded from the earth continually”Genesis 8:3
17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. 18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. 19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. 20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. 21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.Genesis 6:17-21
Consistent with the Genesis Flood, the vertical up and down movement of the earth’s crust is a global phenomenon that’s known as Tectonic Shift. We know the mountains were pushed upward, as they were once under the ocean simply because the sedimentary rocks that form the tops of most mountains contain marine fossils, it’s not rocket science, nor is it complicated.
The fundamental tectonic mechanisms of global geology are vertical, up and down and occasionally sideways, but mainly in the vertical plane, still evidenced by seismic activity, tectonic plate movement and volcanic eruptions in various places today.
Furthermore, the Holy Bible reliably informs us in the Psalms:
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. 2 Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: 3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind: 4 Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire: 5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. {Who…: Heb. He hath founded the earth upon her bases} 6 Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. 7 At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. 8 They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. {They go up…: or, The mountains ascend, the valleys descend} 9 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth. . Psalm 104:1-9
Our Loving Lord God has promised to never again cause a flood to destroy all flesh upon the face of the Earth wherein is the breath of life.
Any shamefully deceitful attempt to claim that the Holy Bible does not clearly state that the flood of Noah’s day was a Global Flood is utterly exposed by the profound words in Genesis and the above Psalm that make it transparently clear that the flood covered the entire Earth.
Dear Roy, I am not being arrogant, I am stating the truth and you dishonour me by your words.
The thing is that it is exceedingly obvious that for anyone reading Genesis 1, who is searching with an honest desire to know God and understand the Holy Scriptures, will understand that the Holy Bible’s descriptions of the Creation in six normal days and the Global Flood of Noah’s day are precisely as they are so clearly and profoundly written, for all peoples of all times.
High hills? What about all the translations that were carried out directly from the original Hebrew text? Why are you constantly attacking and obfuscating on these important matters that God has informed us about ever so unambiguously in the Holy Scriptures?
Are you really claiming that ALL of the highly intelligent devout scholars of Hebrew, who worked tirelessly on these different and in many cases completely isolated in time and space translations, have ALL got the translation of the original Hebrew text wrong, and you alone have the correct translation?
The flood continued forty days and the waters rose and lifted the ship high over the Earth. The waters kept rising, the flood deepened on the Earth, the ship floated on the surface. The flood got worse until all the highest mountains were covered—the high-water mark reached twenty feet above the crest of the mountains. Everything died. Anything that moved—dead. Birds, farm animals, wild animals, the entire teeming exuberance of life—dead. And all people—dead. Every living, breathing creature that lived on dry land died; he wiped out the whole works—people and animals, crawling creatures and flying birds, every last one of them, gone. Only Noah and his company on the ship lived.
fifteen cubits upwards have the waters become mighty, and the mountains are covered;
Again, yet more obfuscation! I do not ignore how language works.
CONTEXT! AND MORE CONTEXT!
When Jesus Himself said the flood of Noah washed them ALL away, He didn’t mean a few or some of them, or a hundred or a thousand or a million, He was palpably clear that ALL of them were washed away. Elsewhere in the Holy Bible, we are told that it was only those safely aboard the enormous ark that lived. All other life on Earth that had the breath of life died.
Therefore in this use of the word ‘ALL’, the meaning is ALL, categorically every single one!
No ifs or buts, no obfuscation whatsoever, the Holy Bible is unambiguously clear as crystal about this reality that ALL people and all land animals perished by drowning from the floodwaters that covered the Earth.
THE FLOOD WAS NOT A LOCAL FLOOD,IT COVERED ALL THE LAND ON EARTH UNDER HEAVEN,THEREFORE IT WASA GLOBAL FLOOD.
IT IS REALLY THAT SIMPLE… IT IS REALLY THAT EASY TO UNDERSTAND.
TRUTH HAS A PROFOUND WAY OF SHINING THROUGH THE FALSELY BASED WORLDVIEWS AND EXPOSING THEM AS THE FALSE TEACHING THEY CLEARLY ARE.
I wish you well, and I sincerely hope you understand that I must be honest about the manifestly false teaching you insist on repeating over and over, and your propensity to ridicule and mock what some here on this website have sincerely and honestly written.
I disagree with your analysis of the Holy Bibles information about the flood of Noah’s day that covered all the land on Earth under Heaven, and that destroyed all life except for those on board the huge ark. There would have been enormous tectonic plate movements and forces at play during the Global Flood when the fountains of the great deep were broken up.
I’ll explain why:
In Genesis 1:9-10 we are informed that 9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
From this part of the creation week description in Genesis 1 verses 9 & 10 it is very clear that God created the Earth with a single landmass of dry land in one place, and the rest of the Earth was covered with water or seas as the Holy Bible describes them.
Then in Genesis 2:1-3 we are informed that: 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
This three verses of the Holy Bible yet again confirms that the creation was completed in six ordinary days and on the seventh day God rested, giving us the pattern for our working week here also.
Then we are reliably informed in Genesis 5:5-7 that:
*5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. {every…: or, the whole imagination: the Hebrew word signifieth not only the imagination, but also the purposes and desires} {continually: Heb. every day} *
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast,
and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. {both…: Heb. from man unto beast}
Thus God determined to destroy ALL life on Earth that He had made, because He was grieved at His heart that man was ever so evil.
Then we are reliably informed in Genesis 6:8-21: 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. {perfect: or, upright} 10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
*11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. 13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. {with the earth: or, from the earth} 14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. {rooms: Heb. nests} 15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. 16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. 17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. 18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. 19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. 20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. 21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
Here we are told that the only people that would be saved from death by drowning in the flood that would cover ALL the land on Earth under Heaven would be eight people of Noah’s family.
Then we are reliably informed in Genesis 7:1-24:
1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. 2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. {by sevens: Heb. seven seven} 3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. {by sevens: Heb. seven seven} 4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. {destroy: Heb. blot out}
*5 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. 6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. 7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. {after…: or, on the seventh day}
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. {windows: or, floodgates} 12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; 14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. {sort: Heb. wing} 15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. 16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.
17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. {the breath…: Heb. the breath of the spirit of life} 23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
Then we are reliably informed in Genesis 8:13-14 that after the floodwaters were receding, Noah was able to leave the ark onto dry land. That dry land is the same dry land we have around us today, there may have been some minor differences, but ostensibly the present position of the continents would have been approximately where they ended up after the year long flood of Noah’s day.
So we see here that the Holy Bible clearly sets out the starting point of the Earth at creation was a single landmass, with the rest water that would have surrounded that single landmass and after the Earth covering catastrophic Global Flood, we have the continental distribution we see today.
It is logical that for God to have reshaped the landmass of the entire planet underwater, in one year approximately, there would have been massive and catastrophic tectonic plate movement, with mountains being pushed up and ocean basins sinking down to receive the floodwaters pouring off the land.
So you see, in reality the Holy Bible does provide sufficient information to us that we can understand fairly precisely what has transpired.
Dear Roy,
I guess that you are unable to see the circular reasoning here that you are assuming, “All coal is too old to contain any remaining natural atmospheric C14.” when in fact all the samples tested had 14C within them, that strongly indicates that they can’t possibly be as old as many who subscribe to the deep time worldview would have us believe.
I understand that you will not agree with what I believe, so be it, that is your free choice.
The most important matter here as always is keep your eyes, your heart and soul firmly focused on the Lord. He is all that matters.
I have not necessarily by choice (I was working on a broader talk topic) critically and carefully sifting through the “evidence” presented by the Creationist” camp for about 2 years now. Unfortunately, it boils down to three main “issues”
We are right and everybody else is wrong.
The Bible has never been “changed” or “altered” from the original text, except when we do it for “clarity”. Such as the moving of verses in The Book of Genesis that involve “Seth” and the other children of Adam & Eve, to JUST AFTER the slaying of Abel by Cain. Or, in the case of additions, the only Ice Age occurred soon after the flood. But the Egyptians and the Chinese, both thriving cultures at the time, don’t have a single mention of the Ice Age anywhere. And the Egyptians wrote everything down.
There is, of course, the question of which “original” texts they are referring to.
The “literal” interpretation of the Bible:
Except again, which one? Using AiG as an example, and not as a criticism. There is not a single biblical translation that states what they say verbally or write in articles in the way they present it. Even the LSB, the “unofficial” official Bible translation of AiG, doesn’t state it that way.
And there is nothing, at all, in the Bible indicating other than the Hebrews continued to think that the Earth was a single landmass. The middle east and Mediterranean basin was their world.
That is neither logical nor Biblical, nor evidenced.
Given that you have been informed why it is expected that both in situ and handling contamination would result in trace detection of 14C, and this information is easily confirmed in readily available technical literature, I would conclude that you are too invested in your apologetic and personal beliefs to even consider the evidence, and it is no longer a matter of science at play.
This is completely wrong. Plate tectonic movement is all sideways. What vertical movement occurs is either a result of sideways-moving plates being pushed together or over/under each other; the result of the weight of sediment or ice being removed from a plate; or the upwelling of material in the gaps where plates diverge.
Your entire case rests on the pre-flood world having a single landmass, and hence a single sea.
But the Bible doesn’t say there was a single landmass. It says the waters were gathered together into seas (plural). It doesn’t preclude the current continental distribution, in which there are multiple landmasses separated by a number of connected oceans and seas.
If the land was all connected and the seas were separated, that would contradict the Biblical description. But connected seas that separate land masses doesn’t.
1 Like
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
52
And they immediately demonstrate their lack of knowledge by talking about geology instead of evolution. If they can’t understand the simple difference between a theory that describes biodiversity and a field that studies rocks, then why should their judgment on scientific matters be trusted?
Have you never heard of stretch pebble deformed conglomerates?
There are even fossils that have been distorted by tectonic movement:
What evidence, if found, would not be consistent with a recent global flood or a young Earth? How is YEC falsifiable?
That’s because low level contamination is about the same in all those samples.
What are you talking about? Uniformitarianism is just the idea that the laws of physics don’t change with time. That’s it. There is nothing in Uniformitarianism that forces anything to be old.
You also use Uniformitarianism in all of your arguments. If you argue that particles would settle out of water and form sediments then you are using Uniformitarianism.
The reality is the evidence doesn’t support your beliefs, so you dream up scare words that give you some pretend justification for ignoring the evidence.
If all the coal is too old to be carbon-dated, then all coal will show roughly the same concentration of C14, due to contamination.
So all coal having roughly the same concentration of C14 doesn’t show that the coal is young. It only shows that all the coal is the same age w.r.t carbon-dating. If coal dated more recently than other material, that would show that coal was young. But it doesn’t. When coal has been carbon dated, the result has always been that the level of C14 found is consistent with there only being contamination present, and no original C14. So when you say “all the samples tested had 14C within them”, they probably didn’t.
This is evidence that all coal is too old to be carbon-dated.
If all coal dated to ~5000 years ago, that would be evidence it formed in Noah’s flood. But it doesn’t.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
55
As stated earlier, Uniformitarianism is nothing more than a basic recognition that the physical laws of the universe don’t change through space or time. Why do YEC’s think this is such an evil concept? Perhaps they could explain?
Let’s look at the observations themselves, using radiometric dating as a focused example:
We can measure the rate of decay for unstable isotopes and determine their daughter products.
We can measure the ratio of isotopes in rocks.
We can observe that specific rocks form without any significant amount of daughter product present while including parent isotopes in their formation.
Isochron methods don’t even need the absence of daughter elements in order to determine how much daughter isotope has been produced by the decay of the parent isotope.
So what would any sane scientific hypothesis for YEC predict using these observations? YEC would predict that we shouldn’t observe any significant amount of daughter isotope in these rocks if the Earth is young, especially those rocks that sit above fossils.
So why isn’t this a valid YEC prediction? Why shouldn’t large amounts of daughter isotope falsify YEC?
The problem is your lie about “something other than what is ever so clearly and succinctly written”. It was clear and succinct in Hebrew for the original audience because they knew what kind of literature it was.
This strikes me as being a demonic understanding of inspiration, that God took over the minds of His chosen writers and used them as dictation machines. It shows a failure to understand that God works incarnationally, working within the limitations of those He chooses. Inspiration dos not mean mental downloads, it means providing an impetus (“men moved by God”) to write on a topic, and leaving the writers to be themselves when they do so.
It illustrates a ubiquitous YEC problem: the invoking of miracles right and left to shore up ideas. Nothing in the scriptures indicates that God took control of writers to make their words conform to some standard that would make modern readers happy, only that He prompted ancient writers to write to their ancient audiences. It’s a problem that boils down to demanding that the scriptures conform to a modern worldview rather than letting them be what they are.
Unless you’ve absorbed a hunk of the ANE worldview – which is that of the Old Testament (with a small caveat) – and understood what kind of ancient literature you are reading, and then read it in the original language, you have no clue “what is ever so clearly and succinctly written”, you only have an English translation and your modern worldview that expects objective reporting.
What I really believe is that God expects us to do our homework, to actually study so we can understand the scriptures. And I call as witness the immense amounts of knowledge about the historical, cultural, worldview, and other context of the scriptures that have come like a deluge for scholars over the last century – that wouldn’t have come without a divine purpose behind it, and the obvious purpose is to aid us in understanding God’s message. In contrast, YEC insists on ignoring all that knowledge, lazily asserting that they don’t need to know anything but their own bias and English translations.
But you have not the least idea what they “obviously do mean” because you reject the history and language – you toss the historical-grammatical method in the trash bin and the actual message of the scriptures with it.
But it’s only (deliberate) ignorance that brings anyone to think that what is found in Genesis 1 is any such thing. By rejecting what the account actually is – ancient literature in an ancient worldview – you reject the theology Moses was setting forth. I say again that the YEC reading of Genesis 1 might provide enough theology for a brief sermon, but reading it as what it was written to be provides eno0ugh for three months of sermons!
Ignoring the fact that Genesis 1 uses the basic ancient Egyptian creation story as its framework ignores what God wanted to say there. Demanding that it be written to make sense to a modern reader without having to study is not just rejecting the message but is (deliberate) intellectual laziness.
Where does the Bible make such a claim?
No YECer has ever been able to point to any such assertion, nor bothered to wonder where they get the idea. Historically, the idea that Genesis is a scientifically accurate objective description does not come from the Bible, it comes from the dominance of the modern scientific-materialistic worldview – and thus the foundation of YEC is scientific materialism.
Show me in the text where the scriptures claim an intent to be scientifically and historically accurate, and I’ll concede some validity to YEC. But until then I will continue to defend the scriptures against the scientific materialism of YEC.
Have you ever stopped to actually think about that? This is an instance where the KJV is quite accurate:
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
“Repented” means something was done wrong. Essentially this verse is saying that God realized He had made a mistake, that what He had done was wrong – and thus attributes to God the ability to get things wrong! That alone should make the reader recognize that the writer is using human terminology, which in turn should lead to understanding that the writers wrote according to their understanding of things.
Genesis 1, for starters, plus Daniel 6 among others.
No – because I recognize that YEC is a tool of the Dark One to mislead people away from the Gospel, as I have observed happen repeatedly, and as surveys have shown is the reality.
You don’t even notice that you’re engaged in circular reasoning.
There’s no assumption involved. If God is faithful that means He doesn’t change the rules He selected for how the world works. Since He doesn’t change the rules, that means that the rules we can deduce now are the same rules that have always been there. Since the same rules have always been there, then we can make conclusions about the past based on the rules we see in operation today. Thus the key to the past is the present – because God is faithful.
YEC – especially “flood geology” – requires believing that God is like Loki, unpredictable and thus untrustworthy. I reject that because the scriptures reject that.
False. Catastrophes leave evidence behind. Where there is no such evidence, there is no reason to assume catastrophe.
Basically here you’re misrepresenting science, or you don’t understand it.
Yes it does, because uniformitarianism is nothing but a recognition that God doesn’t change the rules on us. Any other view is irrational.
Fallacious reasoning: it isn’t necessary to reproduce the YEC science fiction of a “planetary scale tectonic geological event” in order to know how soft sediments deform.
Why do you think God would lie in the scriptures? That’s the only reason there would be a conflict between physics (which is observation of how God runs the universe) and written revelation.
The lie you are believing is that your MSWV is superior to the worldview of the scriptures.
Yeah, I know you prefer a translation that accords to the traditions of men, though you aren’t aware that’s what you’re doing.
That tradition ignores the common use of such words as “all” and “whole” hyperbolically. To be consistent, you must also believe that when David shouted in triumph over his enemies the Incas in Peru and the Chinese in Manchuria heard him; the same language is used.
What “flood geology” proposes is not consistent with tectonic movement. Stop adding your science fiction to the Bible.
Yes, and we can measure how fast they rose – with the only assumption involved being that God doesn’t change the rules along the way. So we know that the Himalayas and other ranges are at the very least hundreds of thousands of years old.
No, it isn’t – but YEC makes it complicated by making crap up.
You’re making assertions about geology in a forum where there are people who actually grasp geology. Your above assertion is flat out wrong. Vertical movement of plate material only happens because the primary horizontal movement leads to collisions.
. . . consistent with the text of the scriptures. All that Genesis says is that the flat earth disk under the solid sky-dome was covered, as a maximum; in context it says that the known world was covered; at the least it says that from the deck of the Ark all that could be seen was water. Peter’s word choice tells us that what the context indicates is correct.
Arrogance leads to just repeating what has been shown to be in error – and in this case shows deliberate ignorance of what the Bible is.
I am baffled that people think they can grasp the scriptures without bothering to actually study – especially when there is an admonition in the scriptures to do that study!
That is from the Hebrew text – directly.
We get “mountains” out of it due to a human tradition that formed due to jumping from one language to another and then to another – Hebrew to Greek to Latin.
There is no Hebrew scholar who won’t say that the Hebrew, in context, means “hills”.
The AMP here is making an unwarranted assumption about the grammar.
All that your list does is show how thoroughly the human tradition has dominated translations in the West. And yes, translation is a cultural phenomenon as much as a linguistic one; translators want their versions to sell, and they know that in a lot of cases fixing a long-standing poor translation will reduce sales because people don’t like change.
Only if you ignore the ordinary use of language.
I’m suspecting you’ve never learned a second language. When you’ve learned more than a half dozen, as I have, how rods are used becomes much more clear – and in this case, the use of “all” does not clearly mean absolutely everyone, any more than it does with David’s shout of triumph over His enemies . . . or do you think the Aztecs heard that shout, and the Japanese?
You continually ignore proper historical-grammatical method and thus try to budge me from the text of the scriptures. I know you’ve been convinced that YEC is correct, but your conviction will not move me from being faithful to what is written.
Why? Where is that in the text?
And why would you think that springs bursting up from the ground (what the Hebrew actually says) have any effect on tectonic plates?
Yes – one land mass in the middle of the flat earth-disk where the waters separated from the Great Deep surrounded it.
It isn’t a scientific treatise – thinking it is involves demanding that God had to conform to your specific worldview.
Only if you demand that God had to conform to your specific worldview.
Again: where does the text say it intends to be scientifically accurate?
Wow. I knew they were deceptive, but that’s pretty shocking.
And for their time, their science was solid – except for a few islands (wait – did Satan make those?), there was nowhere in the world they knew that couldn’t be reached by walking.
He won’t consider the actual scriptures, either, so no surprise.
Or in the matter of the scriptures, ignores the ordinary use of language whenever convenient.
It’s consistent with AiG, which claims to honor the historical-grammatical method but regularly ignores it.
Which, theologically, is another way of saying that God is faithful.
More than once people on campus recognized this when YECers did their “evangelism”, and asked why they should believe in a God that can’t be counted on to be consistent.
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
60
Knowing God from the Bible does not require a literal interpretation of Genesis.
If the YEC interpretation of Genesis is correct, shouldn’t that interpretation match up with the evidence we find in the creation itself? Why isn’t it valid for people to think a literal interpretation of Genesis is incorrect when the evidence from the creation does not match up with the Biblical interpretation?
