Examining the Assumptions of Mosaic Creationism vis-a-vis the Assumptions of Evolutionary Creationism

But only in your opinion.

That’s like saying “One thing that Christians have in common is that they have no common way to interpret the Bible on anything”. The commonality of interpretation of the Bible on the subject of origins among Biologos adherents is far greater than the commonality between you and the majority of Christians on the same subject.

Because the Bible satisfies what God wants every generation to know about origins, without providing us with everything we want to know about origins.

I don’t believe God misrepresented reality at all. But he irony here is that you believe God deliberately misrepresented reality by creating a universe with a fake past. You’ve spent a great deal of time attempting to argue that this was both necessary and ethical.

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@Christy

Is that So? Our man Mike used it in a pretty literal way a few hours ago. I guess you missed it.

I almost posted what you posted… and then it occurred to me that he would argue… it is the word of God, right?

Christy, I agree with you if one is referring to traditional theological sources and ETS papers. But my hunch is that GBrooks9 is probably referring to typical debates on countless Internet forums where the exchange goes something like this:

Strict Inerrantist: “But the Word of God clearly states that…”

…and then the response from his opponent is: “Wait a second! Jesus Christ is the Word of God. You are falling back into your bible-olitry again, the worship of the Bible rather than the Lord.”

Thus, I think I understand where both of you are coming from on this. Unfortunately, certain kinds of phrases have been applied in particular online ways so often that they have become identified—among the general Christian community online, at least—with some positions more than others.

And yes, that bugs me. Sometimes perfectly good phrases get confused or even tainted to where people have to explain them when they use them.

I certainly wish the phrase “the Word of God” wasn’t a source of Internet arguments, all too often. It reminds me of how frustrated I’ve felt much of my life for having to avoid sentences like “He’s a Christian scientist”, because it is easily confused with “He’s a Christian Scientist” (a member of a church which follows the writings of founder Mary Baker Eddy.) Any scientist who is happy to say that he or she is a Christian scientist has for much of the past century avoided saying so for fear of being misunderstood.

I see that I’ve been asked questions by several participants but I’ll have to get back to them tomorrow.

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I like, and have liked, very much the simplicity of your focus. And indeed you are right: "what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God (1 Cor 7:19).

Again, we are agreed.

Why would they have to have understood the term “billion”? The billions or thousands is something we are inferring from the things they did say about the ancient past.

Then permit me to defend my continuing interest.

Our Lord told us through His servant John that He came to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37), and that if we would abide in His word, we would know the truth (John 8:31-32). Through His servant David He told us to speak truth in our hearts (Ps 15:2), and through His servants Zechariah and Paul He told us to speak truth to each other (Zech 8:16; Eph 4:25). Therefore, I hope you would agree with me that a simple focus on keeping His commandments does not preclude a pursuit of the truth.

Frances Collins believes that evolution is the truth about how God has created us, and so he speaks it through the establishment of the BioLogos organization. Leaving aside whether or not God exists, practically the entire intelligensia of Western civilization agrees with Collins that evolution is the truth. An earth of billions of years is an essential aspect of evolution. Implicit in the very existence of BioLogos, therefore, is the claim that the earth is billions of years old. If that claim is true, I want to be speaking it, too. That is why I came here: to make inquiry so as to make a decision.

To say that the reason the Bible seems more supportive of an earth thousands of years old than it does an earth of billions of years is because “it is unlikely anyone during ancient times would have understood the term ‘billion’,” seems an insufficient rationale to say that a person asking the kinds of questions I am is merely promoting a situation where “the argument(s) would go on and on, without benefit to anyone.” If indeed Collins and BioLogos are right about the age of the earth and evolution, they should have better biblical answers for why the Bible’s timeline of history - limited and fuzzy as it might be - seems to fit so much better with thousands of years than with billions - a better answer than “the ancients didn’t use the word ‘billions’.” When the Bible wants to communicate a number beyond counting, it surely knows how to do so (e.g. “as many as the stars in the heavens,” “as innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore”).

Am I the one prolonging the argument, or am I merely one asking BioLogos for biblical justification of its ongoing argument?

The four assumptions you offer here are such caricatures of my thinking that I cannot take your suggestions seriously. If you want to remove the exaggerations and make the proposed assumptions align more accurately with the things I have actually said, then I will give them due consideration.

I address it in the closing paragraph of the introductory section of the OP, and then again in the third assumption.

Hi Mike,

I have re-read my list, and I think they accurately characterize your thought process. The statements are direct, to be sure. That does not make them inaccurate.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. - Proverbs 27:6

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One data point to consider in this matter is that in the New American Standard Bible (NASB) - a very literal English translation - the expression “the word of God” appears 42 times, and the expression “the inspiration of God” not at all. Again, this is but one data point.

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Hi Mike, it’s an intetpretive choice, so I regard it as an assumption. Your third point has a broad range of material in it, so I was uncertain as to what assumption you were stating. For example, point 3 addresses concerns with public reputation.

Grace and peace,
Chris

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A friend doesn’t misrepresent his friend’s positions, and the directness of your statements does not cleanse them of their inaccuracies.

If I believed this, I would not have spent the last month and a half at BioLogos. I would have simply found my “complete and clear” answer in the Bible.

Someone would have to be very unfamiliar with my postings here at BioLogos to suggest that I would lump science and history in any assumption about the Bible.

This is the closest any of your four proposed assumptions have come to the truth, but it is not an assumption I bring to the study. Rather, it is a tentative conclusion of my study that I keep offering here for refutation because I’m trying to falsify it if possible.

This proposed assumption would be true if you were to insert these words between “authority” and “we”:
“but there is a single interpretation among them that the believer cannot in good conscience deny speaks clearly to him the mind of God on the matter”.

I offer this post not because I believe it will convince you, but for the sake of someone who might be new to the thread and to me. If your invocation of Proverbs 27:6 was sincere, then I do not know what is distorting your perception of my views. What I do know is that it doesn’t make much sense for the two of us to continue interacting given how unlikely it is that you will receive my words as I intend them.

And you did. That’s why, when you came to Biologos, you already had a prior assumption from which you have demonstrated absolutely no willingness to move even when confronted repeatedly with evidence against it.

No they wouldn’t. We know that when you approach science and historical questions you check first to see if they match your assumptions of what the Bible has said. This is why you have told us that you check science and historical questions by inferring answers from the Bible.

This is your standard response when people raise questions you really don’t want to answer. You’ve done this to several people now.

Hopefully you will now have some sympathy for the people you’ve done this to many times here.

So you’re accusing Chris of posting in bad faith.

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While I don’t think it’s necessary, I nonetheless added the sentence you want to see - “I don’t see the Bible teaching science” - to the third assumption in the OP.

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I am simply using your terms; you say you can infer an age for the earth from the bible in thousands and not millions or billions. I again emphasise the way I read the bible when thinking of matters such as the age of our planet, and calculating exactly given periods of time.

You now expand your comments on evolution as a “way God went about creation”. I have rejected such terminology on theological grounds, and I do not subscribe to a two book thesis - I regard such an outlook as ridiculous - we have the bible as God’s revelation and His Son as our saviour.

Your appeal for the truth is universal to all people of good faith, and I include atheists as well as theists. Keeping God’s commandments is a sure step to the truth, so I cannot fathom your comment on this.

No scientific theory is regarded as the truth - we may examine scientific notions and theories and be satisfied as to their adequacy or otherwise regarding the subject matter covered by the various disciplines of the natural sciences. I see your comments as naïve - the entire West (and others) have become accustomed to discussing science, including evolution, as accepted and taught by the intelligencia, and I see this as the progress of secularism and materialism. So such a conversation would cover far more than Collins’ project on this site, and an age for the earth in the billions is a small part of such a conversation(in fact ToE often is confined to millions and not billions - the greater age has more to do with models on planetary formation and the ridiculous guesses on how living things are supposed to commence - scientists such as myself regard such speculation as a blot on science).

The bible teaches the belief that God is creator and giver of life. I cannot see any science or theory that would challenge this, or provide an alternate biblical reading.

The biblical inferences on age and periods is there because humans made in the image of God have been here in the thousands of years. This has little relevance regarding the geological age of this planet.

My view is that BioLogos has made a serious theological error in claiming they know how God went about doing things (ie through evolution). That does not negate estimates of a geological age for the planet.

I would suggest a small change to this statement. Make it “why the Bible’s timeline of history as I interpret it” and then you answer your own question. Speaking for myself I don’t read the Bible’s timeline as thousands of years. I just read it as a timeline of history. Science gives us the units. Several people here have given you Biblical reasons for NOT taking the history to be thousands of years and your response is usually along the lines of “but why would God make it look like thousands?”

Side note, in answer to your complaint about EC requiring continuing creation when Genesis says creation was completed, I came across something by Norman Geisler last night. From memory, he was saying Genesis records God’s completion of creation and Jesus speaks of God’s continuing work in creation. Which I can certainly agree with.

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Yes, @Mike_Gantt.
And the great bulk of those verses are in the New Testament where the Greek term for ‘word’ is a favorite one around here: “Logos”.

Typo: ‘bulk’ not ‘Bill’

That’s a good question which English Bible readers may ask as they compare translations. It is a good example where various classes of words, such as prepositions in this case, are not necessarily represented explicitly in the text via their own separate word or an inflection on a word. In Exodus 20:11 [you had a typo, I assume] the “in” of “in six days” in some translations is one of those “implied words”. It is an interpretation by the translator. Exodus 20:11 opens with Hebrew words saying basically: “For six days God made…”

So, no, we shouldn’t make too much hay out of “For in six days” versus “For six days.” It is the work of a translator doing a good job of making the passage read smoothly and more “English like” that makes sense.

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Actually I was looking at an interlinear which is dangerous when you don’t know the original language and I noticed the “in” was missing in both places. Is there an equivalent for “in” in Hebrew? If there is, to a Hebrew speaker, would it make a difference that the word wasn’t used? In English we could say “a creation in six days” or “six days of creation” and get different meanings.

Why do you defend if you are not here to debate, and only here to learn?

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Hi Mike,

Hope you are doing well on this Monday.

Here’s what you stated:

Is it not fair to say that you expect to find clear answers when you turn to the Bible? Is there some other reason you would look to the Bible for guidance? That’s why I stated that your assumption appears to be:

My interpretation of why you have spent time here is that you find a contradiction between (what you perceive to be) a complete and clear answer in the Bible regarding the age of the earth, and the answer given by the scientific disciplines of geology, astronomy, and biology. If you thought the answer in the Bible were unclear or incomplete, there’s no reason to feel a tension.

Am I missing something here? I feel like what I just stated should be very obvious, so if I even have to state it I must be overlooking something.

I’m not sure I agree, but to advance the discussion I propose removing the words “scientific and”, leaving the following assumption:

God expects me to use the Bible to infer conclusions to historical questions, even when the Bible itself is silent about the inferences.

This essential assumption behind MC belongs in your OP, I think.

It really is an assumption of Mosaic Creationism. If it’s not, there’s no reason whatsoever to accept a literalistic 144-hour period for the creation of the entire universe in a basically finished state.

You mention that you have expressed a willingness to explore whether the assumption is warranted. That’s a road worth taking. But it doesn’t mean that the statement is not an assumption at the core of MC, so I think it should be added to the list of assumptions.

I’m fine with your addendum, and I urge you to add the assumption (phrased as you have suggested) to the opening post.

Grace and peace,
Chris Falter

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Chris,

I appreciate your trying to mend matters. Rather than responding to the points one by one, I’m doing some work directly on the assumptions. Some of your suggestions will affect what you see there.

Mike