Personally, @Mike_Gantt, I have no problem with that sentence:
“God created by speaking!” A miracle is a miracle … whether it involves speaking or not!
If the “it” in question above is the two-books model in reference to how both Scriptures and creation testify to truth, then I’ll register my long-standing support for that here. If the “it” refers specifically to “yoking of these two books” as elaborated on by @jpm, then yes, I can see how that would be seen by many here as doing violence to one or both books.
@Mike_Gantt, at the risk of treading an already beaten path among your quickly growing volume of posts that I’ve not kept up with … I’ll ask, would you agree that the two books do not address identical sets of questions? I.e. we can more easily or universally “interrogate” the creation book for answers to physical questions, whereas the Scriptures address a broader swath of bigger and harder questions. Does that sound like a somewhat accurate and informative metaphor to you?
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Hi Mike,
For one, it did discover creation: The Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. We have evidence of a supernatural process (I’m not sold on the multiverse) - a universe from nothing. And God packed everything in that unmearsureable speck of mass and energy and time - what is more miraculous than that!
Two, the fossil record could have discovered that all biological entities showed up suddenly 6,000 years ago, but didn’t. Or we could have discovered that the age of earth and universe is 6,000 years old, but that’s not what we find.
It’s honestly sad that Jesus has done so much for us and has so much to offer those who turn to him, but so many of us, because of mistaken ways of viewing the bible, spend so much time trying to find ways to not accept the obvious - that the biblical creation accounts had a spiritual purpose for an ancient audience that were not attempting to correlate to modern science. (That was for free! 
)
Of course. a miracle is a miracle, but does that means all those references to God’s word Gen 1 are window dressing?
So… you need physics with your metaphysics?
Okay… so if God needs to actually make sound to make these things happen … not just vibrations of gravity, or vibrations of electrons or photons … but literally “sound” … vibrations of gas compressing and expanding …
How does God make a planet with words - - if space is a vacuum?
Or can the words be “in His mind”?
If the words have to be real words composed of sound … how big are God’s lips for making these words of sound?
From a metaphysical viewpoint, I am perfectly content that words are “thoughts of God’s mind” … aren’t you?
Exactly! Mike is handling the conflict by pretending that science is merely hearsay, or merely retrospective, subjective interpretation of evidence. Science is about predicting what we can directly observe with the eyes God gave us.
How many of the 4.543 billion years have been “directly observed with the eyes God gave us”?
Those who contend for a 4.543B year old earth already have a strong case - why overstate it?
You’re not getting it, Mike.
The HYPOTHESIS (now graduated to theory) that the earth is billions of years old makes entirely empirical, correct predictions about what we will directly observe with the eyes God gave us.
The HYPOTHESIS that the earth is 6K years old makes entirely empirical, incorrect predictions about what we will directly observe with the eyes God gave us.
Real science makes prospective empirical predictions.
Pseudoscience pretends that science is merely retrospective.
Do you believe that Jesus is Lord?
Do you regard the Bible as God’s word written for us?
Yes to both.
Why can’t you admit the simple truth that science works prospectively?
How then do you interpret the behavior attributed to God in Ex 20:11 and Ex 31:17?
Kindly answer my question first, Mike. It’s very straightforward.
I’ve admittedly repeatedly that I don’t even know enough about science to call myself a novice in it. You say that you believe that the Bible is God’s word, but you want to treat its words as if they are a hypothesis for a science experiment. If you’ve conducted an experiment on Ex 20:11 and Ex 31:17 and decided that their hypothesis doesn’t hold up, what behavior then do you ascribe to God in those verses?
(If you think I’m seeking to make a rhetorical point rather than elicit information, then you are misunderstanding me.)
[quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:35, topic:36240”]
I’ve admittedly repeatedly that I don’t even know enough about science to call myself a novice in it.[/quote]
So why doesn’t your self-confessed ignorance about science stop you from repeatedly misrepresenting science?
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I don’t know how to give it any more respect than I already am. Among other things, it has driven me to this site to ask questions. My whole difficulty lies in the fact that I perceive conflict between it and the Bible I hold most dear. If I didn’t care what scientists thought, I wouldn’t work so hard to reconcile their views with my own.
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It’s not about what they think. It’s about the evidence and how the evidence is produced.
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Of what else is a fellow who can’t even qualify as a novice in this field capable?
I know you may not be following this thread but I just have to inject something here. The geologists that first came to the conclusion that the earth was older than 6,000 years had nothing but their visual observations of the earth to work with. No radioactive dating or other fancy tests that are so common now. It was just good old fashion going to the field and looking at the rocks. Geology can be a very visual field of study. It doesn’t get you to 4.5 billion years but it does get you way beyond 10,000 years.
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@Mike_Gantt… this kind of statement is self enfeeblement.
What would you say about a critic of most Christian creedal positions explaining his habitual distortion of Christian theology as due to the fact he is no graduate of seminary school?!
You don’t need to be a seminarian to get Christian theology 90% correct. And you don’t need to be a professional scientist to define 90% of science correctly.
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