If the earth is old or evolution is true, why did God not reveal it, and instead allow it to be discovered by people hostile to the faith?

I would think that to be a no-brainer, since you couldn’t know ANYTHING, i.e. sin, sinner, Jesus, son of God, God etc… without His word.

Wookin, do you realise what you’ve just said here? You’ve just said that because Jesus came to fulfil the law, it is now OK for you to tell lies. Do you really believe that?

Wookin, my rules are simply rules of honesty, factual accuracy, technical rigour, and quality control. They are rules that, in any other area of science, if you did not follow them, you would kill people. They are rules that, to fail to follow them would be lying. What kind of “biblical” worldview is that?!!?

Your repeated insistence on using “presuppositions” as some kind of magic shibboleth in an attempt to nix anything and everything that you don’t like just proves that you haven’t paid the slightest bit of attention to a word that I’ve said.

Wookin, do you realise what you’ve just said here? You’ve just said that because Jesus came to fulfil the law, it is now OK for you to tell lies. Do you really believe that?

I never said that. 9 of the 10 commandments carry over to the New Testament. Keeping the Sabbath has been abolished, because, Jesus is the New Sabbath, and Christ lives in all Christians therefore we are conformed in the image of Christ everyday.

Wookin, my rules are simply rules of honesty, factual accuracy, technical rigour, and quality control. They are rules that, in any other area of science, if you did not follow them, you would kill people. They are rules that, to fail to follow them would be lying. What kind of “biblical” worldview is that?!!?

Have you ever heard the story of the blind men and the elephant?

Your repeated insistence on using “presuppositions” as some kind of magic shibboleth in an attempt to nix anything and everything that you don’t like just proves that you haven’t paid the slightest bit of attention to a word that I’ve said.

On the contrary. I have paid attention to every word you have said.

Yes you jolly well did Wookin. The verses that I quoted – and that you said no longer applied to you – were a prohibition against fudging measurements, and since fudging measurements is a form of lying, you were effectively saying that at least some forms of lying are now acceptable.

This had nothing to do with the Sabbath.

Yes I have. But the analogy is invalid and irrelevant. The four blind men and the elephant speaks about four people all coming to completely different conclusions through examining separate parts of the evidence. That is not what happens in geochronology: the conclusions of thousands of different research teams examining different parts of the evidence usually agree very closely with each other.

If you really had been paying attention to what I’ve said, Wookin, you would have either stopped attempting to use “presuppositions” and “assumptions” as a magic shibboleth, or else you would have attempted to provide some justification for continuing to do so. As it stands, you have done neither.

“no brain” is definitely a good descriptor for this. But it is manifestly wrong. For we are not without brain, and thus quite capable of figuring things out once we have freed ourselves from the manipulations of the religious power mongers. And many would include the brain among the things which God gave us, which would have those who actually read the Bible remembering the parable of the talents, which tells us that God expects us to use those things which He gives us instead of burying them out of fear. And what did God do with the servant who refused to use what was given Him? “And cast this worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”

13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Isaiha 1: 11 “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of he-goats. 12 “When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts?
13 Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and the calling of assemblies—I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. 14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15 When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.

And how did God reveal that last post to you, my friend? Imagine using God’s word in order to reveal God’s word

The Bible teaches that people frequently demand of God things which are meaningless, of no value, and even harmful to them, like in 1 Samuel 8 where the Israelites demand a king. God explains what they can expect of a king, but they do not care. Likewise in this passage we see Moses demanding a name of God. And how much do people make of such names like Yahweh/Jehovah or Jesus, imagining that by having such a name they have some power over them or a password by which they can get whatever they want. Such are the delusions of people obsessed with power and control, seeing manipulation as the only way of interacting with the world.

Did you not read the rest of my post above?

I too can speak to many people in the language they understand, German to the German speaking peoples, Japanese to those of Japan, Russian to the Russians, Korean to those in Korea, and Bible to those of Christianity, like myself. I can also include speaking with math to the mathematicians, physics to the physicists, and biology to the biologists though in these cases we are not speaking of a language established by murder and conquest, but a means by which people have simply sought to understand God’s creation.

And what are you doing?

And how do you know you are right in conveying to other’s God’s creation?

Education. Tends to be a habit with me since that was my profession.

How can you go wrong in conveying to others what God has given to all.

How do you know that you are not one of the deluded?

Who is all?

The scientific way to demonstrate this is to find three independent sources that verify your claim. Remember, the Bible is only one source. I use five.

I think we can take it for granted that all us sinners are deluded, and those who think they are free from delusion are a bit more deluded than others. Though the thing about science is that it has a means of getting past our delusions to the correct answer about some things. And that is the thing about science, it is only useful for some questions and not all the question we might have or need the answers to.

Well it is certainly a presumption when we talk about something given to all that people open their eyes and use their brains to see what is being offered. But certainly the light from the stars shines upon us from all directions everywhere on the earth, and fossils and rock formations are to be found everywhere on the earth as well. So the information God is sending to us from all the sky and the earth is freely available to everyone on the earth if they will only open their eyes to them and use their brain to understand them.

But as Jesus frequently observed, people quite often will hear but not understand, see but never perceive. But this is because they shut their eyes and mind not wanting to receive what God offers to them. And so they would listen to Jesus’ parables or read God word and insist on a literal and mindless hearing/reading of them to avoid understanding what God is saying to them.

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Exegesis – exit Jesus, lol. Or at any rate, exit Bible-thumping fundamentalist preachers who’ve somehow got it into their heads that we’re all supposed to read the Bible as a science textbook (including in schools!)

Good one.

I like it when people use Latin to obfuscate what they are saying. And like beauty, exegesis or eisegesis is in the eye of the beholder.

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