I mean people in general. Most people are born with all of their limbs.
Coincidentally, I am novice computer programmer myself, and the case-sensitive language I use is all lower case! (Which is probably my problem.)
2 Peter 3 says âWith God a day is as 1000 years and 1000 years is as a dayâ and that God is not being slow to initiate the end of the world. For example. You could use the words âmetalâ and âhardâ to describe a wrench. You could also use âhardâ to describe a piece of glass. That does not mean that you could correctly use âmetalâ to describe a piece of glass. That is just bad logic. You canât just find the words âCreationâ or âThe Beginningâ and apply something else in the chapter to Genesis 1.
The problem with 4.5 billion years is the Flood would have erased all or most of the fossils on earth and laid down tons upon tons of new sedimentary rock and fossils, making it impossible to distinguish the old from the new. The present is not necessarily the key to the past. The Flood could have easily deposited thousands of feet of sand, compressing it into rock, and then carving out the Grand Canyon. The only way to deny this happened is to say that the Flood was not global, which is a flimsy argument at best, because it goes against the laws of physics and the Bible.
Okay, I shall use dust then. God created us from dust, not apes or apelike creatures. (Not like there is any actual evidence for hominids being between apes and man.)
Technically, I suppose, all people are born with all their limbs, some just have more than others.
I was reading a pre- release Enns book that comes out soon, and he brings out the idea that the ambiguity in scripture allows for the change in concepts we see through the Bible. Certainly, ancient people did see God in a more physically anthropomorphic way, and he is seen as being physically limited to one place, having human features and so forth. As understanding grew, we came to see these portrayals not as false, but as symbolic and as a way to make them understandable.
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Letâs say you made a robot that is by all definitions alive (eating, reproducing and the like) which changed itself every few generations. Would you call them âVery goodâ if they survived only by destroying each other? What if they only got their energy by processing plants? You would probably call them âVery goodâ then!
As far as the Bible is concerned, Iâm not a Hebrew scholar but I am informed by those who are that a regional Flood is actually consistent with the language used in Genesis 6-9 (the Hebrew word eretz is usually used elsewhere in Scripture with regional rather than global scope.)
As far as the laws of physics are concerned â which laws of physics are you talking about? When the young-earth creationist RATE project themselves admitted that squeezing the evidence for nuclear decay into just 6,000 years would have raised the temperature of the Earthâs surface to 22,000°C, I think it becomes abundantly clear that itâs a young earth that goes against the laws of physics, not a regional Flood.
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Regarding the flood, one thing I have never heard explained is where those miles deep layers of sediment came from. If you have ever seen a rocky coast, even with waves constantly crashing it takes ages to grind granite into stones, and stones in gravel and gravel into sand, and sand into clay. To imagine that process happened in a year, or actually in forty days after which it would have been sitting in quiet deep water, is beyond imagination. Any proposed mechanism?
It is my belief that humans were more physically, mentally, and spiritually capable than we are today. The only reason we seem smarter today is that we have more information today, and so inventions can be heard of by more people, including people who would develop them more.
âThe waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.â Water does not stay in a cup that has sides lower than the level of the water!
That would be awesome!
According to the footnote in my NIV, that verse can also be translated, âThe waters rose more than twenty feet, and the mountains were covered.â
Iâll leave it to the Hebrew scholars around here to discuss the respective merits of global versus regional interpretations of the Flood story, but as far as the evidence is concerned, the global interpretation simply doesnât fit.
The present may not tell us everything about the past, but it doesnât tell us nothing. In any case, as I said, a six thousand year old Earth would have required the past to deviate from the present so wildly that it would have vaporised the Earth altogether.
It doesnât matter what I would call it. You are essentially asking me what I would do if I were God. To answer (or ask) that question is often a direct path toward heresy and apostasy. For example, if I were God I think I would save everybody and consign nobody to hell. Yet it is clear to me that the bible teaches that some are lost. So there is no point asking me âdo I think it is good to send people to eternal torment?â I would advise you not to play the âwhat would I/you do if I/you were Godâ game.
Since a plain reading of time references is something that seems to appeal to you, I want to ask you about these plain time references in scripture:
I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. (Matt. 24:34).
Does this generation mean this generation, or does it mean some future generation with a sliding window?
For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom (Matt. 16:27-28)
Did the son of man come in his glory within, say 40 years of this statement? Or are some of those present still alive 2k years later?
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. (Rev. 1.1a)
Does soon mean soon? Or does it mean millennia and still counting?
Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. (Rev. 1:3)
Does time is near mean time is near? Or does it mean millennia and counting?
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Iâm pretty sure almost every geologist on the planet disagrees with you here.
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Bandwagon fallacy.
But, seeing as I am not an actual geologist (though I may be sometime in the future) I have provided a handy link to a website that proves my point better than I can right now. (Donât worry, itâs not AIG)
Geological Evidences for a Flood
Nope, sorry. Bandwagon involves an appeal to opinion or subjective evaluations. Everyone likes Coke, so you should too. It doesnât apply to scientific consensus, which is based on rigorous testing of hypotheses which explain observations and data. Bandwagon fallacy doesnât apply to scientific facts. âThe flood could have done itâ is not a scientific hypotheses, and the fact that scientists (except a handful who have prior ideological commitments to literal interpretations of Scripture and reject out of hand any evidence that contradicts their religious beliefs) pretty much unanimously agree, based on facts, that the Grand Canyon was not caused by a global flood, but by erosion is something that matters to thinking people.
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I have several friends that have PhDs in geology and I trust them more than your creationist website. I have ten years of seeing Creationist websites lie and misrepresent research behind me and have no desire to retread worn paths. Iâve already put in the work of researching this issue.
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Help a fellow out, yes? Which part of the points you were raising are âa flimsy argumentâ, or that go against the laws of physics and the Bible ?
I think I see where youâre coming from Joshua. You need more than to just be told that almost every geologist on the planet disagrees with you; you need to be given specific reasons why they disagree with you.
The article to which you have linked makes a lot of claims, none of which cite any independent and reliable sources, none of which refer to any measurements, some of which are factually inaccurate, and all of which also have perfectly adequate old-earth explanations. This last point is important, because in order for something to count as evidence for a young Earth or a global Flood, it MUST adequately FALSIFY alternative old-earth explanations. Anything that can be interpreted either way by looking at it through different âlensesâ or âpresuppositionsâ is ambiguous and does not count as evidence for either.
The fact of the matter is that there are many forms of evidence that CANNOT be interpreted with any reasonable young-earth or global flood framework.
To give one example: some forms of sedimentary rock CANNOT form under any kind of flood conditions. Shale and chalk, for example, are made up of tiny particles a few microns in diameter. These take a long time to settle (the rate is determined by Stokesâ Law) and can only do so in very still, quiet waters over very long periods of time. Turbulent flood waters would stir the sediments up and disrupt them before they had a chance to form.
Another example is evaporite deposits, such as halite (common salt). As their name suggests, evaporites can only form through evaporation of a body of salt water (such as the Dead Sea for example); they CANNOT form under flood conditions. There are deposits of halite over a mile thick at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea: these bear testimony to a time, from 5.97â5.22 million years ago, when the Mediterranean repeatedly dried up before being filled in again by a breach of the Straits of Gibraltar.
In fact, it gets worse: there are many places where we see deposits of shale and other similar sedimentary rocks interspersed with layers of evaporite. There is no natural mechanism whatsoever by which a single flood could possibly produce such evidence. See this article for the details.
Then we have zircons, small crystals of ZrSiO4, which are basically the âtimestampsâ that YECs claim that rocks donât come with. Zircon crystals can contain small amounts of uranium when they first form (up to about 1% or so), but they strongly reject lead, for the simple reason that lead does not fit into their crystal structure. This means that any lead in a zircon crystal MUST be there as a result of radioactive decay. The two main isotopes of uranium, 235U and 238U, decay to lead with half-lives of 700 million and 4.4 billion years respectively.
Could radioactive decay rates have been higher in the past? No. Decay rates have been tested by multiple methods and found to be extremely stable in the face of high and low temperatures, high pressure, hard vacuum, strong magnetic and electric fields, different chemical environments and a whole lot more. In any case, if they had ever been high enough to produce significant quantities of lead in zircon crystals within just six thousand years, they would have melted them and reset the âclocksâ.
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God doesnât have a mouth nor hands or eyes. These are mere play on words that God uses for us to better understand the point he drives within scripture. God is beyond what we can know or think and see. The idea of God as an old white bearded dude was made up during the middle ages when in fact Judaism and early Christianity had a better understanding of the nature of God. To be made in the Image of God as told in Genesis 1:26 means that we have power, dominion, emotions and creativity as God does as well. We are meant to be co-caretakers of the earth with Yahweh. God has no image we can capture Him with and is beyond the need of one. Thatâs why God doesnât tell the Israelites to make images of Him as the other ANE nations did.
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And that right there is one of the many points that made me leave YEC and return back to Evolutionary Creationism. If that was so then why donât we find dinosaur bones easily mixed with human and animal bones on a even layer of soil? We donât and YECers cannot explain it in a unified manner. Also if the earth is between 6,000 to10,000 years old then the geological records must truly show this, but they donât and instead it shows the earth to be millions of years old along with a billion year old universe.