Ok, what am I missing here?

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Joshua_Groves

If this is true, then Jesus’s life could just be another metaphor,

Metaphor is a feature of human cognition and communication. How would Jesus’ life be a metaphor? There are clear extra-biblical references to Jesus of Nazareth as a historical figure. Only kooky Jesus mythicists deny that the Gospels were based on the life and teaching of a historical figure. No such corroborating historical account exists for Adam or Noah or Jonah, so it makes sense to wonder if the literary genre of the accounts of their lives and actions are intended to be read as objective historical accounts, or as narratives whose primary intent is communicating theological truth.

@Joshua_Groves

because all of my experience with evolutionary doctrine tells me that it would take an " irresponsible, evil, or uncaring" god to create a world where animals must kill each other to survive, and then call it “very good.”

So you are holding to the belief that tigers were created herbivores by God and somehow magically “sin” made them into carnivores?

@Joshua_Groves

Paul says the whole creation “groans” because of man’s sin.

The metaphor there is childbirth. The labor pains, groans, and travail of childbirth bring about life. The pain is redemptive and part of the ongoing process of regeneration. So are the “painful” natural cycles. The earth cannot flourish and regenerate without death. We had an interesting discussion with @jasonbourne4 bout this on this thread, which was linked to a nice essay about what the groaning of creation entailed. I think BioLogos is going to do a series of articles soon on this topic of the redemption of creation, so stay tuned.

@Joshua_Groves

It is saying young earth creation has no “science” or “evidence” to back it up,

I think if you took a year to seriously investigate the evidence, and did not rely on YEC resources to tell you what scientists say about evolution and an ancient earth, you would find this position hard to hold forever. It was evidence for evolution and lack of evidence for a young earth and a global flood that convinced most people on this site to change their mind. Many of us did not start out life accepting the evolutionary model or believing the earth was old.

@Joshua_Groves

This is like saying that Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities is a manuscript of Herodotus’s work because they both have similar line spacing. The explanation would be that over the centuries there have been so many mistakes that eventually the ancient document turned into this very well written fictional story about people in paris and London. Ridiculous.

Why do you think it is logical to compare manuscripts which must be produced by humans to living organisms that reproduce and pass on genetic information to their offspring. It is ridiculous because the analogy doesn’t work at any level.

@Joshua_Groves

You see, there just happens to have been a worldwide flood as recorded by the Holy Bible, which would have eradicated all evidence of an old earth whatsoever.

Why do you posit this? Would it have broken all the laws of nature? How can rocks that can be dated by isotopes to millions of years of age be eradicated evidence?

@Joshua_Groves

The only way that one could say it wasn’t global is to say the “15 cubits over the tops of the mountains” verse is metaphorical.

Well, you could say the whole narrative meant to teach a theological lesson, not a historical one. It doesn’t have anything to do with metaphor.

@Joshua_Groves

I refuse to believe that any of the history recorded in the Bible is “metaphorical.”

@Joshua_Groves

I am not saying that there are no metaphorical portions of the Bible, but they are fewer and farther in between than ECs say.

I don’t think you understand what “metaphorical” means. It isn’t the opposite of historical. It doesn’t mean fiction. It means describing or understanding one thing in terms of another. The iron curtain and the cold war are metaphors used to describe and understand history. God describing Israel in terms of an adulturous wife is describing and understanding Israel’s idol worship and dependence on military alliances with foreign nations that eventually led to their historical exile. It doesn’t become fiction because the history and politics is described in metaphorical terms of marriage and adultery.

@Joshua_Groves

The only thing labs hace conclusively shown is how inaccurate all of the dating methods used are. These date you have given is the average of them all. Did you know that a fossilized cowboy’s foot, still in the boot, was dated to over 200 million years old? The dates evolutionists give for the age of the earth vary so much that is it hard to see why anyone would trust them. Only one of the dating methods gives us 4.5 billion years, the rest give us closer to 500 million.

You really need to stop trusting creationist propaganda to give you accurate scientific information. If you sincerely investigated radiometric dating, you would see how dishonest these creationist “facts” are.

@Joshua_Groves

There is something you must understand, there is no such thing as objective evidence. All evidence is interpreted.

Do you believe things can be accurately measured? If I measure something as four feet, two inches is any interpretation involved? If I count 92 rings on a tree and can repeatedly observe that one ring grows a year (i.e. it is a standardized measurement), is it an interpretation to say the tree is 92 years old?