I didn’t mention Dr Sproul’s views on evolution.
Are you replying to me and/or to this topic op?
“As-is” simply means that dogs, cats, birds. ect…were created as dogs, cats, and birds and will always reproduce more of the same dogs, cats, and birds. Their colors and other attributes may change but they all remain as… dogs, cats, and birds.
I agree. But I never said it did.
"Therefore it seems clear to me that God was speaking in short hand, not trying to nail all the facts down "
Then I see no reason to believe any of it. Also, how did Adam name all the animals if they were not yet “evolved into existence”?
“You are mistaken. Evidence for evolution is the fossil history which shows how life forms evolved into current forms,”
I have answered this so many times already I will have to ask you to refer to the replies the to same statement you’ve made here.
Then how did Adam name all the animals if they were not yet evolved, and what does the actual observable evidence show? That dogs reproduce dogs, and cats reproduce cats. Again, if the Genesis account of creation is not literally true then why modify it to fit your assumptions. Why not just consider it fiction, and if you consider certain parts of the bible fiction, others figurative, and whatever else you want to assume then who is the tie breaker or final authority on the “correct interpretation and meaning”, you?
Then why mention his name? Particularly when he doesn’t agree with you.
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Since we continue to find new species which nobody has any name for, it is rather obvious that Adam did not name all the species which exist and thus the text of Genesis does not mean what you claim it to mean. After all, there is no reason why “beasts of the field” should include beasts of the desert or beasts of the jungle or beasts of the arctic/tundra, and no reason why “every bird of the air” should include every species of bird from all over the planet.
What the actual observational evidence shows is that dogs and cats like all living organism which reproduce by sexual reproduction are unique and different – every single one of them, and they most certainly have changed over time with increasing varieties to which we give new names. And while a saint Bernard can be crossed with a chihuahua by artificial insemination and thus are technically the same species, in practice mating is made impossible the difference in sizes. And we see other other stages in the speciation process such as horses and donkeys whose offspring are mules incapable of reproduction.
Because I am not the one modifying the Bible – you are. I demonstrated this by calling you out on the words you have inserted into the text to make it fit what you want to believe.
Is that why you alter the text of the Bible to make it contradict science? Are you seeking to convince people to think the Bible is just fiction?
That would be God. You know… the creator of the universe – the one who created all the evidence which the scientists study.
Because torturing and killing children with various medical problems in His design is … evil if intentional, a terrible mistake if accidental, irresponsible if overlooked, uncaring if ignored. But if all these things are a product of evolution rather than design then God simply isn’t responsible. In that case our life is our own and it is up to us to figure these things out and deal with them.
The millions of pieces of evidence are already posted in millions of websites. All you have to do is google it. The fact that evolution takes millions of years is demonstrable. Anyone can dig up the fossilized evidence and go to any of the 140 labs in 50 countries to get them dated by one of the 20 different dating methods.
Why are you searching for something to contradict the Bible?
This is demonstrable. This DNA even gets activated in a few people and they grow them.
You don’t have to believe me. That is the whole point of science. You just have to believe the evidence which God has provided for anyone who wants to look and see for themselves.
That only applies when scientists go off into the realm of philosophical opinions and speculations. But there is nothing subjective about the accumulation of evidence which provides calculations of the age of the universe to an increasing degree of precision. There is nothing subjective about the millions of fossils documented for over 250,000 extinct species and nothing subjective about the findings of 140 labs in 50 countries using 20 different methods for dating those fossils. And there is nothing subjective about the ability to calculate answers from genetic data. These are things which anyone can do and the results are not effected in any way by what they believe.
You were the one who claimed, “Everything in the Bible is observable now.” Not only is this literally incorrect because some species are extinct, but the other fact that so little of what we observe is in the Bible shows how little relevance there is to your claim even if it were true. After all, I can say the same of a nursery rhyme and what would that prove?
Golems of dust and bone are not observable by anyone. Magical fruit which can give knowledge or prolong life forever are not observable by anyone. Talking snakes are not observable by anyone. Are you claiming to have seen these things? And if you do make such claims are they comparable to the simple fact that anyone can dig up fossils and take them to one of those 140 labs and find out how old they are?
ditto
How can I be shocked by that when it is perfectly consistent with the fact that you obviously ignore what the vast majority of people in the world have to say as well was what they demonstrate with written procedures which anyone can follow no matter what they believe to get the same result.
No, not at all. I was just trying to set expectations appropriately. Some people’s idea of debate involves mostly trying to score points with some sort of imagined audience, and very little real dialogue occurs. We expect people to present their views and explain them and to defend their opinions. We just hope they do so in the interest of expanding common ground between people and possibly learning something not in the interest of “winning” or making other people look foolish.
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This is basically the “were you there?” fallacy, which is nonsense. The fact that the past is not directly observable may mean that we do not know everything, but it most certainly does not mean that we do not know anything.
For starters, I don’t know where you stand on the age of the earth, but if you were trying to argue for an age of 6,000 years, you would have to either propose that God created evidence for a history of events that never happened, or else change the scientific method itself in ways that would kill people if you applied them in any other context. Furthermore, the YEC organisations have themselves admitted that squeezing the evidence into 6,000 years would have raised the Earth’s temperature to 22,000°C. When that is the situation, one can be absolutely 100% certain that the Earth is far, far older than six thousand years, end of story.
As far as evolution is concerned, it’s much the same principle. It’s patent nonsense to claim that we can’t know anything at all about who or what did or didn’t evolve from what; we have to admit that the evidence tells us something in that respect, and make sure that we get our facts straight about exactly what.
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Hello @Truthseeker1 You seem to be defining “kind” by some sort of intuitive sense and you then mix groups. I don’t think you mean that all birds are one “kind” such that any bird can make any other bird sand that is just variation that can change in that entire group. If not where are the boundaries. Think of it this way, why can’t a cat and dog be the same kind? You might respond that cats and dogs are both mentioned in the bible and thus they are different sorts of animals that God must have made as distinct creations. But you have just said you think that “dogs” all all a kind but the Bible mentions foxes, wolves and domestic dogs and maybe African wild dogs and so are we to believe these are separate “kind” as well? If these “dogs” could have come from a common ancestor on the ark then why could cats and dogs not have come from a common “ark kind” as well? Afterall, can you name a character of cat a dog that are not just variations on a theme? One has retractable claws and the other doesn’t. But isn’t that just a different attribute that may change? (BTW, fossil cats don’t have retractable claws). Also consider that no creationists has been able to point to a single dog or cat fossil from before the Flood so there is no evidence that there were separate “kinds” before the Flood.
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Mark,
There are two Creation stories in the Bible. They are not the same, so does that mean that the Bible is wrong or that God expects us to us our brains to work out the differences?
I am still amazed that some people know that God gave us amazing brains, but does not want us to use them. To be sure it would have been much easier for God to just control us so God could just tell us what to do, but God does not work that way as we can see.
Humans evolved after the other animals, as the Bible says they were created after the rest of creation. We see today that Adam (humans) are still naming new species that we are finding. You have a way of thinking that science denies Biblical truth, when it does the opposite. Thus your way of understanding the Bible weakens the Christian witness, instead of strengthening it.
It seems that you would have God’s world never change once God created it, when in truth God created a finite universe which by definition id constantly changing and we are constantly changing as part of God’s plan and Will.
I think it is necessary to understand how we use the word creation. Technically there are not two separate creations in Genesis. Perhaps most people do not strictly use or define the word “create” the same way. I think it necessary especially when making the claim that God used the act of creation in terms of evolutionary development. I think that is one of the greatest misunderstandings between both sides.
YEC propenants (i think) understand God created each branch of the biological tree with all the information needed for every future species.
EC in opposition in keeping with current dating methods and known fossil record, understand that there was no specific creation event, but that over time the inerrant information revealed itself. Assumingly from a simple state to a more complex state as information was utilized as neccessary. Or the information was “infused” at any period over billions of years.
Genesis 2 does not even seem to be a retelling of the first event, nor is it a creation event. God planted a Garden and took an existing human from the rest of humanity for the purpose of living there. How the animals arrived is as much of a mystery as how they arrived for Noah.
Those are the only two options?
Do you believe that God is made of stone (Psalm 18:2), or is that just metaphor “because it’s convenient”?
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I’ll probably regret this, but what about horse fossils? Have you actually seen any fossils? Have you bothered to visit a really good natural history museum to ask questions?
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Genesis 2:6-7 (NIV2011)
6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:20-22 (NIV2011)
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.
\It is hard for me to think that Gen 2 does not portray the creation of Humanity different from Gen. 1.
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It is not different except for the perspective of one individual. The description from one individual does not contradict the account as a whole in the previous chapter. If one is going to give an account of just one human, it is not a retelling. It is that one individual’s perspective.
Verse 5 would have argued the point for you. However the point of a a barren earth was compared to the first day. It was not compared to the 7th day when all creation was completed. No one has argued that this is “history” except the Complete Jewish Bible. Some versions use “generations”, while some just describe it as an account. There is an indication that from verse 4 to verse 5 there was a passage of time to place the Garden as happening some time after the first week of creation. On day one there was no vegatation. This account also describes “wild” which is not an attribute of a perfect and completed creation. This account is about an event that happened after there was wild and unkept land that had also become barren back to the condition of the first day before there was any plant life created.
Adam was accounted as being created the same way out of dust. That does not mean at a different time. Even the account places Adam’s creation before the planting of the Garden, but after plant life being referenced. The account states the Garden was necessary for the reason of the barren earth condition that had occurred after the 7 days of creation and also the loneliness of a certain human God called Adam.
There is no version of the Bible that gives Adam a name until after this human names all of the animals. Genesis 1 is a not a single generic account of one human being created. It is a specific creation of multiple humans both male and female who were told to multiply from day 6. It was much later with a “historic” reference to the passing of time that Genesis 2 takes place.
To point out that one of the 6th day humans and not an offspring, the account of Adam places him as being created on day six exactly the same way as the other humans. The loneliness of Adam was not due to lack of other humans, but a lack of a human mate. This is further indicated in that even naming the animals or as it is succinctly stated he could not mate with any of them either did not resolve Adam’s loneliness. A subtle hint at the modern notion of ape ancestry?
Why not just take another lonely human mate, or even wait for an offspring is a great question to ask. It does not mean Adam was the sole human. That would contradict chapter 1. My guess would be that God wanted Adam’s offspring to be only from Adam’s dna. Chapter 1 does not point out that all humans had the exact same dna. Why would it? Why put in that every one needed to have the same dna? It was not stated that humans were created after their kind either. It was pointed out that humans were created in God’s image separate from the rest of biological life.
Adam was created in the same way as 6th day humans. It was not seperate because the loneliness was from not having a mate, not because he was alone. Now if it makes sense that Adam was created seperate and remained seperate the rest of his life from other humans, that still does not make him the sole human created on day six. The precedent for mating humans was already established prior to the account of Adam himself. Thus his predicament making the whole account about Adam a point of insertion immediately after the creation account. It had everything to do with both the new and old covenant. I think there are enough facts given to not add that much to the account to understand the account. It is different because of the passage of time, not because it is a seperate account of creation. It is about Adam and the Garden. Verse 8 specifically states that God planted a Garden. It was after and separate from the original week of creation. In fact the location already had an established name Eden. The “Garden of Eden” is not a complete title in practice. It is a historic reference. Adam’s Garden was located in the area known as Eden.
For clarity and not longevity. Some want to place the Garden as happening after all the cataclysmic events found in the fossil record, and perhaps can still be found in the archeological record. The Hebrews were confused by “placing” it at the beginning of history. This may also lead to the proof that millions of years happened way before Adam. These assumptions are just that, assumptions. It seems to me that it was placed as the 2nd chapter because there were not millions of years of seperation. It happened before any major cataclysmic event as well; as Adam was created the same way, and presumably at the same time and place as all original humans. The passage does indicate a passage of time, and a change in Adam’s location though.
Is there a difference between knowing information and understanding information? Not the understood difference; that is ignorance. Can we undestood concepts without the full knowledge involved in those concepts?
For instance langauge is the communication of a concept. Some concepts that may not even be capable of being fully flushed out in our ability to communicate. Does that mean we do not know, if we cannot understand? Or can we know something that we may not fully understand? A single word should hold enough information and perhaps even more information than one person could fully know thus missing out on the full intent of that one word? I realize that is a tangent away from the topic, but somwhat connected to the point that all information has to exist in a physical strand of dna. Else the intent would have to be something more than just physical if a group of information actually held more intent than the physical information in place. I think evolutionary thinking wants to step out of the limits of what a simple dna strand would be if not only intent, but an actual need arises for there to be more physical information than is at hand. ie the jump from simple to more complex cellular structure.
What is implied is that evolution is predictive and in the dna there is physical information, but that information holds a non physical chance of holding more information than what the physical communicates. When needed this additional information is “employed” and allowed into the physical aspect.
Hello, there were a few things that were not exactly right in your extensive post.
If this is true, then Jesus’s life could just be another metaphor, and then there is no reason for the Christian faith!
I would appreciate it if you could expound on this a little more, 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.” Death came about because of man’s sin. Paul says the whole creation “groans” because of man’s sin. (Please note that I used a lower case “g” because I am not talking about the real God.)
The the thought that this idea exists is an extremely dangerous to the Christian faith. It is saying young earth creation has no “science” or “evidence” to back it up, which couldn’t be far from the truth.
You are correct in stating that the Bible does not explicitly say that they were created as-is, but it does say that they were created “after their kinds.”
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.
Excuse me, but I believe there is a statement at the top of the page that says these are forums for “gracious dialogue about science and faith.” And pardon me for saying this, but that is not gracious, but is an insult to his beliefs.
Young earth creationists are not ignoring this. 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. And the arguments that the flood was not global are false. 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. But then, why even keep the flood at all? Why not just say the flood story was metaphorical. I refuse to believe that any of the history recorded in the Bible is “metaphorical.” That would be blasphemy. I am not saying that there are no metaphorical portions of the Bible, but they are fewer and farther in between than ECs say.
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.
There is something you must understand, there is no such thing as objective evidence. All evidence is interpreted.
Mr Cage,
My dad used to say this–and I had great respect for him (the greatest of any one I have ever met). However, although he meant it honestly, it was a bit misleading, unintentionally.
This is true, but not useful to defend a presupposition. Some use it as an excuse to refuse to examine their own prejudices. It’s not meant to be that. It’s supposed to be a reason to strip as many prejudices as possible, and to ask for as many critiques as possible. Does that make sense?
Thus, we can’t use the Bible (or our interpretation of it, to be even clearer) as a starting point if we expect to be taken seriously by Muslims, agnostics, questioners, or anyone else; because if we don’t examine ourselves honestly, we have no right to ask someone else to question themselves.
Thanks.
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So you think Jesus is a metaphor? I don’t. It certainly doesn’t logically follow that if a person uses a metaphor then everything they say is metaphor. It most certainly is true that Jesus used lots of metaphors but it doesn’t follow that everything Jesus said is a metaphor. It most certainly is true that the Bible uses metaphors but it doesn’t follow that everything in the Bible is a metaphor. In Matthew 13, where Jesus explains that He uses parables and metaphors so that people who don’t want to see, hear, or understand are free to close their eyes, ears and minds. So the key here seems to be whether people want to know the truth, and if they do then they look at the evidence honestly with faith rather than fear.
Ah… that sounds like confusing goodness with comfort and easiness. They are most certainly NOT the same thing and how you can possibly get such nonsense from the Bible is incomprehensible to me. The Bible talks about a God who routinely uses death as a tool of providence and restoration – wiping out a world full of people with a flood, commanding genocide, and demanding that Abraham sacrifice His only son Isaac. So is God simply cruel and sadistic because that is just His right, or is God simply like a surgeon who must shed blood and cut things out in order to cure and make things better?
All of my experience (both in life and reading the Bible) tells me that the ends are not independent of the means and therefore it is incorrect to think that God’s omnipotence means He can do anything you say by whatever means you care to dictate. The very essence of life is a self-organizing process which grows from something small and incapable, to learn to do more and more things. Certainly the medieval idea of life as a magical animating force or stuff is nothing but a fantasy of alchemy - there is no such thing. But learning requires exploration to find out what does work and what doesn’t work, which means it is founded on a reality based on fixed rules – a reality of success and failure. Thus there is no life, learning and success without mistakes, failure and death – and the attempt to avoid this reality is kind of a mental illness.
Furthermore, you might as well say that God is evil because a baby must leave its womb and come out into the world. The physical world is nothing but a second womb and it is only natural that we should one day leave it to be with God who is spirit.
Besides this there was more explanation in response to another query above.
Incorrect. God told Adam and Eve that on the day they ate of the fruit of a certain tree they would die. So by this God tells us that Adam and Eve knew what death was. But Adam and Eve did not die on that day – not in the usual sense. So did God lie? No. All throughout the Bible there are two kind of death such as when Jesus says in Luke 9:60, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Adam and Eve died a spiritual death on that day. And that is the only thing which makes physical death a bad thing at all.
Indeed it should, for God put all of creation under our dominion and with our sinful habits we are not only destructive, abusive and corrupting of ourselves but of everything we touch.
Correct! It does not say “as is” or remaining their own kinds but created after their kinds. So when God created living things, they already had kinds because God did not create them from nothing but from living creatures which already existed and were the same kind. All the thousands of species of birds from flying creatures which were already there, and those from feathered creatures which were already there and those from hollow boned creatures which were already there, and those from four fingered creatures which were already there, and so on in a branching tree just like we observe in all the fossil evidence.
Incorrect. We are talking about huge portions of the text being the same. So it is more like the irrefutable evidence used to convict someone of plagarism because whole portions of text were simply cut and pasted into the newer book.
The only thing which is true of that story, if anything, is that a cowboy foot was fossilized and put on display to show how something being a fossil does not mean that it is very old. And if you don’t use an appropriate dating method then you will not a meaningful result.
That is like saying, because the Bible is interpreted there is no such thing as the Bible. This is, of course, nonsense. What makes the evidence objective are the written procedures which anyone can follow to get the same result no matter what they believe. Interpretations may be subjective but none of them can change the numerical results of these written procedures. What you are really saying here is that you are free to close your eyes and mind and refuse to see those results if you choose.
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