If any dinosaurs ever disembarked from Noah’s ark, you could order up sauroburgers from McD’s. We have intact specimens of ancient preserved mammoths and cave lions going back 60,000 years. Not only is there nothing even close to such dinosaur remains, but out of tens of thousands of dinosaur fossils not even a single, solitary, one has been found with any modern mammals. Interpret that data. No human; not Noah, nor the writer of Job, nor Adam who named the animals, ever saw a living dinosaur, pterosaur, dimetrodon, or trilobite.
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No. But if your point here is that Jesus was wrong because he was “officially” off by six days, just how wrong would Jesus have been if he was off by 14 billion years?
Mary Schweitzer, a Christian who found the soft tissue remains, says that isn’t the proper interpretation of her research. See the interview here
And given how YEC organizations misuse her research (actually research in general) makes me distrust anything else they might be saying.
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No, my point is that Jesus was not being fallaciously literalistic like you are.
If they thought of it at all, they might have, just as they accepted that the earth was flat and didn’t move and had a dome over it as scripture implies, which is why viewing Genesis as a scientific text is us projecting our own cultural expectations and values onto it.
This is just silly. Try this: take out the bits about the universe being 14 billion years old and replace them with the earth being round:
could you possibly PROVE that the earth is round? Of course not. Can any of the scientists you put your faith in PROVE it? Nope. Is a round earth the ONLY POSSIBLE way to interpret the data? No again. So you indeed believe in a round earth, not verifiable facts.
Can you see why your reasoning might have some problems?
The same kinds of assumptions that any other measurements rely on, which produce technology and results that you and I rely on in our daily lives all the time. It’s just science. Geochronology is a fascinating field and isn’t some “special” branch of science that relies on a different method than anything else. As JammyCakes has told you, you can’t magically hand-wave away evidence just by using the word “assumptions.”
I was raised with Answers in Genesis and for most of my life YEC spokespeople (very few were actually scientists) were my primary source of information about science. It was a hard pill to swallow when I discovered they had been wrong. I’m grateful that I still have faith, but it hasn’t always been easy. It’s not a good idea to try to force Genesis 1 to pass the test of modern science. It’s more like cultural imperialism and doesn’t honor the text for what it is.
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First of all, 2 Peter 3:8 has no application to the historical account in Genesis. Secondly, Peter’s statement works both ways. God could experience one of our thousand year periods as if only a day went by for Him… OR He could experience one of our literal 24-hour days as if a thousand years went by for Him.
So Day 1 of creation could have lasted 365,000 times LONGER than one of our days… OR 365,000 times SHORTER than one of our days. Of course, nobody ever wants to consider the “shorter” part of Peter’s statement.
But the bottom line is that how God may or may not EXPERIENCE time as it passes for us is irrelevant to whether or not God knows HOW to talk to His children, using phenomena and words that He created in the first place. God knows what “day” means. He certainly didn’t tell Moses “six days” when He really meant “14 billion years”. Especially when He clearly and unequivocally EQUATED the six days of creation with the six LITERAL days the Israelites were to work before taking a day of rest.
Nobody says it could have rained for 40,000 years during the flood because of 2 Peter. Nobody says the Israelites may have had to work for 6 thousand years before taking a break because of 2 Peter. No, 2 Peter only comes into play in relation to Gen 1 - and only by people who have non-Biblical reasons for not wanting the words of Gen 1 to mean what they actually say.
You have no idea what “billions of years” would look like, jammy. Don’t pretend like you do.
Now… there is a question about a wheel for which I’m awaiting your answer.
(Just say you don’t know when the first wheel was made and utilized like we use them today, okay? Save us both a lot of time. Thanks.)
I’m sorry… do you mistakenly think that you control what I say and when? 
Has it occurred to you that I’m one person fielding dozens of responses - and have been going non-stop at it for many hours now?
But okay, there are scientists who say earth began as a water world, and others who say water was delivered here via much later via meteorites. Same data, different interpretations.
Jesus is said to have spoken in Aramaic at times. He certainly would have been fluent in Greek too. I don’t have enough information to answer your question. But go on with your point anyway.
We know the rate of tectonic plate drift for sure. That is data. We know the rate of radioactive decay, that is data. You are not arguing with scientism; your argument is with facts, which is hard to do. That explains why you want to talk about first wheels and other squirrel distractions.
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It’s called measurement, Mike. Measurement.
Which you seem to believe is nothing but guesswork and assumptions, despite having been told repeatedly that it isn’t.
Your question is irrelevant and off-topic. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the point that I was actually making.
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Thanks, I will.
Here’s Mark Chapter 10 in the Peshitta.
- Note: “The consensus within biblical scholarship, although not universal, is that the Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from Biblical Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD, and that the New Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Greek, probably in the early 5th century. [Source: Wikipedia - Peshitta]”
- Look down at the English translation of the “Aramaic NT Parallel English Translations” and tell me if you don’t read:
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What data? When did water world form? From what? In which geological era? Which scientists?
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Which is not the standard definition, even if there is one. You have basically defined scientism as any confidence that scientific data or reasoning is capable of giving objective, reality based answers.IOW, anyone but a strict theologian is a practitioner of scientism, or putting it another way, unless a person agrees with a YEC interpretation of Genesis, then they have fallen prey to scientism. Setting things up this way is almost a classic case of a straw man.
A Christian, who may also be a scientist, may find evidence scientific evidence that contradicts the YEC “interpretation” of Genesis.Does this mean they are contradicting the Bible. Not at all, as the YEC interpretation of Genesis one of many ways to interpret it. Data from science may well prompt responsible theologians to consider their interpretation of Genesis incorrect and therefore reassess and consider other ways of interpreting it. Even before modern geology and evolutionary biology found evidence that the earth and life on it is much older than 6,000 years, there were other interpretations of Genesis that allow for the greater time, while still remaining faithful to scripture.
Are suggesting that scientific data should not help inform how we interpret scripture?
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Thanks so much for the welcome, Randy. (Please call me Mike.) You want my background? Okay…
I’m a 57 year old recovering drug addict who eventually ended up homeless and destitute. I always knew that evolution was nonsense, but I openly rejected the God of the Bible. When I hit rock bottom, I prayed to that God I had never believed in, and good things began to happen for me. I figured the least I could do is read His book. So I read it cover to cover. And then again. And again. A total of 6 times. At some point during those readings, I joined a Bible discussion forum. The discussions there encouraged me to delve very deeply into the scriptures, and into science. I’ve been clean and sober and spending my limited spare time doing that for 15 years now on various forums.
In short, I’m a truth seeker who likes to be challenged on my understanding, because it causes me to continually dig deeper. I’ve spent years researching and discussing the age of the earth, evolution, radiometric dating methods, dinosaurs, and things like whether or not we actually live on a spinning ball orbiting one of billions of giant suns. I’ve also enjoyed years of researching and discussing Biblical subjects like whether or not Jesus is God, whether or not Jesus preexisted his time on earth, and the many different gods of the Bible.
Right now I’m trying to discuss the clear contradictions between how the Bible describes our world and how “science falsely so-called” (I call it Scientism) describes it. My intent is to encourage others that they don’t have to jump through hoops to align the Bible with big bang/deep time/evolutionism - since those things are all hogwash to begin with. I’d love for people to come to the realization that they CAN trust God’s written word for exactly what it says.
Cheers.
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I’m understanding the “days” in Genesis 1 literally. Do you have a valid reason for me to understand them differently? If so, please share. Thanks.
I think not. I think he’s suggesting that “scientism” should not be allowed to or be used to interpret the data.
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In fact the data is not the same. The interpretation - not the interpretative method - changed with changing data. So you need to come up with an actual example where the data hasn’t changed and concurrent disinterested scientists in the same field interpret the same data in many - your word - ways. Two isn’t many. Or get off the pot. If you’d have been right about water world, you’d still have been wrong. As it is, you were wrong early.
And what is measurement again?
Ohhhhhhh!!! It formed in Kevin Costner. Yeah but did he use wet or dry enstatite chondrite meteorites?
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