And that is the problem that comes when people realize that the world described by YEC is a phantasy world, and does not exist.
And when they then accept what that were taught that if that world is not true, then the Bible is false, they then toss their faith aside. I hope you do not wind up there someday.
The Bible’s truth does not depend on a binary all or nothing interpretation. It both tells us to confront fools, and to ignore them, and we are to learn from it the wisdom to know when to do which one, something I still struggle with. We are to have humility in our approach to scripture, seeking to be open to what it has to teach us.
Dear Mike, God speaks to His children in many ways. One way is through the written words of testimony from prophets and apostles. Another is through observation of Her creation. He has chosen to be subtle in showing Herself, so that He doesn’t scare people into grovelling in fear. Therefor, by God’s choice, there is ambiguity in the message. That is, what God means to say to me is subject to human interpretation. In the case of the bible, there are many levels of human interpretation between what God revealed and what God wants me to know. First, was this really something God revealed (does this book belong in the bible)? Second, does the translation accurately reflect what the original author intended to say to his original audience? Third, how does what was written to a different audience in a very different context apply to me in today’s context? Note in this regard that God told His people some very specific things to do (lots of details in Leviticus), and most Christians believe that God also told His people at a different time that what He had said earlier did not apply to them. The point is unmistakable: Just because God told something very specific to some of His people at one time does not mean that God intended to say exactly the same thing to others of His people at a different time and place.
For those of us who believe that God created this universe, She also speaks to us through the way the universe operates. For me, this has one very good advantage over written testimony: I have no doubt as to who is the Author of information given through observation of the universe. To be honest, however, I must admit that it is not trivial to discern what the observation really tells me about God. For me, the best use of observations has been to help me understand what some of the written things might really mean, and to help me understand what the bible means for me in today’s cultural and scientific context.
As for the question of when God created the universe: I ask you to consider two hypotheses:
God created the universe in a Big Bang, about 13.9 billion years ago; or 2. God created the universe somewhere around 6000 years ago, with every single sub-atomic particle, including transient things like photons and gravitons, in exactly the same state as it would have been if She had created the universe 13.9 billion years ago.
Can you tell me one thing that is different, that can be objectively (independent of observer) used to determine which of these “actually” occured?
And now for the really important question: What real physical difference is there in this universe based on which of these hypotheses is true?
Since it cannot be determined which is true, and it makes no difference as to what is happening in this world in which we are living, perhaps we should focus on different questions, things that really do make a difference, such as how can we help our neighbors in need.
How about option 3: God created the heaven, earth, sea, and all that is in them about 6000 years ago, and there is not one iota of actual scientific data available to us that would even hint that the heaven or earth were even a minute older than that?
That’s the option I believe. The Big Bang/deep time/evolution stuff is wild conjecture and speculation by flawed men who have big biases. Their biases require them to interpret certain data a certain way - but the conclusions of flawed and biased men about unique events that may or may not have happened in the distant past is not science. In fact, none of those one-time historical events themselves are not a part of science, because there is no way to observe, test or repeat them.
So your belief that God either created 13.9 billion years ago (I thought the latest was 13.7 - has it recently changed?) or made it look like He did that is only valid IF it really and truly is or appears to be that old. And I promise you that there isn’t one single thing we can look at today and rightfully say that it is 14 billion years old as opposed to 6000 years old - or even that it appears to be 14 billion years old as opposed to 6000 years old.
Not inside the tiny mental dungeon you’ve willingly locked yourself into anyway. The rest of us who live in and keep our eyes open to God’s real world get to see a whole lot more insights and evidence into how God’s creation has been made to work. Your filter keeps you blind to nearly all of that reality and has you believing astonishingly impossible conspiracies and lies of all sorts, and then trying to pretend that scriptures promote those same lies.
Is your interpretation of the Bible and what God means to teach by it not done by a flawed man with bias? Does your bias require you to harmonize, rationalize and apologize for a ton of scientific, historical, logical and moral dilemmas in our Sacred Scripture? Can you test all your beliefs against all possible alternatives? Can people around the world test them similarly and come up with the same conclusions using the same methodology?
The only wild speculation and conjecture here pertains to the size of the box God is being relegated to.
Not super important but the latest number I see tossed about is 13.79 billion.
Thanks, Mike, for agreeing completely with what I said, as opposed to what you seem to think I said. I did not say anything about what I believe. I asked you whether you believe there is any evidence visible in this universe that has been discovered at this time that would show conclusively whether God created the universe a long time ago, or much more recently. Your answer above, that there is not one single thing that we can see that would show us which is true is exactly what I was saying.
Now I ask you again, if there is no way to know, and it makes absolutely zero difference to anything that is happening in this universe during my lifetime, is there any reason why I must believe one or the other? My real belief is that God knows, and I don’t have to know (I wasn’t there when God laid the foundations of the Earth). My belief is that the important consideration here is just that God created this universe, not the unknowable details of when and how. And even that is a belief, not a provable, objective fact. (My personal basis for my belief in the existence of God is subjective experience, and supporting reliance on the witness of others to their own subjective experiences. The sum total of these evidences still is subjective.)
Not inside the Bible (which is apparently a “tiny mental dungeon” in your eyes) nor outside of it. Dude, you blindly believe certain things for no other reason than you were told them by someone else. Admit it… you haven’t personally scientifically verified that our world is older than 6000 years, nor could you possibly do that. The problem is that you blindly believe people who also couldn’t possibly do that, but tell you that they can and have.
If you mean can reasonable people all over the world observe a finely tuned world full of complicated living things that appear to have been designed for a purpose and then conclude that they were… of course.
So you are aware that 13.79 billion is just the latest number that you have seen “tossed about” - yet all the numbers that came before that one weren’t wild speculation and conjecture? How about this new number? Absolute provable fact? Or just more wild speculation and conjecture that will some day be tossed aside in favor of a new number?
It is clear from what I posted that my point is that there is no viable reason to even contemplate the idea that maybe God did make the world 6000 years ago but made it appear much older when there is no evidence that it appears much older.
Is that more understandable? The Bible says 6000 years ago. I couldn’t possible prove 6000 years ago, but I believe the Bible. And since you couldn’t possibly prove 14 billion years ago, there is no rational reason to posit that God created the world to look much older than it really is.
It would be like positing that maybe the rain lasted for 4000 years instead of 40 days when there is no logical reason or scientific evidence to suggest 4000 years in the first place. Understand? Why even posit a young earth that was created to appear older when there isn’t any valid evidence that it looks older in the first place?
So while neither of us could conclusively prove either a 40 day rainstorm or a 4000 year rainstorm, there isn’t a valid reason to even contemplate the latter in the first place. That was my point.
Yes. The reason is that the one whom you say is your God told you point blank that He created our world in six days about 6000 years ago. He even wrote the six days part in stone with His own finger. The 6000 years part can be determined via the many genealogies written down by those who were inspired by God to do so…
2 Timothy 3:16… All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…
Do you mean that humans have attained the ability to experiment on a beam of starlight in a lab and determine how old it is? Or do you really mean that if we accept a 14 billion year old universe with the “most distant stars” producing light that took eons to reach us, we can call that “ancient starlight”? And who exactly are these “most YECs” - by name and statement if you don’t mind.
I couldn’t agree more with that part of what Augustine said. Trying to somehow align what the Bible teaches with what Scientism teaches by giving silly and irrational explanations for why God clearly and unequivocally said six days but really didn’t mean six days, or why God said stars are in a firmament that supports waters above it when they are really in a huge expanding vacuum does tend to make one look like an idiot.
Hey Dale, please try in the future to make better arguments than, “This self-professed Jew/Christian/YEC/etc doesn’t agree with you, Mike, and therefore you must be wrong.” Thanks.
I think that most of what the Bible says about the origins of the world or cosmology often seem to be illustrating some other point. The point of Job 39-41, for example, is that God is control of the cosmos and Job is not. God is not giving Job a tour of the universe like David Attenborough. He is, however, describing the universe in a way that Job would find relatable. It is interesting that very few if any Jewish interpreters of the Bible ever bring up scientific ideas in the Bible. It appears that this interest in the Bible being scientifically accurate began with Greek converts to Christianity. It is possible that this need for the Bible to be a sort of Encyclopedia Galactica stems more from Western cultural ideas about what sacred texts should be than from the intention of the Biblical authors.
What YECs do in their speaking against the antiquity of the universe, the antiquity that glorifies God’s enormity and which doesn’t pinch him into a flawed reading of early Genesis, what they do is elevate science over the intent of scripture.
It is interesting that what YEC, ID, OEC, and EC all have in common is the desire to reconcile science with religion. And sort of ironic that of them all, EC is one most likely to hold that there is no need to make the Bible do so, as it is not about science
Since “science” is a modern construct that is not surprising. Still many people believe an omnipotent and omniscient Creator wrote scripture through human hands. That means the Bible holds more authority than science or anything else. Not to mention we have the issue of God authoring statements that are ultimately false. Not to beat a dead horse but many here are opposed to mature creation (light in transit or trees created with rings) as it makes God out to be deceptive. I’m not sure why hundreds of false statements mistakenly assuming the cosmology, worldview or incorrect understanding of history at the time is not a problem. If God can’t make light in transit without being deceptive, I sure as heck don’t see how he can be behind a book where one human falsely writes in another’s name.
For us EC’s, the list of things the Bible gets wrong, or the things it accommodates or all the lines we have to read in between (and call things cultural) is certainly not how many Christians approach the Bible. In fact, I suspect a lot of ECs waffle a bit in their use of scripture or simply are not very consistent. Claiming x y and z don’t mean what they plainly narrate but then in another discussion, proof-text hunting away like normal.
No, Mike, neither of these. The point is very simple. One specific example from the Webb telescope shows the absolute fallacy of your claim. There are clear images of a galaxy that is demonstrated to be 500 million light years away from Earth. If we can identify the source of the light, and determine how long the light has been traveling to get here (that is, very simply, how far away is the source), we can determine the age of the light. If this galaxy did not exist 500 million years ago, if God created it 6000 years ago along with the rest of the universe, then God also created the photons that are now arriving in our vicinity 6000 years ago. Those photons are “ancient starlight” whether God created them 6000 years ago, or whether they actually were emitted from a real galaxy 500 million years ago.
Mike, the argument that either the galaxy existed 500 million years ago, or God created photons that are exactly where they would have been if the galaxy had been there 500 million years ago is absolutely true.
There is no other possibility. When you insist that God created the universe 6000 years ago; and that God did not create any evidence that things might have existed earlier than that, you are 100% doing what Augustine asked you not to do. First, you 100% discredit yourself as someone to be seriously considered. And second, by being a thoroughly discredited person, and yet claiming to be the true and correct spokesperson for Christians, you directly influence many reasonable and rational non-Christian people to discredit all of Christianity.
Why can’t it have anything to do with time? Names among ancient people describe the person in some way, i.e. they’re not just empty labels but have meaning. “I AM” has meaning in both Exodus and John, and in both cases the meaning likely has something to do with time. The Jews equated “I AM” with “The Eternal (One)” because His Name isn’t “I AM” for just one moment but for always, and since it is for always then in every moment God is present, not bound by time – so Jesus isn’t just name-dropping, He’s making a statement about His existence which is just as present with Abraham as with Moses and with Elijah plus right there with the Pharisees at the Temple.
That is an understatement: Judaism deliberately changed itself around 100 A.D., classifying things that had been ordinary Jewish theology as false, changing long-standing interpretations, throwing out the Deuterocanonical books – all to avoid anything that sounded like Christianity!