Depends on field: taxonomy, much of medicine, and cosmology, much more so. Stratigraphy, mechanics, and faunal compositions, have more total consensus, generally.
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Wat is your religion? Have you read the Bible? Genesis does so happen to talk about events concerning the origin of man, species and the universe. So, you have to deal with the data in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t talk about microwaves and iPhones, but it does have something to say about the time span that God took to create the universe. let me ask you here again: how do you interpret Genesis 1:5. In Hebrew it is: Vayikra Elohim laor yom vlachoshet qara layla, vaihi boker, vaihi layla, yom echad. Here we have the word echad (not yom rishon, interestingly), which means a type of composite unity: having two subunits, one of darkness, one of light. That is why the Jews thought that a day began with night and continued with a light portion – meaningless if the day was a million years or so. Today is a day, as was yesterday. There is nothing in the text of the Bible to suggest that the length of a yom is anything other than what we experience today. So the Bible does not talk about old ages, or billions of years. You see, we might be talking past one another. I am a Christian and for me the Bible alone is the sole highest authority in all questions – not just ethics or morals but even in science, history, etc. You cannot bind God’s hands and tell Him that He cannot say anything about scientific issues. God speaks about whatsoever He wants to speak. If you pull in the theories and the traditions of men to add to the Bible, then we cannot have a debate here.
There is no scientific data in the Bible. We must approach Scripture on its own terms and read it for what it is, God’s revelation of himself and his mission on earth to Israel and the early church.
No one around here argues that day means a million years. It clearly means a day, the normal kind, the 24 hour kind, if you insist on that. But primary sense words are used all the time in figurative passages. Showing that day means day in no way excludes the possibility that a work week is being used figuratively to describe God’s creative work in an anthropomorphic way that humans can relate to. Other clues in the passage, which is structured very carefully in terms of the number of words, the repetition of phrases, the setting up of three realms and then filling the realms with inhabitants and rulers, suggest that the structure is intentionally literary and poetic, not a straight narrative of facts.
No one is saying it does. The age of the earth is calculated by taking measurements according to established methods based on known constants. The age of the earth is not calculated by reading the Bible.
Then you are asking the Bible to answer questions the authors did not set out to answer and you are going to end up wrong about stuff. All truth is God’s truth and the Bible is not the only source of truth we have accessible to us.
It’s not about adding to the Bible, it’s about seeking truth. Science is a means of knowing true things about the world. God’s revelation is another. Since truth can’t conflict with truth, if we are understanding both science and God’s revelation well, then they will support one another and give us a fuller picture of reality. If there is a conflict, the solution isn’t to let science overrule the Bible or the Bible dictate science, the solution is to resolve the conflict by seeking ways to resolve the tension between the two.
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First of all, that’s irrelevant…not to mention egregiously but hilariously misspelled ;). Second, you didn’t answer my question, which was “do you consider [the absence of the word ‘evolution’ in the Bible] a serious argument against evolution?” Because if you do, I have some news for you: There are many, many scientific findings that are never mentioned in the Bible but that you trust to keep you safe, healthy, and happy on a daily basis. Why is evolution different? And why would you expect the Bible to be comprehensive on every subject? Why would it matter if it’s not?
Edit: I didn’t respond to the rest of your reply because @Christy did a great job of that.
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Ok, the Bible never mentions the germ theory, ever take an antibiotic which is based on the germ theory? Lots of things that are not in the Bible. Some of which will kill you if you base all of your decisions off what the Bible says.
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No it’s not “the theories and the traditions of men.” It’s measurement. Which the Bible demands that we conduct and interpret honestly and accurately. And as I’ve said already, you can’t fob that off by quibbling about the context, for the simple reason that to do so is to demand the right to tell lies. Nor can you fob it off with hand-waving about “same evidence, different interpretations,” as your different interpretations must be accurate and honest too.
So I put it to you again. Are you or are you not able to defend the YEC approach to measurement of such things as geological time as being accurate and honest, as the Bible demands?
You’re forgetting one important thing here. Genesis 1 talks about events on a cosmic scale. Once you leave the Earth’s atmosphere, the concept of what constitutes a day and a night no longer applies in these terms. A day on Mars is not the same as a day on Earth or a day on Venus. Even on Earth, evening, morning and 24 hour days do not apply at the North Pole or the South Pole. And then you have time zones thrown into the mix. In order to account for time zones in the LSDYEC model, with evening and morning delineating when one day ended and the next day started, you have to propose that there was a place on Earth (presumably in the Pacific) where Day Three started at exactly the same time as Day Two was starting just one metre to the west.
Treating the days of creation as literal 24 hour days rather than as figurative and phenomenological language requires you to abandon much more than the well-established geological fact that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. It also requires you to abandon basic geometry.
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I assume that you do not mean to say that for all other dealings, dishonesty is A-OK, so what do you intend?
@Jammycakes application of these verses is appropriate in that the soul of science is measurement. These measurements speak for themselves. YEC does not interpret them differently; YEC fabricates fantastical flights of fancy with no credibility. Like“yeah, nuclear decay just sped up like a bomb, only there was no explosion, but there was a little bit of heat because we want to grease up the tectonic plates. Oh, and while that is going on the magnetic field of the planet flipped like every other day, because…well…forget about all that electrodynamics stuff, it just suits us.” That is no interpretation of the data, but a dismissal of the data, often by reprehensible misrepresentation of the science involved.
There is no distant starlight problem. Light takes billions of years to reach us from sources billions of lightyears away. No problem.
Radiometric dating indicates rock crystallized billions of years ago? No problem.
All the measurement problems YEC seeks to redress are not problems to begin with. The measurements are what they are, and it is dishonest to fudge the scale.
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Why did God take a whole 144 hours to create the universe? Why not do it instantaneously? And did he take a whole 24 hours for the recorded creations on a given day or was it instantaneous and then he waited for the next day to come around?
(I was a YEC in my youth because it was the only thing I knew. But I never did like the explanations of where light came from before the sun was created – they seemed fabricated and a forced fit, unsupported biblically and nothing to do with reality.)
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Why oppose YEC?
Because God opposes YEC in all the information He sends us from the earth and sky. We prefer not to call God a liar. You may like a liar as your God but I do not.
What about the Bible? It is not a science textbook. It is full of dreams and parables. We have little reason therefore to use the Bible to support contradicting what God tells us and to call God a liar.
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Reading The Language of God… finally. 
That last sentence resembles parts of this conversation.
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@jammycakes, @rsewell, @GhostlyFigure02, guys, rationally proving that YEC pseudoscience is dishonest, that their God is a liar, cannot possibly help them. Nothing can. They have to double down. How can we help ourselves in the light of that? And not add to their burdens in the process?
That’s the question I asked in the discussion I started recently:
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Yes, measurement really is the elephant in the room for YECs. They try to insist that it’s just “secular science” that they are opposing, but it isn’t “secular science” that tells us that the earth is 4.5 billion years old; it’s the most basic, fundamental principles of measurement and mathematics that sit right at the foundation of every branch of science, secular or not. It’s particularly telling that I’ve never had a YEC try to defend their approach to measurement other than by playing the “out of context” card. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that they know full well that they haven’t a leg to stand on in that respect. Especially if they have science degrees.
What they’re doing with Genesis 1 is simply weaponising it to try to bully and intimidate Christians into going along with them and we need to recognise that for what it is. It’s the only way they can get any traction.
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Aye, and my response to To what extent should we assume good faith? was always. Unless it’s obvious we’re dealing with knowing Machiavels. Which isn’t the case here. We have to be far smarter, more tolerant, inclusive in dealing with those with other epistemologies. And do it without superiority and patronization. As in politics.
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From your comment 49:
But then also this in your earlier comment 7:
Do you see the contradiction between these two?
In #7 you seem to favour the idea that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. But that idea is, in your words of #49, a “tradition of men”: the sort of thing you strongly disfavour.
To defend “Moses wrote the Pentateuch” is to defend “the tradition of men”.
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One of the biggest reasons I detest young earth creationism , and I absolutely do. “ Love the young earth creationist , hate the young earth creationism “ type of thing. Ultimately young earth creationism is bad theology that misses basic things like genre type and often they ignore common sense practices such as editing of a story, but they also ignore and misrepresent science. Ultimately it just encourages a very backwards unintelligent way of seeing the world. It does not mean the YEacist is stupid, but it does mean they often wear these dummy glasses. It often also seems like it’s teamed up with other things exponentially. I feel like you find far less bigotry within EC than you do within YECism.
Westboro Baptist church has been been holding “ evolution is satanic lies”.
Though the KKK is mostly gone it still exists somewhat and one of those places is in the south, though they are also in Washington state and ect… but in the south at food festivals like the strawberry festivals or German sausage festivals you still end up seeing these people set up a tent, wearing their uniform with the hood down selling little trinkets like pocket knives with the rebel flag and so on. I often poke at them when I’m there and none of them have ever agreed with evolution and when they do it’s a weird mixture of Adam was white and certain animals evolved into subhuman like species. But in general they just reject evolution in any form. Either way they ignore the actual scientific data.
Now i don’t think anywhere near all YECist are to those extremes. But I do often see YECism breeding in the same vein movements. Such as the political movement to enforce theocracy where all kinds of things are banned or criminalized. It seems to breed bigotry in many forms. It seems to breed this desire to suffocate personal freedoms. There are always exceptions and outliers but most of the time when there is some
Christian Parents that refuse medical treatment for their kids it’s some kind of YECist. The bulk of anti maskers and anti vaxxers I met were also some kind of yecist. When I’m doing volunteer work at nature preserves and meet other Christian’s they tend to almost always either already accepts evolutions or are in the process of being critical of YECism and want to accept EC but are not sure how to harmonize it and after talking are relieved to know that many do and here are some sources.
So in a nutshell I oppose YECism because I think it breeds toxicity, anti love and anti stewardship through misrepresenting and ignoring science and promoting the worse kinds of biblical hermeneutics.
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Yes, we can.
When you ignore evidence because it conflicts with the conclusion you want, you are no longer doing science.
Science is an activity. Science is a method. Science requires you to test falsifiable hypotheses. When you decide that no evidence can ever falsify your hypothesis you are no longer doing science.
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I am sorry to hear that the Communists killed your grandfather. I am sure he was a good man. On the other hand, you should know that communism is based on Marxist economic theory, not evolution. It is about politics and social movement, not about science.
During WW2 Hitler claimed tone Christian, but Nazi racism was the main enemy. Stalin was an atheist and a brutal dictator, but Hitler was worse.
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Nowhere does the bible claim inerrancy for itself, or ultimate authority so no interpretation, grammatical or otherwise can either.
Richard
YEC’s do claim inerrancy. They are telling us that their interpretation of the Bible is infallible which allows them to ignore any and all evidence that contradicts their interpretation. That is not science.
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