Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Only the favoured few get recognition, most toil in obscurity satisfied with doing what they can. A friend of mine was responsible for several patents but he was simply an employee of a large company.
Success is its own reward.
Richard
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The general assumption is that for scientists in industry (and to some extent, those working for the government), their reward is their paycheck. For those in academia and related venues, recognition is also a key reward. That doesnât have to mean a Nobel Prize â it can mean being respected within the community that works in a particular subfield.
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@glipsnort I was going to respond to @RichardG with something like, âSo your friend got paid to do a job?â but you conveyed the same idea with more information and no sarcasm! Great response.
This is why I oppose YEC, and even then not all of them. It raises the barrier to entry on a topic that seems so unimportant to me.
Jesus said go out to the world and make disciples. You donât make disciples by raising barriers to faith. And doctrines like YEC raises barriers. People lose their faith because of these types of doctrines, people are harder to reach even by Christians who disagree with such doctrines because of such doctrines. It undermines the prime mission we have been given for a doctrine which I still donât understand why it is so importante. Why is this doctrine so importante that it is worth risking peoples salvation over?
Now you are free to believe what you want. I donât have a fondamental issue with the belief. Most of us live in countries where we are free to think what we like and that is a good thing, that why I donât oppose all people who believe in YEC. But if you are making such a belief a requirement then we have a problem.
As for the day question, believe it is parabolical is perfectly acceptable to me. it wouldnât be unusual, look up the sphinx riddle for example.
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This. And you can substitute YECers, ECers, pastors and farmers in place of scientists, and it would still be a true statement. Or forum posters. We love to be part of a group, of a community, and will suffer a lot of arrows thrown our way to remain with our peers. Perhaps unto death, in the case of anti-vaxxers and soldiers.
That is not all bad, as community can achieve things individuals cannot, and we can do good things together that we cannot do separately, but it can be a negative thing, too. We need to be able to step back and see what is true and good, otherwise, as the Bible states, we have eyes but do not see.
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No theistic evolution does not mean a supernaturally force behind evolution. For evolution to work it does not require any supernatural forces. Same as a supernatural force is not required for me to grow trees, understand chemistry and so on.
Theistic evolution became into being as a coined phrase to combat two mindsets.
- Anti intellectualism of young earth creationism.
- Anti theistic beliefs of science, namely evolution.
So young earth creationists rejects science.
Atheists reject the supernatural.
Evolutionary creationist / theistic evolutionists simply means a Christian ( unless youâre of another faith ) that accepts the scientific theory of evolution. Theistic evolution is the same exact evolutionary sciences that atheists believe. The difference is that atheism believes that since naturalism can explain evolution it means God does not exist and theists say that just because science does not require God does not mean it cancels out God.
Take how gas in a car work. Letâs say young earth creationist denied gas. They said cars run without gas or another source of power. They say cars run purely on the supernatural influence of God. Atheists say no God is required and we have all the science to prove it. So gas makes a car run and therefore that means there is no God. A theistic car driver would say , actually all the science does indicate that gas or some other form of power is required for cars to run. Thst we donât need the supernatural to understand how cars work but that does not mean God does not exist. Itâs unrelated.
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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 doesnât 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 â 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 â not just ethics or morals but even in science, history, etc. You cannot bind Godâs 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, Godâs 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 Godâs 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 Godâs truth and the Bible is not the only source of truth we have accessible to us.
Itâs not about adding to the Bible, itâs about seeking truth. Science is a means of knowing true things about the world. Godâs revelation is another. Since truth canât conflict with truth, if we are understanding both science and Godâs revelation well, then they will support one another and give us a fuller picture of reality. If there is a conflict, the solution isnât 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, thatâs irrelevantâŚnot to mention egregiously but hilariously misspelled ;). Second, you didnât answer my question, which was âdo you consider [the absence of the word âevolutionâ in the Bible] a serious argument against evolution?â 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 itâs not?
Edit: I didnât 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 itâs not âthe theories and the traditions of men.â Itâs measurement. Which the Bible demands that we conduct and interpret honestly and accurately. And as Iâve said already, you canât 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 âsame evidence, different interpretations,â 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?
Youâre forgetting one important thing here. Genesis 1 talks about events on a cosmic scale. Once you leave the Earthâs 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. Likeâyeah, 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, becauseâŚwellâŚforget about all that electrodynamics stuff, it just suits us.â 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 â 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?
Thatâs 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 itâs just âsecular scienceâ that they are opposing, but it isnât âsecular scienceâ that tells us that the earth is 4.5 billion years old; itâs the most basic, fundamental principles of measurement and mathematics that sit right at the foundation of every branch of science, secular or not. Itâs particularly telling that Iâve never had a YEC try to defend their approach to measurement other than by playing the âout of contextâ card. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that they know full well that they havenât a leg to stand on in that respect. Especially if they have science degrees.
What theyâre 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. Itâs 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 itâs obvious weâre dealing with knowing Machiavels. Which isnât 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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