That is not a proper analogy because it misunderstands the truck scale argument and it misunderstands how measurement works.
The very first thing that you learn in the very first hour of the very first practical class in any A level physics course worth its salt is that every form of measurement has two sources of error: random error and systematic error, and that both of these must be quantified. Weighing a toy truck and getting a reading of 500 pounds does not mean that a 50,000 pound truck could weigh nothing too. It means that it could be as low as 49,500 pounds and no lower.
This is an error that I see young earth arguments making over and over again. They assume that there are only two possible options: “reliable” and “unreliable” with no regard whatsoever to any actual quantification or calibration efforts. I’m sorry but measurement does not work like that, and nor does anything else for that matter.
Hundreds of thousands or millions of years may sound like a lot, but the same principle applies even when the ages are in the billions of years. An error of two million years is only ±0.05% when you are considering ages of four billion.
That is an opinion based on bias, it cannot be demonstrated from the text. The truth is that we don’t know in most cases how inspiration occurred because we aren’t told. The statement in 2 Peter doesn’t clarify things at all because there is no information about the process of being “carried along”; from the word/grammar it could be a time period while they were writing or it could have begun at the moment their brains first began to function.
The nature of all cases cannot be extrapolated from the few where we are told how things went.
Or at the very least that they were not YHWH-Elohim’s equals. It took the opening Creation story to say more. I sometimes envision Moses after the golden calf incident and its aftermath thinking, “Okay, how do I get their brains free from that Egyptian crap? Ah – the people know that the different cities in Egypt change their creation story to put the local god on top, so I’ll take their shared creation story and use it to tell them that all those gods are just Yahweh’s tools! That will get the point across.”
It’s something that should be asked about every piece of the scriptures: Why did the writer choose the form he did? What was the Holy Spirit’s message through the use of that form?
That’s what’s missing in the YEC view that leads to the question of this thread: All the scriptures were written to people who saw the world very differently, and so long as we try to make the scriptures read as though they’re our mail and not theirs, we’ll miss the point.
Which is why there’s no actual problem with the situation that scholars recognize, that there were other Semites already in the Promised Land when the Israelites got there, and those Semites in large numbers joined themselves to Israel: Israel was never just Abraham’s, Isaac’s, and Jacob’s offspring by blood, it was by the promise. We often think that oh, now it’s by the promise, but then it was by the Law and by inheritance, but Paul’s point is that it was always by the promise – by faith(fulness).
Fighting to convince people that Genesis 1 was meant literally is not only wrong and dangerous, it is those things because it betrays the Gospel: it implies that we have to have the right knowledge (Gnosticism) in order to come to Christ, or that we have to have the rights answers to be faithful to Christ – but faithfulness isn’t about having knowledge or answers, it’s about showing loyalty by living lives that are set apart, that have changed from what they were, that in at least some small ways they are no longer laborious or wearying but have begun to experience Christ’s rest; or to use an analogy from one of the church Fathers, it is about surrendering the rudder of our life to Christ and letting Him change our course to whatever degree, large or small, that He chooses.
Why bother with the Bible? Because it is about how God comes to meet us where we are and makes a new course possible, one towards being majestic eternal beings beyond our current imagining.
Huh – my first chemistry professor had a list of three; he included “stupid error”, which he corrected out loud to the more polite “human error”.
Oh, superb point!
It applies to the question at hand because there is “error” and then there is “error”: some error would make the Bible unreliable (e.g. wildly incompatible assertions about just who Jesus is) while other error affects its reliability not one whit!
And that’s especially so when the “errors” are of human invention as a result of trying to make this special set of ancient literature be something it isn’t and was never meant to be.
[Caught myself with a mental image of my Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and humming, “Let it be, let it be…” as I prayed before opening it.]
Because they wouldn’t work. Why can’t you see this?
It is IC but subtle. The shape of a bone may look simple enough but if you were trying to construct one you would have to take several hundred measurements and carve it by hand because a lathe or CNC would not be able to do it.
The mammalian limb is a remarkable piece of engineering. Human robotic limbs are simple by comparison… They reproduce the motion, but not the design or structure.
It amazes me that you keep criticising my use or not of the Bible but when I hold onto a specific understanding of genesis 1 it is still me who is wrong.
I have no certainty of how God guided Evolution but I am 100% sure that it could not guide itself which is basically what ToE claims It might be that He “programmed” the DNA coding so that when the right combination is “found” it clicks, or He might have injected specific creations (Cambrian Explosion?). All I see, and you can’t seem to, is an order and perfection that belies a chaotic construction. Despite all its mechanisms and “controls” ToE is still chaotic. It has to be if there no intelligent oversite. Evolution does not have a mind It cannot asses, or plan or even compensate. it does not have those cognitive abilities. it is not a person in any shape or form.
I harp on about feathers but the evolutionary explanation of them being some sort of display that just so happens t be perfect for flight is as far out as an YEC claim. The feather has one primary function and it isn’t display. or insulation. The fact that there are fliightless birds is irrelevant.
It doesn’t make Christians look silly it makes Scientists look arrogant. As if details do not matter.
All the intricacies of Ecology and physiology are just brushed away by “There are millions of years to achieve this”. Can’t you see that each one is a gigantic fluke?
Time cannot solve all problems. Some actually need intelligent input. That applies in Engineering and Industry even Healing and medicine, why not Creation?
Or to demonstrate that the God of Israel was superior to the gods of Egypt—which were taken as real figures by monolatrists.
Referring to the tenth plague, God said, “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt” (Ex. 12:12).
Reflecting on the exodus as a whole Moses stated, “Who among the gods is like you, O Yahweh?” (15:11).
Also, “Moses told his father-in-law about everything Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel’s sake…[Jethro] said, ‘Praise be to Yahweh, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly’” (18:8, 10–11).
Again, “They marched out boldly in full view of the Egyptians … for Yahweh had brought judgment on their gods” (Num. 33:3–4)
Yes, and that they are usually (if real) demons. I think many somewhat more recent (say, Medieval and since) people have been a bit too ready to attribute all false gods to being demons, instead of just being fakes (as described in Isaiah 44 and Jeremiah 10), and conversely, more post-“Enlightenment” people seem too slow to allow that some false gods may be demons.
The Egyptian Gods, Roman & Greek Pantheons, Babylon and of course Bhaal are all in dirrect competition with Judaism. (I refuse to name God) What about those religions who have never come into contact with Israel? Or at least, not in Biblbical times.
Does God accept genuine worship within the context of culture until or unless it competes with His chosen religion? What about Judaism? It has so say been superseded but it still survives. Then there is Islam that post dates the Bible. The crusades failed to extinguish it. Hinduism? Is overrun with symbolism and icons (Graven Images)
Christ on the Cross? Madonna? Saints? Graven Images?
And as for all false gods being demons? Where does Native American belies fit in?
IOW can we be so dogmatic about how God has approached and still approaches humanity?
If you think about the pantheons of Rome or Norway they do not iinteract with us. They do their own thing and the beleivers just hope they will ignore them. Most primal beleifs are more worship of the strong and unknown than any reall formaiised god.
Christianity claims a relationship. We claim that God is personal and cares for the individual. That is antithesis to the traditional views of God (Or gods) Impesronality or disdain would not work for demons any more than God. The whole point of the demon is to deceive and entice. That means getting in close and interacting. Ignoring or not reacting would fail every time.
Just a few random curved balls to be hit for six.(Or should that be smashed out of the Park?)
Another way to look at it that people are more familiar with than truck scales, is measuring distance with you car’s odometer. It works great in determining the distance between two cities, but if you use it to measure the length of your driveway (and forgive me for using US centric measurement) which is the usual 50 ft or so, you are going to get one of two measurements: 0 miles, or 0.1 miles. so, do you claim your driveway is infinitely short, or that it is 528 ft long?
I’ve never heard this. Veiling was standard in many cultural contexts in the ANE for married women. It was the elaborate (braided) hairstyles of 1 Tim 2:9 that indicated great wealth and therefore were considered immodest. Most of the commands about modesty and propriety in the NT are against flaunting wealth, not against flaunting sexuality.
Ah but now we are in the realms of tolerance rather accuracy. In engineering the tolerance can be as small as 2 or 3 thousandth of an inch, the Odometer (Milometer in the UK) is working in 10th of a mile (Kilometer) Your standard ruler might go to 16ths or just mm, but how accurate is perfect?
I guess we are back to definitions or parameters, even measuring systems. Converting between metric and SAE causes nightmares because they don’t always compare exactly.
Your question “Does that mean that the other gods were read and existed?” --Good one! Very controversial. Read Heiser’s The Unseen Realm" for a larger discussion of this. I initially was attracted to his book because of its somewhat prolonged discussion of Genesis 6–who were those beings that are being discussed there, etc?
Heiser (who has since passed away) had a website (or did have one) and you might find his book helpful – or at least challenging on this.
But in a nutshell, Heiser would say that these other “gods” were demonic angels posing as “the real deal” …so in that sense “the other gods” were real and existed — but were not really God Himself. OK…just a thought. Explore on your own if you like.
The problem with that is the interaction or not. Ezekiel on Mt Carmel taunted the followers because Their God was not reacting to them. A demon would not be so remote. It is self defeating to be proved not to exist. A Demon would fight back with all the power he could muster.
All i am trying to say is that there is no “easy” answer or een a Universal answer. Each faith will have its own parameters within which it allows for interaction. Any response from the “god” will be positive, no response would be negative. Unless you ae not expecting a response, but that changes everything. We do and that is the yardstick we use for genuine.
According to some passage and authors/editors of scripture, yes.
Before I even look at it, what does the narrative in Kings have to do with the Exodus narrative or the Pentateuch in general which I cited? It looks like you are implying the various accounts must inerrantly teach the same thing or have the same view of other gods. Otherwise, I don’t follow why you are bringing it up. Exodus says what it says and Kings says what it says. I don’t follow you.
The view at the time and the purpose of the plagues as I stated. It wasn’t to show their gods didn’t exist. It was to show the superiority of Israel’s God because people were polytheists at the time (monolatrists).
All I did was point out what Scripture says. I never argued Egypt’s gods were real. Only that the Bible treats them as such in places. Your reference to other scripture can never nullify or negate that simple fact.
And Demons “fight back” you say? “would not be so remote”?
I cannot personally claim great knowledge of what demonic beings would or would not do. But I think I have read that they have to get clearance from someone.
In 1 Kings 18, Baal—who is supposed to be the god of fire — has trouble making it. Read Heiser…Heiser’s view is a development of the “divine counsel” concept which is a little complex, maybe controversial and I have read i of this council idea elsewhere.
