they are absolutely not false testimonies…you will not once find a YEC reinterpreting scripture in order to make it align with what they believe Science is apprently telling them. All YEC take scripture and mould their science conclusions around the bible statement first!
For example, YEC do not use any of the following arguments, however ANE use almost all of them…and regularly:
Genesis is an allegory
Old Testmanet language has been incorrectly interpreted by ancient scholars…literary and genre arguments presented here, however, these do not align with the fact that other bible writers hundreds even a thousand years later make the same claims of historical fact in a different language…one of these figures is Gods own Son who created the earth in the first place!
Genesis and the statements in the bible which do no align with science must be lessons in morality rather than real events
the genealogies arent real records of humanity in the bible
There must be huge gaps in the genealogies (apparently thousands/hundreds of thousands of years)
Moses probably didnt really exist
The Exodus probably didnt really happen
The Israelites probably never were in captivity in Egypt
The Ark of the covenant hasnt been found probably because the Israelites were never in the Sinai desert and never built an ark as commanded by God…its a made up story
Noah wasnt a real man, nor were his sons
The confusing of language at the tower of Babel…this isnt a real event as portrayed in the bible, its a mythical story of some other bible lesson God is trying to teach us
Genesis is poetry (comparisons often used in support of this cite texts from biblica books where the entire book referenced is clearly poetic and therefore intentionally different from the examples cited in Genesis)
The Old Testament Tabernacle…plans werent given to Moses by God as “a copy of the Heavenly model”…Moses copied ancient Egyptian Pharoah “field tents” and pretended God gave him the plans (how Israelites who were in captivity for hundreds of years in Egypt wouldnt have known this and subsequently discredited the story is profoundly problematic id suggest)
So you are arguing theology with “blinkers” on! (horse blinkers just in case you are wondering)
Too late! It was already done (interpreted, re-interpreted, and filtered through a modern framework) for us all even before you inherited it. The people most blind to what they’ve been given by preceding generations and contemporary peers are those who’ve had it for a long enough time that they don’t even think they’ve been given anything - they imagine it was never any other way. You don’t see it or smell it because it’s the air you’ve been breathing since birth. It’s invisible to you. But not to others. We all have these doxa. Some are just better at realizing at least some of it - or even just realizing it must exist even if we still can’t identify our own as well as outsiders can see it for us. Others, like yourself, tend to deny it entirely, and therefore become the most easily manipulatable by it.
What young earthists do is take scientific evidence and cherry-pick it, quote mine it, misrepresent it, fudge measurements on it, and defy every rule of science in the book to try and force-fit it to predetermined conclusions that it quite clearly contradicts.
That is not “taking scripture and moulding their science conclusions around the bible (sic) statement first.” It is lying.
I did not say that your YEC beliefs are false testimonies - I think they are misinterpretations but it is natural that you try to defend them. What I think was a false testimony was the following claim:
I assume that the other non-YEC believers would agree that we are not worshiping science. We believe God and worship Him. As humans we do not know everything and may have various misinterpretations about the biblical scriptures but we worship and serve according to our best understanding. Claims that non-YEC believers worship a wrong god, and worship science and theology more than God are strong claims.
Your claim about arguing theology with blinkers on might be correct if you are talking to your mirror image. I claim that YEC interpretations (at least the version advocated by AiG) demands blinkers on. I base my claim on the guideline of AiG claiming that anything that seems to be against their interpretation of the biblical scriptures cannot be accepted.
Animals reproducing after their kind. Throughout the Bible, a goat is a goat and a sheep is a sheep, a horse is a horse and a donkey is a donkey. Animals are not confused. Adam named them. YEC reinterprets scripture to turn this simple concept into weird massively heterogeneous protocreatures at creation that give rise to hundreds of actual kinds, then does it again at the flood. That is not in scripture. Nobody in church history ever wrote anything like this until YEC came along, and nobody would have if all the animals in Australia, North and South America, the polar regions, and huge amounts of discovered extinct megafauna, dinosaurs, and Permian animals, had not crowded out the Ark. There is this forum thread on the topic - Is Baraminology Even Scriptural?.
The Biblical Flood was fed by springs and rain. Water came up, water went down. The rains came down and the floods came up. YEC reinterprets that to whatever geology finds to be old, the flood did it. There is nothing in scripture about earthquakes or volcanoes, reshaping the Earth, or tectonic plates, let alone chunks of Earth blasting into space. Where is the chapter and verse speaking of accelerated radioactive decay? If God wanted to destroy life on Earth, the radioactivity alone would have done the job, the Flood would not even be necessary. What is the text for magnetic reversals? Why are named rivers of Eden still present after the flood? What YEC projects into the flood story is just bizarre.
Here is one that doesn’t get a lot of mention. It is clear from history and the close Biblical Hebrew phonetic reference that the pharaoh Shishaq, who attacked Jerusalem during the reign of King Rehoboam as recorded in Kings and Chronicles, is the Egyptian Sheshonq, who left records of his exploits. Instead of simply accepting that Biblical history is validated by Egyptology, YEC contorts to identify Shishaq with earlier pharaohs, because there is far too much Egyptian history to fit to their timeline charts.
Here is one of many articles in which YECs reintepret scripture in order to align with what they believe science is telling them about rabbit feeding practices.
Sorry, but that understanding can be found from 200 BCE right on through the church Fathers, the middle ages, the Reformation, and right up until today.
That’s perfectly good and understandable English.
Natural selection is observed. Unless you are asserting that the Devil is more powerful than God, then what is observed is how God works.
I reject category errors however much you want others to embrace them.
Then demonstrate from scripture that “all life has value”.
No, you just find YEC insisting that scripture teaches science.
And thereby throws out the theology.
False. Nothing in ancient near east studies remotely suggests that the opening of Genesis is allegorical – indeed it flat denies such a thing.
False. Nothing in ancient near east studies remotely suggests that “Old Testmanet language has been incorrectly interpreted by ancient scholars”.
False. Nothing in ancient near east studies remotely suggests that “Genesis and the statements in the bible which do no align with science must be lessons in morality rather than real events” – in fact ANE studies don’t involve science except when archaeology is a part.
Adam, it’s plain you have at best a very poor understanding of the ancient near east and what ancient near east studies are.
True, that – though what’s really missing from the statement is that YEC doesn’t start with scripture, it starts with a scientific-materialist worldview and forces it onto ancient literature.
That’s why I regularly call much of what YEC does “science fiction”. It isn’t text-based, it isn’t science-based, it’s just speculative heaps of invented theology.
Whoa – that’s one I’ve never heard before! It’s . . . bizarre.
That’s not really re-interpreting scripture, it’s merely setting out that you can’t force modern definitions onto an ancient text – that not only can something be lost in translation, but that things can be gained, leading to confusion.
The fact that you need to be told by Scripture is bad enough.
And you justify your view of God and creation by your view of Scripture.
Your whole faith is what you are told.
If you had said “all life had equal value” you might have been able to justify yourself
Look at the lilies of the field, God clothes them.
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them
Are not two sparrow s sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.
And that is just from Matthew;s Gospel.
You really should read the whole Bible and not just the odd proof texts that you have memorised and live by.
There are so many more examples of God’s care for all of His creation you must be blind not to see them.
Whether God loves humans more is probably a mute point that you would assert from a few chosen verses, but to claim that God doesn’t care at all is just, well, unbelievable
I suggest that before you claim ignore Scripture, again you should read more of what i write. it is not that I ignore it, only that i do not have such a rigid and uncompromisingly human view that you do.
You also need to know the meaning of personal faith, but that is beyond your comprehension, it would seem. You see everything in Black & white. Right and Wrong, No individuality. No personal “opinions”.
With so much diversity in humanity, why should one faith fit all?
No, I derive my view of God and Creation from scripture. Why? Because it is the only authoritative source.
Hardly – but the cognitive foundation is. That’s how Paul explains it works – faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
And how does He feed them? With the lives of other creatures. So the scripture affirms the very thing you object to, that God’s view of the value of life involves death, where the smaller and weaker feed the stronger.
That it is not good for some to die that others might live is not a value found in the Bible – it comes from post-Enlightenment values.
You are blind in not seeing how it works. God provides prey for the predator, right there in Matthew.
So it turns out that “survival of the fittest” matches what scripture tells us.
No, it is that you impose human values from outside scripture, and thereby ignore what doesn’t fit your preferences.
Because either Christ died for all or not. If Christ is the exact representation of God’s being, then Christianity is the one faith.
Either Christ is the center or Christianity is false.
Irrelevant – that any are makes your position fail.
Quite the contrary – you brought it up, as you have often done before.
Nice way to dodge and change the subject. You might try paying attention to context:
Because either Christ died for all or not. If Christ is the exact representation of God’s being, then Christianity is the one faith.
Either Christ is the center or Christianity is false.
But since you brought it up: since Christ is the exact representation of God’s being, that means He is the exact reprresentation of the Trinity.
And just BTW, the Trinity has no parts.
Not if you understand it correctly it doesn’t.
(and you can’t be bothered to quote your “proof”.)
more empty assertions.
You really can’t be bothered to read more than one sentence at a time. How does that work with context?
I am not the one who claims death is wrong, or caused by humanity, or that it demonstrates God’s lack of care.
pot calling the kettle black.
If Christ is part of the Trinity then He is always at the centre of any faith in God! But you appear not to understand that.
wow. Not a Trinitarian then. That statement incorporates several Trinity heresies.
???
I state that Christ died that we might live and you claim I am denying it?
I think you need to go back to your English Comprehension class.
“Greater Love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends.” (Jesus)
“That you die for your fiends is amazing but Jesus died for us even when we were His enemies”(paraphrased Paul)
He is at the center of any faith that (1) acknowledges the Trinity and (2) honors Christ as the perfect representation of God’s being. Anything else is not faith in God, it is faith in an idol that is labeled “God”.
Um, what? It’s two clear statements about the Trinity, both of them excluding heresy, not including any.
No, you argued that it is not good for some to die that others might live, and then you claimed that Jesus shows this. But Jesus dying for others shows exactly the opposite.
Your entire argument against evolution was that it is not good for any to die, that death shows the opposite of God’s character. I pointed out that this is not a value found in scripture. You noted that Jesus died for others, which agrees with my point.
Both those quotes claim it is honorable to give your own life.
How can you deny this?
How? In what world? In whose mind?
Give me something to go on instead of blank assertions.
Wrong
You have proved beyond doubt that you failed to understand.
I said that the strong being favoured was wrong. That may or may not include death, but it is the principle I claim is wrong. You do know what a principle is?
a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning:
That is your quote, not my understanding
That Jesus died for everyone is not a bad thing in any Christian’s book. It is the foundation of Christianity.
Now, I know that there ae varying views of the Cross and the act of sacrifice, but how ever you look at it we do not have a faith if Jesus did not die (or be raised) So how can it not be good! (not a question)
You are just plain wrong, and it takes a lot for me to state such a thing.
