Replies

Thanks for the ping.

Philosophy is not my thing and some of what you and The_Reader_David have been discussing has gone right over my head. However, I think a-g and bb would find this intriguing.

The only thing about about the literal 6 day creation that I have the most difficulty with is when creationists claim that the earth is 6,000 years old. I know someone who is fluent in Hebrew and he told me once, decades ago, that in the Hebrew, there is a change of tense between the first and second verses of Genesis one, indicating that an unknown amount of time passed between creation being spoken and God working on the earth to make it habitable.

I don’t have a problem with God creating the universe in 6 days with the appearance of age. I know the typical arguments that the evos use accusing God of deception for doing that, but what they fail to recognize is that creating with the appearance of age can be for sheer usefulness. Adam was created with the appearance of age, not to deceive, but as a practical matter. He had to in order for man to procreate. There’s simply no way of having a human grow from fertilized egg to adult without somewhere for that egg to grow.

I think that the forensic evidence found in the fossil record supports special creation. There are simply too many breaks and jumps in evolution with an appalling lack of intermediate forms to support the ToE as evos put it forth.

There is an interesting take on reconciling the apparent age of the universe with the literal six day creation and it has to do with time dilation. I find it intriguing and I do not think it at all compromises the integrity of Scripture.

The Age of the Universe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1576941/posts

[[I know someone who is fluent in Hebrew and he told me once, decades ago, that in the Hebrew, there is a change of tense between the first and second verses of Genesis one,]]

That’s what that link i posted talekd about- there is a change (actually between verse 5 and verse 6 I beleive)

Basically, what the article was statign was that Yeah, there is the change, but there is a reason for the change (which is backed up by numerous other ‘lists’ throughout the bible) and htere is no reason to believe that the words “First day’ and “Day” meant anythign other than a literal 24 hour days becasue when describing lsits, it is common for hte writers to use a cardinal form to begin the list to establish that the list will be talking about, in this case, a literal 24 hour period, and then the following ordinals used will establish clearly that the cardinal word was speakign about 24 hours

Essentially there were two forms of the word used- the first was suppose4dly, accordign to long earth advocates, a a more ‘casual’ use of Day was used for the “First Day” whiel the following words for day were concise- in other words, since the first use didn’t coem otu and state a literal 24 hour period, a whole unbiblical hypothesis has arisen (in which whoel sectiosn of God’s word need to be ‘reinterpreted in order to fir a theistic evoltuionary scenario) which is inconsistant with hte scriptures- soem of hte reasosn beign the whole ‘Death and sin’ BEFORE the fall of man issue I brought up- (aNd once again, in order to accomodate the unbiblical hypothesis of long ages, Theistic evolutionists once again change God’s word to mean that there was physical death before the fall, but that God was onlty talkign about spiritual death if Adam ate the fruit- This too is inconsistant with God’s word)

The link I provided has the work Steven Boyd who also puts an end to the claim that Genesis is nothign but peotry- He did an exhastive reasearch into the matter and has proven that it is prose, not poetry- which is a claim often thrown at young earth creationists- again- just another attempt to deconstruct God’s word

As well, a definitive stuidy of the Hebrew doen by one Andrew Steinmann shows that there is no question the ‘First Day’ is meant ot convey a literal day, and Hebrew Scholars do not question the matter because htere is no basis for questioning it- the Article just goes on to show why htere is no reason to question that-

Basically, the conclusio n is that whenever there are lists of ordinal numbers (in which it is clearly speakign about 24 hour days) the cardinakl form of hte word is to be used IN THE BEGINNING of the list (that is important, because it establishes that the following words will describe what the FIRST use of the word means- thsi is proven out many times throuhgout scripture and is consistant with the Hebrew language)

His final conclusiosn o nthe matter are the following fro mthe l ink I gave previously:

“It has been my experience that those who question the normal historical narrative reading of Genesis 1:1–2:4 tend to be my fellow evangelicals. Theological liberals recognize the text as saying that God created the universe in six 24-hour days. They see evangelicals who adopt alternative readings of the text as engaged in a form of suspect apologetics. I believe the liberal critique to be accurate. Where I differ from them, however, is that I believe the text is correct in what it is teaching. A more effective apologetic therefore lies in simply admitting what the text proclaims and showing that it has far more explanatory power than many people think. In that light, I am excited by the kind of research being conducted by CMI and likeminded creation science organizations. God means what He says and He did it just as Genesis says he did”

just another quick comment in anticipation of htose who claim there was death before the fall, and who point iot hingsl iek cell death, plant life death, bacterai death- These low life form deaths were not a part of the curse of the fall- the death spoken abotu by God was nephesh chayyah - death of vertebrates basically

and onem orep oint that long age creationists like to ignore is the fact that when the word yom is used to denote long periods of time, the context always backs that concept up- yet we do NOT see that in Geesis 1:5- 24- what we see is the context backign up the concept of a short period of time, and specifically a period that is described as literally day and night- Again- it is common i nthe Hebrew language to preface ordinals with a Cardinal- The Cardinal beign described by the ordinals that follow-

It is akin to stating “On the day I began life, it became clear to my folks that the second 24 hour day, the thrid day which included both night and day, and the fourth day which saw light and darkeness (as is common to a literal day), was goign to be a sheer joy for my Folks”

Note that I did NOT say “On the very first FIRST 24 HOUR DAY that my life began”, I simpyl said “ON THE DAY”- but the following descritions go on to describe what I meant by my first use of the word DAY- there is no reason to assume I was talking about anything other than 1 literal day- especially when hte followign context make it clear that I was describign the very next day and the days which followed- to interpret it any other way woudl be to pervert the original intent and one woudl have to force the rest of the sentence into a convoluted twisted explanation for why those days were different than the first day mentioned

Conclusion is that when the Hebrews Described DAY- then went on to follow it up with a dfescription of what DAY meant by describign what the successive DAYS stood for, the first use of hte word means the same- when the Hebrews used the word day without follwoign it up with descriptors, or followed with descriptors which made it clear IN CONTEXT that the Hebrews meant LONG PERIOD- then we can rightfully assume they meant LONG PERIODS OF TIME and htere is no reason to assume they meant anythign other than what they meant- However, the fellow I listed in previous post has foudn that the creation record does not follow the patterns used by the Hebrews when discussing long periods of time- isn’t even close to using hte same context- and no languages Scholar woudl think otherwise- only those tryign to fit millions.billions of years into the cvreation story woudl think so