Posted on 08/27/2005 9:28:07 PM PDT by Crackingham
Dinny the roadside dinosaur has found religion. The 45-foot-high concrete apatosaurus has towered over Interstate 10 near Palm Springs for nearly three decades as a kitschy prehistoric pit stop for tourists. Now he is the star of a renovated attraction that disputes the fact that dinosaurs died off millions of years before humans first walked the planet.
Dinny's new owners, pointing to the Book of Genesis, contend that most dinosaurs arrived on Earth the same day as Adam and Eve, some 6,000 years ago, and later marched two by two onto Noah's Ark. The gift shop at the attraction, called the Cabazon Dinosaurs, sells toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution."
The Cabazon Dinosaurs join at least half a dozen other roadside attractions nationwide that use the giant reptiles' popularity in seeking to win converts to creationism. And more are on the way.
"We're putting evolutionists on notice: We're taking the dinosaurs back," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian group building a $25-million creationist museum in Petersburg, Ky., that's already overrun with model sauropods and velociraptors.
"They're used to teach people that there's no God, and they're used to brainwash people," he said. "Evolutionists get very upset when we use dinosaurs. That's their star."
The nation's top paleontologists find the creation theory preposterous and say children are being misled by dinosaur exhibits that take the Jurassic out of "Jurassic Park."
"Dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden, and Noah's Ark? Give me a break," said Kevin Padian, curator at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley and president of National Center for Science Education, an Oakland group that supports teaching evolution. "For them, 'The Flintstones' is a documentary."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
2 Peter 3:3-7 "First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the Earth was formed out of water and with water. By water also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and Earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men." This is referring to Genesis 1:2 and earliar.
The world of THAT time was deluged. What time? The world that was formed out of water. The present heavens and Earth are the same HEAVENS and EARTH that existed in Noah's time. This passage is not referring to Noah's flood. When Noah's flood took place nothing changed the Heavens from what they had been to what they are now.
Sin did not destroy a pre-Adamic world.
Isaiah 14:12 "How you have fallen from heaven, verse 16; is this the man who shook the Earth, verse 17; The man who made the world a desert." When in scripture did Satan do this? When did the world become a desert? His sin is described in verse 13....I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God. Verse 14; I will make myself like the most high. But since Satan is not flesh and blood, he still lives. But sin still destroyed the pre-Adamic world necessitating a new creation which God accomplished in seven literal days.
Yes, actually, it is the way it works among other shifty methods. The "science" of dating is about as reliable as a politician's promises. And it's because the premised assumptives going into the methodology don't hold up under scrutiny. It isn't a crime to be wrong. And if these guys were actually looking for the truth instead of trying to prop up an agenda, the heat in that regard wouldn't be so great. So don't go there with me. All the "equipment" methods used are based on assumptives that not only can't be proven; but, rather have been called into question on their face. 14c was in trouble well before argon came on the scene and it was gauged to the 14c methodology and had equally absurd assumptives given that the 14c assumptives were considered 'rational'. Truth is, nothing in way of assumtives is irrational for the evo crowd until somebody steps in to defrock the fraudulent assuptions and then ya'll act like the bunch of cowboys in Young Guns after they shot their own sherrif.., "Uh oh". Course, when the press comes, the story will be, it was that indian fellow.. our aim is impeccable.. kinda sounds Roman Rite to me. Learn a word: fallible. It's a happenstance, not a crime. The crime is the story ya'll push.
Whoop de doo. Try looking for DNA in it.
As usual, when confronted with an article full of facts, you start babbling about agendas and conspiracies, rather than even attempting to address anything in the article.
I enjoy science in that it reveals to us how much our Creator cares. He could have easily made things only black and white for instance -- or not added odor to the elements -- or not made such a wide array of animals to watch and marvel at -- or not made offshore winds strike breaking waves that throw off curtains of mist creating patterns in the refracted light of the sunset, all the while producing a cacophony of thunderous sound -- or created us with a brain capable of processing information for a body that can drive a convertible 70 miles per hour along a curvy road, while listening and singing to our favorite song as the wind blows through the hair on our head and arms, sensing the pitch of the road, while estimating the necessary speed to make an upcoming turn, while breaking and down-shifting as we turn the steering wheel the minutest amount.
All this powered by a potato!
No, I didn't read the article. Plain and simple. This isn't the first of these threads I've been on nor is it the first time offers of non-proof have ever been presented. Sorry. No amount of snowjob articles will change the fact that 14c testing was based on faulty premises and those same faulty premises have just been carried over into every other method. When it comes right down to it, there is no dating method that can be said to work beyond things for which we know a solid date from observation.. and even then they give incorrect dates. But, oh, how accurate it is...
And he's damned sure of it!!
--EvoDude
I would bet that NO would have a very high percentage of people that believed in creationism. Why did God punish them?
"I would bet that NO would have a very high percentage of people that believed in creationism. Why did God punish them?"
I would have no knowledge to take that bet on, and seems the majority left when the call came.
Blaming God for man's engineering defects for building inside a bowl below sea level as punishment is a bit accusatory now isn't it? Man does need to point the finger of blame to God and rarely ever remembers Him as they draw in every breath.
Then don't thank him for the good acts of man or nature. You can't have it both ways ...
1) God created man.
2)God knew every action man would do.
3)God knew when he created man that they would have a great flood in NO due to the engineering defects.
3)God was aware of the defects yet did nothing to prevent the catastrophe that he designed.
WOW well maybe I can have a ring side seat when you get to personally file your complaint.
Seeing how a Christian would NEVER bear false witness most of the creos on this board must not be Christians.
Nice of you to be so concerned about my social life.
Did Moses REALLY strike a rock to get water out? Did God REALLY rain down fire and brimstone on Sodom? Did His finger REALLY write on stone tablets and a wall?
I don't know, but I would doubt these things happened in the literal sense. I interpret the Bible as a series of analogies meant to convey lessons about life. The Bible was somehow directed by God, but most likely written down by wise humans. The story about fire and brimstone teaches us about sin, punishment and second chances, and Moses' striking of the rock is a metaphor about trusting God. Many Jews and Christians do believe these stories occurred literally as they are written down, and I respect their beliefs. Please respect mine.
The bible is just another book. It may or may not teach anything.
I am not sure why any skeptic would waste so much time arguing about an oriental book. That is one I have never figured out, unless it is for political reasons.
That is the exception that I have found. Why do agnostics, atheists, etc. (like me) spend so much time and energy talking about some book called the bible? Politics?
You are NOT helping the evolutionary cause. You help to expose what the ideology is really about.... flipping the proverbial bird at the Heavenly Father.
Bearing false witness requires a knowledge with intent that what is said is a lie in the eyes of the Heavenly Father. You do not have that kind of power to judge the mind of another person.
Evolution is a lie to me, no ifs ands or buts about it, so by your measure I could accuse you of bearing false witness.
What point in your life did you decide that it was God who was responsible for all evil? What exactly did He do or not do to you?
relax
Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, Gen 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. Gen 2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Problems with the Gap Theory
It is inconsistent with God creating everything in six days, as Scripture states.
Exodus 20:11 says, "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy". Thus, the creation of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) and the sea and all that is in them (the rest of creation) was completed in six days.[1] Where is there time for a gap?
(Review the creation week)
It puts death, disease, and suffering before the Fall, contrary to Scripture.
From Romans 5:12, "Therefore, even as through one man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed on all men inasmuch as have sinned," we understand that there could not have been human sin or death before Adam. The Bible teaches (1 Corinthians 15) that Adam was the first man, and as a result of his rebellion (sin), death and corruption (disease, bloodshed, and suffering) entered the universe. Before Adam sinned there could not have been any (nephesh[2]) animal or human death. Note also that there could not have been a race of men before Adam that died in "Lucifer's flood" because 1 Corinthians 15:45 tells us that Adam was the "first" man.
Genesis 1:29-30 teaches us that the animals and man were originally created vegetarian. This is consistent with God's description of the creation as "very good." How could a fossil record which gives evidence of disease, violence, death, and decay (fossils have been found of animals apparently fighting and certainly eating each other) be described as "very good"? Thus, the death of billions of animals (and many humans) as seen in the fossil record must have occurred after Adam's sin. The historical event of Noah's flood, recorded in Genesis, provides an explanation for the presence of huge numbers of dead animals buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.
Romans 8:22 teaches us that "we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now." Clearly the whole of creation was, and is, subject to decay and corruption because of sin. The fossil record shows disease, decay, and death. When gap theorists believe that disease, decay, and death existed before Adam sinned, they ignore that this contradicts the teaching of Scripture.[3]
The version of the gap theory that puts Satan's fall at the end of the geological ages, just before the supposed pre-Adamic Lucifer's flood, has a further problem -- the death and suffering recorded in the fossils must have been God's fault. As it happened before Satan's fall, Satan and sin cannot be blamed for it.[4]
The gap theory is logically inconsistent because it explains away what it is supposed to accommodate -- supposed evidence for an old earth.
Gap theorists accept that the earth is very old. They base this on geologic evidence interpreted with the assumption that the present is the key to the past. This assumption implies that in the past, sediments containing fossils formed at basically the same rate as they do today. This is also used by most geologists and biologists to justify belief in the "geologic column" as represented by billions of years of earth history. This geologic column has become the showcase of evolution because the fossils are claimed to show "ascent" from simple to complex forms.
This places gap theorists in a dilemma. Committed to literal creation because of their acceptance of a "literal" view of Genesis, they cannot accept the conclusions of evolution based on the geologic column. Nor can they accept that the days in the Genesis record correspond to geologic periods. So they propose that God reshaped the earth and re-created all life in six literal days after "Lucifer's flood" (which produced fossils); hence the name "ruin-reconstruction." Satan's sin supposedly caused this flood and the resulting judgment upon that sin reduced the previous world to a state of being "without form and void."
While the gap theorist may think Lucifer's flood solves the problem, this actually removes the reason for the theory in the first place. If all, or most, of the sediments and fossils were produced quickly in one massive worldwide Lucifer's flood, then the main "evidence" that the earth is extremely old (based on the assumed slow formation of the sediments) no longer exists.
Also, if the world was reduced to a shapeless chaotic mess, as gap theorists propose, how could a reasonably ordered assemblage of fossils and sediments remain as evidence? Surely with such chaos the fossil record would have been severely disrupted, if not entirely destroyed. (This argument also applies to those who say the fossil record formed over hundreds of millions of years before this so-called "Lucifer's flood," which would have severely rearranged things.)
If "Lucifer's flood" created this, then what did Noah's flood do?
(See the video: Grand Canyon: Monument to the Flood - Go
The gap theory does away with the evidence for Noah's flood.
If the fossil record was formed by "Lucifer's flood," then what did the global flood of Noah do? On this point the gap theorist is forced to conclude that Noah's flood left virtually no trace. To be consistent, the gap theorist would have to defend Noah's flood as a local event. Custance, one of the major proponents of the gap theory, did this. He even published a paper defending a local flood.[5]
Genesis, however, depicts Noah's flood as a judgment for man's sin (Genesis 6). Water flooded the earth for over a year (Genesis 6:17 and 7:19-24). Only eight people, and air-breathing, land-dwelling animals with them on the ark, survived. (Genesis 7:23).
Sadly, in relegating the fossil record to the supposed gap, "gappists" have removed the evidence for God's judgment on the violent pre-flood world in the graveyard of the flood. The fossils buried by the flood should warn us of God's judgment to come on sinful humans (2 Peter 3:2-14).
The gap theorist ignores the evidence for a young earth.
The true gap theorist also ignores evidence consistent with an age for the earth of less than 10,000 years. There is much evidence for this -- the decay and rapid reversals of the earth's magnetic field; the quantity of helium in the earth's atmosphere; the amount of salt in the oceans; the wind-up of spiral galaxies; and much more.[6]
The gap theory fails to accommodate standard uniformitarian geology with its long ages anyway.
Today's uniformitarian geologists allow for no worldwide flood of any kind -- the imaginary Lucifer's flood, or Noah's real flood. They also recognize no break between the supposed former created world and the current re-created world.
Most importantly, the gap theory undermines the gospel at its foundations.
By accepting an ancient age for the earth (based on the standard uniformitarian interpretation of the geologic column), gap theorists leave the evolutionary system intact (which by their own assumptions they oppose).
Even worse, they must also theorize that Romans 5:12 and Genesis 3:3 refer only to spiritual death. But this contradicts other Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15; Genesis 3:22-23). These passages tell us that Adam's sin led to physical death as well as spiritual death. In 1 Corinthians 15 the death of the last Adam (the Lord Jesus Christ) is compared with the death of the first Adam. Jesus suffered physical death for man's sin, because Adam, the first man, died physically because of sin. Genesis 3:22-23 tells us that if Adam and Eve could have partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Life, they would have lived forever, but God decreed that they should die physically because of their sin.
In placing on man the curse of physical death, God provided a way to redeem man through the person of His Son Jesus Christ,
who suffered the curse of death on the cross for us. "He tasted death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9). By becoming the perfect sacrifice for our sin and rebellion, He conquered death. He took the penalty that should rightly have been ours at the hands of a righteous judge, and bore it in His own body on the cross. All who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are received back to God to spend eternity with Him. That is the message of Christianity. To believe there was death before Adam's sin destroys the basis of the Christian message, because the Bible states that man's rebellious actions led to death and the corruption of the universe (Romans 8:19-22). Thus, the gap theory undermines the foundations of Christianity.
Genesis records a catastrophe that destroyed all organisms that had the "breath of life in them" except for those preserved in Noah's ark. Christ refers to Noah's flood in Matthew 24:37-39, and the apostle Peter writes that, just as there was once a global judgment of mankind by water, so there will be another worldwide judgment by fire (2 Peter 3).
It is more consistent with the whole framework of Scripture to attribute most fossils to Noah's flood than to resort to a strained interpretation of the fall of Satan[7] and a totally speculative catastrophe that contributes nothing to biblical understanding, or to science.
Moreover, advocating death before Adam sinned contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture that death came only after Adam sinned and made man's redemption necessary.
The gap theory undermines the foundations of the gospel.
A Closer Look at Genesis 1:1-2
The earliest available manuscript of Genesis 1:1-2 is found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (LXX), prepared about 250-200 B.C. The LXX does not permit the reading of any "ruin-reconstruction" scenario into these verses, as even Custance admitted. A closer look at these verses reveals that the gap theory imposes an interpretation upon Genesis 1:1-2 which is unnatural, and grammatically unsound. Like many attempts to harmonize the Bible with uniformitarian geology's supposed long ages of earth history, the gap theory involves a well-meant but misguided twisting of Scripture.
In the following we deal with the five major issues of interpretation bearing on the gap theory. For a much fuller analysis, we recommend the book Unformed and Unfilled.[8]
Creating and making (Hebrew: bara and asah)
It is generally acknowledged that the Hebrew word bara, used with "God" as its subject, means "to create" -- in the sense of the production of something which did not exist before.
However, in the Fourth Commandment God "made" (asah) the heavens and the earth and everything in them in six days (Exodus 20:11). If God made everything in six days then there is clearly no room for a gap. To avoid this clear scriptural testimony against any gap, gap theorists have alleged that asah cannot mean "to create," but to "form" or even "re-form." They claim that Exodus 20:11 refers not to six days of creation, but six days of re-forming a ruined world.
Is there such a difference between bara and asah in biblical usage? A number of verses show that while asah may mean "to do," or "to make," it can also mean "to create," the same as bara. For example, Nehemiah 9:6 states that God made (asah) "heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things in it, the seas, and all in them." The reference is obviously to the original ex nihilo creation, but the word asah is used. (We may safely assume that no "gappist" will want to say that Nehemiah 9:6 refers to the supposed "reconstruction," because if it did, the "gappist" would have to include the geological strata as well, thereby depriving the whole theory of any purpose.)
The fact is that the words bara and asah are often used interchangeably in the Old Testament; indeed, in some places they are used in synonymous parallelism (e.g., Genesis 1:26-27; Exodus 34:10; Isaiah 41:20; 43:7).
Applying this conclusion to Exodus 20:11 (cf. 31:17) as well as Nehemiah 9:6, we see that Scripture teaches that God created the universe (everything) in six days, as outlined in Genesis 1.
The Grammar of Genesis 1:1-2
Many adherents of the gap theory claim that the grammar of Genesis 1:1-2 allows, even requires, a time-gap between what happened in verse 1, and what happened in verse 2. Into this gap -- believed to be billions of years -- they want to place all the major geological phenomena that have shaped the world.
This is a most unnatural interpretation, which is not suggested by the plain meaning of the text. The most straightforward reading of the verses sees verse 1 as a subject-and-verb-clause, with verse 2 containing three "circumstantial clauses" -- that is, three statements further describing the circumstances introduced by the principal clause in verse 1.
This conclusion is reinforced by the grammarian Gesenius. He says that the conjunction waw ("and") at the beginning of verse 2 is a "waw copulative," which compares with the old English expression "to wit."
This grammatical connection between verses 1 and 2 thus rules out the gap theory. Verse 2 is in fact a description of the state of the originally created earth: "And the earth was without form, and empty" (Genesis 1:2).
"Was" or "Became"?
"Gappists" translate "the earth was without form and empty" as "the earth became [or, "had become"] without form and empty." At stake is the translation of the Hebrew word hayetah (a form of the Hebrew verb, hayah, "to be").
Custance claims that out of 1,320 occurrences of the verb hayah in the Old Testament, only 24 can certainly be said to bear the meaning "to be." He concludes that in Genesis 1:2 hayetah must mean "became" and not simply "was."
Note again that the meaning of a word is controlled by its context, and that in the previous section we showed that verse 2 is circumstantial to verse 1. Thus, "was" is the most natural and appropriate translation for hayetah. It is rendered this way in most English versions (as well as the LXX). Furthermore, in Genesis 1:2 hayetah is not followed by the preposition le, which would have removed any ambiguity in the Hebrew and required the translation "became."
Tohu and Bohu
These delightful words are usually translated "formless and empty" (Genesis 1:2). They imply that the original universe was created unformed and unfilled and was, during six days, formed and filled by God's creative actions.
"Gappists" claim that these words imply a process of judgmental destruction, and indicate "a sinful, and therefore, not an original state of the earth." However, this imports into Genesis 1 interpretations found in other parts of the Old Testament with very different contexts (namely, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23).
Tohu and Bohu appear together only in the three above-mentioned places of the Old Testament. However, tohu appears alone in a number of other places and in all cases simply means "formless." The word itself does not tell us about the cause of formlessness; this has to be gleaned from the context. Isaiah 45:18 (often quoted by "gappists") is rendered in the KJV "he created it not in vain [tohu], he formed it to be inhabited." In the context, Isaiah is speaking about Israel, God's people, and His grace in restoring them. He did not choose His people in order to destroy them, but to be their God and they His people. Isaiah draws an analogy with God's purpose in creation: He did not create the world for it to be empty! No, He created it to be formed and filled, a suitable abode for His people. "Gappists" miss the point altogether when they argue that because Isaiah says God did not create the world tohu, it must have become tohu at some later time. Isaiah 45:18 is about God's purpose in creating, not about the original state of creation.
Though the expression tohu and bohu in Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23 speaks of a formlessness and emptiness resulting from divine judgment for sin, this meaning is not implicit in the expression itself, but it is gained from the particular contexts in which it occurs. It is not valid therefore to infer that same meaning into Genesis 1:2, where the context does not suggest it. As an analogy, we might think of a word like "blank," in reference to a computer screen. It can be blank because nothing has been typed on the keyboard, or it can be blank because the screen was erased. The word "blank" does not suggest, in itself, the reason why the screen is blank. It is likewise "formless and empty" -- this can be due to the earth not yet being formed and filled, or it could be due to something becoming that way through judgment, for example.
Theologians call the form of use of tohu and bohu in Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23 a "verbal allusion." These passages on judgment allude to the formless and empty earth at the beginning of creation to suggest the extent of God's judgment to come. God's judgment will be so complete that the result will be like the earth before it was formed and filled -- formless and empty. This does not imply that the state of the creation in Genesis 1:2 was arrived at by some sort of judgment or destruction as imagined by gappists. As theologian Robert Chisholm Jr. wrote, "By the way, allusion only works one way. It is unwarranted to assume that Jeremiah's use of the phrase in a context of judgment implies some sort of judgment in the context of Genesis 1:2... Jeremiah is not interpreting the meaning of Genesis 1:2."[9]
The gap theory imposes an interpretation upon Genesis 1:1-2 which is unnatural, and grammatically unsound.
The Straightforward Meaning of Genesis 1:1-2
The gap (or "ruin-reconstruction") theory is based on a very tenuous interpretation of Scripture.
The simple, straightforward meaning of Genesis 1:1-2 is that when God at the beginning created the earth it was initially formless, empty, and dark, and God's Spirit was there above the waters. It was through His creative energy that the world was then progressively "formed and filled" during the remaining six days of creation.
Consider the analogy of a potter making a vase. The first thing he does is get a ball of clay. What he has is good, but it is unformed. Next, he shapes it into a vase, using his potter's wheel. Now it is no longer formless. He then might dry it, apply glaze, and fire it. Now it is ready to be filled -- with flowers and water. At no time could one of the stages be considered evil or bad. It was just not finished -- unformed and unfilled. When it was finally formed and filled, it could be described as "very good."
God, of course, did not have to take six days to create everything, but he did this deliberately as a pattern for us -- for our seven-day week.
Warning
Many sincere Christians have invented reinterpretations of Scripture to avoid conflicts with "scientific" ideas. The gap theory was one such reinterpretation designed to fit in with scientific concepts that arose in the early 1800s and are still popular today.
In reality though, the gap theory was an effective "anesthetic" that put the church to sleep for over one hundred years. When the children who learned this compromise position went on to higher education, they were shocked to discover that this theory explained nothing. They thus accepted the only remaining "respectable" theory, evolution (which went hand in hand with millions of years). The results were usually disastrous for their faith.
Today, other compromise positions like "progressive creation" or "theistic evolution" have, by and large, replaced the gap theory.[12] The "gappists," by attempting to maintain a literal Genesis but adhering to the long ages (millions of years), opened the door for greater compromise in the next generation -- the reinterpretation of the days, God used evolution, etc.
But whether it be a "gap theory," "progressive creation," or "theistic evolution," the results are the same. These positions may be acceptable in some churches, but the learned in the secular world will, with some justification, mock those who hold them -- they see the inconsistencies.
The gap theory anesthetized the church for over one hundred years.
Christians will be derided whatever they believe about Genesis. We can choose to be scoffed at for believing the first book of the Bible as God intended it to be understood, or for believing in a compromise position that undermines the authority of God's Word.
Dimension,
Is WT another name you post under??
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.