Posted on 08/05/2009 11:15:25 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Todays top-selling biology textbooks present evolution as the only scientific view of the history of life. Often these textbooks use faulty or deceptive evidences to support evolutionary ideas. Fortunately, students can easily equip themselves with free materials that dissect textbooks and reveal the truth...
(Excerpt) Read more at answersingenesis.org ...
Darwin Medalist Ernst Mayr says it does. You know him. He wrote a book called What Evolution Is. But maybe you will say he didn't know what he was talking about.
I don't know why evolutionists keep pretending to disagree with you, when in fact "the Grand Old Man" of evolution, Ernst Mayr says:
"Darwin more than anyone else was responsible for the acceptance of a secular explanation of the world"It's worth reading all of Mayr's article.
"Idiomatic expression...allusion...pay attention to this part, not the other part..."looks like" a circle...metaphor..."
Like I said, you have to go beyond the plain meaning of the words in order to make them comport with reality. And that's fine with me. But you are aware, I hope, that some people in these threads insist that the "fountains" were literal huge gouts of water from beneath the earth's surface? I just find it curious that we're allowed to interpret "sluices" as a metaphor emphasizing how it flows, but "fountains" have to be real; or that "ends" of the earth (using the same word that refers to the hem of a garment or the edge of a carpet) can be an idiom, but the six days and the creation of kinds have to be taken literally.
Then the biggie question is how do we distinguish between the literal and the metaphor, idiom, etc.?
My impression is that everyone takes some parts as metaphor or idiom, but several people insist that only they have the key to figuring out which parts those are.
There are more? By all means bring them on.
No need--they're more of the same, and you'll explain how they're not meant to be taken literally but rather as idiom or metaphor. The thing is, I agree with you, at least when it comes to figuring out what's important in the Bible. Who cares if the writers thought the sky was a solid covering like a tent? The important thing is that God placed it there for us.
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear sister in Christ!
Evidently there is a shared aspect of wings, ends of the earth, or as “kanaph” is translated in the AV at Ezek. 7:2, “four corners” of the earth.
Wings, four corners, ends, all the plain meaning of “kanaph”.
As for fountains or gouts of water from under ground sources, the Ogallala aquifer covers thousands of square miles and is estimated to have as much water in it as Lake Huron. That's enough water to do a lot of gouting and fountaining.
Without trying to understand how someone uses metaphor, idioms, literal and figurative speech we would still be thinking King Herod really was a fox.
” Who cares if the writers thought the sky was a solid covering like a tent?”
Evidently you do, evidently those persons attacking the veracity of the Scriptures do, evidently I do or I wouldn't comment on it.
Wow.....incorrect political labels and lame ineffectual insults. Shocked, I say.....shocked.
Where your way has resulted in 26% of kindergarteners actually graduating H.S., or with a less than 50% literacy rate for adults.
....and that's because they don't teach the Creation?
LOVE to see the causality there......but I'm not expecting more than lame ineffectual insults.
Hint: the causailty is uneducated parents, worse when it's a single uneducated parent, that don't take an active role in their children's education because they either are too ignorant and uneducated themselves or they simply expect the State to educate their kids while they are hands-off.
....but DO TELL....how is this problem cause by not teaching the Creation? Here, I'll get your insults out of the way for ya. Liberal.....(fill-in-the-blank)berry....
Why even go that far? MIT......full of braniacs that learned evolution. Harvard Med School.....full of braniacs that learned evolution. Need any more?
The original assertion was that teaching evolution has damaged our academic and scientific accopmlishments, compared to the rest of the world. Once you start moving the goal posts, then it turns into a disagreement over where they should be moved to, the test is abandoned, and the original assertion gets by without ever having been tested at all.
Sort of, but I think I mean a little more than that. I don't just mean the literal meaning of a single sentence, I mean the obvious inference to draw from all the descriptions taken together. If I write, once, that "the curtain of night fell across the city," it'd make sense to take it as a metaphor. But if I write in several places that the lights switched on in the roof of the sky, and the rain fell through holes in the sky, and the sky covered the earth like a tent, you might conclude that I actually thought the sky was solid.
Especially if I never wrote anything to make you think otherwise. Is there anyplace that the Bible describes the earth, unequivocally, as a ball or sphere, or the celestial objects as not attached to anything but moving freely in vast space?
Evidently there is a shared aspect of wings, ends of the earth, or as kanaph is translated in the AV at Ezek. 7:2, four corners of the earth.
Yes. They're flat things with edges.
As for fountains or gouts of water from under ground sources, the Ogallala aquifer covers thousands of square miles and is estimated to have as much water in it as Lake Huron. That's enough water to do a lot of gouting and fountaining.
So now you're arguing that the fountains are actual fountains? I thought they were a metaphor. If the fountains are real, then, what are the sluices?
Evidently you do, evidently those persons attacking the veracity of the Scriptures do, evidently I do or I wouldn't comment on it.
I "care" mainly out of historical curiosity. I'm not trying to prove anything about the value of the Bible. I think the fact that the people who actually set the words down thought they lived on a flat surface under a dome, and so passed what they were inspired to write through that filter, has little to do with the essential truth of what they wrote. A child, learning that the earth was a ball and people lived on the other side, might think they must be standing upside down. That mistake doesn't change the essential truth that they learned.
BTW, "who cares" is a common idiom to express the fact that the speaker himself doesn't care.
“Darwin Medalist Ernst Mayr says it does. You know him. He wrote a book called What Evolution Is. But maybe you will say he didn’t know what he was talking about.”
—When it comes to science he certainly knows what he’s talking about, but this was a philosophical article written for a philosophical journal.
I can easily find philosophical writings from scientists that say that heliocentricism means that we are nothing special in the universe, but does a sun centered rather than earth centered solar system really mean that? There’s a difference between what the heliocentric theory is, and what someone thinks the philosophical implications are.
It’s unclear to me in the article if by “intelligent design” he merely means the idea of God creating the universe, or if he’s using it in the sense of the Discovery Institute as meaning that nature (somewhat ironically) was not designed in such a way to allow for evolution. If he meant the former, there are many tens of thousands of scientists who vehemently disagree with him, such as Francis Collins who headed the human genome project and started the BioLogos Foundation. But maybe you will say that none of them know what they are talking about.
Where your way has resulted in 26% of kindergarteners actually graduating H.S., or with a less than 50% literacy rate for adults.
....and that's because they don't teach the Creation?
Do you read?
It's because liberals prevent it and any other potential Christian ideals from being taught. YOur secular humanist methods have dire consequences. Demanding God be excluded from schools has resulted in notihing but moral and educational failures.
You liberals made your bed, you have to sleep in it now.
Sane and normal Americans know we tried it your way for FAR too long.
The state has hijacked the schools and demands teaching secular humanism to ALL...and that's why responsible, educated, normal parents leave in droves. It's why even many of the stupid liberal ones are asking for vouchers now!
Ah yes.....incorrect political labels and lame ineffective insults. Glad you’re limited to such nonsense.
The atrocious graduation rate in Detroit has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the lack of teaching Creationism or the lack of indoctrinating school kids into Christianity like you want them to do.....or school science classes teaching evolution without teaching your religious views. There is no causality. None.
Empty claims are just that. Restating empty claims is just as asinine as making them. Ad nauseum arguments always fail for a reason.
Intelligence has nothing to do with being a Christian either......especially a YEC Christian.
Hint: It’s something else that causes that atrocious graduation rate.....but go ahead....keep up with the asinine insults that show nothing but your limited intellect.
For example, “..the sky covered the earth like a tent...”
In this phrase it is the COVERING aspect of the sky that is being compared with the COVERING aspect of the tent, not the solidness of either.
“roof of the sky, holes in the sky”? If you wrote in English I might well conclude you wanted to be understood in the most literal way unless the context indicated otherwise, but if you were writing in Hebrew, especially when used in the Bible, I would know that metaphor and poetical usage is far more common than in English.
The way the word used elsewhere by others and the context would be the next things I would look at.
“Especially if I never wrote anything to make you think otherwise”.
I might never know for certain what you believe the reality is if you wrote in metaphor but it be wrong of me to assumed’ without foundation that the literal and the metaphorical were one and the same in your mind.
“Is there anyplace that the Bible describes the earth, unequivocally, as a ball or sphere, or the celestial objects as not attached to anything but moving freely in vast space?”
Is there any unequivocal description contrary?
There's no indication that the distances and composition of the heavenly bodies was something the Biblical writers pondered over to any great degree so as a subject it would not be discussed except peripherally in the Bible.
At Job 26:7 Job says God ‘stretches the north out over an empty space and hangs the earth on nothing. And Abraham certainly understood there were far more stars than he could see as the stars of the heavens and the sands of the seashore were compared for number in Genesis 22:17.
Evidently there is a shared aspect of wings, ends of the earth, or as kanaph is translated in the AV at Ezek. 7:2, four corners of the earth.
“Yes. They're flat things with edges.”
As the reference in the lexicon pointed it was the meaning, “extremeity” as in the outermost part not something like the edge of a table and flatness doesn't enter into it, despite your efforts to put it there. As you say, you think the writers believed they lived on a flat earth.
“So now you're arguing that the fountains are actual fountains? I thought they were a metaphor. If the fountains are real, then, what are the sluices?”
Are you serious? My comment was ever so obviously about the QUANTITY of water available.
Do you think Mayr would state philosophically something contrary to what he believed to be scientifically so?
That he published his ides in a philosophical journal seems an irrelevancy unless you are asserting Evolution is philosophy free.
“Theres a difference between what the heliocentric theory is, and what someone thinks the philosophical implications are.”
Different? Yes, but not unconnected and one would have to be pretty obtuse not to understand that.
No. I didn’t bring up 7th century Islam.
because liberals are disagreeable, miserable people.
You advocate keeping your kids ignorant. Developing a rind around their brain will assure they remain uneducated
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