Let's get something straight. Science is perfectly competent to discover and comment on the world before it--the world that exists today. It is not competent to comment on a world and/or situations totally unlike the world we have today. This includes not only cosmogony, but the world as it operated originally before the sin of Adam.
The first eleven chapters of Genesis are theology and history--not biology, not physics, not chemistry. Science is not competent to comment on cosmogony (the process and events that brought our present world into being). The "laws of nature" cannot be invoked here because the laws of nature did not exist. Anyone who believes in a single miracle--be it the talking donkey, the floating ax, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the liquifaction of the blood of St. Januarius, or the "miracle of the sun" in 1917--has forfeited the right to invoke the "uniformity of nature" as an excuse to retroject current conditions into the actual events of creation. Those who persist in doing so are guilty of both hypocrisy and internal inconsistency.
There is one and only one reason for treating the literal truth of the first eleven chapters of Genesis differently from everything else: a sociological prejudice against "trailer trash," with whom this particular section of the Bible is commonly associated. That is it. That is all.
People who reject the very concept of the supernatural--total atheists, materialists, and naturalists--are perfectly logical to reject the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Anyone who accepts a single miracle elsewhere does not.
I note that EnglishCon apparently doesn't believe in his religion's dogma of the "fall of man," since according to his uniformitarian cosmogony there was never a paradise to fall from . . . and certainly no original immortality for a fictitious Adam and Eve!
Once again, here is an article by Hugh Owen illustrating the absurd internal contradictions of cosmogonic uniformitarianism by people who otherwise set "nature" aside for numerous miracles. I doubt it will be read this time either.
Finally, let me state something that almost all chr*stians seem to be totally ignorant of. While there is certainly much mystery and many esoteric secrets with regard to the Creation which are hidden from the vast majority of us, there are and always have been those who have an authentic knowledge of these great mysteries. There is an unbroken line of great sages who have received this knowledge in an unbroken line. Those privileged few who have received this knowledge are not going to broadcast it (since it is forbidden to expound it before more than two people). All the hot air and all the ink spilled by everyone else on this subject is mere speculation--legitimate in the case of naturalists, hypocritical and inconsistent in the case of everyone else. In the meantime we may rest assured that, whatever these great mysteries might be, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are inerrant history written by G-d Himself and dictated to Moses letter-for-letter, just like the rest of the Torah.
I note that EnglishCon apparently doesn’t believe in his religion’s dogma of the “fall of man,” since according to his uniformitarian cosmogony there was never a paradise to fall from . . . and certainly no original immortality for a fictitious Adam and Eve!
Science has the duty to examine everything. While “without faith we do not find God,” learning of his glory first hand is a joy. There is a reason that some 70% of scientists (talking the hard sciences here, not the fuzzy ones) have a firm belief in God. They see his works all around them. For engineers it is 7%.
I stopped at the end of Genesis 1, as given by the linked version of the KJV, or this would be a record breakingly long vanity, and I ain’t THAT vain! Commenting on all the first 11 chapters of Genesis in one post would be painful to read and even more difficult to discuss!
Working on Genesis 2 now. Much more difficult, as some of the theories involved are contentious. And yes, I firmly believe in the doctrine of the fall, and the evidence, biological, social and indeed physical is there.
I read your link. If people take the time to read something I write and bother to reply, I owe them the courtesy to read what they link.
The official Church stance on evolution has, if you will forgive the pun, evolved. http://www.lastseminary.com/genesis-modern-science/Evolutionary%20Creation.pdf is a good summary of the position that
“Today, the Church’s unofficial position is an example of theistic evolution, also known as evolutionary creation, stating that faith and scientific findings regarding human evolution are not in conflict, though humans are regarded as a special creation, and that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual component of human origins. Moreover, the Church teaches that the process of evolution is a planned and purpose-driven natural process, actively guided by God.”