Delusions of Evolution

FreeRepublic ^ | 10/25/20 | Chuck Ness

[Tell It Right]

"Don’t be a idiot."

Here's my take. The Hebrew word yom has 3 different meanings -- including an era of unspecified length. There are other Hebrew words for "day" that could have been used --- IMHO there's a reason the word "yom" was used -- for the meaning of era of unspecified length.

Then, since context is important, there's context in Genesis 1 and 2 describing the 6th yom. Think about all that Adam did on that yom that would be impossible to do in a day (naming all the animals, yet still finding spare time to be lonely). I guess it's possible God gave Adam both supernatural ability to do that in a day, while also having supernatural ADD to hurry up and get bored enough to be lonely. But since the Bible text doesn't say God gave Adam that kind of supernatural ability (no context) I'm left to assume the meaning of the sixth yom is more than a day, it was an era.

Then on the 3rd yom the plants sprouted forth and has the plants yielding seed (Hebrew word zera). I guess it's possible God gave the plants supernatural ability to produce seed within 24 hours. But since the Bible text doesn't say that I think it best not to assume that. (Same thing with the 6th yom in which the garden of Eden has plants yielding seed.)

As far the yoms having evenings (Hebrew ereb) and mornings (Hebrew boqer), which would you read as sunsets and sunrises for 24 hour days, I guess that's possible. But the fact that the sun wasn't created until yom 4 makes it hard to imagine there being evenings and mornings in the literal sense. I don't discount the possibility -- God can do anything. But since the Bible text doesn't state the evenings and mornings as miraculous events I'm left to lean towards them being used to mean something else besides sunset and sunrise. For example, the Hebrew words ereb and boqer in Psalm 90:4-6 are used like this (AMP):

For a [a]thousand years in Your sight

Are like yesterday when it is past,

Or as a watch in the night.

5

You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep [forgotten as soon as they are gone];

In the morning they are like grass which grows anew—

6

In the morning it flourishes and springs up;

In the evening it wilts and withers away.

I guess it's possible Psalm 90 is talking about grass that lasts only during the daytime. But since the Bible text doesn't describe God giving that grass a uniquely short life span, I'm left to assume that the Hebrew word boraq is used for more than just morning -- it's used for the end of chaos. While ereb is used for more than just evening -- it's also used for the beginning of chaos. It's easy to see those words being used the same way during the creation story in Genesis 1.

Fellow Bible believer and Christian, am I still an idiot? LOL

[OneVike]

When you look carefully at Genesis 1, in Hebrew or even in English, it is clear that God created everything in six literal (24-hour) days. First, we are told that He created the earth in darkness and then created light. Then He called the light “day” and He called the darkness “night.” And then He said (in the original Hebrew) “and [there] was evening and [there] was morning, one day.” He repeated the same statement at the end of the second day through the sixth day.

So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Everywhere else in the Old Testament, when the Hebrew word for “day” (יוםֹ, yom) appears with “evening” or “morning” or is modified by a number (e.g., “sixth day” or “five days”), it always means a 24-hour day.

On Day Four God further showed that these were literal days by telling us the purpose for which He created the sun, moon, and stars—so we could tell time: literal years, literal seasons, and literal days.

Then in Exodus 20:8–11 God commanded the Israelites to work six literal “days” and rest on the seventh because He created in six “days” (using the same Hebrew word).

Furthermore, Jesus and the New Testament apostles read Genesis 1–11 as straightforward historical narrative.

[Faith Presses On]

“Time and time again Scripture has always been proven right. While man continues to change that which they claim to be truth.”

And unbelievers want us to worship that “truth,” until it changes, and then just forget about it changing. I remember how when the internet society was new, atheists would try to rub the noses of Bible-believing Christians in the “fact” that the appendix was a vestigial organ, and thus one more piece of evidence for evolution — you had to accept this absolute truth of the god Science, until a use for the appendix was theorized and atheists stopped talking about it. They of course didn’t care how many people had left this world believing in that truth, or how many people were influenced by it.

[backwoods-engineer]

Cool story bro.

[backwoods-engineer]

You believe young-earth just-so tales. My God is bigger than yours. You and Russell Humphreys and Morris and Ken Ham and the rest of the young earthers can have your own little room in heaven.

[American in Israel]

Nope’ great layout. I apologize.

[OneVike]

Seems to me your the one who cannot wrap your brain around a God who can speak creation into being.

You need to answer how God made man as and adult with no woman to give birth to him

How God opened the Sea for Moses and the Israelites to cross it

How Christ raised a three day rotting corps that smelled back to life

How Christ died and came back to life if He could not create the heavens and earth into being without waisting millions of years

Your answers speak of a very weak small God who is dumber than Darwin

[backwoods-engineer]

More slander. Look, we’re not going to agree. So, let’s make like Paul and Barnabas and go our separate ways. (Acts 15) Go in peace and in the grace of Jesus Christ.

[Faith Presses On]

I’m sad for you and all those you’re wrongly influencing, backwoods-engineer. Why is it so hard for you to accept God’s Word?

[Faith Presses On]

God setting up the Creation situation as He did is a test of our hearts, not our minds. As in so many other areas, He creates a certain amount of ambiguity to bring out what really matters to us. Then He will go to work on the hearts that don’t choose Him, till they either turn back to Him, or reject Him forever.

[OneVike]

So true

God asks for us to have faith and believe, and yet so many who claim to be believers demand that God must fit into their narrow minded little box of human facts. They want human proof because they refuse to accept GOD at HIS Word.

I can only imagine how they could ever interpret Abraham’s blind faith in God’s promise to him. Paul tells us that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. It didn’t say Abraham used Human logic to believe. It says Abraham believed, because God told him what would come to pass, and Abraham took God at HIS Word.

I am guessing they figure Sarah really wasn’t over 90 when she had Issac. After all, modern scientific knowledge proves to them that a 90 year old woman cannot get pregnant.

Also, do they really think the Mary had sex to conceive Jesus? After all, human knowledge tells us that getting pregnant with out a human males Sperm is impossible. Yet Mary was a virgin.

So many things they must find hard to swallow while reading the Word. Makes one wonder how they can ever claim to believe in a man who walked on water or calmed the sea if they have more faith in mans science than the Living Word.

How is it a person can pick and chose what parts of the Bible they want to believe and which ones they don’t. Yet they claim they have faith in Christ. Christ is the Word, yet the refuse to believe the Word.

[Faith Presses On]

Yes, believing that way doesn’t add up, unless maybe someone is either young or a new believer, or something like that.

[OneVike]

Or from attending a false church

[BroJoeK]

On this thread we see the arguments against evolution are almost entirely theological and boil-down to: for science to be true the Bible must be false, making God a liar.
And since God, by definition, cannot be a liar, science must therefore be false.

Here and there we see it claimed that science is "inconsistent" or sometimes "contradictory", or suffers from "gaps" in its theories.

On the other side we see it admitted that the Bible does include metaphorical language, which need not be taken literally, but what rules, exactly, should be used to divide literal from metaphorical(?) are never spelled out.
For example: is a "yom" day 24 hours, or a thousand years, or an undetermined length "age"?

My own view is that God did not lie in the Bible because, by definition, He cannot lie.
On the other hand, God always speaks to us in language & words we can understand (else they are not for us) so His communications to Biblical writers were in words & metaphors which made sense to them.
Whether & how those words (in translation) make sense to us is a matter for deep prayer & contemplation.

But it's most noteworthy that the Bible and science agree on two very key points:

1. God created the Universe in what science calls a Big Bang: "let there be light".

2. God created man from mud, which is also what science says, though it calls God's miracles "natural processes".

Such amazing convergences seem to me too important to be coincidental, too consequential to be ignored and suggest an intelligence behind the Bible far greater than required to explain Creation to a few illiterate Hebrew sheep-herders sitting on hill-tops at night staring up at the stars...

[Reily]

Well said !

[OneVike]

illiterate Hebrew sheep-herders sitting on hill-tops at night staring up at the stars.

Wow. God walked with Adam in the Garden. All was shred from the man HE created, and he passed down the things GOD shared with him. Illiterate? You lost all credibility with that snide comment.

Oh, by the way, God did not make mud then make man, he made man from dirt.

Now, go get your own dirt, Because He began with nothing.

[BroJoeK]

OneVike: "Illiterate? You lost all credibility with that snide comment."

So you think all ancient Hebrew shepherds were literate?
Of course Moses was entirely literate, but his words were written for the benefit of all children of Israel, literate or not.

OneVike: "Oh, by the way, God did not make mud then make man, he made man from dirt."

Sure, but what do you get when you add water to dirt?
Even illiterate shepherds knew that answer.

[Tell It Right]

Great observations.