Nope, the literial Hebrew says "evening, morning, second day". There's no 'the' there but neither is there an 'a'.
"In this verse, yom means a literal 24-hour day in one place and 40 days in another place."
Which is why you want to do a word-study focused on yom and not on 'evening, morning, second day', etc.
"Guess what happens when radioactive decay is very fast? A nuclear bomb!",/i>
Nope. That relies on the assumption that nuclear energies are based on nuclear-time and not dynamic-time. If they are based on dynamic-time and are related to the ZPE, then faster decay simply means the same (or less) energy spread out over more events occurring during the same amount of dynamic-time in the past.
"The speed of light used to be faster."
Probably. If you are going to discount Setterfield's work, you should probably use his site, rather than t.o. (which is notoriously incomplete and biased). Barry Setterfield
"The Hebrew word yom combined with an ordinal always refers to a 24 hour day: Wrong. "Zechariah 14:7 contains the word yom combined with an ordinal (number one, echad), exactly as seen in Genesis 1:5."
That doesn't help you as it refers to a single day there as well.
"This fits with my observation that YECs understand the Bible about as much as they understand science."
I would say this fits with my observation that OECs insert as many unobserved assumptions into the Bible as the philosophical naturalists insert into their 'scientific' theories.
"Today, I have to convince my peers that not all Christians are anti-intellectual and anti-science. I have seen the damage done by YECs -- that's why I'm so passionate about battling it."
You assume an 'a' when there is none, your example of an ordinal yom does indeed refer to a single day, you focus on definitions of yom alone and ignore the references to evening & morning, you cannot distinguish between observation and assumption in science and you place the word of talk.origins above the Word of God.
You are just another confused OEC who only supports the damage done by the philosophical naturalists. Your God is indistinguishable from no god at all and that's just how the boys at t.o. like it.
There is no "a" because Hebrew does not have an indefinite article. The indefinite article is implied by context. English has an indefinite article, but sometimes it, too, is implied. To wit:
- I ate steak last night. [implied indefinite article]
- I ate a steak last night. [indefinite article included]
This page explains the difference between the definite and indefinite article.
Finally, Genesis says that God entered into rest on the seventh day. If we were to hold to the YEC theory that yom must mean a literal 24-hour day, it means that God's rest was only on that 7th day. However, Hebrews 4:1-13 says that God is still in that time of rest and we can enter into it with him.
This is just one more example of how YEC conflicts with the word of God.
Which is why you want to do a word-study focused on yom and not on 'evening, morning, second day', etc.
I did both. Please look again at what I wrote -- you even mentioned my "evening, morning, n day" study in your first question! Why did I do a word study on yom? Because it is the centerpiece of the YEC argument. If YECs admit that their interpretation of yom is incorrect, then the whole argument for YEC vanishes.
That relies on the assumption that nuclear energies are based on nuclear-time and not dynamic-time. If they are based on dynamic-time and are related to the ZPE, then faster decay simply means the same (or less) energy spread out over more events occurring during the same amount of dynamic-time in the past.
I'm sorry, but I do not understand what you are talking about. Are you talking about nuclear time scales and dynamic time scales in stellar evolution? Or are you talking about measuring time based upon nuclear decay and measuring time based on things like the movement of a pendulum? Or neither? Please educate me.
The interior of the earth is heated by nuclear fission caused by nuclear decay. If the rate of decay is faster, you would have a hotter earth. For the adherents of YECs to be correct, the earth would have molten at best and blown apart at worst.
I know what the next argument is: "God could have supernaturally cooled the earth." Well, yes he could have. YECs are fond of using layer upon layer of "what if?" arguments to support their interpretation of the Bible. Have you ever heard of Occam's razor?
- The body of science and observation point to an old earth.
- The Bible does not claim that the earth is young.
Why not just accept the simplest explanation, which also happens to agree with the Bible?
MM: "The speed of light used to be faster."
GD: Probably. If you are going to discount Setterfield's work, you should probably use his site, rather than t.o. (which is notoriously incomplete and biased). Barry Setterfield
Lord, have mercy and give me patience. Setterfield's work has been thoroughly discredited in many, many places, including here. To accept Setterfield's theory, you again have to add on layers upon layers of "what if?" arguments.
As just one example, Setterfield tries to reconcile E=mc2 by claiming that nuclear particles once had more mass. Setterfield is not just proposing a minor correction -- his theory claims that the speed of light would have had to have to approximately 10 million times faster than it is today. If the mass was once greater, then gravity was once greater. Sutterfield then has to add another layer to compensate for that fact.
By the time Setterfield is finished, he has a layer cake that is two miles high.
Conveniently for Setterfield, he claims that light stopped slowing down in the 1960s. Even the Institute for Creation Research is dubious about Sutterfield's work.
Since ICR has an entire cottage industry built upon incompetent science, their criticism of Setterfield is like Michael Moore saying that Rosie O'Donnell is too fat.
If one accepts a reasonable and consistent meaning for the word yom, one does not have to create a whole set of Rube Goldberg contraptions to explain the universe.
MM: "The Hebrew word yom combined with an ordinal always refers to a 24 hour day: Wrong. "Zechariah 14:7 contains the word yom combined with an ordinal (number one, echad), exactly as seen in Genesis 1:5."
GD: That doesn't help you as it refers to a single day there as well.
No, it doesn't. Zechariah 14:7 refers back to the "Day of the Lord" in Zechariah 14:1. Read the entire chapter. It clearly does not refer to a single, 24-hour day, but rather to a span of time. In fact, some of the events of the "Day of the Lord" have already happened. For example, Amos 5:18-27 uses the "Day of the Lord" to describe sending Israel into captivity -- something that happened in the past!
Research the many passages in the Bible that refer to the "Day of the Lord." Please do it yourself for your own benefit. I'm tired of doing Biblical research for people who claim to know that Bible better than I do.
I'm not directing this to you, but many people on this thread whom I believe are well-meaning Christians claim that I and other reasonable people don't understand the Bible. Yet, when they make a Biblical claim, I find they are the ones who do not have an in-depth knowledge of the Bible.
It is my contention that YEC is based upon a fundamental misinterpretation of portions of the Bible, not on science. It's a Biblical interpretation problem, not a science problem.
I would say this fits with my observation that OECs insert as many unobserved assumptions into the Bible as the philosophical naturalists insert into their 'scientific' theories.
I have not inserted any assumptions into the Bible. However, YECs claiming that yom must mean a literal, 24-hour day is inserting a huge assumption into the Bible.
You are just another confused OEC who only supports the damage done by the philosophical naturalists. Your God is indistinguishable from no god at all and that's just how the boys at t.o. like it.
You talk like this and wonder why reasonable people sometimes fight back? You refuse to accept a reasonable interpretation of the Bible that completely agrees with both science and the rest of the Bible. To defend your belief, you have to insert increasingly complex layers of "what if?" claims that are without basis.
Why not just accept a reasonable, Biblically-sound interpretation of the Hebrew word yom? That solves the whole problem.