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To: DallasMike
No reading of these passages can infer, imply, or somehow suggest that it is not a 24 hour period. You choose to refuse it not by the Word of God as it is written, but by the knowledge of fallible man. You are interpreting the Bible through the lens of man's current understanding that is subject to change.

There is no interpretation of this passage that can make yom be anything other than a 24 hour day. There is too much against that interpretation. You are totally ignoring the language and context in which it is used. You totally ignore the morning and evening aspect, the numbering, and the passages in other parts of Scripture (i.e. Exodus) that unequivocally show that it is a 24 hour day.

You have yet to provide any sort of rebuttal to these remarks other than "science says it, so I believe it". You can doubt the clear Word of God all you want, but you are falling into the trap that befell Adam and Eve. Hath God said....

JM
39 posted on 09/28/2005 10:27:40 AM PDT by JohnnyM
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To: JohnnyM
No reading of these passages can infer, imply, or somehow suggest that it is not a 24 hour period. You choose to refuse it not by the Word of God as it is written, but by the knowledge of fallible man. You are interpreting the Bible through the lens of man's current understanding that is subject to change.
_________________________________

Some bible expositors are unwilling to allow for more expansive views that incorporate scientific discovery into creationist dogma, so they promote an unscientific stance that in some cases can appear to be quite intolerant. Check out H. Morris:

"We need...to recognize plainly that the biblical "days" of creation were real days, such as we know them today, and cannot possibly be equated with the"ages" of the so-called historical geology. This should not trouble us scientifically, since we have already seen that science, as such, is utterly incapable of telling us anything about creation. Science deals only with present processes, with reproducible experiments, and present processes are not processes of creation. We prefer, therefore, simply to let God's word speak for itself concerning what happened in the creation period." (The creation of the world. 1977. pg 24).

Morris plays scientific evidence against scriptural truth as if they were forever at odds and opposed to one another. I find this attitude impossible to support. The underpinnings of Morris' consistent unscientific stand hinges, then, not on what is evident from creation, but from what is not.
Let me illustrate. Nowhere is this philosophy more bankrupt than when it comes to ideas about the age of the earth. The apparent old age of the earth is clearly problematic to those who accept the young earth premise. Yet the young earth creationists, like Morris, are the first to admit that the earth does indeed look old. (Please note. They have invented this idea. It was not invented by evolutionists, atheists, or santa clause.) So in order to reconcile the evidence of an old earth with their ideology that the earth is young they have come up with the novel idea of "creation with apparent age." This idea proposes to argue that God made the earth appear to be billions of years old when He actually created it 6,000 years ago. This is a remarkable concession to the overwhelming scientific evidence of an old earth, and it is one that should trouble those who believe they must reject the evidence of age in order to keep alive the unsubstantiated belief in a 6,000 year-old-earth. Remarkably, Morris and others must acknowledge that their belief is the one least supported by science. What is a scientific creationist, then? If Morris is right and science really can't tell us anything about creation per se, why should we expect to find any evidence for a young earth? Let's consider Morris again:

"On the same day, God caused vegetation to cover the dry land, grasses and herbs were already bearing seed and the trees already yielding fruit, as soon as they appeared. This further implies that the "dry land" which had just previously come forth from the waters was already prepared with suitable soils and nutrients for the plants. Everything was created in fully developed, completely funcioning form. The whole world thus had an "appearance of age," even though newly created. Creation of apparent age is inherent in the very concept of creation. No deception is involved, since God has plainly told us these events of creation." (ibid. pg 25.)

Can't anybody go back to the first step to see why they find themselves so very far down the wrong road? If this issue is "plain" why all the uproar? The lack of evidence for a young earth contrasts so sharply with the abundant evidence of the real age of the earth that the two can never be harmonized--at least not scientifically. Morris suggests that God deliberately made the earth look billions of years old when it was born 6,000 years ago. Decades of promoting this belief has undoubtedly engendered the cry from everybody who hears of it that some type of heavenly deception is afoot. Morris has to deal with that problem, hence his comment at the end of his statement.

What is troubling to me as a paleontologist is that when one studies the formations of earth, we indeed do not see evidence of a young earth, because page upon page of God's natural history book is replete with information that go back much farther than 6,000 years. What we are supposed to believe is that God wrote into these geological layers a clear, moment by moment, history of events spanning millions if not billions of years in an instant. This concept is so fantastic that it is impossible to grasp by anyone who has ventured out into God's garden and read His book, layer by layer, like I have. Morris can only resort to a demand to "believe" an idea that overrules the scientific evidence of an old earth. Morris again:

"Recognition of the necessity for creation of "apparent age" and of a "finished creation" will go far toward resolving the apparent scientific conflict between the Bible account of creation and the supposed great age of the earth and the universe." (ibid, pg 29.)

LET ME CATEGORICALLY STATE THAT MORRIS' CLAIM DOES NOT HARMONIZE SCIENCE WITH THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION, BUT MISSING SCIENCE WITH HIS YOUNG-EARTH THEORY.

Those that, like me, do not accept the necessary tenet of the apparent age of heaven and earth have no problem. For the heavens and the earth look old because they are old. There is no divine mandate whereby any Christian is obligated to believe this. All readers must understand that this premise is an absolute theological disaster that has created so many false teachings that the gospel of Christ has been hindered, regardless of whether the creation account is a big issue or not, among a huge pool of professionals, who would otherwise be open to the Gospel. When they find out what young-earth creationists believe about science, why should I expect them to believe the ridiculous story that a man rose from the dead? If young earth creationists like Morris use the same logic employed in the apparent age dogma with the account of the resurrection of Christ, all Christian apologetics would collapse.

Christ didn't really rise from the dead. It only appeared that he did.
50 posted on 10/17/2005 8:57:36 AM PDT by Dinobot (Youngearth; creationevolution; apparentage;ageoftheearth;creaetionevolution;intelligentdesign)
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