Posted on 02/14/2009 10:55:11 AM PST by chuck_the_tv_out
“He told you how he got us here.”
Allow me to revise that:
“He’s telling us how he got us here.”
You see, he gave us the brains to figure it out. He’d be disappointed if we didn’t try.
“he gave us the brains to figure it out”
The Bible is not actually very complementary about your brain.
The Bible says
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
Making up some random axiom & saying “you believe it” doesn’t impress me much.
This is entertaining, but obviously pointless. The point I am making is that the Bible is allegorical, and you counter that with scripture quoted from the Bible. Can you really not see that that is not an effective rebuttal?
Sorry. The answer is yes.
One does not have to bend either the Bible or science.
“””This is entertaining, but obviously pointless. The point I am making is that the Bible is allegorical, and you counter that with scripture quoted from the Bible. Can you really not see that that is not an effective rebuttal?”””
You seem to think “allegorical” means “have no belief in holy scripture”; that the word “allegorical” gives you carte blanche to ignore the Bible. That is 100% in making-up-a-religion-to-suit-yourself territory, not just borderline as I assumed.
An atheist would use your argument ie “I have no belief in the Bible, what use is quoting th Bible to me”. I quoted you a proverb. It’s not making a statement that you can “allegorise”.
I’m a devout Christian—I also believe that the Bible is allegorical in places. I believe that God would be sorely disappointed if we didn’t use the brains that he gave us to try to figure out his method of creation.
Didn’t Jesus himself teach the crowds using parables?
If you are as open-minded as you think you are and are willing to consider one of the best presentations for creation then would you please do us all a favor and read www.creationscience.com - it’s written by Dr Walt Brown, a former evolution scientist who saw the error of his ways.
Other than Genesis the other main reason YEC hold fast to 6-10k years of history is simply found in the Biblical genealogies that describe how old each father was when his son was born. Following that lineage leaves a very short history.
Lastly, how do you resovle the ideas for millions of years between creation of plants and then animals (they really do depend on each other for life) and also how could death enter the world with the sin of Adam and Eve if they were preceeded by plants and animals dieing for millions of years befre the creation of man?
There are 2 kinds of people who say what you are saying. Both kinds are on this board.
There are those who are religiously committed to it, and won’t listen to any evidence in favor of the Biblical interpretation, and there are those who genuinely think they are helping Christianity by trying to fit it with what they see as “settled science”.
I note you have added “in places” to soften your statement. If you are in fact the 2nd type, then I have some sympathy for you since I am a convert from that way of thinking myself.
You should be noticing that I can pick holes in your position quite easily. This debate has been going on a long time. I am totally expecting the “didn’t Jesus teach in parables” argument - of course he did, and he said clearly that they were parables. And every time Jesus referred to scripture, he did so literally, not allegorically. There is no precedent for reading the Bible allegorically.
As Christians, we should be able to have faith that God can command a whale to swallow Jonah for instance, and regurgitate him on a beach. “but he couldn’t breathe”, you might say. So? Jesus turned water into wine! that’s chemically impossible! If you start picking & choosing your miracles you’re on such a slippery road, you can be pushed any way the devil wants you to go.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed the discussion with DallasMike, but he’s in quite a tough spot right now, because he’s been forced to say he believes that all the people on Earth came from Noah in about 5000 years, because he came out with the “local flood” argument. Now scientifically, that’s pretty easy, but it’s not what mainstream science believes, at all. So where does he stand now? Neither in science, nor in the Bible. Tough spot.
So sure Buck, use your brain, but just make sure that is what you’re doing, and you’re not just accepting a bunch of stuff you’ve been told without exploring the alternatives. There are very good scientific reasons to accept the biblical worldview in terms of the creation, and the flood. The first 10 books of Genesis is where the devil is attacking the Bible. If he can get people to throw that out, he can go on to the rest. For example the homo “churches” that throw out half the Bible because they don’t like it!
And I’m not just talking about the numerical age of the Earth. Personally, that’s not something I’m concerned about. I generally support the young Earth argument, because there is at least as much evidence for it than the long Earth argument, but it’s not something I’d say is key. Evolution however is.
Thank you for the civil response. We will continue to disagree.
I haven’t softened my position by including “in places”. That is what I have always felt. However, one cannot convey an entire outlook in a few post on this board. It is not, as I understand it, peer reviewed.
To summarize, I beleive that the Bible is allegorical in places, and the places in which it is so becomes clearer as we grow in intellectual capacity, a capacity that God gave us. I believe that the earth is very old, and I believe that evolution is the path that God used to get is here. Furthermore, it took a lot more than 5000 years to do so.
Finally I am a Christian of great faith. I believe that literalists betray a weak faith.
You say you can pick holes—go ahead. Science and Christianity support my position.
Thanks again.
“I believe that literalists betray a weak faith”
having seen it from both sides, I know that’s not true. Accepting the world’s way is the easy thing to do. I used to be pretty adamant like you, but came to realize my belief wasn’t based on science - I had done no research into the creation , or the impossibility of evolution, but just assumed that the “consensus science” was right. The fact is, it’s blatantly wrong, but no one ever deals with it. For example the Big Bang. Were it true, we should be able to see much further in one particular direction in the fixed sky, that being the location of the “event”. But the furthest galaxies (or rather fuzzy redshifted blobs we presume to be galaxies!) seen are evenly distributed across the sky. This directly contradicts the big bang theory, but most people are completely unaware of it, because it was never reported like that in any major publication, so most people think there was a “big bang” some place billions of years ago, like it’s a fact, when it is completely impossible, scientifically.
all of the wrong science is non-observational, theory-on-top-of-theory. all of the observational science is totally true.
No, you are reading your pre-conceived notions into the Bible.
Geology confirms to us that there was no world-wide flood. If there was a world-wide flood, don't you think that there would be signs of it? And, yes, I've read plenty of YEC "scientific" papers claiming evidence for a world-wide flood. Unfortunately, they're garbage.
So which is it: (1) Did God lie to us in his word; (2) Did God lie to us in his creation; (3) Are you misinterpreting the Bible?
The correct answer is number 3. You're just like the people in Galileo's time whose misinterpretation of God's world led them to fight the evidence that the sun revolves around the earth.
“If there was a world-wide flood, don’t you think that there would be signs of it?”
You are entrenched, and I will not spend much time, but to say:
For example:
ammonite fossils near the top of Mount Everest
crocodiles (a new species discovered in 2002, much smaller than the Nile crocodiles) living in the middle of the Sahara
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1295748/posts
The flood didn’t need to cover Everest anyway. The mountains rose up after the flood. That is why the major mountain ranges follow the same path as the continental shelf. The shelf sank down and the mountains rose up. Conservation of mass.
I referenced my knowledge of ancient and modern Hebrew - not a concordance written by a WASP. As for sunrise to sunset, that my friend is quite literally the biblical definition of yom. Please provide biblical proof of ANY other definition of yom.
Well thank God you don’t have any pre-conceived notions then huh?! /s
Or should I have said ill-conceived. Look at how much mental gymnastics you must do in order for the Bible to conform to your viewpoint. It staggers the imagination and leads me to believe that you are not at all sincere in your postings and belief in the God of the Bible.
Good Day, Sir!
LOL! That's one of the best presentations for creation? Please tell me your scientific background. High school class? College class? College degree?
By the way, I am a creationist. I am not a Young-Earth Creationist because it is neither consistent with what God has revealed to us through his creation nor is it required by the Bible. Same with the flood. I believe it happened, but God's revelation through his creation does not show any evidence that it was worldwide and God's revelation through his Bible does not require it to be worldwide either.
Hear are just a few of Dr. Walt's claims and the problems with those claims:
- A simple, visual examination of limestone grains shows that few are ground-up seashells or corals, as some believe.
Wrong. I happen to live over the Austin Chalk formation. During my career, I have drilled into in more times than I can count and have textbooks with photomicrographs of the Austin Chalk in them. While there are some chalks that are non-organic in origin, the vast majority is made of microscopic shells. Here's a picture. Many more photographs of chalk from various places here. Doesn't look like ground-up seashells to me. Dr. Walt is lying to you.
Why do Young-Earthers have to lie? I see it all the time.
- In other words, when liquid water [H2O (l)] containing dissolved (or aqueous) CO2 [CO2(aq)] comes in contact with solid limestone [CaCO3(s)], the limestone dissolves and the chemical reaction moves to the right. Conversely, for every 44 grams of CO2 that escape the solution, 100 grams of limestone precipitate and the reaction moves back to the left.
Vastly oversimplified and an outright lie. The main factor is the pH of the water, not the amount of CO2. While CO2 has an acidifying affect, there are many factors affecting the pH of water other than CO2. Ocean water has a pH of 8 (it's non-acidic). It won't dissolve limestone.
The oceans already contain, in a dissolved state, 50 times the amount of CO2 than is in the entire atmosphere.
Dr. Walt does not even know what supercritical water is. It was just recently discovered in nature for the first time. From the context, I presume that he really means supersatured water. And you call this guy an expert? LOL!
- At the earth’s surface, this gas enters the atmosphere. Had all limestone slowly precipitated in surface waters, as much carbon would have been released into the atmosphere (as CO2) as was precipitated in limestone (as CaCO3). ... That amount of carbon in the atmosphere and seas would have made them toxic hundreds of times over.
Here, Dr. Walt unwittingly makes the case for an old earth. The Dallas area was once covered by seas that were 300 feet and grew shallower over time. We know this from the fossil record. If the sedimentation occurred over a couple of days during the flood, as he claims, then the amount of CO2 generated would have been toxic. If generated over millions of years, the oceans would have absorbed the CO2 and there would have been no toxicity.
- Surface waters could not have held the 60,000,000 × 1015 grams of carbon needed to produce today’s limestone without making them hundreds of times too toxic for sea life to exist.
Dr. Walt is assuming that the surface waters would have held this amount of CO2 at a single time. Untrue. Again, he unwittingly makes the case for an old earth.
- Earth’s vast limestone layers are overwhelmingly inorganic.
Flat-out lie. Also here and all over the internet. After having done so much work with the Austin Chalk that underlies a large portion of Texas, I can tell from career experience that this is a total lie.
I could spend the next two days refuting this garbage.
Walt Brown is a total buffoon. He is either incredibly ignorant or intentionally preys on people with no scientific education to gain adherents to believe in Young-Earth Creationism.
Other than Genesis the other main reason YEC hold fast to 6-10k years of history is simply found in the Biblical genealogies that describe how old each father was when his son was born. Following that lineage leaves a very short history.
What about the contradicting genealogies between Matthew and I Chronicles?
Some claim this proves the Bible isn't true. I (and many others) argue that genealogies may sometimes refer to clans and omit the names of bad people. Thus, when the Bible says "Fred begat Alfie and Alfie begat Henry," there may be 20 generations between Fred and Alfie and 28 generations between Alfie and Henry. Alfie was a new clan descended from Fred and Henry was a clan descended from Alfie. Scottish clans do the same thing.
How do you explain the inconsistent genealogies?
Lastly, how do you resovle the ideas for millions of years between creation of plants and then animals (they really do depend on each other for life)
The earliest plants did not depend on animal life. That came later.
...and also how could death enter the world with the sin of Adam and Eve if they were preceeded by plants and animals dieing for millions of years befre the creation of man?
What makes you think that there was no death before Adam and Eve? What do you think lions ate? What do you think vultures ate? What do you think creep, crawly things that feed on carrion ate? Did plants live forever? Here is a picture of a 95 million-year old fossilized fish with another fossilized fish in its stomach.
The Bible is clear that the Garden of Eden was a special place from the rest of the earth. Spiritual death entered the human race when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. The Bible is quite clear on that. Adam and Eve did not physically die for many centuries later, so that's another Biblical strike against the "yom must equal 24-hours" theory invented by Young Earth Creationists. It's quite possible that Adam and Eve were not created to physically live forever. The Bible is moot on this point.
This is like shooting fish in barrel. Check out the verses that I gave in comment 99. Here's more.
I think my Hebrew teacher was better than your Hebrew teacher.
I go by what God has shown us in his creation and his word. You reject what God has shown us in his creation.
Or should I have said ill-conceived. Look at how much mental gymnastics you must do in order for the Bible to conform to your viewpoint. It staggers the imagination and leads me to believe that you are not at all sincere in your postings and belief in the God of the Bible.
Good Day, Sir!
This is the only "assumption" I make:
- Use a meaning of the word yom that is entirely consistent with the word as used elsewhere in the Bible.
Here is just a teeny-tiny partial list of the assumptions that you have to make:
- Explain how light from galaxies billions of light years away reached the earth in 6,000 years.
- Explain how radiometric data shows the earth to be approximately 4.5 billion years old.
- Explain the red shift in an expanding universe
- If all sedimentary deposits were all laid down in the flood, why do primitive species appear at the bottom of sedimentary layers while more advanced species appear at the top? If these layers were laid down at once during the flood, we would expect to find mammoth bones in the same layers as ammonites. We don't.
- Explain deuterium abundance in the universe
- Explain the multiple reversals of the earth's magnetic pole as preserved in lava layers
- Explain the depth of carbonite deposits (the brilliant Dr. Walt is way out of his league)
- Explain Supernova 1987A
- Explain ice cores in Greenland showing 150,000 annual layers and ice cores in Antarctica showing more than 400,000 layers
- Explain element abundance in the universe given the lifetime of stars which can be determined from their spectrum
Like I said, you have to go through a lot more mental gymnastics than I do.
Tell me again the extent of your science education and career?
Good day, Sir! And a big ol' salute!
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