Posted on 05/19/2014 12:36:05 PM PDT by fishtank
Pat Robertson: Creationists 'Deaf, Dumb, and Blind'
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
Television minister Pat Robertson said on the May 13 episode of CBN's 700 Club, "The truth is, you have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to think that this earth that we live in only has 6,000 years of existence."1 The eight staff doctorates at the Institute for Creation Research, and the many other biblical creation scientists who agree with their position, might like to know what they supposedly haven't heard, don't understand, and haven't seen.2
Robertson was responding to a letter that asked, "I've heard arguments from both sides of whether our Earth is 6,000 years old…Please explain further."1
But Pat's explanation sounded far more emotional than factual.
He said, "I think to deny the clear [geologic] record that's there before us makes us look silly." Of course the "us" refers to Christians in general, who, in Robertson's view, should accept millions of years as a scientific fact that geology has left in a "clear record."
Where in Earth's many rocks can we find this "record"? We may only have seen it in books that men wrote, not in rocks that carry no literal records. Do Earth layers really present as clear a "record" of millions of years as Robertson so assertively persuaded?
Robertson referred to an age of dinosaurs including a Jurassic Period, "radiocarbon dating," and oil as three icons representing millions of years. Good science refutes each.
...more at link...
The explanation that has made the most sense to me is that you have to start from God’s nature and how He creates, which isn’t how nature “creates.” He is above and outside the “natural” laws of our universe, and even created the laws Himself, so He can follow and utilize them or not follow them depending on His purposes.
Given God’s nature and purposes, then, He would have created everything as it says in Genesis, in six literal days. When the sun was created doesn’t matter because in His mind He’d already created what a day would be, and He showed Himself to be above the sun, which He knew would be something man would worship besides Him. (cont’d)
The fact that God seems to violate laws of nature (even to ancient people, who would not have been able to explain how God created light first since all the sources for it that they knew of God didn’t create right away) shows His sovereignty. And when God created things and life, too, to create the whole universe He could simply bring anything from nothing at any point in what would seem to be its natural development. Since Adam and Eve were created as mature adults in one day, they would have seemed to be older on that day. The dinosaurs are another question. If they didn’t live with man, would God have created an earth with their fossils? As unlikely as that seems at first, he could have, if He had greater purpose for doing so. Atheists have objected that all this would make God a deceiver but it doesn’t. He’s given us the account of Creation, which by the human generations involved is only 6,000 years, and He expects us to believe His Word.
Pat Robertson is saved by grace through faith, no doubt, but he still has at least a couple of screws loose.
I certainly disagree with him on this and other issues ...
BUT ...
I remember channel surfing and watching his program in the 80s, and hearing him give a clear gospel presentation ... and then ....
I did not believe - at that time.
If I have died in the years after I heard him preaching, it would have been my own fault for not believing.
God is great and gracious, and He did bring me to faith in the mid-80s.
Pat Robertson has been senile for some time.
Not sure if there is work done like this from the birth of Noah's sons to an independently verified recorded historical point in time.
Actually chapter 11 takes us on Shem’s lineage,at the age of 100, using the same method as Gen 5 all the way up to Abram.
So we know how many years it was from the creation of Adam to Abram/Abraham.
1,556 from Adam to the birth of Shem, and 390 from the birth of Shem to Abram.
Adam to Abram = 1,946 years.
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