AVVET, Christianity has always held that God has twobooks. Why do you keep insisting in ignoring the second book? It's very ironic, considering that second book is Creation. In saying we must only look to scripture, you deny that God created!
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Why ignore book 2?
The second book is difficult to read. It does not allow for literalism. It requires intelligence and very hard work to read it.
That is unsatisfactory for someone who wants to always be right, just by dint of attitude or ism, or maybe "inspiration".
Reading book 2 you can never be sure you are getting it right.
But it does, AV -- it undermines the credibility of the "Documentation," which, by your own admission, is the only reason to accept the "Creation Week."
Would you agree that without the "Documentation," you have nothing to go on? If the "Documentation" is wrong on one of God's acts, then it's not infallible -- just the work of mere mortals.
I have to respectfully disagree, Guardian, on a technicality.
God created this universe ex nihilo --- and that type of creation did not leave an audit trail that we can trace back.
Sure it did. Right back to the Big Bang. But even Young Earth Creationists think there is an audit trail at least from the Flood.
We must go by faith in the Documentation as to how it happened,
That's where you missed Guardian's point: the physical universe is the "Documentation".
AVVET, Christianity has always held that God has twobooks. Why do you keep insisting in ignoring the second book? It's very ironic, considering that second book is Creation. In saying we must only look to scripture, you deny that God created!
Who did it, why it was done, what order it was done in, and even who the eyewitness were --- which said Documentation gives us all that information, and more.
The creation stories give us the Who and why, but there are no eyewitnesses. The fact that you capitalize "Documentation" is evidence that you have are into bibliolatry -- worship of the Bible instead of God.
__________________ "If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437
"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890
Feel free to to show me where I ever said that --- please take any of my posts on the Flood and highlight that part in red. In fact, I've denied that several times.
Sorry... God cleaned up the evidence for "safety and sanitary" reasons. Whatever that means.
__________________ "We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant." – Daniel Boorstin
"Ignorance should NOT be tolerated just because it's cloaked in religion."
-Phred
"Creationists can't all be right but they can all be wrong."
-Frumious Bandersnatch
Science does not undermine any credibility where God is involved.
We're not talking about God or science, AV -- we're talking about your faith in your "Documentation."
Yes --- so far --- and by that, I mean if scientists would soon find a global layer.
Assuming there's a "global layer" to be found. Of course, without reliable "Documentation," there's not much reason one to be there, let alone to go looking for one.
Correct --- either that, or God, Himself was wrong, which is impossible; but either way, yes, the Documentation would be flawed.
You're forgetting a possibility -- That God, Himself, had nothing to do with the "Documentation."
Even you (I think) admit that you can't prove a negative, and if there was no global flood, you'll never prove it.
Note to all: Can we get off this flood stuff now? It has nothing to do with the Creation Week.
First, you can prove a negative. That's what deductive logic does all the time. True statements cannot have false consquences. Therefore, to find a false consequnce means you have proven the negative. Let's take 2 well-known examples:
1. Statement: the earth is flat. That has false consequences. Therefore you disproved the statement and thus, proven the negative: The earth is not flat.
2. Statement: the earth is the center of the solar system. Again, false consequences. So again, you've proven the negative: the earth is not the center of the solar system.
The Flood is essential to what you call "creation week". Two consequences of Creation Week are:
1. There should be very little or no sedimentary rock. There hasn't been enough time for erosion to make the sediments to make the miles deep desposits of sedimentary rock we see.
2. We should see the corpses of all plants and animals mixed together in the sediments we do have. After all, they were all created within 72 hours of each other and thus lived together on the earth at the same time.
The geological record in sedimentary and metamorphic rock have false consequences to Creation Week. There's a LOT of sedimentary rock. And layers of sedimentary rock have plants and animals the others don't. Also, the sedimentary rock contains fossils of plants and animals that are today extinct and are very different from those that are present today. These are three major false consequences for Creation Week. Since Creation Week has false consequences, that means it isn't true. (At least in the literal "this is how creation happened" sense instead of the theological messages in Genesis 1.)
Flood Geology is a massive ad hoc hypothesis to save Creation Week from Falsification. It supposedly eroded enough rock so that the large amount of sedimentary rock was possible. Also, supposedly the various mechanisms of the Flood -- sedimentation rates, fleeing of some animals to higher ground, etc. -- account for the segregation of plants and animals. That some types of animals weren't taken on Noah's Ark supposedly account for the extinct animals. (Altho, notice that this does NOT account for extinct plant species.) That's the essence of an ad hoc hypothesis, AVVET. The ad hoc hypothesis tries to save the favored hypothesis from falsification.
So, if Flood Geology (as in Whitcomb and Morris' The Genesis Flood) is wrong, then Creation Week is wrong. And Flood Geology was shown to be wrong by 1831. Thus, Creation Week is wrong.
Of course, a literal reading of the text of Genesis 2 also falsifies Creation Week. According to Genesis 2:4, everything that took the first 3-4 days to happen in Genesis 1 happened in a single day. So, you've got the "Documentation" contradicting itself. At least if you insist that the "Documentation" tells you how God created.
Of course, if you read the "Documentation" the way it was meant to be written, then there is no contradiction. It all works out if you listen to God and don't insist on trying to tell God how He created.
__________________ "If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437
"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890
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