Adam and Eve

[AureateDawn]

This may sound silly, but here it goes. I think this is the right place, but I couldn't find another place for it. My apologies if it is not in the right place.

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

God created them, so they didn't live nine months within a mother...so why would they need the umbilical cord to live?

 

[shernren]

Oh, it's the right place! And it's really not too bad a question to ask. Here's an interesting article which uses the question as an introduction to a (simplistic) first discussion of the origins debate.

http://www.freedomsring.org/belly.html

 

[jereth]

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

YECist: No
Gap theorist: No
Omphalos theorist: Yes
OECist: No
TEist: Yes

 

[Assyrian]

We read about Adam in the creation Psalm 104...

Psa 104:23 Adam goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.
24 O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.

Is this a naval reference?

 

[ChetSinger]

This may sound silly, but here it goes. I think this is the right place, but I couldn't find another place for it. My apologies if it is in the right place.

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

God created them, so they didn't live nine months within a mother...so why would they need the umbilical cord to live?

Hi. It's not silly question at all.

You're right. A belly button is a scar from the umbilical cord. Adam and Eve, not originating in a womb, wouldn't have had them.

 

[AureateDawn]

Omphalos theorist: Yes

Who are they?

 

[Mallon]

Who are they?

Those YECs who believe God created the world with the appearance of age.

 

[AureateDawn]

.... what? I didn't really understand.

 

[Mallon]

.... what? I didn't really understand.

The logic behind the Omphalos hypothesis is this:
1) God created the stars 6,000 years ago.
2) Starlight can take billions of light years to reach earth.
3) Therefore, God created the universe with the "appearance of age", with starlight created in mid-transit from its source to the earth.

It's another classic example of creationists playing appologetics to fit their conclusion (i.e., backwards science).

 

[AureateDawn]

Ah, okay. That makes sense. Interesting and plausible theory.

 

[Mallon]

Ah, okay. That makes sense. Interesting and plausible theory.

Why do you feel it is plausible?
Why do you feel God would deceive us by creating things with the "appearance of age"?
Just as the moon is assumed to have been created with craters on its surface, do you also think Adam was created with bruises, callouses, and split ends?

 

[Poke]

The logic behind the Omphalos hypothesis is this:
1) God created the stars 6,000 years ago.
2) Starlight can take billions of light years to reach earth.
3) Therefore, God created the universe with the "appearance of age", with starlight created in mid-transit from its source to the earth.

It's another classic example of creationists playing appologetics to fit their conclusion (i.e., backwards science).

The Bible teaches that God made the stars for man. God didn't set out to deceive anyone, but he necessarily had to have the light reaching Earth to accomplish His purpose. He could have done that by having the stars be billions of years older than man, or he could have done in through some aspect of science we don't yet know about (e.g. the whitehole hypothesis), or he could have miraculously have done it.

The Bible seems to exclude the billions of years option. Besides, the Big Bang is no less scientifically unlikely than light reaching Earth in mere thousands of years.

 

[Mallon]

The Bible teaches that God made the stars for man. God didn't set out to deceive anyone, but he necessarily had to have the light reaching Earth to accomplish His purpose.

Fair enough. But then why to Omphalos subscribers then extend the star analogy to explain the appearance of age of rocks, the planets, tree rings, etc?

Besides, the Big Bang is no less scientifically unlikely than light reaching Earth in mere thousands of years.

Except the former is an explanation based on evidence; the latter is an explanation based on a conclusion.
The model is no more godless than our understanding of the rules of baseball, the inner workings of a car engine, or the natural process of rain. I suppose anyone who enjoys these things is a godless heathen, too?

 

[stumpjumper]

Fair enough. But then why to Omphalos subscribers then extend the star analogy to explain the appearance of age of rocks, the planets, tree rings, etc?

Also, you run into some serious problems with phenonema such as supernova. If we witness a supernova, it has occurred ten to hundreds of thousand light years ago. At that point, then, it's not just that God sped up the speed of light at creation and then set it at it's current speed but God intentionally created the appearance that supernova's occurred before creation.

Odd since it takes a long time for stars to develop into supernova...

 

[Poke]

Fair enough. But then why to Omphalos subscribers then extend the star analogy to explain the appearance of age of rocks, the planets, tree rings, etc?

Much "evidence of age" is blatantly based on an assumption of a natural origin via some sort of evolutionary process (e.g. using expansion from the Big Bang to date the universe). Some of it requires a level of trust in the objectivity of reports that I don't have (e.g. K-Ar dates). Of course, some of the evidence I consider more favorable to the young-earth position, even given the necessity of an alleged apperence of age (a working environment for Adam and Eve).

What I need to explain is something like isochron dating, where I know of no reason why this "apperence of age" would be necessary in a completed universe, and where there is little room for evolutionary scientists to let their bias sink the reliability of their reports.

Except the former is an explanation based on evidence; the latter is an explanation based on a conclusion.

The Big Bang is only based on evidence as far as parsimony vs. other evolutionary explanations goes. I could ask "Why did God create a false apperence that the Big Bang didn't happen, such as the absense of primordial anti-matter?" You could do no better than plead about parity violations, or some other such insufficient explanation.

The model is no more godless than our understanding of the rules of baseball,

The difference between Evolution and Baseball rules is that Evolution sticks to the assumption that God is not involved, even when the evidence does not support this assumption.

 

[shernren]

The Bible teaches that God made the stars for man. God didn't set out to deceive anyone, but he necessarily had to have the light reaching Earth to accomplish His purpose. He could have done that by having the stars be billions of years older than man, or he could have done in through some aspect of science we don't yet know about (e.g. the whitehole hypothesis), or he could have miraculously have done it.

But why stars? God could have surrounded the earth with little white LEDs each equipped with a nuclear battery the size of a grapefruit, and man wouldn't have known the difference for 6,000 years. If the stars were created for man, why is it that 99.99+% of any given star's radiative output never reaches man? (And that's on a good day.) Stars necessitate a huge empty vacuum of outer space (since large distances are needed to overcome the gravitational attraction between them) and that causes man to realize that he is astronomically insignificant in such a large universe. And stars necessitate a universe which looks old, when any other number of approaches (like a swarm of LEDs in the Oort Cloud) would leave no room for doubt.

Goddidit can explain old stars in a humongous universe, sure. But is it the best explanation?

"Why did God create a false apperence that the Big Bang didn't happen, such as the absense of primordial anti-matter?"

This is a new fallacy. Why would the absence of primordial anti-matter cause any problem for the Big Bang hypothesis? How do you know there isn't any, anyway?