What Else Could God Have Done To Make Himself Clear?

[chaoschristian]

Up until recent history that has never been an issue, the appearance of age.

If God used billions of years and that concept was difficult to understand (which I don't think it would) he could have just as easily have said, "And there was the first age" instead of "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day."

All of us, yesterday and today, could understand its meaning and not be confused.

Emphasis mine.

This is culturally anachronistic. The concept of a billion in a pre-literate, pre-scientific society is alien.

And from a story-telling perspective the use of 'an age of' is too vague and not nearly visceral enough.

Whereas to use the concept of passing days provides a mechanism to convey the passage of time, something an audience can relate to and be engaged in.

We have to remember that we are actually at a loss in terms of Genesis, for reading the text of that which was originally formed to be spoken and heard.

 

[vossler]

This is culturally anachronistic. The concept of a billion in a pre-literate, pre-scientific society is alien.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I hope its not that you believe Moses and the people of that time didn't have the ability to understand long periods of time.

And from a story-telling perspective the use of 'an age of' is too vague and not nearly visceral enough.

Maybe it is vague, but at least its not something easily defined such as "the first day" when such definition wouldn't have been accurate.

 

[chaoschristian]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I hope its not that you believe Moses and the people of that time didn't have the ability to understand long periods of time.

Did they have the mental capacity? Yes.

Did they have the mathmetical and logical framework to conceptualize a billion? Of that I am doubtful. I think most people today probably lack that framework. They are no lesser for it, but a billion is a very large number. So large that it has no practical use in pre-literate, nomadic cultures.

The authors of Scripture use the phrase 'a thousand years' to mean 'a really, really, really, really, oh so immeasurably, really long time' A thousand years is a long time, but its a blip on the screen in comparison to a billion.

Here's a question that I need to research myself: when does the use of really large numbers emerge in societies?

 

[chaoschristian]

Another WIKI reference, but really fascinating reading: History of Large Numbers

So the reference is to Daniel 7:10

10 A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened.

Which is used in the context of an apocalyptic dream, which signals to me at least that it's not meant to be taken as a literal 100,000,000 (which is shy a billion by a factor of ten) but as 'inconceivably large.'

Regardless of how its to be taken, note that this is a Hellenistic influence.

I really do doubt that the early Hebrews had a conceptual framework for something as large as a billion.

 

[gluadys]

None of those things were important and so they were not mentioned.

That was my point!

What was mentioned is important and that is what we should be focusing on. We have no idea of what they were ignorant of or not.

I think we do on many fronts. People in Europe & Africa & Asia were ignorant of the existence of the Americas until Columbus made his famous voyage. They didn't use items like tobacco or potatoes or corn (maize that is) until there was trade between the hemispheres.

In general people were ignorant of microbes until the microscope revealed them, and of moons around other planets until the telescope revealed them. They thought Saturn was the outermost planet until the telescope turned up three more.

How could it be otherwise?

That's right! It didn't keep them from teaching what they did know. What did they teach? God's Word! Everything God told Moses to write, everything, is what was truly important. That's the whole point.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Maybe you can explain this to Poke so that he doesn't feel the bible is worthless if it is not up-to-date scientifically.

 

[shernren]

If God used billions of years and that concept was difficult to understand (which I don't think it would) he could have just as easily have said, "And there was the first age" instead of "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day."

All of us, yesterday and today, could understand its meaning and not be confused.

But really, would God's message have benefitted from God putting His creation across in terms of large age-scales? To Poke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_cosmology (by the by, it's Hindu; Hindi is a racial/cultural group of Indians), note the category errors between a large age and a seemingly infinite age. I'm not sure that those aren't intentional. Most ancient cultures either conceived the history of the earth as being short and finite (e.g. the Hebrews), infinite (e.g. the Greeks), or long and cyclically infinite (e.g. the Hindus). God wanted the Hebrews to have a finite conception of the universe: it is not an infinity, nor is it continually being destroyed and re-created the way (theological)* Hinduism puts it, but it is a finite entity contained both in time and space and subjugate to the creative and providential will of God. Within the three conceptions of the universe's age that I've listed (short/finite; infinite; long/cyclically infinite), only the short/finite one meets God's requirements. Hence God's describing the universe as something created recently: it was a construct necessary for God to put across the idea that the universe was a finite thing which actually had a definite beginning and would have a definite end.

 

[vossler]

Did they have the mental capacity? Yes.

Did they have the mathmetical and logical framework to conceptualize a billion? Of that I am doubtful. I think most people today probably lack that framework. They are no lesser for it, but a billion is a very large number. So large that it has no practical use in pre-literate, nomadic cultures.

The authors of Scripture use the phrase 'a thousand years' to mean 'a really, really, really, really, oh so immeasurably, really long time' A thousand years is a long time, but its a blip on the screen in comparison to a billion.

Here's a question that I need to research myself: when does the use of really large numbers emerge in societies?

Even if what you say is true (btw I agree) that a billion was too large a number for them to conceptualize, they were capable of higher thinking and were not an ignorant people. They obviously could, as demonstrated by your Daniel quote, conceptualize a long period of time and that was my main point. How eloquently it is stated really doesn't matter, just that they could understand it.

 

[chaoschristian]

Even if what you say is true (btw I agree) that a billion was too large a number for them to conceptualize, they were capable of higher thinking and were not an ignorant people. They obviously could, as demonstrated by your Daniel quote, conceptualize a long period of time and that was my main point. How eloquently it is stated really doesn't matter, just that they could understand it.

Actually, the reference in Daniel isn't to a period of time, but to a very large number of things.

 

[WithAllIAm]

Hey Shernren,

As promised, this is my response to you (third time lucky). I used Firefox the second time but it came up with an error. I think that I’ve found the source of the problem: Windows Media Player. It was the only thing that was running in both cases. I think that the memory used by WMP means that other programs don’t have proper access to the necessary processing power and memory so they shut down. I really need to update my computer. Finally, I wrote it up in Word and then copied to IE. I don't want to look upon this cursed thread again...

Why, make everything look like it was created young.

It isn’t so much that the universe looks old, rather it’s the way that some people look at it based on their pre-conceived or initial assumptions/beliefs. For example, consider the following picture and explanation available here.

Some evidences that make sense in a young universe model can be found here. I have given links because admittingly I am not qualified at all to really speak on the issue with any authority.

Making the universe 6,000 light-years big, or less, would be really helpful.

There is a common misconception that the light-year is a measure of time; but it is a measurement of distance. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, which is about 10 trillion kilometres (or 6 trillion miles).

To be honest, this question has annoyed creationists for some time and some answers have come out, but most of which lack detail and/or were later on proven scientifically unfeasible. However, a new avenue for creation research into answering this question has been explored by Dr Russell Humphreys in his book Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe. The basis for this new cosmology will be outlined below using information here and there from his book (as he knows more about it than I):

I’m sure that you are aware that gravity has an affect on the flow of time, as outlined by Einstein’s General Relativity (GR). Clocks at a low altitude should tick more slowly than clocks at a high altitude – and observations confirm this effect, which some call ‘gravitational time dilation.’ For example, an atomic clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, ticks five microseconds per year slower than an identical clock at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado, both clocks being accurate to about one microsecond per year. The difference is exactly what GR predicts for the one-mile difference in altitude.

The question then becomes, “Which one is showing or running at the ‘right time’?” Both are – in their own frame of reference. There is no longer any way to say which is the “correct” rate at which time runs – it all depends on where you are in relation to a gravitational field. The effect applies to the rates of all physical processes – the Earth rotating beneath your feet, the decay of atomic nuclei in your ones, how fast you get old, the ticking of the watch on your wrist, and the speed of nerve impulses in your brain. This means that locally, the effect is unnoticeable. Whatever measurements were made at one altitude would not show the effect, because everything at that altitude would be slowed by the same factor. You would have to compare clocks at different altitudes to see a difference.

What this new cosmology shows is that gravitational time distortion in the early universe would have meant that while a few days were passing on Earth, billions of years would have been available for light to travel to Earth. It still means that God made the heavens and the Earth (i.e. the whole universe) in six ordinary days, only a few thousand years ago But with the reality revealed by GR, we now know that we have to ask “Six days as measured by which clock? In which frame of reference?” The mathematics of Dr Humphreys’ theory shows that while God makes the universe in six days in the Earth’s reference frame (or ‘Earth Standard Time&#8217, the light has ample time in the extra-terrestrial reference frame to travel the required distances.

Interestingly enough, this result ‘falls out’ of the equations of GR (the same mathematical machinery used to generate the big bang theory), just as the big bang does. The crucial reason why such different cosmologies come out of the same mathematics is that two different (but absolutely arbitrary) starting points (initial assumptions) are utilized; Dr Humphreys assumes that the universe has a centre (and that the centre of the universe was somewhere near Earth at the beginning) and that the universe is bounded (i.e. has boundaries or edges).

I should also say that the big bang does have its own light-travel time problem to which answers are still lacking. It is not just a problem for creationists, but evolutionists too.

It would also knock some (not all) gas out of those weaselly atheists who love to talk about how small we are in such a big universe, too.

Yet, ironically enough, they don’t accept the anthropic principle; that is, the conclusion that the universe appears to be designed for the survival and well-being of mankind. The evidence that leads one to the anthropic principle points towards the centrality of mankind to God is often largely ignored by atheists as they cannot even consider the notion that God created.

Perhaps one reason why God created such a large universe is to show His authority, power, might, majesty, and holiness to us or to reveal some other characteristic of His nature to us. As large as our universe is, God is bigger. As powerful and majestic as the stars, black holes, and nebulae are, God is more. The heavens really declare the glory of God. When I see the handiwork of God and consider the heavens, my mind forces me to fear God (i.e. stand in awe and reverence) and think, “Just who is this God?”

Maybe a second reason is because God is trying to humble us for us to stop our natural ego-centric and sinful attitudes. As much as we may not like it, we are not at the centre (metaphorically speaking) of the universe, God is.

Perhaps yet another reason is to show us that even in this massive universe, God cares that much about us that we are at the centre of His view and concern. It’s a humbling and amazing thought. As a Casting Crowns song “Who Am I” says, “Who am I that the Lord of all the Earth, would care to know my name, would care to feel my hurt?” By the same sentiment, who are we that the Great I AM who created this massive universe and who holds it in His hands wants to know like us and have a personal and intimate relationship with us? To me, when ever I think about that, I just have to stand there and say “Wow.” Just stand in awe about God and who He is. The God of the entire universe, the creator of the stars, the beautiful nebulae, the one who spoke black holes in existence and laughs at them (whose power we think is great) wants to know me … something as low as me.

This is just speculation. We’ll know one day.

I.e., how would God make it clear to a bunch of nomads, wandering in the desert, who don't even know how to smelt metal, what a Big Bang is?

I don’t even know how to smelt metal. They weren't stupid if that is what you are getting at. I’m not asking or saying that God should give them a scientific account written in scientific and technical terminology, but an account much like creation account that God has given in Genesis. In this account, God just states the important stuff without getting to bogged down with the nitty-gritty of technically explaining everything – because giving an in-depth account of how He did everything is not the main point of the Genesis account. God only chooses to give an over view of how He created. For example, in Genesis 1 we are told that ‘God said “Let there be light,” and there was’ (Gen. 1:3, TNIV). We are not told where the light came from, its nature, position, etc. We are just told that God spoke it into existence – a basic description without getting technical or in-depth (because that is not His purpose in Genesis).

How would He tell them that the universe is so many billion years old, and what would it mean to them? More importantly, what would that tell them about Him? I think were God to write them a scientific account, knowing their level of knowledge, they wouldn't understand any of it and so they wouldn't understand anything of God.

One way that God could have been more accurate and not lying or deceiving as much, in the Genesis context, is to say, for example: ‘After many years [billions of years/a long time, etc] God had finished the work He had been doing’ (Gen. 2:1, Evolutionist Standard Version ).

What would a young universe say about God that an old universe would not? Does this then mean, by implication, that the conclusions about God based on a young universe are incorrect if God did not create a young universe?

Why would a young universe mean any more to them than an old universe?

As for the final statement, see response above that answers this (i.e. a basic description without getting technical or in-depth).

The most important purpose of the creation account was that it told the Israelites why God had created,

And just why is it that God felt the need to create and where is it explained in the Genesis account?

Actually, contrary to what many evolutionists believe, the topic of why God created is never even mentioned in Genesis. If it is, I must have missed that somewhere…

and it told them what they could expect God to behave like in future: as their Warrior against chaos, as the God who was different from all the other gods of the nations around them, as a God who was orderly and precise in whatever He does, as a God who formed them with purpose and planning and care.

Generally speaking, the big bang isn’t viewed as being as ordered as what you are suggesting. Mutations are also hardly precise, but more random chance, in my opinion. Creating using death and suffering isn’t exactly what I would call ‘caring’ or ‘good.’

The point that I think you may have missed is that these conclusions about God are only true if God actually created like that!

That is, to me, what God meant to tell them, and to read anything else out of the passage is dangerous.

While I respect your opinion, what if God really was trying to teach them about how He created everything? True, we can draw theological conclusions from the Genesis account about God and His nature, but these are only true if God created as He said in Genesis. Creating in such a way that causes pain, death, suffering, and bloodshed in His creation is hardly ‘good’ or ‘loving.’ Stating that God is a God of order is only true if God created using order – if He did use the big bang where everything seems chaotic, then how does this work? God seems to be acting in contradiction to His nature.

 

[shernren]

I like the fact that you're rephrasing arguments in your own words, and that you listen to Casting Crowns. I dislike the fact that you're using WMP (I'm sure you do too; you could switch to either Winamp or foobar2k), that you seem to assume that I don't know that a light-year is a unit of distance. and that you formatted a links exactly the same as normal text (I almost didn't click the "click here" ). But that's just me.

I'll leave the scientific part of the post aside for now because I think you've touched on some very important things when you talk about the creation account. For example:

I don’t even know how to smelt metal. They weren't stupid if that is what you are getting at. I’m not asking or saying that God should give them a scientific account written in scientific and technical terminology, but an account much like creation account that God has given in Genesis. In this account, God just states the important stuff without getting to bogged down with the nitty-gritty of technically explaining everything – because giving an in-depth account of how He did everything is not the main point of the Genesis account. God only chooses to give an over view of how He created. For example, in Genesis 1 we are told that ‘God said “Let there be light,” and there was’ (Gen. 1:3, TNIV). We are not told where the light came from, its nature, position, etc. We are just told that God spoke it into existence – a basic description without getting technical or in-depth (because that is not His purpose in Genesis).

(Even if you don't know how to smelt metal yourself, I'm sure you know another friend who at least knows how it works. The whole freaking nation of Israel didn't know how to smelt metal during the time of Saul, and so they got their metal from the Philistines. It's a little as if the US was so backward, it had to buy all its electricity from, say, Iran. Now imagine if the US didn't even know how to make copper wires.)

I love what you're saying here, you're the first creationist I've seen who actually comes up with something like this. To use technical-speak, the creation account is a phenomenological one: it describes the world as how it looks, not how it works. A phenomenological description tells us that "the sun rose this morning"; a scientific one that "this morning the earth rotated so that I am now within the hemisphere facing the sun". We see light in today's world, and we are told simply that "God said let there be light, and there was light". And you're right that one simply doesn't hold phenomenological descriptions accountable for teaching science. When I say "That was a beautiful sunrise" I don't mean to promote geocentrism. That's a good start!

One way that God could have been more accurate and not lying or deceiving as much, in the Genesis context, is to say, for example: ‘After many years [billions of years/a long time, etc] God had finished the work He had been doing’ (Gen. 2:1, Evolutionist Standard Version ).

What would a young universe say about God that an old universe would not? Does this then mean, by implication, that the conclusions about God based on a young universe are incorrect if God did not create a young universe?

Why would a young universe mean any more to them than an old universe?

Because a young universe has a finite beginning, whereas a very old universe would not, within their mindset. Actually that's what the discussion up to now has been revolving around. Do we see any contemporary cultures that are able to accept a universe which started a very long time ago, but still a finite time ago? Most creation myths present creation as having taken a very short time and having happened very recently. The Hindus believed that the lifespan of a universe was very long, but along with that came reincarnation and the idea that reality is cyclical - effectively that the universe was not created by any God as the Jews would understand Him to be. The Greeks had notions of a universe which was infinitely old, which carried over into much of modern scientific thought before the Big Bang (which was, ironically, first conceived by the Catholic priest Lemaitre). On the other hand, the idea that the universe had a finite beginning, but very long ago, was effectively born only with the idea of the Big Bang, AFAIK. And I believe that this happened only with the invention of scientific notation (using powers of ten), the exploration of nature at scales far removed from everyday experience giving us immense numbers (so that 12 grams of carbon-12 has 6.02 x 10^23 atoms of carbon and the speed of light is 3 x 10^8 m/s, say) and the invention of digital computers which can crunch those numbers.

So I think that within the Israelites' pre-scientific mindset there were really only two options: a young, finite universe, or an effectively infinitely old universe. And of course there is theological significance in the universe being finite, for how can an infinitely old universe have been created?

Actually, contrary to what many evolutionists believe, the topic of why God created is never even mentioned in Genesis. If it is, I must have missed that somewhere…

And you say we evolutionists make creation meaningless! ;D The purpose of creation is quite clear. In Gen 1:2 : The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (ESV) In Hebrew, "without form" (more traditionally rendered "formless") is tohu, and "void" is bohu. We are presented with the initial state of creation as God began it: formless, void, a great mass of waters (which symbolize chaos).

Over the first three days of creation, God creates order (where the initial creation was formless). Over the next three days of creation, God fills that order with life (where the initial creation was void). This is the "tohu-bohu" parallelism, presenting creation as an orderly account (which is one of the things which make it sound suspiciously like a story, not a factual retelling).

So what was the purpose of creation? To make the world orderly and fill it with life. Order and life are significant themes in Jewish theological thought, as far as I've seen (though seen only from reading Chaim Potok, heh), and they match the general theme of other creation myths from around the region. So yes, Genesis 1 does tell us why the world was created.

Generally speaking, the big bang isn’t viewed as being as ordered as what you are suggesting. Mutations are also hardly precise, but more random chance, in my opinion. Creating using death and suffering isn’t exactly what I would call ‘caring’ or ‘good.’

The point that I think you may have missed is that these conclusions about God are only true if God actually created like that!

While I respect your opinion, what if God really was trying to teach them about how He created everything? True, we can draw theological conclusions from the Genesis account about God and His nature, but these are only true if God created as He said in Genesis. Creating in such a way that causes pain, death, suffering, and bloodshed in His creation is hardly ‘good’ or ‘loving.’ Stating that God is a God of order is only true if God created using order – if He did use the big bang where everything seems chaotic, then how does this work? God seems to be acting in contradiction to His nature.

I think you're trying to get two points across here: that the Big Bang and evolution seem to be too random for God to use to create the world, and that evolution seems to be too cruel for God to use. Am I right? Those are two separate charges and I will address them separately.

Firstly, one might argue that God wouldn't use such a random, purposeless process as the Big Bang or evolution. But then again, what is "random and purposeless" really depends on what you want them to be. For example, the Bible says that God knit me together in my mother's womb, and that children are a blessing from the Lord. And yet, modern science tells us that of the millions of sperm released during intercourse, it is just chance which determines which will fertilize the egg. Not only that, random chance (at meiosis) determines what genes are in the egg or the sperm, and the development of the fetus is purely natural and scientific. All these processes are "random and purposeless". And yet, in the Bible, God claims responsibility and glory for these processes. If God can claim responsibility and glory for those, why can't He claim responsibility and glory for the processes of the Big Bang and evolution, no matter how "random and purposeless" we see them to be?

Secondly, one might argue that evolution reveals a cruel God. But think about it: cruelty is only defined when morality is defined. An act is cruel only because we humans deem it to be cruel, and we only deem it to be cruel when it transgresses our moral standards. In other words, without a standard for morality, cruelty is not a defined concept. And in evolutionary timeframes, before there was man, who would God have defined morality for? A moral standard is only necessary to gauge the works of man for whom God has given freedom to choose to sin. To the rest of the natural world, and definiely for the whole world before man existed, it makes no sense to speak of morality, and therefore no sense to speak of "cruelty". Besides, God clearly glories many times in providing food for the carnivores, and at occasions even portrays Himself in the picture of a lion, which would be surprising if lions and carnivores only existed as a result of sin.

So I don't consider those sufficient objections against evolution.

 

[gluadys]

It isn’t so much that the universe looks old, rather it’s the way that some people look at it based on their pre-conceived or initial assumptions/beliefs. For example, consider the following picture and explanation available

Until the early modern era, the common European assumptions/beliefs was that the earth was relatively young. Can you explain why the mostly Christian scientists of the 17th to 19th century came to the conclusion that it was at the very least hundreds of millions of years old? They did not begin with the pre-conception that it was old. What changed their mind?

Also note that it was anti-evolutionists, such as Cuvier, just as much as evolutionists who upheld the antiquity of the earth. The antiquity of the earth was a scientifically settled question decades before the evolution controversy began.

Some evidences that make sense in a young universe model can be found here.

This sentence alone tells us you know little about scientific method. Science sets a higher standard than making sense in a young universe model. It requires that the evidence be predicted by the model, and only by this model. IOW, in addition to making sense in a young earth model, it must not make sense in an old earth model. Furthermore, no other alternative may make sense in a young earth model.

here

I will comment only on this article, as I expect the others are marked by the same weaknesses.

The old-earth idea was developed historically, not from letting the physical facts speak for themselves but by imposing anti-biblical philosophical assumptions onto the geological observations.​

This is a demonstrable historical falsehood that slanders many devout Christians who engaged in geological research in the 17th to 19th centuries. Consider, for example, William Smith, Hugh Miller and John Fleming.

Soft-sediment deformation—that thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks (of various layers) are bent (like a stack of thin pancakes over the edge of a plate), as we see at the mile-deep Kaibab Upwarp in the Grand Canyon. Clearly the whole, mile-deep deposit of various kinds of sediment was still relatively soft and probably wet (not like it is today) when the earthquake occurred that uplifted one part of the series of strata.​

In fact, if the strata had not already been lithified, there would be no visible layers, as the uplifting force would simply have poked through soft sediments which would then have rolled to the bottom of the upthrust.

So the time necessary for lithification is required, and one year is not enough.

Many fossils that show (require) very rapid burial and fossilization. For example, soft parts (jellyfish, animal feces, scales and fins of fish) or whole, large, fully-articulated skeletons (e.g., whales or large dinosaurs such as T-Rex) are preserved.​

A common obfuscation found in creationist sources. Yes, they require rapid burial. They do not require rapid fossilization. The process of fossilization is usually very slow.

Also rapid burial does not necessarily mean instantaneous burial. Many fossils do show signs of being partially scavenged, which means they were not buried immediately upon death.

There is a common misconception that the light-year is a measure of time; but it is a measurement of distance. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, which is about 10 trillion kilometres (or 6 trillion miles).

We know that. Are you overlooking the fact that it will take light a year to travel the distance of a light-year?

However, a new avenue for creation research into answering this question has been explored by Dr Russell Humphreys in his book Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe. The basis for this new cosmology will be outlined below using information here and there from his book (as he knows more about it than I):[/FONT]

Speaking of assumptions, what about the unsupported assumptions Humphreys makes. His work has no value until he shows those assumptions to be more than hypotheses.

I’m sure that you are aware that gravity has an affect on the flow of time, as outlined by Einstein’s General Relativity (GR).

Which is why the constant speed of light is specified as the speed of light in a vacuum. Note that experiments showing a different speed of light occur in a medium, not in a vacuum.

Dr Humphreys assumes that the universe has a centre (and that the centre of the universe was somewhere near Earth at the beginning) and that the universe is bounded (i.e. has boundaries or edges).

What is Dr. Humphrey's explanation for the age of the universe being so much more than the age of the earth and its solar system? What is his explanation for the sun containing heavy elements beyond that of a first generation star?

I should also say that the big bang does have its own light-travel time problem to which answers are still lacking. It is not just a problem for creationists, but evolutionists too.

Nothing in physics is a problem for evolutionists. It may be a problem for physicists, but it does not touch on biology.

Yet, ironically enough, they don’t accept the anthropic principle; that is, the conclusion that the universe appears to be designed for the survival and well-being of mankind.

That is not quite what the anthropic principle means, but in any case, accepting the anthropic principle also means accepting an old age for the universe and the earth.

The

evidence that leads one to the anthropic principle points towards the centrality of mankind to God is often largely ignored by atheists as they cannot even consider the notion that God created.

What atheists believe or don't believe is rather irrelevant in a Christians Only forum.

I don’t even know how to smelt metal. They weren't stupid if that is what you are getting at.

No, that is not what we are getting at. Lacking knowledge and lacking intelligence are quite different things. I don't know why this is a difficult concept to grasp. Or why anyone should be considered condescending toward the ancients for not knowing what they could not have known in their time. We don't know what will be discovered in the next millennium either. In my own lifetime I have seen us go from radio to TV to the internet; from heavy 78rpm records to vinyl to tape to CDs and now i-pods. Does that make my kids more intelligent than my grandparents? No. My grandparents were very intelligent people. But their knowledge base was different.

One way that God could have been more accurate and not lying or deceiving as much, in the Genesis context, is to say, for example: ‘After many years [billions of years/a long time, etc] God had finished the work He had been doing’ (Gen. 2:1, Evolutionist Standard Version ).

How would that have tied in with the Sabbath--obviously an important point of the Gen. 1 story?

What would a young universe say about God that an old universe would not? Does this then mean, by implication, that the conclusions about God based on a young universe are incorrect if God did not create a young universe?

Conclusions about God that make his creation to be a sham are obviously incorrect.

Why would a young universe mean any more to them than an old universe?

Probably wouldn't, as they did not use the creation stories to emphasize the age of the universe, but to emphasize God as Creator and the observance of the Sabbath as a creation ordinance.

Creating using death and suffering isn’t exactly what I would call ‘caring’ or ‘good.’

That doesn't mean God shares your opinion.

[Stating that God is a God of order is only true if God created using order – if He did use the big bang where everything seems chaotic, then how does this work? God seems to be acting in contradiction to His nature.

The fact that the big bang is explicable in terms of physics and math indicates that it is orderly. Chaos theory is showing that even highly complex processes operate according to rationally-understandable principles. That is order.

 

[chaoschristian]

Stating that God is a God of order is only true if God created using order – if He did use the big bang where everything seems chaotic, then how does this work? God seems to be acting in contradiction to His nature.

WIKI[/URL]]
Chaos derives from the Greek Χάος and typically refers to unpredictability. In the metaphysical sense, it is the opposite of law and order: unrestrictive, both creative and destructive.
The word χάος did not mean "disorder" in classical-period ancient Greece. It meant "the primal emptiness, space". It is derived from the Proto-Indo-Europeanroot ghn or ghen meaning "gape, be wide open": compare "chasm" (from Greek), and Anglo-Saxon gānian (= "yawn"), geanian, ginian (= "gape wide"); see also Old NorseGinnunga Gap. Due to people misunderstanding early Christian uses of the word, the meaning of the word changed to "disorder". (The Ancient Greek for "disorder" is ταραχη.).
Mathematically chaos means an aperiodic deterministic behavior which is very sensitive to its initial conditions, i.e. infinitesimal perturbations of boundary conditions for a chaotic dynamic system originate finite variations of the orbit in the phase space; see chaos theory

While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I personally think that there is elegance in the theological pov that chaos is a part of God's ongoing creative process. For only God is infinite in nature, and therefore only God would be in a position to measure and manipulate the infinite data points necessary in such an act.

 

[vossler]

Actually, the reference in Daniel isn't to a period of time, but to a very large number of things.

Which could be years too, right?

 

[XTE]

In all honesty God could do a number of things to prove his existence outside of the Bible such as an easy one like:

Walk amongst us in Perfect Love and tell everyone within the plane of our existence(where I can see him with my eyes) that he is here and that everything in the Bible is literal and that's that.

He could also make it so "faith healers" were around so much that they weren't tastements to God's power when we went to see them BUT were so wide-spread that we wouldn't need doctors anymore and cures and what have you. "Faith healers" would cure everything. The miracles happening everywhere, not just in revivals, would really speak to everyone don't you think?

He could take away all of the problems of the world in a single wave of his hand. Then what would we fight over?

My BELIEF in God requires FAITH that he is there. I could justify it out and say it's his will that there be famine, death, and a huge difference between poor and upper class but how would I know? I'm not gonna speak in absolute terms because if I'm honest with myself, I DON'T KNOW.

The real question is if we are all lead by the Holy-Spirit as Christians, why does he tell us different things(YEC, OEC, ID, TE)? Could it be because we want to be right? Self-righteousness isn't next to Godliness.

My FAITH is just that, FAITH. I have FAITH that Jesus Christ came as the Son of God to wash my sins away. I have FAITH that there is a God and I separate it from the Science I see as the single best way to explain anything and everything from Space above to the appliances you use everyday to shorten your workload. I made this post after much self-doubt.

amen and amen

Thank you and God Bless

 

[chaoschristian]

Which could be years too, right?

Well in the passage that is referenced it specifically is talking about servants; but if you are talking about the concept, then yes the concept of 100,000,000 could of course be used to enumerate anything.

 

[artybloke]

There was a limit to how much advanced maths that the ancient Hebrews could indulge in. Not only did they not have Arabic number systems; they didn't even have the concept of "zero".

There seems to be a hidden assumption among some people that if you don't have the scientific understanding of the world that we've developed in the West from the 17th Century to the present, that you're not a brainy as we are now. But if (as seems almost 100% certain) the ancient Hebrews (and everyone in the surrounding cultures) did not have those scientific understandings, does that mean they were less brainy?

Of course not. They were every bit as intelligent as people living now; but their inteligence was focused elsewhere than onto scientific investigation. Nobody in that age did scientific investigation, except in isolated pockets and then it was mostly technological. The Bible contains some very beautiful, very wise & deep knowledge about spiritual matters, about God. It simply does not concern itself with science - because that's not what is of interest to the writers.