Water into Wine.

[prodromos]

In the case of starlight, so that people could enjoy the view.

Quite right. Apart from when the moon was out the night sky would have been pitch black for years until light finally began to reach earth from the nearest stars. God didn't create the myriad facets of the heavens and the earth in isolation but as fully functioning systems already in full swing. I truly don't understand how some people consider this as God being deceptive. I see it as God being glorious and majestic.

John

 

[busterdog]

Quite right. Apart from when the moon was out the night sky would have been pitch black for years until light finally began to reach earth from the nearest stars. God didn't create the myriad facets of the heavens and the earth in isolation but as fully functioning systems already in full swing. I truly don't understand how some people consider this as God being deceptive. I see it as God being glorious and majestic.

John

This is a slight derail. But, I have been studying a little on Hubble, who figured in the inflationary model that is Big Bang. Hubble said that a "favored position" in the cosmos "must be avoided at all costs". That is rather unscientific. He apparently worked like mad to avoid the idea that we could be near the center of the universe. Not that we necessarily are, but why would it be objectionable to just say that God was trying to make it nice or beautiful or old or whatever for our sake? Requiring God to reasona certain way , ie, to avoid "deception", is a very dangerous enterprise.

 

[busterdog]

Yes, yes. we know, if we do not believe everything you say you'll kick us out of heaven... Anyone who disagrees with you or your church is danged to heck... Yadda yadda yadda.

Sorry I do not buy it. I do not feel your interpretation of the scriptures is the correct one. If that makes me less of a Christian in your eyes, oh well, because personally I don't give two cents about your opinion of me, just what God thinks.

That's not what he said. Why do you need to spin it?

He says your doctrine stinks. If he disagrees with you, is he supposed to coddle you? You may not like that someone attacks your doctrine, but deal with it without making a curse out of the charge against you. No one is cursing you.

If perfect doctrine made one a good Christian, I am certain that I wouldn't be one.

 

[Mallon]

In the case of starlight, so that people could enjoy the view.

What about in the case of tree rings, radiometric clocks, or moon craters, busterdog?

 

[Jase]

Quite right. Apart from when the moon was out the night sky would have been pitch black for years until light finally began to reach earth from the nearest stars. God didn't create the myriad facets of the heavens and the earth in isolation but as fully functioning systems already in full swing. I truly don't understand how some people consider this as God being deceptive. I see it as God being glorious and majestic.

John

It's deceptive because no object past 6,000 light years actually exists according to that view. In order for us to see stars billions of light years away, instantly, would require the complete destruction of the laws of physics. Do you really think God spends every second of existence hurling light from distance stars at a rate of 13 billion light years per second?

 

[Jase]

That's not what he said. Why do you need to spin it?

He says your doctrine stinks. If he disagrees with you, is he supposed to coddle you? You may not like that someone attacks your doctrine, but deal with it without making a curse out of the charge against you. No one is cursing you.

If perfect doctrine made one a good Christian, I am certain that I wouldn't be one.

I think the problem people are having with DiscipleDave is that he acts like a prophet. He keeps saying He completely knows the "Truth" (why it's capitalized i don't know), and that Jesus instructs him on that "Truth" directly.

 

[busterdog]

What about in the case of tree rings, radiometric clocks, or moon craters, busterdog?

All I would be doing would be speculating about what God things about it. Maybe Adam liked to climb trees? Not trying to be cute (at least primarily). Perhaps what I am trying to say is that we start getting to level where speculation is pointless, which is what I thought about he deception argument from the get-go.

However, what about God's need to impress people. If you are sick, healing takes time, normally. Healing is certainly a gift of love for the creature from the creator. But, it is also intended to make a point about who has the power and what kind of power. A 400 foot white pine or cedar is impressive. Does it not make the point to Adam more immediately that God coudl make a 400 foot tree with all the rings? Would Adam have understood "evolution" and a slow process requiring death.

Is that more or less impressive? Since we intend to set the parameters on this one, and I think we are rather arbitrary in doing so, what the heck was God supposed to do? We only get to the conclusion about deception once we completely dismiss reasonable specuation about what God was thinking and if we reject lots of evidence that should give us pause in the first place.

Lets try this experiment your way. Adam is born and told to wait while primordial ooze is evolved into a tree or food or Eve or whatever. WHy is this better? Granted you may not accept a literal Adam. But if you are going to try to make the deception argument you must consider the ramifications of the plan you are attacking on its own terms, which is a six day creation.

As for radiometric issues, half-lives and everything else, I think we are way off the reservation. We are way too bold in trying to parse God's thoughts. We should be speculating in a way to give God the widest berth possible, philosophically speaking. As Mark Kennedy said, God is apparently going to create a fully formed future creation to replace the current one, or a new Jerusalem or whatever. If a nice wood grain panelling in your living room makes you happy, why wouldn't God just make that for you in paradise?

If you reject the prophetic view of the future as being unreliable or merely figurative, then of course it is hard to reason this way. But, the problems we have looking backward or forward are essentially the same. What limitations can you possibly put upon God for the outworking of what His word promises for the future paradise? Only those in His Word. Looking backwards, I think our mental discipline should be the same.


Mar 2:10
But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) Mar 2:11
I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.

 

[prodromos]

In order for us to see stars billions of light years away, instantly, would require the complete destruction of the laws of physics.

Everytime God does something miraculous, He works outside those laws of physics. That's why we recognise them as miracles and not natural phenomena. Crippled limbs suddenly made strong and healthy, a few loaves of bread feeding thousands, walking on water, people suddenly translated from one physical location to another, all these things are in violation of our laws of physics. God is clearly not bound by them even if they are a part of His creation.

John

 

[busterdog]

I think the problem people are having with DiscipleDave is that he acts like a prophet. He keeps saying He completely knows the "Truth" (why it's capitalized i don't know), and that Jesus instructs him on that "Truth" directly.

I kind of think I know the truth too. So I have to say something about it, though I know I could be wrong. At some point, you do have to stop apologizing and just get on with it. But, I can understand why he rubbed you the wrong way. But at least arguably, that's his job.

 

[gluadys]

Would Adam have understood "evolution" and a slow process requiring death.

Where does this idea that evolution requires death come from? There are other facts of life that require death, one of the most basic being that most organisms need to use other organisms as food. But evolution per se does not require death. All it requires is differential reproductive success leading to a change in the ratio of varying alleles in the population.

 

[Mallon]

All I would be doing would be speculating about what God things about it. Maybe Adam liked to climb trees?

I don't see why a tree would need to have false growth rings in order for Adam to climb it. That's the whole point. Despite your lengthy post, you have still avoided the issue as to how implanting a false history in the world makes God any more "impressive." Whether God created a 400-foot-tall tree or a 3-foot-tall tree ex nihilo is irrelevant. The question is why would God give a newly-created, fully-grown tree a false appearance of history (including seasonal growth cycles preserved as growth rings)?
The same question could be asked about the created Adam: Did God create a perfect Adam with shortened telomeres? Telomere shortening is a necessary product of cell division, and if Adam and his progeny were expected to grow, their cells would necessarily have divided and eventually died due to telomere shortening -- all in a perfect world with supposedly no physical death.

(Incidentally, I can see answer coming now: the Bible implies that humans were once packed with telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens telomeres! It's exactly the same logic used to infer a 6,000 year old earth.)

 

[Jase]

Everytime God does something miraculous, He works outside those laws of physics. That's why we recognise them as miracles and not natural phenomena. Crippled limbs suddenly made strong and healthy, a few loaves of bread feeding thousands, walking on water, people suddenly translated from one physical location to another, all these things are in violation of our laws of physics. God is clearly not bound by them even if they are a part of His creation.

John

I never said God can't defy the laws of physics. My point is, the universe is part of his natural creation. He created it to be bound by natural laws that he decreed. In order for stars 13 billion light years away to reach us now, God would have to make light travel any distance instantaneously as opposed to its current speed. That completely throws out of whack the entire universal model. E=mc^2 becomes worthless.

Just look at our sun. It takes 8 minutes for us to receive the light from our sun because our sun is 93 million miles a way, and at the speed of lights rate of 180,300 miles per second, it takes 8 minutes to travel that distance. So does that mean God uses 2 different speeds of light - 1 for objects within 6,000 light years of us, and a different, instant speed for any object farther than 6,000 light years? (And this is basically 99% of the universe). Explain to me how it's logical for God to resort to using 2 different speeds of light to accomodate a misinterpretation of a 3000 year old Hebrew text by a minority of fundamentalist Christians.

 

[busterdog]

I don't see why a tree would need to have false growth rings in order for Adam to climb it. That's the whole point. Despite your lengthy post, you have still avoided the issue as to how implanting a false history in the world makes God any more "impressive." Whether God created a 400-foot-tall tree or a 3-foot-tall tree ex nihilo is irrelevant. The question is why would God give a newly-created, fully-grown tree a false appearance of history (including seasonal growth cycles preserved as growth rings)?
The same question could be asked about the created Adam: Did God create a perfect Adam with shortened telomeres? Telomere shortening is a necessary product of cell division, and if Adam and his progeny were expected to grow, their cells would necessarily have divided and eventually died due to telomere shortening -- all in a perfect world with supposedly no physical death.

(Incidentally, I can see answer coming now: the Bible implies that humans were once packed with telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens telomeres! It's exactly the same logic used to infer a 6,000 year old earth.)

My response is pretty simplistic. Again, I think we are reaching an area where speculation is not productive. So, why would a big tree have lots of growth rings? I would just say because its a big tree and that's what the look like. I don't know why it needs to be more complicated than that. A tree that has rings would be laminated, in effect. Growth rings provide strenght. Why not?

As for the telomeres. I just think there are again too many assumptions about how things might have been done had we been the creator. I just don't see the point of the exercise. How telomeres operated in paradise is completely speculative.

 

[Mallon]

My response is pretty simplistic. Again, I think we are reaching an area where speculation is not productive.

My point in trying to walk you through these arguments is to show everyone where they lead. The implications of believing in a literal Genesis are both ludicrous and indefensible. It pains me to see Christians have to play silly apologetics like this, advocating things like "tree rings make trees stronger," or "the Bible implies telomeres operated differently prior to the Fall," or "fossil tree sequences represent ancient floating forests deposited during a catastrophic deluge."
It's no wonder so many people are turning away from Christianity these days. YECs so often link this baloney with faith in Christ that I don't think they have any other choice if they want to keep their integrity intact. It's blatant ad hoc anti-intellectualism like this that ultimately made me reject YECism/OECism. One day the baloney was just piled too high. As Galileo and gluadys like to ask, "Why would God give us sense and reason if they are not to be used?"

 

[Assyrian]

It's deceptive because no object past 6,000 light years actually exists according to that view. In order for us to see stars billions of light years away, instantly, would require the complete destruction of the laws of physics. Do you really think God spends every second of existence hurling light from distance stars at a rate of 13 billion light years per second?

Even more deceptive are supernovas that exploded long before the heavens were supposedly created.

 

[Assyrian]

Would Adam have understood "evolution" and a slow process requiring death.

Technically, since Adam is the human race, yes we can understand. Certainly Gen 2:17 presupposes Adam would have understood what 'death' meant. But evolution is more about who is best obeying God's 'be fruitful and multiply' command rather than creatures having to die.

 

[busterdog]

Technically, since Adam is the human race, yes we can understand. Certainly Gen 2:17 presupposes Adam would have understood what 'death' meant. But evolution is more about who is best obeying God's 'be fruitful and multiply' command rather than creatures having to die.

In deciding whether God would have been "deceptive" in making an old-looking earth, I would think that we are looking at the question from the YEC perspective to see if it makes sense. From that perspective, what would make sense for God in making a paradise for a literal Adam.

 

[Assyrian]

Why would Adam need the light from stars that were destroyed hundreds of thousand of years before the heavens were created? These are the stars that exploded before 6000 years ago but whose explosion has been seen since then. These stars never actually existed in the YEC universe, but their light was visible in the night sky.

Other supernovas occurred long before that and their remnants would have been visible in the sky, at least with the help of a telescope, as nebulae. But why would God create paradise in a perfect heavens and earth with the remains of exploded stars in the sky?

 

[prodromos]

Just look at our sun. It takes 8 minutes for us to receive the light from our sun because our sun is 93 million miles a way, and at the speed of lights rate of 180,300 miles per second, it takes 8 minutes to travel that distance.

[bible]Genesis 1:3[/bible]Did creation have to wait 8 minutes before it was visible?
[bible]Genesis 1:14-15[/bible]Again, did creation have to wait years to see the first stars and much longer to see the remainder?

John

 

[prodromos]

But why would God create paradise in a perfect heavens and earth with the remains of exploded stars in the sky?

For His glory

Part of the problem here is how you define perfect heavens. Is it God's definition or yours .