Here is mine:
It will be two posts.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
This is like a heading or title rather than what many see as the first act in Creation. It is stating that there was a beginning to our universe and that God created both the heavens and the earth. This is supported later in Genesis. The Big Bang theory supports that the universe did have a beginning.
Right out of the gate we run into some problems.
What is God? Is god a natural entity? Is he in any way understandable or predictable? If God is supernatural, then we're kinda stuck for all the reasons I describe
in this thread - we cannot even in theory provide evidence for or against this answer, and as a result it is untestable and unsupportable. Whether the universe had a beginning or not is unrelated; however, the big bang model does
not imply that the universe necessarily had a beginning. It merely implies that the universe was, at some point, collapsed into a hot, dense point. There are various concepts in cosmology which do seem to imply some sort of beginning, but there is not a significant amount of evidence for them as far as I can tell.
Now the earth was unformed and void,
This is stating that the earth was not formed yet. Which supports my viewpoint that the first verse is not the first act of Creation.
Okay, so thus far, as far as I can tell, the model you've described is, "God created the big bang, and then the solar system and earth coalesced from there"? So basically your standard cosmological model, plus a little more clarity around the singularity? Was there any significant amount of time between the big bang and the formation of earth? I'll pass on asking for the evidence, as if you're just going to describe standard cosmological models, then we can just refer to the evidence for those.
11 And God said: 'Let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth.' And it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. {P}
There are two points to consider in interpreting this verse. The first is that there is no evidence to support this verse. The second has two possible meanings which could be valid. The first of the two is that there is no evidence of this due to plate tectonics, it is a well known fact that the earliest surface of the earth is probably lost for all time due to movement. The second is that all plants and trees have their beginings from green algae which is the first life form on earth.
I concede that "evidence" to support my viewpoint on this is interpretive at best and so I will consider this verse somewhat of a gap in the conclusions I hold.
Fair enough. The evolutionary model would imply very heavily that land plants did not predate algae (or, indeed, multicellular life), but as you say the evidence here is weak, I won't press you further on it. The beginnings of life on this planet are very,
very difficult to examine, as soft single-celled organisms don't tend to preserve very well.
14 And God said: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.' And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 19{P} and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
There are several conflicts in this verse that skeptics have in their understanding of this verse. The first is firmament being meant as a hard dome surface but we see in the following verses that birds fly in the firmament which would be impossible to do in a hard domed surface. The second is that the sun was formed first with the moon and earth thereafter.
My viewpoint is that the age of the earth is not conclusive due to plate tectonics, the oldest known rocks are probably lost to us and those that are in evidence show the earth much older than scientists first believed. 03 February, 1998. Astronomers have been able to date the Sun by applying the theory of stellar structure and evolution to data that describe the interior of the Sun found through the study of solar oscillations. The Sun is dated at 4.5 billion years old, satisfyingly close to the 4.56 billion year age of the Solar System as found from the study of meteorites.
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qage.html
Dating the Sun is an indirect process. There are several independent ways of estimating the age and they all give nearly the same answer: about 5 billion years.
The age of the Sun can be estimated from the ages obtained from radioactive dating of the oldest meteorites. This may seem odd at first, but in fact it is extremely likely that the solar system (i.e. th Sun, planets, asteroids etc.) formed as one unit. Therefore the age of the Sun should be close to the age of the meteorites, which can be found using the method of radioactive dating.
G.J. Wasserburg obtained a meteoritic age of (4.57 +/- 0.01) x 10^9 years and D.B. Guenther (1989, Astrophysical Journal 339, 1156) estimated that hydrogen burning started shortly thereafer (40 million (0.04 +/- .01) x 10^9 years later).
Additional evidence comes from the Earth. The oldest Earth rocks are also about 4.6 billion years old. The oldest fossils, found in Australia, are about 3.5 bilion years old. The presence of fossils in rocks indicates that the Earth was a suitable place for life when the fossils formed. This implies that the Sun was luminous at that time. [Of course we can't say exactly how long before the fossil formed the Sun was like it is today, but it does give us a lower bound.]
What is meant by "luminous?" We mean that the Sun was at or near the stable part of its lifetime called the "main sequence" more than 3.6 billion years ago. Viewing the Sun as a star on the main sequence, is very useful and important for astronomers because they have a model called "The Standard Solar Model" that views the Sun at stages in its life while it is burning hydrogen and converting that to helium. The model can be run forward and backward in time, and the astronomers can check the observable quantities in the model like luminosity, solar radius, composition, solar p-mode frequencies, and so on with our real Sun. They can stop the model at any time during its main sequence. If what we see from our Sun matches the quantities in the model for a specific age, then we have one more piece of information of what we think that the age of the Sun is.
One complication of checking the Solar Model with our real Sun is the quantity of helium: the "helium abundance." That is rather difficult to obtain. According to the Dalsgaard article (see below), the solar spectrum is too complicated to accurately measure the helium abundance, so that one parameter has to be estimated (one infers the helium abundance by matching the observed solar radius and luminosity in the solar models). It turns out this affects the estimated age very little.
Whole bunch of stuff in here that I disagree very little with. My main quibble is with the postulation that the earth predates the sun, or that the moon was formed near the same time as the sun. There is simply no model in modern cosmology in which a solar system such as ours does not form out of a Protoplanetary disk, formed well after the sun has started nuclear fusion. The idea that the earth was there before the sun requires some pretty stellar evidence (although the earth predating the moon is entirely accurate).
It seems to me that what you're putting forward, at least in terms of cosmology, a model which is very,
very similar to the leading models of the day. You replace the big unknown behind the big bang with "God did it" (which I find problematic for numerous stated reasons), you disagree about the order of sun vs. earth, which, while not the leading hypothesis, is not completely unreasonable, and you accept the cosmological age of the universe. So far, really can't disagree with most of this.
20 And God said: 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.'
This is stating what God wants done and the next verse says that is what he did.
21 And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature that creepeth, wherewith the waters swarmed, after its kind, and every winged fowl after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
The Cambrian era was the time period which consisted of all phyla alive today and some that have gone extinct. The waters literally swarmed with life. This period which is called the Paleozoic period includes the Silurian era in which there were centipedes and millipedes, the Devonian with its sharks and amphibians. This also includes the next period which is the Mesozoic period which then includes dino's and of course within this period comes the first appearance of birds. This is a general overview of what was created during this period. So an overview of this is that the day includes first the Paleozoic and next the Mesozoic.
And this is where the problems really start.
You are, as far as I can tell, asserting that god essentially created each of these creatures at the respective times. This is, to put it bluntly, phenomenally unscientific. Science only examines natural causes, as supernatural causes are unfalsifiable and indeterminable. If some supernatural entity poofs a cake into existence in front of me, how am I to know
which supernatural entity that is? God? Satan? Magical Cake Faeries? How could I possibly distinguish a supernatural cause from merely an extremely advanced naturalistic cause? I
strongly recommend looking into my thread on miracles and magic, as if we're trying to build a model of the universe, "God did it" is
not helpful. It offers us no useful information and allows us to make no predictions about reality ("Why did god do X?" "Because god works in mysterious ways"). It's not even really a satisfactory explanation, because "God did it" could answer literally any question, and throwing it in there with no evidence (because, again, there can be no evidence for a supernatural cause even in theory).
Or maybe you can provide evidence that this is what happened. I doubt it, but you're welcome to try.
According to science the universe came into existence through a Big Bang proposed by a priest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Georges_Lemaître
You remember how in a previous thread I ceded the floor to you with regards to physics because you knew more? Yeah, I take it back, this is just hilariously wrong. Nothing in your post is actually worth discussing. It's just more of the same PRATT.
Can you please explain to me how evolution explains the origin of the universe? Evolution isn't a theory used to predict the origins of the universe but a theory used to predict diversification of life. "Creationism" explains how life came into being and everything else. So when you are saying provide "scientific evidence" then you have to understand that the natural world is evidence. The fact that everything is defined and ordered, even down to the tiniest cells or microorganisms and seemingly all of this is just organic compounds "responding to their environment" that occurred by chance billions of years ago is actually impossible because it would go against the laws of physics that we now do know such as the laws of thermodynamics. Evolution fails to explain the origins of the universe and until it does you cannot argue with "creationism" because they are explaining two completely different things.
This thread is
not about evolution. This seems to be something a lot of people have missed. This thread is not about evolution. It's not about the evidence for evolution, it's not about the standard scientific models of cosmology, abiogenesis, or evolution, it's not about any of that. It is
purely about the models of reality creationists wish to put forward, and what evidence they can provide.
The evidence of creation is created things and this is also logical.
That is logical. Logical fallacy! (Man, that comeback sounded a lot cooler in my head.) Calling things "created" or "creation" and then saying "created things must have been created" is tautological question-begging. Yeah, created things were created. I don't accept that things were created, though, so we're kinda stuck. Where do we go from there? Can you demonstrate that things were created?
Whats more the creation is not chaotic but follows order that was set in the beginning of creation, this is simple and what the reality is. The fact that there requires an energy input or the fact that there had to be an original cause in order for this natural world to come into being when there was nothing originally points to the fact that there is a God. Again, there is no way that evolution can explain any of this. If you would like a scientific model of creation I suggest you have a kid. (the kid did not spontaneously generate, but follows the same principles that were set in the beginning by God that point to the fact that he is the original creator. )
Is there a point to any of this? Because if so, I can't see it. It seems to be just one big fat argument from ignorance: "We don't have a good explanation, therefore god".
Also if you want to learn more I also suggest you look up Dr. William Lane Craig who is a Christian philosopher and scientist who typically gives better answers then your average christian
WLC is
not a scientist. He has a degree in church history and another in philosophy of religion. This just about qualifies him to follow along in a middle school physics class. And it
really shows when he talks from outside his field of expertise; his knowledge of evolution and cosmology are both really weak.
Then there's more about evolution being wrong (evolution being wrong does not prove creation and this thread is not
about evolution), some quotes from the bible which I just don't really care about, and not much else. You really have not made a strong case here. You haven't even presented your model! I still have
no idea what you believe, beyond "God created the universe" and "Evolution is wrong". That gives me nothing to work with. I'm sorry.
