• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

  • CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.

POLL: Which of these elements of the creation story do you believe?

POLL: Which of the following do you accept?


  • Total voters
    99
  • This poll will close: .

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
Well, all that makes sense if one accepts your interpretation of the Bible. But who says you are right? You are claiming the Bible is inerrant, right?

You have already stated that you believe the Bible to be wrong, to be flawed, to be in error.

Now you pretend that the difference is in "interpretation"?????

Is that honest???
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
I might like them to, but don't know how I could persuade them. It would go against pretty hard held beliefs. It seems like you are questioning some NT books too.

Indeed both OT and NT being condemned as "in error" by Hoghead1. Fine - he has free will... but that should not be spun into "different interpretation" between two people that claim the Bible is the Word of God.
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
Why don't you believe that God could create a man out of the dust/dirt/clay/whatever? Why do you insist that man wasn't?

Blind faith evolutionism does not "believe" a doctrine on origins that an atheist would reject.

But what about those atheists? -- they have a problem with blind-faith-evolutionism as well -- as it turns out.

For example - Colin Patterson - I have always referred to him as a blind faith atheist evolutionist - a diehard evolutionist scientist -- never as anything else ---

"details matter". He laments the religion he is stuck with.

On April 10, 1979, Patterson replied to the author (Sunderland) in a most candid letter as follows:

April 10, 1979 Letter from Colin Patterson to Sunderland

“ I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.

You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?
...
You say thatI should at least show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived. I will lay it on the line- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.[The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job “
[Ref: Patterson, personal communication. Documented in Darwin’s Enigma, Luther Sunderland, Master Books, El Cajon, CA, 1988, pp. 88-90.]

In your response we can see that you merely pick and choose what suits your argument when you attempt to appeal to some odd detail that you in fact never identify.



outside of junk-science? nothing. Take for example atheists in Math, chemistry, physics, observable dendrology etc. The fact that they do not inject their religion into those sciences means we will never see scientists in those fields offering this lament -

=============

Collin Patterson (atheist and diehard evolutionist to the day he died in 1998) - Paleontologist British Museum of Natural history speaking at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 - said:


Patterson - quotes Gillespie's arguing that Christians

"'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"

Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact (saying):'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"


"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...


"...,Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge , apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."
=======================================


That is not the sort of lament we have in "real science" over the past 150 years.

Neither is this --


Patterson (the diehard evolutionist right to the end ) -- at that same meeting -

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff fortwenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

========================================


I am a Christian that chooses to "Believe the Bible" rather than "deny the Bible" placing the junk-science-religion of evolutionism ahead of the Bible.

So then - some details held by Bible believing Christians - that even atheists will admit to --

==================================

Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

=======================
Bible-deniers tend to also be science-deniers when speaking of those who cling to blind-faith evolutionism while attacking the Word of God and denying observations in science.

So - please be serious about what you are asking for a second.

Shall we explain why "a pile of dirt is in fact NOT going to turn into a rabbit - given a sufficiently large pile of dirt over a sufficiently long period of time - filled with just-so-stories"???

Shall we explain why "prokaryotes never turn into eukaryotes no matter how many millions of generations we observe them?"

shall we explain why "the Eurey Miller experiment utterly failed to produce viable amino acid building blocks - due to results having randomly distributed chiral orientation of the product amino acids"??

shall we observe that "junk science confirmed frauds fill the history of junk-science evolutionism over the past 150 years"??

shall we observe that "Osborn is praised for lying to, and hiding truth from his readers -- to this very day - over at TalkOrigins"??

shall we observe that "the high-priests of evolutionism - their own well-known scientists, professors, authors LAMENT the distinctively religious and anti-knowledge nature of their own field of study"??

shall we observe that "Othaniel Marsh' junk-science hoax and confirmed fraud horse series is STILL on display at the Smithsonian over 50 years after being publicaly admitted as a fraud?"?? (We know WHY they do that - it is for emotional "effect" - which is the basis of their speculative arguments all along).

shall we observe that this is the sort of junk-religion that is not worth adopting -- with its explicit risk of getting you into the Rev 20 lake of fire?? We need to "explain that"??

This list is wayyy too long -- would fill up several threads.
 
Upvote 0

rakovsky

Newbie
Apr 8, 2004
2,552
558
Pennsylvania
✟82,685.00
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
It is hard to prove to a person with an opposite, strongly held view on this topic. The best I think we can do is try to look at the issues as objectively as possible, open to conclusions that go against our preferences.

Take for example the question of whether everything in the Bible is factually incorrect when intended to be factually correct. Many Christians are divided on the question, since the Bible does not specifically claim that the Bible or anything inspired by God cannot include mistakes of fact.)

It would be like a Christian minister being inspired by the Spirit in him to say that God's way is as straight and pure as route 54, but unknown to the minister, route 54 is actually mostly quite curvy and in need of intense repair, just not at the part he has ever seen.

There are stories like Noah's ark and the Great Flood, and verses like those on the flat earth, that sound so fantastic that either: (A) Reality was warped in that time period just 5000 years ago or so, or (B) these are allegories, or (C) they are factually incorrect myths like parables with spiritual value.

If you pick (A), what you have picked does not normally sound realistic . It sounds abnormal to teach that the earth is flat, or that it was flat in 600 BC or so and afterwards straightened itself out. Nowadays the ideas of a spherical earth is proved so strongly that there is pretty unanimous agreement, with only a few hold outs.

Teaching that the pairs of every animal species in the world just walked onto Noah's ark across all the continents does not sound realistic, just like it does not sound realistic that after leaving the ark, flightless birds came to New Zealand and then lost their flying ability in a few thousand years alone. How did they feed themselves on the ark? Did it simply rain and spring up from the earth in such droves that it flooded the world? Did you know that the ark would not float based on Physical principles of torque and this is why no ship has been built of wood that big? The stories sound so much like fantasy, myth, or warped reality, that it's hard to make it sound realistic.

Architects have built many small wooden models of the ark and even some life sized ones, they've never succeeded in making one that floats on its own . In fact, they've had to float the big models on barges because they are actually unseaworthy.

image.axd.jpg


It's true that failure to build a successful life sized wood model does not disprove that it's possible. It's just a piece of evidence towards it being unrealistic.

I am fine with being proven wrong and seeing a Ark of wood floated long distance at sea. It seems to me though that the architectural issues and failures show that it's probably not realistic. This is just one of many issues. I am not aware of any known animals being seen as having lost flight ability in a few thousand years, nor does it appear realistic to think (as some proposed) that Australia went into a corner of the globe in a few thousand years, or far less than that time. That is why I say it demands a warped view of reality compared to how we currently understand the laws of nature to work. Or there were extreme supernatural actions involved, like marching the lions, giraffes, siberian tigers, etc. etc. onto the Ark.

If you pick (B),
viewing the verses as metaphorical, allegorical, or figurative, the problem is that the verses appear as if they are meant factually. In fact, I can lay out a list of questions in a Socratic style to show as a matter of literary analysis, one would normally interpret them to be intended as factual.

Take for example Psalm 104:5 "Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken."

What are the earth's foundations and how do they stop it from "shaking" always ? Do earthquakes count and can a comet hit the earth to shake it from its orbit? Or take for example the story of Noah's flood. It's quite a lengthy account and it nowhere says that it's a parable.

If comets don't count, then I suppose one could propose that by "not shaken" the verse just means its normal orbit when there are no comets? If so, how do the things that keep the earth stable also keep it on its orbit?

If you pick (C) and say that they are factually mistaken myths or parables, on the basis that the Bible never says that they are parables, while instead they are simply presented in a straightforward manner as if they were facts. The problem however is that in deciding that the Biblical stories in the Old Testament are fantasy, fictional miracles and made up supernatural ideas, then it means that the Bible contains fiction that is mistakenly portrayed as fact. And this in turn opens up the possibility that the stories of Jesus' extreme miracles are also made up fiction, and that we are not required to think that they are facts just by virtue of them being in the Bible. I think that many people do not want to pick C because they feel more emotionally comfortable asserting that the entire Bible is not only spiritually true, but that it is factually true also.
 
Upvote 0

Speedwell

Well-Known Member
May 11, 2016
23,928
17,626
82
St Charles, IL
✟347,280.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Other Religion
Marital Status
Married
Indeed both OT and NT being condemned as "in error" by Hoghead1. Fine - he has free will... but that should not be spun into "different interpretation" between two people that claim the Bible is the Word of God.
Why not? It is certainly possible to accept the Bible as divinely inspired and still not believe that the world was literally created in seven days six thousand years ago.
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
Why not? It is certainly possible to accept the Bible as divinely inspired and still not believe that the world was literally created in seven days six thousand years ago.

you can do that honestly -- until you actually read it.

Gen 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

Ex 20:9,11
9 "Six days you shall labor..."
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.


Even the atheists have figured out this blatantly obvious Bible detail -


==================================

Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

=======================
Bible-deniers tend to also be science-deniers when speaking of those who cling to blind-faith evolutionism while attacking the Word of God and denying observations in science.
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
It's true that failure to build a successful life sized wood model does not disprove that it's possible. It's just a piece of evidence towards it being unrealistic.

I am fine with being proven wrong and seeing a Ark of wood floated long distance at sea. It seems to me though that the architectural issues and failures show that it's probably not realistic. .

Depends on how many Bible details you are willing to flat out ignore.

In Genesis 5-12 we see the ages of mankind gradually come down from an average of 900+ years to an average of around 200 years.

In Genesis 2 we see that Adam had free access to the Tree of Life and in Genesis 3 we are told that eating of it would extend life.

Noah completes the project when he is 600 after having worked on it for 120 years.

So then it is not at all 'unlikely' that the so-called "gopher wood" before the flood had more strength than the boards we use today. It would be almost impossible to insist that we have now "reproduced all the conditions" for the ark.
 
Upvote 0

pgp_protector

Noted strange person
Dec 17, 2003
51,903
17,803
57
Earth For Now
Visit site
✟465,524.00
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Widowed
Politics
US-Others
Upvote 0

rakovsky

Newbie
Apr 8, 2004
2,552
558
Pennsylvania
✟82,685.00
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
you can do that honestly -- until you actually read it.

Gen 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

Ex 20:9,11
9 "Six days you shall labor..."
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.


Even the atheists have figured out this blatantly obvious Bible detail -
None of what you quoted says the days were 24 hours by a modern stopwatch.

Atheists are more likely to say that the Bible means 24 hour stopwatch days because it makes the story less realistic and more like myth, which is how they see the Bible.
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
Depends on how many Bible details you are willing to flat out ignore.

In Genesis 5-12 we see the ages of mankind gradually come down from an average of 900+ years to an average of around 200 years.

In Genesis 2 we see that Adam had free access to the Tree of Life and in Genesis 3 we are told that eating of it would extend life.

Noah completes the project when he is 600 after having worked on it for 120 years.

So then it is not at all 'unlikely' that the so-called "gopher wood" before the flood had more strength than the boards we use today. It would be almost impossible to insist that we have now "reproduced all the conditions" for the ark.

========================================

Hint - God was the architect for the ark - not man. The claim that 5000 years later man is still to feeble to master the task - is not an argument against God's Word.

God was the architect for the virgin birth

For the fact that Christ resurrected Himself

For Christ causing Himself to ascend into heaven.

None of which does our "science" reproduce.

None of which - does the atheist approve.

Same with God's statement on creation vs blind-faith-evolutionism.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
Why not? It is certainly possible to accept the Bible as divinely inspired and still not believe that the world was literally created in seven days six thousand years ago.

you can do that honestly -- until you actually read it.

Gen 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

Ex 20:9,11
9 "Six days you shall labor..."
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.


Even the atheists have figured out this blatantly obvious Bible detail -


==================================

Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

=======================
Bible-deniers tend to also be science-deniers when speaking of those who cling to blind-faith evolutionism while attacking the Word of God and denying observations in science.

None of what you quoted says the days were 24 hours by a modern stopwatch.

is that your way of trying to slip 25 minutes into each of those days -- or is that your way of trying gloss over 500 million years in each day???

I grant you that the "exact 24 hour vs 24.5 hour" detail is not there. Is this a "bait and switch"??


Atheists are more likely to say that the Bible means 24 hour stopwatch days because it makes the story less realistic and more like myth, which is how they see the Bible.

Atheists and bible believing Christians are the least compromised on this point because we have two variables and each of those two groups is willing to dismiss one of them. Neither group has the mandate or "agenda" of marrying the Bible to evolutionism.

But theistic evolutionists are fully comprised in a death-grip like conflict-of-interest - trying to marry Satan's doctrine on origins -- with God's.

The atheist does not mind if the Bible says 2+2=4 or 2+2=5. He/she is happy to admitting whatever the text says since they don't plan to take their ideas from the Bible. Atheists won't insist that every statement in the Bible be fraud or lies or wrong.

And in the same way - a Bible believing Christian does not care if blind-faith-evolutionism happens to get 1 or 2 details right amidst its list of hoaxes and proven frauds. That Christian will not be trying to bend-the-bible to fit those frauds. And will be happy any time evolutionism happens to get it right on some tiny detail that is actually true.

The T.E. is fully compromised however having to constantly adjust to each new string of evolutionist story telling and then having to report to all of his atheist evolutionist friends all about the latest bible-bending that has been done to accommodate evolutionism's latest story.

Hence James Barr spends zero time trying to "bend the Bible" to make it fit blind faith evolutionism. And the same goes for me. A classic case where atheists and Christians at least can honestly render the text - no "bending" needed.
 
Upvote 0

rakovsky

Newbie
Apr 8, 2004
2,552
558
Pennsylvania
✟82,685.00
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
Depends on how many Bible details you are willing to flat out ignore.

In Genesis 5-12 we see the ages of mankind gradually come down from an average of 900+ years to an average of around 200 years.

In Genesis 2 we see that Adam had free access to the Tree of Life and in Genesis 3 we are told that eating of it would extend life.

Noah completes the project when he is 600 after having worked on it for 120 years.

So then it is not at all 'unlikely' that the so-called "gopher wood" before the flood had more strength than the boards we use today. It would be almost impossible to insist that we have now "reproduced all the conditions" for the ark.

========================================

Hint - God was the architect for the ark - not man. The claim that 5000 years later man is still to feeble to master the task - is not an argument against God's Word.
None of what you quoted actually says the first three days before the sun was made were 24 hours by a modern stopwatch.
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
None of what you quoted actually says the first three days before the sun was made were 24 hours by a modern stopwatch.


is that your way of trying to slip 25 minutes into each of those days -- or is that your way of trying gloss over 500 million years in each day???

I grant you that the "exact 24 hour vs 24.5 hour" detail is not there. Is this a "bait and switch"??

Recall that for Christians the main issue is "What does the Bible say" -- not "what would atheists like to hear?"


Atheists are more likely to say that the Bible means 24 hour stopwatch days because it makes the story less realistic and more like myth, which is how they see the Bible.

Atheists and bible believing Christians are the least compromised on this point because we have two variables and each of those two groups is willing to dismiss one of them. Neither group has the mandate or "agenda" of marrying the Bible to evolutionism.

But theistic evolutionists are fully comprised in a death-grip like conflict-of-interest - trying to marry Satan's doctrine on origins -- with God's.

The atheist does not mind if the Bible says 2+2=4 or 2+2=5. He/she is happy to admitting whatever the text says since they don't plan to take their ideas from the Bible. Atheists won't insist that every statement in the Bible be fraud or lies or wrong.

And in the same way - a Bible believing Christian does not care if blind-faith-evolutionism happens to get 1 or 2 details right amidst its list of hoaxes and proven frauds. That Christian will not be trying to bend-the-bible to fit those frauds. And will be happy any time evolutionism happens to get it right on some tiny detail that is actually true.

The T.E. is fully compromised however having to constantly adjust to each new string of evolutionist story telling and then having to report to all of his atheist evolutionist friends all about the latest bible-bending that has been done to accommodate evolutionism's latest story.

Hence James Barr spends zero time trying to "bend the Bible" to make it fit blind faith evolutionism. And the same goes for me. A classic case where atheists and Christians at least can honestly render the text - no "bending" needed.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

rakovsky

Newbie
Apr 8, 2004
2,552
558
Pennsylvania
✟82,685.00
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
is that your way of trying to slip 25 minutes into each of those days -- or is that your way of trying gloss over 500 million years in each day???

I grant you that the "exact 24 hour vs 24.5 hour" detail is not there. Is this a "bait and switch"??

Recall that for Christians the main issue is "What does the Bible say" -- not "what would atheists like to hear?"




Atheists and bible believing Christians are the least compromised on this point because we have two variables and each of those two groups is willing to dismiss one of them. Neither group has the mandate or "agenda" of marrying the Bible to evolutionism.

But theistic evolutionists are fully comprised in a death-grip like conflict-of-interest - trying to marry Satan's doctrine on origins -- with God's.

The atheist does not mind if the Bible says 2+2=4 or 2+2=5. He/she is happy to admitting whatever the text says since they don't plan to take their ideas from the Bible. Atheists won't insist that every statement in the Bible be fraud or lies or wrong.

And in the same way - a Bible believing Christian does not care if blind-faith-evolutionism happens to get 1 or 2 details right amidst its list of hoaxes and proven frauds. That Christian will not be trying to bend-the-bible to fit those frauds. And will be happy any time evolutionism happens to get it right on some tiny detail that is actually true.

The T.E. is fully compromised however having to constantly adjust to each new string of evolutionist story telling and then having to report to all of his atheist evolutionist friends all about the latest bible-bending that has been done to accommodate evolutionism's latest story.

Hence James Barr spends zero time trying to "bend the Bible" to make it fit blind faith evolutionism. And the same goes for me. A classic case where atheists and Christians at least can honestly render the text - no "bending" needed.
Reading the text simply by itself, with no references to science or skepticism, the text simply says that the light was called day and that on the fourth of the exchanges of night and day, the sun was made to measure the length of the days, in Gen 1. No further specification of the exact length of the first 3 or 4 days when there was no measuring object is ever given, except for tangential statements like a day for God is like 1000 years for man, in the Psalms.

Try as we might, I am skeptical that thete is any direct on point clear specific explanations of the first four days' length. Asserting that we need to believe the Bible is just a knee jerk response that tells us nothing about what the text actually says on this question.

St Augustin in the 4th century AD or so wrote that no one knows the nature of those particular days of creation.
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
Reading the text simply by itself, with no references to science or skepticism, the text simply says that the light was called day

1. And it "simply says" that each day was comprised of one "evening and morning" - and obviously all mankind knew and still knows what an "evening and morning" is.

2. And it simply says that just as God did this for six days - so WE are to do this work for 6 days in the week and rest the 7th. Another fact of life - known to all mankind - what is a day... what is the week.

Incredibly obvious.

incredibly simple.

Even for atheists --


when you actually read it and instead of ignoring these details -- notice them.

Gen 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

Ex 20:9,11
9 "Six days you shall labor..."
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.


Even the atheists have figured out this blatantly obvious Bible detail -


==================================

Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

=======================


Try as I might - I cannot get this incredibly obvious and simple sequence of six work days and one rest day to be "complex, convoluted, mystified"

Try as we might, I am skeptical

You have free will - you can choose that path if that is your preference.

Thankfully neither the Bible believing Christians nor even the atheists have to imagine complexity-and-confusion into this text - where there is in fact clear obvious "details".


Asserting that we need to believe the Bible is just a knee jerk response that tells us nothing about what the text actually says

Atheists don't need to "believe the Bible" -- just ask them. Yet even they can read.


St Augustin in the 4th century AD or so wrote that no one knows the nature of those particular days of creation.

Augustine wrote in the 4th century that his own PREFERENCE was that 7 literal days was TOO LONG a time for God -- such that inserting his own preference in - he would allow God at most 1 day to accomplish all of it.

Certainly atheists are not going to argue that 7 days is too long for creation. So if your going down the Augustine path - you are going the opposite direction as they would have you go.
===============================================================

Atheists and bible believing Christians are the least compromised on this point because we have two variables and each of those two groups is willing to dismiss one of them.


We have 1. The Bible and 2. Blind faith evolutionism.

Atheists hold to one and reject the other - leaving them free let the Bible read just as it reads - no need to "bend it" for them.

Christians hold to one and reject the other - leaving them free to let the Bible read just as it reads -- no need to bend it for them either.

Neither group has the mandate or "agenda" of marrying the Bible to evolutionism -- so Bible-bending not required for them.




But theistic evolutionists are fully comprised in a death-grip like conflict-of-interest - trying to marry Satan's doctrine on origins -- with God's.

The atheist does not mind if the Bible says 2+2=4 or 2+2=5. He/she is happy to admit to whatever the text says since they don't plan to take their ideas from the Bible. Hence James Barr's statement. Atheists won't insist that every statement in the Bible be fraud or lies or wrong, and when they do think it is wrong - they don't care to bend it to "make it fit evolution".

And in the same way - a Bible believing Christian does not care if blind-faith-evolutionism happens to get 1 or 2 details right amidst its list of hoaxes and proven frauds. That Christian will not be trying to bend-the-bible to fit those frauds. And will be happy any time evolutionism happens to get it right on some tiny detail that is actually true.

The T.E. is fully compromised however having to constantly adjust to each new string of evolutionist story telling and then having to report to all of his atheist evolutionist friends all about the latest bible-bending that has been done to accommodate evolutionism's latest story.

Hence James Barr spends zero time trying to "bend the Bible" to make it fit blind faith evolutionism. And the same goes for me. A classic case where atheists and Christians at least can honestly render the text - no "bending" needed.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
the text simply says that the light was called day and that on the fourth of the exchanges of night and day, the sun was made to measure the length of the days, in Gen 1. No further specification of the exact length of the first 3 or 4 days when there was no measuring object is ever given,

evening and morning require a rotating planet and a light source on one side --- what that light source is -- does not matter.

Here again - you insert confusion where there is none.

But let's suppose that God were truly helpless and desperate as most atheists would like to think of Him - and that here he had a sunless/moonless environment for Earth and He was "stuck" needing a light source for this spinning planet to use as a reference point for evening and morning.

With no sun or moon -- then no planets in our solar system to cast any sort of light.

That leaves the center of the Milkway itself. With a rotating planet that center would pass over head - once each day (or night) depending on what you want to use as your point of reference.

http://www.space.com/29077-milky-way-coma-berenices-skywatching.html
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

rakovsky

Newbie
Apr 8, 2004
2,552
558
Pennsylvania
✟82,685.00
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
evening and morning require a rotating planet and a light source on one side --- what that light source is -- does not matter.

Here again - you insert confusion where there is none.

But let's suppose that God were truly helpless and desperate as most atheists would like to think of Him - and that here he had a sunless/moonless environment for Earth and He was "stuck" needing a light source for this spinning planet to use as a reference point for evening and morning.

With no sun or moon -- then no planets in our solar system to cast any sort of light.

That leaves the center of the Milkway itself. With a rotating planet that center would pass over head - once each day (or night) depending on what you want to use as your point of reference.

http://www.space.com/29077-milky-way-coma-berenices-skywatching.html

It's nice you have creative thinking.

Accepting what you've just said, this provides no specification on the length of each day by a modern stopwatch, only that exchanges of light could occur.

Secondly, the planet does not have to rotate for there to be exchanges of light called days. Calvin's reading of the Bible was that the earth was stuck on pillars and the sun moved around the flat earth.
 
Upvote 0

BobRyan

Junior Member
Angels Team
Site Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
53,499
11,987
Georgia
✟1,109,122.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
SDA
Marital Status
Married
It's nice you have creative thinking.

My point is that even the various options we know of from such a great distance from the event - are "sufficient" - to affirm faith in the Word of God - without panicking out to the "Bible is wrong... bible is wrong" models that our atheist friends love so much.

Accepting what you've just said, this provides no specification on the length of each day by a modern stopwatch

Which is not needed since even the atheists are not about to argue that the spin of the earth was wildly ranging from once every 24 hours - to once every 1 billion years. There is such a thing as "conservation of angular momentum" to not trash in a desperate effort to get the Bible timeline to be unreliable.

The point remains.


Secondly, the planet does not have to rotate for there to be exchanges of light called days.

Well it does have to "in real life".

Here again even the atheists are going to agree to this basic point.

And recall that we have the iron-clad hardwired form in legal code "six days you shall labor...for in six days the Lord made". Spoken by God... written by God on stone. Pretty hard to argue that God was too "uninformed" to know better.

Again - even atheists (not just Jews and Christians) are going to get this obvious point.

No need to imagine confusion on such simple basics.

Calvin's reading of the Bible was that the earth was stuck on pillars and the sun moved around the flat earth.

Indeed - but it is not the Christian claim that Calvin is the author of the Bible nor do we claim he authored creation.
So why should we care?
 
Upvote 0

OzSpen

Regular Member
Oct 15, 2005
11,553
709
Brisbane, Qld., Australia
Visit site
✟140,373.00
Country
Australia
Gender
Male
Faith
Baptist
Marital Status
Private
It is hard to prove to a person with an opposite, strongly held view on this topic. The best I think we can do is try to look at the issues as objectively as possible, open to conclusions that go against our preferences.

Take for example the question of whether everything in the Bible is factually incorrect when intended to be factually correct. Many Christians are divided on the question, since the Bible does not specifically claim that the Bible or anything inspired by God cannot include mistakes of fact.)

It would be like a Christian minister being inspired by the Spirit in him to say that God's way is as straight and pure as route 54, but unknown to the minister, route 54 is actually mostly quite curvy and in need of intense repair, just not at the part he has ever seen.

There are stories like Noah's ark and the Great Flood, and verses like those on the flat earth, that sound so fantastic that either: (A) Reality was warped in that time period just 5000 years ago or so, or (B) these are allegories, or (C) they are factually incorrect myths like parables with spiritual value.

If you pick (A), what you have picked does not normally sound realistic . It sounds abnormal to teach that the earth is flat, or that it was flat in 600 BC or so and afterwards straightened itself out. Nowadays the ideas of a spherical earth is proved so strongly that there is pretty unanimous agreement, with only a few hold outs.

Teaching that the pairs of every animal species in the world just walked onto Noah's ark across all the continents does not sound realistic, just like it does not sound realistic that after leaving the ark, flightless birds came to New Zealand and then lost their flying ability in a few thousand years alone. How did they feed themselves on the ark? Did it simply rain and spring up from the earth in such droves that it flooded the world? Did you know that the ark would not float based on Physical principles of torque and this is why no ship has been built of wood that big? The stories sound so much like fantasy, myth, or warped reality, that it's hard to make it sound realistic.

Architects have built many small wooden models of the ark and even some life sized ones, they've never succeeded in making one that floats on its own . In fact, they've had to float the big models on barges because they are actually unseaworthy.

image.axd.jpg


It's true that failure to build a successful life sized wood model does not disprove that it's possible. It's just a piece of evidence towards it being unrealistic.

I am fine with being proven wrong and seeing a Ark of wood floated long distance at sea. It seems to me though that the architectural issues and failures show that it's probably not realistic. This is just one of many issues. I am not aware of any known animals being seen as having lost flight ability in a few thousand years, nor does it appear realistic to think (as some proposed) that Australia went into a corner of the globe in a few thousand years, or far less than that time. That is why I say it demands a warped view of reality compared to how we currently understand the laws of nature to work. Or there were extreme supernatural actions involved, like marching the lions, giraffes, siberian tigers, etc. etc. onto the Ark.

If you pick (B),
viewing the verses as metaphorical, allegorical, or figurative, the problem is that the verses appear as if they are meant factually. In fact, I can lay out a list of questions in a Socratic style to show as a matter of literary analysis, one would normally interpret them to be intended as factual.

Take for example Psalm 104:5 "Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken."

What are the earth's foundations and how do they stop it from "shaking" always ? Do earthquakes count and can a comet hit the earth to shake it from its orbit? Or take for example the story of Noah's flood. It's quite a lengthy account and it nowhere says that it's a parable.

If comets don't count, then I suppose one could propose that by "not shaken" the verse just means its normal orbit when there are no comets? If so, how do the things that keep the earth stable also keep it on its orbit?

If you pick (C) and say that they are factually mistaken myths or parables, on the basis that the Bible never says that they are parables, while instead they are simply presented in a straightforward manner as if they were facts. The problem however is that in deciding that the Biblical stories in the Old Testament are fantasy, fictional miracles and made up supernatural ideas, then it means that the Bible contains fiction that is mistakenly portrayed as fact. And this in turn opens up the possibility that the stories of Jesus' extreme miracles are also made up fiction, and that we are not required to think that they are facts just by virtue of them being in the Bible. I think that many people do not want to pick C because they feel more emotionally comfortable asserting that the entire Bible is not only spiritually true, but that it is factually true also.

rakovsky,

Do you understand the implications of the meaning of theopneustos in 2 Tim 3:16 (ESV), 'All Scripture is breathed out by God [theopneustos] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness'.

Paul to Timothy was here referring primarily to the OT because the NT was not yet compiled. Since Scripture in the original documents is 'breathed out by God', it means it is breathed out by the One who is perfect, the God who affirmed this, 'This God—his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him' (2 Sam 22:31 ESV).

We can have lots of questions (as you have articulated here), but human reason will not determine how God caused the Great Flood at the time of Noah, saving only 8 people, how the animals fitted on the Ark, and how the animals were brought to Noah. The God who is perfect determined how this was done. No amount of skeptical reason will arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

I am not suggesting blind faith as my article demonstrates: Just accept it by faith – a No! No!

However, you seem to be placing a lot of emphasis on the importance of human reason when God's emphasis is on providing accurate information because of his perfection through theopneustos. Of course there can be errors in transmission and textual criticism is a legitimate discipline to determine the accuracy of texts. However, ours is not to elevate the role of human reason over theopneustos.

Oz
 
Upvote 0