You are right, there are numerous places where it is obvious that the bible is not to be taken as literal. There are places that are metaphors and parables.
However, the Genesis account is plain and simple text with absolutely no reason, indication or context for which to take it any other way.
Simply false. First of all, others as well as myself have pointed out to you many times that Genesis 1 is structured as Hebrew poetry, along with other signs like internal puns and the symbolism in Genesis. We both agree there is symbolic language in Genesis, right? 1 If not, can you please show me the verse where Satan bites Jesus' foot? Secondly - in addition to that, even text that doesn't have these signs is often symbolic or a parable. Such as the Good Samaritan story - you agree that's a parable, right? 2
It is reinforced as 6 literal days throughout the Old and New Testaments.
Irrelevant. Taken literally, the text of Genesis 1 says that we live on a flat earth, under a hard dome, with the sun and other stars as little lights inside the dome. That's reinforced by literally dozens of verses from Genesis to Revelation, including the story of Jesus' birth in Mt. It's certainly supported by a lot more scripture than the idea of a literal 6 day creation.
That gives three (non hypocritical) positions.
1. Both the 6 day creation and the flat earth are literal (for people who are both creationists and flat-earthers).
2. Both are written to communicate with ancient people, and both are not to be taken as literal science. (for people who are Christian evolution supporters and accept a spherical earth).
3. Because the literal 6 day creation is only mentioned in a few places compared to the cosmology, I guess one could accept evolution and insist on a flat earth, but that's a bit of a stretch.
I can give some of the verses that describe the cosmology if you like. By the way, Bible scholars have recognized this for a long time - it's well accepted, because it's obvious when one reads the text in the original hebrew and greek. 3
If it were not for these anti-God atheists spouting on about billions of years, if it were not for their deathgrip on evolution and it's life support system of 48 billion years of time, if it were not for this worldly demand for something other than the one true God..............we would all believe it was 6000 years old.
Anyone who knows Christian history knows that this is simply false. Christians decided long before Darwin that the earth was many millions of years old. This realization was done by Christians, with the assumption of Christianity, for the rest of the Christian world. It has nothing to do with Atheism, and especially has nothing to do with evolution, as it was decided long before Darwin's Origin of Species.
A good place to start learning about that is through looking at the life of Rev. Adam Sedgewick. Make sense? 4
In analysis, one error that is the same in all methods creates invalid numbers in all methods.
No - it's not that the proposed altered number are "invalid" - it's that they are all thrown off by the exact same amount, even though the different methods are unrelated.
Like what? Carbon dating, dendrochronology, speleotherms, varves, ice cores and more have all been validated by written historical records, such as when a church with wooden pews with the date carved on them is tested, or the date that history records give as the date a city burned is seen in the varves.
All of those methods and more confirm obsidian hydration, Pb-K dating, magnetic polarization, electron spin dating, and more. Each of those confirms a half dozen other methods, stretching back 4.6 billion years.
Now, what variable are you proposing that would throw off the fact that tree rings form every year, that spring runoff happens in the spring, that uranium atoms decay at a certain rate, that electrons change their spin at a certain rate, that humans write down historical dates, that oxygen diffuses through silica at given rate, that magnetic material lines up along a magnetic field, and more?
What are you proposing that won't just throw these off, but
throw each one off in exactly the right amount to make it match all the other "incorrect" dates? Oh, and of course that factor will have to make humans record all their historical dates in their history book by again - the exact same incorrect amount. 5
We have absolutely no standard that can be held as solid with which to calibrate any of the dating methods.
Which we don't need, as explained twice now.
All are speculation based on physics that have been shown to be in error in the past and will be shown to be in error in the future.
No, it's been confirmed over and over - with hundreds of samples and thousands of tests. In fact, it's even been tested by using known contaminated samples and shown that those produce the dates expected based on the contamination.
Besides, there are literally dozens of other proofs our our common descent (evolution). Even if all these dating methods disappeared, and we had no idea how old anything was, evolution would be better proven than the fact that the US Civil War happened. 6
In Christ-
Papias
