Of course you can. My company had me learn to do fire investigation. You can prove all sorts of things from the remains of a fire. Coroners can prove all sorts of thigns about a person's death. Did you even think about that before trying that dodge?
Just like you "knew" that it's impossible to prove anything you didn't see? Like that? It appears you don't know what "hypothesis" means. Go look it up. It might seem to you that one can't prove anything one didn't actually see...
Proverbs 14:12
There is a way which
seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Steven Katz notes…, "In Jewish religious thought Genesis is not regarded as meant for a literal reading, and Jewish tradition has not usually read it so." In fact, as we shall argue below, even the compilers of the Bible do not seem to have been concerned with a literal reading of the text. They were prepared to have at least parts of it read non-literally.
That word comes out of your mouth too easily. It says things about you.
I showed you an honest YEC scientist. You didn't want to hear what he had to say. C'mon.
Nope. I've checked for myself. And Katz is right.
Well forensics on living people and fires can reveal alot. but trying to find clues for your suppossed 13 billions years is too much. You should know that. And we can test, repeat and observe the clues left behind by fires and heart attacks with others. We can also see the chemicals and enzymes and know form continual observation and testing that we can draw some strong but not absolute conclusion. You just can't do that with the universe! You can make a prediction (CMB) and be right but even a broken clock is right twice!
Yes it does say alot about me! I am willing to call a lie a lie when it is one!
As for the works of Maimonides :
Originally published in Creation 26, no 2 (March 2004): 53-55.
After years of agonizing over the literal days of creation in Genesis, I decided to spend time researching this problem at the London School of Jewish Studies in Hendon, England.
After all, I thought, why shouldn’t I go to the natural Jewish vine for some answers? (Of course, one should be cautious to distinguish between real exegesis of the Word of God, which must always overrule the “traditions of men” (
Mark 7:13), and we’ll see some examples. Although not covered here, it applies especially to modern Judaic revisionism of the Messianic passages
after the rise of Christianity.
1)
On my arrival, a Yeshiva (religious study group) was in process among the Orthodox students. But I was shown to the library where a bearded Rabbi pulled out the best conservative commentaries on the days of creation, along with the Talmud. This is the code of Jewish oral tradition interpreting the Torah or the Law of Moses, completed in the 5th century AD.
2
Eager to study, I took notes from these learned works, which had been compiled by some of the most eminent scholars in Judaism. It was a strange experience being surrounded by Orthodox Jews meticulously scrutinizing ancient books. After days of careful study of the conservative Rabbinical scholars, I had my answer: the days of Genesis were literal.
I turned to Ibn Ezra’s commentary on Genesis. This scholar (c. 1089–1164) from medieval Spain is highly regarded in traditional Rabbinical circles, and his commentary was highly commended by Maimonides (1135–1204). Maimonides (a.k.a. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or the acronym Rambam) has been considered the key figure in Judaism since the Temple was destroyed in AD 70.
In fact, in the preface it says, “Ibn Ezra’s commentary constitutes a major contribution to Biblical Exegesis. One cannot be considered a true student of the Bible without having studied it.” Actually, Ibn Ezra was somewhat liberal, imbibing neo-platonic philosophy, and was a forerunner to the Jewish numerological mysticism known as the Kabbala.
But on Genesis, he has no doubt: he says very clearly, “One day refers to the movement of the sphere.” This shows that the common sceptical objection “how could the creation days be literal before the sun was created” was solved
in principle centuries ago. The “sphere” referred to the celestial sphere of the pre-Galilean Ptolemaic cosmology, universally accepted in the Middle Ages. This is further proof against the idea that the Bible or its followers promoted a “flat earth”.
3 But now we would say that the earth was rotating relative to the light created on Day 1.
The footnote makes sure we get the point when it says, “The heavenly sphere made one revolution. The sun was not yet …”.
4 This shows that they had no problem with the sun being created on the fourth day, as opposed to “appearing” as many long-agers, e.g. Hugh Ross, claim. There is a perfectly good word for appear (
ra’ah), e.g. when the dry land “appeared” as the waters gathered in one place on Day 3 (
Genesis 1:9). But it is not used here.
ALL THE RABBIS HAD UNDERSTOOD THE CREATION DAYS AS LITERAL DAYS.I turned to one of the best commentaries available on Genesis from Talmudic, Midrashic and Rabbinic sources. I discovered that virtually all the Rabbis had understood the creation days as literal days.
In fact, some of the Rabbis even tried to work out what happened in each
hour of the creation of Adam on the sixth day! But here they delved way beyond the information in the text. The
Talmud says, “In the first hour his [Adam’s] dust was gathered; in the second it was kneaded into a shapeless mass; in the third, his limbs were shaped; in the fourth, a soul was infused into him …”. But on Day 6, God created all the animals and brought them to Adam to name, then created Eve (
Genesis 2:18–24).
However, the
Talmud errs more seriously when it claims that in the twelfth hour Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden.
5 Creation was still “very good” at the end of Day 6, so the Fall of both Satan and the first couple must have happened after Creation Week. It can’t have been more than a few days, because Adam and Eve were told to reproduce (
Genesis 1:28), and, being physically perfect, they would have been fertile and unlikely to disobey.
The Rabbis who have compiled this commentary on Genesis write, “The Sages however, tell us explicitly (
Yalkut,
Tehillim [Psalms]
49;
Midrash;
Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer 11) that
all the events related here—[creation of man, Fall, etc.] including the birth of Cain and Abel [
Tosaf. Sanhedrin 38b excludes Abel; see
Maharsha ad. loc.]
occurred on the very first day of Adam’s creation”.
6 This is also wrong, because Cain’s conception occurred after they had fallen and were expelled from Eden (
Genesis 4:1).
We are even told that the ancient Rabbis did not bother to debate about the literal days so much as the
actual month in a solar year when the world was made! The commentary says, “It appears that the ancients referred to Tishrei [September/October] as the first month, for in it creation was completed.”
7
Search as I might, I could not find any reference to a day (Hebrew
yôm) in Genesis 1 meaning any more than a literal 24-hour period. Some of the Rabbis did debate about
Genesis 2:4, which says, “This is the account of the heavens and earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.” However, in this case,
yôm is prefixed by the preposition
be, so
beyôm, and was just an idiom for “when”. The days in Genesis 1 had no preposition, and had the phrase “evening and morning” and a number, which are always indicators of ordinary days everywhere else in the Old Testament. None of the rabbis tried to juggle this “day” (in
Genesis 2:4) to suit pagan philosophy (the Greek philosophers held to a long-ages understanding). Instead, most of them correctly took “day” here to mean “
at the time when” creation took place.
8
There was a popular prophetic understanding of a “day” meaning the coming of the Messiah at the end of the world, but this had nothing to do with creation itself. The Talmud says, “Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one [thousand, the seventh], it shall be desolate, as it is written,
And the Lord alone
shall be exalted in that day. … it is also said,
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.”
9
The Rabbis calculated these six thousand years by basing them on the six literal days of creation. They reasoned that one literal day of creation prophetically referred to a thousand years of history.
10 This reasoning was the traditional approach of most of the early Church Fathers, too.
11
A number of old-earthers, including Hugh Ross, have misrepresented their teachings and claimed that they believed in thousand-year creation days, which as we saw above is not what they taught. Rather, they regarded the creation days as corresponding to,
not equal to, thousand-year periods of earth history, with the seventh day corresponding to the millennium.
12
Turning to some of the more modern Jewish scholars, I discovered a stubborn refusal to dilute the plain meaning in the Hebrew Scriptures. Professor Ginsberg had this to say:
“There is nothing in the first chapter of Genesis to justify the spiritualisation of the expression ‘day’. On the contrary, the definition given in verse 5 of the word in question imperatively demands that ‘
yom’ should be understood in the same sense as we understand the word ‘day’ in common parlance, i.e. as a natural day.”
13
Professor Nahum Sarna, who was chairman of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, referred to the days in Genesis as the same kind of days in the regulatory sacrifices in the Book of Leviticus (i.e. literal days,
Lev. 7:15; 22:30).
14
My conclusion had to be that the traditional Jewish understanding of the days of Genesis is that they are literal. As I left the London School of Jewish studies and passed a Jewish newsagent on the way back to the tube (London Underground train), I glanced at the
Jewish Chronicle. It was dated in the year 5,760 since creation. The Rabbis calculated this date 4,000 years after the event, and a lot of information was missing at the time. With modern knowledge of post-biblical chronology, we now know they were about 250 years short.
But even so, it is roughly 6,000 years ago with no thought of millions or billions of years. This shows that they must have accepted a straightforward understanding of the creation days in Genesis 1 and the chronologies in Genesis 5 and 11.
KAtz is either misled, or disingenuous
As for showing me an hones YEC scientist- if you are reffering to the genome degrading since Adam (or the accumulation of 6 millennia of mistakes ) I agree. But no creationist has ever refereed to non coding DNA as junk. But I am not sure what this is referring to anymore so I can't answer!
As for encode you are being very sly! Yes in 2014 they were up to identifying over 80% of noncoding DNA having function, despite the protests of many in the field. They were not done researching and were confident that it would be up to 100% by the time they were done!
Remember they started believing most DNA was junk or fossil leftovers forma by gone era!
