Stonginhim you write : ( the Bible is the final authority in matters of faith: Christian doctrine, Gods Will and plan etc. ) that’s right . And there be no problem with that or with the many professions that are sought in life . The whole issue here is when those professions are used to override what the bible teaches or claim the Bible is wrong and must be reinterpreted another way. That be the issue between me and you and that is the issue at hand . Ok let’s take the claim of the earth being billions of years old that many men of science claim . It be in direct conflict with the Bible and what came forth of this monstrous claim .
Thank you for your reply.
I will try and answer the rest of your post later, but my answer to this is, no, science is not in direct conflict with the Bible.
Genesis 1 says that in 6 days God made heaven and earth. The dispute has always been over "what is a day?"
Some people take that to be literal - 6 days of 24 hours; 72 hours in total. For me, that raises several questions:
i) what took him so long? God is God, he can heal, restore and create instantly. He could bring the whole universe into being in a moment. Why did the author of Genesis say that he split it into 6 "days"? Why did God create things separately - stars before trees, for example? Why did he create the sky on the 2nd day but only create birds on the 5th day? Why did he create 2 things - dry land and sea, which he said were good, and all vegetation and seed bearing plants, which he also said were good - on the third day?
ii) God is outside time. Peter said that with the Lord, a day is AS 1,000 years (a verse which is often misquoted.) What may seem like a day to God could be 1,000 or even, thousands of, years to us.
iii) I read an article once which said that scientists are coming to believe that the universe was created in the same order that is described in Genesis. IOW, first of all, there was light, then water, then dry ground, trees etc, then animals etc etc.
So it is perfectly possible that a "day" in Genesis 1 could be a period of time - maybe 1,000 years, maybe longer.
Only people who take the whole of the Bible to be literal will argue that 1 day = 24 hours. From that, they conclude that scientists are wrong, or lying. This, sometimes, leads to ridiculous conclusions like "the devil is using science to trick us", or "God put fossils on the earth to test our faith". Both of which I have heard Christians saying.
The purpose of Genesis 1 is to show WHO created the universe - God. It tells us what he thought of his creation - good, or very good. And the implication is that God created for a reason. Most people have reasons for doing things - the implication is that God created because he wanted to.
THAT is what Genesis 1 is about and that is what scientists cannot answer. They have no reason for creation - other than maybe a few atoms collided and somehow produced everything.
And there are many scientists who are Christians, and believe Genesis 1 and also what they know to be true as a result of their studies.
God created - end of.