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Do you honestly think Paul would support such a reading of his letter? Do you think that he intended us to scrutinize his use of tenses in this context in order to glean some mote of information about the timing of creation? Can you honestly even begin such a detailed analysis without getting into the original Greek?" For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:" (KJV)
But, notice that the 'things that are made' is also in the present tense.????? So in either version you have man and creation appearing at the same time (tensewise). I think the NIV actually phrases it better using past tense.
Do you honestly think Paul would support such a reading of his letter? Do you think that he intended us to scrutinize his use of tenses in this context in order to glean some mote of information about the timing of creation? Can you honestly even begin such a detailed analysis without getting into the original Greek?
I don't think Assyrian was at all claiming that different tenses was even implicit scriptural evidence for an old Earth and I'd be shocked and rather saddened if ANYBODY started picking apart word-choices in isolated verses to make utterly out-of-context points to support their theological beliefs!
This verse is one of Paul's signature horribly convoluted Greek structures so it is understandable that different versions struggle to express it clearly. The word translated 'things that are made' is actually a noun from the verb poieo to make. It means a product or a work. As such it doesn't have a tense. The things God made in the past are still 'the things he made'. I may look at these products today, at the things he made, without travelling back to the past.I was being a little facetious with the five billion age of man. Also I posted Rom 1:20 from the NIV. The wording in the KJV cannot be made to imply this.
" For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:" (KJV)
But, notice that the 'things that are made' is also in the present tense.????? So in either version you have man and creation appearing at the same time (tensewise). I think the NIV actually phrases it better using past tense.
God is spirit, but the universe he created is natural, a physical reality that natural people can understand.
Be careful you don't mix figurative and literal. Revelation is a book of symbols. Remember as well, when God made Adam, he was 'flesh and bone' (Gen 2:23), just like we are. This was before the fall.
You are not saying Jesus was created are you? Jesus is God's only begotten son. When the bible talks of Adam as son of God, it is not speaking literally
Not sure what you are saying there Ben.
The way that we tell the age of something is by testing/observing it in some way. In other words, looking at it.
Now if the world were created to look old, then no matter in what way we looked at it, it would still appear to be old. So without any evidence to the contrary, you cannot criticise anyone who comes to the conclusion that it is actually old.
So if neither science nor scripture can back it up, is there really any validity to the idea?
I do not think the advocation that God created the universe with the mere appearance of age is biblical, for He inspired David to write, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1). He also inspired Paul to write, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).
How could either of these verses be true if God embedded a false history in His creation? I can understand reading Genesis as largely allegory because the written word is a human inovation limited only by our own creativity. God can and does deliver His "spiritual truths" (1 Cor 2:13) via any means He wishes, not just through historical narrative. What I cannot understand is someone who insists that Genesis must be read literally, and at the same time hold that God's creation cannot be taken at face value.
If God decieved us about the age of the earth, then why should we believe him about anything else?
First of all I totally understand where you are coming from; so many of God’s people see the Word of God has literal and reject anything out side of those religious laws and taboos; I am not a literalist and I know God’s Word is hidden/spiritual. You say God’s Word is that natural people can understand; and that is true when you speak of the milk of the Word, anyone including babies can drink milk. But the meat is hidden; you need spiritual teeth to chew on it; in other words mysteries (Greek sacred secret) the word mystery is written 27 times in NT. Hidden manna, mystery, parables, types, shadows; allegories, different languages, when you put all this together; it makes it almost invisible to the carnal eyes of man’s traditions and understanding.Sorry you've lost me again.
Scripture does give a timeframe. We have genealogies that link Jesus to Adam directly. Tracing back this linage and adding the ages of individuals, we can determine how long ago Adam lived and was created. Of course these numbers are not exact, but even adding these ages and accounting for missing people leniently, this number can not be larger than 10,000. And we know that Adam was the first man. When does old Earth "science" say mankind started agian?
My definition of age: The amount of actual real-time that has past. If God was to create a world "ready" for human occupation, He could. In the Genesis account of creation, this is what appears to be happening. We have Adam being created fully grown, the same for all the plants and animals. God simply created with "built-in" maturity. Not to mislead future observers, but to allow for the immediate habitation of Earth.
Indeed! Surely an omnipotent God could make life capable of surviving in a world that appears young! The argument that life could only survive on an old-looking planet is both ad hoc and unbiblical. Why in the world would Adam have been better off if the first trees were created with growth rings?But God could have made life-forms that could survive on an Earth that not only is 6,000 years old but looks 6,000 years old.
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My point was that it is the natural world God created that natural man can understand.First of all I totally understand where you are coming from; so many of Gods people see the Word of God has literal and reject anything out side of those religious laws and taboos; I am not a literalist and I know Gods Word is hidden/spiritual. You say Gods Word is that natural people can understand; and that is true when you speak of the milk of the Word, anyone including babies can drink milk. But the meat is hidden; you need spiritual teeth to chew on it; in other words mysteries (Greek sacred secret) the word mystery is written 27 times in NT. Hidden manna, mystery, parables, types, shadows; allegories, different languages, when you put all this together; it makes it almost invisible to the carnal eyes of mans traditions and understanding.
But that has nothing to do with the notion that the world was created to look old, which was what my point was.
I find ice cores particularly counter to this Omphalos argument. They contain tens of thousands of years of visible yearly rings that hold evidence of the 11-year cycle of solar activity, major events (like meteorite impacts and volcanic eruptions that were previously dated to precisely the same time) and evidence showing temperature and atmospheric composition that is mirrored by varves and tree rings elsewhere.
Even below the point where individual layers can be visually identified the regular yearly cycles in the highly stable arctic and inland greenland are easily found by measuring changes in electrical resistance. Further, regular sunspot cycles longer than the 11-year Schwabe cycle (i.e. 210 and 2300 years) have been followed back over a hundred thousand years.
To have these features just poofed into existance isn't just God's attempt to make the Earth inhabitable -- it would be nothing short of deception.
Thats because the strong wind would blow the snow from miles away onto the crash site.I answered this question, though maybe not directly. I suggested that it is only the interpretation of the observer that may or may not identify what they see as "old". The evidence for both ideas (old; young earth) is the same, just with a different interpretation. May I also point out that 10,000 years is a very long time.
I understand your view on the ice core samples. However, the rings fit a non-yearly pattern, not of summer/winter, but periods of warmer/colder.
During WW2, some airplanes crash landed in Greenland in 1942, they were found in 1990 and dug up. They were under 263 feet of snow. Bob Cardin, one of the people who dug up one of the planes makes many remarks about how they dug through many hundred if not thousands of these "rings" to get to the planes. However, the ice had only 48 years to pile on top.
Talk Origins, Index to Creationist Claims
CD410. World War II airplanes are now beneath thousands of "annual" ice layers.
I answered this question, though maybe not directly. I suggested that it is only the interpretation of the observer that may or may not identify what they see as "old". The evidence for both ideas (old; young earth) is the same, just with a different interpretation. May I also point out that 10,000 years is a very long time.
We can measure the distance that a star is away from Earth, and as far as I know the measuring techniques are not disputed by any creationists. This means that if a star is more than 10,000 light years away then the light we're seeing from it has taken more than 10,000 years to get to us (I don't know if there is any star that far away - if not, then substitute galaxy for star).
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