An evolutionist, TE, OEC and YEC all walk up to a bar...

Can you answer the question seebs, or shall you keep trying to talk yourself away from it?

If the wine tasted as if it had been aged, is Jesus Christ a deceiver?

SBG said:

Tell me seebs, did the master of the banquet think the wine was the best, better than the other wines?

When does wine taste is best, after it has aged?

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Depends. Some old wine is just vinegar. Age doesn't matter as much as other kinds of quality.

But nonetheless, there's no obvious reason to say that miraculous wine would necessarily test out as being old.

I can show you what the Bible says on such matters.

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No, you can't. You, like me, are human. You do not know what the Bible says. You cannot. All you can know is how you interpret it.

Will you take the Bible as truth according to what it says?

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Depends. On the question of how many legs grasshoppers have, or whether the mustard seed is the smallest seed, no, I will not. On the question of whether charity is the greatest of faith, hope, and charity, yes I will.

It is not anger or hostility. It is a question, you will not answer. To keep from answering it you go off on a tanget.

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What you have offered is not a genuine question, but an accusation rich with hidden premises. It's comparable to "have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

If the wine tasted as if it had been aged, is Jesus Christ a deceiver?

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This question doesn't even mean anything. While good wines are often aged, there are old wines which are dismally bad, and young wines which are good.

But, granting the whole thing for the sake of argument... No, no deceit, merely creating a thing in a completed state.

This leaves us with an interesting question. What is the history of a thing which is created with age? Does it have the history it was created with, or does it have no history at all?

Wine changes with age due to chemical processes. If Jesus creates already-changed chemicals, does this mean that the wine somehow experienced these changes already, or that direct creation can make things which are identical to the outputs of those changes?

I see. Did you give the author the benefit of the doubt, or was your first response on here accusatory toward the OP?

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My comment on the post stands; I have made no comment about the author.

The post is unpersuasive and indeed confrontational. It could be improved by a better representation of other views; as is, it's an attack on strawmen.

You don't find this to be accusing the OP of his intent? Or do you find what you say here to be giving him the benefit of doubt?

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This is the generic "you", referring to intended readers. I have no idea what the OP's intent is; I have offered a piece of constructive criticism which could make the point carry better. I have politely assumed that his intent is not actually to insult people with strawmen, but to clarify a point of disagreement.

I ask one simple question seebs, can you answer it?

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Not really; it has false premises.

If the wine tasted as if it had been aged, is Jesus Christ a deceiver?

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You keep hammering on this... and in so doing, you've made it clear that you have an argument-by-analogy, which you seem to be very very emotionally caught up in.

But... The wine is not the whole of the world we have lived in for as long as we've done anything.

Let's try a different way of looking at this.

If Jesus created wine, and He created it in bottles with the label and name of a local vintner, and a date five years in the past, would you say that He was deceiving people?

How about if Jesus creates this wine, then makes a point of telling us all that we can learn the truth about how wine came to be by studying the label?

SBG said:

Can you answer the question seebs, or shall you keep trying to talk yourself away from it?

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This aggressive, confrontational, attitude is absolutely inappropriate, and you are about to find yourself the first entry on my ignore list in about a year and a half.

The question has hidden premises which I do not accept, and furthermore, your aggressive pummeling of it over and over with emotionally loaded language is absolutely incompatible with honest intent to have a productive discussion. You have made it clear that you have no interest in discussing this issue, only in hammering me and insulting me until I give a pat yes or no answer, to either of which you have a carefully pre-arranged, scripted, little response that will "prove" your point.

This is the fallacy of the excluded middle being pushed to an extreme, and it is conduct unbecoming.

If you wish to discuss, please do so in a respectful and productive manner.

If you just want to be rude and pushy, and ignore peoples' objections or points of clarification on a subtle issue, then please do it on your own time. This is a discussion forum.

Thanks for the accusations and judgements seebs. I appreciate your ways of turning your rudeness to the OP into me being the one who is rude.

It seems we cannot hold a conversation without accusations. My apologies and may God Bless you!

Calminian said:

The point remains the same. If wine was miraculously created, this would throw off those trying to date it, not just scientists who might measure the alcohol content, but wine experts as well.

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Agreed. I don't think our concepts of measurements apply well to attempting to date wine created by miracle.

Second I see a huge flaw in the approach of OECs and TE to miracles.

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But the approach you have described is not necessarily the one OECs and TEs take!

But I’ve heard from many scientists that miracles are outside of their realm of investigation. Science must assume a non miracle environment before it even starts looking at data. Science can never disprove nor prove a miracle and as I think my illustration demonstrates, science can’t date a miracle either.

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Indeed.

What science can tell us that our world looks exactly like one which has been aging for billions of years. It is, as you note, possible that it was created in this state, already "old", six thousand years ago. Or ten thousand. Or two thousand. Who are we to say that anything which happened before the birth of Jesus actually happened, as opposed to merely being part of the history with which our world was created?

Third, the Bible clearly conveys the Creation and Flood and Babel as supernatural events. If this is so, why would we look to scientific investigation for answers? Why would we let it influence our interpretation one way or another?

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Here is where it gets interesting.

Let us imagine that we have the claim that Bob was raised from the dead. If Bob was in a hospital, hooked up to a number of machines, one question we might ask is "how long was he dead for?"

What if the machines show no time at all at which he was dead? What if, so far as the machines and hospital records show, Bob was in perfect health the entire time?

For that matter, what if Bob, who has allegedly been raised from the dead, continues to show no externally visible signs of life, and is starting to smell bad?

It seems to me that, in some cases, our ability to observe the world would affect the credibility we give to claims of miracles. If you show me an EEG chart showing brain activity completely stopping for several minutes and then starting up again, I will be quite curious as to what happened. But if you show me an EEG chart with no irregularities, and assert that a miracle occurred, I will have to ask why I should believe this claim.

Looking at the world, we find a great deal of evidence consistent with the theory that it's been here a long time, and things have been happening for thousands of years. We can go back more than ten thousand years looking at patterns of rings in fossilized trees. Now, certainly, God could create a world in which there were buried bits of stone in the shape of trees, with patterns of rings consistent with those of later trees... But at some point, we have to wonder why He would put all this extra detail in.

In the case of the wine, we can argue that perhaps a wine which is more like wine which has been aged will taste better. But... What of a world? Why does God choose to create for us a world which looks exactly as though it were billions of years old, and had never seen a global Flood? Is He trying to confuse us? Does He not want us to study His creation? Is there some other goal?

I find it simpler to assume, as many theologians have for the last couple of millennia, that these stories were not always understood in the way that YEC readers understand them, and that some of the other ways of thinking about them are perhaps closer to the intent of the writers, or more importantly, closer to what God wishes us to learn from these passages.

Calminian said:

Second I see a huge flaw in the approach of OECs and TE to miracles. I’m not a scientist, and will not (or more precisely cannot) make any scientific arguments for a young earth. But I’ve heard from many scientists that miracles are outside of their realm of investigation. Science must assume a non miracle environment before it even starts looking at data. Science can never disprove nor prove a miracle and as I think my illustration demonstrates, science can’t date a miracle either.

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Fallacy of Equivocation. Not everything science currently cannot understand is "miraculous"

Fallacy of Appealing to Ignorance. Just because scientists cannot use their methods on miracles doesn't mean they don't believe in them themselves. Especially since science cannot deal with them, they'd be the first to tell you that they are possible.

Third, the Bible clearly conveys the Creation and Flood and Babel as supernatural events. If this is so, why would we look to scientific investigation for answers? Why would we let it influence our interpretation one way or another?

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Creation simply says "and God said" and so it was. Doesn't say how long, since we are still in the seventh "day" which hasn't ended yet. Science says the Big Bang probably happeneded, and we have reasonably good to very good explanations to how the rest happened. God could have very well guided the whole process and is still at work.

Babel is simply a story about pride, not to mention a bit anti-urban (a lot of Genesis is). There's nothing factual about it, except that ziggurats were indeed real buildings (temples actually) that were supposed to "reach out" to the heavens. Note also it is a play on "Babylon."

The big bang is not an explanation, in the sense of saying why anything happened; it is a description of what appears to have happened.

And God said "let there be light", and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.

Boom.

Calminian said:

Just a couple of comments about my OP. First some were critical about the type of wine in those days. To tell you the truth I don’t think any of that really matters for the purpose of the illustration. I could have easily given the illustration a modern setting with modern wine making processes. The point remains the same. If wine was miraculously created, this would throw off those trying to date it, not just scientists who might measure the alcohol content, but wine experts as well.

Second I see a huge flaw in the approach of OECs and TE to miracles. I’m not a scientist, and will not (or more precisely cannot) make any scientific arguments for a young earth. But I’ve heard from many scientists that miracles are outside of their realm of investigation. Science must assume a non miracle environment before it even starts looking at data. Science can never disprove nor prove a miracle and as I think my illustration demonstrates, science can’t date a miracle either.

Third, the Bible clearly conveys the Creation and Flood and Babel as supernatural events. If this is so, why would we look to scientific investigation for answers? Why would we let it influence our interpretation one way or another?

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It's true that science cannot disprove miracles. In fact, by definition, a miracle is virtually impossible to study scientifically. The miracle would need to be repeatable. Unfortunately, you can't just witness a miracle whenever you want to. It's not so much that science rejects the idea that miracles happen, it's just that it is not testable. Experimentation is what separates science from other ways of knowing. That's not to say that it is the only way of knowing.

Aw, I was expecting a joke.

Calminian said:

Well the fourth scientist was a YEC. After hearing the woman’s testimony, and since he believed miracles indeed could happen, he took a different route. He took samples of the wine to test it and make sure it was real. He then interviewed all the attendants at the party. Their stories all matched perfectly. They all testified that the jugs were originally filled with water and that it was turned into wine before their very eyes. Then he took physiological profiles of all the witnesses. All checked out as unlikely to lie about something like this. He then interviewed the Christ Himself and found no evidence of deceit in him. After more time and investigation He finally concluded a miracle indeed took place at the wedding party the day before. Later on, this conclusion was reinforced by the impact this miracle had on the lives of its witnesses.

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Actually, a YEC would not do any of this. There would be no need to. The YEC scientist would give the scene a cursory examination, confirm that it does in fact match up to how they read the Bible, and move along.

Anything more would be to question the Word of God, would it not?

Calminian said:

Which is why I'm amazed that christians think science disproves the miracle of creation, and therefore believe it necessary to squeeze TE and other old earth interpretations into the text.

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Except that science does not disprove the miracle of Creation. It is theology which rules out literalism.

God doesn't hide His miracles...doesn't suspend natural laws and then make it look like He didn't...why do it here?

RECENT?!

No No No!

Reread your ECFs...

Calminian said:

Ah, but you know for certain what a miraculous earth would look like.

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Nope. I merely know that it seems a little odd for it to have all these extra bits of pre-history built into it. Why?

Assuming no miracles have happened. Funny how you keep leaving this out.

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Not at all! This is how we draw any useful conclusions at all. Otherwise, why use antibiotics? It may seem to the casual observer that penicillin is killing bacteria, but how do we know God is not miraculously killing the bacteria?

In short, if we wish to learn anything about the structure of Creation, we must assume that God is not actively intervening all the time.

No it was not created old, no more than the wine was created old.

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Okay. It was created with traits (such as tree rings) that are associated with age in the normal scheme of things, but which aren't in the case of miracles.

It only looks old to you because you don't believe the record that's telling you it's young (relatively). You're believing scientific dating methods that assume no miracles. Yet the record tells us miracles have happened—incredible large scale miracles.

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Sure. But... It's not just that there's miracles. It's that they are followed by a miraculous coverup! If there was a Flood, not only was there a Flood, but after the Flood, God carefully hid all the evidence, miraculously moving things around and changing them.

In other words... If you look at what any normal flood leaves for evidence, you learn that floods leave certain kinds of evidence. The global Flood, if it happened, left absolutely no evidence at all.

This requires a second miracle, not described in the Bible.

Well, you might want to let God tell you. He did give you a historical record.

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Says who?

It is not an article of my faith that the Old Testament is "a historical record", least of all the book of Genesis, which is structured very much like a creation myth, and indeed, is similar structurally to the creation myths of other cultures, but adapted in ways that highlight the differences of Hebrew beliefs.

But in that case you know what the irregularities are, because you know what the regularities are. We don’t have multiple universes that have been naturally formed to compare ours to, that we might determine which ones are regular and irregular. Everything we have to observe is ultimately from a supernatural act.

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This may be, but nonetheless... If I am confronted with a petrified tree, I can tell you how many years it lived, and identify patterns that indicate, say, when there were good years, and when there were bad years, and even fires.

And if you show me three trees, I show you whether or not they lived at overlapping times, and if so, how long the time from the oldest to the youngest was.

And this works in most cases, except that, around 6,000 years back, the rings are all manufactured by supernatural influence. Nonetheless, they continue to show the patterns of abundance and scarcity, and fire, going back thousands of years further. For reasons of His own, apparently, God created fossilized trees that have rings showing a pattern of abundance and scarcity happening before the world was even created.

This is rather interesting. Why?

But it doesn’t look billions of years old. It’s only assumed to be old by those that deny a miracle was involved in its existence.

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This, I think, is where we disagree. We have mechanisms available to let us compare one thing to another and develop reasonable predictions about their ages; for instance, tree rings.

You wouldn't argue with me if I showed you a cross-section of a huge, old, tree and told you it was seven hundred years old. And if I showed you a fossilized tree, from the same area, with a hundred or more years of rings in similar patterns, you would probably grant that the fossilized tree was older, and that the old tree was there during the years they have in common.

So, things can "look old". Strictly speaking, though, this is not just assuming "no miracles". It is assuming that the miracles are not covered up.

If, around 6,000 years back, all the tree rings were perfectly regular, and there were no dead trees over 6,000 years old, we would have a very good argument for believing that the world was created 6,000 years ago, with trees springing from the ground in a single day.

Indeed many scientists believe matter in infinite. Do you believe it’s infinite or that it just looks infinite?

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I have no opinion on the question.

I think he wants you to study His Word and trust it. As you know, scientific theories will come and go.

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The Bible is not the Word. It is a book. The Word is Jesus, and none other. To call the Bible the Word is to flirt with the edges of bibliolatry.

By this logic, you then must also believe that God wanted practically all theologians to be deceived before the age of scientific enlightenment. For that is indeed what happened if you are correct.

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I theorize that God doesn't really care how old we think the universe is, except insofar as it prevents us from loving our neighbor.

I always marvel how concerned some are that YEC interpretations make God a deceiver because it contradicts modern scientific theories that assume naturalism. Yet they have no problem with the text misleading theologians for centuries.

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I don't think the text misled people. After all, Augustine and Origen both understood it as parable. So far as I can tell, theologians are sometimes in the habit of trying to extract simple answers from hard ones, and in this, they deceive themselves.

Calminian said:

The ruling out of a literal Genesis, with a literal Adam, Garden, Flood, Babel etc. is a relatively recent trend. Most are willing to admit modern scientific theories are the direct cause of this. Apparently some are not.

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If it were the direct cause, how would you explain Augustine and Origen?

Calminian said:

The ruling out of a literal Genesis, with a literal Adam, Garden, Flood, Babel etc. is a relatively recent trend. Most are willing to admit modern scientific theories are the direct cause of this. Apparently some are not.

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take a few moments and read a little on the history of hermeneutics:

the 'preference for the literal' began with Luther, mostly as a reaction to the extreme allegorical interpretation results of the high middle ages. Uniil then the 4 fold interpretation prevailed:
see: http://shakinandshinin.org/TheBible.html

In the Middle Ages (500-1500), Origen’s allegorical approach to the interpretation of Scripture was the accepted pattern. Indeed, Middle Ages interpreters expanded on Origen’s two meanings and found anywhere from four to seven different levels or types of meanings. A fourfold meaning was usually sought in Scripture:

1.

the literal-historical, for the simple believer
2.

the allegorical, which supplies a deeper meaning for faith
3.

the moral, which guides conduct
4.

and the anagogical, a mystical interpretation which points towards the ultimate goal of the Christian in his pilgrimage.

Various terms were used to denote these four different levels of meaning.

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its a nice short intro to the topic, worthwhile reading.

as the last 500 years unfolded, there has been a very large number of allegorical understandings proposed for Gen 1-5 and not all of them are reactions to the rise of science.

besides, why shouldn't our understanding of Scripture be enriched as by God's good favor we understand more about His second book, that of Creation, via science?