Calling Oneself a Christian But Calling God a Liar about Creation?

[Tom Cohoe]

I like saying things indirectly; to me it is a more artistic form of discussion. Nevertheless, if you must have it directly, I will oblige you. I was objecting to this "exegetical reason" you gave:

shernren, it may be more artistic but it is also plain unfair. This time it's not so bad, but last time we talked, you complained about unqualified people, bad metaphysicians, etc, without actually naming anyone you were complaining about or complaining about anything specific. It was a matter of insinuation instead of accusation. This time is not so bad. At least you clearly indicated you were talking about me. Nevertheless, the indirection still leaves me in a position where I have to guess what you are talking about, and you in a position to deny you meant whatever I respond to.

I was giving you two examples from the Bible itself in which God "puts Himself to the test", so to speak, through skeptical inquiry.

[...]

If God was willing to authenticate the resurrection with irrefutable physical evidence, why would He not authenticate a recent creation with irrefutable physical evidence?

This is what I guessed was your point, and I have indeed responded to it elsewhere.

God does need to reveal himself to His chosen messengers. There would be no way for His message to be communicated if He did not. However when He reveals Himself is chosen by God, to whom He reveals Himself is chosen by God, and the purpose of the revelation is God's purpose.

These purposeful, limited revelations are very different from what leaving evidence of a miraculous creation lying around for every skeptic to stumble across would be. This is what Jesus meant when he said [Matthew 13:13]:

Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
​

God is to be found through faithful seeking and the fact that chosen messengers receive revelations does not change this. It is for that reason that I call generic YECs striving to prove biblical miracles through creation "science" people of weak faith. I differentiate creation "science" YECs from "sophisticated YECs" who have found a way to believe Genesis while leaving science alone.

Personally, I like to believe that the world was created 13.5 bya as science models it and I read Genesis as a metaphor. I am the same as you and gluadys in that. The only difference is that I am not so sure of myself that I would exclude those who see it differently.

Now I ask you shernren: If God would leave evidence of miracles lying around for skeptics to find and have their minds changed, not through faith, but through proof, then why does He not just give direct revelation of His supernatural existence to all skeptics everywhere and convert them all right now by making what we believe by faith undeniably easy and disbelief plainly ridiculous to all?

Concluding, I do not agree that there is some iron clad argument from the Bible, from metaphysics, or from science, that we are logically bound to see the science models as the truth. In fact, this kind of belief in infallible conclusions drawn from reasoning are the antithesis of the way science itself works. As scientists, we long ago learned that when we try to figure it out in an armchair, we invariably go wrong. We make progress in tiny, half blind steps, feeling our way by experiment every step of the way. By contrast, the churches have historically done the armchair thing and gotten it wrong. Epicycles were a good idea when they were first thought up, but the Catholic Church, with its hide bound, intricately thought out theology was unable to accept Copernican cosmology until it was too late to avoid doing things that are to this day a major embarrassment to Christianity. Christianity should just stay the heck out of science ... totally, unless, like today's wiser Catholic Church, it wants to support it at arm's length and otherwise keep out of science.

Now how about that question about the number of wavelengths of light from a green laser hovering over a black hole to its horizon? I thought that as a third year physics student, you would be able to clear up something for me that's been bothering me for years. The green light question is simple and only serves as an introduction to the problem that has been bothering me.

 

[gluadys]

I did not change my wording. I quoted myself exactly. What follows the quotation is an amplification completely consistent with the quotation.

Your original wording (emphasis added)

So, to get to the nub of things, by this argument, if Christ rose from the dead three days after he was crucified to death then God is a liar, because biology tells us it couldn't have happened.
​

Your amended wording (emphasis added)

Every miracle is a violation of a science model. If a miraculous six day creation makes God a liar because it violates a geology model, then a miraculous rising from death makes God a liar because it violates a biology model.​

Violating a biology model is not the same thing as saying it could not have happened. Yes, Christ's resurrection violates a biology model, but that doesn't mean that biology tells us it couldn't have happened. It only means there is no way to account for it within the science of biology.

The foundation is not that we were 'robbed' of something. It is that we ceased to be in communion with God and it became a requirement that we seek God through faith.

Incorrect. Faith was just as much the foundation of knowing God before the fall as afterwards. Had Adam and Eve had faith in God they would not have succumbed to the tempter. That is one of the points of the story. Communion with God did not cease when they ate the fruit, but when they no longer trusted God. It was their failure of faith that led to eating the fruit, not the other way around.


The foundation of exegesis is the text, the text, the text---just as in real estate it is location, location, location.

From that foundation, one uses reasoning (if it is allowed).

But according to many YECists, one cannot use reasoning, because the fall took away our power to reason correctly. (Naturally they do not really apply this in ordinary life, but it is given again and again as the basis for rejecting scientific theories.)

So: If we need faith to find God, then we cannot find Him through science.

We don't find God through science. (Unless one subscribes to ID, but that is another kettle of fish.) But we do find God's creation through science. Science studies what is created, not who created it.

But according to YEC, scientists do not find what is created. They find some sort of illusion, not what God actually made.

Therefore miracles as given in the Bible can only be known through faith, except when God, for His own reasons, reveals Himself through a miracle.

Again you are assuming that "as given in the Bible" means the YEC version of what is given in the bible. Revelation is the purpose of a miracle; there is no reason for a miracle except to reveal God. So "hidden miracles" are an oxymoron. What YECs forget is that the creation itself is also a revelation. This is why Paul can argue that those who are outside the law can still be condemned for their idolatry, for God has shown himself to them through the creation of the world. The invisible God can be known and understood through the visible work of the creation. Rom. 1:19-20 paraphased.

The theology of the general revelation (i.e. the creation) has long standing in Judaeo-Christian thought (and is also a staple of Islam). This is what YEC is rejecting.

But it is quite another thing to be intolerant of someone else's interpretation of the Bible.

Depends on what "intolerance" involves. To observe the discrepancies between an interpretation of scripture and some basics of traditional Christian theology is just that: an observation. To show inconsistency in a line of thought is also an observation.

Intolerance, I think, goes to suggesting that something needs to be done about it, and I am not making any suggestion of that order. I am not, for example, suggesting ex-communication or censorship. (By contrast, many churches committed to YEC do practice intolerance. One example is that they require prospective members to sign a statement of faith that explicitly sets out a YEC interpretation of scripture.)

I do not claim to have 'proved' anything with the 'we are fallen' justification I just gave.

The point is that "we are fallen" is not grounds for arguing anything that is not stated in scripture. Yes, "we are fallen" means we are prone to sin and have difficulty resisting temptation. "We are fallen" means our relationships are broken: first and foremost our relationship with God, but also our other relationships, since all relationships of love and care and compassion rest on that primary relationship with God. So the proper relationship of husband and wife is also broken; the proper relationship of earth to the tiller of the earth is broken. This is stated in scripture.


What is not stated in scripture, but often stated by YECs is that our capacity to observe the data of nature is broken and that our capacity to reason logically is broken. Without a scriptural basis one cannot say that "we are fallen" justifies these claims. Yet, ironically, they are essential to show that YEC interpretations of scripture are valid.

I recognize that I could throw away the whole Bible and still have the infinite thing, which is God. Infinity minus the Bible is still infinity.

That's good. It is another failing of YEC to hold that the Bible is the only pathway to knowing God. As if God had locked the Holy Spirit into the Bible. This is also another reflection of the fact that YEC rejects the creation itself as a form of revelation--even though scripture tells us it is.

I was speaking of biblical miracles when I said the liar argument can be applied to all the miracles.

It is another YEC argument (and a false one) to hold that science disallows miracles entirely. It doesn't. It just sets miracles among the things that science cannot account for. Science deals with the normal order of creation, not with super-natural exceptions. But it cannot rule out the possibility of super-natural exceptions.

So biblical miracles offer no grounds for the "liar" argument. They are clearly intended to be super-natural exceptions. Nor are any of them contradicted by existing evidence. We do not have the ax-head which floated in water. And even if we did, we have no reason to suppose it would do so a second time.

The problem comes, as stated, when one feels threatened by the normal order of creation and is led to deny it by claiming ad hoc miracles which left no evidence. Claiming, for example, that fossils were placed in the ground to test our faith is demeaning to God. When God tests faith it is not through childish trickery.

Since we are talking about the act of creation, if you use the same word to denote what is created, you are making your writing less clear than it could be. Why not use a different word for "what is created".

... no longer make accurate observations of reality [emphasis mine - TC]
There you go. You used the word "reality". Much better.

What has been created is a creation. You and I are created beings, creatures, creations. I use "creation" for the natural world to emphasize that it has been created. And to emphasize that it is also a revelation whose truth is grounded in God's own truthfulness.

"nature" is a secular word and I will often use it when speaking in a secular forum. But because there is a tendency to divorce "nature" and "God", and set them against each other, I prefer to use "creation" as a reminder that such a divorce is untenable in Christian thinking. Nature is a creation.

"reality" is another term that is useful in some circumstances. Here the issue is whether what we call nature is the real creation. My point is that it is. And that is why I see the YEC stance as a denial of creation (though ironically, they see themselves as defenders of the theology of creation). In various ways YEC denies the reality of nature in favour of a "creation" that is unseen and invisible; in that view, nature as we know it is not "reality".

Oh the fallen nature certainly does. You can't just sweep it away with a wand of authority.

The fallen state argument exactly represents the text of scripture. What follows from it is not scripture, but reasoning.

Of course. But I was not questioning the reality of our fallen state. I was questioning alleged consequences of the fall that have no scriptural foundation. See above.

Nothing I have ever said indicates Genesis is a scientific model. It couldn't possibly be a scientific model.

Agreed. So why sanction an interpretation that treats it as a scientific model? If that is a correct interpretation, then the world described by science has no actual existence. And it can no longer be claimed that when scripture says "God created the heavens and the earth" it refers to this heaven and this earth that we perceive via our senses.

I'm sorry, but I never said anything like that. You read above just how important Genesis actually is to me personally. Not very.

I'm oversensitive, I suppose. But the phrase "literal truth" you used has often been used by others to argue that only the literal is true. I long ago came to the conclusion that many YECs don't actually know the meaning of "literal" and conflate it with the meaning of "true".

But you are the one coming up with the 'liar' argument, that is, if God actually made the world the way it is given in scripture then God is a liar.

It shouldn't take too long roaming around these forums to see that most often the argument comes from YECs telling the rest of us that if we don't support their interpretation of Genesis, we are calling God a liar. They invented the argument.

And I agree it is absurd. It is based on the idea that 1) only one particular interpretation of the Genesis creation accounts is valid and therefore 2) the use of human sense and reason to study the created world directly reveals a lie rather than the truth about creation.


One can only ponder what twisted logic leads people to assume, as Galileo so aptly phrased it, "that the God who has endowed us with the faculties of sense and reason has forbidden us to use them."

I mentioned biblical miracles because the "God is a liar" argument is as valid or invalid against every one of them as it is against a single one of them, including six day creation.

Perhaps you are unaware that evolutionary creationists have never held that the 6-day creation could not be true. What is stated is that there is no evidence that it is true and plenty of evidence that it is not. The fuss is not over whether God can conjure up a world in an instant (or 6 days) which would appear billions of years old. Of course he can.

The issue is 1) did God do this? and 2) what does that tell us about the nature of God? There is no scientific argument against the Omphalos proposal. But the majority of Christians hold that it is contrary to what we believe about God to attribute the world of the Omphalos to the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is less an argument about creation than about the Creator. That is why it is basically a theological rather than a scientific controversy.

Yeah, right. If Genesis is literally true then God is a deceitful liar.

That is basically what YECism tells us.

There always is, if the model is any good.

And the current model of the origin of the universe and of humanity is a very good one. Even those who oppose it have not been able to show that it is not a good model. So, if a good model of reality has some basis in reality, then, theologically, it is connecting with what God actually created.

But, according to YECs, it is not. Not because it fails as a model, but because it is not modelling reality. It can't be modelling reality, because what it models is not what YEC interpretations of scripture demand as reality. So YECs invent a different reality--one in which physical constants are not constant, global floods leave no trace of their occurrence, continents race across the surface of the earth without generating so much heat it kills every living cell, etc. etc.

Actually, theology should stay out of science, period. That includes telling us that models of science are revelations of God. The models of science are the works of humans.

True, scientific models are works of humans. The question is whether they are models of reality. A scientific model that does not connect with reality is false. A scientific model that is also a reasonably accurate model of reality connects with the handiwork of God. And the handiwork of God IS revelation. That is why it is not the scientific model that is important, but the evidence on which it is based. The evidence is not an invention of the model. But it is the reality of that evidence which YEC is forced to deny.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

Your original wording (emphasis added)

... biology tells us it couldn't have happened.
​

Your amended wording (emphasis added)

... it violates a biology model.
​

Hmm, this is not what you quoted when you said I changed my wording. Nor did I "amend" my wording. I made the case much earlier that people doing science will speak as though the science model is "the truth" even though they are aware that it is a model. In the first usage, I was doing just that.

Incorrect. Faith was just as much the foundation of knowing God before the fall as afterwards. Had Adam and Eve had faith in God they would not have succumbed to the tempter. That is one of the points of the story. Communion with God did not cease when they ate the fruit, but when they no longer trusted God. It was their failure of faith that led to eating the fruit, not the other way around.

You are now claiming that in the literal Genesis, Adam and Eve did not know God? They were tempted from God, whom they knew, and the moment they succumbed to temptation was the beginning of the fall.

The foundation of exegesis is the text, the text, the text---just as in real estate it is location, location, location.

I've cited more text than you have. Read my message to shernren above. There's lots more, I just haven't looked it up. The requirement of faith is all through the Bible.

But according to many YECists, one cannot use reasoning, because the fall took away our power to reason correctly. (Naturally they do not really apply this in ordinary life, but it is given again and again as the basis for rejecting scientific theories.)

That's the dumb ones. I'm arguing that there is a sophisticated position for YECs.

But according to YEC, scientists do not find what is created. They find some sort of illusion, not what God actually made.

It's all in the words. "Find" and "illusion". The "facts" (sensory data) we find are not an illusion. What you are calling an "illusion" is a model, which is a creation of the scientists. The principle of parsimony is a principle of science. Nothing guarantees it as a principle of reality. In fact, we are fortunate that it is not so, because if it were, we'd have to give up God. I have actually thought in moments unrelated to this conversation that science is what you get when you view reality from the point of view of simplicity. God is what we get when we view reality from a point of view of complexity. That would be another reason why science and religion should stay out of each other's bailiwicks.

Again you are assuming that "as given in the Bible" means the YEC version of what is given in the bible.

The only reason I used "as given in the bible" was because you started talking about all kinds of miracles made up by YECs. I'd be perfectly happy to go back to saying plain 'miracles' if you are not going to attribute creation "science" nonsense to me.

Revelation is the purpose of a miracle; there is no reason for a miracle except to reveal God.

Exegesis please. No, never mind. So does that make creation not a miracle? Well, if God created in order to reveal himself to his creation, it would be a miracle by your comment. But the comment is irrelevant.

So "hidden miracles" are an oxymoron.

It is not. All the miracles are 'hidden' except to those who benefitted from God's choice to reveal to them. The Jews, for example, are the Chosen People.

What YECs forget is that the creation itself is also a revelation.

Well yes and no. It is a revelation, but what is revealed is n atural, not supernatural. God is not revealed to skeptics in the visible creation (there, now I'm using creation your way).

The invisible God can be known and understood through the visible work of the creation. Rom. 1:19-20 paraphased.

Indeed. But God is not known and understood to skeptics through the visible work of creation. It requires faithful seeking. Explain, for example, the existence of atheists if God could be known and understood by skeptics through the visible works of creation? We virtually all see these works, but skeptics don't see because

seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand [Matthew 13:13]
​

This is very plain and easy to see.

The theology of the general revelation (i.e. the creation) has long standing in Judaeo-Christian thought (and is also a staple of Islam). This is what YEC is rejecting.

Please. The history of Christianity is one of disagreement, schism, and deadly strife, virtually all of it caused by unwarranted "certainty" about theology. If YEC disagrees with what you wish to call orthodoxy, there is absolutely nothing new about that. When Christians really begin to understand that we could be mistaken, that God doesn't have to agree with our complex reasoning, then we will have taken a big step ahead.

As for intolerance, I find Christianity riven with it.

Intolerance, I think, goes to suggesting that something needs to be done about it, and I am not making any suggestion of that order.

You decided that my suggestion that there is a place for YECs in sophisticated YECism needed to be opposed. Now, don't get me wrong. I understand that it's not for you, just as it's not for me, because we have decided to accept the science models as reflecting reality. All I ask is to be not so completely convinced that you cannot be mistaken. I come out of agnosticism, so this is easy for me, but it's not that hard really. It is just an admission that we are far from omniscient and our reasoning is far from something that guarantees us that we have found the truth through it. This attitude is precisely the attitude of science. We cannot sit in an armchair and reason it out as ancient philosophers tried. Our reasoning is so bad that we have to feel our way with experimentation, step by step, like blind people, to find out whether or not our clever reasoning is correct.

It is for that reason that I believe that God does not require us to pass theology exams for our salvation. Simple faith will do.

By contrast, many churches committed to YEC do practice intolerance.

Sure they do i.e., they are normal Christians.

What is not stated in scripture, but often stated by YECs is that our capacity to observe the data of nature is broken

Do they say that? Not a sophisticated YEC. A sophisticated YEC believes that what he observes is what is there.

and that our capacity to reason logically is broken. Without a scriptural basis one cannot say that "we are fallen" justifies these claims.

Hmmm, I don't think I have to use scripture to say we don't reason very well. That's an observation. Just like science, it's not based in scripture.

It is another YEC argument (and a false one) to hold that science disallows miracles entirely.

Not the YECs I'm talking about. I hold the 'liar' argument to be completely invalid. Accepting it as a for-the-sake-of-argument hypothesis leads to the conclusion that God is a liar if any biblical miracle is true (here is where you started talking about creation "science" "miracles" which led me to insert the phrase "as given in the bible", which was always meant). It followed by some kind of the-science-models-are-God's-word confusion. The whole point is, the 'liar' argument is just nonsense.

So biblical miracles offer no grounds for the "liar" argument.

Oh, I agree entirely, so why don't we dispose of it as an example of theological reasoning being unreliable, and also as example of established dogma (settled case) being incorrect?

The problem comes, as stated, when one feels threatened by the normal order of creation

Come, come now. Is this an hypothesis for-the-sake-of-argument (the beginning of an reductio ad absurdum argument), or are you assuming your conclusion (circular reasoning).

Claiming, for example, that fossils were placed in the ground to test our faith is demeaning to God.

The kind of YECs I am defending don't make this sort of claim, but just out of interest, how would it demean God?

childish trickery.

prejudicial words appeal to emotion, not reason.

What has been created is a creation.

I accept that usage now. It is no longer confusing me as it did.

Of course. But I was not questioning the reality of our fallen state. I was questioning alleged consequences of the fall that have no scriptural foundation.

The fall is the scriptural basis. We are allowed to reason from that, fallible though our reasoning is. Otherwise, we could only quote the scripture and say nothing about it. Now be fair and stop trying to tell me that my reasoning is not founded in scripture, whereas yours is.

Agreed.

I'm glad we agree on a few things. It means that there is hope that after a half million words or so, we may actually be at the beginning of an understanding.

So why sanction an interpretation that treats it as a scientific model?

I don't. That's the whole point. Creation "science" is the YEC science model (not Genesis, the 'science' interprets the data into a model that is supposedly consistent with Genesis, but because it abandons parsimony, it is not science at all) Creation "science" is as bogus as Piltdown man. And creation "science" is not faith either. It is some kind of cancer. The kind of YECs I can live with are the ones that clearly understand that science does not support (does. not. support) their faith. They get around that by contorted metaphysical reasoning (fallible reasoning, but so is ours that says its bogus, so we just have to accept it).

If that is a correct interpretation, then the world described by science has no actual existence.

The world described by science would still exist. Would would be incorrect would be the history of it inferred from the laws of science and the principal of parsimony.

And it can no longer be claimed that when scripture says "God created the heavens and the earth" it refers to this heaven and this earth that we perceive via our senses.

Of course it can be claimed. Disagreement over history does not imply that we are talking about different universes. If you thought your friend had gone for a drive but instead, someone else claimed that he had gone for a run, would you say, "No, that couldn't be because it would mean the person I thought was my friend isn't the one I perceived with my sense" (reductio ad absurdum)?

It shouldn't take too long roaming around these forums to see that most often the argument comes from YECs telling the rest of us that if we don't support their interpretation of Genesis, we are calling God a liar. They invented the argument.

Well in this they are wrong. The 'liar' argument stinks no matter how you look at it. Of course these YECs are not capable of seperating science from religion and are therefore unsophisticated.

One can only ponder what twisted logic leads people to assume, as Galileo so aptly phrased it, "that the God who has endowed us with the faculties of sense and reason has forbidden us to use them."

Yes, it is a twisted mess. I saw it confirmed by someone yesterday that Dawkins attacks religion because of the attacks on science by misguided Christians. That's why getting rid of creation "science" (and ID) is so important. Which is why any YECs who have found a way to seperate science and religion through metaphysics should be encouraged. If they can lead any of the angry, paranoid YECs away from attacking science through trying to impose bogus science on us, that will be a good thing. Once a YEC has found this position, he will lose his fear of science and may be able to actually learn something about it. He may then be able to see that science is not a threat from the devil and feel less required to interpret Genesis literally because not to do so is a threat from the devil.

What I am saying is that YECs should be given every bit of breathing room they can be given without compromising about science. It is YECs who try to prove Genesis (and other parts of the Bible) through bogus science who are intolerable. They are intolerably mixing religion and science and subjecting Christianity to ridicule (what Augustine warned against).

That is why it is basically a theological rather than a scientific controversy.

Right. And since theological reasoning is fallible, we must tolerate it. I wouldn't call it Omphalos, though, unless these Christians that wish to take this point of view are happy with it.

Well, I think this is getting too long, so I will drop the rest. It is my ambition to make my posts shorter than yours until they get to a more reasonable length.

 

[shernren]

shernren, it may be more artistic but it is also plain unfair. This time it's not so bad, but last time we talked, you complained about unqualified people, bad metaphysicians, etc, without actually naming anyone you were complaining about or complaining about anything specific. It was a matter of insinuation instead of accusation. This time is not so bad. At least you clearly indicated you were talking about me. Nevertheless, the indirection still leaves me in a position where I have to guess what you are talking about, and you in a position to deny you meant whatever I respond to.

I take your point.

This is what I guessed was your point, and I have indeed responded to it elsewhere.

God does need to reveal himself to His chosen messengers. There would be no way for His message to be communicated if He did not. However when He reveals Himself is chosen by God, to whom He reveals Himself is chosen by God, and the purpose of the revelation is God's purpose.

These purposeful, limited revelations are very different from what leaving evidence of a miraculous creation lying around for every skeptic to stumble across would be. This is what Jesus meant when he said [Matthew 13:13]:

Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
​

God is to be found through faithful seeking and the fact that chosen messengers receive revelations does not change this. It is for that reason that I call generic YECs striving to prove biblical miracles through creation "science" people of weak faith. I differentiate creation "science" YECs from "sophisticated YECs" who have found a way to believe Genesis while leaving science alone.

I think I can partially agree with the last part of this. My main problem with YECs is that they distort the physical evidence we have, either consciously or not, and make a bad name for Christians. I'm much more comfortable with those who acknowledge that the physical evidence is what it is, and then explore the metaphysical implications of that - such explorations often lead to ideas that are more widely applicable in the rest of Christian life, as compared to the esoteric "science" of "creation scientists".

However, I would think that the verse you quoted can't quite be used in the way you think it can be used. It talks directly about parables; it doesn't say anything explicitly about miracles. On the other hand, we have many explicit examples of miracles that were physically verified even by skeptics in the Bible. For example:

While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, "Tell people, 'His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.' And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
[Mat 28:11-15 ESV]​

Note that here we have a large group of people, all of whom are non-believers (and, in the case of the elders, having active incentives to disbelieve), nevertheless tacitly admitting by their actions that something had indeed occurred. If they didn't believe that there was evidence of the resurrection, they would not have perpetrated a cover-up! Another biblical example of skeptics being forced to admit the physical signs of a miracle is the Jewish council's reaction to the healing of the cripple at the Beautiful Gate:

But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, "What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name."
[Act 4:14-17 ESV]​

Plenty of incontrovertible evidence there!

Now I ask you shernren: If God would leave evidence of miracles lying around for skeptics to find and have their minds changed, not through faith, but through proof, then why does He not just give direct revelation of His supernatural existence to all skeptics everywhere and convert them all right now by making what we believe by faith undeniably easy and disbelief plainly ridiculous to all?

And would a public miracle really convert the masses?

But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'
And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'
He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"
[Luk 16:29-31 ESV]​

Look at the Jewish council in Acts 4, with a man standing before them who was healed in the name of Jesus. They saw that the name of Jesus had the power to heal cripples, and to turn timid Galileans into lions. Their response shows that they had no doubt that the miracles were authentic. And yet, for all that, they did not fall down and embrace the faith - indeed, they chose to suppress these authentic miracles!

I don't believe that human nature and its total depravity has improved in the intervening two thousand years. I don't think that skeptics witnessing a miracle today would believe unless they had wanted to believe all along. Mind you, it is true that God, in His sovereign providence, has allowed the ordering of human society in such a way that many will not be saved. Why He does that is a profound mystery to many. But that mystery has nothing to do with whether or not there are miracles today - God could cause all manner of miracles to happen, and the world would still not believe Him. Indeed, the dispensationalist premillienialists in their prediction of seven years of Great Tribulation say that God will cause His wrath to fall through many global miracles, and yet at the end of it the Earth will still be filled with unbelievers.

Personally, I like to believe that the world was created 13.5 bya as science models it and I read Genesis as a metaphor. I am the same as you and gluadys in that. The only difference is that I am not so sure of myself that I would exclude those who see it differently.

Concluding, I do not agree that there is some iron clad argument from the Bible, from metaphysics, or from science, that we are logically bound to see the science models as the truth. In fact, this kind of belief in infallible conclusions drawn from reasoning are the antithesis of the way science itself works. As scientists, we long ago learned that when we try to figure it out in an armchair, we invariably go wrong. We make progress in tiny, half blind steps, feeling our way by experiment every step of the way. By contrast, the churches have historically done the armchair thing and gotten it wrong. Epicycles were a good idea when they were first thought up, but the Catholic Church, with its hide bound, intricately thought out theology was unable to accept Copernican cosmology until it was too late to avoid doing things that are to this day a major embarrassment to Christianity. Christianity should just stay the heck out of science ... totally, unless, like today's wiser Catholic Church, it wants to support it at arm's length and otherwise keep out of science.

Now how about that question about the number of wavelengths of light from a green laser hovering over a black hole to its horizon? I thought that as a third year physics student, you would be able to clear up something for me that's been bothering me for years. The green light question is simple and only serves as an introduction to the problem that has been bothering me.

Ah, let me get to work on that. It will be a good exercise!

 

[yeshuasavedme]

You guys have highjacked the thread.
This thread is specifically about God's own word written for us to read, without interpretation or obfuscation.
To claim that God did not do exactly what He said He did in the manner He said He did it and the time frame He said that He did it is calling God a liar.

So what does God say in Genesis 1? -He says that He created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, in 6 days of evenings and mornings.

In what order? -the world as a globe of water, first, with no heaven, no light, no landmass, nothing but water and darkness.

So when was the light brought into being? -on day 1, making an evening and a morning ="one day".

So when was/were the heaven/s stretched out? -on day two by the dividing of the waters and the heavens stretched out between them.

This is what God's Word states and it is not open to interpretation, as it is plain.

 

[metherion]

To claim that God did not do exactly what He said He did in the manner He said He did it and the time frame He said that He did it is calling God a liar.

Couple things.

1. It you take the idea of sola scriptura, that whatever is written is written, and disregard everything else but the words written on the page, and take those only at face value... THAT IS STILL AN INTERPRETATION. There is no such thing as a reading without interpretation. Period.

2. Genesis 2 has a different order of events. Which should we follow?

3. Then of course, there is the fact that God didn't actually write it. The only things God actually wrote if memory serves were the original 10 commandments on the stone tablets, which Moses proceeded to smash. God may have INSPIRED them to be written, but did not write them Himself nor is it anywhere in Scripture stated that it must be literal and word for word.

4. This is the exact same God who tells parables without telling His audience they are parables in Jerusalem, who sends message in dreams, who gave John all the crazy visions he put in the book of Revelations. In other words, a God with a history of speaking in and sending messages through non-literal means. Unless all of those are lies as well.

5. This is also the exact same God who made the universe the look as if it had been made a completely different way than is described in either version in Genesis.

Well, more than a couple things, then.

Metherion

 

[Tom Cohoe]

This is what God's Word states and it is not open to interpretation, as it is plain.

This is what God said [Mark 4: 11-12]:

The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that 'they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.
​

Everything comes in parables.

Therefore it is not plain. God is not a liar if Genesis is a parable. Isn't it a little presumptious (not to mention blasphemous) to say that if God didn't do it the way you say he had to he is a liar?

 

[laconicstudent]

You guys have highjacked the thread.
This thread is specifically about God's own word written for us to read, without interpretation or obfuscation.

You can't read a text without interpreting it.

To claim that God did not do exactly what He said He did in the manner He said He did it and the time frame He said that He did it is calling God a liar.

God was not speaking literally, since we can see that his universe rather contradicts what he said happened.

So what does God say in Genesis 1? -He says that He created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, in 6 days of evenings and mornings.

Jesus also spoke in parables.

In what order? -the world as a globe of water, first, with no heaven, no light, no landmass, nothing but water and darkness.

So when was the light brought into being? -on day 1, making an evening and a morning ="one day".

So when was/were the heaven/s stretched out? -on day two by the dividing of the waters and the heavens stretched out between them.

This is what God's Word states and it is not open to interpretation, as it is plain.

You cannot read a text without applying your own fallible interpretation and understanding to the text. You interpret it literally. That doesn't mean there is no interpretation occurring.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

I think I can partially agree with the last part of this. My main problem with YECs is that they distort the physical evidence we have, either consciously or not, and make a bad name for Christians.

If you change that to some of them (probably most of them), I agree. They are doing the Catholic Church and Galileo thing again, to no good effect.

However, I would think that the verse you quoted can't quite be used in the way you think it can be used. It talks directly about parables;

Similarly, the words of Genesis are plain, ... hmmm, as our good friend yeshuasavedme tells us. Is it possible there could be a deeper meaning here too? Or is that just in Genesis?

it doesn't say anything explicitly about miracles.

It doesn't make much sense if the reason is that people are not to understand [without faith] but an easy route to faith is supplied by having really impressive miracles by which any skeptic can choose at any time to test God. The meaning, if you apply the Augustinian test (On Christian Doctrine, Book 1) that nothing in the Bible can make us more likely to hate God, is clearly that you don't get in without the harder route of plain faith, not that people are being kept out out of mean spiritedness. It is that they must seek. We are told to seek elsewhere in the Bible, as I am sure you know.

On the other hand, we have many explicit examples of miracles that were physically verified even by skeptics in the Bible.

You are not addressing with these examples quite what I am saying. I said that faith was required, not the easy route of seeing miracles. I didn't say that witnessing a miracle is a sure cause of conversion. Seeing a miracle in the presence of God made flesh and then believing is still an act of faith. It's just a lot easier faith than the faith required to seek. "Seek" implies that the finding has not yet happened.

In fact, we know nothing without faith. That Mom is Mom is faith, not something irrefutably demonstrated. That "Mom" means Mom was something that we trusted to be true when we saw that using it got the response we wanted. That the 4 vector Momenergy (see John Wheeler) is an invariant has not been irrefutably demonstrated. It requires the faith that the experiments that have been done will give the same results tomorrow.

Some things are easy to believe by faith, some are hard. Believing that a man who performs miracles in front of us is God is a much easier leap of faith than believing that Jesus is God in this apparently lonely, miracle free world that requires us to seek. But if you've ever heard the saying, "science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic", you will understand that some people will not make the easiest leap of faith, so distracted are they by what they can enjoy in this world.

Faith with the crutches of miracles to witness is easier than seeking with faith, hope and love. That is the test we must pass.

Ah, let me get to work on that. It will be a good exercise!

The number of wavelengths is infinite. You can satisfy yourself as to the truth of that.

 

[yeshuasavedme]

You can't read a text without interpreting it.

Not true. Revising history is what you are doing when you make such a claim, and it is what is being done in the present generation about all truth which is being turned upside down, but that does not make the revised history true.
If you really think that it does, then try telling that to the representatives of the written law if and when they may stop you for speeding, arrest you for stealing, or for murdering.

 

[laconicstudent]

Not true.

When you read a text, you are by definition interpreting it, because you have to understand it.

Revising history is what you are doing when you make such a claim,

No, it isn't.

and it is what is being done in the present generation about all truth which is being turned upside down, but that does not make the revised history true.

It doesn't make your interpretation true either.

If you really think that it does, then try telling that to the representatives of the written law if and when they may stop you for speeding, arrest you for stealing, or for murdering.

There's a difference between the law and an obviously figurative creation account.

 

[Assyrian]

There is also a difference between law and narrative.

 

[metherion]

We also have the entire framework of the law around it to know that it is supposed to be literal. We know why it was written (to make certain acts criminal), we know by whom it was written (lawmakers), we know who it applies to (everyone in the country). The laws in the OT are also meant to be taken literally because they are laws.

Now we go to the creation narratives. Everything becomes a lot lot clear. We attribute the authorship to Moses inspired by God, the purpose is to teach the Jews something about God's role in the universe, the several-thousand-yea-BC Jews had a HIGHLY different and symbolic culture that is totally different from the modern western culture of today, tons of physical evidence against such a literal interpretation, and the majority of the descendants of the intended recipients (modern Jews) saying that that isn't the way to look at it.

No comparison at all.

Metherion

 

[yeshuasavedme]

This is what God said [Mark 4: 11-12]:

The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that 'they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.
​

Everything comes in parables.

Therefore it is not plain. God is not a liar if Genesis is a parable. Isn't it a little presumptious (not to mention blasphemous) to say that if God didn't do it the way you say he had to he is a liar?

Comparing a stone to a fish is about the size of your argument.
I did not say how God did it. He said how He did it. He meant it:
He says He created the heavens and the earth in the beginning.
He gives a synopsis of the creation next.

He says that He created "earth" before the heavens [the globe is the reference here, as the land mass is not yet created until day three], as "water, first".

He says there was no light.

He says He called light into being, and the evening [the darkness/night] and the morning [the brightness/light/day] were, together, "one day".

He says that He then divided the waters of creation and stretched out the heavens between them, and that was on day two of creation, He says.

He says that He then called the land mass to come forth and the waters to be gathered together/be strong and robust and give place to the land mass. -the original Hebrew indeed translates to English this way, which is not an interpretation. This was on day three, an evening and a morning, in which He also called the earth/land mass to bring forth grass, herbs, and trees.

With that evening and morning completed, He then set the created sun in the created stretched out heavens and the created moon in the stretched out [between the waters heavens] and commanded the sun to rule/govern/regulate the light of His creation by day and the moon regulate the light by night. He also made the stars to govern the pre-ordained seasons and years. That was day four, of an evening and a morning.

There is no interpretation in reading the text needed, but as to parables, there are parables in the creation of the sun, moon, stars, and of Adam and of the earth, but YHWH Elohym explains those parables for the wise, by His own revelations given to His own prophets who wrote them for the wise, who seek top know and understand His ways, to discover.
Anyone can discover His plan for creation in His written revelations and by His creation itself, who has a heart to seek and understand.
Paul, serving as a scribe who expounded, did give understanding of many of these things in his writings, because Enoch first revealed them in his revelations from God which he wrote. Many OT prophets also gave revelations of the creation's parables for the plan of God to build Himself a human being temple/house for His Glory to dwell in, not made with hands, for the 8th day of creation unto eternity.

So if you want to speak of allegories and parables, then yes, the complete plan is told of in the creation, itself, for the wise to seek and understand the parables of creation for each individual soul's salvation [whosoever will receive the Gospel account and repent and believe, that is], but the creation of the heavens and the earth is exactly as He laid it out in Genesis -and to claim that there are two accounts is just poppycock from the mouth coming out in total ignorance of what and how Moses related the one story.

 

[yeshuasavedme]

When you read a text, you are by definition interpreting it, because you have to understand it.

Tell a story like that to the judge whenever you might stand before him to explain why you broke the written and narrated text of the law of the land -see how far you get with your "own interpretation" of the written text of the law.

 

[kiwimac]

Genesis is Narrative NOT history.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

He says He created the heavens and the earth in the beginning.

He said, "Everything comes in parables." See that word everything there? Who are you to say it doesn't apply to Genesis?

poppycock

OTOH, this is just what you said.

So if you want to speak of allegories and parables ...

It's not me who speaks them or speaks of them. It's God. And when he says "everything comes in parables", you blurt out "poppycock".

I'm not impressed.

Is your faith so weak that you are afraid to face the idea that your first understanding of the Bible could have errors in it? If it is not fear of losing your faith, then it could be nothing but pride that makes you insist that you are right, no matter what.

Lose your fear. Leave your pride. God is infinite. The first Gentile Christians did not even have a Bible.

 

[laconicstudent]

Tell a story like that to the judge whenever you might stand before him to explain why you broke the written and narrated text of the law of the land -see how far you get with your "own interpretation" of the written text of the law.

Lol, that is because the law isn't a narrative text. That argument is a blatant red herring.

 

[yeshuasavedme]

Genesis is Narrative NOT history.

So you are claiming -what?
Genesis is non fictional. Genesis is a redacted telling of what God did in the beginning of creation, in the "day" when He made the heavens and the earth.

Genesis tells how, when, what, and why, of the beginning of creation.
Genesis tells what was first and what was last in the creation order and how many evenings and mornings [six, and a day of rest] YHWH Elohym took to begin and complete the entire first creation.

Genesis tells us the world[earth] was a globe of water, in darkness, before light and the heavens was made.
The light was made before the heavens.
the water was before the land mass.
The light was before the sun, moon, and stars.

Genesis teaches us that Adam was made in the image of God, as "Adam son of God" [of the human being kind] on day six, and made as male and female persons, and given dominion of the creation of the earth, from the "breadth of its height" =Mount Eden/Mount Zion; from where Adam was cast out of as a fallen prince/son of God, and can never go back to, as a son of God, for that Mount Eden of God's Garden is guarded by cherubim with flaming swords.
Therefore, the redemption is about being ransomed back for the sonship in a new name, for the Glory to indwell the second temple of human being sons of God.

Genesis tells us what we are, why we were made, and how we fell and Who the Redeemer is, who was to come and is come.


About that Redeemer: He is God the Word come in flesh and He believed the history of Genesis in totality -after all, He did write it by His scribe, the prophet Moses.

 

[yeshuasavedme]

Lol, that is because the law isn't a narrative text. That argument is a blatant red herring.

You application of 'narrative' to Genesis is supposed to make it somehow fiction, and I called you on it.
When have you read the text of the "law" of your own state, county, city and nation in totality?
What true history of the founding of this nation have you read through? How much of it have you read? Do you know the stories of its founding from the beginning?have you read the biographies and diaries of the founding fathers of this nation -or do you have vague ideas from revisionist historians about its founding and purpose?