Can you give a rational explanation...?

[NathanCGreen]

Ahh, but I said nothing about the first six days. In fact, I assumed (in my earlier post in this thread) that the "evenings, mornings" of the first six days intend to communicate that those days were 24-hour days. What does that make, then, of the seventh day? The seventh day does not have the same clause as those first six. The seventh day does not end.

Of course the seventh day ended, otherwise how could you then go on to talk about the eighth day? The previous days were 24 hour days.. those were the creation days, not the seventh. It doesn't really matter if the seventh day was described as having evening, morning, or not. The point is, the creation days were literal days, and so I then expect the day following to have been the same.

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
(Genesis 2:3-4, ESV)

(emphases added) The second "day" in the passage cannot be a literal 24 hours, to you - because according to you the LORD God made the earth and the heavens in six days, not one! So what prevents the preceding "day" from being an extended period of time, either?

Context does. In the english language we use the word 'day' to mean differing periods of time also. But the context helps to clarify what we are intending to convey.

You are wonderfully skilled at dodging my point

This has been done to my posts as well.

They were told to work for six days and rest for one day, not to work for six days and rest for six thousand years, which is what God did. So who's following the creation pattern? Certainly not the Ten Commandments.

I know the commandment. God gave them the pattern, He did cease from the creation week work. As to Jesus' comments about God still working... what does that prove? Of course God still works, but not in the same sense as He did in the creation week.. that much is obvious. The ten commandments were given to Moses from God Himself. I'm sure He knew what He was saying when He told them about six days and one for rest, having given the example of the creation week in the commandment itself. And as to Moses then repeating the commandment in Deut, but not referring to the first week as the example, this is because they already had that reason given to them... the other was addressing the rest they were to give the 'strangers' that would be in the land with them, and their cattle, and the reason why.

I am fighting you, as it were, with two hands behind my back, and you are barely keeping up. Once we start bringing out the australopithecines, hominids, and nested ERV phylogenies, you will be completely out of your league.

Barely keeping up, huh? That is your opinion. By the way, I am against more than one opponent here... and so I may have also answered something from another's post.
Please don't make me laugh with those examples you have given in defense of (the imagined) evolution.

Not quite: The Romans used an eight-day week, and the Chinese rested once every five days during the Han Dynasty and then once every ten days during the Ming Dynasty, so that in the latter period every month could be divided roughly into an upper week, a middle week, and a lower week. In premodern societies weeks of all kinds of lengths, from three to eight days, are found.

Ignorance?

Did you actually read my post? I mentioned 'many', not all peoples. Plus, all but the Israelites were pagan, so I would not expect too much truth from them. Israel was the nation which had God's revealed truths to spread. Including the weekly cycle stemming from creation.

I know about the relation of God's rest to Hebrews 4. Hebrews 4 is only using that as an example of God's true rest for believers, which is found in Jesus Christ. The fact remains that the day was still just another 24 hour period, like the ones preceding it.
And even if you want to maintain that the seventh day was a long span of time (which it was not), that does not detract from the first six, actual days of creating.

Have you thought about reading something like this: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i1/days.asp

 

[Bushido216]

You're linking of AiG means an automatic phail.

 

[NathanCGreen]

I have a question for you, Nathan. Do you think the Ancient Egyptians worshiped Ra because they thought he literally ferried the sun across the sky or because they really understood a heliocentric model but thought it was just easier to assign a god to the sun's apparent transit across the sky?

Do you even know the origins of sun worship? Do you know what the 'mysteries' were all about?

Because it contradicts the very creation it talks about. If you actually knew as much about anthropology and human history as you claim you do you would understand that the Ancient Hebrew writers of Genesis wove into the story moral and theological truths because they had no idea how the world came into being. They knew God did it and they knew God was the only god that did it.

No. The Israelites knew that the God did it, because of what God revealed to Moses. Of course the story is woven with 'moral and theological truths'... But they did know how the world came into being. And you have just answered it yourself in the same way... God made it.

I agree!!! The story clearly indicates 7 separate 24-hour periods.

Good. At least we can agree on that.

Nathan, can you plainly explain to me the effect string theory has on the atomic model?

Umm.. no. Can you? I know that the string theory is not exactly testable. I'm not worried about it.

The Hebrew suggests "side". The importance of God using Adam's side or rib is to show man and woman's equality.

Yes, but it (creation of Eve) was still done that way.

Sigh. Mainly because the "come try and disprove evolution" bandwagon is a little full, I think I'll take a different approach. Nathan, can you give me any scientific evidence that supports Creationism over the Theory of Evolution?

I could, but would you listen? I will name one thing off the top of my head right now... Polonium halos. Do you want to refute Dr Gentry? Then go to this website and do it: http://www.halos.com/

Have you ever actually read any scientific literature? Heck, have you ever read National Geographic?

Of course I have.

The idea behind the word that is translated as 'rest' in Gen 2:2-3 is to sit still.

Yes, God rested (sat still) from the particular work He was doing in creation and declared it to be very good. No death... until sin.

It's interesting that you mention v. 15. Do you believe that it was God's literal hand and arm that led Israel from Egypt?

What kind of a question is that? I don't believe that God is restricted to a body for a start... He is Spirit. But yes, He does appear to His creation (including angels of course) as a visible being with features such as hands, and as sitting down on a throne.

What does God's reason for the sabbath have to do with anything? Why did you bold, italicize and put quotes around strangers? Is that important for some reason?

I responded to this in my previous post.

The Mayan calendar dates back to the 6th century BCE and contains both 20-day and 13-day Haabs.

Well done to it.

Are you the sole correct interpreter of the Bible? Do you know better than Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. about, say, Original Sin?

I do disagree with them, yes.

What about baptism or communion or purgatory?

Most professing Christians do not believe in purgatory. What type of communion are you talking about? Are you referring to the Catholic eucharistic communion? If so, I certainly have a problem with that idolatry.

You might actually find that I disagree with them concerning the Trinity also. I have posted a few times on that topic if you care to have a look...

Are you the only person in the entire world that understand what the Bible actually says? I'll be anxiously awaiting your commentary on Revelation as it is sure to be 100% correct. And what the heck does "burning it" have to do with anything?

No. I don't profess to know it all. Hardly.

I am one who identifies the harlot of Rev 17 as the RCC. And the Beast's mark (seal) as being allegiance to her. Whether it be from partaking of the idolatry involved in the Mass, or plain old Mary (Queen of heaven, Astarte, Venus) worship.

The comment about 'burning' was a reply to someone else who had mentioned it.

 

[shernren]

Of course the seventh day ended, otherwise how could you then go on to talk about the eighth day? The previous days were 24 hour days.. those were the creation days, not the seventh. It doesn't really matter if the seventh day was described as having evening, morning, or not. The point is, the creation days were literal days, and so I then expect the day following to have been the same.

But you expect too much. The Bible doesn't go on to talk about an eighth day. The seventh day clearly hasn't ended, and it clearly isn't 24 hours long; so, why do the previous six days need to last 24 hours?

Here we go. I was just revising some of the work of John Collins, a conservative Christian who accepts Mosaic authorship of Genesis and yet rejects YEC eisegesis; we'll have fun seeing how you fare.

Context does. In the english language we use the word 'day' to mean differing periods of time also. But the context helps to clarify what we are intending to convey.

Indeed; and in the context of the passage, the seventh day does not need to be 24 hours long. Neither, indeed, does the sixth day.

I know the commandment. God gave them the pattern, He did cease from the creation week work. As to Jesus' comments about God still working... what does that prove? Of course God still works, but not in the same sense as He did in the creation week.. that much is obvious. The ten commandments were given to Moses from God Himself. I'm sure He knew what He was saying when He told them about six days and one for rest, having given the example of the creation week in the commandment itself. And as to Moses then repeating the commandment in Deut, but not referring to the first week as the example, this is because they already had that reason given to them... the other was addressing the rest they were to give the 'strangers' that would be in the land with them, and their cattle, and the reason why.

Which set of Ten Commandments were given to Moses from God Himself? The set which mentions the creation week, or the set which doesn't? And if both were given, why weren't both described in Exodus? Did Moses forget something the first time round? How unbecoming. And, Exodus 20 already mentions that manservants and maidservants, animals and aliens should be given rest as well. And if the six-day creation week is really the reason for which the Sabbath rest is given, shouldn't it be sufficient for manservants and maidservants?

That's another thing, by the way. A self-consistent YEC should be a Sabbatarian. Kudos to you if you know what that is. But most YECs aren't, so they aren't self-consistent.

As for John, I'll treat it later below with Hebrews.

Barely keeping up, huh? That is your opinion. By the way, I am against more than one opponent here... and so I may have also answered something from another's post.

Fair enough. To each their own.

Please don't make me laugh with those examples you have given in defense of (the imagined) evolution.

I don't expect you to laugh. I expect you to cringe and admit that evolutionists are right. For example: are australopithecines humans, or apes? Are hominids like ergaster and erectus humans, or apes? If they are neither, aren't they clearly the "transitionals" you all so often accuse us of lacking?

But bring that to another thread. I like using the Bible alone. It is good to recall the Scriptural bases for one's beliefs.

Did you actually read my post? I mentioned 'many', not all peoples. Plus, all but the Israelites were pagan, so I would not expect too much truth from them. Israel was the nation which had God's revealed truths to spread. Including the weekly cycle stemming from creation.

Well, then you mentioned those "many" peoples for nothing. I'll drop it.

I know the commandment. God gave them the pattern, He did cease from the creation week work. As to Jesus' comments about God still working... what does that prove? Of course God still works, but not in the same sense as He did in the creation week.. that much is obvious. ...

I know about the relation of God's rest to Hebrews 4. Hebrews 4 is only using that as an example of God's true rest for believers, which is found in Jesus Christ. The fact remains that the day was still just another 24 hour period, like the ones preceding it.

Let's talk about John first ... I like your response. You are finally thinking about the biblical text, instead of what you are sure the biblical text must say! But not enough.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
(John 5:16-18 NIV; emphasis added)

If you think about it, why should Jesus have to say that God is working? Why would that be necessary? Unless everybody thought that God was resting - in other words, everybody thought that God's Sabbath is still going on! So in effect, Jesus is really saying: "My Father is at work even during His Sabbath; why can't I?" Now of course God was doing something on the Sabbath: He was blessing and sanctifying the day. So that too is Jesus' work, of blessing and sanctifying - in this case, healing and restoring, good deeds.

But note again that we are still in the seventh day.

As for Hebrews:

Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,
"So I declared on oath in my anger,
'They shall never enter my rest.' "
And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: "And on the seventh day God rested from all his work."And again in the passage above he says, "They shall never enter my rest."
(Hebrews 4:3-5 NIV)

Let's look at the second sentence of verse 3 ("And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world"). If humans' rest is just like God's rest, and that's all that the writer of Hebrews is trying to say, then this sentence does not make any sense. It only makes sense if we are living within God's rest. Then the enormity of the Psalm the author has just quoted comes to life: at the time the wandering Israelites were living, God was resting, and yet God would not let them into His rest! Even though He was already resting, He would not let them rest with Him! Further on the author continues:

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.
(Hebrews 4:9-10 NIV)

It is not simply a matter of entering "a rest like God's"; it is entering God's rest, which is still lasting and present right up to now. It is not a rest of inactivity and sloth, as the comments on John earlier demonstrate; it is rather a rest of completeness, fulness and holiness.

And even if you want to maintain that the seventh day was a long span of time (which it was not), that does not detract from the first six, actual days of creating.

Have you thought about reading something like this: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i1/days.asp

Assuming the hypothetical is the first step on a slippery slope. If the seventh day was a long span of time, then "day" alone cannot denote 24 hours: for God conveyed a period of time much longer than 24 hours with "the seventh day". And that, if it is true, renders the second paragraph of your AiG article ("Some Hebrew 'time' words") entirely moot, for purely Biblical reasons.

Do you really want to get started on "and there was evening, and there was morning, the Nth day"? Consider: an "evening" normally lasts 2-3 hours, before giving way to night. And a "morning" normally lasts at most 6 hours (say, 6am to 12am). Therefore, if the text is trying to tell us that an evening plus a morning equals a day, it is telling us that God created the world in 9-hour days, not 24. Try being a little more literal with the narrative. Put things in order, instead of thinking evening + morning = day. What, exactly, is the author of Genesis comparing God to? Big hint: does God need to sleep?

Oh, I've read Answers In Genesis before. I used to believe that bombardier beetles couldn't have evolved because their chemicals spontaneously explode upon contact, too. I firmly believed that even though speciation is possible, evolution can't explain "specified complexity". I've heard all the arguments before; I believed them all at one time. And then I woke up to the real world. Even so, you can try them out on me. Pick the best point you can find in the AiG article you quoted, and try it on me. Whether you want to quote it verbatim, or rephrase it in your own words. Pick a good one.

We'll have some fun.

 

[NathanCGreen]

Which set of Ten Commandments were given to Moses from God Himself? The set which mentions the creation week, or the set which doesn't? And if both were given, why weren't both described in Exodus? Did Moses forget something the first time round? How unbecoming. And, Exodus 20 already mentions that manservants and maidservants, animals and aliens should be given rest as well.

Of course Ex 20 says that. But that is not the point. Moses was going over the commandments in Deut 5 and when he got to the 4th commandment, he merely expressed another reason why they should be generous to the 'strangers' with them, to give them rest along with themselves, the 'natural Israelites'. Israel had already heard Moses proclaim the 'official' and 'original' ten commandments that God had given them.

That's another thing, by the way. A self-consistent YEC should be a Sabbatarian. Kudos to you if you know what that is. But most YECs aren't, so they aren't self-consistent.

Yes. I know all about the Sabbatarianism. I grew up in the atmosphere of Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs.
But what comes into play is the covenants and what they entail. But that is another topic altogether.

I don't expect you to laugh. I expect you to cringe and admit that evolutionists are right.

LOL! Sorry to disappoint you... There is a lot of wishful thinking on your part if you expect me to let my intellect and faith be so clouded as to believe such a lie as evolution...

Let's look at the second sentence of verse 3 ("And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world"). If humans' rest is just like God's rest, and that's all that the writer of Hebrews is trying to say, then this sentence does not make any sense. It only makes sense if we are living within God's rest. Then the enormity of the Psalm the author has just quoted comes to life: at the time the wandering Israelites were living, God was resting, and yet God would not let them into His rest! Even though He was already resting, He would not let them rest with Him! Further on the author continues:

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.
(Hebrews 4:9-10 NIV)

It is not simply a matter of entering "a rest like God's"; it is entering God's rest, which is still lasting and present right up to now. It is not a rest of inactivity and sloth, as the comments on John earlier demonstrate; it is rather a rest of completeness, fulness and holiness..

I have thought about this before... What you have here does make sense. Surprised that I agree with you?

But... this does not suggest that the six days were long ages... not at all. I will get to your point about the 'evenings and mornings' next.

What I am saying is simply that the actual seventh day did end... like any other regular day that we experience ends... But yes, that rest of God's was still going on, up to today, because God had finished His acts of creating the heavens and the earth and all that is in them during that first week.

Do you really want to get started on "and there was evening, and there was morning, the Nth day"? Consider: an "evening" normally lasts 2-3 hours, before giving way to night. And a "morning" normally lasts at most 6 hours (say, 6am to 12am). Therefore, if the text is trying to tell us that an evening plus a morning equals a day, it is telling us that God created the world in 9-hour days, not 24. Try being a little more literal with the narrative. Put things in order, instead of thinking evening + morning = day.

Hah! You first wanted me to think more figuratively, now you want me to think more literally with the narrative... hmmm.

An 'evening and morning' encompassed both day and night in one whole. Evening is mentioned for the night aspect, then morning for the daylight aspect. And so a night and a day had passed, and returned to the night. Remember, the darkness was over the face of the deep before the light from God shone over it to divide the two.

The 'evening and morning' equals one 24 hour period. In Daniel 8:14 we have the same thing spoken of... 2300 'evenings, mornings'. This referred to 2300 literal days.

And I hope you don't go to 2 Peter 3:8 to try to substantiate the long ages idea... it also says that a thousand years are as a day. Nevertheless, that passage of scripture deals with the fact that God is not restricted to space-time as we are.

I think this link from AiG is better than the last one I gave because of a few more details and another link at the bottom of that page dealing with the same issue: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/sixdays.asp

 

[Vance]

When reading AiG, always keep in mind one thing:

They are not doing science, they are doing apologetics. They acknowledge that they start with a conclusion based on their reading of Scripture, and no degree of evidence would change this. So, really, they are not doing science, which is going where the evidence leads. They are starting with their conclusion and then going out and trying to find evidence and develop arguments that support their conclusion, NOT as a tentative hypothesis that would be abandoned if the evidence was not there, but as a final conclusion. So, any evidence which contradicts their conclusion is discarded.

The one good thing about AiG is that they have acknowledge that Hovind is a complete fraud and have called him out on it. For AiG, which borders on the fraudulent to call someone out for fraud, means Hovind is REALLY out there.

 

[shernren]

Yes. I know all about the Sabbatarianism. I grew up in the atmosphere of Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs.
But what comes into play is the covenants and what they entail. But that is another topic altogether.

Good, good. So we won't have to go over old ground. YECism was pretty much started by Seventh-Day Adventists, by the by; thought you should know.

I have thought about this before... What you have here does make sense. Surprised that I agree with you?

Why should I be? For me it's not about evolution vs. creation (as if that's a real dichotomy anyway); it's about what's right versus what's wrong. When I think creationists are right, I fully expect to agree with them, so I am not surprised if you feel that something I say is right and want to agree with it.

But... this does not suggest that the six days were long ages... not at all. I will get to your point about the 'evenings and mornings' next.

What I am saying is simply that the actual seventh day did end... like any other regular day that we experience ends... But yes, that rest of God's was still going on, up to today, because God had finished His acts of creating the heavens and the earth and all that is in them during that first week.

Well, I'll wait for hard biblical evidence to back up your say-so ...

In any case, that does not by itself suggest that the six days were long ages, I agree. It does suggest that the word "day" is far more flexible than initially apparent. It is an initial plausibility check, not the argument itself.

Hah! You first wanted me to think more figuratively, now you want me to think more literally with the narrative... hmmm.

I have always been pointing you back to the text instead of your preconceptions of it, no more, no less.

An 'evening and morning' encompassed both day and night in one whole. Evening is mentioned for the night aspect, then morning for the daylight aspect. And so a night and a day had passed, and returned to the night. Remember, the darkness was over the face of the deep before the light from God shone over it to divide the two.

The 'evening and morning' equals one 24 hour period. In Daniel 8:14 we have the same thing spoken of... 2300 'evenings, mornings'. This referred to 2300 literal days.

And I hope you don't go to 2 Peter 3:8 to try to substantiate the long ages idea... it also says that a thousand years are as a day. Nevertheless, that passage of scripture deals with the fact that God is not restricted to space-time as we are.

Well, 2 Peter 3:8 is quite overused, and Psalm 90 is more classy anyway. What better way to comment on Genesis 1 than a psalm attributed to Moses?

Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn men back to dust,
saying, "Return to dust, O sons of men."
For a thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
(Psalms 90:2-4 NIV)

But in any case, I agree with you (surprised?) that the author of Genesis intends to communicate days as we understand them; but that doesn't mandate a YEC view, to me. I often use the Twelve Days of Christmas to illustrate this. Nobody in their right mind would say: "The author of this song intended to say that in the first thousand years of civilization - which he calls the "first day" - men gave each other partridges in pear trees as gifts; and in the second thousand years ... " At the same time, nobody would insist either that the author is describing an actual, historical sequence of gift-giving, complete with twelve partridges and twelve pear trees spaced 24 hours apart each. The situation is more ... subtle.

You have a good point with Daniel; nevertheless, I think Daniel invokes Genesis, and not the other way around. So what does Genesis have for us? I believe it sees "evening" and "morning" as events, not periods of time. Remember what happened in Genesis 1:5? God called the light Day (not Morning) and the darkness Night (not Evening). So the passage sets out for us a series of events on each of the six days:

God creates something.
God calls it very good.
And there was evening (sunset),
and there was morning (sunrise)
- [and that was] the Nth day.

I don't know about you, but something strikes me as strange in this passage: God doesn't do night shifts! Isn't that peculiar? Coming from the God who neither sleeps nor slumbers? If these are strict, historical 24-hour days, it seems that those night shifts that God doesn't do are also strict, historical nights. That would be peculiar, to say the least.

But if this is just an analogy ...

There are more biblical reasons for regarding the six days as not just simple 24-hour periods of time, but I'll bring out one at a time.

I think this link from AiG is better than the last one I gave because of a few more details and another link at the bottom of that page dealing with the same issue: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/sixdays.asp

It's not much better. Note that the theological significance of six (and not seven, and not five) days are really not brought to the forefront of the discussion. Instead, the majority of the article is a slippery-slope scare story. Why should we believe the six days were literal days? Because if you don't, you might end up not believing that Jesus came and died and rose again! It's the intellectual equivalent of scaring children with the bogeyman under the bed.

If I pointed out that plenty of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are creationists, and said because of that that creationism breeds terrorism, wouldn't you call me extremely unreasonable? After all, you would reply, plenty of creationists aren't terrorists; you can't just irresponsibly find statistical correlations like that, you have to show an actual causal chain between believing creationism and perpetrating terrorism. So now, when AiG points out that plenty of apostates and backsliders are evolutionists, and says because of that that evolution destroys faith, shouldn't I call them unreasonable? Plenty of perfectly fine Christians (including many I know personally, and yet more right here at CF.com) are evolutionists, and until you tell me the mechanism by which evolution makes one un-Christian, you cannot convince me otherwise.

(But let's stick to the Bible in this thread; if you want to discuss this AiG article, we can start another thread for it.)

 

[Vance]

That whole AiG "slippery slope" argument reminds me of the "phantom menace" analogy I have pointed out before:

It seems to me that the majority of the Creationist platform is based on the fear of a Phantom Menace. So often, when a topic is raised, whether it be interpretation of Scripture, the Fall of Man, a literal Adam, etc, etc, the argument that Creationists will eventually fall back on a slippery slope/phantom menace position. They will acknowledge that a belief in evolution, or figurative Adam, etc, is not itself a "salvation" issue, but soon we see this "menace" argument come out.

I will give some examples and in each, consider X something that is not a "salvation" issue in and of itself (an old earth, evolution itself, a figurative Adam, no global flood, etc), but Y *is* a salvation issue. Here is what we end up hearing:

"Well, if you don't believe X, then how can you believe Y?" [or even, "you can't possibly believe Y."]

"A belief in X means you reject A and B, which means, ultimately, that you reject Y".

"You can't truly have faith in the truth of Y if you believe X".

"A belief in X will lead to a disbelief in Y"

"The whole concept of X does away with the need for Y".

And numerous other variations on this theme. Not only does this rely on a slippery slope (which ends up being not as slippery as they think), the entire "menace" is a PHANTOM menace, since all of these statements are almost immediately falsified. It is shown over and over that those who DO believe X almost always still believe Y. Just because a given Creationist can't imagine how someone can accept Y when they also accept X doesn't mean a thing. The facts are the facts.

Those Christians who accept all those X's tend to believe (and believe just as strongly) in every orthodox essential for salvation. Their belief in evolution, or a figurative reading of Genesis, or a typological Adam, does not seem to do ANY damage, whatsoever, to their faith in anything essential for salvation at all. Yes, there have always been those within Christianity who hold unorthodox beliefs, as much before the advent of this debate as now. But the fact that millions of Christians entirely accept evolution and have NONE of their essential Christian beliefs undermined is a plain and simple falsification of the phantom menace.

The bottom line is that any rejection of an idea or concept based on "what the effect will be on other beliefs", is only a valid objection to the extent that effect actually is observable. In the case of Creationist arguments, it is NOT observable. We are still Christians, and devout, committed, Bible-believing, Spirit-filled Christians at that!

 

[NathanCGreen]

Good, good. So we won't have to go over old ground. YECism was pretty much started by Seventh-Day Adventists, by the by; thought you should know.

How about people before Seventh Day Adventism? Do you believe that no scientist before that time believed that God made in six literal days?

I often use the Twelve Days of Christmas to illustrate this. Nobody in their right mind would say: "The author of this song intended to say that in the first thousand years of civilization - which he calls the "first day" - men gave each other partridges in pear trees as gifts; and in the second thousand years ... " At the same time, nobody would insist either that the author is describing an actual, historical sequence of gift-giving, complete with twelve partridges and twelve pear trees spaced 24 hours apart each. The situation is more ... subtle.

I think the author was obviously conveying an actual sequence of gift-giving... even if you don't know why. It's only more subtle if you read more into it that just isn't there.

You have a good point with Daniel; nevertheless, I think Daniel invokes Genesis, and not the other way around.

No kidding...

So what does Genesis have for us? I believe it sees "evening" and "morning" as events, not periods of time. Remember what happened in Genesis 1:5? God called the light Day (not Morning) and the darkness Night (not Evening).

So? Evening is the beginning peroid of night. And morning is the beginning of the day. And so by saying that an evening and morning had passed could very well mean that one full night and one full day had passed during the creating. And so it may seem that God actually worked during the night as well...

Why should we believe the six days were literal days? Because if you don't, you might end up not believing that Jesus came and died and rose again!

You should believe because God said what happened. The issue actually deals with trusting God. And also for those who think death was in the world before sin... that would negate the purpose of Christ's dying for our sins. It would also cancel out the purpose of the restoration to things being 'very good'.

Oh, and by the way... the devils believe.. and tremble. An intellectual acknowledgement does not save a person.

 

[NathanCGreen]

They will acknowledge that a belief in evolution, or figurative Adam, etc, is not itself a "salvation" issue, but soon we see this "menace" argument come out.

Actually, it is a salvation issue. It is about faith in what God has said to be true. A literal Adam had to have existed to make sense of the plan of salvation in the first place. If you take out a literal Adam, then you could start taking out whatever you felt didn't fit your worldview... now that would get you into serious spiritual trouble!

It is shown over and over that those who DO believe X almost always still believe Y. Just because a given Creationist can't imagine how someone can accept Y when they also accept X doesn't mean a thing. The facts are the facts.

Those Christians who accept all those X's tend to believe (and believe just as strongly) in every orthodox essential for salvation. Their belief in evolution, or a figurative reading of Genesis, or a typological Adam, does not seem to do ANY damage, whatsoever, to their faith in anything essential for salvation at all. Yes, there have always been those within Christianity who hold unorthodox beliefs, as much before the advent of this debate as now. But the fact that millions of Christians entirely accept evolution and have NONE of their essential Christian beliefs undermined is a plain and simple falsification of the phantom menace.

My response to this compromising attitude is:

God is the ultimate Judge in every matter. And so, just wait and see then, huh?

The bottom line is that any rejection of an idea or concept based on "what the effect will be on other beliefs", is only a valid objection to the extent that effect actually is observable. In the case of Creationist arguments, it is NOT observable. We are still Christians, and devout, committed, Bible-believing, Spirit-filled Christians at that!

Really? Not all evidence of reconciliation to God are visible. Only God Himself knows the human heart and its relation to the Maker of all.

 

[Melethiel]

Really? Not all evidence of reconciliation to God are visible. Only God Himself knows the human heart and its relation to the Maker of all.

Excellent advice. So, given that, who are you to go around calling TEs "apostate"? Obviously, you are not God, and cannot read hearts.

 

[Molal]

Excellent advice. So, given that, who are you to go around calling TEs "apostate". Obviously, you are not God, and cannot read hearts.

I was thinking about how I would reply to that comment - but you said it way better than I could have.

 

[NathanCGreen]

Excellent advice. So, given that, who are you to go around calling TEs "apostate"? Obviously, you are not God, and cannot read hearts.

If I didn't think that believing in 'God using evolution' was a form of idolatry, then I wouldn't have said that the certain person was an apostate... But also, what the certain individual posted with his made-up dialog between God and Moses was enough to warrant the charge of blasphemy. The person's heart was revealed to a certain extent by the mockful text. That is why I made the charge of being an apostate from the truth...

We are able to judge certain things by the word of God, though, remember? Jesus called some of the Pharisees hypocrites. The Apostle Paul condemned such lies as gnosticism that was creeping in...


Also, the description of the scoffers in the last days were to deny the Flood of Noah, etc... This seems to fit the bill of some here, unless I am mistaken, but I'm sure I remember reading a post or two with people denying the Flood as a literal event...

 

[Melethiel]

I see. So only YECs are allowed to read hearts.

 

[Jadis40]

I was raised YEC, and came to believe it. But eventually, the baloney just piled too high, so I moved on to OEC (omphalos advocate), and eventually, to EC.

I'll add in that initially I started out as OEC, but then as I read more about the variations on that theme, (day-age, gap theory) the more I realized that those positions didn't fit into what the Bible said. I am now a TE.

Now, as an addition to that, I have always believed in the ancient age of the earth, since I was five actually. I didn't even know that there were people out there who thought the earth was only 6,000 years old until about 9 years ago. The more I read on the AiG and ICR websites, the more I realized how scientifically flawed their positions were, meaning they start from the conclusion (The Bible) and try to find facts to support it. There's an excellent cartoon floating around that illustrates that point perfectly. Now, as time has passed, their old arguments are falling by the way side.

Fact is, the mountains of evidence in numerous scientific fields very clearly indicate that this planet we live on much older than a mere 6,000 years. Now, while we're on the subject of the flood, even the historical, archaeological, and linguistic study of the earth proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that there was no global flood in 2348 BC.

Oh, there's an excellent refutiation of Gentry's work on polonium halos by Richard Wakefield here: http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/gentry/canada.htm

Turns out that Gentry didn't identify the rock he was working with correctly, not to mention there was a lot of other inaccuracies as well.

 

[shernren]

How about people before Seventh Day Adventism? Do you believe that no scientist before that time believed that God made in six literal days?

If you look carefully into the literature you will find that McCready was the first person to believe that six literal days six thousand years ago was permissible on the basis of scientific evidence. That makes the difference. Great scientists like Newton did not have the evidence for the great antiquity of the earth and the universe. Of course they would not have believed such things without evidence.

I think the author was obviously conveying an actual sequence of gift-giving... even if you don't know why. It's only more subtle if you read more into it that just isn't there.

Well, so you say.

So? Evening is the beginning peroid of night. And morning is the beginning of the day. And so by saying that an evening and morning had passed could very well mean that one full night and one full day had passed during the creating. And so it may seem that God actually worked during the night as well...

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night."

And there was evening,

and there was morning--the first day.
(Genesis 1:3-5 NIV)

(emphases added)

Firstly, why call one full night "evening" and one full day "morning"? There were perfectly good alternative words available. God has just called night - well, Night, and He has called day Day. How hard would it have been to say "One night and one day passed"?

Secondly, the whole reason to take this narrative as historical (according to you YECs, at least) is the repeated "and ... and ... and ... " denoting sequential events. I am familiar with the form in my own Malay traditional texts, too. So what does it mean? It means that God created, and named the things He created, and blessed them as good - and there was evening, and there was morning. Evening and morning come sequentially after the creative acts.

Doesn't this mean that God doesn't do night shifts, apparently?

You should believe because God said what happened. The issue actually deals with trusting God. And also for those who think death was in the world before sin... that would negate the purpose of Christ's dying for our sins. It would also cancel out the purpose of the restoration to things being 'very good'.

Oh, and by the way... the devils believe.. and tremble. An intellectual acknowledgement does not save a person.

So in the same breath you tell me to intellectually acknowledge what you have to say and then tell me that intellectual acknowledgement won't save me. I am eternally indebted to you for exhorting me to do something and then telling me that it's pointless.

I love this example and I will use it again. I trust in my chair's integrity. That means that I can confidently sit down on it and expect it to hold my weight while I do something useful at the table (like type out this post). It would be extremely strange for me to say "I have faith in my chair", and then exercise that faith by throwing it against the wall. It would be even stranger for me to say "My faith in the chair was ill-placed!" when the chair smashes into a million pieces.

Chairs are not made for hitting walls, and the Bible was not written for teaching science. Faith in someone or something is not grounds for its abuse.

As for death before sin, know that there certainly was no human death in the world before there was sin, even to TEs, and why should Jesus be considered to die for animal death? But you are straying from the discussion around Genesis 1. Getting tired of seeing your assumptions disproven by the very text itself?

 

[NathanCGreen]

Doesn't this mean that God doesn't do night shifts, apparently?

I will concede that God could very well have created during the daylight hours only. That does not imply that He needed rest of any kind though.. Of course the same goes for the seventh day. He stopped the process of creation at that time.. And by the way, In Hebrews 4, it is mentioned that God had finished His work from the foundation of the world. That means He is not still resting. The rest spoken of here is for the people of God, spiritually. But it is compared to the cessation of God's work which He did at the beginning.

So in the same breath you tell me to intellectually acknowledge what you have to say and then tell me that intellectual acknowledgement won't save me.

No. I ask of you to take God at His word and believe the scriptures without twisting them to suit what you think is scientifically accurate. Faith in God will save you, but you must have faith in every word of God and trust Him as a little child would trust his parents. For example, if a father told his little child that there was a monster behind a bush, the little child would believe him.
So if God told a little child that He made the heavens and the earth in six days, then the little child would believe Him and wouldn't even think to question it. But that is what you are doing, even though you have failed, just like all the rest that think like you... I have read such literature before (with an open mind) that you have taken notes from... And I found it to be entirely unsatisfactory and contradictory to Jesus' own words.

Getting tired of seeing your assumptions disproven by the very text itself?

My assumptions are not getting disproven at all.
But I am getting sick of seeing the Bible being twisted to suit your own fallible, compromising-with- evo worldview.

 

[Vance]

Nathan,

You are improperly equating "believing what the Bible says" with "believing my particular interpretation of what the Bible says".

I believe EVERYTHING the Bible says, and and devoutly and as confidently as any person here. I just think it says something very different than you think it says.

Now, you can dispute my reading of the text, and insist that YOUR way of reading it is more correct that how I read it, but it is entirely improper (not to mention poor logic) to argue that your interpretation is obviously what God is telling us and to reject your interpretation is to reject God.

That is the major fallacy of "begging the question".

And this viewpoint of Scripture is not a "compromise" with some atheistic "worldview", since it is conclusion I reached BEFORE being convinced by the scientific evidence for evolution, while I was still a YEC. In fact, it was my revised reading of the Scripture that opened the door for me to be able to review the scientific evidence objectively, since I then believed that Scripture was silent on the issue of the HOW or WHEN of God's creative work.

There are many things to dispute on this topic, but doubting another's faith or devotion to Scripture is just the wrong place to start since it is almost always not true.

How would you respond to those geocentrists out there who insist that you are compromising with the atheistic science of heliocentrism when you now interpret Scripture to be consistent with the idea that the earth spins on its axis and revolves around the sun?

 

[NathanCGreen]

Nathan,

You are improperly equating "believing what the Bible says" with "believing my particular interpretation of what the Bible says".

I believe EVERYTHING the Bible says, and and devoutly and as confidently as any person here. I just think it says something very different than you think it says.

That's fine by me Vance. You are allowed to believe what you like about the Bible. But... my point is to take it as it was intended by the authors. And so I agree with you that particular interpretations of the Bible are being believed here. However, I do not see the interpretation I hold to as being my own. I see it (the interpretation) as being a contextually accurate rendering of Bible truth and the history it contains.

Now, you can dispute my reading of the text, and insist that YOUR way of reading it is more correct that how I read it, but it is entirely improper (not to mention poor logic) to argue that your interpretation is obviously what God is telling us and to reject your interpretation is to reject God.

Once again, it is not 'my' interpretation. Many others believe as I do, and others now dead have done so.

Sir, I do not see your POV of scripture as being accurate since I do not have to try to reconcile the Bible with evolution.

And this viewpoint of Scripture is not a "compromise" with some atheistic "worldview", since it is conclusion I reached BEFORE being convinced by the scientific evidence for evolution, while I was still a YEC. In fact, it was my revised reading of the Scripture that opened the door for me to be able to review the scientific evidence objectively, since I then believed that Scripture was silent on the issue of the HOW or WHEN of God's creative work.

And so you were looking for ways to harmonise the world's understandings with Scripture. That sounds like compromise to me.

I have also reviewed the scientific evidence currently available, and I still find no reason to abandon the position I hold to.

Scripture says, in the beginning. This is 'when'. The 'how' is answered by God simply speaking things into existence.

You are telling me that you are conclusively convinced of evolution as being accurate? As well as the Bible, albeit in a twisted fashion? Because that is what you have to do to reconcile the Bible with evolutionism.

There are many things to dispute on this topic, but doubting another's faith or devotion to Scripture is just the wrong place to start since it is almost always not true.

Fine. But it should be a devotion to accuracy of those very scriptures too. Otherwise we could end up like so many who take a verse out of context and build an entire doctrine and even denomination out of falsehood.

How would you respond to those geocentrists out there who insist that you are compromising with the atheistic science of heliocentrism when you now interpret Scripture to be consistent with the idea that the earth spins on its axis and revolves around the sun?

Why did you say, "atheistic science of heliocentrism"? How is it an 'atheistic' science?
If you mean to say that this is what the geocentrists would say about heliocentrism, then I would respond this way:

Would an atheist make the claim that God doesn't exist merely by pointing out that the sciences hundreds of years ago adopted a false view of the solar system, and since they believed in God, then that proves that God doesn't exist?

I didn't think so...

How then could it possibly be an 'atheistic' science?

 

[artybloke]

But... my point is to take it as it was intended by the authors.

Absolutely. And as the original authors did not intend for it be taken as a modernistic scientific/literal/historical account (as such ways of thinking were not something they were even remotely exposed to), then the ball is in your court. It was intended as a mythical narrative, so why don't you take it as it was intended, instead of eisegetically reading back your modernist notion of truth into a pre-modernist text?