Creation Vs. Theistic Evolution

[jazzbird]

Cal, I can't help but feel that you are twisting my words - not intentionally of course, but some of the things you are saying misrepresent my intent. That could be my fault, perhaps I am not being clear enough.

Now that is the apprearance of a 30 year old man who is really only 1 second old. That's a fact that you agreed to and I think you still agree to. This was not an illusion, this was a fact of history.So the question remains unanswered, why is it not deceptive for a loving God to create a fully grown man who appears, functions, lives and reproduces like a 30 year old man and yet only be a week old, and yet be deceptive to create a fully grown apple tree for Adam to eat from on the first day?

You're right. Adam wasn't an illusion. He was flesh and blood 100% real, just as I said before. The starlight cannot be real in the theory that you are suggesting. It would be merely an illusion created by God. If it is an illusion, it is deception.

It is not deceptive that Adam was created an adult because the Bible tells us that this is the truth. The Bible also tells us that the plants were not created with maturity.

How do you know that there were trees without rings. As I've pointed out a few times, the Bible says that the plants began as seed and grew up. Therefore, the trees would indeed have growth rings.

But you pointed this out presupposing God was deceptive if He created a fully grown tree with the appearance of age. As you have already agreed earlier, God does create with the appearance of age without the intent of being deceptive but out of love, as you so aptly put it.

I don't really understand what you mean. I didn't point out the fact that plants began as seed because I was presupposing God was deceptive if they were fully grown. The text says they were not fully grown.

You have also learned that every time the Holy Spirit refers to morning and evening, night and day or a day with a number attached (513 additional time)as He does in these verses that it means a literal 24 hour day. So of course there was fully developed fruit on fully developed trees for Adam to eat on his first day and all with the appearance of age.

I haven't learned this. You have stated it, but I've never said that I agree with you. I also brought up a reference dealing with the difficulty of translating the Hebrew in Genesis, and you never remarked on it.

I do not believe these days are literal 24 hour periods. I feel that you are beginning your investigation with the presupposition that these are 24 hour periods based on very little evidence and that any physical evidence that doesn't fit the 24 hour period you dismiss.

Maybe this is like the "god being deceptive" post earlier that you admit to being love and not deception after all. It seems like deception or the creation of skepticism if you don't believe God created all in six literal days. But once you begin to unravel it as you did with Adam you discover what you thought was deception is really love.

I'm not sure what post you are referring to. What did I first say was deceptive and then admitted that it was really loving? Could you post what you are referring to?

If you are referring to me saying that Adam's body would have signs that tell us that he was a new creature despite his adult body, I'm confused on how you feel that proves your point. My point in that statement was to show that upon careful examination, it would be proved that Adam was not as you assume upon first glance. If this is true, then when we carefully study the universe, we should be led to the correct conclusion. Whatever that conclusion might be. The evidence we are coming up with is that the earth is very old.

There is no deception when you look at the earth from an old perspective - everything fits. The deception comes when you look at it from a young earth perspective because we must concede that God created things to look like something it is not. We are being led to the wrong conclusions. That is deceptive.

 

[jazzbird]

Now lets look at skepticism. You do realize that there was light before there were stars and a sun. This was one of the very first things revealed in Scripture, and not to make skeptics out of us, not at all, but instead to create a sense of awe in us to better worship our Creator.

This statement opens a huge discussion that I'm not going to be able to get into tonight. I will address the issue of light and the sun and all that tomorrow.

It will be interesting to talk more about the stars and sun and light with you.

And BTW, thanks for sticking to addressing my arguements rather than attacking me. It's much appreciated.

 

[Cal]

The deception comes when you look at it from a young earth perspective because we must concede that God created things to look like something it is not. We are being led to the wrong conclusions. That is deceptive.

Like looking at a 30 year old man who is really a minute old?

 

[Donny_B]

..or the parting of the Red Sea and the Jordan River in defiance of the laws of gravity? Turning back the earth...Jesus feeding the multitude, walking on water, rising from the dead, healing a man born blind, a donkey talking to Balaam, or any other thing in the Bible that defies science? Is this deceptive, or is it the power of God?

 

[theFijian]

Adam as a one day old probably looked 20 or 30 years old. Maybe that's where your confused, I mean on how God created everything with the appearance of age?

I don't believe God created anything with the mere appearance of age. If something appears to be old then it is old, or obviously our observations are wrong.

Consider this: If God has created things with the appearance of age, then we can no longer trust any observation we make in the world around us. How do you know you weren't created 10 seconds ago but with the appearance of age? That appearance of age may be the lines on your face, the grey hairs, even your memories. If we cannot rely on the observations we make of God's creation then frankly all science goes out the window. God would be the great deciever.

Andy

 

[Cal]

I don't believe God created anything with the mere appearance of age. If something appears to be old then it is old, or obviously our observations are wrong.

Consider this: If God has created things with the appearance of age, then we can no longer trust any observation we make in the world around us. How do you know you weren't created 10 seconds ago but with the appearance of age? That appearance of age may be the lines on your face, the grey hairs, even your memories. If we cannot rely on the observations we make of God's creation then frankly all science goes out the window. God would be the great deciever.

Andy

Adam being only 1 hour old looked and fuctioned like a 30 year old, what about that?

There had to be a starting point and God greated it with full maturity and age out of love for Adam and his children, not out of deception. Scientists and you may feel deceived because God didn't do it your way according to the scientific method, but since when did we start putting God into a box?

 

[jazzbird]

..or the parting of the Red Sea and the Jordan River in defiance of the laws of gravity? Turning back the earth...Jesus feeding the multitude, walking on water, rising from the dead, healing a man born blind, a donkey talking to Balaam, or any other thing in the Bible that defies science? Is this deceptive, or is it the power of God?

This is the amazing power of the almighty God! What, you think I don't believe in miracles just because it defies science? No way! God has the power to do anything. However, the Bible clearly tells us that God does not deceive and He does not lie. It also tells us that our natural world gives proof of His creation. In other words, we can trust the information that has been recorded in the earth.

I believe everything the Bible says about God. The Bible tells me that God parted the Red Sea for His people - I take this literally. I don't think these are merely Bible stories that tell a good lesson.

 

[jazzbird]

Like looking at a 30 year old man who is really a minute old?

There had to be a starting point and God greated it with full maturity and age out of love for Adam and his children, not out of deception. Scientists and you may feel deceived because God didn't do it your way according to the scientific method, but since when did we start putting God into a box?

Can you please address the Genesis account of vegetation before stating that everything was created with full maturity.

Also, tell me what is more loving about your view of the creation? From my point of view, God created the world and prepared it with love and when it was all ready, he created man and placed him in the garden. What is different about how I view creation with regard to God's love?

I don't care what way God did it. His ways are always perfect and I trust Him. I do not put God in a box by presupposing certain things about the world. I look at the word of God and His creation both in order to draw my conclusions. I used to believe in a young earth before I started really learning about creation. I was honestly led to a new conclusion.

 

[jazzbird]

Now lets look at skepticism. You do realize that there was light before there were stars and a sun. This was one of the very first things revealed in Scripture, and not to make skeptics out of us, not at all, but instead to create a sense of awe in us to better worship our Creator.

GEN 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
GEN 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
GEN 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The sun, moon and stars were not created until the fourth day.

Now you stated, "So we are not actually seeing light from something that really existed. This suggests that God merely created the illusion..." But this isn't Biblical, God created light without a source on the first day and it wasn't an illusion, it was a fact.

See, these are the kinda things that help us interpret Scripture, we let Scripture interpret itself.

Yes, there was light on the first day, but this light had a source. The very first verse of Genesis says

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light;" and God separated the light from the darkness.

So we see that on the first day of creation God created the earth and the heavens. What does the heavens consist of? Stars, planets, sun, moon, galaxies. This was His first act of creation.

We also learn in Job that God created a cover over the earth. This accounts for the fact that the earth was in darkness:

Job 38:4-9 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? ...When I made a cloud its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling band.

So the sources of light were created on the first day, however, from the perspective of earth it was dark because of the cloud covering.

Let's jump to the fourth day of creation.

Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.

The phrase "let there be," and not "God created" tells us that the sources of light were already in existance. If He had created the light at that moment, the text would say so, but this statement is one of the appearance of the light and not it's creation. It is at this time that the cloud cover is removed and the earth sees the actual bodies of light.

So why does the text say God made the Sun, moon, and stars in verse 16? Actually, the Hebrew verbs indicate an action completed at some time in the past. The text could be translated, "And God had made..." Verse 18 gives us another hint. The lights were placed in the sky to "separate the light from the darkness." Does this sound familiar? It is the exact Hebrew phrase used for God's work on the first day when, "God separated the light from the darkness" (Genesis 1:4) By using this phrase, the text is recounting the formation of the Sun, moon and stars from the first day. If we accept that God created the Sun, moon and stars on the fourth day, then He didn't really create the heavens in verse one.

Reference:
http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/genesis1.html

 

[theFijian]

That's not what the pictures show.

What pictures?

 

[jazzbird]

I have no problem at all with people disagreeing with my point of view. I think it's good that we discuss our beliefs with others who hold different perspectives. It is a wonderful way to be shaped and strengthened in our faith. That being said, I feel that the idea of an old earth is viewed almost as heretical in the eye's of some young earthers. It bothers me that some people display such an unwillingness to even listen because they think that my view somehow discredits the Bible or God's power, or something....I'm not even really sure what causes the repulsion. Anyway....

As many of us here are Presbyterians, I just wanted to bring to attention the fact that the PCA states that old earth creation is a Biblically valid interpretation of Scripture. The Report of the Creation Study Committee is quite long, but I am posting the link for anyone who is interested.

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/pca_creation_study_committee_report.shtml?main

This post is by no means a response to all young earth creationists. It's just that over time, I've run into uncharitable responses in various places, and since a lot of us are PCA, I just thought I would post the link for our information and benefit.

 

[theFijian]

Adam being only 1 hour old looked and fuctioned like a 30 year old, what about that?

There had to be a starting point and God greated it with full maturity and age out of love for Adam and his children, not out of deception. Scientists and you may feel deceived because God didn't do it your way according to the scientific method, but since when did we start putting God into a box?

With your literalist interpretation it is you who are putting God in the box. By dismissing scientific method and dogmatising what christians must believe with regards to creation you are declaring that God only worked in the way your literalist interpretation allows. If God did indeed create the universe in 6 24hour days around 6000 years ago (which I don't think he did although I have less problem with the 6/24hour days than with a young earth) then I have no problem with that, because I do not hang my faith on it nor do I insist that others must share my viewpoint. On the other hand, science in the past has falsified the position of flat-earthers and geocentrists who took their views from a literal reading of scripture yet there are still those who hold to these ideas (http://www.flat-earth.org/).

I believe it has been one of Satan's cleverest tricks to convince people, christians and non-christians alike, that they must either believe modern science or the Bible. All truth is God's truth.

 

[jazzbird]

I believe it has been one of Satan's cleverest tricks to convince people, christians and non-christians alike, that they must either believe modern science or the Bible. All truth is God's truth.

Very well said.

The Bible tells us that 'Jesus will call his angels from the four corners of the earth,' and people used that passage to support a flat earth. We now know that the earth is not flat despite the fact that the Bible says the earth has four corners. So is the Bible wrong, or did people in the past merely misunderstand the nature of the passage? The Bible also talks of the sun and moon rising and setting, yet we know it is really the earth that is moving. Despite scientific findings, should we continue to insist that the sun moves around the earth and the world is flat so as not to say the Bible has error, or do we recognize that this language is descriptive, and that the new meaning does no violence to the text.

What made people take a second look at how these texts are interpreted? There is nothing in the text itself that can tell us one way or the other. Rather, it was scientific findings that made them say, "you know, maybe we need to take another look at how we are reading this passage." There is nothing wrong with that as long as it does not conflict with what we know about God and the Bible.

 

[Cal]

The Bible tells us that 'Jesus will call his angels from the four corners of the earth,' and people used that passage to support a flat earth. We now know that the earth is not flat despite the fact that the Bible says the earth has four corners.

jazzbird and fijian,

Sorry I've been away so long and delayed in my reponses, the Lord had me taking care of a few other things.

Christians believing in a flat earth is a common misconception started by those who hate our Lord. Atheists and those who hate Christianity love to "slam" Him and us at every turn. We should be careful not to believe and side with them on these issues, otherwise we find ourselves in that box I mentioned earlier.

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=-1]Jeffrey Burton Russell is Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Besides UCSB, he has taught History and Religious Studies at Berkeley, Riverside, Harvard, New Mexico, and Notre Dame. He has published seventeen books and many articles, most of them in his special field, history of theology. He is most noted for his five-volume history of the concept of the Devil, published by Cornell University Press between 1977 and 1988. He would prefer to be most noted for two more recent books, Inventing the Flat Earth (1991), which shows how nineteenth-century anti-Christians invented and spread the falsehood that educated people in the Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat, and A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence, Princeton University Press (1997), a study of the history and meaning of heaven in Christian thought from the beginnings to the time of Dante.[/size][/font]

He wrote:

How does investigating the myth of the flat earth help teachers of the history of science?

First, as a historian, I have to admit that it tells us something about the precariousness of history. History is precarious for three reasons: the good reason that it is extraordinarily difficult to determine "what really happened" in any series of events; the bad reason that historical scholarship is often sloppy; and the appalling reason that far too much historical scholarship consists of contorting the evidence to fit ideological models. The worst examples of such contortions are the Nazi and Communist histories of the early- and mid-twentieth century.

Contortions that are common today, if not widely recognized, are produced by the incessant attacks on Christianity and religion in general by secular writers during the past century and a half, attacks that are largely responsible for the academic and journalistic sneers at Christianity today.

A curious example of this mistreatment of the past for the purpose of slandering Christians is a widespread historical error, an error that the Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in its short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is the notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat--especially medieval Christians.

It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.

A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few dissenters--Leukippos and Demokritos for example--by the time of Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC), and Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans.

Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A few--at least two and at most five--early Christian fathers denied the sphericity of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.

Historians of science have been proving this point for at least 70 years (most recently Edward Grant, David Lindberg, Daniel Woodward, and Robert S. Westman), without making notable headway against the error. Schoolchildren in the US, Europe, and Japan are for the most part being taught the same old nonsense. How and why did this nonsense emerge?

In my research, I looked to see how old the idea was that medieval Christians believed the earth was flat. I obviously did not find it among medieval Christians. Nor among anti-Catholic Protestant reformers. Nor in Copernicus or Galileo or their followers, who had to demonstrate the superiority of a heliocentric system, but not of a spherical earth. I was sure I would find it among the eighteenth-century philosophes, among all their vitriolic sneers at Christianity, but not a word. I am still amazed at where it first appears.

No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.

The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and an American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection, though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices who had studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834). The American was no other than our beloved storyteller Washington Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the guise of history. His misrepresentations of the history of early New York City and of the life of Washington were topped by his history of Christopher Columbus (1828). It was he who invented the indelible picture of the young Columbus, a "simple mariner," appearing before a dark crowd of benighted inquisitors and hooded theologians at a council of Salamanca, all of whom believed, according to Irving, that the earth was flat like a plate. Well, yes, there was a meeting at Salamanca in 1491, but Irving's version of it, to quote a distinguished modern historian of Columbus, was "pure moonshine. Washington Irving, scenting his opportunity for a picturesque and moving scene," created a fictitious account of this "nonexistent university council" and "let his imagination go completely...the whole story is misleading and mischievous nonsense."

But now, why did the false accounts of Letronne and Irving become melded and then, as early as the 1860s, begin to be served up in schools and in schoolbooks as the solemn truth?

The answer is that the falsehood about the spherical earth became a colorful and unforgettable part of a larger falsehood: the falsehood of the eternal war between science (good) and religion (bad) throughout Western history. This vast web of falsehood was invented and propagated by the influential historian John Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such as Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the president of Cornell University, who made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts, encyclopedias, and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A lively current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers, found in any bookshop or library.

The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of the earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism. The answer is really only slightly more complicated than that bald statement. The flat-earth lie was ammunition against the creationists. The argument was simple and powerful, if not elegant: "Look how stupid these Christians are. They are always getting in the way of science and progress. These people who deny evolution today are exactly the same sort of people as those idiots who for at least a thousand years denied that the earth was round. How stupid can you get?"

But that is not the truth.

 

[Gabriel]

http://www.christianforums.com/t684278

 

[jazzbird]

Sorry I've been away so long and delayed in my reponses, the Lord had me taking care of a few other things.

Hey Cal. Good to see you back.

Christians believing in a flat earth is a common misconception started by those who hate our Lord. Atheists and those who hate Christianity love to "slam" Him and us at every turn. We should be careful not to believe and side with them on these issues, otherwise we find ourselves in that box I mentioned earlier.

Thanks for posting that article. It was very informative.

However, whether or not anyone ever believed in a flat earth, the point is that if we take that text of the angels at the four corners at face value we must come to the conclusion that the earth is flat. There is no evidence in the text that it should be read any other way. Why would we come to the conclusion that the earth is round when the Bible seems to imply that it is flat? - By observing the natural world that the Lord gave us to point to His Truth. Don't you see how that relates to the Genesis account?

 

[theFijian]

Christians believing in a flat earth is a common misconception started by those who hate our Lord. Atheists and those who hate Christianity love to "slam" Him and us at every turn. We should be careful not to believe and side with them on these issues, otherwise we find ourselves in that box I mentioned earlier.

In other words if I don't agree with you I am no better than an atheist?! Come come, you can do better than that.

The flat-earth lie was ammunition against the creationists.

And that's because a flat-earth is exactly where a literal interpretation will take you.

I'm not going to get drawn into a side issue here or the dubiety of your post, but needless to say you have not addressed the thrust of my post. One can easily come to the conclusion that the earth is flat from scripture through poor interpretation.

Also let me ask you, how do you know the earth is not flat. Have you ever been in space and observed it? Have you orbitted round it and know for sure it is indeed spherical and not flat?

 

[Bulldog]

Maybe God does not like "fence sitters", and lukewarmness. We see in His council to the church of Philadelphia, He prefers that we be hot or cold, and not lukewarm. Paul says that God will send a strong delusion to believe "a lie" in the last days. Is evolution part of this lie? Perhaps He will allow the discovery of a "missing link" that will make many of the compromisers cold non-believers? Does God prefer atheists to compromisers?

11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. II Thessalonians 2:11-12

15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Revelation 3:15-16

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Matthew 24:24

Are you saying that theistic evolutionists are lukewarm?

 

[jazzbird]

Are you saying that theistic evolutionists are lukewarm?

I think he's saying that any Christian who believes the earth is more than 10,000 years old is lukewarm.

You and I have different views on creation, Bulldog, but hey, do you want to come sit on a fence with me and discuss our heretical beliefs that will cause God to spew us out of His mouth?

 

[Donny_B]

I don't believe it's a salvation issue, note that I included Matthew 24:24.."if it were possible"

But I believe it does involve compromises that are quite dangerous.
See the questions that are asked of Old Age Creationists and Theistic Evolutionists here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/Genesis.asp

The creation-evolution debate is quite interesting and some devote their full time to this. I prefer to focus on other things, remembering what Paul's advice to Timothy was about "avoiding profane babblings". But still, since evolution is such a force in the Church today, there are those called to confront this challenge.