AlmostAdult said in post 30:
My friends like to debate me on my faith.
Don't debate them. For they won't gain faith through debate, yet you could forfeit your faith through debate.
They won't gain faith through debate because everyone on his own is wholly corrupt (Rom. 3:9-12), & so it's impossible for people on their own to ever believe in Jesus & the gospel & be initially saved (1 Cor. 15:1-4, Jn. 20:31, 1 Jn. 5:13) through their own will (Rom. 9:16, Jn. 1:13, 6:65) or through their own intellect (1 Cor. 1:18-2:16). Unsaved people can't possibly understand the gospel (1 Cor. 2:14, 1:18) because only initially saved people, who've received the miraculous gift of some measure of God's own Spirit, can understand it (1 Cor. 2:11-16). The nonelect can't possibly ever believe in Jesus & the gospel & be initially saved, even when they're shown the truth (Jn. 8:42-47, 10:26, Mt. 13:38-42), for the ability to believe in Jesus & the gospel comes only to the elect (Acts 13:48b) wholly by God's grace as a miraculous gift from God (Eph. 2:8, Jn. 6:65, 1 Cor. 3:5b, Rom. 12:3b, Heb. 12:2) as the elect read (or hear) God's Word the Bible (Rom. 10:17, Acts 13:48, 26:22-23), just as the ability to repent comes only as a miraculous gift from God (2 Tim. 2:25, Acts 11:18). Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers so that on their own they can't repent & acknowledge the truth of God's Word (2 Cor. 4:4, 2 Tim. 2:25-26).
Recently one brought up all the scientific inaccuracies in the bible.
There aren't any, for nothing proven true by science has ever proven anything in the Bible to be false.
She made her main point on Genesis, mostly on creation and light and the sun and stuff.
Regarding "light and the sun", are you referring to Gen. 1:3-5? If so, it could mean that God had some light source in space temporarily light up half the earth as bright as day, three days before he created the sun (Gen. 1:14-19).
Regarding "creation", are you referring to the idea that evolution contradicts creationism? If so, evolution per se (random mutation and survival of the fittest) doesn't contradict creationism. Instead, it can coexist with creationism, just as an automated process created by a human (e.g. a computer program which makes random, colorful pictures which can be seen as art) can coexist with that human sometimes performing a task himself, directly (painting some pictures by hand). That is, evolution per se can simply be a process created by God to allow new, adaptive species to arise naturally over time, and this process can coexist with God sometimes creating new species himself, directly, i.e. miraculously, whenever he wants to (cf. punctuated equilibria).
Creationism includes what could be called the double-gap theory, meaning that there could have been two different gaps of time in Gen. chs. 1-2, the first gap between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, and the second gap between Gen. 2:4 and 2:5. Gen. 1:1 could have occurred some 4.5 billion years ago, when God first created the planet earth and its atmosphere (the first heaven, in which the birds fly: Gen. 1:20b). Between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, some 4.5 billion years could have occurred, in which God could have allowed his own created process of evolution to serve as a mechanism by which new species arose on the earth. During those same 4.5 billion years, God could have also sometimes gone outside of evolution and created new species miraculously, whenever he wanted to.
Gen. 1:2 could refer to the condition of the earth only about 12,000 years ago (at the end of the Paleolithic period), after some cataclysm, such as a comet strike, had killed off all life on the planet (both evolved and miraculously created), had submerged all land areas in water (comets contain huge amounts of water), and had ruined the atmosphere. The impact of the comet could have also knocked the earth out of its orbit around its original star, so that the earth was sent hurtling into the darkness of interstellar space. Gen. 1:3-2:4 could then refer to God, over a period of six literal, 24-hour days (some 12,000 years ago, at the start of the Neolithic period), miraculously restoring to the earth light, a good atmosphere, dry land, and life, including a race of male and female homo sapiens sapiens, after God had miraculously restored land plants (Gen. 1:11-13) and land animals (Gen. 1:24-25) to the earth.
Then, only about 6,000 years ago, God miraculously created on the earth an individual male homo sapiens sapiens named Adam in an uninhabited desert land (Gen. 2:5-7; there, the original Hebrew word translated as "earth" can simply refer to a certain "land": e.g. Gen. 2:11). After that, God planted the plants of the Garden of Eden in that desert land (Gen. 2:8-9) and God placed Adam in that garden (Gen. 2:15). After that, God miraculously created the animals of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:19). After that, God miraculously created in the Garden of Eden an individual female homo sapiens sapiens (Gen. 2:22) whom Adam named Eve (Gen. 3:20).
Because Adam was created only about 6,000 years ago, but there are homo sapiens sapiens fossils said to be as old as about 200,000 years, God could have first created homo sapiens sapiens (or it could have evolved by God's created process of evolution) as far back as about 200,000 years. Also, all the different hominid forms the fossils of which long predate or are as old as the earliest fossils of homo sapiens sapiens, and which preceding or coexisting hominid forms we don't consider to have been fully human like us (such as homo sapiens neanderthalensis), could have all been created by God (or could have evolved by God's created process of evolution) over millions of years prior to the first appearance of homo sapiens sapiens on the earth.
Perhaps thought this conversation should be private, so we don't get off topic on the thread.
Actually, what you've brought up is on topic, because many people think that science has somehow proven that God isn't real. Of course, science has never done any such thing, and it never will.
