How long was the First Day?

If that is what you were responding too I think you are weakening his position unfairly.

Allow me to explicate his argument:
1) Biblical scripture is always true.
2) Moses equated six days of creation to six days of work in scripture.
3) Six days of work are a reference to 24 hour periods.

Thus: Six days of creation were 24 hour periods.

What exactly in this argument do you challange?

JonF said:

If that is what you were responding too I think you are weakening his position unfairly.

Allow me to explicate his argument:
1) Biblical scripture is always true.
2) Moses equated six days of creation to six days of work in scripture.
3) Six days of work are a reference to 24 hour periods.

Thus: Six days of creation were 24 hour periods.

What exactly in this argument do you challange?

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Biblical scripture is always true..

anyone's interpretation of Scripture is not the same thing as Scripture itself.
which of all the interpretations of Gen 1 is the true Biblical Scripture? how do you know that?

what does "always" true mean?
if God is accommodating Himself to human thought patterns and is using ANE cosmology to form and construct the OT, then is He teaching this cosmology as culturally transcendent? that is must we conform to the ANE cosmology and abandon our current scientific understanding in order to be faithful to the Scriptures and to God? Does He require this in order to assent to the authority of Scripture? Because Gen 1 uses a flat earth, solid firmament, lights as holes in the crystal, hell underneath your feet, heaven just outside the firmament, do i have to deny the value and truthfulness of modern astronomy?


Moses equated six days of creation to six days of work in scripture.

it works both ways equally well.
Moses justified the Sabbath requirement by making the preamble for the Treaty of the Great King major motif the Creation Week capped by the Sabbath. The Sabbath in the Law was read back into Gen 1 as a justification, as a great literary motif, as the pattern for Creation, it says nothing about the modern scientific and historical knowledge of cosmology which was not even thought of 500 years ago, let alone 3000+ years.

Did God really rest on the 7th Day?
no souls created? was providence operative?
what does it mean for God to rest? isn't it an anthropomorphism, with a purpose?

Six days of work are a reference to 24 hour periods.

so, framework interpretation says as much.


btw.
these are the kind questions.
any good atheist worth his time will ask you:
Biblical scripture is always true
how about which Bible? which canon? which OT version?
do you even know how many of each exist?

could you recognize the truth if you saw it?
which truth, with 3K+ Christian denominations there is little agreement on anything.
always? does this means all cultures, all people, all times? how can you make such a blanket statement. even the prohibition against murder is not universal.

You claimed his argument was superfluous, and I claimed it is a fairly valid claim. So please respond to his argument first, then advocate your view after, I will respond to your claims relevant to his argument.

rmwilliamsll said:

what does "always" true mean?

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Any proposition presented in the bible as true, is in fact true. Any proposition in the bible presented as false, is in act false.

it works both ways equally well.

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Moses justified the Sabbath requirement by making the preamble for the Treaty of the Great King major motif the Creation Week capped by the Sabbath.

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Reference to what verse(s) you are talking about.

so, framework interpretation says as much.

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As the standard interpretation of a “working day” is a 24 hour period the burden of evidence falls on you to show it is something else.

Any proposition presented in the bible as true, is in fact true. Any proposition in the bible presented as false, is in act false.

there are lots of threads here about this.

it is a thoroughly modern notion, built on the Scottish Common Sense philosophy of T.Reid and imported into the church via the Old Princeton greats of BB Warfield and the Hodges.

lots of things can be truth and not be propositions. lots of the propositions in the Bible at face value are false. (this is my Body) all Scripture is interpretated, this idea is a hermeneutical principle.

but look at the archive. we've been down this road before, more than once. i've lots better things to read that to rehash what has already been said, in most cases, better than i can say it.

what is most interesting about your statement in bold, is that it is not in Scripture, but a modern scientism that makes science and historical statements (logos) the only valid way to look at things versus the norm in ANE culture of mythos.....

we've been there as well. more than once.

It is really Dennis’ place to respond since it is his argument, but I would guess his position would be along these lines…

Which bible/cannon: Since the Torah is included in almost all cannons, it seems reasonable to suppose that the Torah is scripture. If we want to know which version of the Torah is true, I would say the original. Now with the consistently of the verse in question in almost all interpretations and bibles it also seems reasonable to say it is scripture.

How could you recognize the truth? We don’t need a general method to recognize truth; the only truth we are recognizing in this argument is scripture. The verse in question uses the term six days in two places. The term “for” let’s us know that “six days” in both places is the same object. What is one of the things you do in six days? The verse tells us that is labor i.e. work. Thus #2 seems fairly sound.

rmwilliamsll said:

lots of things can be truth and not be propositions.

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irrelevant, I never made any claim about this statement.

rmwilliamsll said:

lots of the propositions in the Bible at face value are false. (this is my Body) all Scripture is interpretated, this idea is a hermeneutical principle.
.

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indeed. But can we agree that some propositions in the bible are self evident as to what they mean? Such as “Jesus Wept”?

I would say the original.

we don't have the originals. (autographs in Old Princeton language)
not even close.
we have at least 3 variants of Gen 1-5, that i am aware of, and this is not my field of interest.
the Hebrew underlying the LXX,
the proto-Masoretic
the Hebrew underlying the Targums.

and that is just the beginning of the problem.
the early manuscripts didn't have word breaks, sentence markers or vowel pointings. those are all added later, much later.

But can we agree that some propositions in the bible are self evident as to what they mean?

can we agree what a proposition is?
probably not.
can we agree on what the Bible is?
depends.
can we agree on what self-evident is?
no, i've studied foundationalism and am convinced of the modern arguments against it.

can we agree on what the word meaning means?
probably not. i've interested in semantics and semotics and think it a very difficult question.

so to answer your bolded question.
nope.

Eh, I wouldn't talk about putting the Torah in a cannon if I were you. (lol.)

indeed. But can we agree that some propositions in the bible are self evident as to what they mean? Such as “Jesus Wept”?

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If I asked you what the word "wept" means you can't look anywhere else in the Bible to find its meaning. You'll have to go find a dictionary.

Any and every statement in the Bible needs to be interpreted in relation to an external reality. No matter how inspired you believe the Bible is it is still a collection of words. And words cannot derive ultimate meaning from between themselves but must refer back to some external reality. The Bible is underdetermined without reference to the external universe.

rmwilliamsll said:

can we agree what a proposition is?

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rmwilliamsll said:

probably not.

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uh, by definition a proposition is a statement that can only possibly have one of two truth values.

can we agree on what the Bible is?

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We don’t need to agree on what the entire bible is, just the portions of it relevant to this argument

can we agree on what self-evident is?

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This question wasn’t asked in a universal sense. I don’t need everyone in the world to agree on what is self-evident, only the person I’m talking too at the time.

can we agree on what the word meaning means?

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This is a position of infinite reduction, which is a non falsifiable but verifiable stance. Statements like this the burden of evidence is always on the person who makes them. You need to give me a “non standard” interpretation of what ever word is in question, then support it.

by definition a proposition is a statement that can only possibly have one of two truth values

actually, no.

true false
undecidable
unknown for now
self referential
about the future

are just a few more possibilities.
see:
http://www.multivaluelogic.com/

topic is: multivariable logic

rmwilliamsll said:

by definition a proposition is a statement that can only possibly have one of two truth values

actually, no.

true false
undecidable
unknown for now
self referential
about the future

are just a few more possibilities.
see:
http://www.multivaluelogic.com/

topic is: multivariable logic

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you are wrong. First of all "multi value logic" is commonly referred to as fuzzy logic and isn't unified at all. Secondly that article never addresses what a proposition is. Third you make an equivocation error on the word "logic", i am not speaking of logical operators. And lastly a proposition BY DEFFINITION is exactly what i said it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition

JonF said:

you are wrong. First of all "multi value logic" is commonly referred to as fuzzy logic and isn't unified at all. Secondly that article never addresses what a proposition is. Third you make an equivocation error on the word "logic", i am not speaking of logical operators. And lastly a proposition BY DEFFINITION is exactly what i said it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition

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1. multivariable logic is NOT fuzzy logic
2. at least one self referential statement is in Scripture, the Epimenides paradox, at Titus 1:12,13, this statement is not (either true or false) yet it is a proposition by virtually any definition.

but get back to your statement.
Any proposition presented in the bible as true, is in fact true. Any proposition in the bible presented as false, is in act false.


Titus 1:12,13 falsify this statement. The Epimenides paradox is self-referential, it is not true, not false etc.

so does any prophetic statements, future statements are never true nor false, they are currently undecidable.


that is even before you can define a proposition.

JonF said:

Multivariable logic is fuzzy logic, also by definition. Fuzzy doesn’t mean it’s good or bad.

“12Even one of their own prophets has said, "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons." 13This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith”
If you are addressing the statement “this testimony is true”. That is not a paradox. It’s self affirming referential, which is logically supercilious. X iff X is meaningless.
If you are trying to say the prophet in verse 12 is a Cretan we end up with the statement: P(x): P(x) is a lie. This statement can have no truth value, and therefore isn’t a proposition. Thus the statement in bold makes no claim about it.

It does not follow because we can’t decide on the truth value of X implies that X has no truth value.

I have defined a proposition.

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this conversation is going no where.
you may have the last word.

fuzzy logic is a particular application of a specific kind of multivariable logic. you may however believe as you wish on the topic. i feel no particular incentive to enlighten you on the matter. you appear to be doing no studying on the topic and i have better things to do that to quibble over words.

If you are addressing the statement “this testimony is true”. That is not a paradox. It’s self affirming referential, which is logically supercilious

if you do not know where the self referential part of Titus 1:12,13 is, then we have nothing to talk about. i do not wish to hold up both sides of the conversation. your posting illustrates no particular understanding of the paradox.
i even gave you the term-Epimenides paradox
so you could study it if you were not aware of it. you obviously did not. nor do you seem to feel any need to study or learn in order to converse here.

but please, go on to define proposition, something philosophers have been unable to do. i'm going to go read.

rmwilliamsll said:

but please, go on to define proposition, something philosophers have been unable to do. i'm going to go read.

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It's not like any reputable philosophical sources have defined what a proposition is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions/
http://mally.stanford.edu/objectives.html

rmwilliamsll said:

fuzzy logic is a particular application of a specific kind of multivariable logic. you may however believe as you wish on the topic. i feel no particular incentive to enlighten you on the matter. you appear to be doing no studying on the topic and i have better things to do that to quibble over words.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic

rmwilliamsll said:

If you are addressing the statement “this testimony is true”. That is not a paradox. It’s self affirming referential, which is logically supercilious

Click to expand...

rmwilliamsll said:

if you do not know where the self referential part of Titus 1:12,13 is, then we have nothing to talk about. i do not wish to hold up both sides of the conversation. your posting illustrates no particular understanding of the paradox.
i even gave you the term-Epimenides paradox
so you could study it if you were not aware of it. you obviously did not. nor do you seem to feel any need to study or learn in order to converse here.

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There were two self referential parts in those verses, I addressed both. I can only assume you didn’t read my whole post here is where I do address the epimenides paradox. “If you are trying to say the prophet in verse 12 is a Cretan we end up with the statement: P(x): P(x) is a lie. This statement can have no truth value, and therefore isn’t a proposition. Thus the statement in bold makes no claim about it.”