If evolution is not valid science, somebody should tell the scientists.

gluadys said:

Retrojecting modern science onto the biblical accounts (and grossly misinterpreted science at that) is what I call interpretation by anachronism.

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Kudos for the whole post, but most especially for that gem of a line. Interpretation by anachronism is going to become part of the language of origins debates.

It is ICC that is critical of his work-not ICR- 2 differing bodies. And a failure in peer review means the review broke down. Humphreys did not produce his work by fraud, his model has some inconsistencies that may or may not weork out, but I would like to know what failed in the review process- for it is the peer review thast failed not Humphreys work, and the article does not enumerate what failed in the review process.

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Oh, my bad on ICC.

I am not implying that Humphreys produced his model by fraud (my apologies for the example, but it was the most fresh one I could think of). Do you understand how the peer review process works? When a scientists says that he has found certain things, the important question other scientists in the field ask is "is this repeatable?" That was what caused Hwang Woo-Suk to be exposed - other labs could not repeat his results, and in the end it was fellow scientists who figured out that he'd cheated.

Read the paragraph and follow the flow of events.
- Humphreys publishes his paper.
- Lots of critical replies.
- Particular colleagues present specific difficulties.
- Humphreys not able to resolve these difficulties.
- Therefore, ICC concludes that this paper has not survived the peer review process.
- Humphreys still fixing theory. God alone knows when he'll try and publish another paper.
- In the meantime, good job brother, no matter how it turns out.

"What" failed in the review process were the technical flaws in his paper pointed out by the others, which are spelled out very clearly in the paragraph.

Well that is a nice cushy answer that means nothing. All geologic samples undergo weathering to some degree. And a sample that is declared to be say 2.5 billion years- a geologist cannot determined how much weathering and how much leaching, He also cannot determine if parent or daughter elements were added to the sample and if it is determined there might have been this contamination, there is no mechanism to determine how much thus skewing the dates meaningless. Your turn.

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I'm getting in the deep end of the pool here.

http://education.usgs.gov/schoolyard/RockDescription.html
http://geology.csupomona.edu/drjessey/class/Gsc101/Weathering.html
http://pr.water.usgs.gov/public/webb/bibliography/abstract029.html

Well I discussed thias with someone far more wise in the ways of physics than I and showed hiom this qoute and he told me immediately the radioactivity is emitted from the lead samples thus making them moderately radioactive. Now if you want to go down to the subatomic levels and detrermine if the lead that was emitting radioactivity had micro amounts of thorium or uranium- well email Oak ridge and ask them.

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The Oak Ridge article itself says that there was contamination by known radioactive elements. Ask the friend who is wiser in the ways of physics what would happen if the lead had been chemically isolated from all the other isotopes to produce elemental pure lead.

Well then let me ask-- do you beleive he wasthe product of evolution via the standard chain or was he formed by God to be the first human to trod on the earth.

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Both! God used evolution to create man!

(Now I'm really messing with your brains. )

Well first off Romans 5 12 the a part. If you wish I can go into the differences of the word world gr. kosmos and also oikeumenie and evven aiaon). But for now suffice it to say that ksomos (as used here) CAN be used of men but because all men is ina contradistinction to the one man the world here is rendered the globe especially in light of a further verse in Romans 8:

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Romans 5:12:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world (kosmon) through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men (anthropous) because all sinned--
(Romans 5:12 ESV)

What would oikonomia have to do with anything? The Bible says sin entered the world (kosmon) and then death spread to all MAN (anthropous). Not that death spread to the whole WORLD (kosmon).

19For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

20For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
21Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Creation itself was made subject to futility and painand death, which means at one time it was not futile and vain- before sin. Reread the curses God made in Genesis 3 after Adams fall.

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I see "futility" in the passage. You are reading "sin" and "death" in by your own whims and fancies. They are not equivalent. Jesus died, and yet He was not subject to futility. On the other hand if Adam had eaten of the tree of life, He would have lived forever, and yet be subject to sin all his eternal life. We can see that you can have death without futility and futility without death. So why do you assume that "futility" automatically means "death"?

But the spiritual lessons can only be gleaned because the events literally happened and thus made subjects for our learning.

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Did the parables literally happen?

Well after further review let me correct a misunderstanding. Lions do not sin. Only men do! Lions act on the basis of the instructions God embedded in their instincts. Only man can sin because only man was given the ability to rationalize with a eternal soul

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But by your theories, lions are only predators because man sinned. As such, lions' predatory instincts are there only because of the advent of sin and represent a gross defect in the working of the world. When the world is renewed the lions will not be predators any more. So ... why is God comparing Himself to actions which are explicitly the result of sin?

Btw. It is precisely because animals do not sin that the death of animals is entirely amoral.

Well you can use "nested hierarchies but it still means the same something that wasn't a dog kept randomly mutating until it became a dog etc. etc. Lizards changed to birds, fish to lizards etc and we have no proof, just supposition.

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Sigh. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

I could but no where near as technically as you appear to be able to. I understand the infinite denseness and all that, but simplisticly said- it was a huge explosion that caused space and matter to expand exponentionally. It really isn't that hard to make the complex into a simple explanation (of course the minute dtasils are noincluded but the general picture is given, just like when God told Adam how He spoke everything into ewxistence- He didn't get down to the minute details of special creation) And the empirical evidence that gives then the smoking gun to make this a fact is????? The best I have seen is just some amazingly intelligent astrophysicists taking what has been observed iin observable time and exropolating backwards to the initial infinitely dense grapefruit size mass of matter.

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"Observable time" is somewhere around a few million years in astronomy. Unless you believe in the omphalos interpretation? And the empirical fact is the existence of the Hubble constant governing the outward movement of every observable galaxy in the universe over that past few million years.

Another flaw that the "huge explosion" model presents is that it makes the Big Bang look like it had a central point. Which is not true. Space at all times in a Big Bang model is reasonably isotropic (AFAIK) and we cannot say that the Big Bang actually started from somewhere.

Really, you have to try and pretend to be God communicating with people who do not have telescopes, microscopes and electricity to see how dauntingly difficult the job is. What I believe is that the best model within which God could give them the moral framework of relating to a theistic universe was the six-day creation model. And so He told it as such, accommodating to their complete prescientific-ness.

Well you are getting there. Do you also beleive God spoke into existence all flora and fauna in the few days before He made man but after He created the universe?

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Few days? God told creation to produce plants, fish, birds, and land animals, and creation went ahead and did as it was told - taking 4.5 billion years using the process of evolution to do so. (Funny, I'm veering towards a days-of-proclamation approach.)

shernren said:

Really, you have to try and pretend to be God communicating with people who do not have telescopes, microscopes and electricity to see how dauntingly difficult the job is. What I believe is that the best model within which God could give them the moral framework of relating to a theistic universe was the six-day creation model. And so He told it as such, accommodating to their complete prescientific-ness.



Few days? God told creation to produce plants, fish, birds, and land animals, and creation went ahead and did as it was told - taking 4.5 billion years using the process of evolution to do so. (Funny, I'm veering towards a days-of-proclamation approach.)

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And one of the primary theological reasons for using the 6-day framework was to validate Sabbath observance. Even scholars who hold to the documentary thesis agree that Genesis 1 (including the first few verses of Gen. 2) and Exodus 20 were written by the same person. That is why the 6 day work week is mentioned in both.

Whereas the Deuteronomic version of the Sabbath commandment does not mention creation, but exodus and release from slavery--also an important Sabbath theme, and one we forget too often because we tend to learn the Exodus version instead of the Deuteronomic version.

Ancient mythology, like modern science, is used to explain things. At the time Genesis and Exodus and Deuteronomy were written, the Israelites were already observing Sabbath--more or less. What these scriptures do is provide the reason why they observed Sabbath.

A reading of the prophets shows how ready they were to disobey this command and why it needed to be explained and reinforced. It is one of the major themes of the prophets, along with idolatry.

Really, you have to try and pretend to be God communicating with people who do not have telescopes, microscopes and electricity to see how dauntingly difficult the job is. What I believe is that the best model within which God could give them the moral framework of relating to a theistic universe was the six-day creation model. And so He told it as such, accommodating to their complete prescientific-ness.

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Well that is your belief, but it still says that God intentionally misled the inspired writers of His Word. He had already given man the linguistic and mental capacities to understand long long time (though in a non specific way) and all the different forms of life through a process of long slow change from a single life type. To say otherwise is to say that Adam and HIs descendants up through the Tower were functional illiterates which is not true.

And one of the primary theological reasons for using the 6-day framework was to validate Sabbath observance. Even scholars who hold to the documentary thesis agree that Genesis 1 (including the first few verses of Gen. 2) and Exodus 20 were written by the same person. That is why the 6 day work week is mentioned in both.

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Well Moses was the editor of the penteteuch and author of Most of Exodus, Leviticus Numbers and deuteronomy, but as to the book of genesis the original authors are found by looking at the term" these are the generations" or towl@dah in the original. This is the common Hebrew marker for delineating biogrtaphical material. So MOses took preexisting records and compiled them to make the book of Genesis.

Well that is your belief, but it still says that God intentionally misled the inspired writers of His Word.

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Only if you think that all storytellers, novelists, poets and songwriters are essentially liars. Why is it wrong to tell people stories that are not factually correct but are nevertheless theologically or philosophically or psychologically true? I've never understood the notion that one is decieving somebody by telling stories. Deliberate covering-up of facts, deliberate misrepresentations of facts - well, I'd usually leave that the creationist "scientist" to do that.

Aside from the frankly silly notion that God actually wrote the stories, rather than inspired the writers who actually did the writing.

Well Moses was the editor of the penteteuch and author of Most of Exodus, Leviticus Numbers and deuteronomy

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No he wasn't. The Penteteuch wasn't compiled until at least the time of Ezra. Some of the writing is earlier than that, but none of it goes back as far as Moses.

Well that is your belief, but it still says that God intentionally misled the inspired writers of His Word. He had already given man the linguistic and mental capacities to understand long long time (though in a non specific way) and all the different forms of life through a process of long slow change from a single life type. To say otherwise is to say that Adam and HIs descendants up through the Tower were functional illiterates which is not true.

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Misled? If you think our theories make God a misleader, you should know what God should have said if we are right. But I haven't seen any proof of that.

If I want to explain to an 8-year-old kid how the solar system started, within a Christian point of reference, I would say "God lit up the sun and then set the earth moving around it at just the right distance so that we wouldn't freeze to death or burn up!" If on the other hand I am delivering an undergraduate thesis on "The current state of scientific opinion on the origin of the solar system" I am going to have to hand in pages and pages' worth of material on the nebular hypothesis and dating moon and meteorite rocks and such.

If my undergrad thesis is simply "God lit up the sun!" then I would certainly be given a fail grade. And if I tried to tell an 8-year-old kid about orbital eccentricity you can bet nothing of what I said would get into his head.

When God was writing Genesis He was effectively writing to 8-year-old kids. Mind you, a typical child that age in our culture already knows about electricity and already knows that the earth is round and goes around the sun and not vice versa - which sets him or her ahead of the intellectual elite of Moses' day. So what He told them was kiddie-talk. We only consider it misleading because we expected Him to cater to our scientific knowhow and we are reading Genesis 1 as if we are reading something to be submitted to the American Journal of Astrophysics (if such a journal exists). We are judging Him by our own criteria instead of stepping into the shoes of His original audience.

shernren said:

Misled? If you think our theories make God a misleader, you should know what God should have said if we are right. But I haven't seen any proof of that.

If I want to explain to an 8-year-old kid how the solar system started, within a Christian point of reference, I would say "God lit up the sun and then set the earth moving around it at just the right distance so that we wouldn't freeze to death or burn up!" If on the other hand I am delivering an undergraduate thesis on "The current state of scientific opinion on the origin of the solar system" I am going to have to hand in pages and pages' worth of material on the nebular hypothesis and dating moon and meteorite rocks and such.

If my undergrad thesis is simply "God lit up the sun!" then I would certainly be given a fail grade. And if I tried to tell an 8-year-old kid about orbital eccentricity you can bet nothing of what I said would get into his head.

When God was writing Genesis He was effectively writing to 8-year-old kids. Mind you, a typical child that age in our culture already knows about electricity and already knows that the earth is round and goes around the sun and not vice versa - which sets him or her ahead of the intellectual elite of Moses' day. So what He told them was kiddie-talk. We only consider it misleading because we expected Him to cater to our scientific knowhow and we are reading Genesis 1 as if we are reading something to be submitted to the American Journal of Astrophysics (if such a journal exists). We are judging Him by our own criteria instead of stepping into the shoes of His original audience.

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You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to shernren again.

EDIT: YAY! 1000th post!

I think another point to keep in mind is: what if God had told us in the Bible that the Earth orbited around the sun, that it was round, and that rain came about via orographic and other processes? To those early people without the benefit of science, such descriptions would go entirely against their perspective and understanding of the world. Why would these 'early' folks believe in a book that completely contradicts what their eyes see? I think the strength of the Creation account and other biblical stories lies in the fact that they explain things as WE (as in 'all people') see them, thereby keeping them accessible to all people throughout human history.

Mallon said:

I think another point to keep in mind is: what if God had told us in the Bible that the Earth orbited around the sun, that it was round, and that rain came about via orographic and other processes? To those early people without the benefit of science, such descriptions would go entirely against their perspective and understanding of the world. Why would these 'early' folks believe in a book that completely contradicts what their eyes see? I think the strength of the Creation account and other biblical stories lies in the fact that they explain things as WE see them, thereby keeping them accessible to all people throughout human history.

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But by saying that He should have told them about small changes over a long period of time you're still assuming that He was interested in giving them (and us, by proxy) scientific conclusions. Incidentally, although I do think he was giving them the basis for a particular science, it was not a natural science. It was theology.

This, I think, leads to the crux of the problem of treating the Bible as an "answer" book. It's really not. If anything, it makes us question all the more. We call it the word of God because it is testament to God's revelation to Man. It is a standard under which theology is done. If God had given us the "answers" to origins, they still wouldn't have been any help. Evolutionary scientists would still have to study the fossil record, DNA, etc. in order to understand it, truly. This is because fossils, DNA, and all of these other things are where our real connection to evolution is founded. The Bible does provide us, however, with the commandment of God. By studying the history of the Church and its faithful (or unfaithful) observance of that commandment, we have theology (or dogmatics, anyway). Ultimately, we must find that the Word of God is our connection to God, and we would be hard pressed to find a reason to accept what natural science has to say about Him.

Whether Genesis is a mythical account (something that makes a lot of sense in the context it was delivered) or a literal history (in the modern sense), it is a communication of the Word of God as he was known to the ancient Hebrews. I think it is imperitive to determine which (myth or history) it is, lest we come to erroneous conclusions about the content of revelation. Certainly, as Gluadys pointed out, it would be quite an anachronism to interpret it as a literal history. I know you don't think myth is an honest way of presenting truth, but the simple fact is that it was a common way of presenting truth as ancient people saw it. It really isn't about you, or what you are used to in your particular age and society. It really is about who the ancient Hebrews were, and their particular age and society. This, at least, can be said as to the form in which the Word of God manifested himself to them.

Edit: Not you, Mallon. Sorry if "you" is a little ambiguous.

Only if you think that all storytellers, novelists, poets and songwriters are essentially liars. Why is it wrong to tell people stories that are not factually correct but are nevertheless theologically or philosophically or psychologically true? I've never understood the notion that one is decieving somebody by telling stories. Deliberate covering-up of facts, deliberate misrepresentations of facts - well, I'd usually leave that the creationist "scientist" to do that.

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Well I stand amazed at the dulpicitiousness of your comments. To intentionally tell someone something that is factually untrue and pass it off as true is a lie no matter how fancy you wish to dress it up. And this is a lie straight from God according to you as God told Adam He created not evolved all life and made them all within six days! Not only is it factually untrue, it is theologically, morally, ethically, philosophically untrue or lies as well. If God said He was spinning a yarn then fine but there is nothing at all within Scripture that says God was just making a parable of the first 2 chapters of Genesis to get a message across. This concept didn't occur until the late 1800's when sophists thought they knew better than God.

No he wasn't. The Penteteuch wasn't compiled until at least the time of Ezra. Some of the writing is earlier than that, but none of it goes back as far as Moses.

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Well according to the liberal theologians (most of whom I ahve heard these supposed enlightened arguments from are unbeleivers anyway), but no MOses was the editor of the penteteuch and the author of most of the last 4 books of the penteteuch.

nolidad said:

Well I stand amazed at the dulpicitiousness of your comments. To intentionally tell someone something that is factually untrue and pass it off as true is a lie no matter how fancy you wish to dress it up. And this is a lie straight from God according to you as God told Adam He created not evolved all life and made them all within six days! Not only is it factually untrue, it is theologically, morally, ethically, philosophically untrue or lies as well. If God said He was spinning a yarn then fine but there is nothing at all within Scripture that says God was just making a parable of the first 2 chapters of Genesis to get a message across. This concept didn't occur until the late 1800's when sophists thought they knew better than God.

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I think this argument has been sufficiently refuted in this thread. I'd suggest reading the rest of the thread for a direct refutation.

nolidad said:

Well according to the liberal theologians (most of whom I ahve heard these supposed enlightened arguments from are unbeleivers anyway), but no MOses was the editor of the penteteuch and the author of most of the last 4 books of the penteteuch.

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Possibly.

artybloke said:

No he wasn't. The Penteteuch wasn't compiled until at least the time of Ezra. Some of the writing is earlier than that, but none of it goes back as far as Moses.

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This thread's topic is about evolution, not who wrote the Torah. IMHO, whether or not Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible (which I believe he did) is not related to the subject of theistic evolution.

I think this argument has been sufficiently refuted in this thread. I'd suggest reading the rest of the thread for a direct refutation.

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Well you may think so, but I think not. If God was just simply making a story up to try to teach a moral or spiritual "truth" then the first 2 chapters of Genesis are unlike every other parable spoken in the Bible. When God walked among us 2 millenia ago, When He told stories, even those illiterate fisherman knew He was crafting stories--they even asked HIm why He was speaking in parables. Jesus used comparative terms to hide the truth from unbeleivers and to compare aspects or qualities of the kingdom to beleivers. The genesis account is directly opposite of what really happened if evolution were true! There is no comparison, no moral lesson can be brought out by a contradictory fabrication! No matter how you wish to slice it, dice it , or mask it with fancy terms-- God intentionally misled His people by telling them the exact opposite of wht really took place if evolution is true. And intentional untruths or factually inaccurate accounts are lies.

nolidad said:

Well I stand amazed at the dulpicitiousness of your comments. To intentionally tell someone something that is factually untrue and pass it off as true is a lie no matter how fancy you wish to dress it up.

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Question: Is Dante's Inferno a lie?

And this is a lie straight from God according to you as God told Adam He created not evolved all life and made them all within six days!

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And when did God tell any of this to Adam?

Not only is it factually untrue, it is theologically, morally, ethically, philosophically untrue or lies as well. If God said He was spinning a yarn then fine but there is nothing at all within Scripture that says God was just making a parable of the first 2 chapters of Genesis to get a message across.

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Nothing at all says he wasn't making a parable of Genesis either.

This concept didn't occur until the late 1800's when sophists thought they knew better than God.

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Oh, let me guess... Darwin, right?

Well according to the liberal theologians (most of whom I ahve heard these supposed enlightened arguments from are unbeleivers anyway), but no MOses was the editor of the penteteuch and the author of most of the last 4 books of the penteteuch.

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I'd say his editorship declined sharply in the passages after his death.

Of course, some evidence for your claim might be nice. Perhaps those liberal theologians know something you don't?

nolidad said:

Well you may think so, but I think not. If God was just simply making a story up to try to teach a moral or spiritual "truth" then the first 2 chapters of Genesis are unlike every other parable spoken in the Bible. When God walked among us 2 millenia ago, When He told stories, even those illiterate fisherman knew He was crafting stories--they even asked HIm why He was speaking in parables. Jesus used comparative terms to hide the truth from unbeleivers and to compare aspects or qualities of the kingdom to beleivers. The genesis account is directly opposite of what really happened if evolution were true! There is no comparison, no moral lesson can be brought out by a contradictory fabrication! No matter how you wish to slice it, dice it , or mask it with fancy terms-- God intentionally misled His people by telling them the exact opposite of wht really took place if evolution is true. And intentional untruths or factually inaccurate accounts are lies.

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This notion of a scientifically accurate Genesis has only arisen along with science. You assume so readily that the ancient Israelites interpreted it as a literal historical account. It could not have been so. Nobody was misled. Nobody could have been misled. The only reason you're saying these things is because you were born in the 20th century, when myths are equated with untruths. It was not always so. You have to step into the ancient perspective in order to understand.

Seriously, read this thread (or the multitude of other, related threads in this sub-forum).

The Lady Kate said:

I'd say his editorship declined sharply in the passages after his death.

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How exactly does the account of Moses' death in Deut affect the argument that the vast bulk of the Pentateuch was written by him?

Scholar in training said:

How exactly does the account of Moses' death in Deut affect the argument that the vast bulk of the Pentateuch was written by him?

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I think the bit about him dying and thus not being able to write the later bits might be the key.

Great. Now I have to wipe soda off my screen. Thanks a lot, guys.

KerrMetric said:

I think the bit about him dying and thus not being able to write the later bits might be the key.

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Maybe I should say that again:

How exactly does the account of Moses' death in Deut affect the argument that the vast bulk of the Pentateuch was written by him?

Call me crazy, but I don't think the record of Moses' death says anything about what was written in earlier chapters of Deut.

nolidad said:

Well you may think so, but I think not. If God was just simply making a story up to try to teach a moral or spiritual "truth" then the first 2 chapters of Genesis are unlike every other parable spoken in the Bible. When God walked among us 2 millenia ago, When He told stories, even those illiterate fisherman knew He was crafting stories--they even asked HIm why He was speaking in parables. Jesus used comparative terms to hide the truth from unbeleivers and to compare aspects or qualities of the kingdom to beleivers. The genesis account is directly opposite of what really happened if evolution were true! There is no comparison, no moral lesson can be brought out by a contradictory fabrication! No matter how you wish to slice it, dice it , or mask it with fancy terms-- God intentionally misled His people by telling them the exact opposite of wht really took place if evolution is true. And intentional untruths or factually inaccurate accounts are lies.

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So that bit about the smallest seed grows to be the biggest plant is a lie by Jeus?