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

[nolidad]

gluadys writes:

The newness of this notion is expressed by Blaise Pascal: "The infinity of these great spaces terrifies me!"

Actually teh infinity of space is first spoken of by Job.

mr williams writes:

i'll bet you've never taken an hebrew Bible class with a Jewish professor. after that experience you would not say such nonsense.
one several levels, unbelivers have a better understanding of Scripture than i have seen expressed here by YECists, who tend to have very little knowledge of the cultural and linguistic background to the text, and who rush through exegesis to application so fast that they really miss the big points.

well actually if they understood they would be beleivers now wouldn't they!

As Jesus said:

39Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

And Paul said:

2For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

and if you believe as the person i quoted did, that unbelievers can not teach us anything about the Scriptures-why did you attend the 2nd class, to waste your time?

Cause He was a bible beleiving Christian when I sat under him!!

how can words transcend cultural boundaries?

because they are Gods words and they are not held captive to a cultural context or understanding in regards to tehir import to us!! IOW When Paul worte about woman shouldn't be leaders inthe church over men--it just wasn't a "cultural " thing like liberal scholars declare.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

well actually if they understood they would be beleivers now wouldn't they!

there are levels to understanding.

it is possible to understand the text of the Bible without believing it applies to you.

It is possible to understand the Hebrew Bible with extraordinary depth and not see Christ taught in it. Hence the example of a Jewish prof, i've deeply enjoyed studying with such gifted people yet realized that a simple Christian farmer with his hand on the plow under the work of the Holy Spirit understood Scripture on a level that exceeded those profs. but that doesn't negate the value of their learning. only makes the distinction of levels of understanding a necessity.

 

[shernren]

Well I hate to break this news to you-- but unbeleivers are not blessed by God with the ability to understand the Scriptures--It is a supernatural book which requires a person to be filled with the Spirit in order to beleive and fully understand it! So sorry Darwin et al. really cannot help us in understanding Scripture-- and that includes those areas of ther bible that deal with Scientific things.

To believe that there are areas of the Bible intended to teach us science is to read a scientism bias into the Bible. And scientism was invented by the atheists to justify their disbelief in God. Shucks, the biggest weapon in the neo-creationist arsenal was invented by the enemy ...

So is the "raqiya' " of Genesis 1:6 different from "raqiya' shamayim"? No! It is raqiya' shamayim - just that it hasn't been explicitly named shamayim yet. Note that God creates and then names all the way - creates day and night and then "names" them, creates land and sea and then "names" them. The raqiya' of Genesis 1:6 is only called raqiya' not because it is fundamentally not raqiya' shamayim, but because it only acquires the identity of raqiya' shamayim in Genesis 1:8.

And also to differentiate it from the shamayim He created in 1:1--this is a new act of callign forth and this one is what we call the atmosphere surrounding this planet.

I'll grant that. I'm not sure whether they are intended to be the same thing. But your next comment I can't agree with.

Genesis 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament [raqiya'] of the heaven [shamayim] to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years

Genesis 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament [raqiya'] of heaven [shamayim].

Nope that would be the shamayim he created in 1:1 not 1:6-8!

You need to do a Hebrew word study-- you will find out that the more literal translation is that the birds are to fly to the face of the shamayim. The raqia was used to seperate the waters and also appeared to be some tyope of matrix that could be seen though transluscent !!

Okay, let's trace the shamayim's of Genesis 1.

1:1 - shamayim translated heavens. I don't know whether this is to be identified with raqiya shamayim. Fine.
1:8 - raqiya shamayim, translated the firmament called Heaven.
1:14 and 1:18 - raqiya shamayim, translated the firmament of the heavens, in the first instance the sun, moon and stars are in it, in the second instance the birds are to fly across its face (I agree with that - it's the one piece of solid interpretation I've ever heard from YECism).

Note that in 1:1 God creates "the heavens and the earth". This is easily a hyperbolic description of "all creation", and not literally "the heavens, and, the earth", in the same way that "from Dan to Beersheba" refers to all Israel and doesn't expect us to look at a map and draw a line at Dan and another line at Beersheba and shade everything in between. And even from a YEC point of view there is nothing wrong with paraphrasing Genesis 1:1 as "In the beginning God created everything there is".

My contention is that while I'm not too sure about 1:1, the raqiya shamayim of 1:8, 1:14, and 1:18 are the same. In Genesis 1:6, God introduces us to the raqiya' He created. In Genesis 1:8, God says "This raqiya's name is Shamayim, Heaven." In Genesis 1:14, God tells the raqiya named Shamayim (in the same way that "the man Peter" literally means "the man with the name of Peter", I see no problem with "raqiya shamayim" meaning "the raqiya' which is named shamayim") to let the sun, moon, and stars dwell in it. In Genesis 1:18, God tells the raqiya named Shamayim that birds will fly across its surface. The images of the raqiya Shamayim match up perfectly in 1:6, 8, 14, and 18. Sound exegesis and nothing a YEC cannot agree with - to say that 8, 14, and 18 refer to the same raqiya' shamayim hardly amounts to an argument against a young earth.

Your contention, on the other hand, is that the raqiya' shamayim of 1:14 and 18 are to be identified with 1:1, and that the raqiya' shamayim of 1:6 and 8 refer to a completely different raqiya' shamayim. As with your reading of Psalm 104, you have to engage in extremely convoluted interpretation to achieve this. You have to ignore the facts that:

- in Genesis 1:1, "the heavens and the earth" form a hyperbolic analogy for the whole universe
- there is no good reason for the raqiya' named shamayim of 1:6 and 1:8 to be any different from the raqiya' shamayim of 1:14 and 1:18 given that they both have the same nature (raqiya, firmament) and name (shamayim, Heaven).
- there is no good reason for the raqiya' shamayim of 1:14 and 1:18 to be the shamayim of 1:1 since the first is never explicitly or implicitly created as a raqiya': therefore if you believe that they are the same you have read the word "firmament" into "the heavens" of 1:1 with no good reason.

Even without a single shred of appeal to science your interpretation is left wanting.

Raqia is a vaulted dome!! It is a strretched outthiness:

But once again every time raqia is used in teh bible it is not speaking of the same thing. There are differing raqias as a concordance shows.

And does calling the sky a vaulted dome make sense? Only if you are operating in a prescientific ANE cosmological framework, not in our modern scientific cosmological framework.

Well that is interposing your own beliefs in t9o teh Scripture. What we do know is that the clear language of Genesis 6-9 speaks of a global flood and so doesn't the geologic evidence.

Show me where in Genesis 1-11 does it imply that humanity had ever went out of the Meso valley.

Simply because you are asking us to beleive in miracles that have not even an implication is Scripture- and the science I use is science that can be tested repeated and observed over and over and over again tha tis science NOT falsely so called!

But you do admit that you use science to interpret Scripture, don't you? I want you to see that. You cannot claim to not use science to interpret Scripture simply because it is impossible. Any person living in any time and in any place and in any culture when confronted with any written word will interpret it using the science of his time. If you can recognize and admit that, it's a big step in your ongoing neocreationism detoxification.

Then we'll get back to the issue of the global flood.

Because God created not evolved-- I do not rely on unbeleivers to tell me what Genesis means, and though YEC scientists cannot give all the answers as to why evolution is wrong (they are outnumbered about 999 to 1) we just know that it is-- and true science will never contradict or cause us to have to come up with "alternative" interpretations of passages to support what supposed science found.

Actually, you're the one with "alternative" interpretations of passages to support what supposed science found. Do you believe in outer space? Do you believe that the heavens of Genesis 1:1 are outer space? Then you have come up with an "alternative" interpretation of Genesis 1:1, since for over 4,000 years humanity never conceived of an outer space (as gluadys pointed out) and would have read those heavens as simply being the sky.

You believe God created a vast universe full of empty vacuum. You believe it based on science. The Hebrews would never have believed it.
I believe God created using evolution. I believe it based on science. But the Hebrews would never have believed it either.

What's the difference?

I newver said nature sinned- I just said it was cursed because of man. Where do you get this idea that I said nature sinned?

Which is exactly what I was saying: that nature is cursed for having to be governed by sinful man. You protested in post 730 where I said creation was punished for man's sin, so I assumed that you believe that nature had sinned too.

Okay then direct me to a website that charts the measurements of radioemissions from this SNR1987A over the (I'll be nice) past 100,000 years!!! It will nedd to show how often they measured the rate and verified it by counting the emissions over the past 100,000 years to show that the decay rate for SNR has remained constantr over the past 100,000 years--do that and you win!!!

Show me a website that can tell me the exact date when the hyperdecay of all radionuclides on earth happened and how the heat was dissipated. I can make perverse evidential demands too.

Simple answer?? You and I both know that if we go to the sacriptures without any bias and just seek to learn what it says we come up with the following conclusions

1. Six 24 hour days for all of creation
2. Earth first then the stars
3. An atmosphere to seperate earth bound from airbound water
4. Things were specifically created and ordered to reproduce after their own kind
6. Material universe is 6-10 K years
7. All animal life restricted to fruits and veggies at first.
8. Man fell god cursed creation as a result
9. God destroyed the world with a flood and only spared 8 adults and 2 of each kind of animal and 7 pairs of the clean animals.

But it never tells us that these have to be history in order to be true. You never read in Scripture that myths are false: you "learned" that from the best atheist minds who desperately want to condemn religion and so came up with the idea of equating myth to fallacy in anthropology (AFAIK). Kinda like if the US were to buy nukes from Iran.

These ideas of a local flood and long ages were unheard of amongst beleivers until Darwin and Wallace and Lyell et al. came on the scene!! These were unbeleivers- The same Biblew you say you respect also says they are in darkness- why should we trust them with what God meant when He inspired the writers to write??

You've got it all wrong.

Cuvier and Agassiz believed in a global flood.
They went into geology.
They couldn't make sense of the evidence.
They developed the theory of the Ice Ages
and then Old-Earth Creationism.
Both were staunch anti-evolutionists
but believed that the earth wasn't merely 6,000 years old.

You'd like us to believe that there is a clean, thick line drawn down the middle between purehearted YEC (TM) True Christians and atheistic evolutionist old-earth liars and compromisers. The examples of Cuvier and Agassiz tear that line off the picture.

So you choose to beleive that God is only going to destroy the mesopotamian valley are at teh end of time??

Shucks, I should go study my Bible for another 30 years, then I can make immense fun of my opponents by putting words in their mouths too!

I said that the flood was universal in terms of humanity. All humanity besides Noah was killed. It happened that all humanity was in the Meso valley at that time so that God only needed to destroy the Meso valley. Today, if God intends to destroy all humanity, He will destroy the whole earth.

 

[gluadys]

gluadys writes:



Actually teh infinity of space is first spoken of by Job.

Reference please. Is the word used "infinity" or a something implying "very large"? Does the word for "space" imply "outer space" to anyone other than a post-Copernican?

 

[2NCBrother]

Evolution is more discriptive of our ability to learn that that of primordial soup brining forth animals. It wasn't until "man" evolved spiritually that "the man" was created.

Jesus said that we should scrutinize every little detail of every scripture...

Let us therefore apply this kind of scrutiny to the account of the creation of mankind in Genesis 1. (If you are using the King James version of the bible to authenticate this, some of it may not follow to a tee since we used the Westcott-Hort and Mouce for athenticy. This helps to remove the ambiguity and preserves the original text that has been lost in the translation.)

26 And God went on to say: Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every moving [animal] that is moving upon the earth.

27 And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God's image he created him; male and female he created them

28 Further, God blessed them and God said to them: Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth (Genesis 1).

Now at first sight this looks like a rather repetitive account of the creation of mankind. But let us examine these verses a bit closer since they may just hold the secret to our very existence within them.

26 Let us make man in our image according to our likeness (Genesis 1).

Md) man
wnmlcb in our image
wntwmdk according to our likeness

Where b means 'in' and k means 'as', and the root Mlc means: Shade, shadow, image, likeness, and the root hmd means: Likeness.

27 And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God's image he created him, male and female he created them (Genisis 1)

Md)h the man
wmlcb in his image
Myhl) Mlcb in image of God.

So ‘man’ was created by 'us' in 'our image' according to 'our likeness', an image of several beings, but 'the man' was created by 'God' in God's image, an image of one being, not in 'our image' and not according to any likeness. This is precisely the distinction that we have just made above. Namely, 'man' is generic, made by a plurality of Gods and made in the image of a plurality of Gods, 'our image', whereas Adam, is unique, made by Jehovah God himself and made in the image of the one and only God, Jehovah. So 'man' stands for mankind, which was Homo sapiens, and 'the man' stands for the one off Adam.

Taking this knowledge a step further, here is a comparative table of the two successive accounts of our creation. This breaks the two accounts down in an illustrative way to show the power of the omission principal of biblical understandings...(Also, scrutinize every word for they differ somewhat.)

Verse 26 Verse 27

Who does the creating? Vs 26 = Us (God and the holy angels) Vs 27 = God himself

In whose image? Vs 26 = In our image (the image of the angels) Vs 27 = The image of God himself

Name? Vs 26 = man Vs 27 = the man

Blessed? Vs 26 = No Vs 27 = Yes

Be fruitful become many fill the earth? Vs 26 = No Vs 27 = Yes

What do they have in subjection?
Vs 26 = Fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every moving [animal] that is moving upon the earth
Vs 27 = fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living [being] that is moving upon the earth

So verse 27 and 28 are not merely a repetition of the creative act of verse 26.
Verses 27 and 28 are the creation of something different from verse 26.
Verse 26 is the creation of 'man', of mankind, of pre-adamic man. He was created by the angels in the image of the angels, whereas verse 27 is the creation of 'the man', Adam, he was created by God in the image of God.

God is perfect, the angels are not, and these are two different images and therefore two difference creations.

Pre-adamic man was not blessed, Adam was. Adam was blessed because he was spiritual; the blessing truly is the everlasting inheritance as a son of God.

Adam was God's son, pre-adamic man were sons of the angels. Pre-adamic man never did fill the earth. Adamic man, the sons of Adam certainly have - almost to capacity right now!

Adam had in subjection every living being moving upon the earth, whereas pre-adamic man had in subjection every moving animal that is moving upon the earth. In other words Adam was to have pre-adamic man, who was a moving non-spiritual being (animalistic) in his subjection.

Modern Archaeology has advanced to the point where we can trace the history of man back to an origin around 2.8 million years ago. So God introduced himself to mankind through Adam and Eve, around 6,000 years ago, when mankind had developed spiritually to the point where he was ready to learn directly from God. When mankind was ready for spiritual nursery school, God introduced himself to us through Adam and Eve.

 

[Willtor]

. . .

Adam had in subjection every living being moving upon the earth, whereas pre-adamic man had in subjection every moving animal that is moving upon the earth. In other words Adam was to have pre-adamic man, who was a moving non-spiritual being (animalistic) in his subjection.

Modern Archaeology has advanced to the point where we can trace the history of man back to an origin around 2.8 million years ago. So God introduced himself to mankind through Adam and Eve, around 6,000 years ago, when mankind had developed spiritually to the point where he was ready to learn directly from God. When mankind was ready for spiritual nursery school, God introduced himself to us through Adam and Eve.

I don't quite understand either of these paragraphs. Mostly the first, though. Could you expand on this? What does it mean for Adam to subject his contemporaries?

 

[shernren]

C'mon !! Evolution does expect everything to keep mitasting and form new species which eventually form new genera and phyla etc. Evolution has declared that single cell life evolved into the biodiversity we have today! Evolution says fish became reptiles which became birds and reptiles became mammals and thecodonts eventually became ausdtrolopithecines which eventually split into pongids and homo lines-- so please stop with the smokescreens. If they weren't trying to evolve the fruitfly--why did they keep force mutating the poor creatures over thousands of generations??? C'mon I may be dumb--but I ain't stupid!!

I don't know how to "mitaste" anything.

Anyway.

Let me reiterate my "special creation of races" argument to show just how ridiculous nolidad's understanding of evolution is.

[parody on]

teh YEC theory that all peopel decended from Adaam is false!!!

[alright, alright, I'll at least spell properly.]

The Chinese couldn't possible have descended from Adam. To claim so is an evolutionary theory.

Firstly, a non-Chinese cannot give birth to a Chinese. How can I prove that? Well, if two Chinese parents mate, their children will be Chinese. Their grand-children will also be Chinese. Their great-grandchildren as well! So, since a Chinese can never give birth to a non-Chinese, how can a non-Chinese give birth to a Chinese?

Secondly, God told Adam to reproduce after his kind. Therefore God told Adam to make human babies. God never commanded Adam to make the Chinese race, just humans, and therefore for Adam to make the Chinese race instead of humans is a violation of God's created order!

Thirdly, if the theory is right, then a non-Chinese must have given birth to the first Chinese. For the reasons shown above this is illogical. Furthermore, nobody has ever observed this happening! Therefore they have no proof that the Chinese descended from the non-Chinese!

Fourthly, it doesn't make a difference that the Chinese genome is very similar to the genome of other humans! That doesn't prove that they were evolved! They could have been designed with the same design as other humans as well!

[parody off]

Now the parallels are explained:

1.
Just because a Chinese cannot give birth to a non-Chinese, doesn't mean that a non-Chinese cannot give birth to a Chinese.
Just because a fruit fly species cannot evolve into a non-fruit fly species, doesn't mean that a non-fruit fly species cannot evolve into a fruit fly species.

2.
Just because Adam was told to reproduce and produce humans doesn't mean he couldn't produce Chinese, since Chinese are also humans.
Just because fish reproduce into other fishes doesn't prove that they cannot evolve into amphibians. We can consider amphibians as fishes with systems that enable them to walk and breathe on land, reptiles as amphibians which can lay eggs and rear young on land, etc .... Every descended species rightly belongs within the clade of its progenitor species: the nested hierarchy is a powerful proof for evolution.

3.
Just because we didn't observe something doesn't mean it didn't happen.

4.
self-explanatory.

My proposition is that anything labelled "science falsely called" by creationists is really science falsely understood by creationists.

 

[gluadys]

My proposition is that anything labelled "science falsely called" by creationists is really science falsely understood by creationists.

 

[nolidad]

mrwilliams11 writes:

It is possible to understand the Hebrew Bible with extraordinary depth and not see Christ taught in it. Hence the example of a Jewish prof, i've deeply enjoyed studying with such gifted people yet realized that a simple Christian farmer with his hand on the plow under the work of the Holy Spirit understood Scripture on a level that exceeded those profs. but that doesn't negate the value of their learning. only makes the distinction of levels of understanding a necessity.

I agree!! I would gladly sit under an accomplished Hebrew Rabbi to learn the Jewish thought for language and how their culture operated. When I sat under the teachings of Dr.. Fruchtenbaum for "The life of Christ from a Jewish [erspective-- it made the gospels so much more alive than I ever knew before!!


shernren writes:

I don't know how to "mitaste" anything.

my poor spelling- it was supposed to be mutating!!

Secondly, God told Adam to reproduce after his kind. Therefore God told Adam to make human babies. God never commanded Adam to make the Chinese race, just humans, and therefore for Adam to make the Chinese race instead of humans is a violation of God's created order!

I am glad this is a parody!!

Just because a Chinese cannot give birth to a non-Chinese, doesn't mean that a non-Chinese cannot give birth to a Chinese.
Just because a fruit fly species cannot evolve into a non-fruit fly species, doesn't mean that a non-fruit fly species cannot evolve into a fruit fly species.

Great orwellian doublespeak!!! Chinese can give birth to non chinese if anywhere in their gene pool their is nonmongoloidian descendants!! Its called a recessive gene popping out in the dominant!!

Just because Adam was told to reproduce and produce humans doesn't mean he couldn't produce Chinese, since Chinese are also humans.

Well then this brings me to something I have ponder all day on a statement of yours. You said:

I said that the flood was universal in terms of humanity. All humanity besides Noah was killed. It happened that all humanity was in the Meso valley at that time so that God only needed to destroy the Meso valley. Today, if God intends to destroy all humanity, He will destroy the whole earth.

If you really beleive that all of humanity was located in the mesopotamian valley when Noahs flood occured you have placed yourself on the horns of an intractable dilemna! Why? You also freely admit science is correct in describing the ascent of man form austrolopithecus. Well they do have cave drawings in Europe that they say date back to 7-10,000 years B.C. which puts humanity into Europe approx. 4,000 years BEFORE the flood!! So your two beleifs are at odds with themselves!!!
For man had to migrate from the Meso valley to Europe and that would have taken time as well-- so would you like to come up with yet anothyer "interpretation" of what you think God meant for the flood???

Just because we didn't observe something doesn't mean it didn't happen.

This is a generally true statement! What it does mean is that we cannot conclusively prove HOW or WHEN something happened!!

4.
self-explanatory.

I said that teh Chinese were descended from Adam through Noah through Ham!! Just read the bibleit will show you how Asia, Africa, Europe and by extension the New World much later were colonized!!

To believe that there are areas of the Bible intended to teach us science is to read a scientism bias into the Bible. And scientism was invented by the atheists to justify their disbelief in God. Shucks, the biggest weapon in the neo-creationist arsenal was invented by the enemy ...

So let me get this straight:

Science is the study of the natural world. We agree.

God is the divine creator of the natural realm. I hope we agree.

All that we can see, feel, touch, taste in the natural world was ordered by God. I think we agree.

God definitely has things to say about the natural world in His book. But it can't be scientific because to say that would be reading "scientism" into the bible??

So I suppose we should accept the criticisms of secular historians as well and dsay the bible does not deal with history as well!!

Wow!!! I don't even know how to respond to such an off the wall statement like yours!! You should teach my wife how do to that-- she would not beleive that someone could make me speechless!

Note that in 1:1 God creates "the heavens and the earth". This is easily a hyperbolic description of "all creation", and not literally "the heavens, and, the earth", in the same way that "from Dan to Beersheba" refers to all Israel and doesn't expect us to look at a map and draw a line at Dan and another line at Beersheba and shade everything in between. And even from a YEC point of view there is nothing wrong with paraphrasing Genesis 1:1 as "In the beginning God created everything there is".

Here I cannot stand firm on! For this could be an opening statment and then the rest of the chapter fills in the blanks of this opening statement but I disagree with that thought simply because of the construct of Genesis 1B and the earth weas tohow wavh bohuw- that is enough to convince met hat Genesis 1:1 a is an intial creation and the shamayim was just an empty vastness!!

Your contention, on the other hand, is that the raqiya' shamayim of 1:14 and 18 are to be identified with 1:1, and that the raqiya' shamayim of 1:6 and 8 refer to a completely different raqiya' shamayim. As with your reading of Psalm 104, you have to engage in extremely convoluted interpretation to achieve this. You have to ignore the facts that:

Well "my contention" comes from Hebrew linguisdtic sacholars and Hebrew historians. And you miss the point of the whole matter. Genesis 1:1 God creates a heaven.

vses3-5 God seperates the light from the dartkness in this newly created heaven

vse 6: 6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

He calls forth something new in this verse that wasn't present before-- an expanse that divided the waters! The expanse is called raqia-which is defined as a vaulted dome or stretched out thiness! Now this new thing which did not exist before God also calls shamayim as well! So now in the first 6 verses of Genesais we have two heavens created. and for the rest of the OT AFAIK htey use a lkinguistic tool to help identify the two.

In Genesis 1:14, God tells the raqiya named Shamayim (in the same way that "the man Peter" literally means "the man with the name of Peter", I see no problem with "raqiya shamayim" meaning "the raqiya' which is named shamayim")

I could agree as well if God had so worded it that way but He didn't.
1:14 14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

God says here that let there be the stars in the expanse of the heaven (remember raqia has several meanings and context determines which one it is)

Now 1:20-- 20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

This is a different construct of the Hebrew and firmament is not an adjectival noun of heaven! K&D and Dr. Fruchtenbaum render this that teh birds were commanded to fly in the face of the domed expanse called heaven.

If you really really are interested I will see if I can dig up the nuance diiference of these two passages. But if you want you can do a search of Hebrew commetnary of Genesis and see thaT many will say this as well.

And does calling the sky a vaulted dome make sense? Only if you are operating in a prescientific ANE cosmological framework, not in our modern scientific cosmological framework.

Or you are talking about an antedeluvian ecology which was vastly different than ours and there would havew been some type of matrix holding the waters God divided in 1:6 and then had come crashing down in Chapter 6-9

But you do admit that you use science to interpret Scripture, don't you? I want you to see that. You cannot claim to not use science to interpret Scripture simply because it is impossible. Any person living in any time and in any place and in any culture when confronted with any written word will interpret it using the science of his time. If you can recognize and admit that, it's a big step in your ongoing neocreationism detoxification.

I freely admit that I use TRUE science to understand Scripture i nplaces. Though not a textbook on science--When God wrote of matters scientific- they wqere 100% correct and factual and not allegorical or mythical or whathave you!! Once again God is the author of TRUE science so why should I not use methods God ordained to understand His word!

Actually, you're the one with "alternative" interpretations of passages to support what supposed science found. Do you believe in outer space? Do you believe that the heavens of Genesis 1:1 are outer space? Then you have come up with an "alternative" interpretation of Genesis 1:1, since for over 4,000 years humanity never conceived of an outer space (as gluadys pointed out) and would have read those heavens as simply being the sky.

Been there, done that and that turkey just won't fly!! All Gluadys did is point out that some modern liberal nominal beleivers that are well educated in mid east history have sought to impose upon the Hebrew race and the pre Noahic peoples the common beleif of the day when the Biblwe shows the elect beleived different! I fully know that most neighboring cultures have wrecords showing they beleived in a domed sky and the stars were like painted on that dome. But to say the Hebrew and pre Hebrew elect beleive this is utter nonsense!! Especially when so many Jewish linguists have so stated iotherwise. Teh beleif in the three heavens of the bible (air, space, Gods throne) dates back to well before the kings and judges and patriarchs!

Show me where in Genesis 1-11 does it imply that humanity had ever went out of the Meso valley.

I can't-- nor can you show me anywhere that they did not leave the Meso region either. But to again point out your dilemna-- archeologists unearthed the cave drawings and dated them back to over 4,000 years before the flood- so we have sin and death outside the Meso region in your beleif systems!! Now you have to reconcile them. And even if they never did leave the fertile crescent-- God said He was going to destroy the world, and He emphasized that when He said everything that hath the breath of life in it!!! So according to Gods own Words only the survivors of the ark were spared!!!!

But it never tells us that these have to be history in order to be true. You never read in Scripture that myths are false: you "learned" that from the best atheist minds who desperately want to condemn religion and so came up with the idea of equating myth to fallacy in anthropology (AFAIK). Kinda like if the US were to buy nukes from Iran.

Hate to break the news to you-- but beleivers have been seperating myth form truth for alot longer than the modern era!! When the first false doctrines starting rolling out of Babel is when we started defending truth form lies!! There may have been many different names over the millenia to call the "myths" but there were still all the same-- untruths!!

But it never tells us that these have to be history in order to be true. You never read in Scripture that myths are false: you "learned" that from the best atheist minds who desperately want to condemn religion and so came up with the idea of equating myth to fallacy in anthropology (AFAIK). Kinda like if the US were to buy nukes from Iran.

And the Bible never says its okay to drive an SUV or a hybrid!! So maybe you better not trust those things. I can rest assured when a passage says: "and God said let there be..." And then goesd about putting specific seperations and numerical listings--it is very very very accurate historically. You are making the charge now try to prove your claim!!!

You'd like us to believe that there is a clean, thick line drawn down the middle between purehearted YEC (TM) True Christians and atheistic evolutionist old-earth liars and compromisers. The examples of Cuvier and Agassiz tear that line off the picture.

Do you think Darwin and Asa Grey were the first to vccome up with these ideas?? I hope not. there was growing thought and theorizing on these ideas- they were not readily accepted but the idea of an old earth (ont he beleivers side) and naturalistic evolution (on the unbeleivers side) were beginnig to grow-- I use Darwin as a demarcation for his book help popularize the idea and got the balls of both these courts rolling faster than ever before. Okay now?? UNderstand?

Shucks, I should go study my Bible for another 30 years, then I can make immense fun of my opponents by putting words in their mouths too!

Well I am just making a very logical assumption here!! Since you beleive that teh old world that persihed with water was just the Mesopotamioan valley-- it would be only normal to think that you beleive the judgment of fire on the same world that is reserved for it would be the Merso valley as well-- it would be consistent thinking on your part!

what was their battle with? instantaneous creation OTOH, and an eternal universe OTOH.

No the numerous pagan beleifs of their day that the Devil kept trying to sneak in and dilute the pure Word of God through his human agents--just like he still does today. Compromise here, allegorize there, thesis, antithesis, synthesis a little and beofe you know it-- the biblew is rewritten to match the modern thought!!

 

[nolidad]

Reference please. Is the word used "infinity" or a something implying "very large"? Does the word for "space" imply "outer space" to anyone other than a post-Copernican?

Job 22:12

And please do not take my word alone for it-- Go to some Hebrew web sigfhts for their commenatry- you will find some who hold to your concept and others (more to teh orthodox side I would imagine) who hold to the beleif Job had a "premodern" basic concept of outer space. Not in any detail as modern man does but He knew the stars were in the 2nd heaven and God was in the third heaven! And the birds were in the first heaven!

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I freely admit that I use TRUE science to understand Scripture i nplaces. Though not a textbook on science--When God wrote of matters scientific- they wqere 100% correct and factual and not allegorical or mythical or whathave you!! Once again God is the author of TRUE science so why should I not use methods God ordained to understand His word!

So rather than God using the ANE cosmology to teach spiritual truths, God is teaching true science in a flat earth, geocentric solar system, solid firmament etc etc. so despite your protestations that the Bible is not a science book, that is exactly how you are treating it.

once again i will point out that this is a modern hermeneutic that has it's origin in the scottish common sense philosophy used by Princeton seminary profs to do battle with the rising geology and liberal theology.





Hate to break the news to you-- but beleivers have been seperating myth form truth for alot longer than the modern era!! When the first false doctrines starting rolling out of Babel is when we started defending truth form lies!! There may have been many different names over the millenia to call the "myths" but there were still all the same-- untruths!!

myth is not opposed to truth.
it is opposed to logos, logic, science, history, factualness. it is a fundamental way of looking at the world. you are so caught up in the modern logos mentality that you can't even see you are projection your own ideas back 4K years into a very different culture.

the best evidence?
storytellers.

No the numerous pagan beleifs of their day that the Devil kept trying to sneak in and dilute the pure Word of God through his human agents--just like he still does today. Compromise here, allegorize there, thesis, antithesis, synthesis a little and beofe you know it-- the biblew is rewritten to match the modern thought!!

always with the extreme moralization of knowledge, believing things is either godly or demonic, there is never the opportunity to share to try to come to grips with the world of ideas. it is always this radical manicheanistic kingdom of light versus the kingdom of darkness metaphor. epistemology as ethics.

 

[2NCBrother]

I don't quite understand either of these paragraphs. Mostly the first, though. Could you expand on this? What does it mean for Adam to subject his contemporaries?

I cannot post all of it here but you can visit our page regarding this understanding. Since I cannot post any links yet, you will have to sort this out: www
truebiblecode
.com
/understanding1

Blessings

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I cannot post all of it here but you can visit our page regarding this understanding. Since I cannot post any links yet, you will have to sort this out: www
truebiblecode
.com
/understanding1

Blessings

what a strange, unreadable, cultlike site.

This teaching site has around 45 lessons that take you through the basic (corrected, re-corrected and then corrected again) literal bible understandings of the 4th true Christian church, the Lord's Witnesses.

from somewhere on: http://truebiblecode.com/

looks like a JW's offshoot group.
another crazy site.

 

[Willtor]

what a strange, unreadable, cultlike site.

from somewhere on: http://truebiblecode.com/

looks like a JW's offshoot group.
another crazy site.

That's what it looks like to me.

2NCBrother, did you read the Creed statement you signed to get a "Christian" icon?

 

[gluadys]

Job 22:12

And please do not take my word alone for it-- Go to some Hebrew web sigfhts for their commenatry- you will find some who hold to your concept and others (more to teh orthodox side I would imagine) who hold to the beleif Job had a "premodern" basic concept of outer space. Not in any detail as modern man does but He knew the stars were in the 2nd heaven and God was in the third heaven! And the birds were in the first heaven!

22:12
Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!

Nothing here that shows the writer of Job did not assume the standard ANE cosmology. No mention of infinity--just "the height of heaven". No mention of outer space. Not even any mention of second and third heavens.

Looks like another example of interpretation by anachronism.

What do you make of v. 14?

 

[nolidad]

mr williams writes:

So rather than God using the ANE cosmology to teach spiritual truths, God is teaching true science in a flat earth, geocentric solar system, solid firmament etc etc. so despite your protestations that the Bible is not a science book, that is exactly how you are treating it.

I treat the scientific parts of the bible as teraching science yes, just like I treat teh historical parts of the bible as history.

What is an ANE cosmology by the way Ancinet Near east??

The Bible does not teach a flat earth, it does teach a domed atmosphere pre-flood, and inthe sense that teh eart his the center of Gods attention--yes the earth is the center not just of the solar system, but of creation in that sense.

once again i will point out that this is a modern hermeneutic that has it's origin in the scottish common sense philosophy used by Princeton seminary profs to do battle with the rising geology and liberal theology.

Well it is a hermeneutic (literal exegetical hermeneutic vs. allegorical) that has been around since the writings starting being compiled, and yes creationism as a form of apologetic really got going in the 1800's with the rising tide of secular thought attacking the bible. Just like in the first century they diodn't have it but they did have an extensive apologetic on gnosticism which we don't have that much use of today. The body of Christ will be given the proper defenses for the Word by the Holy Spirit when the enemy raises up attacks against it!

myth is not opposed to truth.
it is opposed to logos, logic, science, history, factualness. it is a fundamental way of looking at the world. you are so caught up in the modern logos mentality that you can't even see you are projection your own ideas back 4K years into a very different culture.

Well then you are opposed to God for Jesus said the word is not inspired myth but inspired logos. The pagan cultures after the dispersion at Babel made upi myth (like hercules and gilgamesh) but there has always been the truth that God inspired people to write down even as Peter said. God is not a big story teller-- and the times Jesus did tell stories (parables) the purpose He said was to hide the truth from unbeleivers!!!

And before I go down this "myth " path anymore- I want an explicit definition of what yuo mean when you use the term myth and I also want to know what the person meant when they said thew physical resurreftion was both historical and myth as well!! untilthen I shall notr answer anynmore about "myth"

always with the extreme moralization of knowledge, believing things is either godly or demonic, there is never the opportunity to share to try to come to grips with the world of ideas. it is always this radical manicheanistic kingdom of light versus the kingdom of darkness metaphor. epistemology as ethics.

That is because Jesus Himself said Iam THE way THE truth and THE life, not A way A way and A life!! And Jesus said either things are truth or they are untruth!!

And Jesus was crucified by the religioud crowd of His day cause they hated His declaring "this radicalmanicheastic kingdom of light versus the kingdom of darkness" reality not metaphor!! If it was good enough for God in human flesh-- it is good enough for pitiful me who stumbles forward in trying to honor His name and bring HIm glory. There is no thesis, antithesis, synthesis when it comes to the Word of God!! As one preacher once said :anything LESS than God is GODLESS!"

, there is never the opportunity to share to try to come to grips with the world of ideas.

When it comes to understanding God or how to live to please HIm--you are right I wish not to come to grips. Your problem is that you think the bible is like other books and accounts of other civilizations. It is not-- It isa Gods Word penned by men to give a true account of how He created, How he is sovereign, how He DEMANDS us to live and howe to please HIM and highest-- HOW He is glorified above all else!! Teh writers wrote as God instructed not as common culture dictated-- ungodly culture is just that--cultures who twited and altered the truth because they left the knowlege of the one true God and so seperated themselves from HIS revelation. It just saddens me that you want ot trake the uinspired revelation of God and equate it with pagan cosmologies and moralities and ethics.

Well I Am off line for a fewe days-- I Am with my fellow men in the praise team going to perform at a mens conference! We are going to revel in a literal Word of God!!!


gluadys writes:

Nothing here that shows the writer of Job did not assume the standard ANE cosmology. No mention of infinity--just "the height of heaven". No mention of outer space. Not even any mention of second and third heavens.

Well let us see- it is modern liberal niminal christian "scholars" who have imposed the "standard ANE cosmolgy" on the Hebrewe nation and the patriarchs and the antedeluvian beleivers--despite the fact that Hebrew scholars have consistently showed that the Bible taught that beleivers knew of two material heavens--what we call the atmosphere and outer space. Now they did not know of the troposphere, ionosphere, zoosphere, stratosphere and deep deep space-but then again they never searched it out either.

But the modern "scholar" without any real evidence to show- just automatically assumes that everyone beleived like the pagan cultures surrounding beleivers did. Well the Bible says differently and we have no writings from the biblical folks to say contrary-- so once again this argument is based on no evidence but the opinion of people thousands of years removed without any evidence to base it on.

Job (which is considered the oldest written book of the bible predating Moses) knew of 2 heavens and that the second heaven was very big! Ain't fancy like todays technical terms are but the base concept of deep space was sure beleived-- just not in the minutae that it is known of today.

What do you make of v. 14?

Common eupehemism to describe how God walks without being seen. And the circuit of heaven describes Gods travel. Sorry of they didn't have enough of a technical vocabulary to satisfy the modern critics.

 

[nolidad]

A few thoughts before I leave for the weekend!!

Gluadys and mrwilliams11, one thing you need to understand;

When the people of God fall and backslide we go tot he world and accept its philosophies. This has been true since the dispersion at Babel. When you look historically at eh Jews since the exodus-- you see that when they backslid against God-- they took on the ANE cosmologies and made them their own. Bu t when they got right with God again -- they went back to teh inspired revelation!! Teh ANE cosmologies are simply corruptions of the true revelation of cosmology. The 226 other flood accounts are simply corruptions of the true account, The varied myths of pagan cultures all have as their basis a germ of the truth.

I am fully persuaded that all the myths involving gods and demigods int eh vaired cultures (especially Egyot, Greece, and Rome) are all corruptions of the truth of God, the angels, Satan and his demons. Even many of the ancient religions had majpor triads for their godhead which is a corruption of the truth of the trinity!! Even the pymarids and ziggaruts may be a corruption of the heavenly Jerusalem that satan as the god of this world inspired unbeleivers to construct!!

Now for raqia being used to describe the atmosphere. If you go to blue letter bible and search out firmamnet you will see it used only 17 times.

9 times in Genesis 1 in either describing the atmosphere or the expanse of the second heaven.

7 times in Ezekiel and Daniel in visions of heaven which would be explaining the vaulted dome of heaven itself. and once in Psalm 19 which though ambigous could be describing the third heaven or space or the atmosphere. But iI do not think it an accident that after genesis 6 when the atmosphere is spoken of it is referred to as heaven. Because the raqia was shattered in Genesis 6-9 with the flood and the heavens underwent a large change!!

 

[rmwilliamsll]

When the people of God fall and backslide we go tot he world and accept its philosophies. This has been true since the dispersion at Babel. When you look historically at eh Jews since the exodus-- you see that when they backslid against God-- they took on the ANE cosmologies and made them their own. Bu t when they got right with God again -- they went back to teh inspired revelation!! Teh ANE cosmologies are simply corruptions of the true revelation of cosmology. The 226 other flood accounts are simply corruptions of the true account, The varied myths of pagan cultures all have as their basis a germ of the truth.

You are allowing your major principle of history-Israel backslides and becomes like it's neighbors-to dictate the data and evidence to you. You are doing top down theorizing and missing the point entirely of using a cosmology.

God can not talk in human terms about origins without using human words and human ideas. Ideas about origins are called cosmogony and about the shape of the universe-cosmology. You have to have some idea of both cosmology and cosmogony, every human being of a certain age or mental maturity does. Naturally most learn it from their culture and their community.

ANE cosmology is the Israelite/ancient Hebrew cosmology expressed in Gen 1. the big difference is the emptying of the universe of gods, the desacralization of the universe, God is separate from and above the physical creation, He created it and supervises it. Otherwise the cosmologies are the same between Babylonia, Egypt, Israel.

flat earth, stationary earth, pillars, place of judgement underneath your feet, sun moves through the sky, etc etc.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I was just trying to sign off on an less vitriolic note after venting my, considerable, spleen.
from: http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=23592978&postcount=293


it is this that i am talking about.
conflicting scientific systems.

everyone knows what the bolded statement means. but do any of us believe that the spleen contains the emotion of anger?

how about:
turns my stomach
breaks my heart
you're a pain in the neck

There’s a lot of anger in the play too. Shakespeare’s language is full of very embodied expressions for anger. For example, he says when he meets Laertes, Ophelia's brother, and one of the other prime male figures in the play,

Though I am not splenetive and rash

Yet I have in me something dangerous. (255, I, 5)

Splenetive refers to the spleen, and the spleen was associated in Shakespearian language with wild, aggressive impulses. This is interesting because the spleen is a central part of the immune system, and when its activated, it is designed to attack. At another point, the famous bit where he finds Yorick’s skull (“alas poor Yorick!&#8221 he says “My gorge rises at it” .

Aud. Is that to do with bile, ‘gorge’?

Aud I think it’s a swelling of the throat.

R: That’s it, a swelling, engorgement. It’s the movement of the blood upwards. Up the id canal, as Gerda would say.

He also says of himself, quite contemptuously, “for I am pigeon-livered and lack gall”. There’s another aspect of anger, the liver was associated with powerful feelings, such as rage, and the production and movement of gall (bile), is the embodied chemistry for action.



The association of the organs with psychological functions in Shakespeare’s times derived from the medieval theories about humours, which in turn derived from the ancient Greeks. The point is these associations were living and real. It isn’t just fancy language, it isn’t just metaphor. I think they actually lived in that reality, which we’ve very much lost touch with. Today in Britain we retain traces of this understanding in phrases like, 'to vent your spleen' or 'to feel galled' - although I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say these things - they're in our literature. In Traditional Chinese Medicine there are very clear theories of the psychological function of the organs, which I find intruiging, and which I think are just beginning to permeate our culture. [9] Another of Hamlet's famous phrases is “the time is out of joint”, and I relate that to being dislocated, his proprioceptors aren't effectively orienting him in space. He can’t get it together, that’s basically the story of Hamlet. Who knows what would have happened if he’d had a biodynamic massage therapist!

we don't believe (most of us anyhow) that the heart is the central organ for feelings, the spleen for anger, the liver for strong feelings etc.

what they are, are hangovers from a previous science that has been displaced by modern biology. Yet we still successfully use them to communicate. how come?

the same way that Gen 1 communicates to use even though it uses ANE cosmology. We can grasp the simple, literal, common sense, straightforward, anthropomorphic metaphors.

modern science is NOT common sense, it is often very unintuitive and difficult to understand. evidence is the discussions here about geology, the untrained just don't get it unless they study. biology is getting counter intuitive, physics has been since the early 20thC.

the point?
God uses the ANE the same way that this poster uses the medieval idea of humors and internal organs, to communicate. What He is communicating in Gen 1 is not modern science or history, but something else-theological truths wrapped in an ANE cosmology.

 

[gluadys]

Well let us see- it is modern liberal niminal christian "scholars" who have imposed the "standard ANE cosmolgy" on the Hebrewe nation and the patriarchs and the antedeluvian beleivers--despite the fact that Hebrew scholars have consistently showed that the Bible taught that beleivers knew of two material heavens--what we call the atmosphere and outer space.

It is a question of who is doing the imposing. If you had ancient documents that clearly spoke of outer space rather than outer waters, that would support your case. If they actually spoke of infinity--not just height-- that would support your case. They could do it with their vocabulary. If one can speak of time without end, one can speak of length or width or height or depth without end.

But since these concepts do not show up in ancient times, it seems those imposing them are those who try to read modern science into scripture.

Let's not forget as well just how modern science is. There are 1500 years of church history between the first century and the Copernican revolution. Although the cosmology Christians of that period accepted was somewhat different from that of the bible it was similar in some respects: no infinite expanse---and they did understand the concept of infinity; they attributed infinity to God, but never to the universe. No outer space--instead several firmaments of clear, solid crystal.

Show any Christian writing about the cosmos from that period which points to scripture speaking about infinite space, outer space. If the concept is in scripture, why is it not discovered by biblical scholars until after it is discovered by science? Why for over a millennium do Christian educational institutions describe the cosmos differently?

Job (which is considered the oldest written book of the bible predating Moses) knew of 2 heavens and that the second heaven was very big!

Job may be an older story than Moses or even Abraham, but what we have in the bible was written long after Moses. Most scholars place it in the 5th century BCE. Writers can and do write about olden times, even in biblical days.

And "very big" is not "infinite".

Common eupehemism to describe how God walks without being seen. And the circuit of heaven describes Gods travel. Sorry of they didn't have enough of a technical vocabulary to satisfy the modern critics.

They had a perfectly adequate technical vocabulary to describe what they wanted to describe. The circuit of heaven is the boundary of the non-infinite heaven, called a circuit because its shape is a circle as noted in other passages of scripture.