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A Young Earth Creationistthekawasakikid said:What is a YEC?
What about when the Bible implies the earth is flat, the sky is hard, fire breathing sea serpents exist? Do you take those verses literally?thekawasakikid said:Thanks
The best I'd come up with was 'young, evangelical christian'!!! :o
My problem with not taking the Creation Account literally is that if I don't, what stops me from taking the rest of the Bible non-literally? I realise that things like parables aren't literal, but of course we have the context of the Christ telling the parable...
Why does an all-powerful being need to rest?The reason Creation took 7 'days' surely is that this formed the basis for our working week - thus in everyday life we are reminded of the Creator. Whether the days were 24 hours or 1000 years is neither here nor there.
wblastyn said:What about when the Bible implies the earth is flat, the sky is hard, fire breathing sea serpents exist? Do you take those verses literally?
Why does an all-powerful being need to rest?
Right, so if he did not literally need to rest, even though this is what is said, and the purpose was to give a template of six work periods for one rest period, why is it necessary to read the text as six 24-hour days, rather than six work periods of a longer duration before resting? The message is the same either way.thekawasakikid said:Which verses are these?
An all-powerful being doesn't need to rest, but we needed the template of a working week which included a day of rest, which we were to dedicate as a day of thanksgiving and worship to the all-powerful being which created us into existence in the first place.
So, if you take Adam and Eve to be representative of the first men and women to ever live, it would be wrong to say Jesus was descended from them?Bonhoffer said:Adam and Eve must have been real people otherwise there is a flaw in Jesus' family tree.
Vance said:First of all, you did, indeed, say that those who don't see the clear meaning of Scripture (as you do) are not truly Spirit-filled and led. If you want to retract that, fine, but don't say you didn't say it.
Second, the Bible is, indeed, pretty clear about what it's ultimate message, but it is anything but clear in all its details. Let's take those few things (among the thousands of interpretive issues Christians face).
Days: God did not say He created in days. He said He created in "Yoms". This word YOM has a number of meanings, just like a lot of words in English. One of these meanings is that of an extended, but indefinite period of time. Another meaning is a 24-hour period of time. Which is it here? This is anything but clear. True, it might read "clear" in English, and this is, indeed, where much of the problem lies.
Global Flood: See my thread on this a while back, but you will see that there are very solid arguments in the text itself (not even looking at the vast evidence of God's Creation) that the flood was very likely not global. Again, not crystal clear by a long shot.
What you are doing is "simply believing" either the most simplistic surface reading of the text or what people tell you it says. Neither is a solid way to reach the true meaning of the Bible.
Vance said:Your last paragraph above is finally getting the point: none of this is a salvation issue, and there are a number of different interpretations that Spirit-filled and led Christians can arrive at. It is, indeed, a matter of free will. If God had wanted to make sure that all Christians believed exactly the same thing, He could definitely have written it in such a way, or He could allow His Spirit to direct a single over-riding interpretation. But, He didn't.
The phrase I still object to is you "take God's word for what it is." This is still acting as if there was one clear meaning which you accept, and the rest are looking for more obtuse and complicated readings. This is not true. You are taking God's word how you take it, that is all.
As for YOM, please look at this issue. Are you saying that a 24-hour period is the only way it is used in the Bible?
As for the flood, I am not sure what you mean. God used a word that does NOT always mean the whole earth, so why do we start with the assumption that He meant the whole earth? He used a word that is used the vast majority of the time to mean a specific region or land, or a specific people and NOT the whole earth. As I said, there is a very specific word He could have used to mean the whole Earth, without causing any confusion: tebel. If He had wanted to say the entire planet, why did He not do so with the best word for that meaning?
As for the partial judgment, the Scripture makes clear that the judgment against all the people in "the land" was complete. Some read this to mean that all humanity was still in a specific region, others read this to mean that all those who lived in "the land" were destroyed. Either works fine with the text, but the latter is more likely based on what we know from archeology about the spread of mankind around the time of the flood. Either way, the concept of a total judgment for those God identifies for judgment carries the exact same meaning as a total world flood.
See my thread on the Scriptural analysis of the local flood a while back.
Karl - Liberal Backslider said:Because despite the scientific debate being over for over 100 years (evolution won, by the way), there are those who keep denying it.
More correctly - your Christian perspective.
The penalty of sin is spiritual death. Adam did not die physically the day he ate the fruit. But he was expelled from the presence of God. God had said that he would die that day. It follows that the expulsion from the presence of God (Eden) is the spiritual death which is the penalty for sin.
Evolution merely tells you how our biological form came about. It says nothing about our spiritual nature, nor about morality or our relative worth compared to animals.
It doesn't even mention genetic variation, so it can't say anything about that. Why do you equate "good" with perfect, and perfect with "unchanging"? What if God's intention was to create a dynamic universe that was changing and evolving? If He did so intend, then He succeeded and His creation is indeed good - exactly what He intended.
What about the two contradictory accounts, and the presence of symbolic elements? Two people called "man" and "mother of all"? A talking snake? Trees bearing spiritually significant fruit? Sounds like mythology to me.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzt! Wrong, but thanks for playing. First you must defend your equation of "figurative" with "fallacious", and then explain why the rest of the Bible must be as fallacious or accurate as Genesis 1-3.
No they don't. What does Paul say Scripture is useful for? Scientific knowledge? No. Very specific purposes. In that it achieves its aim.
Except it isn't. Most organisms do not have blood, and yet they are alive. Where is their life? Scripture says the life is in the blood.
Grasshoppers do not have four legs. Bats are not birds. Hares do not chew the cud. The earth is not set on pillars. Rain does not come through holes in the firmament.
No-one is changing the Bible, except some evangelical translators who insert things, like the pluperfect tense in Genesis 2 regarding God's creation of the animals, and the word "Roman" in Luke to correct the apparent (and false) statement that the whole world was to be taxed. They do this to support inerrancy. The Bible left alone is clearly not inerrant.
Actually, I'd agree with you there. That's why I don't hold with the day age theory. But nor do any other theistic evolutionists - 'day age' is an old earth Creationist position.
To an extent I agree. The elements of the story are true within the framework of a figurative narrative. I address this in some detail in an essay I wrote - http://freespace.virgin.net/karl_and.gnome/genesis.htm
Bushido216 said:Does it matter when God put our souls into us? Perhaps we always had them?
I have already been advised of this thanks Karin. But the question I am asking you is this, WHEN did we become humans who have souls if we evolved? At what point does God decide we are humans? Monkies and whales and all other animals do not live eternally. They are animals, we are made in the image of God and a soul is a VERY important part of that.Treasure the Questions said:Do you creationists not understand that to believe in theistic evolution means to believe that God is Creator? It's only the how that is different. However God created us, surely he could still give us souls.
What do you think a soul is?
In the Adam and Eve myth, (story explaining a truth, but not necessary true in every detail) when God breathes into them he gives them life, not a soul. I don't think the Bible says much about what a soul is or how we get it.
Karin
What you say is only true of evolution without God as its author. Once you put God back in the picture the story is the same. It just means that the theory of evolution throws a little extra light on Genesis 1.Andy D said:Evolution knows no sin in the biblical sense of missing one's purpose (in relation to God). Sin is made meaningless, and that is exactly the opposite of what the Holy Spirit does - He declares sin to be sinful. If sin is seen as a harmless evolutionary factor, then one has lost the key for finding God, which is not resolved by adding "God" to the evolutionary scenario.
I'm not entirely sure that yom has to mean a 24 hour period, but even if it does the psalmist tells us "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night." (Psalm 90:4)Supporters of theistic evolution (and progressive creation) disregard the biblically given measures of time in favour of evolutionist time-scales involving billions of years both past and future (for which there are no convincing physical grounds). This can lead to two errors:
- Not all statements of the Bible are to be taken seriously.
- Vigilance concerning the second coming of Jesus may be lost.
I agree with the first point.In addition to these evolutionary assumptions, three additional beliefs apply to theistic evolution:
- God used evolution as a means of creating.
- The Bible contains no usable or relevant ideas which can be applied in present-day origins science.
- Evolutionistic pronouncements have priority over biblical statements. The Bible must be reinterpreted when and wherever it contradicts the present evolutionary world view.
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