One thing I don't understand about the creationist position

[pitabread]

simply there would be death before sin , when bible teaches death is due to man's sin

I was thinking about the "no death before sin" thing and technically doesn't rule out an evolutionary process. Evolution simply requires differential reproduction; it doesn't require that ancestral organisms necessarily die off.

 

[BobRyan]

Initially I tried to have a dialog with you, but your instance on copy-pasting the same responses over and over even after I'd already responded to specific points made it incredibly obnoxious and difficult.

False reality - I always respond with more detail (and this is irrefutable) but what I do is "show the context" for the comment I make so it can be seen in the context of a couple of exchanges -- otherwise it is put upon the reader to follow the chain back up and "Sort it out"... which is fine I guess if you don't want them to know the full context of the next part of my comment.

I'm putting you on ignore now and won't be replying to you further.

Given my statement above - I think we can see why that is.

BobRyan said: ↑
But I have to ask the question "is this thread about trying to find ways not to have dialogue with Creationists"??

 

[pitabread]

Lets say God used evolution, thats very different to normal evolution, it would mean God intervened and designed.

What do you mean specifically by this? How was God intervening and designing?

 

[BobRyan]

Lets say God used evolution, thats very different to normal evolution, it would mean God intervened and designed. .

exactly! Especially in the fiction-evolution of going from dust-to-adam in a single evening and morning on a day the same as the days of Ex 20:9,11.

It would be a massive saltation-miracle and how is that even evolution at all??

 

[pitabread]

"after their kind". The Bible tells us that God created a process that allows the different kinds of plants and animals that He made to reproduce, and to maintain the unique characteristics of their own species. This tells us that Biblically, evolution (which speaks of reproduction across species lines, IOW, of a reproduction that is NOT "according to its own kind") is a false explanation of origins.

I'm sure that our TE folks have an answer for the argument ("after their kind"), but since you asked why YEC do not consider "evolution" to be the means that God used (in the Creation), this is one of the reasons that we give.

Why does the phrase "after their kind" preclude an evolutionary process? After all, the Bible is silent on what a "kind" actually is.

In fact, the process of organisms reproducing after their kind is perfectly in line with evolution. All it suggests is that organisms are constrained by their ancestry. Which is what evolution entails.

One could argue that the repeated use of the phrase "after their kind" actively suggests God used an evolutionary process.

 

[BobRyan]

What do you mean specifically by this? How was God intervening and designing?

Hello Pitabread, here's part of it (I apologize if this has already been discussed in your thread as this is a blind post). It's not that God couldn't have used evolution, it's the fact that He told us that He didn't

Genesis 1
11 God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so.
​

--David

That is true.

Instead of "evolving to other kinds" it says "after their kind".

And what is more He is going "from dust to fully functioning adult human" in a single evening-and-morning. Which is not evolution in any text book known to mankind. Asking that God provide miracles to get evolution to work in such a short time solves nothing except appeal to the vast waste and inefficiencies of evolutionism as 'the process' even in a time scale where evolutionism is not even thinkable.

 

[BobRyan]

I've been down this road before. It's quite a short road, because when one tries to get into the details of how God specifically did things, one quickly releases those details aren't there.

The bible is not a textbook on "how to BE God".

How is this even a little confusing?

What about an infinite being doing something only that being can do - dictates that all finite beings can fully explain how to do it?? That makes no sense.

 

[NBB]

What do you mean specifically by this? How was God intervening and designing?

Either is true things can 'grow' alone to humans, or that God designed them, even with evolution, like theistic evolution or something, but i believe we have a soul so, that creates another problem.

 

[pitabread]

Either is true things can 'grow' alone to humans, or that God designed them, even with evolution, like theistic evolution or something, but i believe we have a soul so, that creates another problem.

There is nothing about evolution which would preclude God giving people souls. The question is primarily around how God created living species. Is there anything that prevents God from using an evolutionary process to do that?

For example, Genesis 1 doesn't describe God specifically designing all the animals. It just says that the Earth and waters brought them forth.

 

[BobRyan]

Because most creationists have been taught the lie that evolution is inherently atheistic.

What does that have to do with the thread topic???

Simple fact - Genesis 1 and 2 show God taking dust and turning it into fully functioning adult human in one single evening-and-morning the same as the length of day of Ex 20:9,11 at Sinai.

What "Evolution" suggestion can do that??

IN other words "the topic of this thread"

 

[Rachel20]

Simple fact - Genesis 1 and 2 show God taking dust and turning it into fully functioning adult human in one single evening-and-morning the same as the length of day of Ex 20:9,11 at Sinai.

Have you read Gerald Schroeders "Age of the Universe"? YEC and OEC can both be right because the "age" of something always depends on the space-time coordinate of the observer. So when God creates something in 6 days, we have to ask "6 days from who's perspective?"

Gerald Schroeder - Articles - Age of the Universe

 

[Subduction Zone]

hint: evolution from dust to adult human does not exist and cars do not reproduce if left to themselves over time.

the point remains

Nope the point fails and like it or not, like all humans, you are an ape.

 

[BobRyan]

Have you read Gerald Schroeders "Age of the Universe"? YEC and OEC can both be right because the "age" of something always depends on the space-time coordinate of the observer. So when God creates something in 6 days, we have to ask "6 days from who's perspective?"

Gerald Schroeder - Articles - Age of the Universe

Gen 1 does not speak to the age of the universe - only to the age of life on Earth, the Sun and the moon. AND Ex 20:9,11 state it is the same as the evening-morning days at Sinai "six days shall you labor...for in six days the LORD made..."

In Genesis 1 the heavens are where birds fly "20 Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.”.

And day 4 only has two great lights created - one to rule the day and the other to rule the night.

So in Ex 20:11 we have this "11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; for that reason the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." -- no reference at all to stars made in that 7 day week.

The point is there is no reason to be forced into trying to jam the creation of the entire universe into the 7 day week in Genesis 1-2..

In addition - God is "the expert communicator" - He knows full well how to convey a message with accuracy and in Ex 20:9,11 there is no doubt as to the timeline for any doubt one might have supposed in Gen 1-2

 

[Rachel20]

Gen 1 does not speak to the age of the universe - only to the age of life on Earth, the Sun and the moon.

Adam wasn't created until the 6th day and nothing in scripture (as far as I can tell) requires the creation days to be of equal duration. From the article -

The five and a half days of Genesis are not of equal duration. Each time the universe doubles in size, the perception of time halves as we project that time back toward the beginning of the universe. The rate of doubling, that is the fractional rate of change, is very rapid at the beginning and decreases with time simply because as the universe gets larger and larger, even though the actual expansion rate is approximately constant, it takes longer and longer for the overall size to double. Because of this, the earliest of the six days have most of the15 billion years sequestered with them.

 

[BobRyan]

For example, Genesis 1 doesn't describe God specifically designing all the animals. It just says that the Earth and waters brought them forth.

Ps 33:9 For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood firm.

you assume that what God speaks he does not plan or design. Without evidence.

Genesis 1 says

24 Then God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kind: livestock and crawling things and animals of the earth according to their kind”; and it was so. 25 God made the animals of the earth according to their kind, and the livestock according to their kind, and everything that crawls on the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

All that in a single "evening-and-mornding"

Gen 2 "More Detail"

7 Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.

19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the sky,

There is forming each of them from dust to living being. All in one single evening-and-morning -- day 6.

 

[BobRyan]

Adam wasn't created until the 6th day and nothing in scripture (as far as I can tell) requires the creation days to be of equal duration. From the article -

well they each consist of a single "evening and morning" and Ex 20:9,11 makes them the same as the six days at Sinai in length.

 

[Rachel20]

well they each consist of a single "evening and morning" and Ex 20:9,11 makes them the same as the six days at Sinai in length.

Well, I won't beat this horse anymore. But I did check your Exodus reference and I see nothing that requires they be equivalent, and I'm typically a literalist!

 

[BobRyan]

Well, I won't beat this horse anymore. But I did check your Exodus reference and I see nothing that requires they be equivalent, and I'm typically a literalist!

ok well in Ex 20 we have "six days you shall labor... for in six days the Lord made". the author is the same, the context is the same the chapter is the same so if you consider that the methods of exegesis don't allow us to insert different meaning for the same word for the same passage because of an outside preference not known to the author or the author's readers.

 

[fwGod]

No, it would be God creating the process of evolution, not using process that already existed.

You don't know from where I speak.

If God created the process of evolution then it would have already existed because God is eternal.. his method of creation is speaking.. and he speaks of things that are not as though they already were.

That is why I said it the way I said it.

Now, if God had used evolution, then atheists would all have to worship God.

I don't think any atheist would.

Now, lets look at evolution.

Evolution is indifferent to people.. can't love anyone.. can't provide redemption from sins. Evolution is dead. It has no capacity, no capability to create anything. It's not a living supernatural being that humans could have a profound and beneficial relationship with.

What is there about evolution that would be useful to God?.. Nothing.

Let's not forget that it's the concept of atheists who set out to use science as a means to back up their atheism. So therefore it would not even be qualified as a supernatural method of creation for God to use.

 

[pitabread]

Now, if God had used evolution, then atheists would all have to worship God.

That doesn't make any sense. Atheism is the lack of theism. Whether God used evolution or not is independent of any theological ramifications thereof.

What is there about evolution that would be useful to God?.. Nothing.

Why wouldn't there be? After all, human usage of evolutionary processes in place of traditional design yields results that go beyond traditional design.

Why couldn't God do the same? Is God limited in some fashion?

Let's not forget that it's the concept of atheists who set out to use science as a means to back up their atheism. So therefore it would not even be qualified as a supernatural method of creation for God to use.

This has nothing to do with atheism. It's a question of what God could or could not have done.

Creationists appear to be placing limitations on their god. For example, claiming that God couldn't use evolution because it's not a "supernatural method" makes no sense. If God had used evolution (and in fact created the very process) would that not make it by definition a supernatural method?