One thing I don't understand about the creationist position

[BobRyan]

So why are creationists trying to hold the Gospel hostage to a literal Genesis?

step one - we read the Bible.
Step two - there are Bible details soooo incredibly obvious that even the atheist professors of Hebrew and OT studies will admit to them.

...even the atheists in world-class universities freely admit. (So then NOT something that creationists/literalist "MAKE UP" even by atheist standards)


Atheists often don't mind "admitting" to what the Bible says - they simply reject what it says. As in rejecting the virgin birth, the bodily ascension of Christ, the miracles of the bible and in this example they freely admit to what the Bible says - while rejecting it as 'truth'.


Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

=========================== quote

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:
(a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience
(b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story
(c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.

Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’

We as creationists cannot claim to be even more uninformed than the atheist professors of Hebrew and OT studies are when they claim the Bible is making a clear and obvious statement about the timeline in Genesis.

So then we readily agree with them when they point to those Bible details that are sooooo glaringly obvious - that both sides admit to them.

Others may claim to know less than that obvious Bible detail - presents - but Creationists should not go there with them.

 

[BobRyan]

That is now, not the same conditions. I can grow a plant in a dark room with artificial light. No sun needed.

Agreed but your artificial light will be a lot brighter than the light energy reaching us from CMBR/BB.

Are you proposing that God did not mention 100's of millions of years of artificial light provided between day 3 and day 4??

The 7 days of Genesis involved the creation of the entire universe, you can't leave it out.

Why do you say that? Gens 1:2-2:4 are the 7 days of creation week. What part of that is the entire universe in your POV? They are summarized in Ex 20:11 where once again the creation of the entire universe is not present.

And I'm not trying to solve any problem, just curious what is the truth. It's not a theological thing for me.

Ok - so then given that solving the problem of "the entire universe in 7 days" is a much bigger problem than "just life on Earth, and our Sun and our Moon" -- why take on all that extra scope for the 7 days unless something demands it??

On day 4 there are exactly "two" lights created according to Genesis 1 - not a zillion and 2.

 

[Speedwell]

step one - we read the Bible.
Step two - there are Bible details soooo incredibly obvious that even the atheist professors of Hebrew and OT studies will admit to them.





We as creationists cannot claim to be even more uninformed than the atheist professors of Hebrew and OT studies are when they claim the Bible is making a clear and obvious statement about the timeline in Genesis.

So then we readily agree with them when they point to those Bible details that are sooooo glaringly obvious - that both sides admit to them.

Others may claim to know less than that obvious Bible detail - presents - but Creationists should not go there with them.

I agree with you there. Six standard twenty-four hour days is what it says and any sort of "day-age" interpretation is nonsense. But that does not answer my question.

 

[BobRyan]

I agree with you there. Six standard twenty-four hour days is what it says and any sort of "day-age" interpretation is nonsense. But that does not answer my question.

Its a good question I think it should be its own thread topic and I am happy to join you in it.

Are you interested?

 

[Rachel20]

I agree with you there. Six standard twenty-four hour days is what it says and any sort of "day-age" interpretation is nonsense. But that does not answer my question.

Is relativity and time dilation nonsense? "Time" and "age" are meaningless terms unless you specify a space-time coordinate of observation. It can be a literal 24 hours from one coordinate, but not from another. Even the atomic clocks don't keep the same time, because of their different locations (though the difference is extremely small because they're both on earth)

 

[BobRyan]

Is relativity and time dilation nonsense? "Time" and "age" are meaningless terms unless you specify a space-time coordinate of observation. It can be a literal 24 hours from one coordinate, but not from another. Even the atomic clocks don't keep the same time, because of their different locations (though the difference is extremely small because they're both on earth)

The "observer" in Genesis 1 and 2 and in Ex 20:11 appears to be on Earth. So the frame of reference is Earth. Which is why it works to have Sun and moon created the next day after plants on day 3.

Time dilation is only an issue with acceleration and speed relative to the speed of light. If the argument is that Earth is changing orbit or is going faster than the speed of light for a while -- during the first 2 days of creation week then it still leaves the question about what the rest of the universe is doing.

But you don't need any of that for a literal 7 day week that only affects Earth and our Sun and our Moon.

 

[Rachel20]

The "observer" in Genesis 1 and 2 and in Ex 20:11 appears to be on Earth. So the frame of reference is Earth. Which is why it works to have Sun and moon created the next day after plants on day 3.

Time dilation is only an issue with acceleration and speed relative to the speed of light. If the argument is that Earth is changing orbit or is going faster than the speed of light for a while -- during the first 2 days of creation week then it still leaves the question about what the rest of the universe is doing.

But you don't need any of that for a literal 7 day week that only affects Earth and our Sun and our Moon.

I pretty much already covered those things and I don't think any minds are changing here LOL what's new, right? I enjoyed the discussion though!

 

[pitabread]

Because most creationists have been taught the lie that evolution is inherently atheistic. When they hear 'evolution', they falsely think it means that not only life, but the earth and the universe came into being 'by accident' and there is no creator.

This certainly does seem the case, at least given some of the subsequent posts in this thread.

 

[Speedwell]

Its a good question I think it should be its own thread topic and I am happy to join you in it.

Are you interested?

It would be, but this is not the forum for it. Creationists want to deny the salvation of over two billion Christians with whom they generally agree on the essential doctrines of Christianity, just because of Genesis, and are generally quite hostile about it. I understand what you believe and pretty much why you believe it and if it brings you closer to Christ you are welcome to it. But I really don't see the need to be so hateful to other Christians about it.

 

[Hans Blaster]

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

I tried, but it was drivel.

A lot of bible stuff, an appeal to the "scientific consensus" of 1950 prior to modern cosmology, then ending with some numerology. Nothing really had anything to do with the age of the Universe.

 

[Rachel20]

I tried, but it was drivel.

A lot of bible stuff

He teaches Torah in Israel, so the Bible stuff was part of his purpose. The "numerology" section I believe you're referring to is actually his calculation of the age of the Universe. I can't personally verify it, but I doubt he'd put his reputation as an MIT physicist too much on the line, at least not to the point it could be called "drivel", so I'll have to believe him over you. He has another article very similar, where he sticks more to the calculations and it's more Torah-layman friendly, but I couldn't find it.

 

[St_Worm2]

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.

Hello again Pitabread, many parts of the Bible can be difficult to understand, but I don't believe that Genesis 1 is among them. I, in fact, believe that elementary school-aged kids in the Bronze Age could understand what it says (what God meant IOW), just like elementary school kids can today.

I'm not trying to insult your intelligence in any way by saying that, but I do believe that you may be overthinking a book that was not designed to be understood as a science textbook.

Concerning plant and animal life, Genesis 1 tells us that God is the Creator of it all, that He put a process in place by which the life/lives He created could continue and also increase in numbers, and also that the various species would renew/reproduce/perpetuate after their kind (according to their own kind).

So (according to Genesis), flowers beget flowers, fish beget fish, birds beget birds, cows beget cows. They reproduce according to their own kind.

Conversely, fish do not beget birds, rosters do not beget pigs, and apes do not beget human beings, and they never will. This is what Genesis is saying, plainly/simply/concisely (I have, in fact, wondered if God chose to use Genesis 1 to tell us what seems to be so obvious .. that fish beget fish and birds beget birds, etc ... in anticipation of evolutionary theory, however that is nothing but pure conjecture on my part ).

I hope that helps and that you understand what I mean, but perhaps I am misunderstanding part (or all?) of what you were trying to say to me? If that's the case, please help me understand what you meant.

Thanks

--David

 

[Hans Blaster]

He teaches Torah in Israel, so the Bible stuff was part of his purpose. The "numerology" section I believe you're referring to is actually his calculation of the age of the Universe. I can't personally verify it, but I doubt he'd put his reputation as an MIT physicist too much on the line, at least not to the point it could be called "drivel", so I'll have to believe him over you. He has another article very similar, where he sticks more to the calculations and it's more Torah-layman friendly, but I couldn't find it.

It's just pointless numerology.

He starts with the number 1 million million (aka, 1 trillion), because of some number he claims is related to nucleosynthesis (but it's not), and then multiplies by 5.5 days, because well that's how old he claims the creation was when Adam's "soul" was born to get 5.5 trillion days which is ~15 billion years.

Numerology. Pure and simple.

 

[coffee4u]

I've asked creationists repeatedly over the years how God created living species. Yet I have found that creationists are unable to provide an answer to that (outside of vague reference to supernatural powers).

But at the same time, creationists insist God could not have done so via evolution.

So if we don't have an explanation for how God created living species, why couldn't God have used evolution? Why explicitly rule that out?

The whole point of special creation is not to do with how things were made, but to do with sin.
The origin of sin
The results of sin
The cure for sin.
How it will be once sin is gone.

The Bibles position is that God created the world to be very good and that mankind was made in the image of God. There was no sin, no death, no corruption. The couple were as close to perfect as possible in body, soul and spirit. The spirit was awake and able to talk with God as easily as two people walking together. The first people, the garden, the world was a picture given to mankind to show us what God intended, to show us the world that God had planned and how things could be. It was a sample.

To this perfection God granted man free will. While man was innocent he could be corrupted by an outside influence. Indeed God knew he would be corrupted. God was not surprised when Adam fell, he knew he would because God is outside of time and could see the beginning, middle and end.
God could have made it so man could not fall but this would have meant taking away free will. God wanted mankind to have free will so they could freely choose him. Not robots who had no choice but to follow.

Satan deceived Eve (Adam was not deceived)
1 Timothy 2:14
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.
Adam knowingly disobeyed. It was his free will choice that brought in sin and death. There was no death before sin. This is how sin came into being, the origin of sin.

Romans 5:12-21

12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Every father since Adam has passed original sin onto their children. This is the results of sin.

The cure for sin was Christ's death on the cross.
Romans 6:23

23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is why Jesus came in the form of a man, he was a man because Adam was a man. Where Adam fell, Jesus was tempted but did not fall. The New Testament is a mirror of the old. What is shown as a fail state or an incomplete state in the Old Testament is shown as a success or a completion in the New.

God says he will remake the world back to what it was. It will be destroyed by fire and mankind will be judged.

2 Peter 3
5 But they want to forget that God spoke and the heavens were made long ago. The earth was made out of water and water was all around it. 6 Long ago the earth was covered with water and it was destroyed. 7 But the heaven we see now and the earth we live on now have been kept by His word. They will be kept until they are to be destroyed by fire. They will be kept until the day men stand before God and sinners will be destroyed.

Then the world will be remade made back into the perfection that is seen in Genesis but this time the people populating it wont be able to fall. This way God will only gather those who chose him.

New Heavens and a New Earth
17 “See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.

25The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.

In this completed world there is no longer a tree of knowledge of good and evil to choose from, only two trees of life.
Revelation 22:2
down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
So it began in the book of Genesis and so it ends with Revelations.

 

[pitabread]

Hello again Pitabread, many parts of the Bible can be difficult to understand, but I don't believe that Genesis 1 is among them. I, in fact, believe that elementary school-aged kids in the Bronze Age could understand what it says (what God meant IOW), just like elementary school kids can today.

I'm not trying to insult your intelligence in any way by saying that, but I do believe that you may be overthinking a book that was not designed to be understood as a science textbook.

Concerning plant and animal life, Genesis 1 tells us that God is the Creator of it all, that He put a process in place by which the life/lives He created could continue and also increase in numbers, and also that the various species would renew/reproduce/perpetuate after their kind (according to their own kind).

So (according to Genesis), flowers beget flowers, fish beget fish, birds beget birds, cows beget cows. They reproduce according to their own kind.

Conversely, fish do not beget birds, rosters do not beget pigs, and apes do not beget human beings, and they never will. This is what Genesis is saying, plainly/simply/concisely (I have, in fact, wondered if God chose to use Genesis 1 to tell us what seems to be so obvious .. that fish beget fish and birds beget birds, etc ... in anticipation of evolutionary theory, however that is nothing but pure conjecture on my part ).

I hope that helps and that you understand what I mean, but perhaps I am misunderstanding part (or all?) of what you are saying? If that's the case, please help me understand

Thanks!

--David

I understand what you're saying.

What I'm saying is that the "kinds begetting kinds" fits perfectly with evolution. Essentially all the Bible is really saying is that organisms are bound by their own ancestry. And this is exactly what we see in evolutionary biology. Organisms don't jump between different "kinds" of organisms outside of their ancestral lines.

For example, you say roosters don't beget pigs. Well of course not, since they are ancestrally diverged species. Any subsequent ancestral offspring of say roosters will always be part of that rooster ancestral line. Likewise with pigs. They can never "cross over".

That doesn't mean necessarily that they cannot share common ancestry. However, that common ancestry is perfectly in line with kinds begetting kinds, because they would both share the common ancestral line (e.g. vertebrata) from which independent lineages ultimately evolved (e.g. aves, mammalia).

In short, what the Bible describes is an apt description of how evolution works and how it is dependent on reproduction to produce diversity. I don't think it's a coincidence that reproduction is specifically described in Genesis 1.

 

[pitabread]

The whole point of special creation is not to do with how things were made, but to do with sin.
The origin of sin
The results of sin
The cure for sin.
How it will be once sin is gone.

<snip>

That's not really the point of the thread though. I understand the concept of sin and how it applies to Christian theology. If I wanted to discuss that, I'd head over to the theology subforums.

The question here is simply whether its possible that God could have used an evolutionary process in creating biological diversity on Earth. Do you have an opinion on that?

 

[Maria Billingsley]

I've asked creationists repeatedly over the years how God created living species. Yet I have found that creationists are unable to provide an answer to that (outside of vague reference to supernatural powers).

But at the same time, creationists insist God could not have done so via evolution.

So if we don't have an explanation for how God created living species, why couldn't God have used evolution? Why explicitly rule that out?

Evolution does not fit into to the intelligent design model. Scripture tells us we are "made in God's image " therefore any attempt to claim that an animal is made in the same image is rejected. This is what evolution teaches. Blessings.

 

[pitabread]

Evolution does not fit into to the intelligent design model. Scripture tells us we are "made in God's image " therefore any attempt to claim that an animal is made in the same image is rejected. This is what evolution teaches. Blessings.

Do you believe that being made in God's image is a physical descriptor? IOW, does God look like a human?

 

[St_Worm2]

That doesn't mean necessarily that they cannot share common ancestry. However, that common ancestry is perfectly in line with kinds begetting kinds, because they would both share the common ancestral line (e.g. vertebrata) from which independent lineages ultimately evolved (e.g. aves, mammalia).

In short, what the Bible describes is an apt description of how evolution works and how it is dependent on reproduction to produce diversity. I don't think it's a coincidence that reproduction is specifically described in Genesis 1.

Hello again Pitabread, from God's POV in Genesis, nothing that God created shares the kind of common ancestry that modern, evolutionary theory suggests. While the different kinds of plants and animals may "evolve" over time (in the micro-evolutionary sense) to perhaps better fit their particular environments, there is no sense in the Bible that anything will ever become something different than it was originally (IOW, different than what it was when God created it), in the macro-evolutionary sense.

We started out as human beings, because that's how God created us .. e.g. Genesis 2:7. We didn't evolve to become human beings, and we are not evolving now to become some higher form of being in the future. After all, God told us that He created us in "His" image .. e.g. Genesis 1:26-27, in the image of the highest Being in existence, not as some lower kind or form of existence, as if our lives, along with all life, originated in can of.....................

​

--David

 

[pitabread]

Hello again Pitabread, from the God's POV in Genesis, nothing that God created shares the kind of common ancestry that modern, evolutionary theory suggests. While the different kinds of plants and animals may "evolve" over time (in the micro-evolutionary sense) to perhaps better fit their particular environments, there is no sense in the Bible that anything will ever become something different than it was originally (IOW, different than what it was when God created it), in the macro-evolutionary sense.

The Bible doesn't explicitly say this though (at least insofar as the general biosphere goes).

As I said, the way creation is described in Genesis 1 appears to point to an evolutionary process with the emphasis on reproducing of their kind, which is an apt description for the evolution and diversification of species.

We started out as human beings, because that's how God created us .. e.g. Genesis 2:7. We didn't evolve to become human beings, and we are not evolving now to become some higher form of being in the future. After all, God told us that He created us in "His" image .. e.g. Genesis 1:26-27, in the image of the highest Being in existence, not as some lower kind or form of existence, as if our lives, along with all life, originated in can of.....................

For the record, there is also nothing in the Bible about limits to biological evolution.

Although I have to ask you the same question, I asked another person above. Do you believe that God's image is physical? IOW, is God essentially a physical human being?