Puzzled.....

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:

Is the important truth that the Bible is concerned with that the world was made in six days? I don't think it is. The important truths can indeed be understood by an average person reading Genesis and not being diverted by unnecessary questions about its literal historicity

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If you can't trust the bible on the six day issue (confirmed by the 10 commandments and the usage of YOM)...then can you trust it when it says Adam was formed from the dirt then Eve from his side?

Can you trust it when it tells us that Adam and Eve fell in the garden after being deceived by Satan?

Can you trust that there really is a Satan or is Satan just a myth?

Ark Guy said:

If you can't trust the bible on the six day issue (confirmed by the 10 commandments and the usage of YOM)...then can you trust it when it says Adam was formed from the dirt then Eve from his side?

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I do not believe this happened literally. It contains profound truth, but it is not a literal account.

Can you trust it when it tells us that Adam and Eve fell in the garden after being deceived by Satan?

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Ditto. I most certainly trust that its assessment of how man reacts to God is completely accurate. It says that Adam - Man - disobeys God and is thereby estranged from Him. Yep. Sounds right. But there is no mention of Satan in Gen 3 - just a talking snake. It's your interpretation that makes it Satan.

Can you trust that there really is a Satan or is Satan just a myth?

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As it happens, I tend to think Satan is a literary construct - he seems to undergo quite a transformation as one traces him through Chronicles and Job and into the NT. But that's neither here nor there.

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:

Fairy tale is your phrase not mine. If you are not capable of escaping from the false dichotomy of "literal truth" versus "fairy tale" then there is little point carrying on because you will not be able to understand what I am saying.

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The ad-homs continue from KLBS.... Why is that?

It is you who have claimed that Adam never existed and that the creation account in Genesis didn't happen. Call it what you want, a myth, allegory, parable...fairy tale...etc.

I just want to know how you know it didn't happen.

You claim it didn't but refuse to tell us why. You present shallow hints but that's all.

Personally I believe that you ought to take a week off and think real hard about this subject. Seriously

KLBC,
Just for the record, the bible talks of satan walking in the garden,
The bible associates Satan as the serpent.

But this is a topic for another thread.

I do think it is rather strange how you now appear to be denying the existance of Satan, and if I may extrapolate, demons.

Is this an accurate statemen or did I actually read your words wrong?

Ark Guy said:

The ad-homs continue from KLBS.... Why is that?

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This is not an ad hom. You seem genuinely unable to grasp the concept. If you did, you would not keep miscategorising my view of Genesis 1-3 as "fairy tale"

It is you who have claimed that Adam never existed and that the creation account in Genesis didn't happen. call it what yoou want, a myth, allegory, parable...fairy tale...etc.

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That you equate these very different concepts shows exactly what my problem explaining my position to you is.

I just want to know how you know it didn't happen.


You claim it didn't but refuse to tell us why. You present shallow hints but that's all.

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I have told you why a dozen times on a dozen threads. I suggest you read my essay at http://freespace.virgin.net/karl_and.gnome/genesis.htm for a full account.

Personally I believe that you ought to take a week off and think real hard about this subject. Seriously

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Owing to the attacks of creationists on good science and on the faith of those who understand it I spend far too much time already on this relatively unimportant topic. To be honest, I don't care what you believe. It's quite obvious you think I need to realise how wrong I am and convert to YEC. Check out of your window - there'll be a bloke in red tights driving to work in a snowplough before I commit intellectual suicide.

Actually Arkguy, your whole point is a non-starter, since many, many Christians DO believe that the Genesis account is not literal and yet have complete faith in the truth of the salvation message. So your theory that if you don't believe in a literal Genesis account, you will eventually come to doubt the rest of Scripture is proved wrong by millions of Christians worldwide.

Personaly, I bet if you took a poll of all the church members in the USA the literal Genesis believers would be in the majority.

In fact the only place I meat the myth guys is on these forums.

Ah, that explains a lot. Did you not see the result of the poll from Focus on the Family? That is not only among "church members" but specifically fundamentalist believers! In that poll, LESS than 50% (43%) believed that God created the universe thousands of years ago.

Now, considering what percentage of "church members" in the USA are actually fundamentalists (a minority), the numbers, even in the good ol' US of A would most likely, then, be even LOWER than 43%.

But I know exactly where you are coming from. Those who attend fundamentalist churches tend to believe that ALL Christians are fundamentalists, and even YECs! This forum is a better gauge of general Christian belief than your personal experience.

Where is this poll?
Do you have a link?

here is one poll that seems to suggest vance is wrong.
http://family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0019712.cfm

here's another poll

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm

Ark Guy said:

here is one poll that seems to suggest vance is wrong.
http://family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0019712.cfm

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This poll says nothing about what the participants believe.

At least I presented a poll...did you?

Ark Guy said:

At least I presented a poll...did you?

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You presented a poll and suggested that it showed that vance was wrong. Neither poll you presented did that. The first poll does not tell us anything about the beliefs of the students that took it. The second poll shows us that creationists are in the minority, especially amoung scientists.

Ark Guy said:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm

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This page probably makes reference to the poll vance is discussing:

"In 1999-NOV, Focus on the Family, a Fundamentalist Christian agency, concluded a poll of their web site visitors concerning their beliefs about creation and evolution. Results were:
God created the universe, but I don't know when: 46%
God created the universe thousands of years ago: 43%
God created the universe billions of years ago: 10%
Life came into being and evolved on its own: 1%
I don't have a clue: 0.4% 6"

Actually, the second link you gave provides the results of the Focus on the Family poll. I am not sure why they were asking a question about evolution as an option when discussing how long ago God created, though. Notice that the only question they ask about evolution was the atheistic belief that God had nothing to do with it. They did not ask how many believe that God USED evolution as part of his creation process.

Karl - Liberal Backslider said:

Is the important truth that the Bible is concerned with that the world was made in six days? I don't think it is. The important truths can indeed be understood by an average person reading Genesis and not being diverted by unnecessary questions about its literal historicity.

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Well, the big problem I have with that is the fact that it is in there for some purpose or reason. How can the average bible student discern what is and isn't important? Why does the text give us "six days" (Gen 1:5, Exo 20:11), a 6,000 year(ish) geneology, a global flood (Gen 6-8), amazing prophecies, miracles, resurrections, an unseen devil running amok on the earth (Job 1:6-12, 1 Pet 5:8), angels, chariots of fire (2 Kin 6:17), and the outcome of end times? (Dan 7-11, Rev 1-22).

Q: What do we take to know the truth? All, Part, or None? If part, how do we know what to take? Can we be CERTAIN that partial literality is not in error?

Not sure about that - the oldest bits are generally held to be 3000 years old by most scholars; of course the newest bits are less than 2000 years old.

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You're right - my "about 4,000 years" is actually better stated as "about 3,000 years".

Your definition is a little off. Uniformitarianism merely proposes that the physical universe operates by the same laws now as it did in the past. It is in fact a profoundly Christian influenced idea - that God made a universe that is comprehensible and ordered.

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Well, yes, and no...uniformitarianism is the notion that what we measure today can be applied to billions of years of things like geologic formations, red-shift (studies of prismatic qualities of star light), and fossil distribution. What God's word says is that all was VERY organized following Gen 1,2; but then in Gen 7, God floods the whole planet with water, with catastrophic results! Everything with breath dies, save them on the Ark, and the creation is now is a state of relative disorder from its original intent.

According to Gen 1:6 the firmament was an expanse of air separating water from the waters (before dry land appeared):

Gen 1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Gen 1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so.

Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

It has been THEORIZED (acceptable notionality) by YEC that this firmament formed a protective boundary of water (or ice) that covered the atmosphere. Imagine the possibility that it was as the Bible describes it; The air pressure would have been much greater, if the O2 content was higher as some air bubbles in amber have indicated O2 levels of approx 40% (I'll have to look for that source and get back later), plus the repellent capacity of this "canopy" to withstand UV radiation...that would make the earth almost like a hyperbaric chamber. It would give some modicum of credibility to the 900-year-old people, and paint a picture of a world massively different than ours. Also, you would be able to legitimize how the flood waters covered the earth and made it rain for 40 consecutive days (it had never rained before, then the canopy fell). Plus, the word also tells us that:

Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Some also theorize that the mid-Atlantic ridge could have been a rupture point for the "fountains of the great deep", as a mist would come up from the earth to water the plants prior to the Flood (Gen 2:6).

This could very well be a scientific possibility (not claiming anything here, just a possibility) that is in TOTAL HARMONY with scripture and the resultant obervations made in geology.

Sedimentary rock was formed as the water settled, the Grand Canyon was cut rapidly as the rock was still soft, fossil graveyards were deposited as clusters of dead animals floated in the flood water, etc, etc. It is a possibility and clearly disagrees with uniformitarianism.

Remember that 150 years of Darwinian evolution? Your problem here is chronology. The antiquity of the earth - that it could not be merely thousands of years old - was established by such men as Lyell and Sedgewick long before Darwin even conceived of evolution. There was simly no evolutionary theory for them to need to defend. The late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century gentlemen scientists were Christians; their base assumption was creationist but their discoveries forced them to modify that paradigm.

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Correct, Darwin obtained much of his theories from Lyell's research, who theorized the geologic column which, though disproven, is still used today.

That sounds like pantheism - if the Word is God as John asserts, then the Word cannot be the creation. But that aside...

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Ah, correct again...man, I didn't mean to indicate the creation is one with God...my mistake.

I'd agree. But I cannot agree that the creation accords with a literal intepretation of the Bible, because it quite simply doesn't, as the Christian gentlement scientists of 200 years ago finally had to conclude.

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Not all of them concluded, nor do we have to conclude today that evolution is the only choice. There are alternatives to what is being taught as seemingly factual.

Do you have good reasons to doubt that science? To show it as being erroneous? Do you have evidence that the motivation of earth scientists is actually to support evolution? Because that is what you are saying. Fundamentally, you are accusing them of dishonesty....

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I take no delight in "finger-pointing", intentionally anyway. Many of my posts are written primarily from a biblical perspective, and my premises are biblically-centered, and I also strive to maintain a close connection with science, because I am interested in science...very much so! What bothers me is the stuff of Lyell's theory still being taught and used when it is plainly "junk". My fear is that it is still being used intentionally because there is not another theory to fill the gap. I could get into discussions on polonium halos and what happened to Dr. Gentry when his research started to debunk the "Big Bang"...his grant money and funding dried up and he no longer had a job. Check out: http://www.halos.com/

My accusations of scientific malfeasance occur when educated men and women withhold evidence from challenging evolution because evolution cannot be challenged - I could talk about this for a long time...my posts are always so long!! Sorry guys!!

Really, though, the evolutionary biologists I have read are MUCH more honest in their presentation than any YEC literature I have read. In the book What Evolution Is, Ernst Mayr raises the legitimate questions about evolution and then provides the best answers. He sets out the position in good scientific fashion, showing the good, the bad and the ugly about the theories involved.

YEC's on the other hand, routinely misrepresent what evolution says (and this MUST be intentional or they are immensely ignorant, neither of which is good for Creation Science viability), leave out vital information and evidence, present ONLY evidence which supports their concepts and twist all the rest around to fit their needs.

Vance said:

YEC's on the other hand, routinely misrepresent what evolution says (and this MUST be intentional or they are immensely ignorant, neither of which is good for Creation Science viability), leave out vital information and evidence, present ONLY evidence which supports their concepts and twist all the rest around to fit their needs.

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Vance, I'll be honest with you here, I don't have a clue what manner of evolution you believe in, nor anyone else in here for that matter because there is a vast myriad of evolutionary ideas that counter one another...who the heck can keep up with them all? I'll dig some up (pun intended) and post them here sometime early in the week. More to follow...

In the meantime, maybe you could clarify your version of evolution, and I'd be happy to discuss it directly rather than upsetting the dialogue with dissimilar strikes on matters that neither you nor I claim to support.

I think you know what I believe, if I'm mistaken on your end, please correct me.

Well, really, there is not a wide variety of theories of evolution. Really, what I believe is the standard concepts of evolution as taught in such seminal works as "What Evolution Is" by Ernst Mayr.

What I DON'T believe in is any strawman version of evolution such as:

abiogenesis (life originating on its own, without God)
cats producing dogs
creatures developing useless "half wings"
etc, etc

I will do my best to post a short summary of evolution, but really it is just the standard stuff.

Vance said:

What I DON'T believe in is any strawman version of evolution such as:

abiogenesis (life originating on its own, without God)
cats producing dogs
creatures developing useless "half wings"
etc, etc

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I'll look up Mayr, and see what he says, I'm getting curious now!

Glad to hear that I can discount the strawman versions. I had to sit through high school Biology and listen to that junk about "missing links". I almost got kicked out of class when I suggested they were missing for a really good reason....I wasn't even a Christian then!