Science (observations in nature) - supports creation not evolution. So does the Bible

[Roymond]

And this highlights my frustration. I keep getting answers about what God created or how he created—this time it's that he created instantaneously, as Augustine suggested—but I never asked a question related to those answers. For the sake of argument, let's assume that God instantaneously created the past and future altogether as a single whole from his perspective, as you described. Does this tell me what it means for God to create something? Does it tell me if creation is about bringing things into material existence?

Alas, no.

Even though that was my question: "According to the Genesis text [being] referenced, what does it mean for God to create something? [Does it mean bringing] it into material existence?"

"Into material existence"?

For material things, yes -- but the text suggests that there are things that aren't material in that word "heavens", which anyone at the time of the original writing would have understood to be populated by heavenly beings made of spirit, so they were brought into spirit existence.

Though we really don't have that much to go on; the only verses that falls into the category of bringing things into existence from nothing are the very first and the third; the first one announces that God made everything, the third adds light to the mix -- the rest of the account is devoted to God changing the stuff He had already made. There's no indication how He made that everything, but in the third verse we have a means: as one thrologian once put it, God spoke to things that didn't exist and commanded them into existence (the force of what is rendered "Let there be light" can better be understood with a more literal translation: "Light -- BE!") Can we extrapolate back and assume that He spoke everything into existence? With just one sample of commanding something into existence one might say that that's all we need, it's how things came into existence, but a case could be made the other way, that one sample is insufficient to make a projection -- for all we know God may have just had a thought ("Let's make something") and everything sprang into existence, or -- if some ancient rabbis got it right -- He imagined a tiny, tiny bit that had all the possibilities of existence packed into it, and let go of it to let it grow, which it did faster than the imagination can grasp.

I'm putting my money on those ancient rabbis. who went on to say that the universe was filled with a fluid, and as it grew the fluid thinned until a point when light could shine -- at which point God commanded light into existence [trivia: people often ask how there could be light with no sun. this misses the point, which we can understand because we know of a lot of ancient creation stories, and one thing common to a lot of them is that in the beginning there was light everywhere, and everything that existed was pervaded by light -- so it's a common primordial condition that is connected to the goodness of a creator, i.e. the creator is filled with goodness so he//she/it gives off light]. They went on to say that the universe is old beyond the possibility of counting, and the Earth is only a little younger.

 

[Roymond]

Given that plants come into being in a single evening and morning -- and that this happens before the sun is created. Jamming billions of years into one evening and morning is hardly a reasonable treatment of the text.

Scholars of ancient literature will disagree: given the type of literature that first Creation account is, there is no reason to think that "one evening and morning" has anything to do with twenty-four-hour days. In fact a number of ancient scholars who grew up with Hebrew as a natural language have said there is no limit to the amount of human-reckoned time that could be included in this "one day", pointing in part to the fact that the only observer present was God, and so these have to be divine days.

And of course the text does not lead the reader to suppose that God created Adam as a zygote - held him in His hand for 9 months then raised him into a an adult for 20 years then had him go through 9 months of gestation to have Eve. So the readers were not being pointed to that kind of timeline in the case of humans either.

That's a distinct story, in a different literary type. An interesting aspect of it is that the ancient near east was a-flood with stories of gods forming humans out of mud or clay and then bestowing life, stories the original audience would have been aware of, so the moment they heard that God formed humans from the dust of the ground they'd have been asking, "How is this different from the stories our neighbors tell?"

 

[Roymond]

Genesis is not saying "and God spoke -- then there were bacteria... prokaryotes all over the earth" so that Evolution's doctrine on origins for all forms of life on Earth could then say "and from there over billions of years - every class and phyla evolved".

Of course it doesn't -- God spoke to people in the terms they understood.

The text is not of the form "and so thanks to God we got bacteria - then God said to evolution -- take it from there see what you can do with that".

The text clearly tells us that God commanded the land and the seas to "Bring forth!" It doesn't tell us how that happened, it just tells us that He gave the command and then it gives the result.

 

[Roymond]

You still don't get it. Evolutionary theory isn't about the origin of life.

You know better than that now. Even Darwin supposed that God created the first living things. But if you didn't read carefully, tell us which of Darwin's four points of evolutionary theory are about the origin of life. Not holding my breath for that, but that's what you'll need to do.

It assumes that life began somehow.

The reasonable thing to do is to fill that "somehow" with God's command to the land and sea to "Bring forth!" and named the sort of creatures He wanted, if you're going with the Bible.

 

[Roymond]

The text is not helping him in that case either. as already noted above

It may not help him, but it certainly fits: God said "Bring forth!"

 

[Roymond]

As we showed you Prof. Barr has it wrong. Not only do modern Hebrew scholars realize that Genesis does not mean literal 24-hour days, ancient and medieval Hebrew scholars also realized it. Would you like me to show you again?

Apparently that's necessary.

 

[The Barbarian]

Behe irritates me immensely. Before he and his ilk hijacked the term, some of us in university science majors had an informal intelligent design club, and it was exactly what those words suggest: that due to studying science, some people concluded there is a Designer behind it all. Included in our number were some biology majors who due to understanding the elegant system by which life changes and develops decided there was a Designer. Fundamentalist types wanted to join, but didn't last long because they kept wanting to use Bible verses as "data" for scientific inquiry, and we were only interested in what science, once we had agreed there was a Designer, could say about that Designer. Whether or not any information from claimed revelation was of any use was a topic far, far down the line.

Yes, I know; ID was hijacked and debased by creationists, in spite of attempts by people like Michael Denton to keep a rational teleology clear of religious beliefs.

Have you read his forward to Nature's Destiny?

 

[The Barbarian]

As we showed you Prof. Barr has it wrong. Not only do modern Hebrew scholars realize that Genesis does not mean literal 24-hour days, ancient and medieval Hebrew scholars also realized it. Would you like me to show you again?

Not the case in all world class universities as Barr notes

He merely asserts, offering no evidence for his claim. For reasons we all now understand.

Apparently his knowledge of his peers exceeds your knowledge of his peers.

I actually provided counter-examples, while Barr merely asserts without supporting his claim. So you surely understand why people don't believe him.

 

[BobRyan]

"evolutionism" is "belief in evolution" despite the facts (observations in nature) to the contrary.

"Evolutionism" is not evolution.

 

[BobRyan]

He merely asserts, offering no evidence for his claim.

Barr is one such professor in those world class universities which apparently you now claim "does not exist".
And it is his observation of his own peers which you apparently now claim "does not exist"

Is that really logical on your part??

 

[BobRyan]

I actually provided counter-examples

No you did not. Instead of paying attention "to the details|" you skimmed past them and claimed to find "one exception".

To find a counter example you needed a professor in a world class university quoted as saying "all professors of Hebrew and OT studies reject the literal interpretation as the intended meaning of the author of Genesis -- as far as I know".

you did not - but apparently post as if you did. surely you understand why people do not find that sort of "counter" to be at all compelling.

You "Could" also have tried to rescue your assertion by addressing such as details as
1. How the newly freed slaves at Sinai were going to read darwinism "into the text"
2. How the narrative about no manna falling on the exact 7th day each week for 40 years argues against "the exact 7th day detail" in the text.
3. How the death sentence for one who ignored the exact 7th day detail in Ex 16 -- argues against "The exact 7th day detail" in the text
4. How those "reading the text" could be so easily mislead into following those details

 

[BobRyan]

But once there is a horse, and if ancestors are found,

I don't know of any text of evolution that state "first horses came into being as on day 6 of Genesis 1 -- and then they began to evolve" ... do you??

 

[BobRyan]

And this highlights my frustration. I keep getting answers about what God created or how he created—this time it's that he created instantaneously, as Augustine suggested

[/QUOTE]

I don't know of anyone here arguing that we should ignore the details in the text (as Augustine stated) and pretend that it all happened in one second instead of the 7 day detail in the text... do you know of anyone here arguing for that??

For the sake of argument, let's assume that God instantaneously created the past and future altogether as a single whole

Why would we do that?

I notice you are still avoiding the details in the text that you claim to have read? How is that in any way compelling for your statements about the text?

 

[The Barbarian]

As we showed you Prof. Barr has it wrong. Not only do modern Hebrew scholars realize that Genesis does not mean literal 24-hour days, ancient and medieval Hebrew scholars also realized it. Would you like me to show you again? I provided counter-examples.

No you did not.

They are in the thread for everyone to read them. No point in denial. On the other hand, Barr provides nothing but an unsupported assertion. Do you think no one noticed?

To find a counter example you needed a professor in a world class university quoted as saying "all professors of Hebrew and OT studies reject the literal interpretation as the intended meaning of the author of Genesis -- as far as I know".

No, I merely needed to show that one such scholar rejects Barr's assumption, which he was unable to support with evidence. And I showed you such a counter-example. As an added point, I showed that ancient and medieval Hebrew scholars rejected a literal interpretation of the creation story.

 

[DamianWarS]

To many rational minds this idea of the creator having more capability and intelligence than the thing created - makes sense and fits what we observe in real life.

This just speaks to the who, not the how. Is God not powerful enough to work through all mechanisms of life regardless what they are?

Science confirms that there is not one observation of dust,rocks,gas,sun-light producing a horse, or rabbit, or amoeba, or bacteria over time.

Is not belief in the unseen intrinsic to the faith? Some things in the bible are for time and place and are not actively happening yet if applied to theistic evolution you demand the evidence. Maybe amoeba don't evolve because God has stopped his creation process through amoeba.

Why doesn't God continue to create as he did in Genesis? Simple, because he ceased. So why is this counter biblical again?

Agreed, science has unanswer questions yet with a creator who is in control the unexplained becomes ordered. Why doesn't it happen? Because God is in control of the processes and he determines what advances and what doesn't. he also determines the when.

 

[The Barbarian]

Is not belief in the unseen intrinsic to the faith? Some things in the bible are for time and place and are not actively happening yet if applied to theistic evolution you demand the evidence. Maybe amoeba don't evolve because God has stopped his creation process through amoeba.

Amoebae do evolve. Recently, one species was found to have evolved an obligate endosymbiosis with bacteria; neither can now live apart from each other, and the bacteria evolved to become a sort of organelle within the cell of the amoeba.

This is the mechanism by which chloroplasts and mitochondria evolved in the evolution of eukaryotes.

 

[BobRyan]

This just speaks to the who, not the how.

The Bible addresses "How" in two areas -
1. The time frame - 7 literal day
2. The initiating event - God speaks.

But does not provide a chemistry lab for creating all forms of life in a single day for either land or sea.

Is God not powerful enough to work through all mechanisms of life regardless what they are?

Indeed - we could have had a text that said "for in 4 billion years God created all life on Earth in a very slow innefficient and death -centric way..somehow".

He did not choose that option according to His text.

Going with His actual text - we have "the other option" as the one selected -- which is a problem for trying to jam belief in evolutionism into it.

 

[BobRyan]

Amoebae do evolve.

into? "more amoeba" and not into multi-celled species.

 

[BobRyan]

BobRyan said:

To find a counter example you needed a professor in a world class university quoted as saying "all professors of Hebrew and OT studies reject the literal interpretation as the intended meaning of the author of Genesis -- as far as I know".

No, I merely needed to show that one such scholar rejects Barr's assumption

Bar made no assumption. His observation was that he knows of no professor in Hebrew or OT studies in any world class university that takes the "jam billions of years into each day" path. He states that as far as he knows there is no such professor which at the very least informs us that his own peers have a very strong tendency to view the text in its obvious literal form.

You find not one single professor saying " as far as he knows there is no professor of Hebrew or OT studies in any world class university that views the text as teaching a literal 7 day timeline for creation... or failing that -- "most or al professors of Hebrew or OT studies in all world class universities assume the text of Genesis is figuratively and allows for billions of years in each day."

We seem to both agree you did not show that at all.

What you DID claim to show is "There is at least ONE professor" that does view it that way -- who makes NO statement at all about how his peers at all world class universities view it.

Details matter.

 

[BobRyan]

No, I merely needed to show that one such scholar rejects Barr's assumption

Sadly for your argument - all that would show is "There is one exception" ... Barr's statement "so far as I know" does allow for things like "one exception".

The salient point in Barr's argument is that the facts in the text are so glaringly obvious that the professors in all world class universities accept the text as "intended" to be taken literally and even you avoid all the problems that would occur trying to re-imagine the text details in to "billions of years not 7 days" as has been pointed out repeatedly on this thread.

That means "not is not just Christian creationists" that notice this glaringly obvious details. Those guys in many cases are not even Christian at all and they still admit to it.

Finding "one of them" that holds your view does not help your case.

as already noted here:

No you did not. Instead of paying attention "to the details" you skimmed past them and claimed to find "one exception".

To find a counter example you needed a professor in a world class university quoted as saying "all professors of Hebrew and OT studies reject the literal interpretation as the intended meaning of the author of Genesis -- as far as I know".

you did not - but apparently post as if you did. surely you understand why people do not find that sort of "counter" to be at all compelling.

You "Could" also have tried to rescue your assertion by addressing such as details as
1. How the newly freed slaves at Sinai were going to read darwinism "into the text"
2. How the narrative about no manna falling on the exact 7th day each week for 40 years argues against "the exact 7th day detail" in the text.
3. How the death sentence for one who ignored the exact 7th day detail in Ex 16 -- argues against "The exact 7th day detail" in the text
4. How those "reading the text" could be so easily mislead into following those details