Simple question for the ID proponents

[Melethiel]

In the animal kingdom you will not find reproduction occurring naturally outside of the genus level taxonomically. In most cases not even beyond the species level.

Of course not. Because that's what helps to define species and genus. Why is this a problem for evolution?

 

[Mick116]

When you compromise God's word with man's so called wisdom of how this all went down you are buying into a lie and tredding into dangerous ground indeed.

We could just as well say, "when you compromise God's word with man's so called wisdom in the young-earth creationist movement - ultimately, an interpretation of fallible men - you are taking something literally that was clearly meant to be symbolic, you are buying into a lie, and tredding on very dangerous ground indeed".

We could be wrong, you could be wrong, or we both could be wrong. In fact, we probably are, about a large number of things. It doesn't really matter in the scheme of things. Salvation is not at stake. We are certainly not on "very dangerous ground", any of us.

 

[Willtor]

Although you are being charitable, I will tease you nonetheless.

Haha! I'm actually not being charitable at all (well, I'm not humoring you, anyway). Consider ethics, for example. One couldn't possibly begin to do ethics with science. To be sure, science helps to give one good information when doing ethics. But science could never tell you what is good or evil or the will of God. These are things that can't be tested through experimentation. You can see, then, why TEs react so strongly to people (not you) who say that evolution implies purposelessness or some such. Purpose isn't a question that evolution could ask, and an evolutionist who asked such a question would be searching outside his field.

Apparently the notion of the nebular hypothesis for the origin of the solar system was confirmed in seances to Emmanual Swedenborg, who seems to have been one of the originators.

Does this prove a particular point in favor of YECs? Not really. Its just kind of a funny story.

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/02-star8.htm#Swedenborg

 

[Assyrian]

In Genesis 6:6-7 the original language is specific in that the word " amche" means to totally wipe away man and animals. In Gen 6:17 the word/s "eadme" says that God would wipe off all things that have breath from the face of the ground. Rationalizations do not make this say only a local flood was intended or expected. The Bible tells us that Noah , a preacher of righteousness, told of the end of all known life for 120 years.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

Hi Jim, could you quote the verse you are referring to and highlight the words instead of just giving the transliteration? It is easier to follow what you are talking about especially with different transliteration schemes for Hebrew. I am more used to the transliteration ha'adamah than eadme

Anyway, your reference to God wiping away man and animals doesn't really help. If you remember, Jesus referred total destruction in the flood and Sodom, but it could simply mean total destruction within that area as it did in the case of Sodom.

ha'adamah or eadme is also used to describe the ground being made desolate in local regions.

Isaiah 6:11 Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land [ha'adamah]is a desolate waste,
12 and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land [ha'erets cf Gen 6:17].

Zeph 1:1 The word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.
2 "I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth[ha'adamah]," declares the LORD.
3 "I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth[ha'adamah]," declares the LORD.
4 "I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place the remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests along with the priests,

Hag 1:11 And I have called for a drought on the land [ha'erets again] and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground [ha'adamah] brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.

 

[Assyrian]

No, there is not conclusive evidence that life evolved from a single cell to the diversity we see in the biota today.

Certainly there is much more evidence for divergence over the last half a billion million years, than for earlier evolution from single celled life. There is simply less information available about life back them. But the evidence we do have supports evolution there too. Unless someone have a clear agenda for not wanting evolution to be true, any objective assessment the evidence is that it is conclusive. That is why you get people accepting the evidence for evolution from every background from atheists and agnostics, throughout Christianity liberal, traditional, evangelical, and throughout all the worlds major religions, while only creationist Christians, Muslims and Hindus, think evolution is in doubt.

Reproductive barriers alone prohibit this from happing.

Reproductive barriers arise naturally as different populations of a species evolve in different directions. Scientists have observe these barriers forming. If reproductive barriers arise when species diverge, there is no reason to think the barriers between two different species today mean they could not have evolved from a common ancestor.

Also, there is no evidence that the Bible taught that the earth was central to all of the universe. You can take it that way by reading into it some things but it does not specifically teach that.

What they believed the bible said was that the earth was fixed and unmovable and that the sun and moon went around the earth. I suppose the earth being in the centre of the universe follows from that but it was not the issue. The problem Christians had when Copernicus came along was that they understood the bible to say the sun went round the earth, while science was telling them it was the earth went round the sun.

When you compromise God's word with man's so called wisdom of how this all went down you are buying into a lie and tredding into dangerous ground indeed.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

How can you tell the difference between compromising the word of God and compromising a traditional literal interpretation of God's word?

 

[Jimlarmore]

Of course not. Because that's what helps to define species and genus. Why is this a problem for evolution?

Because it limits the amount of change that can occurr due to the genome pool under consideration. For macro-evolution to occurr there has to be novel information brought into the genome/s. Mutation is not a viable modality to accomplish this neither is natural selection.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

 

[Jimlarmore]

Hi Jim, could you quote the verse you are referring to and highlight the words instead of just giving the transliteration? It is easier to follow what you are talking about especially with different transliteration schemes for Hebrew. I am more used to the transliteration ha'adamah than eadme

There are several texts that can be used. In Genesis 6 we have :

6

And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7

And the LORD said, I will destroy "Amche", man whom I have created from the face of the earth; "ehame" both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

THere is absolutely nothing here to indicate that any life would survive the soon coming deluge.


We also have:

13

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me;"qts ki bshr ba", for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

QTS means the end of or finishing of something, ki bshr ba means of all flesh literally.

Then we have :

17

And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, "ki bshr", wherein is the breath of life, " bu ruch" from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

Again, ki bshr is specific when it is translated as "all flesh". "bu ruch" or "ruach" is which has the breath of life. Ruch is also translated as spirit in hebrew.

Anyway, your reference to God wiping away man and animals doesn't really help. If you remember, Jesus referred total destruction in the flood and Sodom, but it could simply mean total destruction within that area as it did in the case of Sodom.

ha'adamah or eadme is also used to describe the ground being made desolate in local regions.

Isaiah 6:11 Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land [ha'adamah]is a desolate waste,
12 and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land [ha'erets cf Gen 6:17].

Zeph 1:1 The word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.
2 "I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth[ha'adamah]," declares the LORD.
3 "I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth[ha'adamah]," declares the LORD.
4 "I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place the remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests along with the priests,

Hag 1:11 And I have called for a drought on the land [ha'erets again] and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground [ha'adamah] brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.

Clearly the Bible makes mention of all flesh dying or being destroyed and it is clear that the original language says this. You can either accept it or not.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

 

[Melethiel]

Because it limits the amount of change that can occurr due to the genome pool under consideration. For macro-evolution to occurr there has to be novel information brought into the genome/s. Mutation is not a viable modality to accomplish this neither is natural selection.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

How do you define "information", and how is it measured? Although I've taken biology before, this is not a concept I'm familiar with.

 

[Jimlarmore]

We could just as well say, "when you compromise God's word with man's so called wisdom in the young-earth creationist movement - ultimately, an interpretation of fallible men - you are taking something literally that was clearly meant to be symbolic, you are buying into a lie, and tredding on very dangerous ground indeed".

We could be wrong, you could be wrong, or we both could be wrong. In fact, we probably are, about a large number of things. It doesn't really matter in the scheme of things. Salvation is not at stake. We are certainly not on "very dangerous ground", any of us.

Anytime you compromise God's word you are tredding on dangerous ground. I do not take things literally that are clearly symbolic in scripture. Please show how the narrative in the flood story is in anyway symbolic or would lead one to interpret it as symbolic.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

 

[crawfish]

Anytime you compromise God's word you are tredding on dangerous ground. I do not take things literally that are clearly symbolic in scripture. Please show how the narrative in the flood story is in anyway symbolic or would lead one to interpret it as symbolic.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

The problem is you refuse to compromise your view of God's word even when the words have changed their meaning over time. You take a story written by people with a fairly small worldview, and then apply it using what we know now about the state of the earth. Why is it "compromising" God's word to assume that when they spoke of the earth being flooded that they couldn't possibly have known the size and shape of the earth, and thus couldn't have meant the same thing that it does to us. Do we use our meaning, or the original intent?

Whether you like it or not, you are compromising scripture by making it mean something different as we discover more about the nature of the universe around us.

 

[Assyrian]

There are several texts that can be used. In Genesis 6 we have :

6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7And the LORD said, I will destroy "Amche", man whom I have created from the face of the earth; "ehame" both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

THere is absolutely nothing here to indicate that any life would survive the soon coming deluge.

Like I said, this is simply saying everything in the region flooded would perish, not that the flood was global. It is what I pointed out to you Jesus' quote where 'and destroyed them all' is used to describe both the flood and the destruction of Sodom, 'and destroyed them all' means no survivors too. It just doesn't mean global.

I presume by "ehame" you mean the "eadme"you referred to in your previous post? I pointed out to you a number of verses where a judgement on eadme or ha'adamah refers to a local region. The language in the verse you quote can be used in to refer to a local judgment, so there simply is no reason to say the flood has to be global.

The face of the earth was used twice in the Zephaniah quote I gave you, describing a judgment on Judah. It was also used back in Gen 4:14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth ; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth [erets]; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. This was before Cain moved from the land, erets, he was living in and settled in the erets of Nod.

We also have:

13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me;"qts ki bshr ba", for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

QTS means the end of or finishing of something, ki bshr ba means of all flesh literally.

Look at the context. I have mentioned to you erets usually means a land or region.
Gen 6:11 Now the land was corrupt in God's sight, and the land was filled with violence.
12 And God saw the land, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way in the land.
13 And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the land is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the land.
God was telling Noah he was going to destroy everything because the region was filled with violence. Destroy everything in the whole world because the region was violent? No destroy everything in the region they had filled with violence.

Then we have :

17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, "ki bshr", wherein is the breath of life, " bu ruch" from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

Again, ki bshr is specific when it is translated as "all flesh". "bu ruch" or "ruach" is which has the breath of life. Ruch is also translated as spirit in hebrew.

Talking about the breath of life is particularly appropriate when they were all going to drown. 'Under heaven' as I pointed out meant from horizon to horizon, and he tells Noah everything that is in the land will die. Again we are talking total destruction in the region not that the region is global.

Clearly the Bible makes mention of all flesh dying or being destroyed and it is clear that the original language says this. You can either accept it or not.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

It is really sad when Creationists end up saying 'if you don't accept how I read the passage, you don't accept the bible', when we have been discussing what the text actually means.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Isn't it compromising God's word to ignore his first word -- the universe itself?

God spoke that. To deny what we see is to deny what is first order revelation -- reality itself. The Bible is, at best, second order revelation -- revelation about the God's first word, the universe.

 

[shernren]

Isn't it compromising God's word to ignore his first word -- the universe itself?

God spoke that. To deny what we see is to deny what is first order revelation -- reality itself. The Bible is, at best, second order revelation -- revelation about the God's first word, the universe.

While I normally agree with you, I have some reservations about what you say here. Is the Bible not primarily revelation by God about Himself? Certainly it serves at best as a secondary source of information about the universe, but it is our primary source for information about God; furthermore, we cannot deduce the exact nature of God's relationship with nature without the revelation of Scripture and Christian theology surrounding Scripture, or we will fall into the trap of deism.

 

[Tinker Grey]

While I normally agree with you, I have some reservations about what you say here. Is the Bible not primarily revelation by God about Himself? Certainly it serves at best as a secondary source of information about the universe, but it is our primary source for information about God; furthermore, we cannot deduce the exact nature of God's relationship with nature without the revelation of Scripture and Christian theology surrounding Scripture, or we will fall into the trap of deism.

I accept that correction to a point. To say the Bible is, at best, secondary source WRT physical reality would have been more to the point.

However, with some presumption about the nature of moral law and that we are made in God's image, I'd suggest that these basics -- understanding of justice, love, mercy, social relationships -- inform us about God and give us a basis for understanding the Bible.

However, as for falling into traps, well PM me if you like.

 

[Jimlarmore]

There is absolutely nothing in any of the flood scriptural texts that would indicate that the flood was confined to a local event. However, the narrative is resplendent with phraseology that tells us the flood was indeed a global event.

God Bless
fJi8m Larmore

 

[Mallon]

However, the narrative is resplendent with phraseology that tells us the flood was indeed a global event.

And Luke 2:1 is resplendent with phraseology that tells us his census was indeed a global event, too, right?

 

[Jimlarmore]

It is really sad when Creationists end up saying 'if you don't accept how I read the passage, you don't accept the bible', when we have been discussing what the text actually means.

What is really sad is rationalizing away the clear word of the Bible. Trying to make it say something it does not say. Do we find anything that says animals survived the flood or that in such and such region of the earth that animals or man survived? No, not at all. The Bible clearly says that the end of all life was extinguished during this event. "Everything that had breath means EVERYTHING THAT HAD BREATH not everything that had breath in a certain part of the world. The Bible says that all of the earth was full of violence and all of man's thoughts were evil. God repented that He made man at all. The only one that was found faithful was Noah and his family.

You can try to make it seem to say what ever you want but it's very apparent what it really says to a discerning mind. Lurkers please read Genesis 6 and see if there is anything there that would make one think that the flood was just a local event.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

 

[Mallon]

I think it's time for another quote from our friend Martin Luther, just to put things into some much-needed perspective:

So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow [Copernicus] does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Jos. 10:12].

 

[Assyrian]

There is absolutely nothing in any of the flood scriptural texts that would indicate that the flood was confined to a local event. However, the narrative is resplendent with phraseology that tells us the flood was indeed a global event.

God Bless
fJi8m Larmore

The phraseology does not tell us the flood was global because the same phraseology is used in scripture to describe local phenomena.

The problem is you are taking scriptural terminology and interpreting from your 21st century view point. We need to try to understand how those phrases were used, and what they meant, when they were written. That is why I have been giving you the examples of their use elsewhere in scripture.

 

[Jimlarmore]

And Luke 2:1 is resplendent with phraseology that tells us his census was indeed a global event, too, right?

Equating this phraseology with the narrative of the flood is ludicrous because one is speaking of a census and tax while the other is clearly speaking of the end of all flesh on the face of the earth. Besides, the whole known world was indeed taxed at this point and if they could have communicated this requirement on the other side of the world they would have done it.

Here's some neat stuff to look at for the global flood"
http://www.globalflood.org/

God Bless
Jim Larmore