Well stated Reepicheep!
In regard to Adams age and maturity (as none of us will know), Eve is created some time after Adam. That timing is also debatable... I will not digress and concede young Adam may have been a young Man.
Thank you for the replies GBTG, I am certainly not an expert; however, have found very many brothers and sisters here who are very knowledgeable (with many perspectives on creation) whom I've enjoyed discussions and am always learning from. I believe Eve was created the same day as Adam (Genesis 1:27), but definitely after having already created Adam as you have indicated.
I never assumed light could only come from a sun, the Shekinak Glory of light was also a consideration... if the Earth was spinning. But the intended audience is Man. God could have easily stated his light shown upon the Earth but didn't. I firmly believe there was so much light in the beginning of creation that atoms could not form until God separated the two. You did not however touch on the timing or phrasing of evening and morning.
That's what I was curious about from an YEC believer.
How many hours are from evening to morning on the first "day" of creation (not 24)?
How can you have a 24hr. day and 2 others without a sun (4th "day" of creation)? -Shekinah glory if the Earth was spinning, but then you have to account for without form and void... so please give me a reasonable explication that would seem plausible to a secular science educated non-believer that would be curious about this topic.
Yes, I believe it is possible God may have been the source of light. A
reasonable explanation is in the mind of the beholder so what may be reasonable to you and I may not be so for an education non-believer (educated under the paradigm of deep ages, gradualism, uniformitarianism, progressivism, evolution, etc...) so bear that in mind.
As for the timing and phrasing of evening an morning, as you know this has been the topic of much debate within Christian circles for a long time. The majority of the world's leading Hebraists (experts in the Hebrew language) point to the Hebrew word for day (Yom), as given in the context of evening/morning and in conjunction with sequenced numerals (day 1, day 2, day 3...) all give indication that yom is an ordinary (what we think of as a) 24-hr day. There's speculation floating around as to whether the earth spun faster/slower in the beginning, but setting that aside, it does not materially change what was intended to convey the length of time that of an ordinary day. Aside from leading Hebraists, most of the widely used Lexicons also point to the days in Genesis 1 as being ordinary days as well. I'm also, attaching a link below to a somewhat lengthy, but really good and very thorough article on the Days of Genesis by Dr. Gerhard F. Hasel:
G. F. Hasel - The "Days" of Creation in Genesis 1
As for the life in "day" three without suns, chemo-synthesis covers this...
What is Chemosynthesis? (with pictures) not illogical at all for the Creator of all and well described in Genesis. I am all good with supernatural! The whole of the universe is supernatural.
I wouldn't rule out chemosynthesis as a possibility, nor consider it illogical either. Likewise as you have stated, I too am all good with supernatural. There are some who believe behind every supernatural event as described in the Bible that there are just natural processes of which we do not yet know or understand - but I personally do not ascribe to the notion that God only works miracles through natural processes... though He certainly can use natural processes for His purposes and glory.
Is it possible that a scientist could make a discovery that proves God, or is all of science merely against God? I don't consider naturalistic events natural... as just described the whole of the universe is contrary to science or mans understanding. Gods influence (miracles) were necessary in all 6 days of Creation, but there is logical progression to these events. In regard to God "sitting around watching Dinosaurs" this is my point. “Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?” -Charles Darwin (not an atheist).
I believe the discovery of God is made known by the Holy Spirit. When I see the stars on a clear night, I see where God has 'stretched out the heavens'... when a non-Christian looks up, I suspect they see balls of nuclear reactions with the one we orbit around being about 70% hydrogen and 28% helium with the rest being various other elements. This comes back to the paradigm of what we believe. Will science discover God despite their continuing to stumble about His creation? Only by the grace of God. Time will tell.
Charles Darwin never claimed to be an atheist - that is correct, but he was also a big proponent of naturalism and did not take the Bible as historical (for the sake of time, I just quickly confirmed this on Wikipedia though generally do not take Wikipedia seriously as a scholarly/professional source):
Religious views of Charles Darwin - Wikipedia
As God is the I am that I am, the Alpha and the Omega he is outside of time, presumably all time is the present and no time is relevant for God. The timing of Genesis and dinosaurs are therefore for man.
Again as an YEC how do you logically rectify fossils to an educated person that might be interested in Christianity? What do you say when they come to you looking for a explanation. If your answer seams illogical does that diminish your testimony and bring fewer people to know Christ?
Yes, God is the Alpha and Omega and is outside of time, He sees our past, present, future as a single continuity. That said, the creation story is framed within time-based identifiers with land animals and man happening on the same day, which as you know is not the widely accepted story in scientific academia. Conventional dating places dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years ago and yet we find dinosaur bones with soft tissue? Dinosaur bones with C14 present (which essentially disappears after 50k - 100k years)? I may start packing my lunch in dinosaur bones because if those babies can keep soft tissue around for 65+ million years then they ought to keep my sandwich fresh all the live long day - forget ice packs! Many cultures around the world (China, Europe, Native American Indians, etc...) have legends of hunting and fighting creatures that when described, match up with dinosaur descriptions.... this is all before dinosaur bones were being dug up in the 17th century - seems to indicate dinosaurs have been around much more recently than we've been led to believe. I'll talk more on my thoughts about fossils below...
This was the analogy I was making, fallibility deters probable followers of Christ! If a christian, church, or religion, proves itself fallible does that bring honor to God?
illogical arguments have no merit...
Yes, I've been to the Patheos
Friendly Atheist forum and chatted with Atheists (oddly enough, many were not super 'friendly' - oh well) to understand their views/issues on/with Christians, and honestly, we've not always done a great job at waving the banner for Christ. The problem isn't God, the problem is us. The challenge for Atheists though is they are judging God by our actions rather than seeking to understand God from what He tells about Himself in His word. We are all fallen, all sinful, all imperfect, all unholy - we're no better than the Atheist except to the extent that we've recognized our need for a savior and have placed our hope and trust in Jesus Christ. As we're told, we only love Him because He first loved us. We should see ourselves simply as beggars telling other beggars where to find water (water that leads to life and life abundantly).
An interesting article from Pew Research (2016) talking about why people are leaving Christianity and among groups that do not ascribe to a religious affiliation, the most significant reason given for such was because of 'science':
Why America’s ‘nones’ left religion behind
It would seem that the naturalistic framework that is so pervasive in our culture and is so widely (and blindly) accepted as truth is the driving force behind many turning away from Christianity. Billions of years and evolution just don't jive with creation, 6 days, catastrophic floods destroying humanity, etc... and so they toss Christianity out the window - accepting the word of man over the word of God, exchanging the truth for a lie.
I whole hardheartedly agreed that we should trust in the wisdom of God. My issue is the amount of dissension there is amongst fellow (would be) Christians on the topic of Genesis. I would happily concede the argument as a whole, if a logical answer could be given aside from "the Bible says so".
Keep in mind that as soon as you're asked to provide arguments for your position that requires setting aside the Bible as support then you have already lost the debate. It is like asking scientists to prove their position but then insisting that cannot use "because the evidence says so". One paradigm/worldview is given to us by God. The other is not given, but is created, by man, where only naturalistic explanations are acceptable as 'scientific proof.' Science used to be something that was observed: If you could see it or touch it, or taste it, smell it, hear it, experiment on it, test it, and prove it... well, then it was true. Now we have science telling us evolution is fact, yet we've never actually seen one kind evolve into another kind, there are no transitional fossils. In fact, let's think about it: If evolution (life from common descent) is true, the fossil record would show many many many (almost exclusively) life forms from bygone eras that don't look like anything else, let alone anything we have today. We'd almost continuously be finding something unique that doesn't look like anything else ever seen because life is continuously evolving, continuously changing, continuously morphing to the newer, better model. But we don't see that. We see dinosaurs that look like dinosaurs, birds that look like birds, shark fossils conventionally dated to hundreds of millions of years ago that look like... sharks, people that look like people, etc... No transitional forms. Google sometime a phrase like what did cats evolve from, or what did giraffes evolve from and see how long it takes before the articles become vague and nebulous and start using unspecific terms like "common ancestor"... yet we never find the remains of all of these common ancestors or ancestors of the ancestors that everything supposedly has. Also, the Cambrian rock layer - all these complex life forms with no progressive fossils to show where it came from - poof! Magic. What about the E. Coli evolution experiments by Richard Lenski? After 50,000+ generations (like 1,000,000 years on a human scale), the E. Coli is still.... here it comes.... E. Coli - it's not a new bacteria. For the science that claims evolution is true yet has no transitional fossils, never been observed, cannot be reproduced in a lab (and even if it could, does not mean it can or would happen in nature - but they cannot even make it happen in a lab), I say, "Fail, fail, fail!!"
The Bible does support ideas like natural selection which allows for kind to produce after it's kind. This, for example, explains why people whose ancestry is from Africa has darker skin and wider nostrils than someone whose ancestry is from northern Europe who will have lighter skin and narrower nostrils. We're all humans, all from the lineage of Noah (and ultimately Adam & Eve).
One last analogy: A new wife and her husband are sitting at a dinner table. The new bride is talking with her husband while she prepares their first holiday dinner. She prepares vegetables, biscuits, gravy, etc... When she gets out the Ham to prepare it for cooking, she takes out a large knife and cuts off about 2 inches from the front of the Ham. The husband immediately asks why she did this, as it seamed an waste of meat. The wife replies this was how my mother made ham and it was the best! The best, she assures him... The husband not wanting to argue about the wasted meat lets it go. The wife however is bothered as she does not know why her mother cut off the front portion of the ham. She calls her mother after she puts the ham in the oven for the prescribed cook time. "Mom why did you cut the end off the Ham before cooking?" The mother responds with "... I dunno your grandmother taught me to cook ham in this manner call her". The new wife hangs up the phone and calls her grandmother and asks the same question. The grandmother says...
"I cut off the front of the Ham because my pan was to small."
So it goes with the book of Genesis... we have come along way in both science and theology. Is our understanding of the book of Genesis "the ham"? Do we know the order and description in Genesis because we have studied and applied knowledge or because we were told?
Warm regards, GBTG
I've heard of this story before, but more so in the context of examining behavior, habit, and tradition, rather than reevaluating one's belief. That said, what do we know to be true about the beginning? The Bible said God created all things and John 1:1-4 tells us that Jesus was there with God in the beginning, all things were made through Him (Jesus), and so forth. Now, examining Jesus a littler here - he was fully God and fully man. That said, we know He showed who He was by the miracles He performed. When Jesus performed miracles, they didn't take billions of years or a natural progression that needed to occur in order for the miracle to be completed. Jesus would have been a laughing stock if the miracles He performed did not manifest themselves immediately - the pharisees would have been like, "Hey Jesus, I think the rest of us are going to go blind here waiting for this man's sight to return!" So when Jesus speaks, it happens. When God speaks it happens. God says He spoke all of creation into existence in just 6 days and we know it is His nature that when He speaks it happens - it is perfectly aligned with His timing. The ham analogy was around a tradition that didn't seem to make sense, but a relatively 'immediate' creation
does make sense and is consistent with the character and timing of God as every time we read of Jesus performing a miracle it is 'immediate'.
Hopefully I hit on everything, but may have overlooked a few.
Respectfully in Christ,
"Reepicheep"
