TE has nonexistent theology (?)

[rmwilliamsll]

and reading further into Chronicles we read
"The children of Amram: Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. The sons of Aaron: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. Eleazar was the father of Phinehas, Phinehas of Abishua, Abishua of Bukki, Bukki of Uzzi, Uzzi of Zerahiah, Zerahiah of Meraioth, Meraioth of Amariah, Amariah of Ahitub, Ahitub of Zadok, Zadok of Ahimaaz, Ahimaaz of Azariah, Azariah of Johanan, and Johanan of Azariah (it was he who served as priest in the house that Solomon built in Jerusalem). Azariah was the father of Amariah, Amariah of Ahitub, Ahitub of Zadok, Zadok of Shallum, Shallum of Hilkiah, Hilkiah of Azariah, Azariah of Seraiah, Seraiah of Jehozadak..." (1 Chronicles 6:3)


comparing it to:

Ezr 7:1 Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, {there went up} Ezra son of Seraiah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah,
Ezr 7:2 son of Shallum, son of Zadok, son of Ahitub,
Ezr 7:3 son of Amariah, son of Azariah, son of Meraioth,
Ezr 7:4 son of Zerahiah, son of Uzzi, son of Bukki,
Ezr 7:5 son of Abishua, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the chief priest.


yields the "fact" that the names vary for the same geneology, this should be enough to "convince" anyone that the geneologies are written by people like you and me with agendas and things to prove, and it is not a Koranic dictation from the distant past, furthermore that Genesis 1-11 is sacred history written with an overarching purpose that is not modern history, nor modern science.

 

[Biliskner]

yields the "fact" that the names vary for the same geneology, this should be enough to "convince" anyone that the geneologies are written by people like you and me with agendas and things to prove, and it is not a Koranic dictation from the distant past, furthermore that Genesis 1-11 is sacred history written with an overarching purpose that is not modern history, nor modern science.

your argument is lost within your obfuscation. what exactly are you saying? EG: are you saying that Adam is not a real person like you and me?
(to be as clear as crystal: my Q is a "Yes" or "No" answer.)

 

[jereth]

your argument is lost within your obfuscation. what exactly are you saying? EG: are you saying that Adam is not a real person like you and me?
(to be as clear as crystal: my Q is a "Yes" or "No" answer.)

Biliskner, this has been discussed in depth in another thread:
http://www.christianforums.com/t1983104-for-tes-historicity-of-ot-people.html

Here's a short answer: you can't give a simple "yes" or "no" to that question. (I'm sorry, but sometimes the world -- and the Bible -- is not the simple place we want it to be.)

Many TE's would believe in two Adams -- a "generic" or mythical Adam for Genesis 2-3 (remember, "Adam" just means "man" in Hebrew), and a literal historical Adam for Genesis 4-5.

 

[relspace]

your argument is lost within your obfuscation. what exactly are you saying? EG: are you saying that Adam is not a real person like you and me?
(to be as clear as crystal: my Q is a "Yes" or "No" answer.)

Different TEists have different points of view on this question. I accept all of Genesis on faith as reliable as my own memories. But then I have a memory of driving my father's car when I was eight years old that I strongly suspect was a dream (and that was only 36 years ago).

I believe that Adam is a real person but I do not believe that Genesis 1&2 are intended as a detailed description of how God created the world or man and so I do not believe that Adam was made from modeling clay or that Eve was made from body parts like the Frankenstein monster. (I do not believe that Genesis 1&2 relates every conversation that God had with his angels or that God had with Adam and Eve. I believe that "Tree of Life" and "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" have bright flashing neon signs saying THESE ARE SYMBOLIC.)

So I accept (with another leap of faith) a lot of what science says about the development stars and galaxies in the universe and the history of the development of life on this planet. It does not replace Genesis for these are entirely different types of information. Science only talks about generalities and cannot possible say much of anything about the specific actions of a specific person on a specific day six to twelve thousand years ago. Whereas that is exactly what Genesis does inform us about the two people called Adam and Eve.

I do not rely on scripture for information about when my next dental appointment is or about the best place to buy computer equipment. I do not rely on scripture for things for which the Bible was obviously never intended to inform us like on the topics which science is particularly good at uncovering information. So I obviously do not accept Sola Scriptura. But nor do I have any desire or intention to use science to rewrite the content of Genesis.

It is unfortunate that many people do believe in Sola Scientifica and use science to ridicule both scripture and Christianity. But that is their choice and their loss. The earth will always have poor and ignorant people as a consequence of our free will. Surely you do not think that science is any threat to God or that science is any significant barrier to God's ability to help people receive the message of the Gospel. The limitations are only in your mind and my mind. If you want to take it upon yourself to guard the purity of the Bible and the respect due it in Christendom then I salute what I see as an honorable calling.

 

[muaxiong]

and reading further into Chronicles we read "The children of Amram: Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. The sons of Aaron: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. Eleazar was the father of Phinehas, Phinehas of Abishua, Abishua of Bukki, Bukki of Uzzi, Uzzi of Zerahiah, Zerahiah of Meraioth, Meraioth of Amariah, Amariah of Ahitub, Ahitub of Zadok, Zadok of Ahimaaz, Ahimaaz of Azariah, Azariah of Johanan, and Johanan of Azariah (it was he who served as priest in the house that Solomon built in Jerusalem). Azariah was the father of Amariah, Amariah of Ahitub, Ahitub of Zadok, Zadok of Shallum, Shallum of Hilkiah, Hilkiah of Azariah, Azariah of Seraiah, Seraiah of Jehozadak..." (1 Chronicles 6:3)

comparing it to:

Ezr 7:1 Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, {there went up} Ezra son of Seraiah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah,
Ezr 7:2 son of Shallum, son of Zadok, son of Ahitub,
Ezr 7:3 son of Amariah, son of Azariah, son of Meraioth,
Ezr 7:4 son of Zerahiah, son of Uzzi, son of Bukki,
Ezr 7:5 son of Abishua, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the chief priest.


yields the "fact" that the names vary for the same geneology, this should be enough to "convince" anyone that the geneologies are written by people like you and me with agendas and things to prove, and it is not a Koranic dictation from the distant past, furthermore that Genesis 1-11 is sacred history written with an overarching purpose that is not modern history, nor modern science.

From my humble understanding the word "begat" used in Chronicles and the phrase "the son of" in Ezra have two different meanings where in the first instance begat always means to be the biological father of, and "the son of" can mean son, grandson, great son, etc. of - where the connection is not in direct fathering but to establish the lineage (priestly, kingly, ancestral). As an example in Matthew 20:30, 20:31, 21:9 21:15 Jesus is refered to as "the son of David", now does that mean that David fathered Jesus? Of course not - but Jesus was in the royal line of David and therefore could be called "son of David".

 

[rmwilliamsll]

The Book, if not the above pasted chapter, should be enough to "convince" anyone that Adam (+Eve) were real people like you and me, and that Genesis 1-11 is literal history.

your argument is lost within your obfuscation. what exactly are you saying? EG: are you saying that Adam is not a real person like you and me?
(to be as clear as crystal: my Q is a "Yes" or "No" answer.)

the only thing that is obvious is that OT geneologies are NOT the same thing as modern family trees. What controls them is the purpose of the writer, not a cultural-wide agreement that geneologies are the names of all who went before, in order, with no names left out, of the father's father's line. We have examples in Scripture of exceptions to each on these elements: names left out, not strictly father's father's line. Geneologies are like ancient king's lists, they exist to prove a point, a different point then we use modern family trees for. For example, modern family trees are both male and female lines, something that seems so natural to us yet in many cultures is unthinkable as well as a stupid waste of time. But we think it so natural that even an elementary school student given a family tree project writes down mom and dad. Why? cultural norms. Do you think a Chinese student from the 19thC constructed family trees like you do?

I think Adam was a real human being, but i don't think that the geneologies of 1Chron help at all to evidence the point. They look and act like ancient kings lists which end in mythical and godlike progenitors all over the world, they do not look nor have the same purpose as modern family trees, to assert that they do misses the point of cultural and historical context.

 

[Biliskner]

the only thing that is obvious is that OT geneologies are NOT the same thing as modern family trees. What controls them is the purpose of the writer, not a cultural-wide agreement that geneologies are the names of all who went before, in order, with no names left out, of the father's father's line. We have examples in Scripture of exceptions to each on these elements: names left out, not strictly father's father's line. Geneologies are like ancient king's lists, they exist to prove a point, a different point then we use modern family trees for. For example, modern family trees are both male and female lines, something that seems so natural to us yet in many cultures is unthinkable as well as a stupid waste of time. But we think it so natural that even an elementary school student given a family tree project writes down mom and dad. Why? cultural norms. Do you think a Chinese student from the 19thC constructed family trees like you do?

it doesn't matter what the point is and/or how trees are constructed. the argument is that the names within the (unspecified) tree from an (unspecified) era will have names that exist within the tree that are real people - after all, if the tree is a real tree, and the final Generation X exists, then the father of the father of the father of the father of the father etc. of Gen X has to be a real historical person.

I think Adam was a real human being, but i don't think that the geneologies of 1Chron help at all to evidence the point. They look and act like ancient kings lists which end in mythical and godlike progenitors all over the world, they do not look nor have the same purpose as modern family trees, to assert that they do misses the point of cultural and historical context.

all i was trying to do was to see the unaimous view (or lack thereof) in the historical person Adam as the "father" of the whole human race within the TE "doctrine", but it is clear now that TEs do hold differing views on this issue, some say Adam is real some say not...

Thanks Jereth for the link. I will surely follow that thread.
Cheers.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

it doesn't matter what the point is and/or how trees are constructed. the argument is that the names within the (unspecified) tree from an (unspecified) era will have names that exist within the tree that are real people - after all, if the tree is a real tree, and the final Generation X exists, then the father of the father of the father of the father of the father etc. of Gen X has to be a real historical person.

your posting is evidence that we are so tied up in the modern notions of reality, of historicity, of "realness" that we can not even understand the way people thought just a hundred years ago in other cultures (the point of using China as an example) or of our own culture before the Reformation.

i'll repeat the issue, geneologies are a cultural phenomena. they reflect the purposes of the writers, not your modern notions of family trees. this is obvious from the Scriptures themselves and how they use geneologies. you are, once again, pushing your modern notions onto a document which is thousands of years old and reflects a very different culture.

 

[jereth]

Thanks Jereth for the link. I will surely follow that thread.

BTW if you want to read a scholarly presentation of the question of Adam from a TE viewpoint, I suggest you look at this article on the ISCAST website:
http://www.iscast.org.au/pdf/AdamAnthropandtheGenRec.pdf

It's very good.

 

[gluadys]

BTW if you want to read a scholarly presentation of the question of Adam from a TE viewpoint, I suggest you look at this article on the ISCAST website:
http://www.iscast.org.au/pdf/AdamAnthropandtheGenRec.pdf

It's very good.

It's great. Two paragraphs near the beginning caught my eye. Emphases added.

In considering such a complementary approach to biblical interpretation one is simply restating for this particular issue that science and Scripture both reveal truth and must therefore complement each other. It is also to recognise that neither scientific theory nor biblical interpretation are necessarily the truth, but are current approximations of truth, paths on the road to truth.​

What we often see in these discussions is a recognition by creationists that science is not truth in itself, but a current approximation of the truth. Evolutionists agree with this. But then there is a failure on the part of creationists to recognize that biblical interpretation is likewise not the truth in itself but a current approximation of the truth in scripture. This leads to the common but false accusation that TEs are setting the fallible human knowledge of nature we call science above the infallible word of God. What TEs are doing is setting the human and fallible quest to know nature through science on a par with the human and fallible quest to know God's revelation in scripture through interpretation of the biblical text.

The problem is to navigate between the twin rocks of a ‘Biblicist approach” which evades the scientific data as being irrelevant and unimportant and a “Concordance approach” which conforms the text to the current scientific theory and misunderstands the nature of biblical revelation as presenting scientific rather than theological knowledge.​

Both of these errors are common in the defence of creationism. My current conversation in "If evolution is not valid science....." thread deals with the problem of a Concordance approach that tries to read modern science into the biblical text, and so misidentifies the biblical firmament as space rather than as a solid structure. The same can be seen in the attempt to appropriate the break-up of Pangea into human history at the time of Peleg. This approach distorts both science and scripture. It is the basic reason I broke with old-earth creationism in both day-age and gap forms.

 

[Buho]

Relspace:

"I accept all of Genesis on faith as reliable as my own memories."

Which basically means you do not accept Genesis as absolutely reliable for a source of Truth.

"I do not believe that Genesis 1&2 are intended as a detailed description of how God created the world or man"

Throughout the Bible you'll be hard-pressed to find "scientific" descriptions such as "the earth rotated about its axis and curvature of the earth shaded the local area from the sun." However, throughout the Bible you find "phenomological" descriptions such as "the sun rose." Equivilently, when God says "let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear" we can be sure that -- if this is literal -- this is a phenomological description of scientific events. Possibly God used plate tectonics to shift the mantle and create mountains and continents (in one day). Perhaps God smashed a meteor on one side of the earth which pushed up land on the other side.

Just wanted to clarify about phenomological descriptions.

"So I obviously do not accept Sola Scriptura."

You're misapplying Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is to be relied upon for issues of faith and morals. Historically, Sola Scriptura was clarified to correct the Roman Catholic Church's idea that revelation comes through tradition as well as scripture.

 

[Buho]

Point 1: The Bible IS Truth

I think we're making some progress here on this thread, especially with Gluadys's post.

Article wrote: "Science and Scripture both reveal truth.... Neither scientific theory nor biblical interpretation are necessarily the truth, but are current approximations of truth."

Gluadys wrote: "But then there is a failure on the part of creationists to recognize that biblical interpretation is likewise not the truth in itself but a current approximation of the truth in scripture."

I think Gluadys hit very close to the problem, if not right-on.

• Creationists believe scripture is absolute truth (John 17:17).
• Creationists believe scripture isn't the whole truth (Job 28:1, Ecclesiastes 8:17) but what truth God has revealed to us.
• Creationists believe we can know truth (Romans 1:18-19, Acts 24:8, Galations 4:16) -- contrary to New Age and postmodern thought (this is key), and no I'm not talking about Jesus as Truth, but the regular truth.
• Creationists acknowledge that understanding of truth in scripture requires human (fallable) interpretation.
• Creationists believe that correct interpretation of scripture is possible and God's truths are knowable to us (Matthew 22:29, Daniel 9:2, Luke 24:27)

(The 4th bullet does not have scripture but is a logical outworking because both YECs and TEs use the same scripture and have come to contradictory positions.)

The article's statement can only work if one does not believe in the points above. Do all of you believe in the points above? If no, correct me where I am wrong with scripture. If my summary points are an accurate reflection of what the Bible says and you do not believe in the points, I must question whether you are a Christian at all, for how can a Christian believe in Jesus's redeeming work on the cross as described in the Bible yet disbelieve the rest of God's holy communication to us? Denial of God's Word as absolute Truth sounds like heresy to me.

Therefore, Creationists claim absolute knowable truth from scripture in all* matters that of which it speaks. Creationists rank this authority (scripture) above science and personal observation because it is the source for absolute knowable truth. Ones mind can play tricks, ones eyes can play tricks. Ones theories are constantly revised. God's Word is the unmovable Rock (Matthew 7:24, Psalm 62:2).

The "failure," as Gluadys puts it, is on TEs' understanding the fullness of God's inerrrant word, authority, and sufficiency.

The error is in determining a difficulty in extracting truth from a certain part of scripture (say, Genesis 1), and then claiming we cannot extract any truth out of any part of scripture.

How do we extract God's Truth in scripture? If we regard scripture as the absolute authority in truth, we can only use more scripture. When God says "I am the way and the truth and the life," (John 14:6) how do we understand what this means? we investigate: the way to the Father, what truth is biblically, how scripture defines life, and how exactly Jesus is the essence of all of these things by looking at his recorded life.

The same goes with Genesis 1. How is the word "day" used throughout the Bible? (It always refers to a 24-hour day.) What is the purpose of six days? (To establish our weekly work cycle and to remind us of who God is. Exodus 20:8-11) Could God have created everything? (Yes: Job 38-39) Where was God before Genesis 1? (Psalm 119:89, Isaiah 26:4, John 1:1) Those just as example.

Yes, we are prone to misinterpretation of God's truths. How can we be sure that we are interpreting God's word correctly? By using more scripture, starting with easily-understood fundamentals and building from there. (NOT by using modern science!)

Which interpretation is backed by the most verses in the Bible and fits in best with God's eternal Plan for us? Young Earth Creationists's literal interpretation of Genesis 1? Or Theistic Evolutionists figurative/allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1? This is precicsely on-topic.

* I said "all" because when God speaks, he speaks Truth. I realize there are areas that we can't comprehend what God told us, such as God's eternality. Nevertheless, we know God is eternal.

+ + + + +

Point 2: "Concordance Approach"

As far as a Creationist is concerned, observable facts are secondary to God's word.

Let me rephrase the Creationist question: Do you trust man's word more or God's word more?

God says we are born dead (Romans 8:5-8, Romans 3:9-18). What do you believe? Ok, you grant, Paul is talking about spiritual deadness. Ok then, God says you are born spiritually dead. Yet people still think, contemplate, decide, choose, introspect, and sin. Again: Do you trust your experiences and observations more or God's word more? God is telling you something contrary to your experiences. Surely then, Paul must be using metaphor and he means something else. No. Paul is saying we begin life spiritually dead. What does that mean then? Aah, this might be one of those things we can't comprehend, but we can still know to be the truth of the universe.

Gluadys wrote: "It is the basic reason I broke with old-earth creationism in both day-age and gap forms."

The examples you cite are when people attempt to put science into scripture, where I already talked about how scripture gives primarilly a phenomological description of what actually takes place. All attempts are prone to human error, and are highly speculative (just as is the theory of macroevolution), since we are attempting to add more detail than what the Bible provides.

You still hold onto macroevolution as God's mechanism for creating the diversity of life we see on this planet, though. Why? God didn't say that, or even imply that in how he phenomologically described his creative process. Day 3: plants created. Day 4: sun, moon, and stars created. Day 5: sea creatures created. This is contrary to the theory of evolution! Gluadys, with all due respect, you do not stand by God's word at all but rely completely upon man's theories. In order to "fit" Genesis into the NDT, you will have to rearrange God's explicit order, which means God had to lie. Had God not been explicit in the order (such as in Genesis 2), this would be possible, but you cannot remove from God's word and ignore his spoken truth.

+ + + + +

Conclusion:

In summary, Gluadys (I appologize for using you as an example) highlighted two key disagreements between TEs and YECs which I think are very accurate. I justified the reasoning behind the YEC position on both and call upon TEs to provide better (more authoritative) justification that has been evidenced thus far.

I'll conclude with this bit, which I've been meaning to tell TEs for a while but haven't because my arguments have been science-free.

Apart from scripture, there is no logical reason for YECs to uphold their position. It's madness to go against "proven" science. Why in the world would YECs claim the earth is only 6000 years old?!?! Science has "proven" the earth is billions of years old. Why then? Here's my personal experience: I was a TE for about three months after I had dedicated my life to Christ. While visiting my Christ-seeking cousins, I ran across a world history book for my youngest cousin who's 7. His mom with a black marker had censored out evolutionistic content (millions of years, apes, etc.). I opened the subject with "you don't really believe...." They showed me a few things (that I later found came from AiG) that showed that there is a possibility of scientific evidence that supports their interpretation of Genesis. I was totally skeptical, but nevertheless, let them present their evidence. Once home, I looked into the matter a little more and found that the "science" YECs parade is actually credible and backed by observational evidence. I also found all the "dirty little secrets" that mainstream science does not display publicly -- and that the "dirty little secrets" are actual scientific problems -- not falsehoods spread by propogandists.

In short, I don't think I could have become a YEC by scripture alone because I would not be able to rationalize the apparent contradiction of scripture and observation. But seeing that science actually supports a young earth model was significant for me. In the end (I remember this distinctly), I trusted God's word more than man's word. And just as when you lean on God in all other aspects of your life (trust and faith), you are more than adequately held up by Him; as I continuted to study evolution and creation, I found more and more, evolution cannot happen scientifically, and there is an overwhelming body of scientific evidence that supports creation.

So, if rubber-meets-the-road application is at hand, all this theology talk is good, but checking out the science behind creationism might just do it for you. Then remember the arguments creationists present about sola scriptura. You CAN reconcile the Bible and Science. Try to answer this question: Why are creationists "ignoring" the overwhelming evidence for evolution? We are logical. We do have very good reasonable reasons.

http://www.AnswersInGenesis.org/home/area/qa.asp

 

[Buho]

I mentioned postmodernism and I didn't follow up on it. It's actually a kind of confusing topic, but for our purposes here, I'll state that postmodernists affirm "we cannot know the truth" which is the same battle cry of agnostics, New Agers, and the American philosophy of religious "tolerance."

What's really scarry is that "worldly" postmodernism has infiltrated the Church, and you'll find preachers elluding (subconciously) to this very anti-Christian philosophy.

Yes, postmodernism is anti-Christian, and I do not falsely inflate the "anti-" prefix: Postmodern thought is diametrically opposed to Christianity in all areas of thought.

It's a complicated subject. I've been researching it for several months now and I'm just now getting the hang of recognizing it in the world around me. If you are interested in this, or think I said something wrong, I highly reccomend you research what postmodernism is first -- in its delicate detail.

 

[Willtor]

I mentioned postmodernism and I didn't follow up on it. It's actually a kind of confusing topic, but for our purposes here, I'll state that postmodernists affirm "we cannot know the truth" . . .

No we don't. Not all of us, anyway.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

But seeing that science actually supports a young earth model was significant for me.

i've been waiting 25 years for this evidence. Since first reading Morris's Genesis Flood.
Can you present it to the forum so that we all can be YECists as well?

 

[relspace]

Relspace: "I accept all of Genesis on faith as reliable as my own memories."

Which basically means you do not accept Genesis as absolutely reliable for a source of Truth.

I am sorry I really do not know what "absolutely reliable" means in this context. I accept both my memories and Genesis on faith and I would throw neither away no matter how much criticism is made of them in the rhetoric of people trying to shove their point of view down my throat.

Ok, you don't like the comparison. I get it. You are one of these black and white people to whom truth is truth, whatever that means. Well, you people just give me a headache.

Throughout the Bible you'll be hard-pressed to find "scientific" descriptions such as "the earth rotated about its axis and curvature of the earth shaded the local area from the sun." However, throughout the Bible you find "phenomological" descriptions such as "the sun rose." Equivilently, when God says "let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear" we can be sure that -- if this is literal -- this is a phenomological description of scientific events. Possibly God used plate tectonics to shift the mantle and create mountains and continents (in one day). Perhaps God smashed a meteor on one side of the earth which pushed up land on the other side.

Just wanted to clarify about phenomological descriptions.

Ok, so what would be a "phenomological" description of the inflationary expansion of the universe or of the process of nucleosynthesis when the universe had sufficiently cooled? For that matter what would be a "phenomological" description of evolution? Assuming that God played a critical role in the process, would the "phenomological" description of evolution go something like Genesis 1:20-25?

You're misapplying Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is to be relied upon for issues of faith and morals. Historically, Sola Scriptura was clarified to correct the Roman Catholic Church's idea that revelation comes through tradition as well as scripture.

Oh? really? So just where exactly does "faith and morals" begin and end? Does morals include ethics? What about abortion, cloning, or conflicts of interest in the legal profession? Are you really claiming that ethics ends with the Bible? Well if so I guess I still do not accept "Sola Scriptura".

But if "Sola Scriptura" really means sole authority with regard to the primary purpose of the Bible only, which I understand is just the means of reconcilliation with God. Then, (surprise) maybe I am a fundamentalist after all!

 

[relspace]

You still hold onto macroevolution as God's mechanism for creating the diversity of life we see on this planet, though. Why? God didn't say that, or even imply that in how he phenomologically described his creative process. Day 3: plants created. Day 4: sun, moon, and stars created. Day 5: sea creatures created. This is contrary to the theory of evolution! Gluadys, with all due respect, you do not stand by God's word at all but rely completely upon man's theories. In order to "fit" Genesis into the NDT, you will have to rearrange God's explicit order, which means God had to lie. Had God not been explicit in the order (such as in Genesis 2), this would be possible, but you cannot remove from God's word and ignore his spoken truth.

Oh yes I quite agree. I do think Genesis is a nice story for children, intended for children and not for people with the vastly more complex understanding of the world due to our advances in science. But I do not rely on man's theories for there is no "relying" in science. Science accepts uncertainty and seeks to explain observational data. And thank goodness it no longer has to distort the data to fit Genesis, so we have a chance to grow up a little from the childlike understanding of 4 millenia ago. Nor do I feel any need to fit Genesis into scientific theory either, because I do not believe this text was written for that purpose at all. As to why Genesis talks about plants being created before the sun, I do not know, but perhaps it is to make fools of overly rigid and legalistic people who cannot resist misusing the scripture for a purpose for which it was never intended.

Apart from scripture, there is no logical reason for YECs to uphold their position. It's madness to go against "proven" science. Why in the world would YECs claim the earth is only 6000 years old?!?! Science has "proven" the earth is billions of years old. Why then? Here's my personal experience: I was a TE for about three months after I had dedicated my life to Christ. While visiting my Christ-seeking cousins, I ran across a world history book for my youngest cousin who's 7. His mom with a black marker had censored out evolutionistic content (millions of years, apes, etc.). I opened the subject with "you don't really believe...." They showed me a few things (that I later found came from AiG) that showed that there is a possibility of scientific evidence that supports their interpretation of Genesis. I was totally skeptical, but nevertheless, let them present their evidence. Once home, I looked into the matter a little more and found that the "science" YECs parade is actually credible and backed by observational evidence. I also found all the "dirty little secrets" that mainstream science does not display publicly -- and that the "dirty little secrets" are actual scientific problems -- not falsehoods spread by propogandists.

This is the sort of nonsense I expect to see in the rhetoric of Flat Earthers. Just because they can disguise their rhetoric as a superficial imitation of science, they think they have got scientific evidence for their point of view.

Try to answer this question: Why are creationists "ignoring" the overwhelming evidence for evolution? We are logical. We do have very good reasonable reasons.

Now that I can answer. Faith is more important than science. There is no question about it. And if your faith requires absolutes like "the Bible is the inerrant sole authority upon all things which it mentions" then what importance could science have that it should stand in the way of your faith? Furthermore, there is the obnoxious rhetoric of atheists who think that science supports their point of view. It easier to simply join them in their pretense that science supports your rhetoric instead of theirs, rather than make the effort to understand what science is really about. Our culture shows a deplorable tendency to extremes deriving from an impatience with complex issues. A society of fast food, cars, microwave ovens and fast sources of information has encouraged a laziness and habit that has extended to fast thinking. This kind of addiction to fast and easy thinking justifies itself by equating balanced points of view and compromise with selling out. And since balance and compromise is really the foundation of the American society, this tendency to extremes is what will ultimately destroy us.

 

[shernren]

Throughout the Bible you'll be hard-pressed to find "scientific" descriptions such as "the earth rotated about its axis and curvature of the earth shaded the local area from the sun." However, throughout the Bible you find "phenomological" descriptions such as "the sun rose." Equivilently, when God says "let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear" we can be sure that -- if this is literal -- this is a phenomological description of scientific events. Possibly God used plate tectonics to shift the mantle and create mountains and continents (in one day). Perhaps God smashed a meteor on one side of the earth which pushed up land on the other side.

Just wanted to clarify about phenomological descriptions.

But to start subscribing to phenomenological descriptions of Scripture without making the equivalent point that science cannot be judged by it is very dangerous. Theologically speaking, we cannot excuse Genesis' anachronistic cosmogony as being simply phenomenological. We have to accept that the ancients received their revelation in the context of a cosmogony which is entirely incompatible with our modern one.

Otherwise, one can look at statements such as:

The disciples touched the holes in His hands and feet and watched Him eat a piece of fish, and were thus convinced that He was physically resurrected.

and say:

These were only phenomenological descriptions of the disciples' encounter with the spirit Jesus who wished to convince them that He had indeed been resurrected in body.

I'm sure there has been at least one theologian in history who has carried the phenomenology card that far in interpreting Scripture to remove the resurrection. I'm not saying that I hold to this myself, but these excesses can happen unless we quantify the phenomenology assertion.

God described Genesis' creation in a way that made sense within the ANE scientific framework of a solid dome over a flat earth.
The disciples described meeting the risen Jesus in a way that makes sense with our (extremely crude) scientific knowledge of what it means when a person can eat and can be touched.

The science required to understand the disciples' framework has not changed. But the science required to understand the ANE framework has.

Also, as relspace has said, it is very difficult to conceive any phenomenologically accurate description of modern cosmology's results concerning the universe. Concepts like the Big Bang, inflationary theory, nucleosynthesis, fusion, and the Heat Death would have been next to impossible to communicate to the ANE people - and remember, they hadn't even discovered electricity, and they were still relying on Philistines to work metal all the way into the kingship of Saul.

The article's statement can only work if one does not believe in the points above. Do all of you believe in the points above? If no, correct me where I am wrong with scripture. If my summary points are an accurate reflection of what the Bible says and you do not believe in the points, I must question whether you are a Christian at all, for how can a Christian believe in Jesus's redeeming work on the cross as described in the Bible yet disbelieve the rest of God's holy communication to us? Denial of God's Word as absolute Truth sounds like heresy to me.

Which statement does the article transgress, and how?
And if the Bible is so fundamental to the Christian faith, how can there have been any Christians before there was the Bible? As far as I know, there weren't even the first hints of the canonization process anywhere in the 1st century AD.

As far as a Creationist is concerned, observable facts are secondary to God's word.

Can you show this?

I also found all the "dirty little secrets" that mainstream science does not display publicly -- and that the "dirty little secrets" are actual scientific problems -- not falsehoods spread by propogandists.

What are those "dirty little secrets"?

I mentioned postmodernism and I didn't follow up on it. It's actually a kind of confusing topic, but for our purposes here, I'll state that postmodernists affirm "we cannot know the truth" which is the same battle cry of agnostics, New Agers, and the American philosophy of religious "tolerance."

Wait up - are you talking about methodological pluralism or ontological pluralism? There is a difference.

 

[gluadys]

Point 1: The Bible IS Truth

Do all of you believe in the points above? If no, correct me where I am wrong with scripture.

It is not so much that you are wrong on scripture as that you identify God's revelation only with scripture. Yet scripture itself points to creation as God's revelation, so it cannot be legitimately left out of the picture.

Let's re-write your points to include it.

• TEs believe scripture and creation are absolute truth .
• TEs believe neither scripture nor creation is the whole truth but complement each other in terms of what God has revealed to us.
• TEs believe we can know truth from both scripture and creation.
• TEs acknowledge that understanding of truth in scripture and in creation requires human (fallable) interpretation.
• TEs believe that correct interpretation of scripture and of creation is possible and God's truths are knowable to us.

Do you agree with these points? If not, why not?

Denial of God's Word as absolute Truth sounds like heresy to me.

No need to raise a red herring.

Therefore, Creationists claim absolute knowable truth from scripture in all* matters that of which it speaks.

Well that is just downright silly given point 4 above (either list).

That scripture contains truth is a given. That the truth is knowable when scripture is correctly interpreted is a given. But this is a claim to have an infallibly correct interpretation. There is no basis for this claim.

Just because truth exists does not mean we know it. Truth can be knowable without being known.

Creationists rank this authority (scripture) above science and personal observation because it is the source for absolute knowable truth.

And this is their error. God's truth is absolutely true no matter the source through which we learn it. Some we learn through scripture, some through observation, some through creation, some through wise teachers. But every truth is God's truth and none can be ranked above another. How can one truth be truer than another?

Ones mind can play tricks, ones eyes can play tricks. Ones theories are constantly revised. God's Word is the unmovable Rock (Matthew 7:24, Psalm 62:2).

And all those things apply when one is studying God's Word and when one is studying scripture. As we read scripture our mind can play tricks. Our eyes can play tricks--skipping a line--so that we misread. Our theories of what scripture is saying to us---and of what God's Word is saying---must be constantly revised.

Our understanding of scripture is no more automatically correct than our understanding of nature.

How do we extract God's Truth in scripture? If we regard scripture as the absolute authority in truth, we can only use more scripture.

Why ignore God's Truth in creation? Or God's Truth in the witness of the Holy Spirit? Why should we not use all of God's Truth in interpreting scripture. Surely there is nothing of God's Truth which is not absolutely true?

Yes, we are prone to misinterpretation of God's truths. How can we be sure that we are interpreting God's word correctly? By using more scripture, starting with easily-understood fundamentals and building from there.

And where do these "easily-understood" fundamentals come from if not from fallible human teachers? They are not, to my knowledge, listed in scripture itself.

* I said "all" because when God speaks, he speaks Truth.

God spoke creation into existence. So why do you exclude listening to what we have discovered about creation. If God speaks Truth in all he says, the Truth he spoke in creating is part of the Truth we cannot deny. But you would deny this Truth with your arrogant claim that only you recognize the Truth of Genesis 1.


Point 2: "Concordance Approach"

As far as a Creationist is concerned, observable facts are secondary to God's word.

Observable facts of nature are God's word as much as scripture is. He made them what they are.

Gluadys wrote: "It is the basic reason I broke with old-earth creationism in both day-age and gap forms."

The examples you cite are when people attempt to put science into scripture,

Exactly, and since I discovered YEC, I have rejected it for the same reason as well. It continually tries to inject modern science and modern atheistic philosophy as well into its interpretations of scripture.

You still hold onto macroevolution as God's mechanism for creating the diversity of life we see on this planet, though. Why?

Because all the evidence in regard to God's word in his creation points to this being fact.

God didn't say that, or even imply that in how he phenomologically described his creative process.

So?

Day 3: plants created. Day 4: sun, moon, and stars created. Day 5: sea creatures created. This is contrary to the theory of evolution!

Absolutely! But I thought you agreed that we ought not to insert science into scripture. So we do not have to consider that this description is scientifically correct even as phenomenological description. The contradiction of this description with science must be apparent, so we can consider other interpretive possibilities that do not deny the factual evidence, which we know comes from God.

but you cannot remove from God's word and ignore his spoken truth.

You cannot ignore his created truth either.

Conclusion:

I was a TE for about three months after I had dedicated my life to Christ.

That's not true. You were never a TE. You were only a person who had heard about evolution in school (and the media) but never paid enough attention to it to check it out. TEs for the most part have actually learned the theory of evolution, the reasons scientists hold it to be correct and at least some of the evidence that supports it.

They showed me a few things (that I later found came from AiG) that showed that there is a possibility of scientific evidence that supports their interpretation of Genesis. I was totally skeptical, but nevertheless, let them present their evidence.

If you had really been totally skeptical, you would have done a lot more checking into the reliability of AiG's "science". You were willing to entertain the idea that science could be wrong, but you never really entertained the idea that AiG was wrong. So don't tell me you were totally skeptical. You were selectively skeptical.

Once home, I looked into the matter a little more and found that the "science" YECs parade is actually credible and backed by observational evidence. I also found all the "dirty little secrets" that mainstream science does not display publicly -- and that the "dirty little secrets" are actual scientific problems -- not falsehoods spread by propogandists.

Of course, this is the reaction of someone whose science background was weak. I know. I fell for those creationist arguments too, for I did not care much for studying science in my adolescence, so I had no information to counter the "science" being presented in creationist literature.

It was only when I decided I needed to understand why people who knew science fell for such obvious idiocy as evolution that I began to study what science says. And found out that most of the "science" in the creationist material was not legitimate science.

But seeing that science actually supports a young earth model was significant for me.

It doesn't. There is no claimed scientific support for a young earth model that is actually scientific.

In the end (I remember this distinctly), I trusted God's word more than man's word.

You thought that was what you were doing. But it was man's word (about scripture and about science) that you trusted, and that human word was and is wrong about both.

I found more and more, evolution cannot happen scientifically, and there is an overwhelming body of scientific evidence that supports creation.

A statement that tells me that evolution is probably not what you think it is. You are not believing a straw man, but that's ok. All you need to learn is that it is a straw man, not evolution.

 

[gluadys]

I mentioned postmodernism and I didn't follow up on it. It's actually a kind of confusing topic, but for our purposes here, I'll state that postmodernists affirm "we cannot know the truth" which is the same battle cry of agnostics, New Agers, and the American philosophy of religious "tolerance."

It took my daughter a long while to pound a modicum of understanding about post-modernism into my head. I am far from an expert, but I know enough to say it is a caricature of post-modernism to confuse it with relativism and an attitude of "we cannot know the truth".

What post-modernism stresses is that as individuals none of us has a full grasp of the truth. We are all socially conditioned to see some things as "truth" and to reject other things as "error". But those with different social conditioning may see our truth as error and our error as truth. Also each of us may see "truth" the other does not see at all.

Too often we assume, especially if we are in step with our society as a whole, that the truth we see is complete and correct and anyone who sees things differently is in error and needs to be enlightened. When we take this attitude we don't even listen to the others. A blatant example of this is the attitude of European immigrants to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Assuming that as civilized peoples and Christians, they knew the truth and that indigenous people as savages and non-Christians did not, all the wisdom and experience of indigenous people was set aside and scorned.

Post-modernism takes the tack that to know truth, one must listen to the perspectives of all people, even when they seem to be contradictory. One must be skeptical of one's own truth and examine it to see how much of what we take for granted as true is based on social conditioning and is really a partial perspective on truth.

Typically, when a post-modernist speaks, she will identify where she is coming from e.g. "I speak as a white middle-class urban Canadian ..." so that her biases and her limitations are declared up-front and her vision of truth is understood to be true in that context and not be a claim to universal truth.

In particular, we must listen to the voices that we are not accustomed to listening to, and not reject their truth because of our knee-jerk assumption that it is error. It just may be that our truth ought to be revised and enlarged to include their truth.

I don't know that post-modernism is anti-Christian, but it certainly challenges Christians to examine the real roots of their faith.