The number one bugger for creationists: C

[Nathan Poe]

This in no way invalidates that God will let you believe a lie.

Including His own lie?

The foundation of YEC theology is that God's work cannot be trusted at face value. Is that the kind of God you believe in?

That God has shown himself in his handiwork should be obvious. Every author has his style, every guitar player, every painter, unique penmanship among peers.

And what God had authored under YEC theology shows Him to be a master of fiction.

As for God not being the author of confusion, well said, but it doesn't change that God hardened Pharoh's heart, That God chose a lying spirit to deceive Ahab, that Christ spoke in parables to prevent the 'learned' from understanding. Remember it was the legalistic pharasees that chose Man's tradition over God's law. It was the worship of their own righteousness.

So God cannot be trusted to tell us all the straight-up truth. You're making my point for me.

Why didn't Christ mention evolution when he asked the question: can a leapord change his spots?

Because that wasn't the point?

 

[Nathan Poe]

Nathan Poe, I respect, you - that is another story.
I will not tolerate your snipes and arrogance. I am trying to be civil and you seem to desire a war of words. Perhaps you should take your ball and go home. The real dangers in the forum are not that I ridicule your trite arrogance and demonstrate your mental poverty. The real danger is that I ignore you.

One more snipe and consider yourself on the permanent 'waiting for a response list'.

Lets be civil.

Huh? That was Philosoft's post...

 

[Jet Black]

Huh? That was Philosoft's post...

mind control will not be tolerated either! should you control philosoft's brain once more and post things which you have obviously made him say, then I will never speak to you again

 

[Jet Black]

Blown through the roof, and w81minit owes me $NZ 20 for that.

That's about 2 European cents isn't it?

 

[Jet Black]

Yeah, Silly. Science trumps careful study of the bible.

since when was "careful study" synonymous with "literal reading" there doesn't seem anything careful at all about literal interpretation. Science assists careful study of the bible. Read Job and then look at Cumulo Nimbus. where are the storehouses for the snow? there aren't any. from this we can find that the purpose of God's little monologue was an allegory for his power, not a literal description of snow being stored in storehouses.

 

[Nathan Poe]

It has been refuted. You just refuse to believe that God would do what we say he did.

Because you say God created images of things that never happened, for no reason other than to make us think they did.
Sounds like a deceiver to me. Christians would like to trust God a little more than that.

While I do not buy the argument that light had to move faster etc. I am saying God created - we are the beneficiaries. You want to take your scientific rules and bind them to God. I find that beyond reason.

They want to take God and bind him to His own ideas of honesty and trustworthiness. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

 

[Nathan Poe]

mind control will not be tolerated either! should you control philosoft's brain once more and post things which you have obviously made him say, then I will never speak to you again

Yes you will... I'll make you speak to me....



You want to talk to Poe....
Poe is a fascinating person....
Poe is always right...
You don't need to see his identification; these aren't the droids you're looking for...

 

[Nathan Poe]

You somehow think that science is nothing, and all based on stupid ideas that men have. You are incorrect though, science is as much study at what God created as any bible study.

More so, since science is the study of what God created without any interference from self-described "inspired" men.

Pretty much straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

 

[Nathan Poe]

Bzzzzzzttt.... Awe mom, time for school already?

I have got to get some sleep.

Nice debate - May the fullness of our words never be so burdensome that we lack desire to retrieve them yet again from the dungheap to recycle them and pass them off as wisdom.

Dodge... with an insult.

 

[Nathan David]

Didn't know it was a science forum. Thought it was a place where people could discuss why they believed in creationism vs. evolution.

6-day creationism makes scientific statements. So by backing 6-day creationism you are taking a scientific position - one which has been proven wrong.

Christianity does not make any scientific statements; there is no conflict between Christian religious beliefs and science. But there is a conflict between 6-day creationism and science.

 

[w81minit]

Huh? That was Philosoft's post...

I merely invoked the respect I had for you to draw distinction from Philisoft.
After reading your posts with much discussion between us I have grown to respect that you can debates in a civil manner. I hope you didn't take that as a snipe against you -

My words were expected to read: Nathan Poe, I respect - You (Philisoft) - that is another matter.

 

[Polycarp1]

"Anyone else notice that so far (still going through the thread) creationists can't scientifically backup claims that the earth is very young? "

Anyone else noticed that so far(still going through the thread) evolutonists can't scientifically prove that God did not create the world with fossils, stars that are vissible to earth, ect about 6,000 years ago?



"Lots of "god did it" and hand waving when its mentioned that not only is that not scientific, it turns god into a liar. And then off topic stuff."

As I said, YOU guys made God the liar.

I thoroughly resent being told that *I* made God into a liar. Bevets and others to the contrary, my point was to show how accepting the truth of Scripture, but reading the Creation passage as something other than a repertorial account, prevents the apparent contradiction between the claims of geology and cosmology and those of Bibliochronologists.

It's a matter of epistemology. God is omnipotent; He can do anything He chooses, including having created the world 20 minutes ago, incuding all human beings equipped with memories of having grown up, having made these posts, and so on. He could have created a world in which He did not send Jesus -- but made everybody think that He did. And we'd never know the difference.

The reasons we don't believe in those sorts of worlds is that we trust God to be the Author of Truth, not a trickster god like Loki in Norse mythology or Coyote in S.W. Indian myth. He will not do one thing and make us think He did something different.

And right there is my point. If you suggest that God created the world in six days in 4004 BC, and made it replete with evidences of being far, far older, you have made Him into one of those trickster gods, not to be trusted, in your own mind. Because the Bible does not say that He did it in six days in October 4004 BC.It tells the story of creation in seven days (not six) to show the creation of the Sabbath as an integral part of His Creating. And adding up genealogies and matching the later end of them to round-figure durations for various events, and then, making assumptions about those durations, down finally to historically datable events, gave the Most. Rev. James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, the famous chronology he is associated with. (BTW, did you know that his work was not to prove YEC, but rather was done in accord with the finest science of the time? S.J. Gould has a truly fascinating essay on him.)

Anyway, my point here is that one cannot prove by scientific means what happens outside the purview of science. The law of gravity says (among other things) that if I drop this tennis ball, it will be attracted by the mass of the Earth. It does not say it will inevitably fall to the ground; the tennis ball and I may be in free fall orbit. And Nathan Poe may be standing there ready to catch the ball before it touches the ground, just to screw up my experiment. What it says is that, in the absence of external intervention or data not taken into account, it will respond to the pull of Earth's mass by falling to the ground.

Likewise, the theory of evolution accounts for the wide variety of species and the fossil and sub-fossil remains of them and of extinct forms, by positing what must have happened in the absence of supernatural or other external intervention. If one cares to posit that the dinosaurs went extinct because of little green aliens with a taste for big game hunting, nothing can disprove that -- but there's no evidence for it.

Likewise, the sole evidence for YEC is interpretive -- readings contrary to majority opinion as to selected natural phenomena (such as cross-stratum fossils) and, most especially, an insistence that the first chapter of Genesis must, unlike passages like the sixth chapter of John, be heard as absolute literal reportage and not the conveying of the majesty and significance of creation by means of story-telling (which we know from other passages of Scripture the Jews did a lot of, incluing parts of the Bible), not to be taken as a verbatim account but as a story like Jesus's parables bringing across important points by dwelling on them over and over.

Most YEC's look forward to the Rapture, too. Why? Because "Christ will take them to be with Him in Heaven, removing them from this evil world." -- Right? Well, take a good look at what you're insisting is literally true -- because God said something different about this world in it.

 

[Nathan Poe]

I merely invoked the respect I had for you to draw distinction from Philisoft.
After reading your posts with much discussion between us I have grown to respect that you can debates in a civil manner. I hope you didn't take that as a snipe against you -

My words were expected to read: Nathan Poe, I respect - You (Philisoft) - that is another matter.

Ah. Punctuation is your friend...

 

[Polycarp1]

Indeed, first they make their God into a liar, then they get insulted by it!

Even I have more respect for God, and I don't even believe in Him...

Luke 7:9

 

[Nathan Poe]

Ah. Punctuation is your friend...

Much as I hate to quote myself (I see it as a sign of egotism, IMHO), I thought this would be more effective than a simple edit...

Anyone who doesn't see the value of proper punctuation need only read these two love letters:

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are kind, caring, and sweet. Men who are nothing like you admit to being usless and inferior to you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I could be the happiest woman on the planet; Will you let me be yours?
Mary

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are kind, caring, and sweet men who are nothing like you. Admit to being usless and inferior. To you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I could be the happiest woman on the planet. Will you let me be?
Yours, Mary

I trust that future grammatical misunderstandings can be avoided...

 

[Polycarp1]

Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know. ~ James Barr Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England

Does this help?

The source for this quote is given here.

The annotation is interesting:

Letter from Professor James Barr to David C.C. Watson of the UK, dated April 23, 1984. Copy held by the author. Note that Prof. Barr does not claim to believe that Genesis is historically true; he is just telling us what, in his opinion, the language was meant to convey.

According to a 1995 symposium honoring Ernest S. Frerichs of Brown University, Dr. Barr has retired from Oxford and was then teaching at Vanderbilt U.

 

[Nathan Poe]

The source for this quote is given here.

The annotation is interesting:

"Letter from Professor James Barr to David C.C. Watson of the UK, dated April 23, 1984. Copy held by the author. Note that Prof. Barr does not claim to believe that Genesis is historically true; he is just telling us what, in his opinion, the language was meant to convey."

Indeed it is, as interesting as bevets' forgetting to mention it.

The point of the quote is that the author of Genesis (Who, for the 5,725th time, was not God) intended the story to be read as literal.

What impact, if any, this has on the fields of geology, astronomy, or any of the physical sciences is a bit of a mystery.

 

[Polycarp1]

Now that you mention it, my stomach is contemplating rebellion.
Right now, I'm tired to death of reading the YECs' posts in this thread and drowning in a veritable sea of ego.
I called the author of the quote stupid. I don't think he's a member here.

As my quote demonstrates, Prof. Barr (did you ever notice that no YEC advocate ever quotes that with commas in the appropriate places? -- it's always "James Barr Regius Professor..." as though his name were "James Barr Regius" ) -- Prof. Barr is not making an assertion about the truth value of Genesis 1, but rather the scholarly consensus as to what the Priestly source's view of the world was. It is rather akin to my saying, "All participants in this thread are united in their understanding that Charles Darwin was not a Korean Buddhist monk."

And I agree that it was emphatically taken out of context. But unfortunately, though there are some honest and well-intentioned YEC advocates, that seems to be common practice among them -- in general, they are less interested in the salvation of human beings or respect to the truth of which God is the author, than they are in bending, twisting, and perverting whatever will "prove" their idee fixé. (That is not specifically directed at anyone participating here -- "if the shoe fits" is all I have to say regarding YEC CF members.)

 

[Nathan Poe]

Luke 7:9

back at ya, friend...

 

[Polycarp1]

Try this long post in another thread on this topic, which I (immodestly) feel sets forth how a true and lively Christian faith can hold to a symbolic reading of Genesis 1. I'd be particularly interested in your reactions to it, w81minit, since you seem to be interested in civil discourse on the subject, rather than slams of others' views, and are coming at it from a more-or-less YEC viewpoint.