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WithAllIAm said:Okay, let's say for arguments sake that God is really trying to say that He created all things in six literal days in Genesis. To me, the whole account seems basic and will lead anyone to that conclusion, but obviously it cannot be that basic as here we are debating it.
What else could God have done to show all people beyond any doubt that He meant that He created in six literal days? Please be specific and give examples and try your best not to generalise (e.g. "not use symbolic language, etc, etc).
WithAllIAm said:Okay, let's say for arguments sake that God is really trying to say that He created all things in six literal days in Genesis. To me, the whole account seems basic and will lead anyone to that conclusion, but obviously it cannot be that basic as here we are debating it.
Poke said:Some of the Evolutionists here openly blow off the Bible as the fruit of ignorant people. So, it really doesn't matter what the Bible says. I think that is the implication a couple of the replies you've already received in this thread.
gluadys said:Sure it matters what the bible says. Because even though the writers were ignorant of many things they were also wise about many things. And it is those things they were wise about that makes the bible important and authoritative.
Do you really expect that Moses or Isaiah or Luke knew anything about the Maya of Central America or the Polynesians of Tahiti? Even that such places and peoples existed? Did any of them know about the existence of kangaroos or llamas or polar bears? Did they understand that lightning is a form or electricity? Had they measured the speed of light?
No--they were ignorant of all these things and more.
But the key question is "how much did this ignorance matter?" Did it keep them from knowing God? Did it keep them from walking with God? Did it keep them from receiving teaching from God on love and mercy and justice, on sin and salvation, on prayer and spirituality?
To this we can answer "No, it did not!"
And in these things we do not surpass them in knowledge or wisdom, no matter how much new information we have discovered about the physical world.
The Rep Inhibitor says: said:You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to gluadys again.
'Day' is used both figuratively and literally, so is the word 'hour', Rev 3:10 I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world. Evening and morning are also used figuratively and literally. You do have a problem here with a God who has the heart of a poet and keeps trying to get us to see beyond our materialist surroundings.Poke said:"For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth..." Ex 20:11 Maybe if the Bible said, "For in 144 hours..." Nope, the Evolutionists here would just say the 144 is symbolic of perfection, and not literally meant (e.g. 144 is used several times in Revelation).
WithAllIAm said:Okay, let's say for arguments sake that God is really trying to say that He created all things in six literal days in Genesis. To me, the whole account seems basic and will lead anyone to that conclusion, but obviously it cannot be that basic as here we are debating it.
What else could God have done to show all people beyond any doubt that He meant that He created in six literal days? Please be specific and give examples and try your best not to generalise (e.g. "not use symbolic language, etc, etc).
gluadys said:Sure it matters what the bible says. Because even though the writers were ignorant of many things they were also wise about many things. And it is those things they were wise about that makes the bible important and authoritative.
Do you really expect that Moses or Isaiah or Luke knew anything about the Maya of Central America or the Polynesians of Tahiti?
Poke said:It's just too bad that you have to have all the answers before you open your Bible so that you may distinguish what is from ignorance and what is from wisdom. Hmmm, that makes the Bible worthless.
Poke said:What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? There's no hint of Evolution and great ages in the Bible. And, Moses was just as capable of writing about Evolution as he was Creation.
How about actually saying he created the world in six days?
Or not using the word 'day' in three or four different ways in the first two chapters of Genesis?
Hi WithAllIAm, welcome to the forum
You specified the question was about God trying to make a six day creation clear in Genesis, which is why I did not get into the Exodus quotes. However the thing with Exodus is God is not teaching about the creation here, it is about the Sabbath and the Hebrew working week, the creation is used as an illustration. Now when the creation is simply being used as an illustration it does not tell us whether the days are literal or not.WithAllIAm said:Hello Assyrian:
He did in Exodus 20:11
Gen 1:31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.and before that in Genesis 1:31; 2:1-3.
In your illustration it is clear, yet the meaning of the days in Genesis has been raising questions for thousands of years. Unlike your father's contemporaries, there are no humans to give a scale to the days, only God. Nor for the first few days is there even a sun. If these are days whose meaning does not depend on the motion of the sun, then they don't really sound like normal literal days.We use the word day in several ways today yet you seem to have no problem understanding what is meant by each application of the term; for example:
In my father's day they would often travel through the day and rest at night on their way to Peth from Sydney which would take them several days.
Notice that the term "day" was used in three different ways, yet you can still make sense of it. It is not mysterious or poetical, nor can one conclude that what I wrote was symbolic...
Thanks.
I was almost finished a response to shernren when my Internet Explorer went spaz when I tried to open up a pdf (stupid Acrobat Reader 7.08!!) and lost the entire data.
Hence, I am rather annoyed and don't feel like typing all that out again at the moment. I'll reply later on in the night...
WithAllIAm said:Thanks for the answers thus far.
I was almost finished a response to shernren when my Internet Explorer went spaz when I tried to open up a pdf (stupid Acrobat Reader 7.08!!) and lost the entire data.
Hence, I am rather annoyed and don't feel like typing all that out again at the moment. I'll reply later on in the night...
WithAllIAm said:We use the word day in several ways today yet you seem to have no problem understanding what is meant by each application of the term;
Poke said:Liberals usually believe that there are two creation accounts and that the second one is written by a different person. Given that case, there is only one usage of the word "day" in the first Creation account. So, their argument that "day" is used in more than one way doesn't stand up to their own view of the Bible -- aside from their argument being an attempt to obfuscate in the first place.
Up until recent history that has never been an issue, the appearance of age.shernren said:Why, make everything look like it was created young. Making the universe 6,000 light-years big, or less, would be really helpful. It would also knock some (not all) gas out of those weaselly atheists who love to talk about how small we are in such a big universe, too.
If God used billions of years and that concept was difficult to understand (which I don't think it would) he could have just as easily have said, "And there was the first age" instead of "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day."shernren said:I think it's far more meaningful to ask the opposite question. Instead of asking how God would make clear to us what He apparently told them, i.e. that the universe was created young within six days, you could ask how God would make clear to them what the universe appears to be like to us.
I.e., how would God make it clear to a bunch of nomads, wandering in the desert, who don't even know how to smelt metal, what a Big Bang is? How would He tell them that the universe is so many billion years old, and what would it mean to them? More importantly, what would that tell them about Him? I think were God to write them a scientific account, knowing their level of knowledge, they wouldn't understand any of it and so they wouldn't understand anything of God.
None of those things were important and so they were not mentioned. What was mentioned is important and that is what we should be focusing on. We have no idea of what they were ignorant of or not.gluadys said:Do you really expect that Moses or Isaiah or Luke knew anything about the Maya of Central America or the Polynesians of Tahiti? Even that such places and peoples existed? Did any of them know about the existence of kangaroos or llamas or polar bears? Did they understand that lightning is a form or electricity? Had they measured the speed of light?
No--they were ignorant of all these things and more.
That's right! It didn't keep them from teaching what they did know. What did they teach? God's Word! Everything God told Moses to write, everything, is what was truly important. That's the whole point.glaudys said:But the key question is "how much did this ignorance matter?" Did it keep them from knowing God? Did it keep them from walking with God? Did it keep them from receiving teaching from God on love and mercy and justice, on sin and salvation, on prayer and spirituality?
To this we can answer "No, it did not!"
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