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Marshall Janzen
Formerly known as Mercury
Martyrs, I really am glad you posted this and your previous response to me. I had thought I might get a bit of flak from certain long-time YECs here for suggesting that YECs typically hold a lower view of the poetry in Scripture. Thankfully, you chimed in to confirm that this is true before any of them could claim that it was a straw man on my part!
Now, I should note to other YECs that I understand that Martyrs' position is more extreme than most YECs. I know that most accept that Job 38-41 is poetic writing. However, even then, poetic passages are frequently considered less important than non-poetic passages, and not allowed to add to our understanding of other more prosaic passages.
While it's a generalization that admits many exceptions, YECs seem to value Scripture most when its style is closest to scientific writing. When poetry, symbolism or other figures of speech are found in a passage, it is often treated nearly like finding mold on bread (which is why they strenuously argue against the presence of such factors). Passages that are undeniably poetic or full of figures of speech are generally ignored. TEs, conversely, even though they tend to agree more with actual scientific writing, do not typically value Scripture by whether it writes in a similar style. They are far more open to God inspiring a whole variety of styles of writing in Scripture, and allow that truth can be conveyed in a multitude of genres.
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Philis
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Can you sum this up? I just want to know what the purpose is to creation that TEs are missing out on.
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Marshall Janzen
Formerly known as Mercury
Yes, I also agree with glaudys on this. A good analogy is Revelation 16 which describes the seven bowls of God's wrath, just as Genesis 1 describes the seven days of God's creation. I don't think that the days are really long ages or the bowls are really giant cisterns. The accounts really are talking about literal days and literal bowls. But, the accounts as a whole each use a literary framework. God's wrath isn't really a liquid that can be poured into and out of bowls, no more than God's creative activity is confined to six days or his shalom to one day.
The picture is of days and bowls, and this picture provides structure to the accounts. But, the reality transcends the picture. (Which is just what we should expect when God reveals a glimpse of something no human eye has witnessed.)
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Keachian
On Sabbatical
It's the well tested argument that the longer periods of time that are accepted by science and therefore TEs don't point to the ultimate purpose that some TEs and most YEC actually agree upon, that is the purpose of God creating the Universe is to create man. I disagree with this on a fundamental level as I see God's purpose in creating the Universe to be about God's glory and his own enjoyment, often arguing that the reason it took 14 billion years to get to the here and now is because God was enjoying his creation, enjoying his acts of creation, mainly drawing on God's speech to Job (Job 38-41) where to me God expresses joy in his creation (there are some anger overtones, directed at Job but it appears to me that when he is talking about creation it changes as he describes things)
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Marshall Janzen
Formerly known as Mercury
Good point! Especially since those chapters of Job seem to focus on aspects of God's creation that are not there for human benefit. After all the frightening aspects of weather, we get:
- The lion hunting prey for its ravenous young (38:39-40)
- The raven bringing prey to its young who sometimes starve (38:41)
- Mountain goats braving harsh elements where humans cannot observe them (39:1-4)
- The wild donkey braving desolate elements and scorning human contact (39:5-8)
- The wild ox who is untamable and of no use to humans (39:9-12)
- The proud ostrich who sometimes tramples her young because God made her stupid (39:13-18)
- The hawk and eagle who live aloof and search out carrion, bringing blood to their young (39:26-30)
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Keachian
On Sabbatical
I also enjoy the fact that in all those instances God describes it as his own provision in order for these things to happen, kind of like in the Gospels where Christ talks about how the animals are provided food and the lillies are clothed so do not worry about what to eat and what to wear.
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I think I have answered this. Why dwell on such a minor point when there are much, much more heavy matters that need to be explored...like the necessity of the family lineage of Jesus Christ to be legitimate all the way back to Adam...or else it is not legal and Christ would have no claim to the throne of David?
And like the fact that ALL of the quotes and references of the prophets & authors of the N.T. confirmed the historical reality of the people and events of Genesis 1:12?
Who knows how thick the ice dome was? We aren't told. But there were certainly no stars within it. They were almost certainly only seen through it...like a giant magnifying glass.
I am a former believer and defender of evolution...and was a Christian during that time. I am very familiar with the science. But their beliefs make no sense to me whatever. It is scrambled thinking and doesn't match the bottom line of scriptural truth.
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How do you know that? Describe that 'liquid' from those bowls of wrath and prove your point. The truth is we don't know what they consist of but whatever it is will result in terrible things on earth. David saw an angel bearing the sword of death with the threat of judgment to his country by way of a vision(I Chron. 21:27)...it happened. 70 thousand men fell by way of pestilence. The sword was used in bringing about pestilence. How? We don't know. Why would we therefore not see the bowls of wrath pour out something that was real and literal...for whatever it is will have a real and literal effect?
Hint: "...and the evening and the morning were the first day..." and "the evening and the morning was the second day..." The language is clear and it verily demands a literal interpretation. None other is acceptable to God. It is history and no one can change that fact.
The picture is the reality. I hope you will learn that in time...that is sometime before now and when you might well observe the locust devils from hell are real, literal, and physical and will bear a real, literal, and physical pain to men they sting (Rev. 9).
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Then you didn't read the original OP that she changed.
That is not an honest assessement. It isn't even close to the truth.
I will say it once more: God did not offer multiple choice to His divine truth of creation.
(staff edit)
That is your problem and every faithful and careful researcher of God's Word who has read your positions on the issue know it.
(staff edit)
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This person has been here on CF a lot longer than I have but having read now dozens of the posts of those whom he mentions I would have to agree with him. They are really little more than an annoyance and absolutely blind to the true weight of argument and bottom line of scripture on almost every issue as it concerns origins in scripture.
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- Mar 16, 2004
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That's the Hebrew dear, I was referring to the New Testament usage
Ἀδάμ (Adam) Strong's # G76 Adam = "the red earth"
1) Adam, the first man, the parent of the whole human family
the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | gen sg masc), the son of God. (Luke 3:38 )
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | gen sg masc) until Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | gen sg masc), who was a type of the coming one. (Romans 5:14)
For just as in Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | dat sg masc) all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.(1 Corinthians 15:22)
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc), became a living soul.” The last Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc) became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)
For Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc) was created first, then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:13 )
And Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc) was not deceived, but the woman, having been deceived, has come into transgression; (1 Timothy 2:14)
It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh in descent from Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | gen sg masc), prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones (Jude 1:14 ) Strong's G76 - Adam
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | gen sg masc) until Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | gen sg masc), who was a type of the coming one. (Romans 5:14)
For just as in Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | dat sg masc) all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.(1 Corinthians 15:22)
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc), became a living soul.” The last Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc) became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)
For Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc) was created first, then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:13 )
And Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | nom sg masc) was not deceived, but the woman, having been deceived, has come into transgression; (1 Timothy 2:14)
It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh in descent from Adam (Adam | Ἀδάμ | gen sg masc), prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones (Jude 1:14 ) Strong's G76 - Adam
Every New Testament reference is to the person 'Adam', Paul traces original sin back to Adam, 'the first man' not once but twice. It's in the genealogy of Luke's Gospel calling Adam the son of God indicating special creation. My sources are perfectly reliable, Adam means the person in the Genesis account and to take that proper name any other way is ABSURD.
The New Advent quote you used lost me. Paul makes it clear in Romans that Adam was the first man and the reason for the need of humanity for justification. Rome and the traditions of the church and most Protestant churches understand this in terms of 'original sin'.
This is a difficult point and many systems have been invented to explain it: it will suffice to give the theological explanation now commonly received. Original sin is the privation of sanctifying grace in consequence of the sin of Adam. This solution, which is that of St. Thomas, goes back to St. Anselm and even to the traditions of the early Church, as we see by the declaration of the Second Council of Orange (A.D. 529): one man has transmitted to the whole human race not only the death of the body
Original Sin, New Advent
We cannot be descended from Adam and apes at the same time. Original sin is one foundational doctrine affected, God as Creator being another. This is the essence of Darwinism:
He first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. (Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Preface)
Darwinism is a categorical rejection of the supernatural. It is the a priori (without prior) assumption of universal common decent by means of exclusively naturalistic causes. That's what it has to do with theological issues, it's a rejection of God as Creator plain and simple.
What you have done is to take me categorically out of context when I was clearly talking about the New Testament references to Adam. So before you pop off with a scathing indictment I suggest you read my post first, I don't take kindly to being misrepresented and then dismissed as a fool.
My experience is that you do not take statements either in the Scriptures or someone's statement out of it's proper context. I suggest you go back and reassess because we are not talking about the general use of Adam in the Old Testament. I was referring to Romans 5, I Corinthians 15 and if you actually read what I said in context you can see it with minimal effort.
Your scathing indictment is categorically false, contextually wrong and semantically shallow. I'd better stop now even though it is becoming increasingly obvious that you are a theistic evolutionists just baiting creationists.
Have a nice day
Mark
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Actually in Mark 13:35-37 Jesus himself questions whether the Messiah must be the son of David.
And then there are John the Baptist's words to the Pharisees. (Matthew 3:9). I expect that if God can raise children of Abraham from stones he can do likewise for David. But I doubt that such children could verify a legitimate claim to David's throne to the satisfaction of the scribes.
I have yet to meet any "former believer" in evolution who is actually very familiar with the science.
Perhaps you are an exception.
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"I have yet to meet any "former believer" in evolution who is actually very familiar with the science"
John Sanford, inventor of the gene gun (which Ventor had to use to put his synthetic genome in the cell). Has a computer model for modeling human mutation rate, that yields a mutation graph in line with the age-decline of the patriachs in the old testament to today and reaches a point ~6000 years ago (again in line with the patriarch graph) where there is zero mutations.
John Sanford, inventor of the gene gun (which Ventor had to use to put his synthetic genome in the cell). Has a computer model for modeling human mutation rate, that yields a mutation graph in line with the age-decline of the patriachs in the old testament to today and reaches a point ~6000 years ago (again in line with the patriarch graph) where there is zero mutations.
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Might want to double check that reference:
Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is comingin the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch! Mark 13:35-37)
That is not a question, that is an indictment against a false assumption that they are something special to God because they are lineal descendants of Abraham. Jesus explains this on a number of occasions, this one is particularly explicit:
"Abraham is our father," they answered. "If you were Abraham's children," said Jesus, "then you would do the things Abraham did. (John 8:39)
I actually meet few people who claim to be an 'evolution believer', not really sure what that is.
You have made a lot of substantive posts on here, this was not one of them.
Grace and peace,
Mark
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I think Augustine and Paul are talking about very different things. Paul is talking about the wisdom of God which seems to be foolishness to human minds. How foolish it would seem to worship a condemned criminal!!!
But foolish as this might seem to the world, it is not ignorance. It doesn't turn any thing known by common reason and experience upside down.
Augustine is not concerned about the "foolishness of the gospel". He is concerned by the arrogance of ignorance being tied to it. It is the blatant ignorance and the insistence that the illusions of ignorance are not just truth but "gospel truth" that tarnishes the reputation of the faith.
Paul is speaking of the situation where the Christian is speaking about Jesus and about the salvation God has provided through him. While the world may see this as foolish, it doesn't directly contradict what a non-Christian scholar may know about the world.
Augustine is speaking of the situation where a Christian who is ignorant of the relevant knowledge of the world makes claims about the world that are blatantly false and then presumes to have the authority of scripture to back him up.
All this does is tell a knowledgeable person (who has not read the scriptures) that they are not worth reading because they are filled with ignorant drivel.
Exactly, and no, it doesn't mean you should stop believing in Jesus. This is the situation Paul is dealing with.
But when a Christian says to unbelievers that the world is only a few thousand years old, that every scientifically reliable way of determining the age of the earth, the sun, distant stars, the universe itself, is wrong and all the scientists are liars, fools or dupes, we enter the realm Augustine calls offensive and disgraceful.
The gospel does not depend on a blinkered view of the world that screens out everything that a person can learn using the minds God gave us. As another "big name" (Galileo) said: I cannot believe that God gave us sense and reason with the intention that we forgo the use of them.
YECism, in my view demands that we forgo the use of the gifts God gave us to make us human. It demands that we disobey our Saviour and NOT love God "with all your mind". It demands that we reject the world God has created for us for a fairy-tale world of YECist imagination. And that imagination is so various one can hardly find two YECists who can agree on what it is. It demands valuing ignorance above knowledge and confuses that with the foolishness of the gospel.
It is one thing to be foolish and a different thing to be ignorant. All Christians hold to that which is foolish in the eyes of the world: a crucified Redeemer. But most of them don't couple that with ignorance about the world he created.
When a Christian does couple ignorance--and wilful, arrogant ignorance at that--with the claims of the gospel, then the Christian brings the gospel into disrepute far beyond what simple foolishness can.
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Right, I meant chapter 12.
The top edge of the page said 13:7 so I was assuming I was in chapter 13, but it begins further down the page.
That's beside the point that God can raise up sons of Abraham (and presumably David or anyone else) from stones--without a family tree.
I am not disagreeing with you, but you are heading into a different conversation.
Me neither, but it is not rare on these forums to come across those who claim they are "former evolution believers".
People who agree that evolution and common descent are facts don't describe themselves as evolution "believers".
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Up to this point it sounds like you are agreeing with TEs who describe the creation account of Genesis 1 as using a temple motif as an analogy of creation.
Now, here I don't understand why you think it is ludicrous. If it is just a matter of speaking things into existence, isn't six day just as ludicrous as billions of years?
What does it mean to "speak" something into existence?
Why does it have to take merely a moment?
Doesn't it depend on what is spoken into existence?
If current theory on the origin of the universe is right, God "spoke" a plasma into existence some 13.7 billion years ago. And God created that plasma with properties allowing sub-atomic particles to interact, generating atomic nuclei. And that took a bit of time. (About 3 minutes IIRC).
And then the nuclei had to attract electrons to form atoms. And that took a little time (a few hundred years?) But that's all right. They are doing what God purposed for them to do, what God in his wisdom knew they would do given the properties of energy/matter as he created it in the first place.
And God also knew that at this stage the only atoms that could form were the light ones: hydrogen, helium, etc. But in his perfect foreknowledge he knows a really interesting creation will need heavier atoms--atoms that can only be created (given the sort of universe he spoke into existence) through stellar fusion. About 10 billion years of stellar fusion.
Now God perhaps, could have spoken a different sort of universe into existence--one that didn't need all those years of stellar fusion to produce the stuff needed to make planets capable of supporting life, and eventually life with intellectual and spiritual capacities to understand creation and commune with their creator.
But he didn't.
And who are we to quarrel with what he chose to do? Does the pot quarrel with the potter?
I just don't see why any particular stretch of time--whether a few seconds, a few days or a few billion years--makes any difference. No one is more ludicrous to me than another and I don't understand why any length of time is ludicrous to you.
Sure God could have created in 6 days. If he wanted to he could have created in 6 seconds. But it doesn't make him any whit less powerful or wise if he chooses to make a universe that takes billions of years to put together. It is God's decision.
This I think is part of the bad theology that has infected YECist views. It comes, I suppose originally, from atheism, but it has been incorporated into too much Christian belief.
That is the notion that "nature" works on its own without God.
In biblical times, and through most of medieval times, nature was seen pre-eminently as where God alone was active. Consider some of the scripture passages cited earlier about God providing for lions and ravens. People used to divide the world into the artificial and the natural. The artificial world was what was made through human skill (in Greek the word for art is "techne" from which we get "technology".) Any piece of technology is an artifact (something made by human art/skill).
But those regions of the world untouched by human hand were "natural"--the places where only the hand of God ruled. To say something was "natural" was equivalent to saying "this is not of man, but of God."
Somehow in the last few hundred years, we have come to saying that natural means the exact opposite "this is not of God, but only of nature without God."
Theologically, that is horrid nonsense. Everything natural is of God. So the TE view is not of God bringing a little bit of something into existence and then "nature" devoid of God "completing" the work. God does all the work and we call it the work nature. We call the way God operates in the created world "natural process". The hydrological cycle is the way God brings us rain in due season. It doesn't happen without God. The electromagnetic force is the way God provides light and colour (as well as a magnetic field for the earth) and it doesn't happen without God. The reproductive process is the way God makes new creatures to live on the earth and that doesn't happen without God.
All of these and more are natural, but none of them happens without God--and not just God at the beginning of things, but every moment, every second, all the time. When we are surrounded by nature we are embraced by God.
You can have a day without the moon (after all the moon has a day and doesn't have a moon of its own) but you can't have a day without the sun. Any body rotating on its axis without a source of light doesn't have a day. After all "God called the Light 'Day'". The moon's day may be about 27 times longer than the earth's day, but it is still the period during which the surface of the moon passes through the radiance of the sun as it turns on its axis.
Whether or not God "needed" millions or billions of years has nothing to do with whether or not God decided to use millions or billions of years. I agree that God knew exactly all that he was doing and whether you think he needed to or not, he DID use billions of years.
Now this is another false statement. Science does not deny there are miracles. Science does say that it cannot use a miracle to help understand the world. Science studies the properties of nature and the regular predictable processes of nature. A miracle, by definition, falls outside of this study. Furthermore, a miracle is, by definition, a singular one-time event. There is no way to predict when a miracle will happen, or to use knowledge of nature to produce a miracle at will.
So, impressive as a miracle may be, it is not something one can learn about through science, nor is it anything that can contribute to the body of scientific knowledge about the world.
Recognizing this, science is understandably silent about miracles. But that is not at all the same thing as not accepting that there are miracles.
The problem I have with this is not just that there is no scientific evidence for this proposal but that there is absolutely no scriptural evidence for it either.
YECism seems to try to stand on two stools: to accept that stars are very distant from the earth, that the speed of light is a stable constant that cannot bring starlight to earth in less than hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years--IOW to be scientific--and then dreams up these ad hoc hypotheses of how a person on a newly-created earth 6,000 years ago could see them.
This is just making stuff up. Scripture gives no support to it; science gives no support to it. So why make it up? Does it defend God? No. Does it defend creation? No. Does it defend scripture? No.
All it defends is a defective literalist hermeneutic made by fallible human minds.
It would make more sense to simply ignore science altogether than dream up idiotic faux-science hypotheses to give an illusion of scientific veneer to an anti-scientific interpretation of scripture.
Ted, I appreciate, I really truly appreciate your sense of the power, glory and majesty of God. I just wish you could see it in the world God actually made in the way and the time-frame he actually chose to use. God doesn't need fake, imaginary miracles for his glory. The world he actually made and the way he actually made it offers more than enough testimony of his majesty, power and wisdom.
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Philis
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You seemed to miss out on what my question was, so I'll only mention it one last time and then I'll leave it so as not to annoy you
According to your view as I understand it:
1) The firmament separated the waters above from the waters below
2) The waters above are the ice dome
3) According to Genesis 1, the sun/moon/stars were placed in the firmament
4) Therefore, based on the first three points, the ice dome is above the sun/moon/stars.
That is what a literal reading combined with your addition of an ice dome gets me. I'm hoping you can explain more clearly why it doesn't seem to make any sense. Do you recognize the fact that the sun/moon/stars are in the firmament, and since the waters above the firmament are the ice dome then that means the ice dome is above the sun/moon/stars?
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