Why do YECs refuse to do real science?

[Assyrian]

attacking the messenger to justify one's ignoring of the truth

Yet my point still stands. You have no claim to speak absolute truth, you just have your fallible and flawed human interpretation of God's word. But don't you ever find it at all hypocritical to complain of 'attacking the messenger' when personal attack is most of what your posts consist of?

When did Jesus affirm a literal six day creation, or is it just that because he mentions Genesis you think he affirmed you interpretation of Genesis? Jesus held Genesis to be the authoritative word of God, I agree totally. I just don't take your interpretation as authoritative

looking for loopholes to continue to practice sin

Personal attack rather than answering the flaws in your argument.

Except we are not rejecting God's rules, we are rejecting your man made rules. Just because God had rules, it did not excuse the Pharisees making up their own and condemning those who did not follow them.

redefining definitions and using the pharisees as a comparison to continue to disobey God.

Again more personal attack. If you condemn others over your man made rules, why shouldn't we learn about that from the example of how Jesus answered the Pharisees?

So which are you when condemn people for not accepting your anti evolution message, a message very different from the good news Jesus sent the disciples out with? If you bring you own message and your own rules and condemn those who do not accept you, are you a disciple or a Pharisee?

poor application of scripture to suport one's sinful desires.

Personal attack instead of answering the question.

But lets say you are right and evolution is wrong, do you stand up in you own righteousness and condemn everyone who disagrees with you, or do you try to show them gently where they are wrong?

now using the limitations of binary to attack the other person and falsely accuse them so you can dismiss their words. as i wrote to the moderator, you cannot read my mind nor can you judge my attitude or emotions from the printed words on the screen

Speaking of 'attack the other person and falsely accuse them so you can dismiss their words' don't you find this ironic when that has been your response to all of my points so far?

But seeing as all you have are your own man made rules about having to reject evolution as a condition for God grace,

false labeling of what a person is saying so one can continue toignore God's word. you have been told over and over gently and you have ignored the warnings and continued down your sinful path. evolution is not of God, it is sin and until you reject sin, you get no grace

And the personal attack continues. However at least this time there is at least an attempt to answer my point. So, do you mean you haven't made up the rule that rejecting evolution is a condition for God's grace? You either need to show evolution is sin, or show that you haven't made its rejection a condition of the gospel.

Rejecting evolution as a condition of the gospel was not the message Jesus gave the disciples. I am afraid that is a false gospel you are preaching there archie.

you are wrong again, as one is to repent from sin. each issue does not have to be mentioned by name to be sin and Christ did not have to be mention everything by name either for it to be sin. such things like evolution are covered in other verses.

And yet you do not show us the verses that say evolution is a sin.

So if the issue is not mentioned by name, and we only have your word that evolution is a sin, how are people to know they are to repent of it? How can you repent of things you do not know are wrong? Did you have to deal with all the sin in your life before you became a Christian? Or can there be issues in our lives we only discover long after we have repented and received the grace of God? Could there be sins in your life you still do not know are an issue, but are covered by God's grace? If so how can you make repenting of evolution, a sin never mentioned in the bible, a condition of the gospel?

There you go with you man made rules. We only have your opinion that evolution is a sin.

false labeling to practice avoidance of reality

Personal attack and baseless assertion instead of argument. It is not enough to claim it is false labelling. We still only have you man made rules and opinion evolution is a sin.

equating people with the pharisees because they won't allow you to have your cake and eat it, is lying and looking for an escape route to justify your continuance in sin.

Actually I was looking at your claims you were not condemning people. It does not stand up to the words of Jesus. If you are embarrassed about condemning people or think you should not be doing it, you should look at what Jesus considered condemning the innocent. Instead you ignore the content of my point and resort to personal attack again.

what you forget is that you have been told gently over and over about evolution and it has been carefully explained to you that evolutionis not of God. but because you keep mis-applying scriptures or ignore the warnings to continue to excuse your disobedience and practice of sin, the time for gentleness and explanation has past.

There certainly have been some gentle and gracious creationists I have had the pleasure to talk with. Usually they know better than to claim that evolution is a sin, though they do believe it is wrong. But they have not come up with convincing arguments for their interpretation. You certainly don't. Your only reply to the flaws in your in your interpretation is to claim we are trying 'to excuse our disobedience and practice of sin'. Not much of an argument that, and why should we listen you your claims when you cannot even back them up with a decent argument.

you use the lackof specific words in scripture to excuse your disobedience and that is wrong and the impression i get is that God is tired ofyou making a mockery of Him and His words. you follow after the world like God does not exist or hasn't spoken and that is very wrong. then you only look at the scriptures which you like or tell you what you want to hear and are not honest with them or yourself. you ignore those passages which tell you to alter your ways because it means giving up something you want--- the world's ways

If by lack of specific words, you mean you have no basis in scripture for your claims, then why should I be obedient to your man made rules or your impressions about how God feels. Rom 14:4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. I stand by the grace of God, redeemed, washed clean and forgiven.

here is your last warning:

friendship with the world is emnity with God

So, what is friendship with the world? The bible tells us John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. So it is not just hating everything about the world. Nor is it hating the physical world and any understanding of how it was created, because God is the one who created it. Heb 1:2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

John talks of not loving the world. What did he mean by that, after all he is the one who also tell us God so loved the world. 1John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world--the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
It is the desires and the pride of the world that are the problem.

Is this what James is talking about in the passage you quote? James 4:1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Yep. that is what James is talking about too, passions desires and covetousness, not science.

That comes under Phil 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

what fellowship does darkness have with light.

Truth is truth whether it is learned from the bible or science. It is from science we learned the earth s round, that the earth orbits the sun and that life evolved over billions of years. Is it wrong to accept the earth is round even if it was discovered by pagan Greek scientists? If it is true, it is God's truth, because he is the source of all truth and he created the earth that way. This is light from God's creation. Even if a scientific discovery contradicts a millennium and a half of scripture interpretation, as the discover of heliocentrism did, it is still God's truth and the interpretation simply a mistake.

 

[Assyrian]

Christians should hate sins and errors not sinners.

Yes the Jewish calendar even dated creation and was accepted by all religious Jews.

I wonder when the Jewish calendar was actually started. After all the problem we have with the date of Christ's birth, which wasn't 0.0 AD is because they didn't start counting the years until much later. Similarly, while the Jewish calendar works from the creation of Adam, in the OT the calendar is we see is months being counted off, and how many years into the reign of a king it is, not the modern Jewish calendar we know now. And interesting point about the Jewish calendar is that AFAIK it counts from the creation of Adam which does not even go near the whole question of the six days being literal or not.

Josephus is not the best example of a Pharisee but like most jews of his day believed in young earth 6 day creation.

He did. But he is still a good example of allegorical interpretations of Genesis among first century Jews. Philo is another and we don't have that much first century Jewish texts. The fact we can have allegorical interpretations of Genesis in as diverse a range of Jewish life as a priest from Jerusalem and a Hellenistic Jew in Alexandria, suggests these interpretation were widespread. Yet nothing is ever said in the NT to contradict them, which suggests either an allegorical interpretation of Genesis was right, or it is completely unimportant how we interpret Genesis.

The quote makes no sense if it was not a literal adam and eve being discussed.

The story of the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, her being flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, one flesh, is taken as a image of sexual union in marriage. That is a highly allegorical meaning of the story.

Philo was Greek in his thinking and lived in Alexandria not Jerusalem

But Paul would have come across Hellenist bible interpretation everywhere he planted churches, not only does he not contradict them, if you look his reference to Adam are quite allegorical too, and his reference to two Adams very similar to Philo.

Jesus symbols always connect with literal historical realities that were apparent to his audience e.g being robbed on way to jerusalem.

They often do, but we hardly practice cannibalism do we? People don't swallow camels and don't walk around with logs in their eyes. But it is not an issue of how realistic or historical biblical imagery is, the important thing is it can be imagery rather than literal.

Geocentricism is something that science can disprove, the origins of the universe or its remote places remain inaccessible to the methodology.

Sure it is. And we have much more information showing us the age of the earth now than the church had when it accepted heliocentrism was scientific truth. How foolish would they have made the gospel appear if they had waited until they had waited until man stood on the moon and watched the earth above them before they accepted heliocentrism was true, and looked again at how they interpreted the geocentric passages?

 

[mindlight]

Horrifying exegetical misuse of Scripture. And what Jesus said isn't even universally true. In Brisbane where I was not too long ago, the sun rose at 5:30am and set at 7:30pm. That's a 14-hour-day.

Was Jesus wrong?

Shernen and arty bloke you really should be more careful with your examples. As a simple unthinking fundie I feel a little embarassed about pointing out the following , but I cannot leave you stumbling around in the darkness on this one;

The Roman Day like the Jewish Day was divíded into 12 hours with midday as the 6 hour point and the Roman night was a separate time period also divided in 12. Thus as with modern timekeeping it was a 24 hour day. However because the length of the day varies over the year the hours were not constant time periods. If you take the John 11 passage in its full cotext you will notice that Jesus points to the two time periods distinguishing the 12 hours of day from the period of darkness where people do not have light to see where they are going.

The use of different calendars or time measures hardly compromises Jesus's main point anyway which had little to do with the definition of the day and which carries very well into different contexts. If you walk around in darkness ie blind to Gods light, then you are likely to stumble!!

 

[mindlight]

Well then, Jesus was wrong, because there are 24 hours in a day. Of course, there were 12 hours in a Roman day, so he was also right and maybe he was accomodating himself to the customs of the day. Not unlike the writers of Genesis, eh?

Setting aside the misunderstanding of Roman days here you seem to have shifted your position from Jesus could not know to he did know but chose to communicate in context. Does this mean that you now accept that Jesus may have had supernatural knowledge transcending his own human experience of first century Israel. You did not answer any of the points made in the original post so it would be helpful if you could clarify.

 

[mindlight]

I wouldn't say science is basically flawed. I would say it's limited.
Science is rooted in what we can experience with our five senses. As such, it can tell us that the universe appears ordered and designed

I am agreeing with everything you say up to this point

(something even Dawkins agrees with), but it cannot tell us whether there is, in fact, a designer and who that might be. There will always be a leap of faith involved with coming to God. If there weren't, we could never freely choose to love God because God would be an inescapable conclusion of nature. As the Bible says, you can't have faith in something you can see.
So I agree that the creation attests to God, as the Bible says. But the scientific study of it does not.

That appearance of orderliness and consistency in natural laws points to intelligence _ to the wisdom of God.

I believe something of Gods power, awesomeness and the beauty of his craftsmanship is also revealed in his works. Science cannot appreciate or measure beauty but it can measure power to some extent. Anything that could create a universe seething with so much energy must be awesone indeed.

We need faith to see the true personal nature of God , his love, his redemptive nature and his fairness for instance and revelation can inform the believer on this.

We must be able to recognize the limits of what science can tell us and to step beyond them before we can comment about the existence of a creator. And given that science, by definition, can only get us so far, there's nothing wrong in doing that.

Science is limited but it does tell us there is a power, beauty , pattern and consistency to creation. This is its witness to the divine.

Interestingly, it's the fundamentalist creationists and atheists who opt to ignore the limitations of science, and who want to use science to comment on God's existence. The former say science can be used to prove God; the latter say science can be used to disprove God. I see this as a fundamental abuse of science, much like trying to use a hammer to connect to the internet. We can't blame a hammer for not being able to get us online, and we can't blame science for not being able to inform us about God's existence -- that's simply not what these things were designed to do. Again, there comes a point when we must recognize the limitations of what our tools can do, and then pick up different tools (like a modem or theology) in order to reach the end we seek.

Well sorry if true scientists like yourself have been political footballs between the likes of Hawkins and Dawkins and fundies like myself. I personally do not need the science for my position on origins (as I do not believe the empirical method reaches that far). I have no doubts of the benefits of scientific research and of the immense practical blessings that have come from letting scientists get on with their research with open minds. However I see macro evolution and also modern political correctness as ideological cages on understanding and research that are beginning to limit the true potential and worth of some science.

 

[Mallon]

That appearance of orderliness and consistency in natural laws points to intelligence _ to the wisdom of God.

I agree wholeheartedly that the orderliness seen in the universe suggests a higher power. Again, though, I don't think this is something we can ascertain with the inherent limitations of science. Practically speaking, how could you ever scientifically disprove the hypothesis that God wasn't involved in creating something? That is, after all, how science works -- by ruling out alternative hypotheses. I just don't see how this could be done, particularly from the perspective of a Christian who believes a priori that God created everything.
(BTW, kudos to you for arguing that the consistency of nature points to God's creative prowess. I'm used to hearing the opposite from YECists -- that inconsistencies or gaps in nature are the best evidence for God.)

Science cannot appreciate or measure beauty but it can measure power to some extent.

Interesting comment. How, practically speaking, does science measure creative power? How can I show that one object in nature was created, and another wasn't?

Science is limited but it does tell us there is a power, beauty , pattern and consistency to creation. This is its witness to the divine.

Again, I agree entirely. The point I am trying to make is that going beyond those general statements to infer a supernatural creator is beyond the scope of science.

However I see macro evolution and also modern political correctness as ideological cages on understanding and research that are beginning to limit the true potential and worth of some science.

As someone who works in the field of evolutionary science, I humbly disagree. Simply admitting "God did it" is one thing; the real interesting stuff is trying to figure out HOW He did it. Unfortunately, I think "creation science" has little to offer in that regard. The answer from that end usually comes, "It was a miracle! No further explanation necessary. God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Etc, etc, etc."

 

[mindlight]

I wonder when the Jewish calendar was actually started.


After all the problem we have with the date of Christ's birth, which wasn't 0.0 AD is because they didn't start counting the years until much later. Similarly, while the Jewish calendar works from the creation of Adam, in the OT the calendar is we see is months being counted off, and how many years into the reign of a king it is, not the modern Jewish calendar we know now. And interesting point about the Jewish calendar is that AFAIK it counts from the creation of Adam which does not even go near the whole question of the six days being literal or not.

The days started counting with the first man Adam. There are 7 calendar related commandments in the Torah including the definition of the first month of Nissan :

Exodus 12 v 2 'This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.

The original calendar seems to have been 360 days along with many other ancient calendars but this does not fit with the current solar year. I wonder if there was a catastrophe of some sort.

There is variance in the various churches on the precise detail of the calendar and when it dates from but they all specify thousands rather than tens of thousands of years to Adam. How long creation existed before the days of forming and filling is also another issue and discussion.

He did. But he is still a good example of allegorical interpretations of Genesis among first century Jews. Philo is another and we don't have that much first century Jewish texts. The fact we can have allegorical interpretations of Genesis in as diverse a range of Jewish life as a priest from Jerusalem and a Hellenistic Jew in Alexandria, suggests these interpretation were widespread. Yet nothing is ever said in the NT to contradict them, which suggests either an allegorical interpretation of Genesis was right, or it is completely unimportant how we interpret Genesis.

Neither of these guys were Pharisees like Paul or Gamaliel and the one was too Greek and the other too Roman in his outlook.

The story of the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, her being flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, one flesh, is taken as a image of sexual union in marriage. That is a highly allegorical meaning of the story.

But Paul would have come across Hellenist bible interpretation everywhere he planted churches, not only does he not contradict them, if you look his reference to Adam are quite allegorical too, and his reference to two Adams very similar to Philo.

They often do, but we hardly practice cannibalism do we? People don't swallow camels and don't walk around with logs in their eyes. But it is not an issue of how realistic or historical biblical imagery is, the important thing is it can be imagery rather than literal.

Sure it is. And we have much more information showing us the age of the earth now than the church had when it accepted heliocentrism was scientific truth. How foolish would they have made the gospel appear if they had waited until they had waited until man stood on the moon and watched the earth above them before they accepted heliocentrism was true, and looked again at how they interpreted the geocentric passages?

The bread and wine do not become the literal body and blood of Christ but Christ is literally present by his Spirit so the communion with the divine is real and meaningful.

Science will never provide enough evidence about origins to be convincing in my view and the evidence will always be rendered questionable by time distance.

The allegorical method has been considerably abused and in many cases has roots outside scripture. It is fair to say that there is more in most Bible passages than simply the literal historical meaning but one has to be careful in how far one claims to have discovered the extra spiritual dimensions of a text. This was the Gnostic error - claiming hidden truthes that served their own agendas and had nothing to do with what God was saying. In the context of Greek mythology and Roman rhetoric I would say that the gospel eyewitness accounts of the life of Christ were remarkably free of allegory as if these worldly tools of understanding were somehow misleading and not the way the early Christians chose to present their cases. The apocalyptic literature of that period is also remarkably underrepresented in the NT. One wonders how important allegory as a method actually was. Maybe this says more about the worldliness of the Roman catholic church to day that it is so heavily into allegorical interpretations of scriptures.

 

[mindlight]

I agree wholeheartedly that the orderliness seen in the universe suggests a higher power. Again, though, I don't think this is something we can ascertain with the inherent limitations of science.

Science provides the observations and deductions on which basis you could credibly claim the existence of a higher power.

Practically speaking, how could you ever scientifically disprove the hypothesis that God wasn't involved in creating something? That is, after all, how science works -- by ruling out alternative hypotheses. I just don't see how this could be done, particularly from the perspective of a Christian who believes a priori that God created everything.

The overall observations and deductions science provide evidence on the basis of which it would be false to claim that there was no God. A limited subset might lead to an alternate conclusion. People ignore what science tells them for other reasons than the evidence itself.

(BTW, kudos to you for arguing that the consistency of nature points to God's creative prowess. I'm used to hearing the opposite from YECists -- that inconsistencies or gaps in nature are the best evidence for God.)

Aspects of Gods nature are testified to by the established patterns and consistency of Gods creation. However miracles testify to a deeper level of reality in the universe - that the Creator of it transcends it.

How, practically speaking, does science measure creative power? How can I show that one object in nature was created, and another wasn't?

All objects were created - I was speaking simply about the effort to measure the total mass or energy in the universe. The immensity of this value testifies to an even more immense God.

As someone who works in the field of evolutionary science, I humbly disagree. Simply admitting "God did it" is one thing; the real interesting stuff is trying to figure out HOW He did it. Unfortunately, I think "creation science" has little to offer in that regard. The answer from that end usually comes, "It was a miracle! No further explanation necessary. God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Etc, etc, etc."

It is hard to accept that an honest man could be a vertebrate palaeontologist but I trust from my experience of you that you are honest and have simply not yet been confronted with the kind of evidence that could break through the ideological indoctrination of your training. There is also value in your classifications and discernments on long dead species and things to learn from this. The evidence you deal with is however considerably degraded and this limits what you can say and the evolutionary links/maps you draw between the creatures you classify are a work of modern fiction in my view based on the ideology that presupposes your job description.

 

[archaeologist2]

i have chosen not to continue in this thread forthe following reasons:

1. i have said just about all that is needed to be said on the topic and i do not need to keep repeating myself nor waste time answering false accusations and badly applied scriptures.

2. the premise of this thread is biased. it assumes that the secular world has the right definition to what is 'real science' and everything else is wrong or junk. not true.

3. the people engaging me are not being honest with themselves but look for excuses and justifications to continue disobeying God and there is a time to stop talking to them and let God deal with their rebellion, disobedience and sinful pursuits.

4. the arguments presented by those engaging me are desgined to waste time and as they have no inclinationto re-exmine their direction in light of all of God's word and continue to allow themselves to try to have their cake and eat it too.

5. they resort to personal attacks, insults, false labeling, false accusations to make their point and justify their pursuit of sin. we all know that evolution and its offshoots are wrong, a lie and meant to lure people away from God and the truth and it is a shame that christians blindly follow along behind it lapping up the lies, the conjecture, while making a mockery of God and His word.

6. even God stops giving warnings and stops talking to people when they refuse to listen. like noah entering the ark, God has to shut the door and no more entrants will be allowed in and people die in their sins. in noah's time thepeople had 120 years so time is running out for those who continue to call God a liar and pursue secular ways.

7. their interpretation and use of the Bible comes from their own understanding or the secualr world's. in either case neither are of God and they are wrong.

8. the hiding behind the word 'interpretation' means they are followng Bultman and the existential crowd who said that what scriptures means to you may not mean the same way to me. that makes God word subjective and subject to the whims of man and that is wrong as well. it is all an excuse to continue to avoid the truth.

9. God's word is not subjective or it would not be God's word nor the truth. if it was subjective then there would be no standard for the world to follow and nothing better to call the world to. plus God would not be able to judge sinners and send peopleto hell for His word changed depending upon the person reading the Bible and He would ave no constant with which to measure people and their lives.

10. dealing with TE's is as bad as dealing with hardcore atheists, no matter what you say they will find a reason or excuse to dismiss it and continue in their sin. as an example, hard core atheists keep demanding proof, well even if we found the ark they would find some reason to dismiss that discovery as a fake or not the real thing. TE's are the same way, nomatter which scripture you show that proves them wrong, they will find some reason or excuse to ignore God's word.

whether they call it your 'man made rules', or 'your interpretation' or what ever the reason, they do not want the truth, they want to pursue their selfish desires. and continue to delude themselves or be deceived.

so i am out of this thread now, they have had another warning and i am not going to waste time nor energy repeating what they have already heard and ignored. this act of departure does not signal that i lost, have no more evidence or am chicken. i am just not going to waste time on those who will not change. those that have encountered me have not proven their point , have not provided one shred of evidence to back their position up, have provided not one scripture which shows they are right nor shown Gen 1 or creation to be wrong.

they should not pat themselves on the back because they didn't win anything here, they are just being left to their sin because of their hardhearts and stiff necked attitude.

 

[Mallon]

It is hard to accept that an honest man could be a vertebrate palaeontologist but I trust from my experience of you that you are honest and have simply not yet been confronted with the kind of evidence that could break through the ideological indoctrination of your training. There is also value in your classifications and discernments on long dead species and things to learn from this. The evidence you deal with is however considerably degraded and this limits what you can say and the evolutionary links/maps you draw between the creatures you classify are a work of modern fiction in my view based on the ideology that presupposes your job description.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, mindlight.

God bless.

 

[Mallon]

i have chosen not to continue in this thread

seems someone ran home to mommie and cried

 

[shernren]

Shernen and arty bloke you really should be more careful with your examples. As a simple unthinking fundie I feel a little embarassed about pointing out the following, but I cannot leave you stumbling around in the darkness on this one;

The Roman Day like the Jewish Day was divíded into 12 hours with midday as the 6 hour point and the Roman night was a separate time period also divided in 12. Thus as with modern timekeeping it was a 24 hour day. However because the length of the day varies over the year the hours were not constant time periods. If you take the John 11 passage in its full cotext you will notice that Jesus points to the two time periods distinguishing the 12 hours of day from the period of darkness where people do not have light to see where they are going.

The use of different calendars or time measures hardly compromises Jesus's main point anyway which had little to do with the definition of the day and which carries very well into different contexts. If you walk around in darkness ie blind to Gods light, then you are likely to stumble!!

Aww! There are fundies, and then there are simple unthinking fundies; and I don't think I've ever stated or implied that you're the latter. ^^

YSM was somehow trying to prove the point that yom in Genesis 1 is a 24 hour day by referring to the 12 hour "day" in John. I hope that strikes you as exegetically silly as much as it did me.

Setting aside the misunderstanding of Roman days here you seem to have shifted your position from Jesus could not know to he did know but chose to communicate in context. Does this mean that you now accept that Jesus may have had supernatural knowledge transcending his own human experience of first century Israel. You did not answer any of the points made in the original post so it would be helpful if you could clarify.

I don't know if we can know what Jesus did know. (What a confusing sentence!)

But we know, for example, that Jesus "grew in wisdom" (Luke 2:52, NIV); the most natural way to interpret this is that Jesus learned things as He grew up, which wouldn't seem possible if He was born omniscient. Yes, He was precocious even before then; but He still had a way to go.

We also have at least two incidents in which Jesus demonstrates (possibly) that He does not know things. Firstly is obviously Matthew 24:36, a strange verse about the Son not knowing the date of His return. Secondly Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that His cup would be taken away from Him if possible; C.S. Lewis argues that it is psychologically impossible (especially for someone who could not lie to Himself!) to simultaneously pray for the cup to be taken away and know with certitude that it cannot be. That is not an ironclad argument but I think it has merit.

Did Jesus display supernatural knowledge? Certainly. Did Jesus display omniscience? I don't think we can really know for sure. Remember that Jesus in His incarnation "emptied Himself". To me it seems most natural to see Jesus in the Gospels as someone who, although human, was sinless (because He was God), and therefore was fully attuned to the Holy Spirit and capable of fully drawing on the power of the Holy Spirit - and since the Spirit grants supernatural knowledge even today to people to be used for the glory of God, how much more would Jesus have had access to that?

But did Jesus know (if it is true) that the Genesis stories were not meant to be read literally and that creation was much older than the Jews thought it was? I don't think we can say with certitude. And again, even if He did, would He have thought it important to communicate this in the limited time (and space, in the Gospels, too!) He had with His disciples?

10. dealing with TE's is as bad as dealing with hardcore atheists, no matter what you say they will find a reason or excuse to dismiss it and continue in their sin.

To each his own.

 

[mindlight]

Of course Jesus is the incarnate word of God and inspired all the scriptures, including Genesis and the OT. But when creationists talk of Jesus affirming Genesis, they are usually claiming that the words of Jesus in the gospels, God incarnate, supports their view of Genesis. And Jesus did open up the OT scriptures for his disciple to understand and he did teach his disciples to interpret the OT. What he did not do was affirm the YEC interpretation of scripture. Personally I think it is really important to learn how to understand scripture from Jesus Christ, rather than man like Ken Ham.

So, was Jesus talking about the Genesis creation days here? If he wasn't talking about Genesis and showing us its meaning, you can hardly claim he is affirming a literal six day creation.

Look at the rest of Jesus' statement. John 11:9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." Do you really think Jesus is continuing to talk about a literal day and night here?

What do you think Jesus meant by the light of the world?
John 9:4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Was Jesus really just talking about safety out walking after sunset when he talked about walking in the night?
John 12:35 So Jesus said to them, "The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light." When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.

It is interesting that such an apparently literal statement "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" is not actually teaching about literal day and night at all.

Agreed Jesus was not primarily talking about a day and night together being 24 hours. Rather the central point was about walking in the light of God in the NT passage. I would affirm the genesis day on the basis of its use with a number (e.g. first, second etc), the use of literal - historical place names in the passage and the affirmation of it as a day in Exodus 20 when referring to the Sabbath rest to follow 6 days work.

However it does seem that in saying a day is 12 hours long as part of the way of making his point (as if it was obvious to his audience) Jesus is affirming a definition of the day that was prevalent in Jewish and Roman worlds and today also and which is the most obvious way of interpreting Genesis 1 also and the way that Jews would have interpreted it in context. That Jesus speaks so straightforwardly about what his audience assumed a day was and even as a way of illustrating more important spiritual truthes is an evidence of sorts. So YSM has a point of sorts here.

So Jesus affirms the account indirectly by silence (ie not contradicting the prevailing view but instead by repeating it to make illustrations), He also affirms the account by quoting from other parts of Genesis 1-11 on occasions and thus affirming the literal historical content of the passage.

 

[mindlight]

Aww! There are fundies, and then there are simple unthinking fundies; and I don't think I've ever stated or implied that you're the latter. ^^

Maybe I just measure myself by higher standards than Richard Dawkins. He thinks he is the ultimate end product of evolution. I believe I image the allknowing and allwise God and aspire to understand the mind at the heart of all reality. Dawkins belief he is oh so smart is born of his low standards in my view....

YSM was somehow trying to prove the point that yom in Genesis 1 is a 24 hour day by referring to the 12 hour "day" in John. I hope that strikes you as exegetically silly as much as it did me.

Jesus does seem to be affirming a 24 hour day in this passage as if it were an obvious truth with which he can illustrate more profound truthes. There are probably better arguments to use to affirm the Genesis days as also being literal days but its clear that Jesus did not expect his audience to understand or accept the metaphorical use of statements about time.

I don't know if we can know what Jesus did know. (What a confusing sentence!)

But we know, for example, that Jesus "grew in wisdom" (Luke 2:52, NIV); the most natural way to interpret this is that Jesus learned things as He grew up, which wouldn't seem possible if He was born omniscient. Yes, He was precocious even before then; but He still had a way to go.

Yes but you could see this in terms of the tension in Christs person between his humanity and Divinity. There is a sense of perpetual connection to the Divine which manifests itself in creation miracles like feeding the five thousand or supernatural awareness of things not yet come to pass or details about peoples lives. There is also the human being and creaturely nature of Christ which like all human lives grew, matured and developed.

We also have at least two incidents in which Jesus demonstrates (possibly) that He does not know things. Firstly is obviously Matthew 24:36, a strange verse about the Son not knowing the date of His return. Secondly Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that His cup would be taken away from Him if possible; C.S. Lewis argues that it is psychologically impossible (especially for someone who could not lie to Himself!) to simultaneously pray for the cup to be taken away and know with certitude that it cannot be. That is not an ironclad argument but I think it has merit.

CS Lewis spoke to a generation of Christians finding their humanity for the first time and that of Christ also. He released a wave of human creativity with his insights and stories and those of his Christian contemporary JRR Tolkein also. I think the agenda today has more to do with transcendence and I am still waiting for the CSLewis of our generation to speak. I disagree with him on the impossibility of Jesus holding the unshakeable answer and the desperate prayer for it to be changed in his same nature. I think this misunderstands the paradox of being man and God in the same person. Jesus was both and the tension was real in Him and inexplicable also.

Did Jesus display supernatural knowledge? Certainly. Did Jesus display omniscience? I don't think we can really know for sure. Remember that Jesus in His incarnation "emptied Himself". To me it seems most natural to see Jesus in the Gospels as someone who, although human, was sinless (because He was God), and therefore was fully attuned to the Holy Spirit and capable of fully drawing on the power of the Holy Spirit - and since the Spirit grants supernatural knowledge even today to people to be used for the glory of God, how much more would Jesus have had access to that?

But did Jesus know (if it is true) that the Genesis stories were not meant to be read literally and that creation was much older than the Jews thought it was? I don't think we can say with certitude. And again, even if He did, would He have thought it important to communicate this in the limited time (and space, in the Gospels, too!) He had with His disciples?

I think Jesus did know that Genesis was true and this is why he did not contradict the scriptures the Holy Spirit had inspired about this. Indeed he affirms the authority of the whole Pentateuch on innumerable occasions and conventional interpretations about it e.g. Mosaic authorship. If Jesus had questioned the veracity of the original Genesis inspiration it would have cast doubts on who he was, as he would have been directly contradicting the obvious intent of scripture. That he reinterpreted aspects of the law in the light of his arrival on earth is clear e.g. food laws and ceremonial laws. He also reaffirmed truthes from before the law that had been lost e.g. the equality of women and the worth of even lowborn slaves and gentiles in the way he dealt with and spoke to people. BUt he left the basic background structure in tact e.g. creation.

 

[mindlight]

i have chosen not to continue in this thread forthe following reasons:

1. i have said just about all that is needed to be said on the topic and i do not need to keep repeating myself nor waste time answering false accusations and badly applied scriptures.

2. the premise of this thread is biased. it assumes that the secular world has the right definition to what is 'real science' and everything else is wrong or junk. not true.

3. the people engaging me are not being honest with themselves but look for excuses and justifications to continue disobeying God and there is a time to stop talking to them and let God deal with their rebellion, disobedience and sinful pursuits.

4. the arguments presented by those engaging me are desgined to waste time and as they have no inclinationto re-exmine their direction in light of all of God's word and continue to allow themselves to try to have their cake and eat it too.

5. they resort to personal attacks, insults, false labeling, false accusations to make their point and justify their pursuit of sin. we all know that evolution and its offshoots are wrong, a lie and meant to lure people away from God and the truth and it is a shame that christians blindly follow along behind it lapping up the lies, the conjecture, while making a mockery of God and His word.

6. even God stops giving warnings and stops talking to people when they refuse to listen. like noah entering the ark, God has to shut the door and no more entrants will be allowed in and people die in their sins. in noah's time thepeople had 120 years so time is running out for those who continue to call God a liar and pursue secular ways.

7. their interpretation and use of the Bible comes from their own understanding or the secualr world's. in either case neither are of God and they are wrong.

8. the hiding behind the word 'interpretation' means they are followng Bultman and the existential crowd who said that what scriptures means to you may not mean the same way to me. that makes God word subjective and subject to the whims of man and that is wrong as well. it is all an excuse to continue to avoid the truth.

9. God's word is not subjective or it would not be God's word nor the truth. if it was subjective then there would be no standard for the world to follow and nothing better to call the world to. plus God would not be able to judge sinners and send peopleto hell for His word changed depending upon the person reading the Bible and He would ave no constant with which to measure people and their lives.

10. dealing with TE's is as bad as dealing with hardcore atheists, no matter what you say they will find a reason or excuse to dismiss it and continue in their sin. as an example, hard core atheists keep demanding proof, well even if we found the ark they would find some reason to dismiss that discovery as a fake or not the real thing. TE's are the same way, nomatter which scripture you show that proves them wrong, they will find some reason or excuse to ignore God's word.

whether they call it your 'man made rules', or 'your interpretation' or what ever the reason, they do not want the truth, they want to pursue their selfish desires. and continue to delude themselves or be deceived.

so i am out of this thread now, they have had another warning and i am not going to waste time nor energy repeating what they have already heard and ignored. this act of departure does not signal that i lost, have no more evidence or am chicken. i am just not going to waste time on those who will not change. those that have encountered me have not proven their point , have not provided one shred of evidence to back their position up, have provided not one scripture which shows they are right nor shown Gen 1 or creation to be wrong.

they should not pat themselves on the back because they didn't win anything here, they are just being left to their sin because of their hardhearts and stiff necked attitude.

I agree with a lot of what you have said in this thread and with many of your comments above also. Although we have different ways of saying it and different expectations about how quickly seeds come to flower. I believe I need also to add the below.

Gods word does not return to empty but will accomplish the purpose for which he sends it. Sometimes we just need to trust Him for that and not try and push stuff through in our own strength. God gives freewill to people and this needs respecting even when people make all the wrong choices. Also knowing how stupid I have been in the past and unscriptural in some of my positions I hold the view that a little bit of grace and mercy seems in order when arguing with people from whose views God has liberated me from, over a process of years. Also I have been challenged on innumerable occasions by some very honest people on this forum to investigate annew the faith for which I attempt to give reasons and am thankful for that.

 

[shernren]

Jesus does seem to be affirming a 24 hour day in this passage as if it were an obvious truth with which he can illustrate more profound truthes. There are probably better arguments to use to affirm the Genesis days as also being literal days but its clear that Jesus did not expect his audience to understand or accept the metaphorical use of statements about time.

I'm not so sure about that. Remember the Parable of the Workers? Jesus sure made a big metaphorical use out of the hours of the day there.

I think Jesus did know that Genesis was true and this is why he did not contradict the scriptures the Holy Spirit had inspired about this.

The issue is not whether or not Genesis is true. Genesis is true, and the whole Bible is true, life-or-death true. The question we are trying to answer, however, is "What is it saying?"

Indeed he affirms the authority of the whole Pentateuch on innumerable occasions and conventional interpretations about it e.g. Mosaic authorship. If Jesus had questioned the veracity of the original Genesis inspiration it would have cast doubts on who he was, as he would have been directly contradicting the obvious intent of scripture.

And again, the issue is not whether or not Genesis was written by Moses. The whole thing could've been written in one night (with lots of coffee), and Moses (and God) could still have meant for it to be taken non-literally; or it could've been written (as God inspired) by many different people over many centuries as some say and yet still be meant by God to be taken literally. When a journalist compiles quotations from numerous sources about, say, global warming, and puts them all together into a single article in a newspaper, he still means for each and every single quotation (and the overall article) to be taken at its face value. What difference would it make whether Genesis was written by one man or a thousand?

That he reinterpreted aspects of the law in the light of his arrival on earth is clear e.g. food laws and ceremonial laws. He also reaffirmed truthes from before the law that had been lost e.g. the equality of women and the worth of even lowborn slaves and gentiles in the way he dealt with and spoke to people. BUt he left the basic background structure in tact e.g. creation.

I think the words of Graeme Goldsworthy answer eloquently enough to this point:

... the gospel must instruct us since it is God's final and fullest word to man. It is clear from the gospel that God created all things for a purpose, and that He exercises His rule over creation by His word. It is not at all clear from the gospel that the creation took place in six twenty-four hour periods. Nor is it clear from the gospel that it did not happen in that way. The question is not whether the Bible tells the truth, but how it tells it.​

 

[yeshuasavedme]

It is interesting that such an apparently literal statement "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" is not actually teaching about literal day and night at all.

Yes it is.
Twelve hours after Jesus Christ created the heavens and the earth, He said; "Let there be light", and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness.
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were = echad/one day.

"Are there not twelve hours in the day" is Jesus' speaking of the exact time that the light shines on the globe in its fulness, before the darkness shines for its equal twelve hours, which equal "one/echad day". [always twelve hours at the equator
"At the equator, sun rises daily at 6 a.m. local time and sets at 6 p.m. local time" -about.com].

 

[Assyrian]

The days started counting with the first man Adam. There are 7 calendar related commandments in the Torah including the definition of the first month of Nissan :

Exodus 12 v 2 'This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.

The original calendar seems to have been 360 days along with many other ancient calendars but this does not fit with the current solar year. I wonder if there was a catastrophe of some sort.

[FONT=&quot]
Probably owes more to having a lunar calendar than anything else. Lunar months are lot easier to count out than working out a solar year. Besides the Babylonians had a thing about the number 60. But notice the example you gave was counting out months in the year rather than numbering the years since Adam was created. Just because the Jewish calendar counts from the creation of Adam does not mean it was started in year 0 when Adam was created. That numbering system seems much later and whoever started it had to work out long they though it was since Adam was created and start from that number. I know of no evidence in scripture that they used that system in biblical times.[/FONT]

There is variance in the various churches on the precise detail of the calendar and when it dates from but they all specify thousands rather than tens of thousands of years to Adam. How long creation existed before the days of forming and filling is also another issue and discussion.

Sound like there is a range of different ways to read the genealogies, let alone the days in Genesis. The bible simply does not tell us how old the earth is.

Neither of these guys were Pharisees like Paul or Gamaliel and the one was too Greek and the other too Roman in his outlook.

You mean Roman citizen Paul? Classically educated Paul who would quote Greek poets as well as scripture and came from Tarsus one of the great centres of learning in the classical world? Josephus was a Pharisee like Paul, and Philo was a Hellenistic Jew like Paul. We can see God’s wisdom in the apostle he chose to bridge the gap between Jew and Gentile for the gospel to go out to the world. Of course Paul was quite unique. But regardless of how well Philo and Josephus compare with Paul, they still show us some of the ways Genesis was being interpreted in first century Judaism, this was the background Paul came from himself, and it is how Genesis would have been understood by the Jewish believers in the churches Paul wrote to.

The bread and wine do not become the literal body and blood of Christ but Christ is literally present by his Spirit so the communion with the divine is real and meaningful.

Does not make Jesus statement, John 6:53 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you, any less shocking and horrifying to the disciples who heard it and turned away. It did not "connect with literal historical realities that were apparent to his audience". Neither did swallowing camels.

Science will never provide enough evidence about origins to be convincing in my view and the evidence will always be rendered questionable by time distance.

And to the geocentrist the question of relative motion will always make the actual science questionable. If you wanted to deny the existence of atoms or subatomic particles, which after all are never mentioned in scripture, science has never observed them. Why doesn't the size and the inability to see something that small make that science questionable too? The fact is even when it cannot observe things directly, science is able to test its theories and the age of the earth has stood up to as rigorous testing as the existence of atoms or the motion of the earth.

The allegorical method has been considerably abused and in many cases has roots outside scripture.

Allegory has certainly been abused, which is why the Reformation saw a major move away from it. But I think the church has swung too far in the other extreme, especially in modern literalism. Just because you find allegorization in Hellenistic culture too, does not mean scriptural allegory has it roots there. Allegory has deep roots in scripture, the book of Revelation is allegorical as are the parables of Jesus. You find allegories and parable all through the OT. Paul allegorised the OT, including Genesis, Gal 4:24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. He interpreted Gen 2:24 as both a picture of marriage and a deep mystery talking about Christ and the Church Eph 5:32. If you don't like the term allegory, though Paul uses it, call them parables and metaphors.

It is fair to say that there is more in most Bible passages than simply the literal historical meaning but one has to be careful in how far one claims to have discovered the extra spiritual dimensions of a text. This was the Gnostic error - claiming hidden truthes that served their own agendas and had nothing to do with what God was saying. In the context of Greek mythology and Roman rhetoric I would say that the gospel eyewitness accounts of the life of Christ were remarkably free of allegory as if these worldly tools of understanding were somehow misleading and not the way the early Christians chose to present their cases. The apocalyptic literature of that period is also remarkably underrepresented in the NT. One wonders how important allegory as a method actually was. Maybe this says more about the worldliness of the Roman catholic church to day that it is so heavily into allegorical interpretations of scriptures.

It is possible that because you avoid allegory yourself, you do not notice it in scripture. The Gospels are historical texts, yet they are full of allegorical parables, and Jesus Olivet discourse was apocalyptic as were many of his parables. There is an awful lot of allegorical interpretation of the OT in Paul's letters while ICor15, 2Thess2, 2Pet3 and the book of Revelation are apocalyptic. But it does not matter if it is underrepresented, the fact that it is there legitimises it. Of course it is possible to go overboard with allegory, and people who are already overboard like the gnostics will probably try to justify their views with hidden meanings. But it is possible to go overboard the other direction, as literalism does. Jesus spoke in metaphor figures and parables all the time. To insist on literalism completely ignores how Jesus own words in scripture.

 

[Assyrian]

Agreed Jesus was not primarily talking about a day and night together being 24 hours. Rather the central point was about walking in the light of God in the NT passage. I would affirm the genesis day on the basis of its use with a number (e.g. first, second etc), the use of literal - historical place names in the passage and the affirmation of it as a day in Exodus 20 when referring to the Sabbath rest to follow 6 days work.

Numbers can have deep symbolic meaning and feature in metaphorical writing, so I do not see why the word 'day' which can be used metaphorically and numbers, which can be used symbolically, have to be literal when combined together. In fact numbers and day are used together figuratively in scripture, look at Ezekiel's symbolic portrayal of the siege of Jerusalem Ezek 3 or Jesus reply for Herod Luke 13:32 And he said to them, "Go and tell that fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Place names feature if figurative passages too. Look at Jerusalm and her sisters in Ezek 16. I presume you are talking about the rivers in the second creation account here. I would say they suggest a figurative landscape rather than a literal one, because it is physically impossible to have a river with the same source as the Tigris and Euphrates but flows around the land or Cush, Ethiopia. It suggests the story is a parable for all the known world, not a literal description of it. One interesting thing about the OT Sabbath is the way it unpacked itself in longer and longer periods, there was the rest every seven days, but then seven weeks after Passover you have Pentecost, ever seven years there is a Sabbath of the land and seven times seven years is the year of Jubilee. you even have the seventy weeks of years in Daniel. If the weekly six days plus Sabbath was meant to replicate the duration of God's creation week, rather than just the pattern, then why all the other Sabbaths of different lengths?

However it does seem that in saying a day is 12 hours long as part of the way of making his point (as if it was obvious to his audience) Jesus is affirming a definition of the day that was prevalent in Jewish and Roman worlds...

Hardly affirming something everyone took for granted. He was using their understanding of a day as a starting point for his metaphor.

...and today also and which is the most obvious way of interpreting Genesis 1 also and the way that Jews would have interpreted it in context.

Some did, others from as diverse backgrounds as Philo and Josephus saw a lot of allegory in the Genesis accounts. Jesus never discussed the creation days, except in the context of the Sabbath, which he did not interpret literally, When challenged about the Sabbath he said his Father never stopped working John 5:17 But Jesus answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." And he used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical lesson in marriage today rather than a history lesson about the creation..

That Jesus speaks so straightforwardly about what his audience assumed a day was and even as a way of illustrating more important spiritual truthes is an evidence of sorts. So YSM has a point of sorts here.

It is certainly evidence that a day with numbers, its twelve hours, can be used metaphorically.

So Jesus affirms the account indirectly by silence (ie not contradicting the prevailing view but instead by repeating it to make illustrations),

Arguments from silence are pretty dubious but I think there is more to be said from Jesus and Paul not correcting the allegorical interpretations held by people at the time. Instead we see Adam and Eve being seen as a illustration of marriage, Eve made from Adam's rib, being the one flesh with him, as an picture of sexual union, or even Christ and the church, and we see Adam interpreted as a figure of Christ, while Paul's teaching of the two Adams echoes the highly allegorical interpretation of Philo

If an allegorical interpretation was such a mistake, it should have been corrected rather than adopted.

He also affirms the account by quoting from other parts of Genesis 1-11 on occasions and thus affirming the literal historical content of the passage.

All of Genesis is authoritative, but just because one part of a book is figurative, it doesn't mean other parts can't be historical. Plenty of books in the bible contain both.

 

[mindlight]

Allegory.....

Back to Alexandria v Antioch. I am closer to Antioch and you to Alexandria. Where you see allegory I may often prefer to talk about typology. But I do not go all the way to the Antiochian position because of the way Jesus and the apostles used OT scriptures. A historical-grammatical method is not enough to explain this.

Philos method was speculative in my view although he did accept the literal historical meaning as a starting point in most cases. The conclusions he draws become using the Bible to decorate his prior Platonism.