Old Earth vs. Young Earth Creationism

Basically, you are describing someone who denies the literal understanding of Genesis.

 

self censored

Rob

 

Oh, my friend has heard all that before. Of course, a historical statement is not empirical science but it is an historical science of an event that cannot be repeated in the laboratory. It is like forensic science applied at a crime scene, which is not empirical or experimental or operational science.

What Walton is saying is that Genesis is not to be taken as a literal historical statement from God of how the world was created historically. Walton is saying that Genesis is not historical science and not operational science.

Of course, evolution really comes from the heathen, pagan Greeks, but it was revived in Europe about the time of the American Revolution by Frenchman Comte de Buffon who speculated that the earth was formed from molten rock that took 70,000 years to cool and reach its present state. I think that he denied the global flood of Noah 4500 years ago. By 1840 or so Darwin, an heir to the Wedgewood china company who married his Wedgewood cousin, became popular but there were always dissenting clergy who continued the six 24-hour day six thousand years ago doctrine.

I myself believe that Genesis is literal history. Both evolution and big-bang have empirical scientific problems. For example, the discovery of water all over the moon this summer by an Indian satellite designed to identify mineral composition of the moon by scanning, and confirmed by empirical analysis of samples returned to earth, renders null and void all of the possible explanations of big-bang theorists as to the moon's origin.

As for the two types of science--and Christians use empirical science--here is a better explanation:

Two Kinds of Science?

And thanks, Rob, for answering my friend's question.

 

Glad to help!

So what exactly is "literal history"?
Last week as the Wednesday evening bible group was studying the book of Acts, an elderly new convert was surprised when I commented that at a certain point in the book of Acts, Luke would have already known what Paul would do - the gentleman was shocked - he was reading the book of Acts as a stream of consciousness account.

Some people make the same mistake with the creation accounts of Genesis - thinking that they are separated from the context of Egyptian history in which Moses found himself - and written as an eye-witness account of the event.

Rob

 

God walked with Adam in the cool of the morning in the Garden of Eden, as you know. So God must have brought Adam up-to-date about who Adam was and where he came from and the history of the world before Adam, just as parents do with their own children today. Now this history was recorded or remembered and came into the possession of Moses, who wrote as moved by the Holy Spirit. Thus Genesis is literal history.

I think that that desire to know one's origins is a small part of what makes the Kentucky Noah's Ark so compelling--because everyone had Noah as an ancestor who lived about 4,500 years ago and saved himself and his family from the catastrophic global flood.

 

Why would the Author of Scripture that is eternal and for all history and ages including right now...limit the record of beginnings to the history of some also ran country long ago??

 

?? What proof do you have for this?

 

A topic that could take a lifetime to explore!
Why would the Author of the Universe limit himself to having men communicate his message?

He could have written it on stone - there are lots of stones he could have used.
He could have written it in the sky and placed it there for all eternity for everyone to see.
But God chose to reveal himself through a certain group of people, at a certain time, within a certain culture, in a certain language.

It was his choice to use certain people to reveal his purpose - God set it up that way!

So to understand God's purpose we have to go through the author that God chose to communicate with.

We have to understand what the author was saying, what the author meant, what the author intended, because God chose to communicate through that author.

Authority Is Vested in the Human Author
Now we might think, well, maybe God has more purpose, more message than what He communicated to that author. Maybe He does, but our question would be, if He did, how do we get to it? How would we have access to that additional purpose? The fact is, we wouldn’t have any authority in that kind observation about other purposes that we might think that he had. We’re looking for what the Bible has as its authoritative claims. Authority has been vested in the author, and the author then is our access to that authority.
John H. Walton, OT301 Origins of Genesis 1–3 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).​

Rob

​

 

Maybe it beats using little green men.

Some of it He did.

Yet the things that happened were for our benefit in most cases.

No we don't. He spoke through Balam's uknowwhat also. That doesn't mean we need to go through it. He made it so we could read it today.

While that could help at times, the most important thing is to remember He is the Author.

God is the Author. Learning about the various sinners used to convey the words is of limited import.

 

The Egyptians knew nothing. They had even forgotten Joseph, who saved them from starvation. So much for their historical acumen. .

Exodus 1:8 (KJV) Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

Egypt is a synonym for the heathen.

Hosea 11:1 (KJV) When Israel [was] a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

Matthew 2:15 (KJV) And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.

Evolution, or scientific materialism as the communists called it, originated with the Greeks. Neither the Greeks nor the Egyptians showed any respect for the God of Israel before Jesus. The Egyptian Coptic Church has now been dispersed worldwide due to Arab persecution. The Greeks are members of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Noah preserved the history of the world and it came into the possession of Moses through Noah to Abraham to Moses. There was only fifteen hundred years of history before Noah, or almost five chapters of Genesis.

Noah is important: Genesis 5:29 (KJV) And he called his name Noah, saying, This [same] shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.

 

God?

In other words they don't know.

 

They know that the knowledge of the first 1500 years was preserved by Noah. It is not difficult to see that it would have thus passed to Abraham and then to Moses.

Only Genesis is an accurate history of Creation and the Flood. Therefore, we are looking at history as passed from God to Adam and to Noah and to Abraham and to Israel and to Moses.

 

Speculation. The bible does not allude to that or say that. God spent a few months Personally chatting to Moses one time, and we know God often spoke to Moses also. There is no reason to invoke some supposed other records.

How things were passed pre flood may not have involved written records. For all we know there may have been no need to write in the former nature before the tower of Babel, when men could no longer understand each other. Some of the earliest civilizations post flood had to draw pictures and that sort of thing, and written language came later.
So, yes Noah and his family knew about Adam and the history, but not as far as we know because anything was written down.

 

Not in written form that we know!

Yes it is. Moses grew up with the folks of Egypt. Where does it say he was a scholar on Hebrew history? Maybe a lot of things were passed down and maybe he had a good idea one way or another of the history, But we do not need to invoke that unknown to account for how God revealed the creation story to him at all. For all we know, the folks pre flood may not even have had all the details of what was created each day etc. That is all speculation.

 

6:9 [ Hebrew Font Size: LXX | generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked (8694) with God.

Who had that record at that time is the question. You suggest man had it somewhere. What, you think the fathers in the former nature could not remember 50 people or whatever?

Notice that that word generations is the same one used in Ge 2:4 -
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,


Clearly no man could have these generations of the heaven and earth! So why would we assume that there was some written record of everyone who had scattered or migrated as commanded into all the earth?