A literal 6 24-hr days?

Barbarian observes:
Christians who accept that evolution is part of God's creation have no problem at all with Genesis.

Wrong. They merely don't agree with what you say it says. Your interpretation of Genesis is not Genesis.

In other words, they don't believe you. You and God are distinct entities.

You, like they, had to use your mind to decide what to make of His word to us. You came up with a slightly unusual interpretation. That doesn't mean you don't depend on God; it just means you have your own desires and preconceptions. Fortunately, it won't affect your salvation.

Yes. And this is why you (who use your mind to understand Scripture) and orthodox Christians (who also do that) at odds.

Orthodox Christians agree with you. We just don't accept that your word is the Word of God.

Galatian accepts Genesis as it is. Galatian does not accept the word of Helen, which is distinct from the Word of God.

As you saw from the Scopes trial, even fundamentalists a couple of generations ago did not agree that the Earth was that young.

YE creationism is a very recent doctrine, and not a Scriptural one.

 

Responses:

Meatros – I think God Himself wrote Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a, actually. The Bible does say He Himself wrote the Ten Commandments on stone…

Evolution, Meatros, is the result of a belief system – the belief that man has enough brains to figure out the truth about life and the cosmos itself. We are incredibly arrogant to think that. However, God has told us a lot about all of that and evolutionists, preferring their own minds, refuse to believe Him. That makes evolution a belief system at least in part if not the whole.

Paul of Eugene – Job 38:7 refers to the morning stars. The first morning was day one. Genesis 1:16b says, almost in passing, that God made the stars also. There is no time given there. Genesis 1:14-16a refers explicitly to the sun and moon. When we let Bible explain Bible, it appears there were stars shining that first morning. Interestingly, astronomers recognize what they refer to as two populations of stars – those which were formed first – the population II stars – and then the population I stars which were formed later. From what I can see in the Bible, these two things match.

Barbarian/Galatian – “My” interpretation of Genesis? I don’t have to interpret it. It SAYS God created the world in six days. It SAYS plants and animals were created by kind and were to reproduce that way. It SAYS man was not from an animal but his body was formed directly from the elements (or dust of the earth, if you like). It SAYS that only green plants were food for man and the land and air animals with nephesh. When you deny these things, you are not disagreeing with “my” interpretation of the Bible, for I interpreted nothing there! That’s just what it says. You are disagreeing with the Bible itself and putting your own interpretation on it!

No one has to believe me! The Bible says what it says. It is the Bible you are not believing, except inasmuch as it suits you.

Evolution, in the mean time, is not the result of a godly mind, but of a depraved one: Darwin’s and Co. Those who are born again of God have the mind of Christ, and therefore I can depend on Him to show me the truth.

You said my word is distinct from the Word of God. No problem with that. But I listed for you above the things you don’t agree with. Are you telling me these things are not in the Bible, but that I made them up? It is only if I made them up you can call them “not Scriptural.” However, if you happen to find that the Bible indicates – or even says straight out – that creation occurred in six days, each of which had a morning and an evening, that animals are referred to by kind, that man was formed out of the dust (or clay) of the ground, then what I believe is Scriptural and no one needs pay any attention to me at all – only to God’s Word. All I’m doing is presenting what it says.

Evolution denies God’s Word. That’s it in the long and the short of it.

 

This implies agrement with the theories of astronomers of dividing into Population I and II stars. But this is based on observations about the differences in the two populations. The primary difference is that the older Population II stars are metal poor (defining metals as anything heavier than He) while the Population I stars are comparatively metal rich. The theory explains this as being because the younger stars have been seeded with heavier elements from the first generation of stars.

Additional evidence is provided by the masses of the stars in each population. Population I stars include the most massive stars in the galaxy. The only Population II stars that exist in the galaxy are the lower weight, long life stars. Stars that old would have long since burned through their fuel if they were very massive.

Reading on Barry's website, he points out these two differences in the populations himself.

But I cannot find in the writing an attempt to show how his model accounts for the differences. Instead, my reading implies that you would expect to find the opposite situation with regard to metal content in the c-decay theory. It is repeatedly pointed out that higher c values would lead to an increased rate of atomic processes. So would not the older stars, the ones that would have spent a longer time in the increased atomic rate time generating heavy elements in their cores, be expected to have a higher metal content than those stars which had not had as long to do so? The mainstream theory of the younger stars being formed from the remains of the older stars cannot happen if you have four days to send the original stars through their lifetimes, explode them as supernovae, and then incorporate the material in a new generation of stars with gravity operating just as it does today.

And what of the handful of even older stars with metal contents of 1/200th to 1/20,000th of the metal content of the Population II stars that could be part of the earlier Population III. See http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/he0107.htm

So, though science agrees with you that the stars can be divided into the various ages, it disagrees with how to explain the observations. How do you explain the observations?

 

Oops, double post -

[ May 18, 2003, 12:14 AM: Message edited by: Paul of Eugene ]

 

The Bible says scriptures came by inspiring men:
2 Peter 1:21 " . . . holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost".

The Bible says it is OK for men to discover the secrets of God:

The Bible says the sun, moon and stars were placed in the firmament. The Bible further states the firmament did not even exist until day two.

It is your interpretation that these must be taken literally and yet you need not hold to the literalness of the day the stars were created.

Consider Luke 11:46:

One cannot believe that men were both created before all the other animals (Genesis 2:18-19) and after all the other animals (Genesis 1:24-26)

We are forced to regard these as other than literal somewhere along the line!

 

Barbarian/Galatian – “My” interpretation of Genesis? I don’t have to interpret it.

You've confused an allegory with a literal history. Because a literal interpretation such as yours, leads to logical contradictions, we know it cannot be literal.

Genesis also says that other living things were formed from the Earth. We are like them, except that God breathed the breath of life into us and that made all the difference.

[

Are you sure that "only" isn't your addition to Scripture? It's little alterations like that, that lead you astray.

As pointed out above, you did exactly that. You simply assumed that what you wanted was what God said.

Most Christians don't, but what counts is that you understand what God is telling you therein. If you get that, it won't matter if you accept the way He created things or not.

True. But as noted above, it doesn't say what you say.

I'm just not buying the extra stuff you're putting in it.

In fact, both Darwin and Wallace were Christians when they discovered how evolution works. A godly mind accepts God's creation as it is. Hence, most Christians accept that evolution is consistent with our belief.

Yep. See above.

At least one of them is a simple insertion of your word into His. Others are just your attempt to make figurative language literal.

Any time you try to make figurative passages into literal ones, you have altered God's word.

The key words are "if" and "I believe". Your interpretation is not orthodox.

You might as well say gravity denies God's word. God created these things, and they cannot contradict Him.

 

Our creationist bretheren say "I believe in God's Word, The Bible - AND I believe what it actually says".

The evolutionist says "Sure I accept the Bible - ...as myth".

So "both" are saying they "accept God's Word" but the First model is prone to "exegesis" and the second model is prone to "I-suppose" theology that strikes at the heart of the Gospel.

In the case of the "literal 7 day creation week" (the title of this thread) - one has to ask "what is the source of the 7-day-week idea"? What do you accept as your source? Is it going to be God's Word? Or will it be "I-suppose" and "I-guesswork" done to imagine what might have happened 4 billion years ago?

The good news is that our Creationist bretheren have the integrity to admit that "quesswork" forms the foundation of evolutionism - and also have the integrity to admit that the Gospel requires "literal belief" in God's Word - the Bible.

Can there be any doubt of these obvious points?

Bob

 

Hm...Maybe, but the theistic evolutionist would say that the bible a whole lot more then a myth.

Actually no this isn't true. Someone who accepts the theory of evolution is not automatically a Christian, or even a theist. On the other hand a person who accepts evolution and Christ as their savior is a Christian. Also, no matter what, whomever is reading the bible is doing the interpreting as it is overwhelmingly obvious that it can not be taken literally.

Actually it's going to be: WHAT am I going to accept as my interpretation of God's word.

Actually whomever asserts that evolution is "guesswork" clearly doesn't understand how science works. The Gospel doesn't require a "literal belief", no matter how many times you post it Bob.

Of course not, you continue to create strawmen and engage in deceptive rhetoric. You are not the spokesman for Christianity or evolution.

 

Now this is a key point here. Just because there is no foundation for developing evolutionary theory IN THE BIBLE does not mean there is NO FOUNDATION for developing evolutionary theory. Because there are other ways of learning things besides reading them in the Bible. In fact, evolutionary theory was developed and continues to be developed based on evidence from what God has created.

 

Paul, the point is actually not that there is no foundation for evolution in the Bible, but two other points, instead:

1. The Bible specifically presents against evolution (apart from variation)

and

2. Evolution has no foundation apart from rebellion against God. I am not saying that every evolutionist is in rebellion, but that the foundation of this idea is rebellion. It for sure is not in biology!

 

Would you care to prove that Helen?

 

How do you explain this: Chimps are human, gene study implies

 

Originally posted by Helen:

The idea that the Bible specifically presents against evolution is an interpretation of the Biblical point of view. On the side of the us evolutionists, consider that the Bible says, first of all, that God did not directly create the plants from nothing, but cause the earth to bring forth vegetation, Genesis 1:11. In like fashion, the waters brought forth the sea creatures, the earth brought forth the land animals, in their respective verses.

The Bible speaks of all living things being brought forth after their kind. This phrase "after their kind" has been coopted by creationists to speak of a "kind" barrier, beyond which a species may not vary, but can equally be interpreted to refer to the way each kingdom of life carries forth according to its kind; within each kingdom, each family carries forth according to its kind; and so forth on down to the species level. Thus all birds probagated according to their kind, then in that catagory all raptors probagated according to their kind, then in that catagory all eagles probagated according to their kind, then in that catagory all golden eagles probated according to their kind.

It is true that the creation narrative speaks of evenings and mornings. But could these not also considered "beginnings" and "endings" of appropriate periods? As in the day = age theory, only it is necessary to also understand them to not be one in direct succession to another, but overlapping in time. Six great creation periods are referred to, each mentioning a catogory of something that is created within that period.

Sort of like considering stars to be created not on day four but day one, you know.

If you think the language as we have it now can't bear that kind of interpretation, perhaps the language as we have it now isn't the original language. As you know, there is such a thing as scribal error in copying information. This can occur especially when the concepts he is copying are outside the usual world view of the scribe.

I don't think you personally need proof such copying errors have in fact occurred in the transmission of our present text.

As for your remark about evolution being founded in rebellion against God, I don't see why you would come to that conclusion. Darwin and others are quite clear about why they proposed the theory of evolution. They didn't cite anything about rebelling against God as a valid reason for accepting evolution, instead they point to apparantly grouping of animals into related families, the fossil record that extends this relationship into the deep past, the power of evolutionary theory to explain vestigal organs and predict what kind of fossils to expect will be found; the marvelous confirming evidence from molecular studies of protein family relationships and how that carries forth now into the very structure of the genes shows the same family relationships; the special finding of many vestigal developments within the embryo; and so forth.

If genetics can be used to prove paternity and kinship among humans - and it can - why can't you accept how it also proves kinship between species?

It's not rebelling against God to accept the findings of science. One can more logically accept the reverse - it is rebellion against God to deny such a great and wonderful truth as the truth discovered by science as to how life has evolved. After all, the scriptures urge us to get wisdom. Rejecting wisdom, such as the insights of science, is therefore contrary to the will of God.

 

Evolutionists don't know everything because they
have not found everything nor have they studied
everything. They most certainly have not studied
GOD. Most evolutionists will only say that is
because there is no GOD. So what makes you
different? Could it be that you place your trust
in the "traditions" of your church? Seems a
poor trade off for the Word of God.

 

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is. Evolutionists support evolution, which is only concerned with changes in the gene pool over time.

Provide proof of this assertion-I believe you are coming very close to bearing false witness. You do realize there are more 'evolutionist' christians then literal ones, right?

Your post is riddled with assumptions.

 

The Bible uses Allegory, figures of speech and other literary devices on occasion. Often this is obvious, but occasionally sincere scholars disagree on whether a passage is literal or symbolic. But is this the case in Genesis 1-11? The answer is a resounding "no". I am making the seemingly bold claim here that there is no way in which the Hebrew text of Genesis 1-11 can mean anything other than what a child, picking it up for the first time without preconceptions, has always seen as obvious.

I suggest that the only intellectually honest approach for a Christian is either to believe what the writer of Genesis is saying, or reject it as untrue.

To disbelieve it brings the following problems:

1. How can you know which other parts of Scripture are in error as well--that is, how can you reliably know anything at all about Christianity?
2. What about the New Testament evidence that Jesus and the Apostles (including Paul) regarded Genesis 1-11 as inspired Scripture, giving us 'true truth' about historical characters and events?
3. What happens to the very basis of the Gospel - that is, the Fall into sin, death and bloodshed of the whole creation for which the Saviour shed His blood in death (I Corinthians 15:21, 22; Romans 5:12; Romans 8:19-22)?

Those who insist that the days could be millions of years often forget that these "millions of years", in the popular view, are represented by layers of fossils which are interpreted not as the results of the biblical Flood, but as creatures having lived (with struggle and bloodshed) and died before anyone called Adam could have appeared.

To accept, by faith, the biblical statement "Thy Word is true from the beginning" (Psalm 119:160) is a reasonable position, which reasonable people, including scientists, can accept.

God Bless You,
Charlotte

 

Truth does not mean literal. If you wish to reject the overwhelming evidence of an old Universe-that's your business. However be aware that the literal view is not the popular view, nor the only one to have and still be a christian. The following is taken from Theistic Evolution:

 

From the same site, this is in regards to mankinds fall:

 

Meatros:

Let me ask you two simple questions in light of
what you espouse.

Do you believe in TRANSUBTANTIATION?

Do you believe that Peter was being called the
Pope?

 

Meatros:

Let me ask you two simple questions in light of
what you espouse.

Do you believe in TRANSUBTANTIATION?

Do you believe that Peter was being called the
Pope?