See who is a Creation Scientist

Bob,

You seem to want every discussion to be about the "junk science" of evolution. The question asked of me is how one would explain the geneology of Adam.

My point here is that analysis of the text, the context, the genre of near eastern creation stories, and Hebrew writing as a whole suggest that the literal reading is certainly not the only, and perhaps not even the best reading of the account. As such Genesis 1 makes NO claims about the age of the earth (not young, not old!).

 

Charles, the basic rule of thumb is to let Bible explain Bible. The geneologies of Genesis 5 and 11 in the Alexandrian LXX (translated by Hebrew scholars themselves into classical Greek) give a very clear indication of the age of the earth, and thus, if Genesis 1 is taken at face value, the age of the universe as well.

 

In other words, God can't get it right without the human brain, which HE created, to tell Him what He really means.

Au contraire. The data is becoming more and more clear that the Bible is absolutely right about the age of the earth and the universe itself. This is denied only by those who either have not seen the data or are so dependant upon the evolutionary framework that they dare not think for themselves regarding the data and its implications.

Son of a gun! We have GOT to get those weather announcers to quit referring to the sun rising and setting. Do you think anyone has informed them that it is actually the earth rotating and mentioned to them that they are deceiving people in what they are saying???

You mean, like sunrise and sunset, you have SEEN these things? I knew you were a mature man, Paul, but isn't that pushing it a bit?

 

Helen,

The geneologies of Adam define the nation of Israel. I do not see that they or the creation account make any attempt to define the age of the earth. Consider Enuma Elish, or some of the Ugaritic and Canaanite mythology. These almost certainly antedate the writing of the Pentateuch. It would seem that Moses would have had some familiarity with local myth. I favor the argument that the principal context of the creation account in Genesis 1 was to declare that YHWH was THE God and that literally everything came into being by His desire. I think Moses probably was more concerned to define who YHWH was rather than to say how many days or millions of years it took to for plants to come into existence. It is clear that Genesis 1 is NOT an allegory - with a day representing an epoch or a billion years or something of that nature.

Given the mindset of ancient near easterners I don't see how the age of the earth can be seen as an important intended feature of ther Genesis account.

 

Some views re the similarity between pagan myths of creation and the Genesis account:

 

More views re pagan myths and Genesis:

 

Charles, the genealogies of Adam no way define the Israelites. They are BEGUN with Abraham, long, LONG after Adam. In addition, Genesis 10 is called the Table of Nations for a reason -- it is the most accurate record known of where the various peoples came from. The genealogies of Adam define the Christ line, but also the beginning of the human race.

Did Moses copy from others? No, he did not. The knowledge of the order of creation was known to them all, via the bottleneck at the Flood which was survived only by Noah and family. The evidence is actually that Genesis is a series of eyewitness accounts. I have a great deal of material on this -- too much for this little box, but one link is here:
http://ldolphin.org/tablethy.html

the following is from Oswald T. Allis of Princeton and later Westminster Theological Seminary (I assume you approve) in "The Five Books of Moses" Presbyterian & Reformed (1964)

 

In my own view, the phrases "these are the generations of" are, indeed, titular phrases referring to blocks of quoted material. I do not accept, however, that they are the only sources in Genesis; that Genesis also includes threads of tradiational narraties that were passed down from generation to generation; and all these have been blended into our present narrative. But it is apparant that the final editor drew from many sources.

This is not a claim against inspiration. God chose the Hebrew Nation for His special people and God also chose them complete with the narratives of their history and, indeed, He was in control of those narratives and that history.

There is a simple way to reconcile the six days of creation with what we now know, but it involves some non-literal interpreting.

It involves the Day = Age method. The primary drawback of the Day = Age method is not so much that it isn't literal - because, after all, we all know that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. The problem has always been that the creation periods do not occur in an order consistent with the known pattern of development of the universe.

The solution is to recognize that the creation narrative nowhere states that the days were not overlapping or consecutive. They are named as if they were but it is not so stated.

Hence, it is recognized that the development of the dry land and then vegetation is being set forth as a complete funtion of the third day.

Today, we recognize that there were animals in the sea eons before there were land plants; but I am proposing that these are merely the subject of another "look" at creation.

Day five expresses that the waters and the air were filled with their appropriate life. We know that there was animal life before there was bird life, and that before bird life there were flying reptiles that are now extinct.

The "looks" at the creation are not organizing the creation as we do, strictly by time, but by topic.

The organization of the days into a pattern, 1 vs 3, 2 vs 4, 3 vs 5, are well enough known I do not need to spell them out here.

In this manner, it is perfectly possible to read Genesis straightforwardly, if not literally, and see it as a valid description of creation, maintaining the inerrancy view of the passage.

 

As a matter of fact I do accept that this is a well reasoned theory.

Included in that is the concept of "relative motion and frame of reference of the observer" that evolutionists here have done all in their power to obfuscate, deny and misdirect in desperate efforts to discredit faith in Bible "Details".

This is so easy for the reader to see - that it is impossible to debate.

In Christ,

Bob </font>[/QUOTE]So fill me in, before we continue, how you think Einstein's theory handles relative things when rotation is involved. After all, we all know that a Foucault pendulum rotates the plane it swings in; this is commonly taken as a proof of the rotation of the earth. Other rotation effects include the imposed direction of rotations on all hurricanes/ monsoons, which switches south of the equator. There is also the natural reference point of the background radiation of the whole universe, which provides an objective standard, some say, as to whether one is moving or even rotating or not. How do you hold to the relative nature of rotation movement, in view of the fact that rotation provides obvious centrifugal differences from non-rotating motions?

 

If only that made your point instead of mine.

The wolfe contains the genetic information to make a poodle. But the poodle LOST the genetic information needed to make the Wolf.

speciation WITHIN Kind like this example simply shows the LOSS of information and a sequence where going down a given branch produced LESS options in a more limited variant.. it never goes the other way.

Genetic Entropy and certainly information entropy.

In Christ,

Bob [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Oh. Lessee now. The mere naming of dogs as Canis domesticus does not make them separate species but you depend on the evidence to say they are the same.

On the other hand, the mere presence of evidence that Archeopterix is a transition is overridden, in your arguments, by the classification of archi as a bird.

Yet another inconsistency!

 

Helen,

To begin with I reject the premise that all scripture is to be interpreted, by default, in a literal fashion.

Regarding the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. There are patterns of word usage the suggest several sources existed prior to the completion of the pentateuch. Did Moses write it all from memory? Did God dictate to him? Or did he use preexisting traditions, written and oral, to preserve the record under God's direction? I would contend that any of the above are possible, including the third one.

I see the principal point of the creation story as the establishment of YHWH as the supreme creator God. The mythology of the near east is quite unaccidentlally similar to the biblical accounts of the creation - not to mention the flood and some other events. Moses likely was intending to show, in familiar terms, that YHWH brought everything into existence by himself, beholden to none. Thus the intent of the account was not to factually and discretely describe exactly how the earth came into being, with respect to specifics. Near eastern epic writing is quite consistent with this type of thinking.

I don't reject the idea that one should trust the promises in the bible, or that one would believe the bible at face value over "science". Rather I reject the notion that the bible must be interpreted literally in all cases BECAUSE certain people want it so.

 

"The mythology of the near east is quite unaccidentlally similar to the biblical accounts of the creation - not to mention the flood and some other events. Moses likely was intending to show, in familiar terms, that YHWH brought everything into existence by himself, beholden to none."

Charles, I just posted some excerpts of articles refuting the conclusions you make based on this "similarity." Similarity does not mean one came from the other.

 

Marcia,

They're certainly not identical but they are similar. The point I continue to make is that we as 20th century Christians have traditionally held that Genesis 1 should be literal. In fact I'd argue that most of us wouldn't even consider otherwise! I think that no one can prove it either way.

Your post obviously neither proves nor refutes anything. Rather it does show the similarities of the two. I do not fault one for believing that Genesis 1 is literally true, if he/she simply wants to take the bible at face value. What I do have a problem with is those that automatically insist (without knowledge of near eastern studies or language) that the literal way is the only way, often making accusation against those with whom they disagree, referring to them as "liberals" or "so-called Christians".

Let me ask you this. Have you made up your mind before doing the research?

 

In other words, God can't get it right without the human brain, which HE created, to tell Him what He really means.
</font>[/QUOTE]Fallen men can interpret God's word incorrectly, really, its true!

Au contraire. The data is becoming more and more clear that the Bible is absolutely right about the age of the earth and the universe itself. This is denied only by those who either have not seen the data or are so dependant upon the evolutionary framework that they dare not think for themselves regarding the data and its implications.
</font>[/QUOTE]Not really. The age of the universe is clearly millions and billions of years based on starlight from that distance alone. All theories that light has changed speed in any signifigant amount since the creation of the galaxies, for example, are disproved by the simple observation that the light whereby we see them shows them all to be rotating at about the same limited range of speeds no matter how far distant we see them. Light that was once much faster and then became slower would of necessity show them rotating more slowly, exactly in step with the amount of slowing of the light. No slowing of visible rotation equals no slowing of light. It's that simple.

Einstein's formula e=mc² provides another proof. Take a rock from the time of Adam and isolate it. Its mass and energy content remain the same from Adam's day until now, since nothing is taken from it nor added to it, and the law of conservation of mass/energy applies. The formula e=mc² can be recast, as every algebra student knows, into c = sqr(e/m). Since e and m have not changed, c has not changed. Its that simple.

Son of a gun! We have GOT to get those weather announcers to quit referring to the sun rising and setting. Do you think anyone has informed them that it is actually the earth rotating and mentioned to them that they are deceiving people in what they are saying???
</font>[/QUOTE]Just because we have an unbroken tradition of saying the sun rises that carries across from the time when that was literally believed does not change the fact that once it was literally believed.

You mean, like sunrise and sunset, you have SEEN these things? I knew you were a mature man, Paul, but isn't that pushing it a bit? [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]With my own eyes I have viewed the Clouds of Magellan, about a hundred thousand light years distant. With my own eyes I have viewed the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, about 3 million light years distant.