Can we really Believe the Creator's Word?

BobRyan, you seem to be under the impression that all evolutionists are of one mind concerning religion and speak in lockstep with Dawkins. This is simply not the case.

And by the way, some of the speaking out of some scientist involved with evolution against religion is in fact a very human response to the attack they perceive as being made against the truth by people such as you in the name of religion. It is to be expected that after a lifetime of attack from a given quarter that some will strike back verbally, however unfortunate it might be they did so.

 

See, right here is where your claimed powers of "exposition" and "deducing" the text have let you down, because once again you completely misunderstand the point. The point is not that God could not make a day last longer. Not at all! Instead, the point is what is it that causes a normal day and night in the ordinary course of things? Is it that the earth rotates, or is it that the sun goes around the earth in its course in the sky?

Its true you have repeatedly stated these things. That does not make them true.

Well, Dawkins is on the right side as far as his knowledge of science is concerned, and he is wrong to reject God. So your assertion that he is "on your side" is half off at least.

Pay close attention, I know this concept is hard for you. There are many many different philosophies and religious beliefs out there, not just two, i.e. yours and everything else.

 

If God can’t get it right in Genesis 1, how can we be assured He got it right elsewhere? If we have to use “science” to interpret the Bible to give meaning of the words in the Bible, example: the word ‘day’ in Genesis 1 to get millions of years, then frankly, none of us should believe in the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection of Christ.

Science has NEVER shown a virgin birth in humans. Science has NEVER shown a bodily resurrection in humans either. You wanna know why I believe in a literal virgin birth and a literal resurrection? Because of what scripture says. You wanna know why I believe in a literal six-day creation and a young earth? Bingo, you guessed it, b/c of what scripture says.

 

What about the wine which He created at Cana?

Wine takes several months to several years to produce.

A glass of wine implies planting, nurturing, harvesting, squeezing, aging, packaging, etc.

But the wine He made was made in an instant.

So was it really as old as all the implications suggested?

HankD

 

And the reason that humans share retroviral LTRs with the other apes, the reason that humans share mutations with the other apes and primates is...what? An "appearance" of evolution?

 

Precisely!

God hasn't fooled you though, has He? You saw through His deception!

 

I think this points out a good comparison: the creation of the universe and the creation of jugs of wine. Let's assume that a whole science lab was present in Cana, and that a number of scientists were on the scene who had managed to remain sober throughout the celebration. They obtain a few glasses of the wine Jesus had created, and Jesus tells them that the wine uses the exact same recipe as the other wine that had run out. It turns out that part of the reason the wine ran out is because these scientists had also taken quite a few skins (bottles) of this earlier wine, including skins that were labelled as one, two, five, eight, and ten years old.

They decide to find out what age gives the best balance of fruitiness/complexity for this type of wine. The wine from Jesus they label as zero years old. To their amazement, after blind taste tests involving all the wine samples, they discover that the best age for this type of wine is zero years old! To double-check their results, they go about the experiment a different way. Instead of measuring the age, they measure the fruitiness of each wine (since this will change with age), but this time they discover that Jesus' wine has a fruitiness value slightly less than the wine that is eight years old, and slightly more than the wine that is ten years old, and once again this wine is the best. The scientists are perplexed. What is the correct answer? Is the best age for this type of wine nine years old, as their second experiment seems to indicate, or zero years old, based on the information Jesus gave them?

My point with all this is quite simple: for scientific purposes, the answer of nine years old would be most accurate. The wine may have been newly-created, but it was created to be (in this example) nine years old, and so scientifically it should be treated as that age in order to get correct results.

The implications to creation are quite obvious. Scientists are not going to base their ages of the universe on what the Bible says. Further, if the universe was created with the appearance of age, they need to use the age the universe appears to be if they want their experiments to give them meaningful results. If they assume that the universe is 6000 years old when in fact it was created 6000 years ago with the appearance of billions of years of age, their results will be wrong. Their results would be accurate if they assume that the universe really is as old as it appears to be, because if God did create the appearance of age, He did it perfectly.

Personally, I do not believe God made the universe with the appearance of age. However, if one does accept that view, then one should not be upset that science is not taking it into consideration. If scientists did so, they would go off the rails as much as my hypothetical scientists from Cana went off the rails when they assumed that zero age was the best for wine.

 

Appearance of age does not work. YOu might be able to shoehorn in a few date measurments, though why a rock needs to have just the right balance of radioactive materials that make it "appear" to be miilions or billions of years old is never quite explained.

But appearance of age does nothing for the voluminous evidence that the diversity of life we see came about through common descent. I gave you a few examples above. Why would an appearance of age require that humans and the other apes share randon insertions of DNA from retrovirii. Right down to the exact same sequence inserted in the exact same spot? It fits common descent perfectly.

Why would an appearance of age require that humans and the other apes and primates share mutations? They do not help anything. Take the most common example, vitamin C. Most animals use the same four enzymes to manufacture their own. But not any of the primates including the apes including the humans. All of these species have the same gene for the same enzyme broken. Not only that, they have the exact same mutation, right down to the same nucleotide, that breaks the gene and the machine. Why would this fall into an appearance of age? It fits common descent perfectly.

Why would an appearance of age require all those fossil intermediates be put in the ground? I know, someone will point out that there are no fossil intermediates, they are all distinct "kinds." Well, which of the following are and are not humans: Homo neanderthalensis, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, and Homo habilis? They are intermediates leading to modern humans and they fit with common descent.

Why would an "appearance" of age require all of life to fall into the twin nested heirarchy? That is to say that if you take life and categorize it by physiology and then go back and do the same thing with genetics, you basically get the same tree. I know, some will use a Common Designer. But this works with genes that have nothing to do with how a creature looks. Indeed, some of the relationships that can be shown through genetics would be found strange to the lay person but fit the model of common descent when you look closely at how the creatures evolved.

 

I don't think you will find any evolutionist who will say God is lying to anybody. You are putting inflammatory rhetoric into the debate without cause.

Well yes, but that fact from today does not help your cause. You see, the reason we talk that way is because there has been an unbroken oral tradation from the pre-scientific times to refer to the sun rising and setting. Only since the days of modern science we all know that is not what literally happens, and you know the folks in the planetarium will say so.

But we also know there was a time of transition when the minds of the average man were being swayed one way or another according to their eductation in the matter. And during that time, guess what literalistic bible interpreters all said? They got it wrong, because they were led astray by the literalistic interpretation. This is a matter of documented history.

History is being repeated again, of course.

But lets nail this down with some honest hard questions for BobRyan.

(a) Based on your biblical exegesis powers, can you find any Bible verse that tells you it is the earth's rotation rather than the sun's daily movement that causes night and day?

( )yes
( )no

(b) Do you in fact believe that if someone claims the rotation of the earth explains night and day, they are wrong?

( )yes I believe they are wrong
( )no, they wouldn't be wrong, that is a valid way to understand night and day.

I phrase the second question in this awkward negative manner to preclude someone saying relativity theory makes no difference between rotating earth or orbiting sun.

If you answer "no" and then "no" then we all see your inconsistency, because you choose to accept the findings of science over the teachings of the Bible in front of our very eyes.

Go ahead, make your choices!

 

Precisely!

God hasn't fooled you though, has He? You saw through His deception! </font>[/QUOTE]I am very confused by this response. Are you saying that the evidence that indicates the common descent of life on earth is just an "appearance" of evolution? I mean, you said "Precisely!" in response to that. What posible reason could there be for God to make it look like evolution happnened when it did not? On the other hand, if that was sarcasm (tone of voice is really missing in text, eh?) then you have tried to simply dismiss the evidence, because you do not like it, without ever addressing it. I believe my next post expounded a little more on the ideas I first expressed in the post you quote. Why don't you deal substantively with those issues?

And, BTW, no I do not think God has "fooled" me. Nor do I think He would want to. You are the one who keeps talking about God "fooling" people, or lying to them, or His "deception." I do not think God would do such a thing. Yet you continually assert that if you are wrong on this bit of interpretation, then the problem is not that YOU are wrong, the problem is that God lied to you. I would gladly, today, accept a young earth if God's Creation showed that's what we actually have. What would it take for you to accept an old earth?

 

Question for Old-Earth advocates.

Presumably, to hold to the Christian faith and God's Word, yet to hold to an old-earth persuasion, requires some sort of a harmonizing of the two. For those of you who are old-earth believers, how have you harmonized the Creation account with what you know/believe about an old-earth and evolution?

Thank you.

 

I don't view the creation account to be a scientific document describing a step by step process God used to bring about His creation. I believe the purpose of the creation account is to demonstrate that God is the creator of everything, that He deliberately created the universe with purpose and order, that He is fully in control of His creation, and that He created from nothing.

 

I have previously given you the long form version, so now I'll go for the short form.

I do not believe the the account given is meant to be a blow by blow account. To focus on solely the creative aspects, it is to establish God as the Creator and as responsible for all that we can see. The earth? Yeah, it's God's. The sun and the moon and the stars? God's. Life? God again. Man? Same.

The literal reading as a step by step process is in conflict with what God's own Creation shows us. But this conflict is unneeded.

 

No but how about because we have a "shared" Creator.

God's Word defines our reality not the empirical method of science whether they appear to agree or not.

Things are not necessarily as they appear even the things we "see" are but representations of what is really out there. Brain and nerve cells reacting to the stimulus of light waves/photons/? bouncing/reflecting off of "reality".

But we can trust Him implicitly:

Psalm 46:10... Be still, and know that I am God.

Those who wish to see the origins of life reality via theistic evolution let them do so. I would hope that their view contains the essential element of faith since "the just shall live by faith". Personally, though I might differ in my faith view with my brother/sister, I don't deny them the same Soul Liberty that I exercise.

HankD

 

In the particular case of the vitamin c genetic error, this does not work. Not if you are talking about a Creator Who does not make mistakes. We can tell the mistake did not come along separately in men and then in chimpanzees and then in gorillas - because - the mistake occurs in exactly the same spot of the genome in ecah species. It would be as if two students turned in identical answers on a test with the same mispelled word. Evidence of copying, you see. And how else could a MISTAKE be copied between species, unless they shared a common ancestor that had the mistaken gene in it?

Go back to my set of (yes) (no) questions addressed to BobRyan and answer them yourself, then see if you still feel like saying this for the particular case of the rotation of the earth.

I think that's what it comes down to. Some denominations/ individuals will be able to accept us, others will not, during the time of transition.

 

So UTEOTW, I’m curious as to your theory as to the virgin birth, which science hasn’t been able to demonstrate in humans or the resurrection of Christ, which science hasn’t been able to demonstrate in humans. Your theory????

Why do you pick and choose what to have faith in? Is it b/c faith in the resurrected Christ is essential for salvation? So you adjust your faith to agree with the resurrection of Christ, even if science boldly disagrees and drag the rest of the Bible through the mud by trying to tell us what God really meant to say?

God created in six literal days (evening and morning were the first day…etc), created man from the dust of the ground and instructed His creation to bring forth after its kind. Pretty plain and simple language to me, how ‘bout you eh? Give the Holy Spirit a little credit as being a little more learned then you UTEOTW. God hasn’t fooled anyone; science has gotten you confused…re-read the opening paragraphs of this post again…