Can we really Believe the Creator's Word?

Especially when God defined the word ‘day’ the very first time He used it. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (Gen 1:5). So God was very specific in using plain words to avoid any such misunderstandings. So, I wonder why certain Christians would boldly deny the very Word of God?

 

The evening and morning are when the sun rises and sets. The sun is not yet created. Without the sun, you have no evening or morning. YOu are getting away from your own literal insistence right there.

I am not denying the Word of God though I do disagree with your interpretation of parts.

 

Gen 1:5 demonstrates that the Earth was already rotating in space relative to the light God created on the first day. What light was this?

The answer can be found in Revelation 21:23, which tells us that in the new heavens and Earth there will be no need for a sun or a moon. What’s happening here, we gonna be fumbling around in the dark? Of course not, God can create light without a secondary source, just as He did prior to day four in the creation week.

 

OK , correction: some apes are vegetarians…

I didn’t say anything about follicles, perhaps I should have said apes have a genetic proclivity for full body hair, we do not. My wife and I have had 11 children, not one of them had full body hair at birth.

I said:

You responded

Again you said what I did not. I did not say apes did not have an “opposable thumb”. I said “we have moveable thumbs suited for tools, apes do not”.

I already addressed this “unlikely coincidence”…

I said

You responded

Speaketh for thyself John Alden? Or was the use of the second person plural “y’all” (as opposed to 1st person plural) “we” a Freudian slip?

The Word of God makes a distinction and sets a genetic boundary between animals (“after their kind”) and mankind (“in the image of God").

Genesis 1
26 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

27 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

HankD

 

The topic at hand for this thread is - does God tell lies? Well, there are two arenas in which we can view the communication from God - the natural world AND his revelation in the Bible.

The message from the natural world is that it is far older than 6 to 10 thousand years.

The message from the written word is that it is only about 6 to 10 thousand years.

So if we interpret the written word literally, God is seen to be contradicting Himself.

The natural world is incapable of being non-literal, it is not even verbal. Hence the logical thing to do is to conclude the written nearrative is not meant to be interpreted literally.

By the way, when the word says God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, doesn't that mean He created them by evolution? Because, there was a kind that they came from AFTER . . .

 

God isn’t a deceiver, the natural world however, since the FALL of man, can be. You ever heard of the ‘body farm’ located on the campus of the University of Tennessee? It’s a place where they study the decomposition of dead human bodies. Some bodies are left in the open, exposed nature, some in shallow graves, some embedded in concrete, submerged in water. The reason for this farm is b/c a detective was deceived by the natural world.

A detective in Memphis or northern Miss. was called to an old graveyard in the 1960s(?). A grave had been disturbed and a body was found there, as if someone had dug up the grave and dumped the body. The body looked like it hadn’t been dead for only a few days. So they searched the missing persons in the area and none matched the body. Months later the detective realized that it was the body of a civil war era person. Some grave robbers were robbing the grave and disturbed the body, but the body didn’t look like a body that had been dead and buried in the ground for over 100 years! Nature deceived this detective, not God!

 

Personally, I don't think that this is quite right, but "how do we reconcile the apparent differences between evolution and creation"?

In my view, It's sometimes proper to use less judgmental language when asking these kinds of questions. Most/many theistic evolutionists don't accuse God of lying but presenting the truth in allegorical or symbolic or an understandable/contemporary form.

HankD

 

Well, of course the message from the natural world needs to be interpreted with the best possible science. The science of forensic medicine would not have made the same mistake today, of course.

If you want to question the accuracy of radioactive decay methods, of distant galaxy and light speed transit times, of plate tectonic rates and movements of continents, of layer counts for annual ice layers in antarctica and greenland dating back over two hundred thousand years, of annual layers in lake bottom sediments dating back 40,000 years, why feel free to post your objections, but don't be surprised to find them scrutinized for reasonableness and accuracy.

 

Hi all,

Got another question.

From an old-earth perspective, how old is modern man? What is the earliest point where we can look at a fossil or remains of a hominid and say, "This guy is the same as me."

I'm not referring to "almost" man, or "for all intents and purposes" man, I mean what is the earliest, bona-fide, no-guessing, man.

Thanks.

 

Hmmm. Would that include all those that can cook with fire?

 

Yes...no...maybe so. I know folks today who can't cook with fire!

I'm talking about the earliest man that IS you and me! I mean someone who, if that man was reared from an infant in today's world, would be indistinguishable from anyone else, both in physical and mental/sociological ability.

 

Here's a nice summary about the more prominant early hominids:

http://members.aol.com/bkdonnclass/EarlyMan.html

It would be the last catagory, the Cro-Magnum man, that would be able to pass for us without comment. You can see the time scales presented there - as early as 25000 BC . . .

 

[snip discussion about ape diet]

What you originally said was that humans are carnivores and apes are not. The implications are that humans and the other apes have different digestive systems, from the teeth to, um, the end of the process, and that it would not be possible to evolve the human system from the ape system. I, correctly, pointed out that all apes have a digestive system optimized for eating everything. We are omnivores. Now some, like your gorilla example, eat little in the way of meat. Gorillas will eat grubs and termites so let's not say that they eat no meat.

But if you take a detailed look, you will see some striking things. Let's take a detailed look at the teeth since we can all go look at our own in the mirror. First, apes and humans have the same set of teeth: 8 incisors, 4 canines, 8 premolars and 12 molars. Now, take a closer look at the teeth, the molars for instance. We all have a very distinctive molar with 5 cusps interrupted by a "Y" shaped crevasse. There is nothing special about this arrangment of teeth. Other omnivores survive perfectly well with other combinations and shapes of teeth. Yet humans and all other apes share this specific trait. Why? Common designer? Then why was this design not used for all omnivores? The great similarity in teeth, and the rest of the digestive system, is good evidence for common descent.

You first said "Apes have all body hair we do not." This was followed by "I didn’t say anything about follicles, perhaps I should have said apes have a genetic proclivity for full body hair, we do not." What exactly is the difference between the two statements? I have pointed out that humans and the other apes have the same amount of body hair, measured by the number of individual hair follicles per unit of surface area, but that humans have thinner and shorter hairs. Do you not know of some people with very thick hair and some with very thin hair?

"Again you said what I did not. I did not say apes did not have an “opposable thumb”. I said “we have moveable thumbs suited for tools, apes do not”."

Then you will have to point out what differnce you are trying to call attention to. I have shown that chimps have an opposable thumb capable of a precision grip and are known to use tools. What more is there?

"I already addressed this “unlikely coincidence”…"

Yes, I realize that you say that you have. you said "All creation was affected by Adam's sin over which He had god-like power (then). The human creation indeed shares some genetic likenesses (but not all) with apes. As I said before, we can't know how sin transmitted down through all of creation in every nook and cranny and molecule. There are bound to be some "mistakes" (as a result of sin) which we share with other species and not others." It is my opinion that this does not explain why humans and the other apes, and only the apes, have this broken in EXACTLY the same way. But we may be splitting hairs on this because I do not think a real discussion is possible on the issue.

But this leaves undiscussed why humans would have the same retroviral insertions as apes scattered throughout there genome. If you though it was unlikely for several different species to have the same single mutation then this is through the roof. Each virus can infect each of the species. Each virus inserts the same sequence of DNA from its own genome. This insertion goes into the same place in each species genome. Each sequence happens to be in a reproductive cell and gets passed on. Each sequence is spread throughout the whole population of each species. These shared insertions are very strong evidence for common descent, as are the pseudogenes.

"Speaketh for thyself John Alden? Or was the use of the second person plural “y’all” (as opposed to 1st person plural) “we” a Freudian slip?"

I think I must be missing some sort of cultural refence here. John Alden from the Mayflower? Anyway, no you said that you were not descended from a baboon so I used that pronoun to group you together.

"It's sometimes proper to use less judgmental language when asking these kinds of questions. Most/many theistic evolutionists don't accuse God of lying but presenting the truth in allegorical or symbolic or an understandable/contemporary form."

True. I do not thing that God has lied nor made errors in what He has given to us. I do think that it was couched in language that the people receiving the message could understand. Part of that was to use language that went along with their view of the world. I think this was because there was nothing to be added by trying be specific enough to give an account that would be the same as what we would learn from the Creation itself later in our history. They were told what they, and we from a spiritural perspective, needed to know. If you think about it, the early Christians did much the same thing when spreading the Word. Many of the traditions we have for Christmas and Easter, just to pull out to example you may know something about, are derived from pagan traditions. We would incorporate these things to make it easier to convert people. "Hey, when you have your winter festival we are no longer going to celebrate the winter solstice in honor of the old pagan gods, instead we will celebrate the birth of Christ. Keep your yule logs and your trees, we will just give them a new meaning." Easter bunnies and Easter eggs come from pagan spring festivals for fertility goddesses.

Now, let me try and tie humans to the other apes in a new way. I think if I were to go down the road of pseudogenes you would blame each and every one on a coincidental effect of the Fall. So let's look the the chromosomes. Chimps have 24 pairs of chromosomes and humans have 23 pairs. Oops. This looks like it could be a problem. But let's take a closer look. At the end of each chromosome is an area called telomeres. In the middle of each chromosome is a region called a centromere. Now if you look closely at the second pair of chromosomes in humans, you will see that there is a telomere region stuck right there in the middle. Even better, each half of the chromosome has its own centromere. The second pair of human chromosomes is due to a fusion of two pairs of chromosomes into one pair. But it gets better. Go to this ( http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/chro.all.html ) website to see comparisons between the human chromosomes and those of some other apes. Look closely at the box for the second human pair of chromosomes. The banding matches up perfectly with that of the other apes. In fact, if you look through the whole chart, you will see that the bands matchup throughout the entire genome with a few exception for where insertions or deletions have moved things abit. This is powerful evidence for common descent.

 

UTEOTW,

IMO Nothing in the content of what you have responded has clearly and definitively rebutted my reponse to your proposition that the similarities in the primate species (whether genetic construction or telomer positioning or any other) cannot be explained by a similar design of a shared Creator.

I believe we have crossed the line of diminishing returns and going into the minutia of primate genetic architecture will not make a difference.

Thank you brother for the stimulating conversation.


HankD

 

Hank: Nothing in this post shows you have any understanding of what has been presented.

Take the issue of vitamin c defective genes.

No common designer would deliberately design a defective gene. Therefore the only creationist explanation left would be that at the time of Adam's fall the corruption happened to be the same. But unless the corruption of the vitamin c gene were directed, it would not be corrupted in the exact same way in all the primates.

What kind of theology allows for an intelligent agent going in there and directing exactly what corruption would take place? What intelligent purpose would be served by making exactly the same corruption in all the primates?

These considerations show that the creationist explanation is ruled out.


It won't do, you see, to just say "it doesn't rule out a common design", because it DOES rule out a common design.