A literal 6 24-hr days?

That was quite a post Baptist Believer! I'm actually very interested in what you have to say and your ideas about the truth of Genesis. I realize I might be in the minority here, but is there a place online to find out more?

 

Yes, if you got to the bottom, I realized that I had picked the visually brightest quasar and went back to look for the the brightest in absolute terms. The brightest I could find, in a quick survey, were about 15 times as bright. I didn't see any at 100 to 1000 times as bright but I did not look long. That would be impressive!

I have found a reference to the intrinsically brightest quasar known, an object called APM 08279+5255. Its intrinsic brightness is given as -34. This means that it is 4000 times as bright as 3C 273. That would put it at about 10^15 times the sun, as you say.

To have the same brightness at the distance to the center of the galaxy requires about 3 million times the brightness of 3C 273. So now you are talking a brightness of greater than 10^18 the brightness of the sun.

Even an object that was 10^15 would still be around one thousandth of the brightness of the sun. Still pretty dim, but you are finally getting into something where you can discuss what fraction of the sun's light do you need to differentiate night and day.

I should have dug a little more (I realized my reading comprehension problem a little bit late)but we are still quite a bit dimmer than sunlight.

And there is still the matter that our supermassive black hole is on the order of miilions of times the mass of the sun and these superluminous quasars are on the order of billions or tens of billions of solar masses. That would make a HUGE difference.

Thanks for the quick critique. There was a mistake of picking an average quasar rather than the extreme possibility but we are still three orders of magnitude short on the extreme example. The other side is that the few million solar mass black hole in our galaxy is much smaller than the 100 million to 10 billion range for quasars.

[ May 09, 2003, 01:58 PM: Message edited by: UTEOTW ]

 

Here's a nice link to where a fellow has done a lot of work on that:

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

If you'll read my post rightly, you'll see I was not protesting about that interpretation so much as protesting that I should also have the right to so interpret another set of verses my own way.

And God does not ONLY communicate with the Bible. He also communicates with the very creation itself, and the message is that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, the universe is 13 billion years old, and all life comes by common descent having evolved from the first life.

 

You quote Paul is a scary thought; to be honest it reminds me of Nazism!
</font>[/QUOTE]LOL! Yesssss . . . you will believe in evolution soon, my friend, we have our ways . . . .

No one will be forced against their will. Like the dawning of consciousness that the earth moves around the sun, the knowledge will simply increase and spread over time. It is happening as we speak. In the halls of your church, someone will say to another, well I believe God could have created earth over a period of many ages and another will nod in agreement. Please do not offend these in your custody by threatening their salvation or attacking their sincerity.

 

The "Facts" are that "Evening and Morning" make ONE cycle - ONE literal day - ONE rotation of the earth.

In this case the "Facts" are blatant and obvious to even the most basic sciences.

Then the compromised Christian evilutionist steps and in inserts the mythology "evening and morning ARE NOT one cycle, one Day, one rotation of the earth".

Who's dreaming up "stories" there my friends?

Evolutionists reject even the most BASIC of "facts" in favor of their own mythologies.

And the result is - the corruption of the Gospel message itself.

But God's OWN summary statement is "SIX DAYS YOU shall labor and do your work ... FOR in SIX days God CREATED the heavens and the earth the seas and all that is in them and rested the Seventh DAY". Literal - DAY FOR DAY equivalence, same author, same context, same word. Iron clad assignment.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Can't keep the veiled ad-homs out of your post Bob?

How can there be an evening and a morning without a "SUN"?

I'm actually hesitating to comment further as you already seem enraged.

 

"And there was evening and Morning, One Day" Genesis 1:5

Are you asking the question "How could an infinite God create light with any other source OTHER than the Sun. How could an infinite God make the world rotate with a single side light source in place"???

Is that the "hard question"?

So you mean "why would an infinite God create the Sun AFTER creating light and demonstrating that He COULD sustain life even WITHOUT the Sun by His supernatural power alone?".

You seem to be asking the question "What is it like to be infinite God".

Is that really the "problem" - that you yourself "don't know how to create a living planetary system"??

Is that supposed to "prove something". Given that rotation of the earth causes a single point on earth to go through an entire sequence of day and night and THIS is the most "direct" way to explicitly identify a LITERAL 24 hour period (better than "and a little evening plus the entire morning followed by more evening were ONE day").

I'm thinking that is just the obvious part.


quote:Bob
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Impossible to squirm loose from that - but we have "some Christians" for whom the path of "compromised Christianity" is the only choice. Not matter how muc scripture refutes it
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I affirm you willingness to admit your "Faith" in evolutionism instead of scripture.


In Christ,

Bob

 

Nice strawman, that wasn't my question.

Why is a sun necessary if God made the plants survive without one before hand?

This would indicate that you are not impressed with God creating the world in and of it's self. It also nicely evades my question and gives you another strawman to attack.

It does when you redefine my questions to set up strawmen.

Yet another strawman. Please read the entire thread before you comment, my questions were related to the 'well defined' Genesis comment in the OP.

Look if you are going to attempt to answer my questions please do so, don't misrepresent me. Also you do know that there are places in the world that do not have 12 hour periods of light and dark, right? You are aware there are places in the world where 'night' and 'day' go well beyond 24 hours, right? You have heard of Alaska, which IIRC spends upwards of 6 months in total daylight, right?

Please quite lieing about me. I've stated that I am a Christian. You are aware that bearing false witness is a 'sin' aren't you?

Also why are you bringing up evolution? What does it have to do with this thread?

I sincerely pray that you step back a minute and quit your attack on my belief of Jesus being my personal savior.

 

Try to be convincing.

You question (again) is of the form

"Why does grass grow if God was able to feed people with bread that fell from heaven".

"Why is there dry land - if God was able to keep all of Noah's family alive on the boat without any dry land".

"Why is there a Bible - if God spoke directly to Israel at Sinai??"

Your "WHY CAN God do TWO THINGS" form of questioning - is not compelling.


quote:Bob
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So you mean "why would an infinite God create the Sun AFTER creating light and demonstrating that He COULD sustain life even WITHOUT the Sun by His supernatural power alone?".
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quote:
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You seem to be asking the question "What is it like to be infinite God".
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quote:
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Is that really the "problem" - that you yourself "don't know how to create a living planetary system"??
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quote:
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Is that supposed to "prove something". Given that rotation of the earth causes a single point on earth to go through an entire sequence of day and night and THIS is the most "direct" way to explicitly identify a LITERAL 24 hour period (better than "and a little evening plus the entire morning followed by more evening were ONE day").

I'm thinking that is just the obvious part.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I just did above - I showed that there is NO MORE effective way to SHOW the cycle. Instead of coming up with a MORE effective way - you simply punt.

Interesting "wild gyration" in logic - are you proposing that God was "showing creation" to Moses - from the viewpoint of one standing "on the North Pole"???

come on - be at least a little convincing in your responses.

It has everything to do with this thread. The Bible is clear "by BOTH Christian and Atheist AND Jewish standards" that the language of Genesis 1 (AND the Summary of that chapter in Exodus 20:8-11) uses LITERAL 24 Hour day LANGUAGE. Nothing about it "suggests UNDEFINED TIME" nothing about "EVENING and Morning was ONE DAY" suggests "undefined Time".

So IF you did not fIRST come to the text with the bias of evolutionary mythology - the obvious and explicit meaning of the text would REMAIN as it was to the PRIMARY audience of Moses' day - literal DAYS.

Only the evolutionary "bias" argues against the plain and obvious structure of the text.


Bob

 

Bob, we understand clearly where you're coming from.

But all this about how the Bible has to be interpreted is one thing, and the reality of what the earth's history is another.

If the Bible said flying insects have four legs and they really have six, which do I believe? What do I do about that?

We have the same situation with the age of the earth. There is overwhelming evidence that the age of the earth is about 4.5 billion years and of the universe about 13 billion years.

Many of us cannot bring ourselves to disregard these facts.

If I am psychologically incapable of deciding the earth is only 6000 or 8000 years old, what is your advice about how I should view scripture? Would you have me disown my faith?

 

NOW we are getting somewhere.

#1. What is the Bible saying - just read it - try not to READ INTO it your evolutionist mythology.

That is a "BIG step forward".

As you say - you may choose to "Believe in your evolutionist mythology" as science and keep it separate from what you read in the Bible. But you should at "least" be able to tell what you are reading in the Bible EVEN in that case.

Bob

 

Look, if you can't answer my question without building a strawman then just don't answer it. The point is not about God's infinite nature. It's about the logical consistence, which is precisely the question that you are dodging and weaving.

What you are doing is shifting my question into a questioning of God's omnipotence. You are consistently failingly to see (and address) my point-which has nothing to do with what God can and can not do. The OP of this thread made the statement that Genesis is well-defined. Part of being well defined is being logical. This is exactly the part that I am addressing. You on the other hand seemed to be content with building a strawman out of what you perceive to be my views of God's omnipotence. If you wish to discuss what God can and can not do, please by all means start a new thread. However that is not what I'm arguing and your insistence on the opposite is quite distracting.

Show me exactly where Moses was in Genesis. If you can not then you are by your very in admission demonstrating your building of a strawman. Either stick to the topic, or please open another thread, you are misrepresenting MY position repeatedly.

No it has nothing to do with this thread. You are on a zealous campaign against evolution. I understand that. I have shown that your belief in a literal Genesis is not the dominant belief. This has nothing to do with evolution, you just want to lump people all into one group-I'm sorry but it doesn't work that way.

This is untrue and what's more it's predjudice. You do realize that people did not believe in a literal Genesis before evolution was thought up by Darwin don't you? Sort of wrecks your perfectly constructed strawman doesn't it?

Oh and please do not presume things about my opinion based on the predjudice you hold for those who accept evolution. I hate to even mention it, but similar thinking lead to a 'holocaust'.

This is predjudice, a strawman, and begging the question. It's only obvious to those who subscribe to your line of thinking. You do realize that most Christians don't even believe the way you do, don't you? While this doesn't suggest that they are correct, it does suggest that you are going to need some help dealing with people who believe differently then you do.

 

I also wanted to add Bob, I'm fairly certain you don't know much about evolution. You are attacking what you do not understand.

There are people on this board who have a grasp of what evolution is, and they disagree with some of it's tenets (such as macroevolution). Which I can accept. However to not understand a concept and rail against it, that quite frankly is frightening.

Even more so when it's done by a fellow Christian.

 

A couple of things, Meatros, to clarify a bit of what appears to be some misunderstanding here.

First, many consider Moses to be the author of Genesis and that God divinely revealed the material to him. I don't agree with that, as I think the material and evidence indicating Genesis to be a series of eyewitness accounts is pretty convincing. However, even in that case, it would have been Moses who did the final editing and putting all the documents together and, as such, Genesis is known as one of the books of Moses, as are the next four. These five comprise the Torah, or "the Law."

Secondly, I think you will find that the early church mostly never questioned the literal accuracy of Genesis, including a six 24-hour day creation. I have a link for you here. Please, please take the time for it. It is well-written, easily read, and extremely well researched. Go get a cup of coffee or tea or a Coke or whatever suits your fancy and enjoy --
http://www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/Contents.htm

 

Among the early Christians who realized that a literal 6 day Genesis was not possible were St. Augustine, St. Clements, and Origen, all among the most respected and influential Christians of all time.

 

THIS Origen???

from http://www.bmts.com/~bostock/church/index.html


THIS Augustine?

from http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/augustinefather.htm

THIS Clement?

from http://www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/Chapter3.htm

In the meantime, Clement of Alexandria placed creation of Adam at 5592 BC, Origen at less than 10,000 BC and Augustine at less than 5600 BC

These ARE the 'most respected and influential' RC church fathers you are referring to, right, Galatian?

 

quote:Bob to Meatros
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Try to be convincing.

You question (again) is of the form

"Why does grass grow if God was able to feed people with bread that fell from heaven".

"Why is there dry land - if God was able to keep all of Noah's family alive on the boat without any dry land".

"Why is there a Bible - if God spoke directly to Israel at Sinai??"

Your "WHY CAN God do TWO THINGS" form of questioning - is not compelling.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So carry your point forward. I have "shown" the fallacy of your form of questioning "God doing two things instead of one, God having TWO solutions instead of one". I have shown SPECIFICS where the SAME form of question that you ask - is shown to be without validity. I have shown that this is the same case in your use of that SAME reasoning in Genesis 1.

Instead of answering the point - you complain that your fallacy is being exposed.

That is not a compelling form of argument.

The ball remains - in your court.

quote:Bob
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I just did above - I showed that there is NO MORE effective way to SHOW the cycle. Instead of coming up with a MORE effective way - you simply punt.
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Actually the point above is about the "most effective way to CONVEY the idea of ONE Day- and using the term EVENING and Morning".

The point PRIOR to that was the one addressing your "Why did God solve the problem one way in Day ONE and THEN provide the SUN as an expanded solution to that problem in Day FOUR - I don't get it".

I simply pointed out that "your not getting HOW to create a living planetary system" has nothing to do with what "God could or could not do".

You are arguing "proof by puzzle" saying that IF a novice can not figure out WHY God did everyhting that He did in creating our solar system - then GOD probably did not do it.

Your premise is seriously flawed.

It is "logical" to use "Evening and Morning - ONE cycle - ONE day" to identify "One day".

That has been shown.

It is "logical" to have light, dry land, plants, sun and moon etc.

What is "not logical" is to insist that the novice can ALSO fully explain how to create the solar system AS GOD did it. It is not logical to "assume" that IF the novice is not as wise as God then God could not have done what HE claims to have done.

Your "premise" in your rebuttal is not logical at all.


quote:Bob
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Interesting "wild gyration" in logic - are you proposing that God was "showing creation" to Moses - from the viewpoint of one standing "on the North Pole"???

come on - be at least a little convincing in your responses.
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It is you who argue that you know he was at the poles.

I am arguing that the SAME sequence of "Evening and Morning" that we see in the rest of scripture "is the perspective" that we have in Genesis. Basically - I am arguing "the obvious".


You complain each time one of your ploys is shown to be illogical, inconsistent and without merit and insist that "new threads be opened" to address each one of your fallacies. That is just not a compelling form of rebuttal. Why not try to advance your point instead?


quote:Bob
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{Evolution) has everything to do with this thread. The Bible is clear "by BOTH Christian and Atheist AND Jewish standards" that the language of Genesis 1 (AND the Summary of that chapter in Exodus 20:8-11) uses LITERAL 24 Hour day LANGUAGE. Nothing about it "suggests UNDEFINED TIME" nothing about "EVENING and Morning was ONE DAY" suggests "undefined Time".
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I have shown that the "obvious" meaning to the "Primary audience" is accepted by Atheist, Christian AND Orthodox Jews to be a literal 7 day week AS we see in God's own Summary in Exodus 20:8-11's summary of Genesis 1-2:3.

I have pointed out that ONLY by bringing the bias of evolution's mytholgoies to the text FIRST - could you get to ANY OTHER view. As follows

quote:Bob--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So IF you did not fIRST come to the text with the bias of evolutionary mythology - the obvious and explicit meaning of the text would REMAIN as it was to the PRIMARY audience of Moses' day - literal DAYS.
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Obfuscation "again".

#1. No one today is arguing AGAINST the view of the Primary Audience taking this as a LITERAL 7 day week.

#2. No one today is arguing AGAINST the view of the Primary audience on any OTHER basis than evolutionism.


quote:Bob
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Only the evolutionary "bias" argues against the plain and obvious structure of the text.
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Fine - prove your empty "Assertion" above by showing a significant group today that rejects the view of the Primary Audience based on any OTHER reasoning than Evolutionism's pre-bias.

Bob

 

I differ with that view. I accept the traditional view that Moses wrote the bulk of the book of Genesis while in the land of Midian - before the exodus from Egypt. That God "showed him" the creation event - and in that sense - he became an "eye witness" to those events recorded in the book.

NT authors delcare that Moses was the author.

Agreed. But what is EVEN MORE apparent is that ALL agree that Moses' "primary audience" took him literally. This is "key" in any exegetical rendering.

BTW - thanks for the quotes on Origen.

Bob

 

Seriously do you read my posts or do you already have a formulated diatribe for those with different views then you do? From all indications I could say the sky is green and you'd say "that's because you are an evolutionist".

For the final time: I am *NOT* questioning God's ability to do things. For you to stress the opposit is to simply NOT understand what I am addressing-which I have said repeatedly.

I am really overwhelmed by the sheer stubbornness in refusing to answer what I am asking.

For the last time, the assertion on the table was:
Genesis is well defined.
And for the final time, I said "No it isn't". You can bring up whatever you like but if it's not part of what the OP brought up it's a strawman and you are arguing with yourself because I'm fairly certain NNE IS ARGUING THE STRAWMAN YOU KEEP BRINGING UP. So either read what I've wrote and respond to it, or this will be the last time in this thread that I address your overwhelmingly obvious strawman.

This is SIMPLY NOT WHAT I AM ARGUING. This is what you have been repeatedly trying to GET ME TO ARGUE.

My argument AGAIN is that Genesis is not well defined. YOU in fact are showing that I am right by telling me I can't argue from ignorance. Because something is not known to be true it can not be assumed to be true (or not true).

Well if I have to ASSUME HOW GOD CREATED SOMETHING then how is Genesis well defined??

That is sad. You must lump everyone who disagrees with you into one group. It's simply not true. You do not even HAVE to hear of evolution in order to reject the literal Genesis. Unless you would like to prove otherwise (if you do attempt, remember no anecdotals, this is about "proof").

You are already arguing evolution vs. Genesis (and the Gospel) in another thread. That isn't what this thread's premise was. You have attempted repeatedly to derail this thread unto the topic. So obfuscation! Sir you are the master of it.

Alright fine, another significant group that rejects the premise of Genesis? How about the Hindus?
Oh wait, you don't think they count? Let me remind you that the bible/Christianity is meant for all people, not just the ones YOU agree with.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

 

Regarding Origen, Helen, the point was that he had a wide following among the early Christians. If you remember, we were talking about what the early Christians believed. Origen had a wide following among them. As far as being "RC church fathers", remember that the Catholic Church was the only Christian Church in existence at the time. A reasonable person would acknowledge that the early Church gave rise to both Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and various Protestant denominations.

We were discussing what the early Christians thought about creation. Fact is, as you learned, that even at the beginning, widely-respected Christian theologians knew that a literal 6-day creation was not consistent with Scripture. Augustine and Clements won out over Origen, but the point is this understanding of a figurative Genesis was not merely held by the faction that ultimately won out over the others. It was widely known.

The fact that most Christians thought that the world was considerably younger than it is, is understandable; scientists of the time didn't know any better, either.

But we don't hold Scripture as being at fault for references to the Earth as circular, with pillars.

Creationism, as we know it today, is a very recent doctrine.

[ May 12, 2003, 08:43 AM: Message edited by: The Galatian ]