Evolutionism vs the Gospel

Fine. Instead of getting into a discussion about the history of the development of modern geology why don't we just skip to the end and change the statement to say that even if all the evidence for common descent were to disappear tonight, the case for an old earth and universe based on what is known to day from geology and astronomy is so overwhelming partially because of how well the various fields point to the same thing through indepenent means.

 

Mercury, the point is that 'conclusions' regarding an ancient age for the earth and universe are based on presumptions. It is fine to say "Based on A B and C, we can conclude D and E", but it is wrong to say "D and E are fact," when the truth is the presumptions which gave rise to those conclusions may be wrong.

UTE, geology and astronomy do NOT proclaim an old universe unless one presumes uniformitarianism and gradualism. Both have been shown to be wrong in both those fields, but the conclusions based on them have been accepted as fact for so long it will be interesting to see how long these 'facts' can float on air instead of foundation.

 

This goes back to one of our other disagreements in this thread: I do not believe that the Bible is the Creator. The Bible is inspired by God and creation is created by God. So, I reject any approach that tries to pit one against the other. To do so is blatantly contradictory to Psalm 19:1-4a and Romans 1:18-20 which show that both sources of revelation are in harmony in pointing to God.

No. Until about five years ago, I assumed the earth was about 6,000 years old. The evidence (ice cores, tree rings, lake varves, the fossil record, distant starlight, radiometric dating, radioactive isotopes, etc.) convinced me otherwise.

Exactly, and then that assumption led to predictions, those predictions were falsified, and then the assumption was no longer commonly held. Don't you think it's strange that YECs don't agree on exactly which parts of the fossil layer were deposited by the flood? Isn't it remarkable that things get deposited in the same fashion before and after this worldwide flood as during it? That's quite different from local floods and other cataclysms that leave evidence of their occurrence.

Helen, once again, I didn't use the word "fact". (Well, I used it regarding something in the Psalms, but not about what you're discussing.) Anyway, the word "fact" is not as limited as you make it out to be; if it was, we could hardly ever use it, and we'd all have to voice our thoughts like existentialists.

 

How can you say they have been "shown to be wrong" without also making assumptions, which assumptions might also be wrong?

The assumptions of "uniformitarianism" are constantly being checked. They have stood the tests that scientists arranged. Observations of distant stars millions and billions of light years away show the same chemical elements and processes as the stars right around us. The Hawiian Island seamount trail looks pretty UNIFORM as it stretches across the Pacific ocean clear past Midway, making a trail that - astonishingly - took millions of years of plate tectonic movement. And the timing of the plate moving exactly equals the timing for the creation of the islands and seamounts as determined by radiometric dating. The annual layers cored from Antarctic and Greenland ice . . . with telltail datable inclusions that seem to somehow match the counted annual layers . . .

Some things just seem to cry out that the laws of nature have been held constant by Nature's God for a good long time now. And why wouldn't He do that?

 

"What you are saying is that you belive the Bible unless you have a humanistic reason not to."

Same as you, as has been so well demonstrated on these threads.

Well, not exactly. I am not saying I disbelieve the Bible in any case, just that I disgree with your interpreation.

"I find it entirely consistent with your intellectual honesty and Biblical exegesis for you to insist that Genesis is non-literal, yet insist that Psalms is literal."

Back to the slander. YOu never can get away from that.

No, you are the one being inconsistent. You refuse to allow outside knowledge in to tell you one is non-literal yet in other cases you do it so effortlessly that you do not even realize that it is what you are doing.

"This is actually false. Up until recently (within the last few hundred years) the theory of millions of years had no evidence or credibility. It wasn't until atheists and humanists started creating evidence by interpreting it within an a priori commitment to naturalism and materialism (also uniformitarianism) that this so called 'evidence' came into existance."

I think you misunderstand the emergence of the modern disciplines. The old age came from the evidence, not the other way around.

"However, if you know that a global catastrophic event did in fact occur, then you realize that there is an alternate explaination for the strata we see other than it has always happened at the exact same rate in the exact same way for billions of years. You now have a mechanism - a door way - to an alternate interpretation."

Again, you misrepresent. Modern geology certainly recognizes the role of catastrophe. The evidence you have presented thus far for one large catostrophe to explain it all has been woefully inadequate and not backed up when challenged.

"In fact, if evolution and millions of years were removed as the basic pre-supposition to interpreting evidence, ALL of the evidence would again point to the Bible's version of history. How do I know? Because that is exactly what YEC do every single day."

YOu have been challenged repeatedly to demonstrate this by showing us where the mainstream interpretations are wrong and presenting the better interpretations of the data. We are still waiting.

 

News to me and much of the world that these have been "shown to be wrong."

Look, its the same thing I challenged Gup20 with. The claim is that the interpreation of the data is all wrong. Very easy to assert. I am still waiting for someone to come out and show specifically where all the interpreations are wrong and to offer the interpretations that do such a better job of explaining the data. It just is not out there. In my experience, the YEers spend all their time skirting around the periphery tryin to make hay out of differences in the most contentious areas of science, trying to find a few anomolies that have not been fully investigated yet or for which enough is not known yet, misrepresenting what science real has to say and ignoring the bulk of the evidence. It just is not very convincing if you look into it at all. They have no ability to explain most of what we can observe.

 

Well, BobRyan, there you go again, claiming the exclusive right to deterimine appropriately what is meant by God to be literal and what is not.

It is simple enough to see that the universe is billions of years old and life is of common descent and therefore any statement to a people not yet ready for the literal truth was not literally meant.

Reality drives our interpretations all the time. It's just that you don't recognize the strength of the findings of science, and perhaps never will.

 

"But I can see that evolutionists here are not letting these "inconvenient facts get in the way of a good story" - as UTEOTW puts it.z'

It is the YEers who never let the facts get in the way. Exhibit A is your continued attempt to portray archy as just a bird and to try and discredit the horse sequence. Time and time again you have been shown to be making an argument based only on misrepresentation and misquoting.

"This is the classic blunder of evolutionists seeking to "excuse" their abuse of "The ACCOUNT of the heavens and the earth in the day that they were made" of Gen 1-2:4"

No it is the classic case of showing how you use outside knowledge to justify what you accept as literal and as non-literal but condemn those who do the same thing because they happen to disagree with you.

 

Still trying to pass off poetry as literal speech? As I said... you have zero intellectual honesty and no critical thinking skills if you are willing to take Psalms as literal historical data, but not Genesis. No wonder you believe in Evolution.

If you attributed a fraction of belief in Genesis as literal as your argument attributes to Psalms, your point might make sense or have some credibility. However, it is clear that you are using the scripture to make a point, rather than trying to honestly interpret it. This is wrong and is a shameful behavior. Again, you are demonstrating a lack of honesty and a lack of critical thinking. You are, however, being entirely consistent with the atheists and humanists who try to discredit scripture with the junk science of evolution. It is truely sad to see a christian use the scripture in this way. You are picking an choosing what you want to believe as it suits the purpose of the devil.

So it is your assertion that there are never morining on planet earth, or that the Sun is stationary in the sky 24 hours a day? Come on Merc... you are using this scripture in an entirely inappropriate way. Surely even you can see that.

Yep... that's the part that was wrong all right. You can try to re-write history all you want but truth doesn't change no matter how much you want it to.

Firstly, the part you are continually "skipping" when you skip to the end is the Beginning... the Word!

Jhn 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Instead of 'skipping to the end' perhaps you should start from the beginning with a solid foundation. That beginning is revealed to us in God's Word. He gives us a headstart.

UTE: based on what is known to day from geology and astronomy is so overwhelming partially because of how well the various fields point to the same thing through indepenent means[

What you fail to realize is that all that 'overwhelming' evidence is manufactured upon the pre-supposition of uniformitarianistic thought. The Bible, however, gives us the true history and lets us know of a major global catastrophy that has NEVER been factored into the uniformitarian thinking. As a matter of fact, it has been rejected as a possibility even before it had a chance to be considered. The very concept of uniformitarianism is an a priori committment to gradualism and everything happening for billios and billions of years EXACTLY as we see it happening today. The Bible makes it clear that things have not always happened exactly the same. There have indeed been global changes ... geological... biological... zoological... anthropological... etc. For example - The flood is a HUGE geological change. Life spans decreasing from 900 years to 130 years is a huge biological change. The tower of Babel is a huge anthropological change. Noah's ark is a huge zoological event.

What Lyell did when he began making his uniformitarian theories is he said - if we ignore the Bible and assume that everything has always happened at the same rate and in the same way we see now, how do we explain it. Effectively, he removed the Word of God from the equasion. He begain with the pre-supposition that the Word of God wasn't true... that the things spoken of in the Bible didn't happen. That is the ONLY way one can come to the conclusions of evolution and millions/billions of years.

And it's not only the Bible. Just about every culture on earth has some global flood story either in their history or in their mythology. This evidence is also willfully ignored. Evolution and it's theories are built upon willful ignorance of evidence that goes against the theory. It is built upon suppositions and presumptions that are unproovable and contradict the Word.

2Ti 3:16 All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

Pro 30:5 Every word of God [is] pure: he [is] a shield unto them that put their trust in him.

Psa 119:140 Thy word [is] very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it.

That doesn't say everything except Genesis 1-11 is true. It says ALL. You can continue trying to quote Genesis as poetic, and Psalms as literal... but you will continue to be wrong. Clearly, Psalms is poetic speech and Genesis is historical writing. Now we can take the things in Psalms to be true - the sun coming out of a tabernacle as a bridegroom coming out of the chamber is a very good analogy to the way to sun rises each morning, for example. We can see the sun rise each morning and know by Romans 1:18-20 that this proves that every other word in the rest of scripture... including Genesis ... is true.

Every single piece of evidence you listed is synthetically manufactured based on the pre-supposition that nothing in Genesis is true. YEC have answers for all of them that are based on the Bible being true AND accurate.

Incredible... instead of realizing that the predictions were wrong, you immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Word was wrong. Do you see how your humanistic thought has allowed you undermine your belief in scripture? Wow... what a startling and clear example!

Oh... so you've got some credible evidence from pre-flood do you? And you know that it was pre-flood how exactly? That radiometric dating dated it as billions of years old? The mistake you are making is trying to interpret any evidence you see under an a priori commitment to humanism/atheism/Satan himself (aka evolutionay theory). You are trying to apply the interpretive methods of the wrong ideas to the Bible... and that's not going to work either. Ken Hamm says it this way - when you believe in evolution, you interpret the world through those evolutionary glasses. It distorts the truth. But if you wear the Word of God (the Bible) as your glasses, it makes the evidence come through clearly so it can be seen for what it truely is.

So Evolution is not a fact? If it is not, why do you treat it as such? So uniformitarianism is not fact? If you really believe that, why do your actions and words contradict that belief?

Because our 'assumptions' are based on the word of someone who was there and knows all. Our assumptions are based on the FACT that the Word of God is absolute truth.

Uniformitarianism is constantly loosing ground. Every single day, more and more scientists lean towards catastrophism to explain the mysteries of the earth. For example... just look at the 'how did the dinosaurs die out' question. Evolutionists USED to believe that one of the following killed the dinosaurs:

* Mammals eating dinosaur eggs.
* New narcotic plants evolved.
* Global cooling/global warming.
* Loss of plants causing herbivores to starve, which in turn caused the carnivores to starve.
* Lowering of oxygen partial pressure in the atmosphere.

However, scientists and giving more and more credibility to catastrophism as the most logical cause of the dinosaurs getting wiped out... now they say it was a commet or asteroid hit the earth... or perhaps a very large volcanic erruption killed them all. Many scientists are even trying to marry the two saying there were millions of years of the same old thing happening... then WHAM... a catastrophy hit and everything changed. Then millions of years like that ... and wham... another catastrophy. They are even beginning to think that evolution of animals happened quickly in bursts followed by millions of years without change. We've all see these theories on the discovery channel. The very foundation of uniformitarianism never was built. It's foundation is pre-supposition and guess. It is getting weaker and weaker.

The Bible, however, remains unchanged. It's truth remaining remarkably clear. Given enough time, I sure science will eventually come to the conclusion that the Bible is ultimately and absolutely correct.

 

Oh? You have YET to demonstrate from scripture how ANY part of evolution is true. We have shown you time and time again where the scripture refutes the possibility of evolution and millions of years thinking. So when you are arguing for evolution and millions of years, you are arguing against scripture. Since you have no scripture to support your theory, it would be wise if you did not 'kick against the pricks' as Jesus said to Paul.

Get away from Truth? No I guess I never will get away from that. It is entirely consistent of me to interpret Genesis as historical and Psalms as poetic. You can do the opposite if you like, but you will always be wrong.

That is incorrect. The cart came before the horse when it pertains to evolution. Men who disbelieved the scripture or rebelled against God directly (such as Darwin) or men who wanted to cut God out of the picture and come up with a fully naturallistic/humanistic view of the earth (such as Lyell) gave birth to the lies that are taught as fact in our public schools today (evolution). It had little to do with the evidence (YEC and old earthers have the same evidence, mind you) and more to do with the worldview the person wanted to believe. If one were to intentionally ignore the Bible and try to come up with an purely naturalistic science - willfully ignoring any supernaturalistic evidence - then one could create a history of the earth without God. That is exactly what these wicked men tried to do.

Modern geology will never be as full of truth as the Bible. The Bible gives us the details we need to know that there was indeed a global flood that killed every land animal not on the Ark. If that is not factored into your theories, then your theories are wrong to start with. We have an eye witness account from one who was there. I would say that is pretty sound evidence, considering the credibility of the witness.

I have indeed given you this - have you not paid attention to ANY of the overwhelming ammount of scripture we have laid before you to show that Genesis is true? You have yet to be able to present a single verse that challenges Genesis as literal, yet you willfully dismiss Genesis as literal, and go on believing the world rather than God's Word.

You are obviously not paying attention... so let me illustrate:

Assumption1: Uniformitarianism - wrong because the Bible shows a global catastrophe, the Bible discusses the tower of Babel, the Bible describes how death entered the world after creation, the Bible describes how all land animals and people not on the Ark were destroyed, the Bible describes how men used to live 900+ years and now only live ~130.

Assumption2: Millions of years - wrong because the Bible gives detailed and accurate time for creation being six literal days, followed by detailed and accurate geologies that demostrate teh earth is ~ 6000 years old.

Assumption3: Evolution - wrong because the Bible describes how animals were created distinctly reproducing after their own kind, the Bible describes whales being created only days prior to man.

There you go - the three foundational assumptions that have lead to misinterpreting the data - all critiqued and judged for truthfullness from the ONLY infallible source - God's Word.

Bob's interpretation is consistent with ALL people - saved, unsaved, creationist, evolutionist alike who take the Bible at it's word. All those who take a straight forward exegesis of Genesis and honestly evaluate it say what YEC, myself, and Bob say. It is only those CHRISTIANS who seek to justify thier disbelief in a portion of scripture so that they can be 'of the world' who disagree with that interpretation.

It's far more simple to read the Bible and completely refute that notion. Since you have nothing from scripture that contradicts Genesis in any way, then it's settled! YEC's are correct!

 

Basically, this boils down to:

- Evolutionists cannot prove their claim through scripture, because there is no evidence for evolution in scripture (unless Genesis is interpreted figuratively, of course).

- YECs cannot prove thier claim through a scientific study of the natural world, because there is no evidence for Creation and a young Earth in the natural world.

I think most would agree on this. Since God is the author of both models, so to speak, it seems the most logical position to take is to believe that, since Genesis, as a text, can be taken figuratively, but there is no room for a "figurative" interpretation of physical evidence, this seeming contradiction can only be resolved by assuming a nonliteral interpretation of Genesis.

 

I disagree with you, Brett. There is quite a bit in creation which declares a young universe. It is usually conveniently ignored by those who do not want it to be so.

 

Actually, both of these are incorrect statements. Even IF you interpret Genesis as figurative, it still dismisses the possibility of evolution by the mere sequence of events.
YEC can indeed give physical evidence but it is disagreed with by the atheist/humanist community because it does not restrict itself to strict uniformitarian and naturalism-only guidelines. It takes all evidence into consideration rather than only the evidence which is naturalistic. Also, YEC does not make the same mistakes of interpreting the evidence within an impossible framework (evolution is statistically impossible). The evidence that corroborrates the Bible is predominantly ignored or misinterpreted using "millions of years" pre-suppositions.

Actually, Satan is the author of humanism (evolution). We see this described clearly in the account of the serpent and Eve at the Fall of Man. Humanism is the idea that man (or man's knowledge) can be as great as or greater than God (or God's knowledge). The idea that we could dismiss God's word and make our own fate outside the constructs of God's Word was born when Eve took of the fruit when she knew God had said not to. It was with the intention of 'becoming like God', or 'knowing what God knows'. She, in essence, tried to elevate herself above God, just as Lucifer had tried to do. It is Satan who is the author of humanism and evolution - a theory that grossly contradicts the scripture, the Word of God.

 

Deal with reality folks.
There are two models of the creation of the world.
There is the creation model, when, if taken, literally, has scientific facts to back it up. It is a religion. But relgion is not blind. I believe in Christianity because of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, one of the most proven historical facts of history. If Christ be not risen from the dead then your faith is in vain. We have facts to back up the faith that we believe in. It is not a blind belief.

On the other hand evolution, especially when dealing with the origin of the universe is dealing in the realm of metaphysics, that is religion. Science deals with those things which can be observed. It demands observation. No one observed the creation of the universe. Evolution, as science, is outside of its realm. It has become "scientism," which the Bible refers to as "science, so-called." It also refers to it as "vain babblings." Evolution does not deal with facts of science. It cannot. It has no facts to back up the origin of the universe, for it has no one to observe it.

We are on page 20. Put in your final arguments. When this thread reaches page 21, it will be closed.
DHK

 

You have faith (while not blind faith) that the Word of God is true. THAT is the message I have been trying to get accross throughout this thread. That the Word of God is true.

We have given a mountain of Biblical evidence that supports a literal Genesis... a literal creation. The evoltionists here have not presented ANY Biblical evidence to support evolution. Furthermore, they have not been able able to show any scripture that points to Genesis as anything other than being a literal, historically accurate text, God inspired text.

If we are all christians here... and we all believe the Bible to be True... and we all agree that the BIble does not in any way support evolution it should be clear, then, what the result of this thread is. That literal, young earth creation is Biblically supported and Old earth/evolution is not.