Evolutionists - Willingly Ignorant of the Truth

[Paul of Eugene]

I can always count on you, Gup20, as a perfect illustration of the historical errors committed by Martin Luthor, the Catholic church, and all the other clerics who opposed the findings of science in the centuries before us.

Originally posted by Gup20:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> By what rule do you decide when a Biblical passage is to be interpreted literally and when it is to be interpreted figuratively?

Biblical hermeneutics and the rules of Hebrew literature as well as contextual clues.
</font>[/QUOTE]Sure, as long as those clues are present. When those clues are absent, what do you do?

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Surely, our Lord is speaking of how our love for Him needs to exceed the love we have for others, so that for His sake was give up the others, if necessary.

You have to read the passage in Luke 14:26 in the context of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus is talking about separating yourself from all worldly considerations to be his disciple. He said that you have to be willing to give up your family – even your own life – to follow him. </font>[/QUOTE]Now I want to mention right here that I do not disagree with your interpretation of these words. I too follow similar reasoning in order to not have to ascribe Jesus as commanding me to "hate". We are of one mind in how to interpret that passage.

I merely wish to point out exactly why we decide to look for a non-literal interpreation. We do it because otherwise it would be completely inconsistent with the truth of the whole message of Love that Jesus and God consistenly present to us in the Bible and in our lives.

See, what I am saying is, the reason you search for and find the reasons to interpret this in a non literal fashion is precisely because you know it isn't literally true.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Folks, there are no four-footed winged creatures in our biosphere. They are all either two footed or six footed.

It’s good to see that you at least realize that “winged insects” is translated improperly, as the Hebrew word can mean animals, reptiles, or other creeping things. However, you should realize that there ARE in fact winged creatures that move about on all fours – such as the pterosaurs, which most scientists believe walked on all fours. Moreover, there are a host of flying lizards, flying squirrels, etc that probably qualify. </font>[/QUOTE]Pterosaurs don't count, they had two wings and two feet. It is true they had claws on their wings capable of rudimentary grasping. "Flying" lizards merely glide, they do not have true flight, and the same is true of "flying" squirrels. Besides, the Bible names some of the creatures stated to have "four" feet, saying they are clean and may be eaten!

Lev 11:20-23
All the winged insects that walk on all fours are detestable to you. Yet these you may eat among all the winged insects which walk on all fours: those which have above their feet jointed legs with which to jump on the earth. These of them you may eat: the locust in its kinds, and the devastating locust in its kinds, and the cricket in its kinds, and the grasshopper in its kinds. But all other winged insects which are four-footed are detestable to you. NASU

Joshua’s command to the sun to stand still does not support geocentrism, i.e. the idea that the sun moves around the Earth. The Bible uses the language of appearance and observation.
Today people do exactly the same thing. For example, scientists who prepare weather reports for TV announce the times of ‘sunrise and sunset’. In fact, the mention of the moon also standing still seems to confirm both the divine authorship of the account and the fact that it is the Earth which moves. Since all Joshua needed was extra sunlight, and most ancients believed the sun moves, not the Earth, a human author of a fictitious account would only have needed to refer to the sun stopping.

Once again, I agree with your method of interpreting these scriptures completely. I too say that our scriptures are in no way invalidated merely because they don't happen to literally describe the truth about the rotation of the earth.

But my point is, the reason why today even consider talking about these verses as not being literal is based on one thing and one thing only: We know that literally they are not true.

Your assertions about geocentrism have always, and continue to lack any credibility.

Historically the literalistic intepreters of scripture persecuted the scientists who were telling them the truth about the earth and the sun and the moon. They were even accused of lacking credibility in their day, as well, merely because they tried to persuade people by presenting (gasp) evidence. A strange way to lose credibility then as now.

Well you and I certainly agree that you are using modern humanistic ideas to re-interpret the Bible.

Accepting the truth is not being a humanist. Denying the truth is, of course, only too humanistic.

You see, Genesis declares that we are created in the image of God. However, you are changing that image to look like a monkey, a bird, a four-footed beast or a creeping thing.

It is not in our flesh that we are in the image of God, but in our spiritual nature. Be careful about how you ascribe to God the nature of our physical bodies; God is a Spirit, and we do not worship a being of flesh. When God took it upon Himself to become flesh, it was an emptying of Himself, a great condescention.

In fact, if you believe the Big Bang is true you have EXACTLY the same starlight time travel problem. Science tells us that the universe is roughly the same temperature throughout. There has not been nearly enough time – even assuming 14 billion years – for radiation to go from one side of our universe to the other – yet it is all at equilibrium temperature.

(sigh) You are trying to tell me the scientists don't have everything figured out yet? You think I don't know that? What is your point in bringing that up? God certainly has it all figured out how He did it and He doesn't need any of us to get it all figured out, He'll manage just fine without us knowing how He really did it all.

Humphrey’s starlight time model is just as plausible as inflation theory. In fact, many secular scientists are starting to agree with him that the universe has a center and an edge. It has even been quipped that the “big bang” is the only explosion in history to not have a center and an edge.

Humphrey's starlight time model is contrary to known facts. It predicts a blue shifting of distant objects and they are red shifted.

Clearly, there is MORE THAN ENOUGH scientific data to support creation, otherwise the argument would have been over and done with 200 years ago. Yet creationism continues to be successful, and increase in success. With the event of the 400+ scientists signing the dissent to Darwinism we can see that ideas which more closely line up with a literal reading of scripture are making more sense to scientists than you guys think.

400 scientists are a tiny minority among the scientists. The theory of evolution started out among a tiny minority of scientists and has swept over the whole field due to the strength of the science. The opposition to evolution today consists solely of those who do not understand it and those who are driven to oppose it strictly on the grounds of their prior religious commitment against it.

That sound reason is belief in the Bible as it is written. Do not add anything. When it says Israel saw the sun stop, don’t try to construe that to mean that the Bible is trying to say the sun rotates around the earth. Realize that the Bible said exactly what it meant – that from Israel’s perspective (the perspective of a person standing on earth) the sun stood still in the sky.

See, there you go, adding words to what the Bible said. It does not say "from Israel's perspective", that is your own addition.

As I stated before, I do not quarrel with the right to reinterpret scripture based on a new knowledge as to what is literally true, the very thing you do with regards to the rotation of the earth; I merely ask the same right to do that with regard to the new knowledge as to the common descent of life and the age of the universe.

By denying me that right while taking obvious advantage of that right before all our eyes in this very forum you simply fulfill the words of Christ:

Matt 23:1-4
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. NASU

 

[Gup20]

Sure, as long as those clues are present. When those clues are absent, what do you do?

Unfortunately for evolutionists, there is an ample abundance of those clues to tell us Genesis is literal.

see Should Genesis Be Taken Literally

As well as an overwhelming abundance of prophets, apostles, and Jesus himself who took it literally.

I merely wish to point out exactly why we decide to look for a non-literal interpreation. We do it because otherwise it would be completely inconsistent with the truth of the whole message of Love that Jesus and God consistenly present to us in the Bible and in our lives.

There are other possibilities you are not considering - for example that the meaning of the word "hate" has changed over the last 3 or 4 hundred years. Or, that the word may not have a proper translation.

Moreover, you are trying to justify disregarding an obviously literal historical Hebrew text (Genesis) by contemplating that there is other non-literal passages in scripture. Well duh! The point is not that there are non-literal passages, the point is to use a system of logic and reason to determine which are literal and which are not. If this process involves any hermenuetical or grammatical or literary cues, the only conclusion is that Genesis is literal. If one goes on "what seems realistic to them" then anything is open to personal interpretation.

In fact, if you do take them as written, they describe miracles - supernatural events. Are all miracles or supernatural events recorded in scripture false? Are all events that you don't logiclly think could have happened automatically to be considered "non-literal". If so, then you must certainly deny the virgin birth, all of Jesus' miracles, and Jesus' own resurrection as false events since these too defy our sense of 'what is literally possible'.

For those who hold to the religion of evolution, I can understand how they would like to selectively believe certain parts of scripture are real, and certain parts are not. But one must decide on a manner of determining what is literal and what is not, and then be consistent throughout scripture.

Pterosaurs don't count, they had two wings and two feet. It is true they had claws on their wings capable of rudimentary grasping.

They are thought to have walked on all fours - making their 'hands' actually feet as well.

Once again, I agree with your method of interpreting these scriptures completely. I too say that our scriptures are in no way invalidated merely because they don't happen to literally describe the truth about the rotation of the earth.

You have misintepreted or misrepresented what I said. I have pointed out that the Bible does NOT support the idea that the sun revolved around the earth. You continue to assert that it does. I have shown you that the scripture you referred to does NOT in any way reference the earth moving or the sun moving, but that "in the sight of Israel" - or according to their perspective - it remained daylight. This neither supports nor denies geocentrism. If you take it literally - without reading your own notions into the text - all it says is that in the eyes of the people who witnessed it, it remained day light for the period of time which would be ~ 24 hours. That is what it literally reads. To make any additional inferences about whether it says the sun rotates or the earth rotates is mere speculative as this information is not part of the literal text given. The ONLY thing it says is what the people who were there saw. At no time does it switch to God's perspective and describe HOW this supernatural event occured - only that it was daylight for a whole day in the eyes of all who saw it.

But my point is, the reason why today even consider talking about these verses as not being literal is based on one thing and one thing only: We know that literally they are not true.

As I have domonstrated - the verses are entirely literal and mean everything that they say. They simply do not say what you assert that they say.

How would you describe this event today? If about noon came along and the sun stopped in the sky and stayed there for 24 hours - how would you describe it. You would say, the sun rose - in the middle of the day it just stopped and it didn't set again until the next day. Now you are fully aware that the earth revolves around the sun, and that the earths rotation on it's axis causes day and night... but you would describe it graphically in this way - why? Because that's what happens from your point of view. The Bible describes the point of view by saying "in the sight of Israel". So quite literally, the literal meaning is that this is what occured from a human being on earth's perspective.

Historically the literalistic intepreters of scripture persecuted the scientists who were telling them the truth about the earth and the sun and the moon. They were even accused of lacking credibility in their day, as well, merely because they tried to persuade people by presenting (gasp) evidence.

Link

Confusion persists to today in that nearly every textbook that discusses the Galileo affair claims that it was a matter of religion vs science, when it actually was a matter of science vs science. Unfortunately, Church leaders interpreted certain Biblical passages as geocentric to bolster the argument for what science of the day was claiming. This mistake is identical to those today who interpret the Bible to support things such as the big bang, billions of years, or biological evolution.

(sigh) You are trying to tell me the scientists don't have everything figured out yet? You think I don't know that? What is your point in bringing that up? God certainly has it all figured out how He did it and He doesn't need any of us to get it all figured out, He'll manage just fine without us knowing how He really did it all.

Congradulations - you are sounding more and more like a young earth creationist all the time
Now if you just get over believing man's fallible theories rather than God's infallible Word, your transsition to the 'light side' will be complete.

Humphrey's starlight time model is contrary to known facts. It predicts a blue shifting of distant objects and they are red shifted.

(sigh) You are trying to tell me the scientists don't have everything figured out yet? You think I don't know that? What is your point in bringing that up? God certainly has it all figured out how He did it and He doesn't need any of us to get it all figured out, He'll manage just fine without us knowing how He really did it all.

This article also has some VERY interesting theories in it regarding the starlight travel time problem

The theory of evolution started out among a tiny minority of scientists and has swept over the whole field due to the strength of the science.

Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man [was] great in the earth, and [that] every imagination of the thoughts of his heart [was] only evil continually.

Or that human nature is to glorify self rather than God - hence humanism - hence the success of evolution. This is why Intelligent Design is having such success as well. It is a secular, non-religious place for scientists to do creation oriented science without bowing the knee to the God of the Bible.

The opposition to evolution today consists solely of those who do not understand it and those who are driven to oppose it strictly on the grounds of their prior religious commitment against it.

That - and the fact that evolution is mathmatically and physically impossible. Moreover it is exactly opposite to actual observational science. Think about it, PoE - we observe countless methods of removing information (selection, disease, mutations) and have never observed any new system arise (for example, seeing a species with lungs develop gills). Yet for evolution to have occured, this had to happen many billions of times. Now put some real thought in here - if we currently observe billions of information loosing processes, and are hard pressed to observe information gaining processes - then the overall trend should be the loss of information. Moreover, IF there IS a gain of information that gain has to be so great and massive as to stave off the huge ratio of information loosing processes until another big jump in evolution can occur. It is because of this that theories such as Punctuated Equilibrium have come along. But theories such as these destroy the reasoning construct for millions of years thinking.

See, there you go, adding words to what the Bible said. It does not say "from Israel's perspective", that is your own addition. (emphasis mine)

Well let's post the scripture yet again and see if you are right this time:

Jos 10:12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
Jos 10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. [Is] not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

As I stated before, I do not quarrel with the right to reinterpret scripture based on a new knowledge as to what is literally true...

I do. The Bible interprets the Bible... not man's fallible ideas. If Jesus and the apostles and the prophets all took Genesis as literal, then so should we. Otherwise you have just dismissed the resurrection of Jesus as a literal event - and in so doing you would indeed loose your salvation as a belief in this fact is actually a prerequisite to salvation.

In actuality, you are guilty of exactly that which you accuse me. You quoted Matt 23, but this is true of you who is willing to dismiss Genesis because it doesn't conform to man's ideas of possibility, yet you will not dismiss the resurrection which also does not conform to man's ideas of possibility.

 

[UTEOTW]

"This article also has some VERY interesting theories in it regarding the starlight travel time problem"

Let us know when any of these ideas make some testable predictions that are different from the predictions of standard cosmology and thus allow them to be tested by observation. Also let us know when any of these ideas get developed enough to be reviewed and published by the experts in these fields and in their journals.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Gup20, thank you for the interesting link you provided, which I also duplicate here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v17/i2/cosmology.asp

Did you actually read the link? The writer does a wonderful job of pointing out the shortcomings of the various cdk theories out there including Setterfield's theory and Humphrie's theory.

He then modestly proposes his own. Did you catch what it was? He proposes that the earth was frozen in time going veeeerrrryyyyy sloooowwwwww for all the billions of years of the universes actual observed age until the earth experienced six days of time from the beginning of the big bang until about 6 or 10 thousand years ago. Then the earth's time suddenly speeded up to match the time of the rest of the universe.

No, I am not kidding. That is what he really proposes. Go read it for youself, if you don't believe me! He feels as if this explanation makes perfect sense. In other words, preserving the literal words of Genesis is so important to him that he will propose this absolutely fantastic cosmology just to get away from accepting the literal teachings of the very stars themselves.

Please pardon me for not taking that proposal very seriously, especially in light of the fact that the earth itself bears the marks of billions of years of history on its face.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

The problem with these various theories is their authors lack imagination. They are making them up out of whole cloth anyway, so lets reveal how they can rescue their theories.

Setterfield CDK theory can be rescued quite simply by the simple process of joining it with a collapsing universe. Instead of the stars being at a constant distance from us, they are rushing towards us at fantastic speeds, just enough to cause a compensating speedup of their motions that reverses the missing slow down of their motions implied by his theory.

Remember, folks, you read it here first.

That creationist link can be rescued by an alternate universe. Simply prepare the earth initially in an alternate universe and on the fourth day bring it over to our own solar system and pop the earth into its orbit.

Remember folks, you read it here first.

Now lets try to think of some way of making a scientific test to discern which of these two alternatives was the real one?

 

[Gup20]

The writer does a wonderful job of pointing out the shortcomings of the various cdk theories out there including Setterfield's theory and Humphrie's theory.

For those of you who may have missed it, that's called "peer review" - iron sharpening iron. One thing that IS clear from the article is that creationists don't have this problem fully worked out yet - and I think that is ok. Point is, theories and problems are being worked through, and continue to move closer to resolution and clarity. Each time a new discovery is made, it opens doors to answering these questions.

In other words, preserving the literal words of Genesis is so important to him that he will propose this absolutely fantastic cosmology just to get away from accepting the literal teachings of the very stars themselves.

As I stated, creationist cosmology still has a ways to go. However, it is important to see that work is being done. You see, what these men have done is come to a conclusion that the text is literal, and they are applying what they believe as Biblical truth to the world around them. This is in stark contrast to starting with an atheistic hypothesis and coming to a conclusion which you impose upon scripture - which is exactly what evolution does.

Please pardon me for not taking that proposal very seriously, especially in light of the fact that the earth itself bears the marks of billions of years of history on its face.

This is only true if you make various assumptions regarding it's history. For example, you MUST assume a uniformitarian mindset - even though the history in the Bible is irrefutably clear that things have changed between creation and now. Secondly, you must assume that no other possibility exists which could have produced the same effects in a short period of time - namely a global flood.

2Pe 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

There is simply no way to get around that - to think that the earth bears the markings of millions of years is to be willingly ignorant of Noah's Flood - which the evolutionists here claim not to recognize as a legitimate event.

 

[UTEOTW]

"For example, you MUST assume a uniformitarian mindset - even though the history in the Bible is irrefutably clear that things have changed between creation and now."

Yes, please show me your verse that shows that the laws of physics have changed. THis should be good.

"For those of you who may have missed it, that's called "peer review" - iron sharpening iron."

Where exactly is the peer review? Where are the astronomy experts who were doing the reviewing?

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by Gup20:
[QB] </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />The writer does a wonderful job of pointing out the shortcomings of the various cdk theories out there including Setterfield's theory and Humphrie's theory.

For those of you who may have missed it, that's called "peer review" - iron sharpening iron. One thing that IS clear from the article is that creationists don't have this problem fully worked out yet - and I think that is ok. Point is, theories and problems are being worked through, and continue to move closer to resolution and clarity. Each time a new discovery is made, it opens doors to answering these questions.
</font>[/QUOTE]These creationist theories do not represent new discoveries. These creationist theories represent arbitarary ideas thrown out for possible consideration as a way to rescue YEC from the obvious evidence against it. They all fail, as discussed in the article above. You can call it peer review, you can call it iron sharpening iron, that's fine, as long as you realize the creationist article you refer to really does show how they all fail, and its time to quit treating those theories as if they were viable! If you don't quit doing that, if you keep touting them as viable, your iron hasn't sharpened anything after all.

As I stated, creationist cosmology still has a ways to go. However, it is important to see that work is being done. You see, what these men have done is come to a conclusion that the text is literal, and they are applying what they believe as Biblical truth to the world around them.

Just like Martin Luther before them, who denied that the earth rotates based on interpretation of scripture. Real scientists have always used evidence and will continue to use evidence, no matter how much you beg of them to accept your interpretation of scripture instead.

For example, you MUST assume a uniformitarian mindset - even though the history in the Bible is irrefutably clear that things have changed between creation and now. Secondly, you must assume that no other possibility exists which could have produced the same effects in a short period of time - namely a global flood.

2Pe 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

There is simply no way to get around that - to think that the earth bears the markings of millions of years is to be willingly ignorant of Noah's Flood - which the evolutionists here claim not to recognize as a legitimate event.

Actually, the evidence from the real world is utterly inconsistent with a single world wide flood having occurred. The greenland ice sheet shows annual layers going back 400,000 years which wouldn't be possible if there were a flood that had intervened - the ice wouldn't be there. The grand canyon is composed of sedimentary layers that couldn't possibly have been deposited in a single flood - some of them are sandstone, some of them are limestone, for example. The Hawiian Islands are clearly each created in its turn by a single volcanic flow working on a moving crustal plate, and the uniformity of the island chain including undersea mounts going way past Midway Island is clear to any objective observer, and it is equally clear such a chain is not possible to be created in a mere 6000 years.

For these reasons, it is clear that the flood of Noah must be interpreted as the world as known to Noah, a perfectly logically correct view of the language used. Noah's actual flood occurred at the time of the ending of the last ice age, when melting glaciers were a handy cause of the event.