Is Gen 1-3 "real" or is Atheist Darwinism "Real"?

[DHK]

I believe in the basic messages in the Bible, its the details I have qualms with. DHK, you're using Biblical quotes to support the Bible. The Council of Nicaea, I feel sure, kept out any conflicting texts.

Prove your assertion. How does my Bible differ from what was settled at the Council of Nicea. The Council of Nicea did not settle any such thing. I believe you are quite ignorant concerning the canon of the Bible. Furthermore, Catholic Councils did not provide us a Bible. The Catholic Church owes us nothing. The Bible came to us via the prophets and the Apostles, and was then preserved and handed down through the early beleivers and early churches. The RCC didn't even come into existence until the beginning of the fourth century. Would you have us to believe that for three centuries there was no Bible, no Scriptures? I think not!

 

[Rew_10]

I'll admit I am somewhat ignorant of these things. Likewise, please enlighten me as to what the Council of Nicaea did. And, why were so many gospels left out of the Bible. I thought it was the Council that chose those?

 

[Amy.G]

Amy, my post to you was based on the fact that you're trying to dispute evolution without educating yourself on it and even refusing to educate yourself on it. Did you discuss the Bible without reading it?

No, but I think you did.

 

[Rew_10]

No, but I think you did.

To put it kindly, I've read the Bible once straight through, and gone through and studied about half of it.

 

[Rew_10]

Prove your assertion. How does my Bible differ from what was settled at the Council of Nicea. The Council of Nicea did not settle any such thing. I believe you are quite ignorant concerning the canon of the Bible. Furthermore, Catholic Councils did not provide us a Bible. The Catholic Church owes us nothing. The Bible came to us via the prophets and the Apostles, and was then preserved and handed down through the early beleivers and early churches. The RCC didn't even come into existence until the beginning of the fourth century. Would you have us to believe that for three centuries there was no Bible, no Scriptures? I think not!

Regardless if I was wrong about the Concil of Nicaea, the prior point I was trying to make was that you were attempting to prove that the Bible was all inspired directly by God by citing passages from the Bible. It's just fallacious.

 

[DHK]

I'll admit I am somewhat ignorant of these things. Likewise, please enlighten me as to what the Council of Nicaea did. And, why were so many gospels left out of the Bible. I thought it was the Council that chose those?

At that time in history Arius was spreading his doctrine which was a direct attack on the deity of Christ and a denial of the trinity. The basic purpose of the Council of Nicea was to reaffirm the church's belief in the trinity and deity of Christ, something that Bible-believing Christians had never waivered from, from the time of the Apostles onward.

 

[Rew_10]

At that time in history Arius was spreading his doctrine which was a direct attack on the deity of Christ and a denial of the trinity. The basic purpose of the Council of Nicea was to reaffirm the church's belief in the trinity and deity of Christ, something that Bible-believing Christians had never waivered from, from the time of the Apostles onward.

So you're saying the Council did not alter the Bible at all?

 

[DHK]

Regardless if I was wrong about the Concil of Nicaea, the prior point I was trying to make was that you were attempting to prove that the Bible was all inspired directly by God by citing passages from the Bible. It's just fallacious.

No it is not fallacious. The Bible proves itself. It proves itself by fulfilled prophecies. It proves itself by being one book written over a period of about 1500 years, composed of approximately 40 different authors, containing within it 66 separate books, and yet all without contradiction, and still having the same theme woven throughout every book from Genesis through to the end of Revelation--that is that redemption is through Jesus Christ.
It proves itself through the words and works of Jesus Christ. He proved who he said he was. He claimed that He was God. He backed up his claim through the resurrection. He arose from the dead, as no other person ever has. His resurrection is one of the most attested facts of history and cannot be denied. Either Christ is who he claimed to be--God in the flesh--or he is the biggest liar, fraud, and deceiver that ever walked the face of this earth. Who is Jesus Christ? That is your decision to make. If he is who he claimed to be, then he also but his stamp of approval on the Word of God which we have today.

 

[UTEOTW]

Rew_10

Good luck to you if you plan to continue down this path. I doubt you will have much success, at least publically. Lurkers can benefit but the posters just keep recycling. I don't even think that they really read posts with which they think they will disagree very closely. I'll show you a few examples.

(First off, I joined here many years ago to discuss many different things. Eventually, the creation evolution debate came to be the most interesting to me and was the concern of most of my posts. EventuallyI decided to just move on. I rarely post here anymore, rarely even log in, and occasionally I'll look through a few of the forums just to see what is going on.)

Let's just give you a few examples of the recycling. Last time I showed up, there was a thread on evolution. Here, go see what I said and the responses or lack thereof.

http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=36259&page=3

Start on page three of the thread. My posts start at post #25 on that page. DHK was there as well, making the same claim about science requiring an observer. My response to that is in post #26. My comments were never addressed but the same claim is being made here in this thread.

And there you will see Helen making the same claim about a quasar at the center of the galaxy as she made in this thread. Years ago it was pointed out to her that the black hole at the center of our galaxy is way to small to have powered a quasar as powerful as she claims. Equations and references and all. For that matter, for years I have brought up severe problems with the light speed decay theory that she advocates that never seem to be addressed. It is always that they will addressed some day that never comes. For that matter, if you look at my posts, I go through very specific details to refute the things that were posted. I use many published, reviewed references. I show many very specific errors. But instead of addressing any of this, she simply declares my arguments "strawmen" so she can ignore them and go on. I fail to see how posting detailed responses with references can be a strawman, but this might give you an idea of how well received hards facts are around here.

And then there is Bob. You will notice that I gave up with him after a few rounds of asking for peer reviewed support for an assertion of his and Bob responding with unsubstantiated assertions and declaring victory. Bob will drag things on for pages repeating the same things over and over. His favorite tactic is quote mining. Let me show you some old stuff. He threatened you with a Patterson quote on this thread. Let me show you part of a 19 page thread he started just to discuss his own quote mining. Go to page three, first.

http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=30671&page=3

Go down to the second post on the page to see my review of his Patterson quote. It continues through several posts.
Then go back to page one to see a few more of his quotes dissected. And pay attention to his responses. The cognitive dissonance is fascinating!

http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=30671

Now don't get me wrong. I am not trying to slight other posters. I have had some very good discussions with some of them. I am not even trying to dissuade you from trying. This assertion that you have to choose between the Bible and science is a harmful one and I encourage you to work on showing how it is not true. But it might help you to see what you face. Go down to the bottom of the front page and browse some of the old threads from the expired Creation/Evolution forum that used to be around. You can also go read some of the old posts in the open but inactive Science forum. (Inactive mainly because it is hidden.)

http://www.baptistboard.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46

Just remember that you have the truth on your side. Evolution is one of the best supported theories in science. We understand it better even that things like gravity which someone referred to as a "law" in this thread. YE has no answer for the totality of the evidence, the way so many diverse and independent lines of evidence all intersect at the same point. YE is mostly full of unsubstantiated assertions, mischaracterations of what evolution claims and the evidence, misunderstanding of evolution and the evidence and ignoring of most of science.

 

[DHK]

So you're saying the Council did not alter the Bible at all?

No, not one iota.
The OT was completed by 400 B.C. The Jews would not accept into their canon any book that was written after that date. And a translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek was made about 250 B.C. (called the Septuagint) which would automatically exclude those books which are called the Apocrypha.
The last book of the NT was the Book of Revelation written in 98 A.D. There is evidence in 2Peter3 that the apostles knew which books were inspired and which were not. The Holy Spirit guided them as to which were the inspired books, and they passed that information down to the early believers. Certainly there were false teachers, but Paul and others taught them how to recognize false teachers and their writings that none would creep into the original canon of God's Word. We beleive that the canon was divinely inspired and preserved unto this very day.

 

[Jack Matthews]

Jack, I'm going to answer your post bit by bit. This has been a field of study of my husband's and mine.

In the 1930's a fellow named Wiseman noticed something about the most ancient of tablets we have found in Mesopotamia. They were not signed at the top, or beginning, the way we title our documents now. Instead, they were signed off at the bottom with an interesting phrase: this is the generation of...

And he looked at the Bible. Genesis 5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 11:10, 11:27, etc. we see where the authors have signed off on their own eyewitness accounts of what happened in their lives. The first tablet, however, ends with Genesis 2:4a. So who wrote that one? Well, God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone Himself, so it is not a problem to attribute the opening of Genesis to the only Eyewitness who saw it: the Creator Himself.

Genesis does not give any indication that it is anything BUT eyewitness history. Details are remembered, conversations are remembered. There are no 'heros' of mythology there, but rather real people with real problems and real relationships. Warts and all.

You stated that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 give two different orders of creation. No, they do not. There is a translation problems of two verbs, among other things, in Genesis 2. In Genesis 2:8, the pluperfect is absent from Hebrew and the correct translation should be "had planted". The same is in verse 19, where the Lord God "had formed". Thus, we find in Genesis 2, Adam's memories of those first days of his life.

Did the sun appear on day four after the first growth of plants? Yes, it did. If you study the formation of plasma currents and filaments, you will see how the entire universe was probably formed. In a single plasma filament, there forms, around its pinched middle, a 'string of beads' which follow each other in a circle, and finally swallow each other up until only the largest is left, circling the filament. Then, to the inside of that orbit, another string of beads is formed, and again only one will be left. This can happen several times, with each 'string of beads' forming inside the last. The final thing that happens is the 'lighting up' of what is left in the middle. That is how our solar system, and probably all solar systems, formed. The sun is the last part of each to light up, as it is in the middle.

So yes, the earth was formed before the sun. And yes, the plants were growing a day before our sun lit. The initial light for the earth probably came from the center of our galaxy, where there used to be a quasar. These are associated with the black holes as far out as we can see in space, and the further they are, the brighter the quasar; i.e. the longer ago, the brighter the quasar. With its light and the earth formed, plants were quite able to grow before the sun was formed.

When you mention that Moses may have decided to include what you consider contradictory accounts, and then the Hebrews consider the work to be inspired holy Scripture, you are in effect accusing the Hebrews of being incredibly stupid people. They weren't.

And no writing language existed early on? You will find that claim denied in Genesis 5:1.

Just because we don't have a full understanding of everything that happened doesn't mean it didn't happen. Man's brain and understanding are not the be all and end all of knowledge! God is the be all and end all of all understanding. And He attributes historical accuracy to Genesis in His words when He was incarnated as our Lord Jesus Christ.

Gen. 5:1 only states that what follows is a written account of the descendants of Adam. It does not state that it was written as an eyewitness account at the time it was happening. In fact, what follows is a narrative, and is third person, something that is clear even in the Hebrew translation. The first human written language, cuneiform, did not appear until just before Abraham's time, about 1,500 years after the flood. Hebrew, as a language, was not developed until the descendants of Jacob lived in Egypt. And the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the Pentateuch that we have today is a product of the post-Babylonian captivity, most likely an edited version of the originals. The Hebrew dialect in which the oldest available manuscripts are written clearly indicate that is the period of time from which it came. That doesn't undermine the fact that they are still inspired by God. It does preclude a strictly literal interpretation of the creation accounts, but it does not open the door to any form of belief in evolution, theistic or otherwise.

Details of conversations are part of narrative accounts. These were stories that were handed down for generations. To preserve them through the Babylonian captivity, during which the Temple and scrolls of books were destroyed, they had to be committed to memory, and written again either during or after the captivity. Of course there are details of conversations, as well as a great level of care exercised to prevent legends and myths from creeping in. That's part of the inspiration process.

 

[Bible-boy]

No, not one iota.
The OT was completed by 400 B.C. The Jews would not accept into their canon any book that was written after that date. And a translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek was made about 250 B.C. (called the Septuagint) which would automatically exclude those books which are called the Apocrypha.
The last book of the NT was the Book of Revelation written in 98 A.D. There is evidence in 2Peter3 that the apostles knew which books were inspired and which were not. The Holy Spirit guided them as to which were the inspired books, and they passed that information down to the early believers. Certainly there were false teachers, but Paul and others taught them how to recognize false teachers and their writings that none would creep into the original canon of God's Word. We beleive that the canon was divinely inspired and preserved unto this very day.

I agree with DHK's short history of the canon of Scripture. Likewise, I would advise our young friend, Rew_10, to not seek his information regarding the canon and its history from the likes of Dan Brown and the Di Vinci Code novel/movie (because his previous posts seem to be based on the misinformation purveyed by those sources of entertainment).

 

[Rew_10]

Therefore, who put the books of the Bible together and who chose what would be included, what wouldn't and in what order?

 

[DHK]

Therefore, who put the books of the Bible together and who chose what would be included, what wouldn't and in what order?

2 Peter 3:2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:
Peter admonishes those Christians that he is writing to, to be mindful of the words of:
1. the prophets--the writers of the OT Scriptures, and
2. the apostles--the writers fo the NT Scriptures.
They knew which books were inspired and which were not. It was a matter of teaching the early churches that they were writing to.

2 Peter 3:15-16 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

Peter categorizes the epistles of Paul as Scripture. He seemed to know what was inspired Scripture and what was not, for not all the epistles of Paul were inspired. For example, we know that Paul wrote more than just two epistles to the Corinthians.

Jude was one of the last epistles to be written (save for the books of John).
And he writes that we must "earnestly contend for the faith." The faith is that body of doctrine that we have written down. That was what Jude was referring to. Most of the NT was completed by that time--70 A.D. It was totally completed by the end of the first century.

 

[DHK]

Therefore, who put the books of the Bible together and who chose what would be included, what wouldn't and in what order?

The gospels, giving the life of Christ were put first.
The Book of Acts, a historical book of the acts of the Apostles and a book of transition between Judaism and Christianity is next.
Following are the episltes. The epistles teach doctrine. The teach doctrine about Christ, the church, and many other subjects. They are very doctrinal books.
First are the Pauline epistles.
Next are what we call the General Epistles--those written by other authors: James, Peter, John and Jude.
At the end is the apocalyptic book of Revelation which is written by John, and tells us what shall befall us in the future.
Hope that helps.

 

[Magnetic Poles]

The mental and logical gymnastics that bibliolators must go through to hold up a literal Genesis are beyond any rational belief, and without evidence.

 

[Bible-boy]

The mental and logical gymnastics that bibliolators must go through to hold up a literal Genesis are beyond any rational belief, and without evidence.

That is quite a charge. How about backing it up with evidence of the "logical gymnastics," lack of rational belief, and lack of evidence? I'm talking a critique of published biblical scholars not a critique of the personal opinions posted on the BB.

 

[BobRyan]

UTEOTW
And then there is Bob. You will notice that I gave up with him after a few rounds

UTEOTW was totally unnable to sustain any of his claims about the Patterson quote as the thread shows. But even worse - the thread reference above was started totally devoted to allowing UTEOTW to make his own case regarding patterson - but he fled.

The point is that atheist darwinism can not survive the light of day. The more data - the less evolutionism.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Rew_10]

UTEOTW was totally unnable to sustain any of his claims about the Patterson quote as the thread shows. But even worse - when a thread was started totally devoted to allowing UTEOTW to make his case regarding patterson - he fled.

The point is that atheist darwinism can not survive the light of day. The more data - the less evolutionism.

In Christ,

Bob

You say that Bob, but go to a forum of "atheist" evolutionists and state your claims. I promise you your arguments will be torn to peices. As someone stated before, I'm only 19 and I've had to stand my ground on this thread alone.

 

[BobRyan]

#1. Notice that Patterson ADMITS that this is an EXACT tape recorded quote of his own words!
#2. Notice that THIS post is never referenced by UTEOTW on that thread – for he fears his own data!
#3. Notice that Patterson STANDs BY HIS own quote showing that skepticism of evolutionist methods is needed
#4. UTEOTW suggests that you might want to look at Patterson’s argument “in detail” but when “the details are stated” as in the case below – UTEOTW only runs from them!!

Dear Mr Theunissen,

Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes.

The passage quoted continues "(HUGE HINT TO UTEOTW - THIS IS The quote I INCLUDED in the first letter from Patterson to Sunderland!!! GET IT??)...a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.
Yours Sincerely,
[signed] Colin Patterson

From a letter dated Aug 16, 1993

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=846214&postcount=163

From the same page of the debate thread above – we find

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it . .

"[Stephen] Gould [of Harvard] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record.

You say that I should at least `show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record . . It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favored by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science; there is no way of putting them to the test."—*Colin Patterson, Letter dated April 10, 1979, to Luther Sunderland, quoted in L.D. Sunderland Darwin's Enigma, p. 89.


Patterson claims he HAD NO transitional example to put in his book - I believe him.

Patterson claims HE WANTED one AND could really really USE one IF HE HAD IT - and I believe him.

Patterson claims that you CAN NOT use the fossil record to "MAKE UP STORIES" then pass it off as science -- I BELIEVE HIM.