See who is a Creation Scientist

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
So BobRyan, do you agree that Einstein's theory of relativity is valid, and all that implies?

As a matter of fact I do accept that this is a well reasoned theory.

Included in that is the concept of "relative motion and frame of referernce of the observer" that evolutionists here have done all in their power to obfuscate, deny and misdirect in desperate efforts to discredit faith in Bible "Details".

This is so easy for the reader to see - that it is impossible to debate.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Charles Meadows]

Bob,

You seem to want every discussion to be about the "junk science" of evolution. The question asked of me is how one would explain the geneology of Adam.

My point here is that analysis of the text, the context, the genre of near eastern creation stories, and Hebrew writing as a whole suggest that the literal reading is certainly not the only, and perhaps not even the best reading of the account. As such Genesis 1 makes NO claims about the age of the earth (not young, not old!).

 

[Helen]

Charles, the basic rule of thumb is to let Bible explain Bible. The geneologies of Genesis 5 and 11 in the Alexandrian LXX (translated by Hebrew scholars themselves into classical Greek) give a very clear indication of the age of the earth, and thus, if Genesis 1 is taken at face value, the age of the universe as well.

 

[Helen]

Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
God's word is eternally valid when properly interpreted.

In other words, God can't get it right without the human brain, which HE created, to tell Him what He really means.

The facts of the universe have allowed us to see that the creation narrative was not literally meant in the form it has come down to us.

Au contraire. The data is becoming more and more clear that the Bible is absolutely right about the age of the earth and the universe itself. This is denied only by those who either have not seen the data or are so dependant upon the evolutionary framework that they dare not think for themselves regarding the data and its implications.

The sun does not literally, for example, go around the earth as the cause of day and night; rather the earth rotates.

Son of a gun! We have GOT to get those weather announcers to quit referring to the sun rising and setting. Do you think anyone has informed them that it is actually the earth rotating and mentioned to them that they are deceiving people in what they are saying???

In like fashion, the earth is literally billions of years old and all life is of common descent.

You mean, like sunrise and sunset, you have SEEN these things? I knew you were a mature man, Paul, but isn't that pushing it a bit?

 

[Charles Meadows]

Helen,

The geneologies of Adam define the nation of Israel. I do not see that they or the creation account make any attempt to define the age of the earth. Consider Enuma Elish, or some of the Ugaritic and Canaanite mythology. These almost certainly antedate the writing of the Pentateuch. It would seem that Moses would have had some familiarity with local myth. I favor the argument that the principal context of the creation account in Genesis 1 was to declare that YHWH was THE God and that literally everything came into being by His desire. I think Moses probably was more concerned to define who YHWH was rather than to say how many days or millions of years it took to for plants to come into existence. It is clear that Genesis 1 is NOT an allegory - with a day representing an epoch or a billion years or something of that nature.

Given the mindset of ancient near easterners I don't see how the age of the earth can be seen as an important intended feature of ther Genesis account.

 

[Marcia]

Some views re the similarity between pagan myths of creation and the Genesis account:

Third, while distressing to some, there is considerable similarity between the pagan creation myths and the inspired account of creation in the Bible.24 The correspondence includes the use of some of the same terms (e.g. Leviathan) or descriptions (e.g., a man-headed sea monster), similar literary form,25 and a parallel sequence of events at creation.26

The explanation of these similarities by some are unacceptable. For example, we are told that these similarities evidence the fact that the biblical cosmogony is no different than any other ancient creation myth. Others would assure us that while there are similarities, the Israelites ‘demythologized’ these corrupted accounts to assure an accurate account of the origin of the earth and man.27 Some conservative scholars simply call the correspondence coincidence, though this seems to avoid the difficulties, rather than to explain them. The most acceptable explanation is that the similarity is explained by the fact that all similar creation accounts attempt to explain the same phenomenon.

Early races of men wherever they wandered took with them these earliest traditions of mankind, and in varying Latitudes and climes have modified them according to their religions and mode of thought. Modifications as time proceeded resulted in the corruption of the original pure tradition. The Genesis account is not only the purist, but everywhere bears the unmistakable impress of divine inspiration when compared with the extravagances and corruptions of other accounts. The Biblical narrative, we may conclude, represents the original form these traditions must have assumed.28

More important than the fact that the nations surrounding Israel had their own (perhaps older) accounts of creation, was the use to which these were put in the ancient Near East. Ancient cosmogonies were not carefully recorded and preserved out of a love for ancient history; they were the foundation of religious observance. [more]
From
http://db2.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=42
..........................
to be continued....

 

[Marcia]

More views re pagan myths and Genesis:

In some skeptical circles, it is still fashionable to make the claim that the creation account of Genesis was in some sense borrowed from the Babylonian creation account, Enuma Elish (hereafter EE; those who hold this view are hereafter "EE proponents"). I have used a turn of phrase suggesting that the argument isn't held in all skeptical circles -- the latest fad in this regard is to attribute most of the borrowing from Egyptian sources, as Greenberg does in 101 Myths of the Bible (though he posits some Babylonian influence on stories like the Flood and Cain and Abel). Still, you will now and then run into a skeptic still in the Dark Ages intellectually, and it is thus a good idea to run through some of the arguments. (My own perception is that we would expect some similarities in EE and Genesis -- and in other creation accounts as well -- if they all derived from a common source.)

Some of the differences in the accounts are basic -- EE records "successive generations of gods and goddesses" who are subject to typical weaknesses such as hunger, thirst, and sex drive; Genesis records but one God, though He had company of unspecified nature (Gen. 1:26), with no such weaknesses. The EE is a creation account to some extent, but most of it is devoted to describing a battle between the god Marduk (the "creator" as such) and Tiamat the goddess (who ends up being the raw material of creation), and to other non-creation issues, so that after tally, only about a third of it is on the subject of creation. EE played a political and cultic role in the Babylonian religion and explained Marduk's rise to chief god of Babylon; Genesis does not mention Israel, Jerusalem, or the Temple, and served no cultic function [Sarna, Understanding Genesis, 9; I would suggest that this points to the Genesis account being more original]. But, let us move to detail. Our foundational source for this essay is Alexander Heidel's classic work, The Babylonian Genesis. (U. of Chicago Press, 1942) We will address relevant points in outline form, following the order of Genesis as required.

Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
All stories must start somewhere, and the ways in which Genesis differs from EE at the very beginning is quite significant. Genesis starts us "in the beginning", at a time-point which suggests nothing before. But EE and other Babylonian creation accounts start with words like, "on the day that" or "when" -- which do not specify a beginning. The Hebrew word here means "at the first" (Numbers 15:20 "Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave offering..."); the matching Hebrew word for the Babylonian record is not what is used. This feature "finds no parallels in the cosmogonies" of Babylon.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
EE also supposes a watery chaos in place, and this is where EE proponents had their biggest party. The word for "deep" here is tehowm, and EE proponents leapt upon the similarity of this word to the name of the Babylonia goddess Tiamat. In the EE, Tiamat was the water-goddess who was slain by Marduk and used to make the watery chaos. It was supposed that tehom was linguistically derived from Tiamat, thus proving borrowing.

Substantial differences, first of all, render this unlikely. Tiamat was only one of two water-deities involved in this story; the other was the water-god Apsu. Tiamat was salty water; Apsu was fresh water. Apsu, at any rate, has no parallel in Genesis at all, and the tehom is inanimate. [More]
From
http://www.tektonics.org/babgenesis.html
.............................
It is not correct to say that "Enuma elish" was adopted and adapted by the Israelites to produce the Genesis stories. As Lambert holds, there is "no evidence of Hebrew borrowing from Babylon" (1965: 296). Sj"berg accepts Lambert's opinion that "there was hardly any influence from that Babylonian text on the Old Testament creation accounts" (1984: 217). Hasel thinks rather that the creation account of Genesis 1 functions as an antimythological polemic in some cases (e.g., with the "sun," the "moon," and tnnm ('sea monsters'?), etc. (1974). One thing is clear with regard to the religious nature of the creation story of Genesis: in Genesis 1 and 2 no female deity exists or is involved in producing the cosmos and humanity. This is unique among ancient creation stories that treat of deities having personality.

Canaanite Background to Genesis 1? According to Jacobsen, "the story of the battle between the god of thunderstorms and the sea originated on the coast of the Mediterranean and wandered eastward from there to Babylon" (1968: 107). Along the same line, Sj"berg as an Assyriologist warns Old Testament scholars that "it is no longer scientifically sound to assume that all ideas originated in Mesopotamia and moved westward" (1984: 218).

Recently Day asserted that Genesis 1:2 was a demythologization of an original Chaoskampf ('chaos-battle') myth from ancient Canaan (1985: 53). However, the conflict of the storm-god Baal with the sea-deity Yam in the Ugaritic myth has nothing to do with a creation of cosmos like that of Marduk with Tiamat in "Enuma elish." Kapelrud notes that "with the existing texts and the material present so far we may conclude that they have no creation narrative" (1980: 9). Also de Moor recently demonstrated that Baal in Ugaritic literature is never treated as a creator-god (1980). I have noted elsewhere that if the Genesis account were the demythologization of a Canaanite dragon myth, we would expect the term yam 'sea,' which is the counterpart of the Ugaritic sea-god Yam, in the initial portion of the account. However, the term yam does not appear in Genesis 1 until v. 10. It is difficult to assume that an earlier Canaanite dragon myth existed in the background of Genesis 1:2.[12]
[More]
From
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-c001.html

 

[Helen]

Charles, the genealogies of Adam no way define the Israelites. They are BEGUN with Abraham, long, LONG after Adam. In addition, Genesis 10 is called the Table of Nations for a reason -- it is the most accurate record known of where the various peoples came from. The genealogies of Adam define the Christ line, but also the beginning of the human race.

Did Moses copy from others? No, he did not. The knowledge of the order of creation was known to them all, via the bottleneck at the Flood which was survived only by Noah and family. The evidence is actually that Genesis is a series of eyewitness accounts. I have a great deal of material on this -- too much for this little box, but one link is here:
http://ldolphin.org/tablethy.html

the following is from Oswald T. Allis of Princeton and later Westminster Theological Seminary (I assume you approve) in "The Five Books of Moses" Presbyterian & Reformed (1964)

"WE HAVE PREFERRED to call the theory which we have been
examining the Development Hypothesis, rather than to use the
name "historical" which many of its advocates prefer. The aim of
the historian should be to present actual facts in such a way that
they will appear in true perspective and correct relation to other
facts. That it is the aim of the advocates of the Graf-Wellhausen
hypothesis to do this, need not be called in question. But, as we
have endeavored to show, their treatment of the available facts is so
dominated by a theory the correctness of which they hold to be
proved and the acceptance of which they consider to be the badge
of true scholarship and a truly scientific spirit, that this tendency or
bias must be taken account of in appraising their methods and
conclusions. It is significant that the rise of this new and
revolutionary theory followed closely upon the publication of
Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), which gave such encouragement
and impetus to all theories of development. But its roots are to be
traced farther back, to the Hegelian philosophy and the positivism
of Comte, to a theory of development which whether idealistic or
materialistic is "naturalistic" because it tends directly to the denial
of that supernaturalism which is so prominent and distinctive a
feature of the Bible. Even a cursory examination of the literature of
the higher criticism makes it clear that it has been increasingly
dominated by three great principles of evolutionary theory: (1) that
development is the explanation of all phenomena, (2) that this
development results from forces latent in man without any
supernatural assistance, and (3) that the "comparative" method,
which uses a naturalistic yardstick, must determine the nature and
rate of this development." (Allis O.T., "The Five Books of Moses,"
1964, pp.259-260)

The best evidence to my mind against over-elaborate source-theories in Genesis
at least s P.J. Wiseman's pointing out that Genesis contains easily recognisable
evidence even in English translations of what its underlying sources were, in the
oft-repeated phrase "these are the generations of..." which have the same form
as the footer (or header) inscriptions on ancient eastern clay tablets.

Another conservative OT scholar R.K. Harrison, took up Wiseman's insight
and wrote:

"According to the Graf-Wellhausen documentary hypothesis of
Pentateuchal origins, Genesis assumed its present form through
various editorial processes that saw a combination of elements of J.
E, and E sources into a continuous document. ... The present writer
does not support ... [this] positions, and prefers to examine the
problem of the compilation of Genesis against a background of
ancient Near Eastern literary activity. It should be observed as a
general principle that there may well be quite a number of sources
designated in the Old Testament writings which have not actually
been recognized as such by most modern scholars. Genesis appears
to be a case in point, with the clue to the underlying sources being
provided, not by the incidence of the divine names or the presence
of supposed duplicate narratives, but by the phrase translated "these
are the generations of," ..." (Harrison R.K., "Introduction to the
Old Testament," Tyndale Press, 1970, p.543)

and

"The foregoing discussion can be summarized, therefore, by stating
that the term [towledah] can be held to indicate the presence of a
colophon in the text, and to constitute part of the concluding
sentence of each section, thereby pointing back to a narrative
already recorded. Accordingly it is eminently possible to regard its
incidence as indicating the presence of a genuine Biblical source in
the text.... Accordingly the present writer feels justified in following
Wiseman in the assertion that Genesis contains in the first thirty-six
chapters a series of tablets whose contents were linked together to
form a roughly chronological account of primeval and patriarchal
life written from the standpoint of a Mesopotamian cultural milieu.:

1. The Eleven Tablets. Such a view is based upon the conviction
that this approach alone does the fullest justice to the literary
phenomena of much of Genesis, particularly in the light of what is
now known regarding the antiquity of writing, the diverse nature of
literary communications in the Near East during the second
millennium B.C., and the special characteristics of contemporary
scribal techniques. The tablets that may be isolated will be seen to
have a title, a residuum of textual matter, and a colophon, along
with certain additional features to be noted subsequently. The
sources can be described briefly as follows:

Tablet 1: Gen. 1:1-2:4. The origins of the cosmos
Tablet 2: Gen. 2 :5-5:2. The origins of mankind
Tablet 3: Gen. 5: 3-6:9a. The histories of Noah
Tablet 4: Gen. 6:9b-10:1. The histories of the sons of Noah
Tablet 5: Gen. 10:2-11:10a. The histories of Shem
Tablet 6: Gen. 11:10b-11:27a. The histories of Terah
Tablet 7: Gen. 11 :27b-25:12. The histories of Ishmael
Tablet 8: Gen. 25:13-25:19a. The histories of Isaac
Tablet 9: Gen. 25:19b-36:1. The histories of Esau
Tablet 10: Gen. 36:2-36:9. The histories of Esau
Tablet 11: Gen. 36:10-37:2. The histories of Jacob

...The present writer is of the opinion that the foregoing
classification of material represents the genuine literary sources
underlying the first thirty-six chapters of Genesis." (Harrison R.K.,
1970, pp.547-548)

 

[Paul of Eugene]

In my own view, the phrases "these are the generations of" are, indeed, titular phrases referring to blocks of quoted material. I do not accept, however, that they are the only sources in Genesis; that Genesis also includes threads of tradiational narraties that were passed down from generation to generation; and all these have been blended into our present narrative. But it is apparant that the final editor drew from many sources.

This is not a claim against inspiration. God chose the Hebrew Nation for His special people and God also chose them complete with the narratives of their history and, indeed, He was in control of those narratives and that history.

There is a simple way to reconcile the six days of creation with what we now know, but it involves some non-literal interpreting.

It involves the Day = Age method. The primary drawback of the Day = Age method is not so much that it isn't literal - because, after all, we all know that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. The problem has always been that the creation periods do not occur in an order consistent with the known pattern of development of the universe.

The solution is to recognize that the creation narrative nowhere states that the days were not overlapping or consecutive. They are named as if they were but it is not so stated.

Hence, it is recognized that the development of the dry land and then vegetation is being set forth as a complete funtion of the third day.

Today, we recognize that there were animals in the sea eons before there were land plants; but I am proposing that these are merely the subject of another "look" at creation.

Day five expresses that the waters and the air were filled with their appropriate life. We know that there was animal life before there was bird life, and that before bird life there were flying reptiles that are now extinct.

The "looks" at the creation are not organizing the creation as we do, strictly by time, but by topic.

The organization of the days into a pattern, 1 vs 3, 2 vs 4, 3 vs 5, are well enough known I do not need to spell them out here.

In this manner, it is perfectly possible to read Genesis straightforwardly, if not literally, and see it as a valid description of creation, maintaining the inerrancy view of the passage.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by BobRyan:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
So BobRyan, do you agree that Einstein's theory of relativity is valid, and all that implies?

As a matter of fact I do accept that this is a well reasoned theory.

Included in that is the concept of "relative motion and frame of reference of the observer" that evolutionists here have done all in their power to obfuscate, deny and misdirect in desperate efforts to discredit faith in Bible "Details".

This is so easy for the reader to see - that it is impossible to debate.

In Christ,

Bob </font>[/QUOTE]So fill me in, before we continue, how you think Einstein's theory handles relative things when rotation is involved. After all, we all know that a Foucault pendulum rotates the plane it swings in; this is commonly taken as a proof of the rotation of the earth. Other rotation effects include the imposed direction of rotations on all hurricanes/ monsoons, which switches south of the equator. There is also the natural reference point of the background radiation of the whole universe, which provides an objective standard, some say, as to whether one is moving or even rotating or not. How do you hold to the relative nature of rotation movement, in view of the fact that rotation provides obvious centrifugal differences from non-rotating motions?

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by BobRyan:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:

Dogs are dogs. But they aren't wolves any more.

If only that made your point instead of mine.

The wolfe contains the genetic information to make a poodle. But the poodle LOST the genetic information needed to make the Wolf.

speciation WITHIN Kind like this example simply shows the LOSS of information and a sequence where going down a given branch produced LESS options in a more limited variant.. it never goes the other way.

Genetic Entropy and certainly information entropy.

In Christ,

Bob [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Oh. Lessee now. The mere naming of dogs as Canis domesticus does not make them separate species but you depend on the evidence to say they are the same.

On the other hand, the mere presence of evidence that Archeopterix is a transition is overridden, in your arguments, by the classification of archi as a bird.

Yet another inconsistency!

 

[Charles Meadows]

Helen,

To begin with I reject the premise that all scripture is to be interpreted, by default, in a literal fashion.

Regarding the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. There are patterns of word usage the suggest several sources existed prior to the completion of the pentateuch. Did Moses write it all from memory? Did God dictate to him? Or did he use preexisting traditions, written and oral, to preserve the record under God's direction? I would contend that any of the above are possible, including the third one.

I see the principal point of the creation story as the establishment of YHWH as the supreme creator God. The mythology of the near east is quite unaccidentlally similar to the biblical accounts of the creation - not to mention the flood and some other events. Moses likely was intending to show, in familiar terms, that YHWH brought everything into existence by himself, beholden to none. Thus the intent of the account was not to factually and discretely describe exactly how the earth came into being, with respect to specifics. Near eastern epic writing is quite consistent with this type of thinking.

I don't reject the idea that one should trust the promises in the bible, or that one would believe the bible at face value over "science". Rather I reject the notion that the bible must be interpreted literally in all cases BECAUSE certain people want it so.

 

[Marcia]

"The mythology of the near east is quite unaccidentlally similar to the biblical accounts of the creation - not to mention the flood and some other events. Moses likely was intending to show, in familiar terms, that YHWH brought everything into existence by himself, beholden to none."

Charles, I just posted some excerpts of articles refuting the conclusions you make based on this "similarity." Similarity does not mean one came from the other.

Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
All stories must start somewhere, and the ways in which Genesis differs from EE at the very beginning is quite significant. Genesis starts us "in the beginning", at a time-point which suggests nothing before. But EE and other Babylonian creation accounts start with words like, "on the day that" or "when" -- which do not specify a beginning. The Hebrew word here means "at the first" (Numbers 15:20 "Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave offering..."); the matching Hebrew word for the Babylonian record is not what is used. This feature "finds no parallels in the cosmogonies" of Babylon.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
EE also supposes a watery chaos in place, and this is where EE proponents had their biggest party. The word for "deep" here is tehowm, and EE proponents leapt upon the similarity of this word to the name of the Babylonia goddess Tiamat. In the EE, Tiamat was the water-goddess who was slain by Marduk and used to make the watery chaos. It was supposed that tehom was linguistically derived from Tiamat, thus proving borrowing.

Substantial differences, first of all, render this unlikely. Tiamat was only one of two water-deities involved in this story; the other was the water-god Apsu. Tiamat was salty water; Apsu was fresh water. Apsu, at any rate, has no parallel in Genesis at all, and the tehom is inanimate. [More]
From
http://www.tektonics.org/babgenesis.html

 

[Charles Meadows]

Marcia,

They're certainly not identical but they are similar. The point I continue to make is that we as 20th century Christians have traditionally held that Genesis 1 should be literal. In fact I'd argue that most of us wouldn't even consider otherwise! I think that no one can prove it either way.

Your post obviously neither proves nor refutes anything. Rather it does show the similarities of the two. I do not fault one for believing that Genesis 1 is literally true, if he/she simply wants to take the bible at face value. What I do have a problem with is those that automatically insist (without knowledge of near eastern studies or language) that the literal way is the only way, often making accusation against those with whom they disagree, referring to them as "liberals" or "so-called Christians".

Let me ask you this. Have you made up your mind before doing the research?

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by Helen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
God's word is eternally valid when properly interpreted.

In other words, God can't get it right without the human brain, which HE created, to tell Him what He really means.
</font>[/QUOTE]Fallen men can interpret God's word incorrectly, really, its true!

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> The facts of the universe have allowed us to see that the creation narrative was not literally meant in the form it has come down to us.

Au contraire. The data is becoming more and more clear that the Bible is absolutely right about the age of the earth and the universe itself. This is denied only by those who either have not seen the data or are so dependant upon the evolutionary framework that they dare not think for themselves regarding the data and its implications.
</font>[/QUOTE]Not really. The age of the universe is clearly millions and billions of years based on starlight from that distance alone. All theories that light has changed speed in any signifigant amount since the creation of the galaxies, for example, are disproved by the simple observation that the light whereby we see them shows them all to be rotating at about the same limited range of speeds no matter how far distant we see them. Light that was once much faster and then became slower would of necessity show them rotating more slowly, exactly in step with the amount of slowing of the light. No slowing of visible rotation equals no slowing of light. It's that simple.

Einstein's formula e=mc² provides another proof. Take a rock from the time of Adam and isolate it. Its mass and energy content remain the same from Adam's day until now, since nothing is taken from it nor added to it, and the law of conservation of mass/energy applies. The formula e=mc² can be recast, as every algebra student knows, into c = sqr(e/m). Since e and m have not changed, c has not changed. Its that simple.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> The sun does not literally, for example, go around the earth as the cause of day and night; rather the earth rotates.

Son of a gun! We have GOT to get those weather announcers to quit referring to the sun rising and setting. Do you think anyone has informed them that it is actually the earth rotating and mentioned to them that they are deceiving people in what they are saying???
</font>[/QUOTE]Just because we have an unbroken tradition of saying the sun rises that carries across from the time when that was literally believed does not change the fact that once it was literally believed.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> In like fashion, the earth is literally billions of years old and all life is of common descent.

You mean, like sunrise and sunset, you have SEEN these things? I knew you were a mature man, Paul, but isn't that pushing it a bit? [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]With my own eyes I have viewed the Clouds of Magellan, about a hundred thousand light years distant. With my own eyes I have viewed the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, about 3 million light years distant.

 

[BobRyan]

On another thread here - Helen gave the following information.

Helen said
In the meantime, there are some pretty good scientists who have switched from the old to young earth positions BECAUSE of science. You will find a number of them in In Six Days which can be purchased here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0890513414/104-5690804-6944700?v=glance

I am adding it here as this thread already has some references to the list of respected scientists supporting the Word of God and finding harmony between the Word and "true" science.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Charles Meadows:
[QB] Bob,

You seem to want every discussion to be about the "junk science" of evolution. The question asked of me is how one would explain the geneology of Adam.

What problem did you find with it?

Was the Word hard to understand, read? Believe?

Did you find a "video" from Carl Sagan showing the life and times of Adam to be other than God's Word describes?

Where did you run into "the problem" with origins?

Charles --

My point here is that analysis of the text, the context, the genre of near eastern creation stories, and Hebrew writing as a whole suggest that the literal reading is certainly not the only, and perhaps not even the best reading of the account.

Wrong "again".

The fact that the ages descrease in uniform manner down to long-lived ages in the 120-180 range prevents all weaselage approaches to the text. Better to just stick with sound exegesis.

Stop trying to bend the Word "at every corner".

Though the unfaltering efforts of Christian evolutionists to do that very thing on everything from soup to nuts in the Bible should be "very instructive" for anyone so gullible so as to believe that Christian evolutionists ONLY bend Gen 1 and 2.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Helen:
Charles, the basic rule of thumb is to let Bible explain Bible. The geneologies of Genesis 5 and 11 in the Alexandrian LXX (translated by Hebrew scholars themselves into classical Greek) give a very clear indication of the age of the earth, and thus, if Genesis 1 is taken at face value, the age of the universe as well.

Helen - you are using exegesis to determine Bible meaning -- why not use the junk-science myths of evolutionism "instead" as your rule for determining what the text is saying?

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Charles Meadows:
[QB] Helen,

The geneologies of Adam define the nation of Israel. I do not see that they or the creation account make any attempt to define the age of the earth.

That is because you are "determined" to "not see" when the slightest opportunity presents itself.

What motivates you to take that approach to the Word of God?

Surely the gaffs, flaws, blunders and failures of evolutionism can not "still" be that alluring over the Word of God!

Consider Enuma Elish, or some of the Ugaritic and Canaanite mythology.

And "why not"! They are certainly as "reliable" as the Word of God once the Christian evolutionists are done with it.

These almost certainly antedate the writing of the Pentateuch. It would seem that Moses would have had some familiarity with local myth.

What a great "idea". IF Moses KNEW about the easter bunny then in fact Moses BORROWED from the Easter bunny instead of ACTUALLY being inspired by God.

Here we find "Another inconvenient DETAIL" in the Word of God for Christian evolutionists. "NO SCRIPTURE is a matter of ONE PERSONS OWN views or ideas - but RATHER Holy Men of old MOVED by the Holy Spirit SPOKE FROM GOD"

Notice Peter did not say "spoke from the Easter Bunny Gazette of their day"?

Well - I guess "some" people noticed anyway.

Charles said --
I favor the argument that the principal context of the creation account in Genesis 1 was to declare that YHWH was THE God and that literally everything came into being by His desire.

And "certain" a one or two sentence statement would fully get "that" point across.

But INSTEAD of that - God ACTUALLY chooses to describe HIS own "account" of origins.

Very different from just tossing out the "God created all things" like we see in one sentence statements in Psalms and in John 1:2-3.

God give us FAR more detail in ENTIRE chapters devoted to the DEtAILS of origins that atheist's evolutionism "so opposes".

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Paul --
The solution is to recognize that the creation narrative nowhere states that the days were not overlapping or consecutive. They are named as if they were but it is not so stated.

Wrong.

I don't doubt that there are myriad ways to "pretend not to get the plain reading of the text" for evolutionists -- but just for fun...

WHAT would God have had to say such that THE FIRST day and the SECOND DAY actually meant TWO days for you?

How about "FOR IN six days the Lord CREATED the heavens and the earth the sea and ALL that is in them ... and RESTED the SEVENTH day" - resulting in the same WEEK that we see at the foot of SINAI.

Does THAT "help you any"?

In Christ,

Bob