Stunning victory of Creation

Hank,
Well I spent the day ourside shoveling snow, making paths for the cars and the dog.
Do I ski? Not since I was young.But I suppose I could our farm is on a fairly steep hillside.

Hey guys I'm outa here the Grandkids just showed up.Gotta keep my priorities straight.

 

When Copernicus was driven by his love of truth to publish his solar-centric theory of the universe, wherein all the planets move around the sun instead of the sun moving around the earth, he sure could have saved a lot of time by just checking with the church folks and listening to them when they insisted its the sun that moves instead of the earth . . . .

How come he knew something the church folks, reading their bible as they did to find it out, decided was untrue? The answer is simple; he was able to follow the evidence regardless of previous theological misinterpretations.

And the same thing is happening today before our eyes - history repeats itself!

 

Well Paul if you have absolute incontrovertablw proof, go ahead and present it.We are willing to listen.

 

And I won't be able to prove anything until I can get my computer to spell better.

 

1) It does move.
2) It's all relative anyway.



HankD

 

There is a site which like Talk.origen discusses evolution and creation it is called True.Origen and it rebuts the arguements on talk.origens very well.
I just thought we should have access to this site in the interest of having balanced resources for our discussions.

 

That is a site I have spent much time at. I find it to be one of the best young earth websites.

One of the best things I can recommend, and something I love to do for different topics, is to read all that two opposing sources have to say on a topic. Contrasting Talk.Origins with True.Origins for example.

I'll give one example. Talk.Origins makes this easy because they often give links to YE web sites along with their discussion. Look at this page on entropy.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo.html

You will see links to True.Origins, ChristianAnswers.net, AnswersInGenesis.com, and ICR.com (Institute for Creation Research).

You will also find a long list of young earth resources there.

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/other-links-cre.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/other-links.html#creationism

So even if you are against the things that Talk.Origins have to say, you can still use it as a valuable resource. Use the search function for a given topic and I can almost guarantee that you will find links to things with which you will agree. You can then read both sides and decide for yourself.

 

It is a false choice in this subject,because the dichotomy is not berween the Word of God and tha word of the scientists, but between a scientific theory and your particular interpretation of the bible.

The mere fact you are reading and understnding a tet, any text, is in itself interpretation of that text. I never talked about a "story that isn't true"[/QUOTE][/qb]

I do not have any hidden agenda.

But this is a Baptist forum, we debate among believers.

Probably this is a catch 22 kind of question, if I say they are literal you will say I am not consistant in my biblical interpretation, if I say they are allegorical you will dismiss me a "liberal". But for your information, yes I believe that hell and Jesus' miracles are real.

But this is not how ancient sacred literature works, the issue of literary genres in the bible have been studied for many decades, a survey of the literature on this topic may help.

If for "that allegory" you mean Genesis, God doesn't need to include anything, but he decided to include it as part of his revelation to mankind. It helps us understand our relationship to our creator, the entrance of sin to the world, and our need for a redeemer.

Blessings.

Luis

 

Philip,

I would agree with Lchemist that it really isn't a choice between the words and the words of men (science).

The main reason that, while being a conservative Christian, I do not feel compelled to see Genesis 1-11 as literal is that the account has alot of features of ancient near eastern epic writing. Stories about creation, flood, towers, and people all speaking in one language are all represented in the literature of several other ancient near eastern societies. These parts of the Bible bear the marks that suggest that they are theological, and not literal, in their significance. On this point Marcia and I disagree significantly. Furthermore I think that the NT and most of the OT are fundamentally different in scope. The point about "why believe the gospels if you don't believe Genesis" is irrelevant because the Gospels WERE intended to be factual accounts and Genesis 1-11 was likely not.

It would be different if Genesis had said, "be ye not decieved, for God hath made the world in six days only, not little by little over the ages as man sayeth". But it didn't - largely because (I think) the particulars of how God did it are not the thrust of Genesis 1-11.

 

It also does not say"As a prelude to the chapters 1-1 that they are for entertainment value only".There is no disclaimer or qualifier.

 

It's neither a victory nor a defeat for either side of the debate, or, for that matter, any positions in between. It's simply a sampling of opinion. Just like a poll on calvinism vs arminianism, or on divorce and remarriage, or dating polcies at BJU.

The main problem with the topic is not peoples' opinions. Healthy and respectful discussion is what the board is all about. The main problem is the copious amount of questioning peoples' faith, salvation, and commitment to scripture based on varying views on the topic. You find the same thing on topics on election and KJVOism. It's certainly the main reason why I tend to steer clear of these topics as a rule. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

 

Were the Chaldeans a football team or what?

 

My comment about the questioning of peoples' faith, salvation, and commitment to scripture based on varying views on the topic has just been proven. DOesn't matter what side of the debate that kind of comment comes from.

 

I don't think it is a matter of reading biology first, but how do we deal with the data and theories and our interpretatiuo of nature and scripture. We are always making assumptions, but we should be aware of them and critically analyze them from time to time.

There is not a ruling "Science" in the abstract, but a community of scientists, and as such we do not have the tools to deal with the "supernatural"

If you are atheist you would probably support evolution, but the opposite is not true, the relationship between atheism and evolution is one way, and does not bear weight in our debate.

But I insist that the issue is overall, one of biblical interpretation

You are assuming a lot here.

But those observations don't prove anything about the origins.

God mentions it because it is true, He does what he does because he is Lord, and He wishes so.

Blessings,

Luis

 

But as Christians we nelieve that God inspired people to write his Word, it did not came straight from heaven as is the claim of the Quran.

Luis

 

There is the first assumption and the first problem. Saying something is "able to account" is no basis for saying that it did or that it excludes any other possibility... even those based on other presuppositions like a Creator.

 

Stranger than that He made a record of creation that He made to "look" as if it recorded actual events and people with significant detail that was apparently accepted by all subsequent biblical writers and characters as literal... but instead the proper interpretation was not possible until Darwin and Huxley attempted to propose a means for explaining creation without God? It was not possible until human wisdom overcame God's inability to express Himself clearly and factually to His people?

General revelation is completely subject to interpretation. Special revelation is much more direct and self-interpretting.

I asked a question before: Is scripture self-interpretting? If it is, what is the biblical case that Genesis is allegorical? What cross-references support this?

But you do not trust that God would not deceive believers for more than 4000 years by letting them believe that creation was a direct act by Him? Whether Genesis is allegorical or not, there is no indication that I know of that believers prior to the 20th century did not accept its events and characters as literal.

To answer your last response on the other thread, I don't have all the answers either... nor do I have control of billions of research dollars to have people with technical expertise come up with ideas of how to make everything within the framework I propose function... nor am I the beneficiary (or victim) of billions spent by someone else to support alternatives to evolution.

Things I am relatively certain of however include the fact that adaption does occur commonly by the loss of information, ie. a whale that perhaps used to have fully functional back legs wouldn't be left with internal stumps by the accumulation of new information.

I am certain that no creature acquires anything beyond the capabilities it inherited from its parents. We see animals adapt but not by becoming more complex than their ancestors.

From this, I believe it to be a completely reasonable conclusion that speciation occurred by the specialization of original animals with greater genetic flexibility than by the accumulation of new information and genetic capabilities from simple forms.