Should Christians Follow Evolution? Creationism vs. Evolution [Archive] - Page 5 - The Dancing Lawn

inkspot

09-20-2007, 11:56 AM

The scientific evidence for an old earth is overwhelming, and reputable scientists agree the universe, and earth, are billions of years old. I can cruise around the web and get and post the evidence here if you like, or you can just accept that in general the only scientists who believe the earth might be only thousands of years old are those whose religious convictions make them feel any older of an earth would conflict with the Bible. These scientists are not thought of as reputable in the larger scientific world -- simply because they appear to be denying ponderous evidence to the contrary.

So, the better question to begin with is: why is it necessary for your faith for you to believe in a young earth? Usually people say, "Because I believe the Bible is the literal Word of God." Good, I agree with that, too. And I believe when you actually understand the words of Genesis, you will find that it could -- literally -- allow for a period of billions of years to have slipped by during creation.

First ask yourself: is the creation story in Genesis a science and history book and must everything in it have happened in 6 literal days? Clearly not. If it were supposed to be read as a literal science/history book, then you would have to believe that all in one day, Adam was created, saw and named every animal in the world, and then Eve was created. That is the order in which these events happen in Genesis ... and yet if you believe it all happened in a literal 24-hour day, you are stretching believability to the max.

What if, in fact, these things did happen, in this order, but not all in one literal 24-hour day? What if the word used for "day" in the creation story -- "yom" in the Hebrew -- was a word which could be used sometimes to mean a much longer period of time than 24 literal hours? In other places in the Bible, we see the same word used to mean varying lengths of time, so it would make sense -- especially in light of the scientific evidence -- if the "days" of Genesis were much longer periods of time.

In this way, the creation story of Genesis would be perfectly true, and at the same time, the scientific evidence for an old earth need not be disputed against all odds.

There are many other ways of reconciling science and Scripture, and because both are showing us the way to Truth, you can rest assured that scientific "truth" will never undermine Scriptural Truth. In fact in the end, both must arrive at the same place.

Many true Christians believe the same -- CS Lewis and Billy Graham among them. Never fear, you can believe the Bible and still believe in Intelligent Design/Old Earth.

EveningStar

09-20-2007, 01:35 PM

Science is supposed to be a formal process of making observations FIRST and coming to conclusions SECOND. New Earth "Science" begins with a faith-based conclusion FIRST and hunts for observations to support it SECOND. That's not a dishonorable approach, and it may be very scholarly in nature, but it's not scientific.

I can use an example from the courtroom to make my point. You have been arrested for shooting a man down in the street. There were witnesses that say you did it, the slugs in the body are 44 and you own a 44 handgun. Also you were proven to have been in the area on the night of the murder, known the victim, and he owed you money and had been having an affair with your wife. SCIENCE is what the district attorney does when he argues that "The only logical conclusion is that THIS MAN shot Mr. Grainger down in cold blood." New Earth "Science" is what the defense attorney does when he starts asking the witnesses if they usually wore glasses and if they were wearing them on the night in question. And the only reason why it does any good is that the jury is told that if there is the "slightest possible reasonable doubt, you must acquit." But real science in the real world does not discard hypotheses and theories on the basis of the "slightest possible reasonable doubt," especially since we can't climb into our time machine and find out how old the Earth is by catching it on film.

inkspot

09-20-2007, 03:21 PM

Oh, good point, magister!
You are wise beyond the ways of badgers.

ramandu's_daughter

09-20-2007, 09:30 PM

My Sunday school teacher always taught that God was behing both plans, so that's what I think.
Maybe he did both.

And, (I listened to my mum on this one)
we shouldn't take the Bible literally,.

inkspot

09-21-2007, 10:25 AM

Wise decision, to listen to your Mum and your Sunday School teacher. Intelligent Design is the theory which suggests exactly what you say, that God may have used the mechanism of evolution to bring about the complexity and variety of life we have today.

Shadow Hawk

09-23-2007, 06:16 PM

Another thing, about dinosaurs. I was sure that I read somewhere that human footprints and dinosaur footprints had been found quite close to each other, in the same rock level, or whatever. So I believe that it's very possible that men and dinosaurs lived at the same time. I think that Job clearly describes two dinosaurs-one a huge, gentle herbivore (I think the Bible says that its tail was as thick as a tree trunk?) and one a water-dwelling creature.

Yes, there was a place where scientists found human and dino prints together. That was also in Texas. inkspot yes, there is..... However, there is also overwhelming evidence for a young earth.

Besides who are we to say this is whats right and thats wrong. I have seen the innocent put behind bars and sadly sometimes to death. I have seen the hate of others put people on the brink of dispair.... and eventually suicide. Einstein said in a letter "At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice." The most anyone can do is say "This is what I THINK is right" because ultimately each and every one of us could be wrong...... No matter how right you think you are.

Doffen

09-23-2007, 06:34 PM

However, there is also overwhelming evidence for a young earth.

Link please? What's the "overwhelming" evidence?

Shadow Hawk

09-23-2007, 06:37 PM

Mankind is feeble and weak. Our languages are inadequate our minds can't begin to understand science itself. I have searched for most of my life for reason how the Bible and God himself could be wrong. But in the end I had exhausted everything in the world..... From the beliefs of the Indians and the African natives...... all the way to the orient. Every place I turned I found I was at a dead end... Or God proved me wrong. After that I have found one of many things...... We(mankind) will always be in search of right and wrong as well as truth.

Honesty.... Can I ask some simple questions?? what is truth? where had it gone? what have we(mankind) done to it? Whats right? Whats wrong? and who are we to say?

@Doffen

www.drdino.com
www.answeringenesis.com

This is just two..... I've gtg now see ya'll later

Doffen

09-23-2007, 06:45 PM

www.drdino.com
www.answeringenesis.com

This is just two..... I've gtg now see ya'll later

....... Where's the proof? Honestly; one of the links you sent me was a search engine. If I do like you I could go like "Oh yeah, we have overwhelming evidence that evolution took place. Just look here: www.evolution.com" ... Or if I missed something, please redirect me.

Shadow Hawk

09-23-2007, 07:18 PM

sorry....... typo

www.answersingenesis.com

and in drdino download the movies.....

inkspot

09-24-2007, 11:02 AM

ShadowHawk, we have found earlier in this discussion that the "proofs" of Answers in Genesis are very easily shot down by the actual facts. Doffen, Shadow Hawk has posted extensively in the past and has been unable to sustain any of the proofs that the earth is young; the website he linked you to is a popular one with strict 6-day creationists, but its theories are not accepted by actual scientists who are not strict 6-day creationists. If you wander back through this thread, you will see any number of their assertions have already been debunked.

ShadowHawk, if you have some proof in mind, please state it here in your own words, rather than linking to it or copying an article about it. But I have little hope your proof of a young earth will be any more viable today than it has been in the past. :(

Shadow Hawk

09-24-2007, 05:46 PM

............................... nevermind........

I guess they're right... "Where ever you turn, you'll be turned away" looking for the answers is never easy is it?

*sighs*

Doffen

09-25-2007, 11:53 AM

............................... nevermind........

I guess they're right... "Where ever you turn, you'll be turned away" looking for the answers is never easy is it?

*sighs*

... What just happened?

You seem frustrated of our choise not believing you; even though you haven't given any sufficient evidence. Funny. "Sigh" as much as you want.

inkspot

09-26-2007, 12:42 PM

LOL. :)
ShadowHawk, you should take your own advice here: looking for answers is never easy, especially when you feel like what you discover may challenge your faith. But if you trip back through this thread, or visit a site like www.answersincreation.org, you will find that the idea of an old earth or intelligent design do not mean that you have to believe there is no God or stop believing in Genesis ... quite the opposite is true.

~Lava~

09-28-2007, 08:58 AM

inkspot

09-28-2007, 09:05 AM

I just don't see the difinitive proof either way. The Carbon-dating has shown to be in acurate before and so many factors to suggest that there could be other ways to interpret the fossil stratification, that there still remains to be found the missing link, etc. Also a good many theories from six-day creationists are easily shot down.

Therefore, unless definitive, beyond the shadow-of-doubt proof is made for either side I guess that I will be a anti-macroevolutionist, six-day creationist until I die. I am taking on faith that the Bible writers knew far better what they are talking about than we scientists in the here-and-now do. Faith, that is really all anyone has got right now, no matter how much science plays into the mix.
If you read back through this thread, you will see that Old Earth/Intelligent Design Christians believe the Bible is literally true. There is no conflict between the Genesis story and the idea of Old Earth/Intelligent Design.

You do not have to "choose" between the Bible, which is true, and the science which is credible: there is scientific proof of the age of the universe, and nothing in the Bible denies that.

~Lava~

09-28-2007, 10:20 AM

Inky, I do not wish to sound disrespectful but I have been fed every line that the evolutionists can think of to capture the poor doubters who go to public college and I saw holes in the theories.

I do not say that one cannot believe in the Bible infallibility and still believe that Evolution occurs nor would I ever say that; I say that I personally believe that the account of six days for creation is completely true, not just symbolic. I do not ask people to take my belief, I do not try to push it on people. Nor do I necessarily believe that the world is only 6000 yo. I think that there is no way to determine how many years past in between the creation of the world and Moses. First off, they did not have the Gregorian Calender back then so the years in the early bible may have included much more time than our years do now. Secondly, there are gaps of time in Genesis that are not given specific year amounts.

I do not see the necessity to jump on the Evolution band wagon just because there is some evidence that the world is older than Bible scholars would suggest.

inkspot

09-28-2007, 11:27 AM

No, I am not encouraging you to jump on any bandwagon, but to look at the facts and the Bible. If you would like please tell me some of what you are referencing here:
I have been fed every line that the evolutionists can think of to capture the poor doubters who go to public college and I saw holes in the theories.
And I will see what the "lines" are that you're talking about ... for myself, what I see is scientific evidence for an old earth, and nothing in the Bible which compels a person to read "six literal days" of creation.

You do see, though, don't you, that the very way you phrase your assertion ("every line," "poor doubters") makes it clear that you are far from objective on the subject? Perhaps no one is, but at least I am not averring that your beliefs are just "lines" to trap people, or that anyone who believes as you do is some "poor doubter," etc...

EveningStar

09-28-2007, 12:21 PM

People used to believe there was no force of gravity but that God assigned to everything "placeness" such that fire always went up and rain always went down to find its assigned place. I suppose when gravity was proposed as a physical force like electricity that it appeared we were trying to take credit away from God by assigning this function to a physical force of nature, forgetting of course that God made the physical forces of nature.

Since God has infinite power and infinite knowledge, we must acknowedge once and for all that ALL ways of making rain fall down and fire rise up are no more and no less exact, difficult, time consuming or complex. They aren't HARDER different or EASIER different, but merely DIFFERENT different. If I asked you to pick a number between one and ten and you said TEN would that be twice as hard as picking FIVE? See, that's precisely my point. Assigning falling fruit to gravity does not lowball God. The same thing might be said about evolution. It isn't harder different or easier different, but just DIFFERENT.

Ascribing change to evolution, and evolution to God is not insulting God in the least. If my sister showed up at my house and I thought she took the highway but she took the backroads instead, is that an insult to her? The important thing is that she wanted to see me and she showed up.

~Lava~

09-28-2007, 12:39 PM

Inky, you would have understand the teacher to understand the comment, my Bio Lab teacher is someone I would definitely want to forget. His sole purpose in life seems to be endoctrinating people and sullying the good names of people. Other than being particularly spiteful to the teacher I meant nothing by the remark.

It really seems like I cannot post on this topic without sticking my foot in my mouth in some manner or form (either offending someone, sighting stuff that I did not research enough, or both at the same time) so I think that I will cease to come to this thread again.

inkspot

09-28-2007, 12:41 PM

Ascribing change to evolution, and evolution to God is not insulting God in the least. If my sister showed up at my house and I thought she took the highway but she took the backroads instead, is that an insult to her? The important thing is that she wanted to see me and she showed up.
Very nice, magister. :) Thanks.
It really seems like I cannot post on this topic without sticking my foot in my mouth in some manner or form (either offending someone, sighting stuff that I did not research enough, or both at the same time) so I think that I will cease to come to this thread again.
You are welcome in the thread any time. I just thought it might be helpful if I knew what, in particular, you found to be so faulty in the idea of an Old Earth or Intelligent Design. If it is just that you believe Genesis compels you to believe in 6 literal 24-hour days of creation, I only wanted you to know, it doesn't. Lots of believers, like CS Lewis and Billy Graham, think that creation could have taken much longer. That's all. :)

waterhogboy

10-03-2007, 10:24 AM

I personally believe in the literal 6 days. I know that makes me odd these days, but I think if God could do it - why shouldn't he. Plus, I've spoken alot with a Creationist scientist from my church (who's actually mentioned in Dawkin's God Delusion book... rather offensively) and he's shown me just how scientifically probable it is too.

However, don't get me wrong. I've got no problem with it taking longer too. But I cannot believe in macro-evolution at all - I think in any sense it's non-biblical

~Lava~

10-03-2007, 10:43 PM

You are welcome in the thread any time. I just thought it might be helpful if I knew what, in particular, you found to be so faulty in the idea of an Old Earth or Intelligent Design. If it is just that you believe Genesis compels you to believe in 6 literal 24-hour days of creation, I only wanted you to know, it doesn't. Lots of believers, like CS Lewis and Billy Graham, think that creation could have taken much longer. That's all. :)

Really, I do not see Intelligent Design as being at odds with Genesis. I just do not think that that is exactly how it happened.

I personally believe in the literal 6 days. I know that makes me odd these days, but I think if God could do it - why shouldn't he. Plus, I've spoken alot with a Creationist scientist from my church (who's actually mentioned in Dawkin's God Delusion book... rather offensively) and he's shown me just how scientifically probable it is too.

However, don't get me wrong. I've got no problem with it taking longer too. But I cannot believe in macro-evolution at all - I think in any sense it's non-biblical

This is exactly my position. I may not have the scientist friend, but this is the conclusion I have come to.

inkspot

10-09-2007, 12:12 PM

The science is untenable, though. Anyone with any standing at all in the broader scientific community understands the relative ages of the universe and the earth, in the billions of years. It is scientifically impossible that the entire universe could have been created in 6 days, a few thousand years ago. For one thing, there are stars so far from us that it has taken their light millions of years to reach us ... if the universe is young, how is this possible? There is much more.

But this does not mean Genesis is untrue, merely that Genesis did not refer to 6 literal, 24-hour days. The same word for "day" used in Genesis is used elsewhere in the Bible to mean a much longer period of time, so why should that not be the case here?

The issue has no bearing on our salvation, but the problem comes when Christians insist you must believe in a literal 6-day creation or you can't believe the Bible. Then people who understand the science feel like the Bible must not be true. :(

Shadow Hawk

10-09-2007, 05:40 PM

Excuse me for asking but how is it immposible?? :confused:

inkspot

10-09-2007, 05:44 PM

Just as a for instance ...
It is scientifically impossible that the entire universe could have been created in 6 days, a few thousand years ago. For one thing, there are stars so far from us that it has taken their light millions of years to reach us ... if the universe is young, how is this possible?

Catherine

10-09-2007, 06:48 PM

~Lava~

10-09-2007, 07:51 PM

To quote a movie that I really like: "You tell me...What is impossible with God?"~Facing the Giants, Mrs. Taylor

Sir Benjamin the Lion

10-10-2007, 08:50 AM

Yes, but there is much else stuff in science that contridicts the bible as well. For instance Lucy. I'm assuming u know who Lucy is, but for those of u who may not, she is the skeleton of "a human like creature that lived millions of years ago" which goes along with the theory that humans evolved over millions of years. But God didn't create human like creatures that evolved into humans. He created humans.

Just so you know, Lucy is made up of bones found miles apart from each other. And the bones they found for lucy, well, if you can call them bones, are so few that you can't tell it was lucy to begin with!

~Lava~

10-10-2007, 09:12 AM

Ben, a lot of those stories cannot be prooved as many people pointed out to me when I tried to use that evidence a while back. It has not changed my position at all on things, but the stories are unproovable and therefore bad evidence

Shadow Hawk

10-10-2007, 09:25 AM

Just as a for instance ...

ok...... I going to show you a couple of pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

http://i23.tinypic.com/20kobae.jpg

http://i24.tinypic.com/15pltsl.jpg

These are not stars....... they're complete galaxies. billion of light years away. Based off of what you can see..... would it not be logical to assume that there are more galaxies past the ones we can see?

look at it this way........ My brother gets up at 6:00 am. At the same time light ray starts out from the sun. About 8 minutes later he outside getting the newspaper.At that time the ray of light that started at 6:00 now arrives about at 6:08.

Your not looking back in time. You are seeing the "source" of light in real time.... However you are seeing the light ray/waves that started out at the star much delayed.

If the universe's age was based on how big it is..... Then as we(mankind) could "see" farther and farther into space the age of the universe would increase for each and every light year added.

Here's something for you D.O.T.U(is equal to or less than) infinity ;)
D.O.T.U = the dimentions of the universe

Elendil

10-10-2007, 09:33 AM

err.............looks kind of confused...........

inkspot

10-10-2007, 11:25 AM

Just so you know, Lucy is made up of bones found miles apart from each other. And the bones they found for lucy, well, if you can call them bones, are so few that you can't tell it was lucy to begin with!
This is untrue. It has been published as truth by anti-evolution/Christian organizations, but it is a lie. Lucy's bones were not found miles apart; she's a real old proto-human/creature. It is a shame on the integrity of the Christian organizations that they have perpetuated this mis-information about her bones/knee.
Yes, but there is much else stuff in science that contridicts the bible as well. For instance Lucy. I'm assuming u know who Lucy is, but for those of u who may not, she is the skeleton of "a human like creature that lived millions of years ago" which goes along with the theory that humans evolved over millions of years. But God didn't create human like creatures that evolved into humans. He created humans.
We know from Genesis that when God breathed His Spirit into Adam, he became conscious. We do not know what stages the creation of this human Adam took -- it is imminently possible, and seems probable and has been acknowledged as within the realm of possibility by real Christians such as CS Lewis and Bill Graham that before the consciousness of Adam, there was an evolution of Lucy-type people as God perfected the body He intended for humanity. This is not anti-biblical, especially when you consider the "days" of Genesis could have been millions of years long.

SH, you tried your light years reasoning earlier in this thread, and it made no more sense then than it does now. Even the Answers in Genesis people admit that there is no explanation for how the light from stars millions of light-years away reaches us if the universe is only 6,000 years old, as the Young Earth contingent insists. It is impossible. Answers in Genesis says an explanation will be discovered ... I think it already has been: the universe is 14 billion years old.

EveningStar

10-10-2007, 01:24 PM

I've never been as concerned about how we got here as in what we should be doing now that we've arrived.

I believe that a person who believes in and follows Jesus is in no more danger from being GENUINELY MISTAKEN about the origin of species than from being GENUINELY MISTAKEN about the atomic weight of Molybendum. After all, God is responsible for the existance of Molybendum too!

I think everyone in this whole thread believes that God sits upon the throne, that without God there would be no life on Earth, much less an Earth to begin with, and that we owe God our ultimate allegiance. Nothing quoted by either side gives me any reason to believe that some of us are more than MISTAKEN. And mistakes in Natural History are not sins, lest we imagine all the "flat earth" believers of the medieval era are in Hell now along with those who thought dragons ruled the North Atlantic.

This is an interesting discussion, but let us never couch it in terms of "life or death".

~Lava~

10-10-2007, 01:32 PM

Again, if you take God out of the equation it is impossible for the galaxies and stars to be billions of lightyears away, yet still shine on a 6000 year old earth. But God can do anything, if he really wanted to, he could sit there and make Pluto larger and put a tenth planet into our solar system just for fun.

I do not think the earth is exactly 6000 years old, I think it could be much older than that and yet still have a literal six day creation. We have no idea how long a generation was back in Adam's day, in fact we know that our system of years is not at all what they had back then. I do not see why people of faith are so willing to say that God operates outside of the constraints of time, and yet are unwilling to say that God can operate outside of the man-made rules of science.

I know it works both ways here, both groups wish to put their constraints on God because they cannot fathom the immence powers of God.

EveningStar

10-10-2007, 01:49 PM

I put no constraints on the vastness of God. However I am willing to bet that God never does anything simply because he can. At least I HOPE not. I'm sure God could make a three headed pig or a baby that spits fire and brimstone at people. He could make water boil at 20 degrees and invent poisonous cucumbers. The fact that he hasn't should tell you something. Obviously God has his standards, as we all do, of what is reasonable, just, and socially acceptable. And the only reason God would have to force us to see distant galaxies against natural law is to fool us into believing the universe was older than it is. Some people might believe God tries to make the universe NOT make common sense, planting fossils to throw us off the track and whatnot, but that would be a God that actively discourages people from achieving salvation through deception, and I cannot buy into that.

Ultimately we must consider what purpose all those incredibly distant objects serve. Have we considered even for a moment that those objects were NOT MADE FOR US but serve a DIFFERENT PURPOSE? What if there ARE other worlds like Narnia...who is to say they must be in different DIMENSIONS with their own separate time, and not be scattered throughout the universe which is more than large enough to hold them and keep them separate?

I believe God has a plan for us and we should seek our place in that plan. However I believe God has lots of plans that don't involve us.

Shadow Hawk

10-10-2007, 02:27 PM

SH, you tried your light years reasoning earlier in this thread, and it made no more sense then than it does now. Even the Answers in Genesis people admit that there is no explanation for how the light from stars millions of light-years away reaches us if the universe is only 6,000 years old, as the Young Earth contingent insists. It is impossible. Answers in Genesis says an explanation will be discovered ... I think it already has been: the universe is 14 billion years old.

ummm..........

Let me put it this way then............... light travels at about 300,000kps or 186,000mps. One light year is equal to 9,460,730,472,580.8 km or 5,878,625,373,183.61 miles (according to the Julian year). Now comes the fun part......(well... to some its not but:p)

based on the pictures above there are Galaxies as far as the eye can see. It is logical to assume that they're are more beyond what we can see.

so if there is a galaxy 14.9 billion light years away............
14,900,000,000 x 5,878,625,373,183.61 = 87,591,518,066,789,000,000miles
87,591,518,066,789,000,000miles / 186,000 = 470,922,140,144,026.88172043010752688 < thats seconds
78,48,702,335,733.7813620071684587814 < minutes
130,811,705,595.56302270011947431302 < hours
5,450,487,733.1484592791716447630426 <days
14,932,843.104516326792251081542583 years

now lets bump it up just alittle..........
Now there is a galaxy 181.7billion light years away.............
181,700,000,000 x 5,878,625,373,183.61 = 1,068,146,230,307,461,937,000,000 miles
1,068,146,230,307,461,937,000,000 miles/ 186,000 =
5,742,721,668,319,687,833.3333333333333 < seconds
95,712,027,805,328,130.555555555555556 < minutes
1,595,200,463,422,135.5092592592592593 < hours
66,466,685,975,922.312885802469135802 < days
182,100,509,523.07482982411635379672 < years

You can redo the math........ if you want. But no matter what you do or anyone else does..... It does not mean the light from those star/galaxies have reached us. the earth could be 6,000 years old..... it could be 10,000 years old............... you come to your believe by taking the fact and coming up with a conclusion. Weither its right or wrong is not up to us to decide. The most we can do as human being is say THIS is what I THINK is right.

inkspot

10-10-2007, 02:57 PM

I think everyone in this whole thread believes that God sits upon the throne, that without God there would be no life on Earth, much less an Earth to begin with, and that we owe God our ultimate allegiance. Nothing quoted by either side gives me any reason to believe that some of us are more than MISTAKEN. And mistakes in Natural History are not sins, lest we imagine all the "flat earth" believers of the medieval era are in Hell now along with those who thought dragons ruled the North Atlantic.

This is an interesting discussion, but let us never couch it in terms of "life or death".
I totally agree with John here: it is not a salvation issue at all. What I dislike is the prominent evangelicals and whole "Christian" organizations try to make it one. Many anti-evolution, anti-Old Earth groups and their publications make children believe if they do not believe in a literal 6-day creation, then they cannot believe in the Bible. Clearly, as CS Lewis, Billy Graham and I prove, this is not true.

When a Young Earth group tries to force intelligent people to believe the earth is no more than 10,000 years old or else they cannot believe in Jesus, it makes those intelligent people feel, oh well, they cannot believe in Jesus ... which is wrong. This should not be framed as a make-it-or-break-it issue.
Again, if you take God out of the equation it is impossible for the galaxies and stars to be billions of lightyears away, yet still shine on a 6000 year old earth. But God can do anything, if he really wanted to, he could sit there and make Pluto larger and put a tenth planet into our solar system just for fun... I do not see why people of faith are so willing to say that God operates outside of the constraints of time, and yet are unwilling to say that God can operate outside of the man-made rules of science.
Obviously God has his standards, as we all do, of what is reasonable, just, and socially acceptable. And the only reason God would have to force us to see distant galaxies against natural law is to fool us into believing the universe was older than it is. Some people might believe God tries to make the universe NOT make common sense, planting fossils to throw us off the track and whatnot, but that would be a God that actively discourages people from achieving salvation through deception, and I cannot buy into that.
Quite right. Again John has hit on the truth here: why would God deliberately try to fool people He had created to be intelligent and curious? He would not. If you are going to say the science appears to give a true picture, but God has stepped in to make the science lie ... then you are saying that God, if not lying, is at least trying to deceive us. I do not think God would to this.
I do not think the earth is exactly 6000 years old, I think it could be much older than that and yet still have a literal six day creation.
But the basis of the literal 6-day creation is that in six 24-hour days God created, not just the earth, but the entire universe ("God created the heavens and the earth") and rapidly developed all the plants, animals and people. If this happened in 6 days time, then those planets so far away that it has taken their light millions of years to get here were actually created at the same moment as the earth -- and yet the science does not bear this out. They are much older, based on the time it has taken for their light to arrive and the geology of this earth. If you believe in an old earth, as the science suggests, then the idea of a literal 6-day creation is not an option for you, is it?

Again, Shadow Hawk, your science just does not make any sense in this argument. Don't you think, if there were a viable explanation for the elapsed time between our seeing the light of distant galaxies, that prominent Young Earth groups such as Answers in Genesis would have gladly latched onto it? Yet they have not, because it makes no sense what you say. Or, if you think it does make sense, then you should alert them, because they have publicly admitted that they have no explanation for it.

EveningStar

10-10-2007, 04:03 PM

For the sake of playing Devil's advocate (deliberately snide choice of terminology...;) ) if God made the stars ten billion years before he made the Earth, he could have made it YESTERDAY and we would be seeing starlight that took ten billion years to reach the spot where the Earth EVENTUALLY WOULD BE.

But that's just plain silly. :p

inkspot

10-10-2007, 04:27 PM

waterhogboy

10-11-2007, 11:05 AM

Sorry Inky and ES. Although I agree with you both that this isn't a salvation issue and anyone who tries to say you can't be saved if you don't believe in a literal 6-day creation is wrong, I'm afraid I disagree with just about everything else.

There is SO much evidence against evolution and the old world theory and for a young world creationist theory. You're making out that Creationists are just blind fools that make things up just so it fits with their interpretation of the Bible, but this is totally wrong. Admittedly, there are also things that Creationist scientists cannot explain, but it's the same on both sides, so you're wrong to say that Evolution and old world MUST be true.

inkspot

10-11-2007, 11:26 AM

Jonny, I love you so.

But if you objectively investigate the claims of the Young Earth folks without the mindset that it must be true in order for the Bible to be true, you will find their theories are a house of cards, scientifically.

Please feel free to state any of them here -- a lot of them have already been covered back in the earlier pages of the thread, but we can go over them again. One good resource I have found for refuting the Young Earth viewpoint is
www.answersincreation.org.
They have outlined many Young Earth positions and lined them up with the actual science, which was quite enlightening.
:)

Again, this is not a deal-breaker when it comes to faith, but the problem is the whole movement which uses bad science to make kids think they have to believe in a Young Earth or else they can't believe in the Bible.

EveningStar

10-11-2007, 01:08 PM

Once you try to force people to stake belief in the Bible "AT ALL" on unconditional acceptance of a Young Earth and all its other "scientific" assertions, you have to be ready to defend the following points:

1) The Earth is Flat. Get over it. Yuri Gagarin never circled it because it's NOT round. Columbus also made a grave error or just outright lied. You really CAN go to the four corners of the Earth to spread the Gospel. Yeah...the Northeast Pole, the Southeast Pole, the Northwest Pole and the Southwest Pole.... Get out the parkas and sled dogs to fulfil the Great Commission literally. I always wondered if they were striped like barber poles or if, like flagpoles in winter, your tongue would stick to them if you licked one.

2) The Sun and Moon revolve around the Earth, as do all the stars. If you don't think so, stand outside one night. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. They all move from over here to out yonder. Left to right unless you're facing the wrong way.

3) No one can ever know the depth of the sea (Says so in Proverbs!). The bathyscaphe expedition to the Marianas Trench was fake like the Apollo Moon Shots (see 2) and who ever heard of a man named Auguste Picard anyway?

4) Rainbows never existed before the Great Flood. And it never rained before the Great Flood. Not once. At all. Probably didn't snow either.

5) Somehow (because they are still HERE...duh!) all the animals of North, Central and South America must have made it aboard the ark. This includes polar bears, emperor penguins and kangaroos. We mustn't forget the kangaroos....

And you wonder why I think the Earth is older than 6000 years, despite the "overwhelming evidence" to the contrary??

I wrote this in a jovial (though honest) mood without malice or the desire to humiliate...beyond a certain fair-game point that is. I care about all of you as friends, but frankly I don't see eye-to-eye on everything with all of you, and somehow I think God's OK with that...for both sides.

inkspot

10-11-2007, 02:43 PM

It's a good point, though. Why insist on a literal 6-day creation of 24 hours days (or else you can't believe the Bible!!!!) and then not insist on a literal interpretation of these other figurative verses?

I know our Jonny does not insist that you must believe in 6 literal 24-hour days of creation in order to believe the Bible, so that is not an issue for him, but it certainly is for organizations like Answers in Genesis.

What I was wondering, or challenging anyone who believes there is scientific evidence for a Young Earth to do is, explain it here and see if it actually holds up. We've debunked a bunch of the usual ones already in this thread.

Not that this is a thread about debunking Young Earth. It is about evolution and creation, and I think that you can believe in both without losing your religion. :)

Shadow Hawk

10-11-2007, 09:13 PM

I don't know why you can't get or grasp the idea.... thats is using basic mathematics(only with slightly larger numbers;)) and common knowledge (ie: distance and time conversions)

ma'am I'm not saying you have to believe this or that....... I defended my belief. When I pointed something out or asked questions some were 1) avoided or 2) you redirrected it to a different point. So in my eyes you have yet to answer them. most of the arguement on stars I can completely destroy doing simple math.

ES....... Most of proverbs and the bible for that matter is advise or literary similes terms used like in the parables that Jesus used when talking to the crowd or disciples. If you really look at the bible it really saying do this this will most likely happen. In the case of Genesis the is recounted events that happened in the past (Ie; history). the bible is a mix of all subjects from science to philosophy. The book of Job doesn't go "He had to do this" it more or less goes "He chose to do this and this was the result of that choice". The Bible in most cases in proverbs and job and a few others is saying that your choice will either have a reward or punishment for that choice.

Inkspot...... you may look at it that way but Jesus used figurative/literal similes in and when talking to people. Its like the professor at a college giving them an example of a virus(using Star Wars as his basis) making sure he drove the idea home. The Bible does not say believe(it the bible) this way or that way. It is what people wrote down or said when inspired by God/Holy spirit. How you or anyone takes what the Bible say is entirely up to you..... You can believe what you wish. It is like taking the facts(the things that are true.... the world,universe and so on) you choose what you believe based on the conclusion you come up with....

Malacandra

10-12-2007, 11:13 AM

I believe that a person who believes in and follows Jesus is in no more danger from being GENUINELY MISTAKEN about the origin of species than from being GENUINELY MISTAKEN about the atomic weight of Molybendum. After all, God is responsible for the existance of Molybendum too!

True, but God who sometimes permits us to stumble, that we may learn the humility which is proper in dealing with Him, may allow the genuine believer to mis-spell Molybdenum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdenum). :p

most of the arguement on stars I can completely destroy doing simple math.

Go ahead. Make my day. For a start you can explain why it is that when you begin with the number 181,700,000,000, multiply it by something, and then divide a few times until you've supposedly got back where you started, you arrive at 182,100,509,523.07482982411635379672. Also, beginning with a number with four-significant-digit accuracy and ending up with a number with 32-significant-digit accuracy is mathematically nonsensical. But I am willing to see you try. I think you're saying that if there are any stars that are 181.7 billion light-years away then we haven't seen them yet, and so we've no idea whether they're there or not; but I'm not sure what you're trying to establish with this argument.

EveningStar

10-12-2007, 11:27 AM

inkspot

10-12-2007, 11:52 AM

In Genesis God speaks to us as if we were children. One moment he tells us that Mommy is on a plane, which is like a big bird that carries people through the sky. The next he tells us that Lunch will be ready at 12:00 and we'd better have our hands clean by then if we're going to eat. And this makes sense when talking with a child...or with a childlike society.
Nice explanation, John. Even a child could understand it ...

I honestly believe that the only reason Genesis Chapter 1 is in the Bible is to establish God's right to tell us what to do. He devoted the rest of Genesis to explain why the world is in the mess it is...that we did it...and what he plans to do about it. It is not a scientific textbook but an indictment setting forth God's case that we were under the law and, having sinned, fallen short of it.
Can't help agreeing, again.
True, but God who sometimes permits us to stumble, that we may learn the humility which is proper in dealing with Him, may allow the genuine believer to mis-spell Molybdenum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdenum). :p

LOL, always a smile when Doug chimes in. :)
I don't know why you can't get or grasp the idea.... thats is using basic mathematics(only with slightly larger numbers;)) and common knowledge (ie: distance and time conversions)
seems to beg the question ...
For a start you can explain why it is that when you begin with the number 181,700,000,000, multiply it by something, and then divide a few times until you've supposedly got back where you started, you arrive at 182,100,509,523.07482982411635379672.
most of the arguement on stars I can completely destroy doing simple math.
apparently not ...
Also, beginning with a number with four-significant-digit accuracy and ending up with a number with 32-significant-digit accuracy is mathematically nonsensical ... I think you're saying that if there are any stars that are 181.7 billion light-years away then we haven't seen them yet, and so we've no idea whether they're there or not; but I'm not sure what you're trying to establish with this argument.

I defended my belief. When I pointed something out or asked questions some were 1) avoided or 2) you redirrected it to a different point. So in my eyes you have yet to answer them.
I agree here. Your arguments were so confusing, or inaccessible, or as Malacandra pointed out, nonsensical, that the only kind thing to do was ignore them. The Bible says it's best not to answer a person when the only answer you can give would be folly ...

Jesus used figurative/literal similes in and when talking to people. Its like the professor at a college giving them an example of a virus(using Star Wars as his basis) making sure he drove the idea home. The Bible does not say believe(it the bible) this way or that way. It is what people wrote down or said when inspired by God/Holy spirit.
Agreed. :)

Lady Badger

10-13-2007, 03:59 PM

a distinctive explanation--never heard it put like that before--interesting!--gotta chew on that for a bit...

Lady Badger

10-14-2007, 07:06 PM

waterhogboy

10-15-2007, 06:27 PM

Shadow Hawk

10-16-2007, 08:12 AM

Respectfully, Shadow Hawk, one is not allowed to pick and choose within the first chapter of Genesis that the hanging of the sun and moon in the sky is just an expression while the six days of creation are literal. God did not publish Cliff Notes to point out what does and doesn't adhere to laboratory standards.

Sir....... Are you saying that one cannot choose what something means? or one cannot choose to think something means this or that?(because isn't that what you just did?) The true meaning of a work of art or writing(book) will always make sense to the author(ie: its meaning). The reader will read his writting and say "oh, so this is what he means". But in reality he can only say this is what I think he means. He choose what he thinks it means.... One simply cannot say this is right for a fact when he/she did not right the book or paper.

@ Malacandra are you an actual engineer? If so what level of math?because if you are... You of everyone here should be able to find the mistake I deliberately made in those equations reasoning that most people would spot that mistake( I guess I was wrong). Also a light year is a distance covered in one year..

Since your the engineer I'll let you do this.................. So if you start out with 181.7 billion light years and you multiply it by the distance now you divide it... but your going to tell me by what.

@Inkspot where does the Bible say that? could you give a verses perhaps? because from what I understand you give an answer to the best of your knowledge...... is that folly?

Btw Inkspot your doing exactly the same thing. You are giving an answer based off what you know.... and you THINK its right. If I'm committing folly arn't you?(sry about the grammer its common in Texas;))

Now, I'm withdrawing from this debate...... but, I pray that God will lead your heart in making the right decisions and that He will bess you for the time you've lived and the time you've yet to live.

If you can answer that question I might rejoin....... but only if.

inkspot

10-16-2007, 01:35 PM

:)Ok, just to clarify - I think Inky understands but I'm just makeing this clear. I believe in a Young World, literal 6 day creation. But, I agree with Inky, ES and PK that this is not a salvation issue, so as I discuss it here, its simply in an academic discussion, not whether we need to belive it as Christians.

Right, Inky said I've missed alot and I can only apologise if I bring p old points. Just beat me if I do!! But one major falw I see in the old world theory is that death must have existed before the fall. Also natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes, which I believe to be a result of the fall, how can they be explained otherwise. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts - cheers guys!!!
For me, I do not think there was no physical death before the Fall of Man. I think the business in the Garden of Eden resulted in a kind of spiritual death: the potential to spend eternity without God. But it does not make sense that there was no death of any kind before the Fall, because God created all those animals, and many of them were carnivores, and what were they eating before the Fall? And I don't think volcanos and floods and things were the result of sin; they are just natural events, so I think they existed before the Fall of Man, too.

EveningStar

10-16-2007, 02:44 PM

I too find it highly unlikely that death--in any form for any creature period--would only occur after the fall of man.

Carnivores (as Inky pointed out) are designed for killing. And the carefully crafted balance of nature among producers, consumers, predators and scavengers would imply that nature became MORE COMPLEX AND ORDERLY rather than less so as the result of sin. Sin, as you know, has a degrading effect, not an improving effect. So the idea that nature took on a breathtaking complexity that created complex mutual dependencies among living things because man screwed up is...ahem...highly unlikely.

It would also indicate that God was punishing animals for mankind's sin.

lieke

10-16-2007, 02:52 PM

Nice discussion on here, before i join in i would like to say that i too don't think that it is a salvation issue, and also i don't think that it matters very much, but i like the subject, so:).

-----------------

For me, I do not think there was no physical death before the Fall of Man. I think the business in the Garden of Eden resulted in a kind of spiritual death: the potential to spend eternity without God. But it does not make sense that there was no death of any kind before the Fall, because God created all those animals, and many of them were carnivores, and what were they eating before the Fall? And I don't think volcanos and floods and things were the result of sin; they are just natural events, so I think they existed before the Fall of Man, too.
I disagree with you on this. In Revelation 21 there is said: "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

And it is also said in Isaijah 11:
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.

Most of the animals mentioned here are carnivors, and therefore would not be able to live like that: without eating each other. Yet the bible sais that they will some day. If they will live like that someday it isn't hard for me to believe that they have done it somewhere in the past too. And i do think that death was the horrible thing about sinn coming into the world, next to not being in a good relationship with God anymore.

------------------------

Then for the prove against evolution, i'm not an expert for sure, but this is something that i would like to share with you (note: my english is not great, but when it comes to 'terms' i have to translate it is just very sad, so i hope you will all understand it).

If you believe in evolution, than you believe that the life on earth began with just one cell, and out of that one all the life came into being.

Something that could be used to make evolution very improbably is the so-called Cytochrome C (or maybe in English: Cytochrome P450, i think it's the same, i'm not sure though). Cytochrome C is a endosperm (?) which is nessesary for breathing, it is in the cells of all plants and animals. Scientist have examined this thing, and the order and number of the amino acids (?) are known exactly.

Normally the order in which the amino acids are set differs between two living things. But some differ more from each other than others. For example: a horse differs about 6% from a dog, a horse differs about 11% from a turtle, a horse differs about 22% from a little fly, etc. It seems that the difference in the amino acids become bigger when the living things differ more in looks (fenotype).

But... (here it goes:D): if you look at the Cytochrome C from an early bactery and compare it to other living creatures the differences are almost exactly the same. A bactery differs about 65% from a fish, a bug, a plant, a mammal (?), etc. (all living things, that are 'higher' in the evolution process as that one bactery).

If evolution is about going from one sort of living thing to another form of a living thing, then this is where it goes wrong. There can't be a single 'in-between-form' between that early bactery and the later animals, because the difference between that bactery and all the oter forms of life is always around 65%. Then you can say that there never was an evolution from a bactery to a fish/plant/human/etc.

(Also: the differences between all the mammals and all the non-mammals appear to be equally big. There are no in-between-forms found).

Conclusion: the differences between all the members of one group compared to another group are always as big. Nowhere in-between-forms can be or have been found, it makes evolution very improbable.

(note: this doesn't only count for the cytochrome C, but also for other endosperms, and for the DNA).

Well, you wanted something biological/scientific, i hope some of it made sense :o.

------------------------

And one other thing: saying that all the science things prove that there must have been an evolution isn't enough for me yet, because i think there is one thing we forget. Iif God wanted to do it, He could have made the earth in 6 days, and still make it seem like it had been there for centuries. I don't know why He would do that, but God could have created the earth in 6 days, no matter what 'proof' scientist of now find against it:D.

EveningStar

10-16-2007, 02:59 PM

Actually God COULD have created the Earth in six SECONDS. I don't think he did, but I'm sure if he wanted to he could.

Matter of factly, humans COULD have been programmed to become mature in only ten years rather than 18, but we're not. God could have had the Israelites march around the walls of Jericho ONLY ONCE but he didn't. And Jesus COULD have risen after ONE day in the grave but he took three. Just because God CAN do something is no proof he WILL.

Because God is all powerful and all knowing, a six second creation IS NOT HARDER than a six day creation or a six year creation or a six millenium creation or a six billion year creation. They are all equally difficult, equally simple. He picked whatever time he did because it seemed best. And I think the leisurely process was chosen for a reason.

lieke

10-16-2007, 03:05 PM

Actually God COULD have created the Earth in six SECONDS. I don't think he did, but I'm sure if he wanted to he could.

Matter of factly, humans COULD have been programmed to become mature in only ten years rather than 18, but we're not. God could have had the Israelites march around the walls of Jericho ONLY ONCE but he didn't. And Jesus COULD have risen after ONE day in the grave but he took three. Just because God CAN do something is no proof he WILL.
I didn't say it was any kind of proof at all, because i know it isn't, the one and only point i was trying to make with that part of my post was that even though everything points to it that God didn't do something, it doesn't mean that he actually didn't do it. ;) (it wasn't meant as proof, just as a thought).

For instance, I'm as sure as I can be that God can send me on a three week cruise to the Bahamas, but I think it unlikely he will.
unfortunately:p

inkspot

10-16-2007, 03:52 PM

I disagree with you on this. In Revelation 21 there is said: "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
The old order of things seems to have been that lions ate lambs, etc. How does this imply that there was a time in earth history when lions were herbivores? Actually it seems more strongly to imply that the old order on earth was always life feeding on death ... and do you think there was then a second "creation" after the Fall of Man when all the death eaters were created? There is no support for that.

And i do think that death was the horrible thing about sinn coming into the world, next to not being in a good relationship with God anymore.
So you think that God intended all people to live forever in these human bodies? But that is not what happens to us, even when we are united with Christ: we have new, resurrection bodies. It would seem then, that in order to get the new, resurrection bodies (according to your theology), it was worth it for Adam to sin and bring about death ... otherwise we would be stuck forever in these human bodies ... But I do not see that it says any of this in scripture.

If you believe in evolution, than you believe that the life on earth began with just one cell, and out of that one all the life came into being.
Just for clarification, most of us in this thread who allow that evolution could be the means by which God perfected life on earth (and this would include CS Lewis and Billy Graham, etc.), we believe God created everything and may have done it through a process which could be termed evolution, building one thing upon another so that each species evolved to its perfect place by His hand.

The idea that this was accomplished by chance, by a random growth of one cell into everything is, of course, so highly improbable as to be impossible, as your example implies; but most of the Christians in this thread do not think that it was thrown together by chance. We think God was working it in His way, and so we could come by the complexity and variety of life which exists today through an evolutionary process -- as long as God was the motive of power and intelligence behind it.

And one other thing: saying that all the science things prove that there must have been an evolution isn't enough for me yet, because i think there is one thing we forget. Iif God wanted to do it, He could have made the earth in 6 days, and still make it seem like it had been there for centuries.
He could do it, but it would be totally unlike anything we have any record of His ever having done, and would seem to fly in the face of all that we know of God. A God who would create intelligent, inquisitive people knowing that they would use the good minds He gave them in order to study the origins of earth and life -- and then lay deliberate false traps to "fool" them into thinking nature bore one witness when the opposite was true ... that is not at all the kind of God we see revealed in the Scriptures. So while he could be duplicitous and double dealing, I find that much more doubtful than the idea that He created life using evolution and created the universe 14 billion years ago ...

EveningStar

10-16-2007, 05:29 PM

Sometimes it's the journey and not the destination. That's why people go on cruises to the Bahamas instead of taking a jet. If the entire PURPOSE of creation was to get to a certain particular point, then yes, 14 billion years would be a very stupid and wasteful way to do it. If all the stages of Earth's history were of interest to God, and he enjoyed all of them, then it was neither stupid nor wasteful.

On the other hand, if my ancestors were not all put here simply to bring about MY EXISTANCE and if their lives the same importance that I accord my own, perhaps God wasn't sitting around drumming his fingers waiting for ME but was having a wonderful relationship with my Great Great Grandfather.

When you look forward to reading a book the way many people looked forward to reading the final Harry Potter book, you don't want to skip to the last page to find out who died and who didn't. There's a reason it's called a SPOILER. Maybe God wanted to settle down with a world and take his time enjoying it from "It was a dark and stormy night" to "And they all lived happily forever after." Maybe he doesn't have a Nintendo grade attention span. Maybe he's not like an old man with a pink gown and a long white beard who acts like a cross of Grandpa and Santa Claus. Maybe he's quite, quite different in his sense of values.

she-elfwarrior19

10-16-2007, 08:07 PM

We are actually learning about this evolution stuff in history class. I dont believe in evolution, but some of the kids in that class that go to my church think that they can both exist, i dont really agree with that but w/e.

lieke

10-17-2007, 02:59 PM

The old order of things seems to have been that lions ate lambs, etc.

Wait, the verse sais: "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.". This is said to Johannes (John in English??). I think we can say for certain that in the beginning of mankind humans did not die, at least: they were not intended to die. After the first sin, humans did die. If there is said that there will be no more death because the old things have passed away, i think we can say that with the words 'the old thing' is meant the time AFTER the first sin, when humans did actually die. You know what i mean? So if you say that the old order of things is the time after the first sin, after the fall of men, then you can't say automatically that animals did eat other animals in the beginning, right? (i mean before the first sin)

How does this imply that there was a time in earth history when lions were herbivores? Actually it seems more strongly to imply that the old order on earth was always life feeding on death ... and do you think there was then a second "creation" after the Fall of Man when all the death eaters were created? There is no support for that.

I don't think there was a second creation. In one of Lewis' books, i'm not sure which one, but it might be the problem of pain, it is mentioned that when sin entered the world mankind changed, and animals could have changed too. I don't see why there would be said things like 'the wolf will live with the lamb' when the wolf (in our world now a carnivore) would have to change so much (into a herbivore) that you can't really call it a wolf anymore. You could however say that if the wolf was a herbivore (btw, i assume that a herbivore is an animal that only eats plants) before sin, you could still call it a wolf if death goes away. I can't prove this of course, but in my personal opinion it isn't so unlikely that animals didn't eat each other in the beginning of time.

So you think that God intended all people to live forever in these human bodies? But that is not what happens to us, even when we are united with Christ: we have new, resurrection bodies. It would seem then, that in order to get the new, resurrection bodies (according to your theology), it was worth it for Adam to sin and bring about death ... otherwise we would be stuck forever in these human bodies ... But I do not see that it says any of this in scripture.

I already said that part i read in one of Lewis' books, i shall get it from the library again, and see what was exactly said in it. I remember it being an eye-opener to me on this subject :). The main point i think was that our bodies actually 'changed' when sinn came into the world. To answer your question: I think that if sin never came into this world we were indeed meant to live with the bodies we would have back then. Earth was a heavenlike place i think, because there was no sin, and because mankind was in the precense of God. Isn't that exactly how we see heaven, as a perfect place, where we live in the presence of God, without sin? To serve God forever? If sin would never have come into this world i don't see why it would bother us to live on here forever. (and also: when everything is past, at the end of revelations God does not only create heaven, He also creates a 'new earth', a perfect one, like this one should have been).

Just for clarification, most of us in this thread who allow that evolution could be the means by which God perfected life on earth (and this would include CS Lewis and Billy Graham, etc.), we believe God created everything and may have done it through a process which could be termed evolution, building one thing upon another so that each species evolved to its perfect place by His hand.

I know, i know you believe in God, and therefore that he created life (whether it was through an evolution process or through 6-days-creation isn't as important as that he actually did create it!) :)

The idea that this was accomplished by chance, by a random growth of one cell into everything is, of course, so highly improbable as to be impossible, as your example implies; but most of the Christians in this thread do not think that it was thrown together by chance. We think God was working it in His way, and so we could come by the complexity and variety of life which exists today through an evolutionary process -- as long as God was the motive of power and intelligence behind it.

I understand what you mean, but one thing: if you say that there has to be a 'force' behind evolution (for christians God of course) and because of that it doesn't matter if there is any evidence against evolution you make exactly the 'mistake' i made in my first post in here. I said that if God would have wanted it He could have made the world in 6 days, and make it look like He made in in 6 billion years (or whatever), that is of course true, He could have, but there is nothing to proof or even nothing to say in favour of why He would actually do that.
Now i'm giving you something that is used as a proof against evolution, and you basically say: well, but it was God doing it, so even though there is proof against it, because God is all-powerfull He could have done it that way, and still make it look like he didn't do it through evolution, because of the cytochrome C. I agree with you on this: God could indeed have done it, if He wanted to, but He could have created earth in 6 days if that was what He wanted too. What you are saying is basically the same thing as what i was saying in my first post. (please correct me if i misinterpretended something ;)).

He could do it, but it would be totally unlike anything we have any record of His ever having done, and would seem to fly in the face of all that we know of God. A God who would create intelligent, inquisitive people knowing that they would use the good minds He gave them in order to study the origins of earth and life -- and then lay deliberate false traps to "fool" them into thinking nature bore one witness when the opposite was true ... that is not at all the kind of God we see revealed in the Scriptures. So while he could be duplicitous and double dealing, I find that much more doubtful than the idea that He created life using evolution and created the universe 14 billion years ago ...
And as i pointed out already, Cytochrome C is like a proof against evolution, so wouldn't that be a 'false trap' again?

I hope i made my point clear :o

EveningStar

10-17-2007, 03:14 PM

You make your point clear except it has a fatal flaw. Respectfully I suggest that you have admitted that death existed before the fall of man. It says so in the Bible in Genesis 1.

Plants, you see, are living things created by God. When animals ate them, the plants died. These herbivores are living things that feed off the death of other living things. Plants, as you know, are multicellular carbon-based life forms that use DNA to transmit genetic traits the same way animals do. And they reproduce sexually just like animals do. And they die just like animals do, and plants have always died and that is in the Bible.

Before the fall of Man, God told the plants and animals to multiply. The animals were made male and female bearing offspring after their own kind. My question to you should lay this question to rest once and for all: if animals did not die, where did you expect the tens of billions of coyotes and multi-trillions of mice to live? Even if animals only had two offspring every year...

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1028, 2056, 4098.....

And actually the numbers are far more staggering than that. Dear old dad and Uncle Charlie and Great Aunt Ida Mae are all still alive having two offspring per year. In 64 years there would be enough mice to cover the entire continent of Australia three feet deep. And that's if they only had two. Mice actually begin breeding at 50 days of age, and after a gestation of 20 days give birth to an average litter size of 10-12 pups.

Let's be reasonable, folks. If mice only had one offspring every century, it would take much longer, but Australia would still be buried three feet deep with Mice and the mice would keep on going. Each century their population would increase by 50 percent, so by the time they covered half the globe, it would take only 150 years for them to cover the other half....at the rate of ONE OFFSPRING PER CENTURY.

inkspot

10-17-2007, 04:00 PM

And as i pointed out already, Cytochrome C is like a proof against evolution, so wouldn't that be a 'false trap' again?
I cannot say I understand the Cytochrome thing. I think you are saying it is so vastly different between animals and man, that there could be no relation of one to the other, ever? And so you are saying, "If God did use a process of evolution, why would He not have made it clear how men and lower animals could all have come from the same single cell in the case of Cytochrome?" I must say, I do not know. I wish He had been more clear.
:)

lieke

10-17-2007, 04:24 PM

ES, you are right, it does make sense. I checked Genesis one, and it does say that plants were eaten by animals and by humans (parts of plants). No doubt about that!

Though i do think that there is a difference between a plants life and an animals life, you know: feelings i think, i think animals can feel things, while plants can't. Animals have more of a conciouness, while plants don't. But this is not a discussion about whether plants are or are not living creatures, so let's say they live. (One funny thing i saw though was that when God creates the animals He actually says 'living creatures', but when He makes the plants, He doesn't say anything about life.) But lets focus on the animals then:

When i was reading that part i also read this:
Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

Well, i think that answers our question, the animals (all of them) were meant to eat every green plant for food, not eat each other:eek:. (i don't know how all those animals fit in the earth, maybe there weren't many, maybe they multiplied not so fast, maybe the first sin came so soon that it didn't matter in the first place.

Or am i wrong again? ;)

(and btw, i don't take discussion issues personally, i know that the other person just disagrees with my statement, not with me as a person, so don't bother saying anything against what i write here ;)).

And inkspot: that is basically what i meant (not completely, it is more about the non-existing of the in-between-'animals' while the differences are too big, but i think you got the point out of it;)).

onlymystory

10-17-2007, 04:35 PM

Okay, I know I'm totally interrupting the discussion so please just ignore me but I had to share something I just thought of a few days ago. We always talk about how long a day is and if that makes a difference in a literal 24 hour six day creation or if a day to God is longer. Don't you find it interesting that we measure days by the sun, moon, and stars...which weren't actually created until the FOURTH day?
Sorry, just had to add that.

inkspot

10-17-2007, 06:04 PM

That is a good point, Melissa. How did they judge evening on morning on the previous days?

John also made a good point about the animals: God commanded multiplication, but had there been no death intended for earth, what would have happened to all these ever-living animals as they continued to multiply?

For me, I still do not see that there was no physical death before the Fall of Man. As ES also said: why should the animals be punished for our sin? I think death was intended then to be as it is now for Christians, the passage to eternal life with Christ. I don't think it was intended to be as grievous as it is to us now; I think that is part of the Fall -- but I do think it was intended as reality, even before sin entered the world.

The Apostle Paul says something of the kind:
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
To me, this seems to imply that Adam, in his natural human body, was always intended to die physically at some point, and move to the perfected spiritual realm. He was "of the dust" before he ever sinned; he was earthly before he ever sinned -- so he would have had to, at some point, become heavenly -- by shedding the physical body for the spiritual one, in fact, by dying.

Does this seem clear from that passage? Adam was made of earth and according the passage therefore earthly before he ever sinned, so clearly he did not when he was created possess his eternal or heavenly body. If in fact there were no physical death then it seems that he would have been stuck with his less than perfect resurrection body, his physical one, for eternity.

Let me also agree with Lieke that if I disagree with your point of view, it does not mean I dislike you or even think the less of you as a person. Relationally, we are good. If intellectually we differ, well, variety is the spice of life, as they say. :)

EveningStar

10-17-2007, 06:20 PM

On the ONE HAND I don't believe people were meant to die before the fall of man. On the OTHER HAND I don't believe they were intended to occupy this body forever. So what's left? God is going to give us a glorified, incorruptable body when we enter Heaven. But had mankind not sinned, we would have gone straight from this body to that without having to experience death. We would have transformed the way a humble caterpillar becomes a beautiful butterfly. So while never dying, we still would not have run about naked in the woods for all eternity. Which, by the way, proves my point that badgers are the lords of creation. God gave us a fur coat and left you with fig leaves, so nyaaaah! :p

lieke

10-17-2007, 06:59 PM

John also made a good point about the animals: God commanded multiplication, but had there been no death intended for earth, what would have happened to all these ever-living animals as they continued to multiply?

Who knows, no one. Maybe animals/humans wouldn't have multiplied so quickly, i don't know. I'm sure there was a way it could happen, but as Aslan sais: no one ever knows what could have happened.

For me, I still do not see that there was no physical death before the Fall of Man. As ES also said: why should the animals be punished for our sin? I think death was intended then to be as it is now for Christians, the passage to eternal life with Christ. I don't think it was intended to be as grievous as it is to us now; I think that is part of the Fall -- but I do think it was intended as reality, even before sin entered the world.

Well, i don't know if you saw my comment on Genesis one, where it says that animals should eat the green plants, and not each other. That, in my opinion, means that animals did not die before the fall. I was hoping someone could share their opinion on that part:).

And about the animals punished for our sins: i don't think it's biblical (from the bible?) to say that people DON'T get punished for other people's sins. It is mentioned often that if one person does something wrong, his great-great-great-grand-son should be 'punished' for that too. For example, Exodus 20: You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, there are lots of other examples about this, punishing the children for their father's fault. And in fact we are all punished for Adam's and Eve's fault, right? Do we think that's unfair? The animals get punished too, in the sense that the complete world changed by the fall, as Paulus (Paul?) sais: The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.. Humans are not the only ones that 'went wrong' with the first sin, the whole creation was out of balance, if you get me.

To me, this seems to imply that Adam, in his natural human body, was always intended to die physically at some point, and move to the perfected spiritual realm. He was "of the dust" before he ever sinned; he was earthly before he ever sinned -- so he would have had to, at some point, become heavenly -- by shedding the physical body for the spiritual one, in fact, by dying.

Does this seem clear from that passage? Adam was made of earth and according the passage therefore earthly before he ever sinned, so clearly he did not when he was created possess his eternal or heavenly body. If in fact there were no physical death then it seems that he would have been stuck with his less than perfect resurrection body, his physical one, for eternity.

He was made out of the dust of the earth, yes. But the earth at that time wasn't wrong and sinfull yet, it was perfect. So i don't think there would be a reason to make him 'heavenly'.

EveningStar

10-17-2007, 07:17 PM

Jesus himself reacted angrily at the suggestion that people are punished for other people's sins. The people asked blind Bartemaeus whether his sin or his parents' sin made him blind. Jesus treated his blindness as a disease and healed it.

There are other places in the New Testament where that interpretation of inhereted sin is refuted.

People who introduce sinful customs into society see its painful realization in their kids. Children raised by abusive or neglectful parents tend to be that way themselves, or to have difficulty avoiding repeating the pattern. "Raise your children in the way which is right," says Proverbs, "and your children shall return to it." The opposite is also true, to some degree.

inkspot

10-18-2007, 11:02 AM

And about the animals punished for our sins: i don't think it's biblical (from the bible?) to say that people DON'T get punished for other people's sins. It is mentioned often that if one person does something wrong, his great-great-great-grand-son should be 'punished' for that too.
ES has shown that Christ seemed to contradict this.

He was made out of the dust of the earth, yes. But the earth at that time wasn't wrong and sinfull yet, it was perfect. So i don't think there would be a reason to make him 'heavenly'.
But the Apostle clearly says the first man Adam, as created, was imperfect -- at least, unspiritual. There is nothing in the Corinthians passage which implies that it was after the fall that Adam's body became imperfect -- he seems to imply that it was imperfect as it was formed from the dust, at least, it was not ready for heaven, for eternity with God. There was another body, a perfect one, for him, in eternity with God.
Physical life comes first, then spiritual—a firm base shaped from the earth, a final completion coming out of heaven. The First Man was made out of earth, and people since then are earthy; the Second Man was made out of heaven, and people now can be heavenly.
If Adam's physical body were perfect and eternal as created in Genesis, then why is Paul here saying that it was in fact incomplete and needed to be made heavenly? I think that physical death, at least a passage out of earthly body to a heavenly one, was intended for Adam, and for all of us, from creation. What happened when man fell was that spiritual death, the possibility of eternity without God, came into the picture. But I am no theologian, I could be all wrong on this.

It makes more sense to me, however, that physical death was always a part of life on earth, than the idea that there was no death at all before the fall. For one thing, there are certain kinds of stupid parasites that live by killing other things.

I watched a whole nature show about a hideous fishie kind of thing that lives in the tummies of frogs and makes the frog mutate so it grows bad arms out of its head and gets weak fat back legs -- so it can't move, and it gets eaten by a bird, and the parasite is happy that its frog got eaten, because then it can lay its eggs in the bird, and the bird droppings plop the eggs back in a pond where the bad fishie things get inside another frog and disable him. That bad fishie parasite's whole existence is spent disabling frogs so they get killed. Where did it come from and what was it doing if there was no death before the Fall of Man? it doesn't have any other life but that! Was there a second creation after the fall which brought it about, or...?

As for the Genesis 1 passage where God gives all the plants to humans and animals for food: that is still the way today. Herbivores eat plants, and carnivores eat herbivores ... so the plants still provide food for all the animals.

And if there was no death before the fall of man, and no evolution of animals, why are the vulture's neck feathers retractable? Scientists tell us they are like that so when the vulture sticks his head down inside a carcass, his feather's don't get stuck and he can get his head back out! If he did not evolve like that from sticking his head in carcasses, because there was no death before the fall, at what point did he get the ruffled neck feathers, and why?

Animals who eat other animals seem designed to eat other animals. If there was no death before the fall, why were they designed that way? If they changed after the fall, then they must have evolved ...

I am just musing here, and I do not mean to put down anyone else's beliefs. These are just my own thoughts and opinions, and I do not degrade anyone else for holding differing ones.

EveningStar

10-18-2007, 11:14 AM

Inky,

I think this whole arguement really comes down to man's place in the universe. People want to think that something they did somehow shaped the moon and stars and mountains and sea and even the Spokesmodel category on Star Search.

Matter of factly, if God didn't care a whit about us, we woudn't matter worth a match in a forest fire. We are tiny little grains of sand on a billion mile beach. We do not make volcanoes rumble or tides come in. And we should not see our sin as the unwitting architect of nature's violence and raw power. We are only important because God cares, but not from any inherent human characteristic. He TREATS us as if we were important the way he TREATS us as if we are sinless through justification by faith. To my mother, I'm one of the most important men in the world. To my heavenly father, the same is true. And for the same reason...parents are biased.

Shadow Hawk

10-21-2007, 06:26 PM

ES has shown that Christ seemed to contradict this.

what have the animals done to deserve punishment?

If Adam's physical body were perfect and eternal as created in Genesis, then why is Paul here saying that it was in fact incomplete and needed to be made heavenly? I think that physical death, at least a passage out of earthly body to a heavenly one, was intended for Adam, and for all of us, from creation. What happened when man fell was that spiritual death, the possibility of eternity without God, came into the picture. But I am no theologian, I could be all wrong on this.

What would be the point of creating something after his likeness imperfect? We(mankind) fell much farther than just spiritual death. If I was Adam and I was created imperfect my question to God would be "Why?"

It makes more sense to me, however, that physical death was always a part of life on earth, than the idea that there was no death at all before the fall. For one thing, there are certain kinds of stupid parasites that live by killing other things.

I watched a whole nature show about a hideous fishie kind of thing that lives in the tummies of frogs and makes the frog mutate so it grows bad arms out of its head and gets weak fat back legs -- so it can't move, and it gets eaten by a bird, and the parasite is happy that its frog got eaten, because then it can lay its eggs in the bird, and the bird droppings plop the eggs back in a pond where the bad fishie things get inside another frog and disable him. That bad fishie parasite's whole existence is spent disabling frogs so they get killed. Where did it come from and what was it doing if there was no death before the Fall of Man? it doesn't have any other life but that! Was there a second creation after the fall which brought it about, or...?

I do think it says somewhere that God cursed the earth......

As for the Genesis 1 passage where God gives all the plants to humans and animals for food: that is still the way today. Herbivores eat plants, and carnivores eat herbivores ... so the plants still provide food for all the animals.

And if there was no death before the fall of man, and no evolution of animals, why are the vulture's neck feathers retractable? Scientists tell us they are like that so when the vulture sticks his head down inside a carcass, his feather's don't get stuck and he can get his head back out! If he did not evolve like that from sticking his head in carcasses, because there was no death before the fall, at what point did he get the ruffled neck feathers, and why?

Animals who eat other animals seem designed to eat other animals. If there was no death before the fall, why were they designed that way? If they changed after the fall, then they must have evolved ...

God didn't want to kill us afterwards...... he gave us another chance... and another(Noah's flood) He's like a father he does want his children(mankind) hurt. However also like a father sometimes he lets us fall. In your words you are assuming that these animals have always existed.. However they could have been created after the fall for cleaning, like the vultures, or keeping balance in the animal populace.

You cannot assume something is this way when it is not even mentioned... We are told that Adam and Eve ate fruit. The first death that is mention is the death of Abel, who was killed by Cain. Evolve is a term used to say that something is getting better......... If so wouldn't I be an alien?:D:p

Shadow Hawk

10-21-2007, 06:28 PM

Anyone can say this is the truth or fact. But how can anyone say that when they were not even there?

inkspot

10-22-2007, 11:46 AM

Anyone can say this is the truth or fact. But how can anyone say that when they were not even there?
LOL! Indeed, how can you?
:)

Malacandra

10-24-2007, 10:19 AM

Anyone can say this is the truth or fact. But how can anyone say that when they were not even there?

Indeedy. Just as if I run a building site, and as I'm coming to work one morning I hear an enormous bang, and when I arrive there is a smoking crater in the ground where the dynamite shed used to be, and extensive damage in a wide radius. I wasn't there; it ain't for me to say the dynamite shed blew up. :cool:

EveningStar

10-24-2007, 10:46 AM

You didn't actually SEE me post this reply. How can you be sure I did? :p

inkspot

10-24-2007, 01:15 PM

Probably you didn't. Probably God instantly made that post appear. He could, you know. Don't think he couldn't.
:)

EveningStar

10-24-2007, 01:17 PM

You never know. My posts are so wise, so compelling, so TRUE that it could well be the result of Divine Providence. :D

PS: I didn't post this one either, so it's not a lapse of modesty....

jennyjenjen56

10-26-2007, 03:07 AM

wow this thread has been here for so long.

Ephinie

10-26-2007, 05:52 AM

I love Jenny. She's my friend. :)

EveningStar

10-26-2007, 06:41 AM

wow this thread has been here for so long.We've been debating HOW long, actually. Some think this thread is no older than 6000 years and that it was started suddenly by the admin. Others think it's been around 4.5 billion years and originally started out as a thread about primitive bacteria before it gradually got off topic. :D

lieke

10-26-2007, 07:47 AM

We've been debating HOW long, actually. Some think this thread is no older than 6000 years and that it was started suddenly by the admin. Others think it's been around 4.5 billion years and originally started out as a thread about primitive bacteria before it gradually got off topic. :D
It's not here at all, we just think it is, it's like... the matrix:eek:

Hey Jenny, welcome back (?):)

------------

Now one short serious reply: (i was away for a while, that's why it took me so long)

As for the Genesis 1 passage where God gives all the plants to humans and animals for food: that is still the way today. Herbivores eat plants, and carnivores eat herbivores ... so the plants still provide food for all the animals.

It doesn't say that, it sais Then God said, "And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

He gives the green plants for food to the animals, to ALL the animals (all the beasts of the earth, all the birds, all the ground-creatures, everything that breathes), He does not say that he gives plants to every animal, except the Lions, and the tigers, because they can't eat plants...

And if there was no death before the fall of man, and no evolution of animals, why are the vulture's neck feathers retractable? Scientists tell us they are like that so when the vulture sticks his head down inside a carcass, his feather's don't get stuck and he can get his head back out! If he did not evolve like that from sticking his head in carcasses, because there was no death before the fall, at what point did he get the ruffled neck feathers, and why?

Uhm, i don't really know what a vulture is, so :o

Animals who eat other animals seem designed to eat other animals. If there was no death before the fall, why were they designed that way? If they changed after the fall, then they must have evolved ...
I don't know why they were designed that way. Maybe they were different first, maybe they just could eat plants first, i wasn't there, so i have no idea. But it might also depend on what you call evolve, i mean: God cursed the snake, and said that he should crawl over the ground from then on, is that evolving? The earth was cursed, maybe animals changed/evolved too.

inkspot

10-26-2007, 12:44 PM

We've been debating HOW long, actually. Some think this thread is no older than 6000 years and that it was started suddenly by the admin. Others think it's been around 4.5 billion years and originally started out as a thread about primitive bacteria before it gradually got off topic. :D
ROFL!!! :D:D

Welcome back, Jenny!

He gives the green plants for food to the animals, to ALL the animals (all the beasts of the earth, all the birds, all the ground-creatures, everything that breathes), He does not say that he gives plants to every animal, except the Lions, and the tigers, because they can't eat plants...
Nor does it say He doesn't ...

Uhm, i don't really know what a vulture is, so :o

I attached a picture. It's a bird that eats dead things! But if there were no death before the Fall of Man, what did it eat?

I don't know why they were designed that way. Maybe they were different first, maybe they just could eat plants first, i wasn't there, so i have no idea.
This is not valid reasoning. ShadowHawk tried it on the previous page, but I expected better from you. If your answer is "I was not there, so I cannot know the answer," then you cannot know about the Second World War, the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the Crusades. People can know things they did not witness. We can even know things about the ancient past through specific scientific study. And we can know things about the body structure of a vulture just by looking at it. It is perfectly designed for sticking its bald head down a nasty dead carcass, and it seems perfectly clear why God designed it that way; so it could eat dead things.
But it might also depend on what you call evolve, i mean: God cursed the snake, and said that he should crawl over the ground from then on, is that evolving? The earth was cursed, maybe animals changed/evolved too.
For me, it makes more sense, and is not precluded by anything in Scripture, that there was death on earth long before the Fall of Man, and the vulture had adapted to that blessing very nicely. If you say God cursed the animals because of the sin of man, it seems rather harsh of God...

But this is all just my opinion. Anyone who holds a different opinion is perfectly welcome to it. The only thing I do object to is this idea that because we were not physically present at creation, we cannot "know" anything about it; I think you young folks on TDL are much smarter and more savvy than to buy into a faulty idea like that.

EveningStar

10-26-2007, 01:14 PM

Folks, before you go wild over how far the curse spread when Adam and Eve sinned, please consider this:

If the first original sin brought death into the ENTIRE world, then wasn't Adam fatally marked and lions began hunting Bambi's mother from the moment Eve sinned? In other words, if Eve's act brought sin into the world, and therefore death, it didn't matter if he ate of the fruit or not, did it?

But the Bible treats each of them as original sinners, each for their own act. Separately punished for equivalent disobedient acts. So if Eve's sin couldn't condemn her own husband who is of her own species, why should it condemn all 5200 species of mammals and millions of insect species, and all the fish, the birds, the reptiles and amphibians? And if her sin didn't automatically initiate death throughout all nature, why would Adam's be any different?

Consider this. Before God destroyed Sodom and Gemorrah, he told Lot that he would spare those cities if Lot could even find TEN righteous men in them. A God that would let a vile cesspool of filth and debauchery exist because less than half of one percent of its population was righteous would hardly want to have some lion kill Bambi's mother just because the nudist couple down the road started wearing fig leaves. We cannot get inside God's mind and know his thoughts intimately, but we can infer from other acts of God that he showed more leniency on several occasions than to slaughter bunny rabbits over a disobedient human being. My two cents.

John

lieke

10-26-2007, 05:58 PM

Nor does it say He doesn't ...

It says that He gives the green plants to all the animals, i think that's about the same as saying that He doesn't...

I attached a picture. It's a bird that eats dead things! But if there were no death before the Fall of Man, what did it eat?

First reaction: what a funny-looking bird:D I believe we call it a 'Gier', pronounced as 'Geeeeer'... of topic, i know.
Second reaction: The same question as the Lion, and the Tiger, and the Wolf, etc. What did they eat before creation...

This is not valid reasoning. ShadowHawk tried it on the previous page, but I expected better from you. If your answer is "I was not there, so I cannot know the answer," then you cannot know about the Second World War, the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the Crusades. People can know things they did not witness. We can even know things about the ancient past through specific scientific study. And we can know things about the body structure of a vulture just by looking at it. It is perfectly designed for sticking its bald head down a nasty dead carcass, and it seems perfectly clear why God designed it that way; so it could eat dead things.

The only thing i was saying: 'i have no idea, i wasn't there' to, was the part of the 'changing of animals. Let's say that if they did change, and there is no evidence of for example a lion that could eat plants, it doesn't really matter what i think of it, because there is no scientific proof that it did, or didn't, happen. Since humans have not found any lions that can eat plants (or something like that, at least as far as i know of) i can say: 'i believe that the lions ate plants before', but the only way i can get any proof for that is by quoting that passage from Genesis one.
So if you want my answer, it's this: i do think that animals in some way 'changed', because i believe that they did not eat each other before, but that they ate plants. I also know that they do eat each other now, and that some animals even need to eat each other, or they'll die. I don't know how they changed, or how much they changed, maybe just their preferences changed, or... i don't know, i just don't know. I can make up all kinds of ways that animals could have changed, or could not have changed from and into, but the fact is that i just don't know how much and in what way they changed, if the animals changed at all (i mean in looks/genotype then). So that's my answer, can i proof it: yes, but only i think with that passage i quoted too many times, and with the fact that when the new heaven and earth will be there the animals will live with each other too, and will not have to eat each other there. Is that scientific: no, not really. And actually that will just bring us back to the beginning of the discussion where i jumped in, did or did animals not eat each other before the fall of men. And we don't really seem to get anywhere with that question, do we ;).

But this is all just my opinion. Anyone who holds a different opinion is perfectly welcome to it. The only thing I do object to is this idea that because we were not physically present at creation, we cannot "know" anything about it; I think you young folks on TDL are much smarter and more savvy than to buy into a faulty idea like that.
Yeah, you're right, i should have explained myself instead of just saying that;).

If the first original sin brought death into the ENTIRE world, then wasn't Adam fatally marked and lions began hunting Bambi's mother from the moment Eve sinned? In other words, if Eve's act brought sin into the world, and therefore death, it didn't matter if he ate of the fruit or not, did it?

Well, God curses the snake (and the earth i believe, i have to look that up) when He talks to Adam and Eve, the snake didn't crawl from the moment Adam and Eve ate.

But the Bible treats each of them as original sinners, each for their own act. Separately punished for equivalent disobedient acts. So if Eve's sin couldn't condemn her own husband who is of her own species, why should it condemn all 5200 species of mammals and millions of insect species, and all the fish, the birds, the reptiles and amphibians? And if her sin didn't automatically initiate death throughout all nature, why would Adam's be any different?

Well, Eve's sin might not have condemned Adam, but look at it from this way: their sin actually condemned us all, in some way. Now i do not mean that if Adam and Eve would not have sinned I (or someone else) wouldn't have, but their sons were born, and sinfull. We learn that every human is from him/her self a sinner, so their mistake had huge consequences for the entire human race, why not for the rest of the world?
And also: the bible says that after BOTH Adam and Eve ate the fruit, their eyes were opened (don't know the exact English translation, but something like that) and that they realized they were naked, and all the consequences from then on. It does not say that Eve ate, realized that all, and then gave Adam the fruit.

Consider this. Before God destroyed Sodom and Gemorrah, he told Lot that he would spare those cities if Lot could even find TEN righteous men in them. A God that would let a vile cesspool of filth and debauchery exist because less than half of one percent of its population was righteous would hardly want to have some lion kill Bambi's mother just because the nudist couple down the road started wearing fig leaves. We cannot get inside God's mind and know his thoughts intimately, but we can infer from other acts of God that he showed more leniency on several occasions than to slaughter bunny rabbits over a disobedient human being. My two cents.

First: didn't the Lord say that to Abraham? (doesn't matter for the topic though)
A few thoughts:
-one: God is a good God, no question, He is a lot more, but also good. If animals died before the first sin, WHY???? I mean: if you look furthur in the bible, it makes quite clear that when everything is perfect animals will live together, then why did He want them to be able to kill each other first, if in a perfect world they shouldn't?
-two: I agree with you that God wants to go really far to save human beings, personally i think that that part from the bible, where God shows His mercy for mankind is beautiful (and awfull, because there are not even 10 right people), but that same God also lets a lot of people get killed, and not just adults, who could have been really bad and could have deserved to die, but also children (like with the destroying of Jericho, and i believe that there are some more examples of it), if it was up to me (it isn't, luckily) i would say that a 5 year old child doesn't have to pay for their parents actions. I know that Jesus said something against that with that blind man, but the bible does speak a lot (especially in the old testament) about getting punished for other's mistakes. If there were 10 right people in Sodom and Gomorra at that time, the not-right people would have been saved because of the right people. But it also goes the other way around. Saying that getting punished for other people's sin is not biblical is not really true. It does actually happen. Maybe not after Jesus came down to earth, but before that it does.

Why is it always so long?:p

EveningStar

10-26-2007, 07:01 PM

Shadow Hawk

10-26-2007, 11:22 PM

Respectfully, friend Lieke, the world to come is Heaven. That's why nothing dies there and nothing is born there. Heaven is not the Garden of Eden all over again, because before we did not have the knowledge of good and evil, and now we do. Our relationship with God has to be based upon something other than our ignorance. ;)

The bible says nothing about it not being like the Garden. We, mankind, are restricted by our point of view. When the Bible was written it was written in the author's point of view(ie; past, present, future)

In the first part of genesis it was written from the point of view of God. Not one person,not even adam, was there until he was created. So one cannot simply take what we now have/know and say "This was what happened". For the most part it depend on how one interprets the facts. You can never restrict God to what one thinks.

It does not matter what you see in the Bible or I see in the bible that is what we think is right based off of what we've found. No matter who, you could always be wrong. You may have not found science in the Bible but I have(point of view). You have your opinion.. I have mine(as does everyone else:D) but just because you think you're right..... does it actually mean you are?

Malacandra

10-29-2007, 09:45 AM

You have your opinion.. I have mine (as does everyone else:D) but just because you think you're right..... does it actually mean you are?

Why no, of course not. No-one with enough smarts to pour... water... out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel thinks that what they think is right just because they think it. So how shall we tell one opinion from another, when it is plain that they contradict each other and hence cannot all be right? We must weigh them one against the other, discuss, dispute, and generally see which opinion holds water. That, at any rate, seems more sensible to me than merely throwing up our hands in despair and refusing to choose between points of view.

EveningStar

10-29-2007, 10:06 AM

By the way, I'm ALWAYS right. Just for your future reference. :p

Shadow Hawk

10-29-2007, 05:50 PM

True...... we do dispute opinions. But there is a point where science fails, and all that is left is the imagination.

I have placed my trust in the writer and narrator.. Knowing that he of all people must have known what he was talking about.

lieke

10-29-2007, 06:03 PM

Respectfully, friend Lieke, the world to come is Heaven. That's why nothing dies there and nothing is born there. Heaven is not the Garden of Eden all over again, because before we did not have the knowledge of good and evil, and now we do. Our relationship with God has to be based upon something other than our ignorance. ;)
True (though i'm not sure heaven isn't at least like the Garden of Eden), but that doesn't change my point, right?

(and btw, very off topic, but while we're at it: where did you get that nothing will be born in heaven? I mean, i don't necesarily disagree, i was just wondering why you think that?... a lamb is after all a baby-sheep:D)

And i'm always wondering how it will be like in heaven, like: we do know what is evil, but we can't do evil things because it's impossible for something evil to be in heaven, so is it that we just cannot do things, that seems in contradiction to our free will, or is it that we just don't want to do evil things, because it is in contradiction to God's will... i think the latter;).

I have to stop now, before i really get off topic:D

inkspot

10-30-2007, 12:49 PM

Here's the thing: why was there death before the Fall of Man (or why do I think that there was?)? Because there is no evidence that there was no death, and plenty of evidence that things have been born and died here for millennia. I cannot prove that it wasn't the way Lieke believes it was, because it's near impossible to prove a negative. But I can prove within scientific reason the age of the earth and how long animals and people have been dying on it. So it makes more sense to me, as the Scriptures do not explicitly say there was no physical death before the Fall of Man, to believe the scientific record. If you understand the Fall of Adam and Eve to have introduced the knowledge of good and evil to the world, does that not imply both self awareness and spiritual death? Thus, their eating of the apple did indeed introduce death just as Genesis says. But physical death seems to have been the way of earth from its start ... Why would God leave us a faulty scientific record in that regard? I don't think He would.

Shadow Hawk

10-31-2007, 05:46 PM

Lets pretend that God actually let death occur before mans fall. Now put yourself in Adams place(substituting him for yourself). When talking to God what would you ask? would you tell him how you feel? And what about your thoughts?

For one I know what I would ask him. If he granted me every wish I ever had one of those would be to live forever with him. Pounding him with thousands of questions. :p

In the place of Adam I would ask him Why? What is there in me that is good? Who am I to even be here? What have I done? Now someone else.... what questions would you ask God if you were Adam and death was present in the garden?

lieke

11-13-2007, 10:43 AM

Why would God leave us a faulty scientific record in that regard? I don't think He would.
Well, i don't know why He would do that. But i do know that it is not very uncommon for God to do things that are scientificly impossible, like:

-Jesus walking on water, man cannot walk on water, so why would God tell us that Jesus did?
-Jonah was eaten by a big fish, scientist have proven that there is not a single fish that could eat someone AND spitt him out alive. So why didn't God just do it some other way, instead of doing something that would be impossible according to today's science.
-Moses and the people from Israël walked through a path in the red sea, while the people from Egypt drowned there. Why didn't God give them boats, that would be explainable.

And than i'm not even talking about Jesus rising again.

God does these things that could not be explained by our science. He did those things, he did some more (i just named a few of them). Fact is that i don't know why God does those things. I think that we could call all of them miracles, and that God gives them to us to show us that He is actually God, and that He can do everything.

My point is that God does many things that i don't understand, and many things that are scientifically impossible. That isn't proof of course to say that He did it that way with creation, but it gives some thoughts :). (at least: to me it did, so i thought i would post it:D).

EveningStar

11-13-2007, 10:55 AM

The miracles of God were done to show men the truth, not a lie. God is the way the truth and the light and his word is the light of the world, not a source of confusion and darkness.

Walking on water did not mean Jesus ignored nature and natural laws. It merely proves that he had a knowledge and power that he could not have had if he had merely been some "very smart man from Galilee with a lot of humanitarian ideas" or a "great teacher".

All the powers of nature are known to God and have been since the beginning. We are detectives coming along after the act to figure out who did what and how. God is the perpetrator who planned the act and then committed it himself.

Of course there are people who think the physical has nothing to do with the spiritual. Or that think the physical is the enemy of the spiritual. This has no root in the word of God. He made the world and said it was good. And when you see how consistently mathematics and physics and chemistry and formal logic apply to everything that goes on in the world (with the exception of religion, politics and pleasing your wife), you see that the physical world was made in a tidy and well thought out way just as God is a tidy and well thought out person.

Nature would no more lie to you than God would.

I hope that explains my reasoning and my beliefs.

lieke

11-13-2007, 11:09 AM

It does explain it:). And i definately agree with you on the points that you make about Jesus walking on water, etc.

But what truth did it show everyone that God let Jonah be eaten by a fish, while that was impossible? (par example)

EveningStar

11-13-2007, 11:32 AM

It said that God prepared a great fish. In my mind it means he designed a fish that was specially made to support Jonah's life underwater for a few days. The fish we see nowdays were not designed to preserve human life underwater...that is not a usual skill that fish need to survive.

inkspot

11-13-2007, 01:57 PM

And when you see how consistently mathematics and physics and chemistry and formal logic apply to everything that goes on in the world (with the exception of religion, politics and pleasing your wife), you see that the physical world was made in a tidy and well thought out way just as God is a tidy and well thought out person.

Nature would no more lie to you than God would.
Very nicely said, John.

Lieke, I did not mean God could not do miracles, of course He can and did. It was a miracle to create the universe, whether He took 6 days or 14 billion years. I meant that He would not then create false trails to baffle us when we finally grew up enough to investigate our world's age and origins.

Sir Benjamin the Lion

11-13-2007, 07:20 PM

Very nicely said, John.

Lieke, I did not mean God could not do miracles, of course He can and did. It was a miracle to create the universe, whether He took 6 days or 14 billion years. I meant that He would not then create false trails to baffle us when we finally grew up enough to investigate our world's age and origins.

lol. of course, God wouldn't do that, but man would. :p The devil would. :p

Sunrise

12-01-2007, 10:34 AM

lol. of course, God wouldn't do that, but man would. :p The devil would. :p

Are you saying the devil is responsible for dinosaur fossils? That's a pretty archaic idea.

There are a LOT of different arrows pointing to the age of the earth scientifically. To say that all of them are Satan's doing is to give him way too much credit.

The Land of NoD

12-08-2007, 05:03 PM

Well, ToE is fundamental to medical advancement in study of Bacteria and Viruses, so I say it got stay. At least if you want to study medicine.

What many scientist found grating in faith is because people of faith would use the old "because the bible say so", there was a estimate heaven would be ~30 times hotter than hell according to the bible.

When Science is proven wrong on a consistent basis, it is discarded and the author is at fault. When faith is proven wrong, the dissent is often marked for heresy. No one ever considered the work of faith are done by man, even if they were by the will of a superior being. And a simple explanation would be men of faith didn't listen to the lord correctly.

-The land of Nod-

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-08-2007, 06:55 PM

When Science is proven wrong on a consistent basis, it is discarded and the author is at fault.
-The land of Nod-
Actually thats not always true, because I still see TOE taught pretty much all over. You know Darwin himself said that were his Theory disproven he would reject it and I highly doubt he would believe it today. Especially since the genetic code was broken and we discovered that we all came from one man and one woman! Wow, fancy that.
Darwin didn't even have a degree in science. He had a degree in Theology. OR should I say Father Darwin!

lieke

12-08-2007, 07:11 PM

What's TOE? Theory of evolution or something?

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-08-2007, 07:17 PM

yes.
Theory
Of
Evolution. it's a nifty acrostic

The Land of NoD

12-08-2007, 07:24 PM

Actually thats not always true, because I still see TOE taught pretty much all over. You know Darwin himself said that were his Theory disproven he would reject it and I highly doubt he would believe it today. Especially since the genetic code was broken and we discovered that we all came from one man and one woman! Wow, fancy that.
Darwin didn't even have a degree in science. He had a degree in Theology. OR should I say Father Darwin!

well, I like to see the source with genetic code broken and we came all from a man and woman. Human race would had serious problem them due to inbreeding.

As for ToE being taught, well, like I said, there isn't anything significant that disprove it other than the bible, which provided no experiment or evidence that can be reproduced.

When humanity discover something that can

A. Disprove ToE
B. Repeatly produce the effect of A.

Then we can get to the next stage.

As an example, Newton's old Apple theory. On a windless day an apple always fall to the ground. When we start seeing apples take flight, then we will make a different stance.

jonnylaw37

12-08-2007, 07:28 PM

As an example, Newton's old Apple theory. On a windless day an apple always fall to the ground. When we start seeing apples take flight, then we will make a different stance.
If your ToE were true, then apples would already be flying with pigs! :p

P.S. - you asked for it, I'm gonna throw all of my info disproving evolution at you (after I get it all together) *evil grin*

The Land of NoD

12-08-2007, 07:46 PM

If your ToE were true, then apples would already be flying with pigs! :p

P.S. - you asked for it, I'm gonna throw all of my info disproving evolution at you (after I get it all together) *evil grin*

Deal! But please spare me "Just because I don't see apes in the wild suddenly taking a degree in math" or something silly as that.

And notice I am Accounting major, so I am a poor defender of science.

-THe Land of Nod-

jonnylaw37

12-08-2007, 07:50 PM

http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/evolutionism-video.htm
watch this :)

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-08-2007, 08:07 PM

-like Doc Holiday- Ok Johhny Ringo, lets do this.
-slaps self- wait a minute. Johhny Law! I have a heap of evidence that disproves TOE besides that which I have already stated, I will post it soon.

Ephinie

12-09-2007, 01:28 AM

well, I like to see the source with genetic code broken and we came all from a man and woman. Human race would had serious problem them due to inbreeding.
Maybe we ARE all in bred.:eek: That would sure explain a lot.:rolleyes:

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-09-2007, 11:09 AM

The Land of NoD

12-09-2007, 11:54 AM

actually the genetic mutation isn't a big problem. When Adam and Eve were here they had a vast wealth of genetic information so inbreeding wouldn't be as detramental as it is today. Now go down a few generations and it gets worse and worse and worse till presant day which is Why God finally had to say. Okay you can't marry close relatives anymore.
Now you yourself admitted that inbreeeding today is very bad for genetic mutation. But if TOE were true wouldn't inbreeding actually be good for the gaining of genetic mutation? But it's not good because the genes are constantly losing information not gaining it as TOE says. huh, interesting something that happens eveytime someone is born. Genetic information is lost in direct opposition to TOE. don't know 'bout you but that looks like a repeatedly proveable example of the falsity of the TOE.

Please explain how does ToE and Inbreeding are linked. And for certain species, inbreeding is preferred (Dogs and Horses come to mind). And not all mutation are advantageous to a species, if a wolf in the wild suddenly grew two tails and that didn't attract a mate, the wolf's sub-species will die out.

The idea of ToE is largely an environmental than genetics, at least in Darwin's day.

For example.

There are white skinned moths and black skinned moths. Birds eat moths. Birds can see black moths easier than white moths, so most of the black moths go to die (or few survive). Then suddenly a factory is opened up in the area where the moths exist. Soot blacken the trees. So now white Moths all go bye bye cause they became dinner.

Among simple organism such as bugs, viruses, and small animals who are subject to extermination all the time, certain mutation that prove advantageous would work.

For humans such things would be impossible, unless environment change so rapidly and end up killing 90% of us. Not to mention new mutation might not be as good and thus die out (Children borne with certain diseases as an example)

-Land of Nod-

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-09-2007, 09:09 PM

TimmyofOz

12-09-2007, 10:40 PM

I was talking to my sister and brother in law who are devout Catholics. They believe in evolution. Is this the official view of the Roman Catholic Church to say evolution is the bases to understand the origins of life?

The Land of NoD

12-09-2007, 11:41 PM

Why don't you listen when I tell you things.
TOE says that through positive genetic mutation we got better and better. Therefore inbreeding to create more genetic mutation would be good. However contrary to TOE genetic mutation is 99.999999999999 % of the time detramental not beneficial.

Actually, Race horses are one example of pure inbreeding for the positive. There is a explanation with humans as well, but I am a engineer/accountant as a profession, not a biologist.

-The land of Nod-

Elendil

12-10-2007, 04:35 AM

I don't think ANYONE on here is a scientist. ;)

Sunrise

12-10-2007, 10:23 AM

I don't think ANYONE on here is a scientist. ;)

Actually there are some, but they haven't posted in a while. Charn_Tim is a budding scientist, although his specialty is cosmology, I believe, and he has argued strenuously for an interpretation of Genesis that does not conflict with the scientific record (and it is possible, in spite of what both Young-Earth Creationists and atheist scientists will tell you).

Malacandra and EveningStar have also been very credible voices of reason on this topic, and seem to know a great deal about which they speak, although I don't know what their science backgrounds are. They also argue that faith and science need not conflict, and support an old earth and theistic evolution.

You might note that all three are strong believing Christians.

Have a care, creationists. If you intend to defend your position using "studies" from Answers in Genesis or its ilk, be prepared to see plenty of refutation of your position using hard science. You might want to read back through the thread a little before you jump in with all your "evidence", and make sure it hasn't already been dealt with previously.

Genesis is not a science textbook, and it is unnecessary to try to make it one.

If you're interested in seeing a position that respects the powers of reason God gave us by trusting both science and scripture, you might visit these sites: http://www.answersincreation.org/
http://www.reasons.org/

Sunrise

12-10-2007, 10:45 AM

Especially since the genetic code was broken and we discovered that we all came from one man and one woman! Wow, fancy that.

However contrary to TOE genetic mutation is 99.999999999999 % of the time detramental not beneficial.

Cymro, you've made several claims here that you haven't backed up with any evidence. Do you have links to articles or studies that support your statements? Where does the genetic code say we all came from one man and one woman? (I'm not disputing that it does, I'm just asking if I can see the study from a credible source). Where do you get your 99.999999999999% from? Is that an actual figure or did you make it up? If you are going to argue about a scientific topic, you can't just throw random numbers around.

TimmyofOz: One of the practicing catholics on this board could answer this better, but I think the position of the Catholic Church (and, in fact, many protestant denominations) is that evolution can be used to explain the origins of life without negating the work of the hand of God in the process. The official term for this position is "theistic evolution" which basically means that, while genetic mutation did cause the differentiation of species, such mutations were the result of God using natural processes, as opposed to being totally random. There are varying degrees of belief regarding how much God intervenes, but the general idea is that God created evolution itself and set it into motion as part of the created order. This position considers the creation account of Genesis to be a poetic depiction of the process as explained to a primitive people who would not have been able to comprehend the biological complexity, nor the vast amounts of time required, to create all the species on earth today.

Notable Christians who support(ed) this position include Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis. Most mainstream denominations have at the very least indicated that, as it is not a salvation issue, people are free to believe what they choose in the matter.

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-10-2007, 01:29 PM

I will apologize in advance for the lengthiness of this post.

Well you people have finally driven me to it, I am pulling out all the stops and even grabbing my old college notes. I will in this post both prove the existence of GOD and disprove beyond a doubt the Theory of Evolution.

Before I begin my actual argument I would suggest picking up a little book called "Did God Use Evolution," by Werner Gitt. Great book. If your really interested in the subject then "In the Beginning was Information," Werner Gitt. "Thousands not Billions," Dr. Don DeYoung. and "Evolution Exposed," by Roger Paterson. All very good books that provide good answers. I would especially suggest Christians who believe in Theistic Evolution to read some of these books. And If your not a reader but still want to figure this out Answers in Genesis website I believe offers DVDs. Despite what some people might have said AIG has good sound answers and is very scientific organization.

In this debate I will be attempting to use Three Laws of Logic.
1. The Terms must be Unambiguous.
2. The Premises on which Assumptions are made MUST be TRUE.
3. The conclusions come to MUST follow with scientific logic.

To Refute Evolution I must first know what Evolution is. Evolution by itself is just change, However, I am refuting the Theory of Evolution, aka Materialism.
Materialism = The foundational assumptions of Modern Science are the belief that the universe consists solely of Matter (Mass & Energy,) and that Matter is Self-Organizing over time.

Materialism is itself broken down into three forms of Evolution.
Cosmic Evolution = the spontaneous increase in order and complexity from the Big Bang resulting in stars, galaxy cluster, and planetary systems that have the available energy, elements, and molecules necessary for life.
Chemical Evolution = the spontaneous origin of the first living, self replicating cell from inorganic chemicals by random physiochemical processes.
Biological Evolution = Alterations within the first living cell and it's descendants by random genetic mutation and natural selection that have developed all organisms.
Genetic Mutation = is random damage to the DNA caused by physical and chemical agents.
Natural Selection = is a process whereby environmental factors differentially affect the survival of organisms.

I wish to now bring out the Ambiguous terms in the past sentences.
Mass No one really knows what mass or energy are. I looked all over for good definitions and found non.
Energy
Self-Organizing I couldn't even find self-organizing in the dictionary. It mainly means something that that make itself more complicated but how can something that is a single cell do that?
(Note Mass and Energy are the 2 Fundamental Entities)

Now that we know what TOE is we are going to introduce a new player. My player.
Information. Information was recently "discovered" by a group of Christian Scientists in that they studied it's properties, made certain Scientific Laws concerning it, and properly defined it as UDI.

the Universal Definition of Information (UDI) = An encoded, symbolically represented message conveying expected action and intended purpose. Its four attributes are Code Meaning Action Purpose.
Scientific Laws = A Precise statement formulated from discoveries through observation and experiment that have been repeatedly verified and NEVER contradicted.

UDI is a NONMATERIAL fundamental Entity.
Scientific Laws Proposed within UDI

Fundamental Law 1. anything material such as physiochemical processes, cannot create something nonmaterial.
Law 2. Information (UDI) is a nonmaterial fundamental entity and is neither property nor a correlate of Matter.

Laws about Information (UDI). 1. Information cannot originate in statistical processes. 2. information can only originate from an intelligent sender. corollaries of 2. a. all codes result from an intentional choice and agreement between sender and recipient. b. there can be no new UDI without an intelligent sender. c. any chain of UDI can be traced back to an intelligent source. Law 3. allocating meaning to a set of symbols by a sender and determining meaning of a set of symbols by a recipient are mental processes requiring intelligence. 4. the four attributes of information can be identified on both the sender and recipients' sides. 5. information is constantly being degraded and destroyed unless it is maintained by an intelligent source.

UDI is nonmaterial because it has no weight.
IE. if you take an "empty" cd and put it in the computer and download the library of congress onto it and take it back out you should expect it to be very heavy right? NO it is no heavier then when you put it in even though it is full of UDI. and on a 1"x1" slide you can put the entire BIBLE however DNA information if put on the same amount of space a single strand thick you could encode 7.7 trillion Bibles!! if these bibles were real 1" thick bibles and all stacked upon one another they would reach the sun and 1/3 the way past again! Information is not bound by physical restraints of weight.

I mentioned DNA. It is provable that DNA is full of UDI information. Even Evolutionists know this. So the presence of this Nonmaterial entity all over life on every strand of DNA is proof enough that TOE is false for it clearly states in there first premise that "The universe is composed solely of Mass and energy." UDI is not matter, and it is impossible for it to come from matter. Also for UDI information to be on DNA today it is mandatory for it to be on the first living cell. Well if that cell came from material physiochemical processes it would be impossible for it to have Information on it which can't come from matter.
Also with the slide illustration we see that the DNA UDI information is trillions of times more complex then mans present technology and from the Scientific Laws about UDI we see that information (UDI) must come from an intelligent sender which is nonmaterial (UDI can't come from matter) so the Information in the first cell MUST have been put there by an all knowing all powerful being, GOD.

SO:
TOE is incorrect
There is a God

My Information :D was taken in large part from the costudy of Dr. Werner Gitt & Dr. Bob Compton.

Sunrise

12-10-2007, 03:12 PM

Ok, this at least gives us something to work with.

Actually I agree much of this, particularly what you have posted about information. This is a hallmark of the Intelligent Design movement and one of its supporters' most convincing arguments.

Here are some of the problems with your post, though:

You cannot make up your own definition of terms to prove your point, and although many scientists may be materialists, there are enough Christian scientists who believe in evolution to suggest that the definition of the "ToE" is not as narrow as you have made it.

Materialism and the Theory of Evolution are NOT the same, so you are here violating your first Law of Logic: that terms must be unambiguous.

Materialism, as defined by answers.com: "The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena."

While a materialist would seek to include evolution in his worldview, that does not mean that all evolutionists are materialists. That is like saying that since all aunts are women, all women must be aunts. It is a logical fallacy.

Evolutionary theory covers a broad spectrum. At its most materialistic, yes, it does seek to explain the rise of everything from star dust to Sylvester Stallone using natural phenomena alone. And science must typically treat the theory materialistically since questions of the miraculous or divine intervention are outside the scope of science. A working of the hand of God cannot be replicated in a laboratory, so there is no way to prove it happened. This is the problem with supposed "Creation Science' - most of its hypotheses cannot be tested.

If evolutionary theory were entirely materialistic as you suggest, there could be no such thing as theistic evolution. Since there are many eminent scientists who are theistic evolutionists - Michael Behe, and many other proponents of Intelligent Design, for example - I must conclude that the theory of evolution need not be materialistic, and in no way seeks to prove or disprove the existence of God.

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-10-2007, 04:00 PM

I did not attempt to cover every newance of TOE in my argument. The root core of both TOE and Materialism are the same. That everything has come from matter and matter is all there is. What I did simply disproved the fact that matter is all there is. There is more. UDI. Bringing down the core of evolution/materialism will in effect disprove all ideas coming out of it.
Logical Fact: If the premise is proven to be untru then the conclusion is untrue.

You are trying to tell me that even though the tree is gone the branches are ok. logically that is what you are saying. I believe that theistic evolution is even more unbelieveable then evolution alone. Because TOE alone is dissproven the in turn disproves theistic evolution and materialism and any other form of thought coming out of Evolution.

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-11-2007, 12:10 AM

Just wanted to see how many people believed what around here!

NarnianofGryffindor

12-11-2007, 10:53 AM

Definitely Creation. "In the Beginning God created the heaven's and the earth."- Genesis 1:1

jonnylaw37

12-11-2007, 12:07 PM

Creation :D Only logical explanation!

God said it. He wasn't lying, and He wasn't mad, then LOGICALLY, he was telling the truth :D

Darth Sparhawk

12-11-2007, 12:35 PM

Creation:)

Lila

12-11-2007, 03:34 PM

Creation, in my opinion. Even if I weren't a Christian, Evolution wouldn't be very appealing to me..

Josh the Jester

12-11-2007, 03:36 PM

I simply choose creation, cause there is some much evidence that proves it:D

Into the Wardrobe

12-11-2007, 04:04 PM

Since there's already a long-standing thread on this topic in here another isn't necessary in the Socratic area. Thus imerge

Aslan's Son

12-11-2007, 04:46 PM

Definitely Creationism for me. :)

Charn_Tim

12-11-2007, 05:24 PM

Unfortunately, this poll posits a false dilemma. A theistic evolutionist believes in Creation, is a creationist. As sunrise said, you cannot just make up your own terms and pretend that just because you say something, then it is so. Specifically, your assertion that

The root core of both TOE and Materialism are the same. That everything has come from matter and matter is all there is.

is absolutely wrong with respect to the theory of evolution by natural selection. The theory of evolution by natural selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection) is a theory about how natural genetic processes (i.e. heredity) and environmental pressures (i.e. food supply, predators, ecological effects) brings about change in species. This is unequivocally a fact of biology and nature. Whether this fact of nature is sufficient to explain absolutely everything about life-where and how life originated, how species change, how exactly some species can change into another, how consciousness arises, how thoughts and feelings can be about something in any objective sense, etc.-these are all outstanding questions some or all of which may or may not have an answer within science/biology.

For my part, I find natural selection to be entirely inadequate to account for some of these questions, and to me theism is an absolutely rational inference from the "data" we have. But the fact remains that natural processes bring about species change; how far this can be pressed and how many questions this can answer in my mind is still an open question.

Now do some scientists (like Richard Dawkins for example) grossly overstep their bounds and claim that their theory of evolution by natural selection will have a naturalistic answer to all of these questions, thus (in their minds) "disproving" the Bible and a need for a creator? Absolutely. But if they are being honest, they will admit that they do not claim this on the basis of basic "facts of nature", but on the basis of a preconceived "Metaphysical bias" (as Lewis liked to say) that the physical universe is all there is. And although it is wrong for them to claim total knowledge about how the universe and life was created and developed, it is equally wrong to lump the biological theory of how species change (evolution by natural selection) with materialism. It's not that cut and dry.

PunkMaister

12-11-2007, 05:41 PM

A lot of people will probably consider me a sort of heretic after this but here it goes anyway...

I do most certainly believe in creation but at the same time I have to recognize that there was a process involved and it is what I believe scientists simply call evolution. I do not believe for a second that everything came to be as it out of accidents as evolutionists believe. I believe everything had a profound plan behind. The way everything works in Nature including the very nature of the atom whom by itself should just break apart yet is held by what scientists ironically call "strange force" points to the fact that not only God does indeed exist but that he is behind literally everything that we see, feel and touch just like the Bible says so. Then there is the genetic evidence that all modern humans have one common genetic father (Adan) and genetic mother (Eve)! Even though they never met the fact remains that in essence again the bible is proven right and I could go on on but I hope you get the point...;)

Regards, God Bless and Merry Christmas everyone!:D

Doffen

12-11-2007, 06:27 PM

I do most certainly believe in creation but at the same time I have to recognize that there was a process involved and it is what I believe scientists simply call evolution. I do not believe for a second that everything came to be as it out of accidents as evolutionists believe. I believe everything had a profound plan behind. The way everything works in Nature including the very nature of the atom whom by itself should just break apart yet is held by what scientists ironically call "strange force" points to the fact that not only God does indeed exist but that he is behind literally everything that we see, feel and touch just like the Bible says so. Then there is the genetic evidence that all modern humans have one common genetic father (Adan) and genetic mother (Eve)! Even though they never met the fact remains that in essence again the bible is proven right and I could go on on but I hope you get the point...;)

You try to state out that this proves God is real. You didn't prove anything by your post, as there are other ways to explain what the "strange force" is, or isn't. I don't know how you would like to link up "strange" force with creationism and Adam and Eve. This was very unclear, if you ask me.

Merry Christmas to you to :)

PunkMaister

12-11-2007, 06:43 PM

You try to state out that this proves God is real. You didn't prove anything by your post, as there are other ways to explain what the "strange force" is, or isn't. I don't know how you would like to link up "strange" force with creationism and Adam and Eve. This was very unclear, if you ask me.

Merry Christmas to you to :)

Such as? To this day no single scientist and I mean not a singe one has given any explanation about this so called strange force that literally binds everything together?

Doffen

12-11-2007, 07:29 PM

Such as? To this day no single scientist and I mean not a singe one has given any explanation about this so called strange force that literally binds everything together?

So this makes it automaticly a proof of God? Is that your conclusion?

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-11-2007, 09:09 PM

it is a weak emample at best but not completely bad. Actually i might have to resurect my old post as it is my best argument here!

Glad to see creationism is UP on the poll!!

I have been trying to prove the exsistence of God but since to me this is fact why don't I give you a new question.

Prove God doesn't exsist! I DARE you! I want to see if you can give me logical proof that proves there is no God.

Ephinie

12-12-2007, 06:20 AM

Such as? To this day no single scientist and I mean not a singe one has given any explanation about this so called strange force that literally binds everything together?
A strange force that literally binds everything together...? Woah, I think we just took a leap into...

STAR WARS!

*insert theme music here*

To add my two cents to the discussion, again... see Charn_Tim's post. I agree with pretty much everything he posted.

Also, to quote someone from a cartoon that is... kind of taboo around here: "Couldn't evolution be the answer to how and not the answer to why?"

Meaning that the theory of evoultion deals with natural processes - it can't tell us WHY a natural process happened. If you deconstruct pretty much anything scientific, you can get back down the basic question of, "Okay, well why did this happen, then?"

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-12-2007, 12:36 PM

which is Where God comes in, he is the Why though I know Evolution is not the How, I think you are purposing a Theistic Evolution though I could be mistaken.

inkspot

12-12-2007, 05:45 PM

Glad to see Charn Tim is back!!! :)
Glad to see Sunrise is back!!!! :)
Glad to see Ephinie still here and still smart as a whip. :)
Glad to see Punkmaister, Cymru and Knight have joined in the discussion.
Glad to see Doffen being the voice of reason, too. :)

I think Tim's and Ephinie's last posts and Sunrise's on the previous page pretty much establish that God could certainly have used an evolutionary process to bring about the variety and complexity of life on earth, and previous posts have established that this is completely in accordance with the Genesis account.

Old Earth, in particular, cannot be refuted by any credible scientific evidence. Thus, if you want to prove that God created everything in six literal days, you cannot do it with science, and must use the Scriptures to do so (because there is no scientific evidence of this).

But again, Tim and others have shown earlier in this thread that there is nothing in the original language of Genesis which insists that the 6 days were literal 24-hour days, as the same terminology is used elsewhere to mean much longer periods of time. If you are going to insist that these were literal 24-hour days, wheredo you get the evidence for that in Scripture?

I also agree with Tim that the poll, as it is phrased, forces a choice which is not fair, because Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, etc, are all "CREATION" options. I think I will modify the poll.

lieke

12-12-2007, 05:59 PM

But again, Tim and others have shown earlier in this thread that there is nothing in the original language of Genesis which insists that the 6 days were literal 24-hour days, as the same terminology is used elsewhere to mean much longer periods of time.

Really? I didn't know that. Do you happen to know where that was posted? That's interesting:).

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-12-2007, 06:13 PM

actually you are wrong Inkspot, Mod or not. There is actually no scriptual evidence that God used evolution, actually it completely contradicts Genesis and can in no way be applied to it. The Hebrew word used is "yom" which everywhere in the bible is translated day as in 24 hours. if you apply the reading of billions of years to this word then you must apply it universally and by that it rained on the earth 40 billion years? that doesn't make sense Noah would have died in that time. Also was Christ in the tomb 3 billion years. You see this theory really hold no lingual water. And don't correct me on my biblical Hebrew for I am studying under a man who is fluent in it and he has addressed this issue!

lieke

12-12-2007, 06:19 PM

I have some (very serious) questions for the christians among you who believe in evolution too: do you believe Adam was the first (and only first) human? Do you believe that God created Eva out of him? If not, then what do you believe?

^not at all meant as an attack of course, i just would like to know:)

Doffen

12-12-2007, 06:37 PM

Prove God doesn't exsist! I DARE you!

Rargh! ( ;) )

Sorry, I cannot. There is no possible way of proving that God exists or not. No matter how you twist your words and sentences, you will never be able to bring /proof/ that God exists.

Glad to see you back Inkspot! :)

PunkMaister

12-12-2007, 06:46 PM

So this makes it automaticly a proof of God? Is that your conclusion?

That's just it when it comes to God his existence cannot be phisically proven either way. The empirical evidence suggests something at work which I call it God! You want to call it the great Pumpkin be my guest!:cool:

Doffen

12-12-2007, 06:53 PM

That's just it when it comes to God his existence cannot be phisically proven either way. The empirical evidence suggests something at work which I call it God! You want to call it the great Pumpkin be my guest!:cool:

Empirical evidence? Sorry my english starts to slip when it passes midnight over here. You'll have to explain.

(Btw; I'm a big fan of pumpkins)

Charn_Tim

12-12-2007, 06:54 PM

Thanks Inkspot! It's always wonderful to be here :)

The Hebrew word used is "yom" which everywhere in the bible is translated day as in 24 hours...And don't correct me on my biblical Hebrew for I am studying under a man who is fluent in it and he has addressed this issue!

Cymro, seriously? All you have to do to see that yom (the Hebrew word that is translated as "day" in Genesis 1) refers to a period of time elsewhere in the Bible as longer than 24 hours is to read the 4th verse of Genesis 2. Gen. 2:4 says:

"This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day (Hebrew: yom) that the Lord God made earth and heaven."

Here, clear as day (no pun intended) we have an instance where yom means longer than 24 hours. But for further references in scripture where yom refers to a period of time longer than 24 hours, see for example: Eze. 13:5, 30:3, Joel 2:11, Oba. 1:15, Zep. 1:14.

lieke: Hopefully, this is a partial answer to your question. I'll look for where I posted previously in greater detail about the timing of the creation week, answering your questions, etc. but I gotta run right now. :)

EDIT: Guys, this isn't a thread for debating the existence of God, we already have a thread for that, I believe. Please keep that discussion in the correct thread.

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-12-2007, 06:57 PM

I think he means solid definitive evidece,

I have a question. when you mean evidence or proof what do you mean? If visual then no you will have no visual evidence till Christ returns that God exsists. If you mean logical conclusions of his exsistence then yes you can have them. I am bringing my opld post back out because it does logically prove his exsistence.

I will apologize in advance for the lengthiness of this post.

Well you people have finally driven me to it, I am pulling out all the stops and even grabbing my old college notes. I will in this post both prove the existence of GOD and disprove beyond a doubt the Theory of Evolution.

Before I begin my actual argument I would suggest picking up a little book called "Did God Use Evolution," by Werner Gitt. Great book. If your really interested in the subject then "In the Beginning was Information," Werner Gitt. "Thousands not Billions," Dr. Don DeYoung. and "Evolution Exposed," by Roger Paterson. All very good books that provide good answers. I would especially suggest Christians who believe in Theistic Evolution to read some of these books. And If your not a reader but still want to figure this out Answers in Genesis website I believe offers DVDs. Despite what some people might have said AIG has good sound answers and is very scientific organization.

In this debate I will be attempting to use Three Laws of Logic.
1. The Terms must be Unambiguous.
2. The Premises on which Assumptions are made MUST be TRUE.
3. The conclusions come to MUST follow with scientific logic.

To Refute Evolution I must first know what Evolution is. Evolution by itself is just change, However, I am refuting the Theory of Evolution, aka Materialism.
Materialism = The foundational assumptions of Modern Science are the belief that the universe consists solely of Matter (Mass & Energy,) and that Matter is Self-Organizing over time.

Materialism is itself broken down into three forms of Evolution.
Cosmic Evolution = the spontaneous increase in order and complexity from the Big Bang resulting in stars, galaxy cluster, and planetary systems that have the available energy, elements, and molecules necessary for life.
Chemical Evolution = the spontaneous origin of the first living, self replicating cell from inorganic chemicals by random physiochemical processes.
Biological Evolution = Alterations within the first living cell and it's descendants by random genetic mutation and natural selection that have developed all organisms.
Genetic Mutation = is random damage to the DNA caused by physical and chemical agents.
Natural Selection = is a process whereby environmental factors differentially affect the survival of organisms.

I wish to now bring out the Ambiguous terms in the past sentences.
Mass No one really knows what mass or energy are. I looked all over for good definitions and found non.
Energy
Self-Organizing I couldn't even find self-organizing in the dictionary. It mainly means something that that make itself more complicated but how can something that is a single cell do that?
(Note Mass and Energy are the 2 Fundamental Entities)

Now that we know what TOE is we are going to introduce a new player. My player.
Information. Information was recently "discovered" by a group of Christian Scientists in that they studied it's properties, made certain Scientific Laws concerning it, and properly defined it as UDI.

the Universal Definition of Information (UDI) = An encoded, symbolically represented message conveying expected action and intended purpose. Its four attributes are Code Meaning Action Purpose.
Scientific Laws = A Precise statement formulated from discoveries through observation and experiment that have been repeatedly verified and NEVER contradicted.

UDI is a NONMATERIAL fundamental Entity.
Scientific Laws Proposed within UDI

Fundamental Law 1. anything material such as physiochemical processes, cannot create something nonmaterial.
Law 2. Information (UDI) is a nonmaterial fundamental entity and is neither property nor a correlate of Matter.

Laws about Information (UDI). 1. Information cannot originate in statistical processes. 2. information can only originate from an intelligent sender. corollaries of 2. a. all codes result from an intentional choice and agreement between sender and recipient. b. there can be no new UDI without an intelligent sender. c. any chain of UDI can be traced back to an intelligent source. Law 3. allocating meaning to a set of symbols by a sender and determining meaning of a set of symbols by a recipient are mental processes requiring intelligence. 4. the four attributes of information can be identified on both the sender and recipients' sides. 5. information is constantly being degraded and destroyed unless it is maintained by an intelligent source.

UDI is nonmaterial because it has no weight.
IE. if you take an "empty" cd and put it in the computer and download the library of congress onto it and take it back out you should expect it to be very heavy right? NO it is no heavier then when you put it in even though it is full of UDI. and on a 1"x1" slide you can put the entire BIBLE however DNA information if put on the same amount of space a single strand thick you could encode 7.7 trillion Bibles!! if these bibles were real 1" thick bibles and all stacked upon one another they would reach the sun and 1/3 the way past again! Information is not bound by physical restraints of weight.

I mentioned DNA. It is provable that DNA is full of UDI information. Even Evolutionists know this. So the presence of this Nonmaterial entity all over life on every strand of DNA is proof enough that TOE is false for it clearly states in there first premise that "The universe is composed solely of Mass and energy." UDI is not matter, and it is impossible for it to come from matter. Also for UDI information to be on DNA today it is mandatory for it to be on the first living cell. Well if that cell came from material physiochemical processes it would be impossible for it to have Information on it which can't come from matter.
Also with the slide illustration we see that the DNA UDI information is trillions of times more complex then mans present technology and from the Scientific Laws about UDI we see that information (UDI) must come from an intelligent sender which is nonmaterial (UDI can't come from matter) so the Information in the first cell MUST have been put there by an all knowing all powerful being, GOD.

SO:
TOE is incorrect
There is a God

My Information :D was taken in large part from the costudy of Dr. Werner Gitt & Dr. Bob Compton.

PunkMaister

12-12-2007, 06:57 PM

Empirical evidence? Sorry my english starts to slip when it passes midnight over here. You'll have to explain.

(Btw; I'm a big fan of pumpkins)

The evidence while it does not prove that God exists wih a 100% certainty it does show that something we simply do not understand and that is pretty powerfull to bind literally everything together is at work here!

As I said I call that God you being a fan of pumpkins you can call it whatever you like but undeniably something bigger, greater than us does exist and it holds everything together literally!

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-12-2007, 07:03 PM

Thanks Inkspot! It's always wonderful to be here :)

Cymro, seriously? All you have to do to see that yom (the Hebrew word that is translated as "day" in Genesis 1) refers to a period of time elsewhere in the Bible as longer than 24 hours is to read the 4th verse of Genesis 2. Gen. 2:4 says:

"This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day (Hebrew: yom) that the Lord God made earth and heaven."

Here, clear as day (no pun intended) we have an instance where yom means longer than 24 hours. But for further references in scripture where yom refers to a period of time longer than 24 hours, see for example: Eze. 13:5, 30:3, Joel 2:11, Oba. 1:15, Zep. 1:14.

lieke: Hopefully, this is a partial answer to your question. I'll look for where I posted previously in greater detail about the timing of the creation week, answering your questions, etc. but I gotta run right now. :)

EDIT: Guys, this isn't a thread for debating the existence of God, we already have a thread for that, I believe. Please keep that discussion in the correct thread.

But what you fail to see Theologically I see very plain. The Day of the Lord or the Lord's day has certain theological meaning, actually in the day the Lord made them is 24 hours because he is refering specifically to the heavens and the Earth which he did in one day. Also the Day of the Lord and the Lord's day have to do with his second advent which will once more be on a specific day. Not a billion years.

Besides this Theistic Evolution has absolutely no ground theologically.

1. for there to be billions of years of death and decay leading up to Adam to have evolved then why did God call it very good?

2. Why would God curse the ground and say you will surly die if there had been millenia of death and pain and suffering before this?

3. Why would God have been punishing us with death before we sinned?

Sunrise

12-12-2007, 07:17 PM

1. for there to be billions of years of death and decay leading up to Adam to have evolved then why did God call it very good?

2. Why would God curse the ground and say you will surly die if there had been millenia of death and pain and suffering before this?

3. Why would God have been punishing us with death before we sinned?

We have already addressed these questions. Look back through the thread. Start at post #834 on page84 (http://www.narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6373&page=84).

To answer lieke's question: I believe in some aspects of evolution, because the fact that it happens is undeniable for anyone who understands biology. For anyone to say they "know" it isn't true makes me wonder why we aren't turning to them for cures for cancer and new vaccines, since they must be smarter than all the biologists who use evolutionary theory to produce such things. :rolleyes:

I also believe there was an actual first man called Adam who was the first human, specially created, the first living being to have a soul.

There are many different hypotheses among theistic evolutionists on this issue, though, so don't take mine as representative of all.

inkspot

12-12-2007, 11:22 PM

I agree with Sunrise on the issue of Adam: I believe he was the first man into whom God breathed spiritual life, and consciousness. I believe CS Lewis also took this tack: that up until that point, God had been perfecting the human body, and when He had it just so, He breathed divine life into him, as the Scriptures say.

actually you are wrong Inkspot, Mod or not.
LOL! I have been wrong many times before I became a mod and after! :)
1. for there to be billions of years of death and decay leading up to Adam to have evolved then why did God call it very good?
Is that all you see in the grandeur of what God did during those billions of years -- death and decay? When I say (as a biased citizen of the USA) "This is the greatest country in the world!" would you honestly answer, "How can you say the USA is good when so many people have died and their bodies decayed here?" The idea that some things lived and died doesn't make the earth God created "not good."

2. Why would God curse the ground and say you will surly die if there had been millenia of death and pain and suffering before this?
Many of us believe God was here speaking of spiritual death, that in fact His plan for the physical world had been all along for us to live in harmony with Him and die when our time came. Lewis illustrated this beautifuly in Out of the Silent Planet, the world he imagined which had never fallen out of harmony with God ... and yet its people lived, and died; their death freed them to eternal life with their God.

3. Why would God have been punishing us with death before we sinned?
I think I answered that above: physical death may never have been intended as a punishment, but the spiritual death we incurred was, indeed, a curse.

Look at the following passage which seems to describe our perfected world, the New Jerusalem. Remarkably, death is mentioned in this passage, and it is not a curse ... unless you fail to live 100 years, then that would seem like a curse ... If physical death at a ripe old age is part of God's plan in the perfection of the New Jerusalem, why must we insist that death was never part of God's plan for humans?
Behold, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.

18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.

19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.

20 "Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
he who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere youth;
he who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-13-2007, 01:42 AM

Sunrise

12-13-2007, 08:35 AM

inkspot

12-13-2007, 12:29 PM

This isn't about what I think or what I say. You are denying that when God said he created in six days he meant he created in six days. If you bring that into question then you must also bring the rest of the bible into question. Maybe God won't really forgive us of our sins. Maybe when God said he loves us he really meant something else.
I am finished arguing with you because you fail to see the truth.
Mark 6: 11* "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city."
Sodom and Gomorrha burned with fire and brimestone. -steps out of thread and shakes the dust of his feet- Goodbye and happy debating!
OK, in case Cymro dares to poke his head back in this thread, I am going to post a public warning here for him, and I will also send him a PM about this kind of nonsense.

Sunrise took it in stride, and I appreciate her for that, but I want to say for the sake of the few kids who may be reading this that what Cymro said here is unacceptable. It is, in fact, a curse reserved for those who reject Jesus Christ, a terrible thing to say to anyone -- but especially to his own brothers and sisters in Christ! It was absolutely in appropriate to this situation, and I urge him to examine his own heart if he actually thinks that because of our differences over how to interpret Genesis, that I am doomed to hell (which is what his curse means -- he is in effect sending me to hell). I take this very seriously and do not think it should go unanswered.

The way to salvation is through Jesus Christ alone, the Living Word, He is called, the only way to heaven. Neither Charn Tim, Sunrise, EveningStar nor any of us believers who have defended intelligent design have ever in this thread, in any way, denied that Christ is Lord. We all believe Genesis to be 100% true, and Jesus to be the Messiah and Savior. For Cymro to behave as if Christ has been rejected simply because Cymro's unfounded ideas about Scripture have been rejected is inappropriate, ludicrous, laughable.

Please, whether you insist on clinging to a literal 24-hour day interpretation which is not present in Scripture, or whether you believe God may have used Intelligent Design/Evolution, please do not forget that most of us here are brothers and sisters in Christ, and none of us deserve to be told to "go to hell," which is basically what Cymro has done here.

End of warning, end of rant, end of mod talk.

Back to the discussion: Scripture nowhere says creation was accomplished in 6 literal 24-hour days. The word used for "day" in Genesis is used elsewhere to mean longer periods of time. So, if you insist on the literal 24-hour interpretation, what evidence do you have that this is the correct interpretation?

And Cymro, if you are still here, what is your answer to my question about the Scripture in Isaiah 65 and the idea that physical death was the curse of God?

PunkMaister

12-13-2007, 05:01 PM

Well, Inky, Tim, once again we have been consigned to the ranks of the heathen! :rolleyes:

At least we're in good company. Maybe C.S. will reserve us a toasty spot with the rest of the heretics.

Cymro, it's clear you haven't bothered to read any of Tim's numerous posts on the interpretation of Genesis 1, or else you could not in good conscience make such a sweeping, nonsensical statement. We certainly do not bring any portion of scripture into question. We believe Genesis to be absolutely true. But it is NOT a scientific textbook and was never intended to be.

Let me ask one more question, Cymro: who made you? Was it God, or was it your parents?

Wow! I guess so! There's a whole lot of Christians now that although don't lable themselves as evolutionary theists etc do believe that what scientists call evolution is nothing but the process behind creation.

And Cymro I think you should lighten up a bit, after all the Bible does state that a day for God could be a 1000 years and that was just to show that we cannot possibly ever understand how he works and why he does as he does,the very complexity of the universe or should I say multiverse? Attest to that fact.

lieke

12-13-2007, 06:24 PM

lieke: Hopefully, this is a partial answer to your question. I'll look for where I posted previously in greater detail about the timing of the creation week, answering your questions, etc. but I gotta run right now.

Yeah, it is. My sis has a Hebrew bible (and can read bits and pieces of it), so i'll ask her to help me out with it a bit, and we'll search things through, thanks! :)

To answer lieke's question: I believe in some aspects of evolution, because the fact that it happens is undeniable for anyone who understands biology. For anyone to say they "know" it isn't true makes me wonder why we aren't turning to them for cures for cancer and new vaccines, since they must be smarter than all the biologists who use evolutionary theory to produce such things.

I also believe there was an actual first man called Adam who was the first human, specially created, the first living being to have a soul.

So you believe that Adam was actually 'created' and did not 'evolve'? Or do you mean that you believe that he did evolve, but was the first being to get a soul?

I agree with Sunrise on the issue of Adam: I believe he was the first man into whom God breathed spiritual life, and consciousness. I believe CS Lewis also took this tack: that up until that point, God had been perfecting the human body, and when He had it just so, He breathed divine life into him, as the Scriptures say.

So you're saying that there were other kinda like human beings but not 'perfected' yet, and Adam was the first one with a soul, right?

If i remember correctly C.S. Lewis also thought that a human being had more 'controll' over his body before the fall of men... i think i read that in 'The Problem of Pain', anyone happen to know? (I don't have the book with me right now).

And inkspot, the part you quoted from Isaija: i have a few problems with saying that that part is proof of God intending death before the fall of men:
1. The part in Isaija is about NEW heaven and earth. In the bible it is made very clear that there will be no more death on new heaven and earth. (Revelation 21 vers 4, and i believe in more places, this was just one that popped into my mind).
2. It says in the last verse that you quoted that the ones who wouldn't make it to 100 years are accursed. That would mean that there would be the possibility to be cursed, and in a perfect place: how is that possible?

At least we're in good company. Maybe C.S. will reserve us a toasty spot with the rest of the heretics.

:eek: So... you...get...to...meet...Lewis :eek: Maybe i should switch sides:p

But lets remember that this is NOT a salvation issue or something. I don't think that when we arrive at heaven God will say to us: 'Well done, but hey, you didn't believe in literal 6 days creation I see, well, I am terribly sorry, but...'

EveningStar

12-13-2007, 07:31 PM

Charn_Tim

12-13-2007, 08:33 PM

You are denying that when God said he created in six days he meant he created in six days. If you bring that into question then you must also bring the rest of the bible into question.
This is very very sad.

For anyone new to this thread, in addition to sunrise and inkspot's spot on (no pun intended :) ) analysis, I just wanted to make it clear that what Cyrmo is objecting to is entertaining any other interpretations of Genesis 1, because he feels that his interpretation 1 day = 24 hours must be absolutely correct, which we've already shown isn't true. If he would listen to what any of the others of us are saying, then he will realize that we are not questioning the "authority of scripture" or undermining any part of the bible or undermining the precious gospel itself, we are merely questioning the interpretation that the Bible teaches a 144 consecutive hour creation week.

Lieke, i know this question wasn't addressed to me, but I'll give my 2 cents anyway:

So you believe that Adam was actually 'created' and did not 'evolve'? Or do you mean that you believe that he did evolve, but was the first being to get a soul?
It seems to me that the first fully formed human being (mind, consciousness, spirit, moral awareness, etc.) was brought about by some other cause than the natural forces we know about, i.e. natural selection. So at this point, in the evolution of life on earth, I do believe that this required a "fiat" miracle, and if I'm right (along with sunrise and inkspot who also believe something like this as far as I can tell), it would be beyond the realm of science to find a full answer to this question of how exactly human life evolved.

But at the same time, in my opinion, we should not resent or hamper those who do try to find an answer to this question from within science. If they did in fact find a way to answer this question scientifically, I do not think it would invalidate anything in Genesis. Because again, who's to say that God didn't endow the universe with some special consciousness-giving property or something of that nature? (Highly unlikely in my mind, but logically possible.) If this were the case, like all natural law, this law is ultimately attributable to God, who is the author of the Universe.

One final note because it's relevant to this forum is that from everything I've read, this is consistent with C.S. Lewis' scientific worldview.

This is my tentative position, but very much open to change and to receiving input from others wiser and more informed than myself!

Sunrise

12-13-2007, 08:44 PM

So you believe that Adam was actually 'created' and did not 'evolve'? Or do you mean that you believe that he did evolve, but was the first being to get a soul?

I believe he was actually created, myself, because I find that a more satisfying interpretation. But there are folks who hold to the second option, so you see there is a range of opinion.

Also, regarding the "death before the fall" question - we've discussed this before, but I'll bring it up again, in a question for you: if you don't believe anything died prior to the fall, how do you explain the design of animals that are clearly predators, like T-Rex, vultures, and venomous things like spiders and scorpions? Do you think these animals ate grass before the fall and then were changed afterwards as part of the curse? Do you think that bacteria that feed on decaying matter (dead stuff) just did not exist as part of the created order? Does all the plant death as the animals ate not count?

It's worth noting that Genesis does not say anything about God making herbivores into carnivores, or specially creating bacteria that would feed on dead matter after the fall...in fact most literal creationists insist that God did NOT do any more creating after the Genesis week. So how do you reconcile these positions? Just some food for thought.

I think that when we arrive at heaven God will say to us: 'Well done, but hey, you didn't believe in literal 6 days creation I see, well, I am terribly sorry, but...'

AMEN TO THAT. Thank you for your reasonable attitude. :D

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-14-2007, 01:42 AM

To whom I might of offended by virtually saying Got to Hell. This is not what I meant however this issue is very dear to my heart but I was over zealous in using that passgae. I think you can beleive in Theistic Evolution and be a Christian (dont take this personally) But I also believe that this comes from a lack of the understanding of God's Character.I have some questions that I would like to be answered that I have asked before but no one answered them satisfactorily.

If you debate me using Bible then we can have an argument but if you debate using youre ideas and traditionalism then I have won already because the final authority is God's word and what it says.

1. Why after millenia of pain death and suffering did God say it was all very good? God clearly states in Genesis "Eat of this fruit and you will surly die." This means that death is a direct product of sin, how then could there be death before humans sinned? In the New Testament Annas and Saphirah are struck dead for sin, he doesn't call sin nor death very good. Yet according to your interpretation he calls pain death and suffering very good? This belief doesn't flow with the Character of God.
Beresheet Bara elohim eth hashamayim eth erets. Genesis 1:1 the rough Hebrew transliterated into English. Bara is the word create. In Latin it is Ex Nihlo. out of NOTHING! how did God use evolution if he created out of nothing?
Also read through this with me from Genesis 1:1* ¶ "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2* And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3* And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4* And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day." It says quite specifically there was morning and eveninng one day! that dosn't sound like billions of years to me sounds like the evening and morning!

" 6* And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day." Evening Morning.

"9 And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10* And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11* And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth: and it was so.
12* And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after their kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day." the important theme words here are Evening and Morning 1 DAY!

"14* And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years:
15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16* And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day." seeing any theme here with the days any commonalities?

"20* And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21* And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature that moveth, wherewith the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind: and God saw that it was good.
22* And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.
23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day." tell me if you see anything similar in any of these!

"24* And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so.
25* And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw that it was good.
26* And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28* And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29* And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food:
30 and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so.
31* And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." Don't knwo about you but that looked like 6 evenings and 6 mornings, 6 DAYS!
the words evening and morning literally mean darkness and sun rise a typical Hebrew expression meaning 24 hours. huh. crazy how the text tells us right there that it was 6 literal days!

Someone also mentioned an Isaiah Passag about the young will die at age 100. I asked my professor about this because I wasn't exactly sure. He said that if they are using that verse to prove Theistic Evolution then they are grasping at straws because their argument is failing. It said it was one of the most absurd things he had ever heard. Don't get angry at me he said it I am quoting him. Hesaid that verse means that if people were to die 100 years old we would consider him a baby! just a baby at 100. It is in the Hebrew a figure of speech meaning no one will die because all the young will be 100 years old!

P.S. My Proffesor is a brilliant man who has studied the Bible nearly all his life as well as Hebrew culture he knws Hbrew Aramaic Greek and Latin all fluently and has writting a 400 page book on the Character of God, he might know what hes talking about!

P.P.S. I am still not completely convinced Lewis was Theistic Evolutionist but if he was then I would indeed say that he had false beliefs for even the greatest have them.

Charn_Tim

12-14-2007, 04:30 AM

I. Introduction and Lewis' view of Genesis

To whom I might of offended by virtually saying Got to Hell. This is not what I meant however this issue is very dear to my heart but I was over zealous in using that passgae. I think you can beleive in Theistic Evolution and be a Christian (dont take this personally) But I also believe that this comes from a lack of the understanding of God's Character.I have some questions that I would like to be answered that I have asked before but no one answered them satisfactorily.
Thanks for expressing this. Most of us in this thread are very passionate about this topic as well and have thought and prayed much regarding this very issue. We are your brothers and sisters in Christ who are hoping to critically examine God's word together in light of all revealed knowledge-both supernatural and natural.

Now I just wanted to get this out of the way up front, because you keep bringing it up as if it will intimidate or help you convince us:

P.S. My Proffesor is a brilliant man who has studied the Bible nearly all his life as well as Hebrew culture he knws Hbrew Aramaic Greek and Latin all fluently and has writting a 400 page book on the Character of God, he might know what hes talking about!

P.P.S. I am still not completely convinced Lewis was Theistic Evolutionist but if he was then I would indeed say that he had false beliefs for even the greatest have them.
While I respect your professor, if you're this is an attempt to impress us with his credentials and use his teaching as authoritative, forget it. And I don't care if you go run back to him with every reply that we have, or if he converses with us right here on this forum. There are many scholars with differing opinions who I've read, not least of which has been Lewis, and I'm interested in all of their interpretations and reaching an intellectually honest and consistent conclusion in accordance with the Holy Spirit as I prayerfully consider these important matters.

Anyway, among the many passages throughout his writings which discuss science directly or indirectly (see Miracles, God in the Dock, Mere Christianity, Abolition of Man) one chapter from Reflections on the Psalms which I would highly recommend reading is Chapter 11: "Scripture". Here is a passage that is particularly relevant, where he is discussing the literary, historical, and factual basis of the Old Testament:

The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not "the Word of God" in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

Thus, Lewis would absolutely disagree with the approach you and your professor are taking. He reads Genesis and does not believe that it was intended to tell us literal facts about how the universe was brought about-including time scales, order of creation, etc. So if you mean to come onto a website devoted to the works of C.S. Lewis and try to convince us to listen to your professor over C.S. Lewis, it's absolutely futile.

Now onto your questions...

II. Death in Genesis and Creation Ex Nihilo

1. Why after millenia of pain death and suffering did God say it was all very good? God clearly states in Genesis "Eat of this fruit and you will surly die." This means that death is a direct product of sin, how then could there be death before humans sinned? In the New Testament Annas and Saphirah are struck dead for sin, he doesn't call sin nor death very good. Yet according to your interpretation he calls pain death and suffering very good? This belief doesn't flow with the Character of God.
I don't see your problem with this passage in the least. The passage clearly says, "you will surely die" when you eat of the tree, not "you and any other type of lower hominid, animal, bacteria, and life form will surely die." He was addressing the first fully formed human beings: adam and eve. And I fail to see the relevance of Ananias and Sapphira to this passage.

Beresheet Bara elohim eth hashamayim eth erets. Genesis 1:1 the rough Hebrew transliterated into English. Bara is the word create. In Latin it is Ex Nihlo. out of NOTHING! how did God use evolution if he created out of nothing?
Once again, there is no conflict between believing that God bara-created the universe ex nihilo just as the Big Bang says happened to the universe. And just because the Bible says "God created x", it does not follow that he did this by fiat miracle, like Jesus' resurrection. For example, when verse 1:21 says "God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves" it does not necessarily follow that he made them appear out of nowhere in the exact state that we see them today. The possibility that God endowed the Universe with natural laws which would bring this about is just as valid of an interpretation. Just to be clear, I am totally open to the very real possibility that God did create them by fiat miracle rather than a natural "law", like natural selection or anything else. But my contention is that either interpretation is valid.

III. Morning and Evening

It says quite specifically there was morning and eveninng one day! that dosn't sound like billions of years to me sounds like the evening and morning!... Don't knwo about you but that looked like 6 evenings and 6 mornings, 6 DAYS!
the words evening and morning literally mean darkness and sun rise a typical Hebrew expression meaning 24 hours. huh. crazy how the text tells us right there that it was 6 literal days!
The fact that the phrase "and there was evening and there was morning, day x" does not in the least logically require the word "day" to be 24 hours. In fact, it is well known that "Evening and morning" is an idiomatic expression in Semitic languages (see this article (http://www.leaderu.com/offices/o_helweg/eve-morn.html) by Dr. Otto Helweg for more detail). And thus, like all idioms, its meaning is nonliteral and clearly understood by native speakers. In fact, the Old Testament unequivocally uses that phrase elsewhere to mean a time period longer than a day, and perhaps even an indefinite time period. Daniel 8 gives an account of a vision of a ram and goat along with the interpretation given by Gabriel. The vision spans many years; some commentators believe the time has not yet been completed. And we find that Daniel 8:26 says, "The vision of the evenings and the mornings that have been given to you is true, but seal up the vision for it concerns the distant future" (RSV, emphasis added).

But, in fact, in the original Hebrew, the phrase "evenings and mornings" is in the singular and not the plural, meaning this verse has the exact same grammatical structure as we find in Genesis 1. Dr. Helweg says that translated literally, the verse would read "And the vision of the evening and the morning that has been given you." So here we have a manifestly clear case where the idiom "evening and morning" refers to a time period longer than 24 hours, perhaps even indefinite, depending on the interpretation of Daniel.

Someone also mentioned an Isaiah Passag about the young will die at age 100.

I haven't thought enough about this to comment at the moment, but I or someone else can get back to you if you'd like.

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-14-2007, 05:04 AM

i did not post of my Proffessor to intimidate anyone. Simply to state the source of my fact so you knew i wasn't just going off on a tangent, but that credible scholars agree with me. As far as I can see your belief in Theistic Evolution is an argument from silence and speculation. You said God said this but didn't say that. Well if we are going to reason that way (and it's no REASON at all) then we will chase our tails all day and you will never get anywhere. an argument from speculation in that you are speculating that by one day God means to tell us a billion years. My belief however is one that makes sense. God said this THEREFORE this and cursing of the ground and slaying of animals makes sense. also is it not much more reasonable that when God said 6 days he meant 6 days. By your interpretation it seems as if he is delibratly trying to confuse us. Whenever God talks about something important in the Bible he makes it quite plain so that a baby Christian can understand it. in Genesis said, "And the Lord God created the heavens and the earth over billions of years using Evolution until he got to presant man." then I would believe you. But I cannot find and you have not given me sound BIBLICAL evidence that God used Evolution. As I said you have argued from silence and speculation NOT reason and definatly not staying within the parameters of God's character.

Also you said. I am totally open to the very real possibility that God did create them by fiat miracle rather than a natural "law", like natural selection or anything else.

but just before that you said. So if you mean to come onto a website devoted to the works of C.S. Lewis and try to convince us to listen to your professor over C.S. Lewis, it's absolutely futile.
so you are confusing me because one minute you say you won't be convinced and the other you say you are open to it! you are contradicting yourself.

Also since you have the spirit to dissagre with Dr. Dickenson then I have no problem whatsoever dissagreeing to high heaven with C.S. Lewis.

Sunrise

12-14-2007, 10:51 AM

LOL. Nobody is saying you have to agree with Lewis. We're just saying, there are all kinds of scholars with all kinds of different ideas on this topic, and your professor's opinion, as learned as he undoubtedly is, is just one opinion. If you want a list of spiritual leaders who are open to an old-earth paradigm, we can give you a long one. But this isn't really about who believes what. It's about which viewpoint is correct.

Now, Cymro, we've been careful to address your questions, yet you either haven't read the answers or you've ignored them, because you never engage us on the answers - you just go off on your next argument. So, here, I'm going to discuss specifically your issues about death, and I'd appreciate a response.

Can we use logic for a moment? When God told Adam and Eve that "in the day you eat the fruit...you shall surely die," was He lying? Because when I read the passage, I don't see Adam or Eve keeling over and physically dying the moment the fruit touches their lips. Here is evidence from Scripture, not only that "day" does not always mean 24 hours, but that the death God is referencing is spiritual.

As man is the only creature with a soul, he is the only one who can experience spiritual death. But physical death? Can you imagine what the earth would look like now if there were no such thing - if the Fall as you interpret it had not taken place? We would have been overrun long ago with...well, probably bugs and bacteria, since they reproduce the fastest.

Notice that Adam and Eve don't ask, "What does He mean? What is "die"?" Of course we aren't given every detail, but it does seem like they might wonder what He was threatening with, unless, of course, they were already familiar with the concept.

Physical death is merely the cessation of biological function in an organism, and is a necessary part of the life cycle. There is nothing evil about this, and when God called His creation "good" I believe Him. It does not malign His character, although it may be hard for us to understand. Even today, when we are assured that "all things work together for the good of those who love Him," I know good believing Christians whose child is dying of cancer. Is this "good"? I wouldn't call it so, but apparently God does. So clearly He has a different perspective on what is good.

Even in Eden, plants were dying daily as they were being eaten. Does that not count as death? Our fossil record shows many species that were clearly carnivorous - T-Rex, Sabertooth Tigers, scorpions, etc. What do you think they lived on, if nothing ever died? Even Answers in Genesis has no good answers for these questions, coming up with nonsense about T-Rex living on coconuts (talk about unsupported hypotheses).

Now, leaving this subject aside until I hear a response, I'm moving on.

I know we talked about this over PM, but I'm going to reiterate it here in case any readers find it helpful.

I asked you whether you were made by God or by your parents. You answered correctly: that you were made by God using your parents. But you seem to have missed the connection I was drawing, which is that this is the argument theistic evolutionists use: that we were made by God using natural processes. To say this view is not compatible with Christianity because the Bible doesn't say anything about evolution is to not appreciate for whom and when the Bible was written.

We don't look at the verse: "You knit me together in my mother's womb" and use it to say: "See? God did it all! This doesn't say anything about eggs or sperm or chromosomes or cells dividing, so it's wrong to believe in all that stuff!"

So why do you insist that we look at the verse: "So God made the animals according to their kinds..." etc. and say, "See? God made them! It doesn't say anything about gene mutation or natural selection or differentiation of species, so it's wrong to believe in that!" Of course it doesn't say anything about those things - it would have been incomprehensible to the primitive people to whom it was first revealed. That doesn't mean they couldn't have happened, any more than you could not have been built, cell by cell, from natural processes in your mother's body.

One more topic before I quit. You bring up the "and there was evening and there was morning," phrase, which Charn_Tim has rightly described as an idiom - a figure of speech in the original Hebrew used to designate the fact that a period had an end and a beginning. Did you notice that the Seventh Day in the text does not include this phrase?

Old-Earthers take this to mean that we are still in the Seventh Day - a period of however many thousands or millions of years during which God is no longer specially creating - having set His creation in motion, He is resting. (Note: He's only resting from creating, not from everything else.)

These are not arguments from silence. They are arguments that seek to take our best understanding of scripture and our best understanding of science and allow them to work together. If they seem to conflict, we do not question scripture or science but our understanding of them.

inkspot

12-14-2007, 11:37 AM

Or do you mean that you believe that he did evolve, but was the first being to get a soul? So you're saying that there were other kinda like human beings but not 'perfected' yet, and Adam was the first one with a soul, right?
That is what I think; I think the proto-humans whose remains we have discovered today may have been people without souls, before Adam. This is not science or Scripture; just my hypothesis. Tim pointed out that it would have taken a miracle to get from the "Lucy" lady whose bones are in Houston at the Museum of Natural Science today, to a first man, Adam, with a soul, and I believe God was the modus for the miracle.

And inkspot, the part you quoted from Isaija: i have a few problems with saying that that part is proof of God intending death before the fall of men
Sorry, I meant it specifically to reject Cymru's idea that physical death, in and of itself, is a CURSE. Clearly by the Isaiah passage, death after long life is not considered a curse, but simply the end of that journey. I do not think physical death was a part of the curse after the Fall of Man for the reasons Sunrise and others have given -- physical death seems to have been part of God's plan ... or else He created a bunch of animals dependent upon the death of other animals after He rested from all His creating, which seems to defy Scripture.

To whom I might of offended by virtually saying Go to Hell. This is not what I meant however this issue is very dear to my heart but I was over zealous in using that passgae.
Thank you very much, I really appreciate your posting that publicy. Sunrise, Tim, EveningStar and other Old Earth/Intelligent Design people here are, as has been expressed, very devoted to Jesus Christ, and this is not a salvation issue, as Lieke pointed out. No need for anger or curses. :)

If you debate me using Bible then we can have an argument but if you debate using youre ideas and traditionalism then I have won already because the final authority is God's word and what it says.
Not sure what you mean here. We are talking about the Bible, of course, and Tim and Sunrise have shown that the Genesis passage was never intended as a science lesson, and the phraseology of morning/evening/day can certainly mean, and probably did mean to the original hearers of this Word, a much longer period of time.

1. Why after millenia of pain death and suffering did God say it was all very good?
Sunrise answered this, as did I, earlier: something can be good in God's eyes, and still have been formed by pain and death. The salvation Jesus provided for us was GOOD, and yet it involved the torture and death of the world's only innocent Man.

Beresheet Bara elohim eth hashamayim eth erets. Genesis 1:1 the rough Hebrew transliterated into English. Bara is the word create. In Latin it is Ex Nihlo. out of NOTHING! how did God use evolution if he created out of nothing?
Tim and Sunrise answered: God did create everything out of nothing, as the Scripture says. Our argument is that His creation took longer than 6 literal 24-hour days, and why not? Nothing in Scripture contradicts this, and science supports it.

He said that if they are using that verse to prove Theistic Evolution then they are grasping at straws because their argument is failing. It said it was one of the most absurd things he had ever heard. Don't get angry at me he said it I am quoting him. Hesaid that verse means that if people were to die 100 years old we would consider him a baby! just a baby at 100. It is in the Hebrew a figure of speech meaning no one will die because all the young will be 100 years old!
I did not intend the passage as proof of Old Earth. I intended it as proof that physical death was not necessarily a curse delivered in Eden, but for the record, I find it strange that:

You (and your professor) insist that we not take this passage literally, because "in the Hebrew a figure of speech meaning no one will die because all the young will be 100 years old!" and yet you insist we must take literally the "yom" of Genesis as 24 hours, despite the evidence given here that the word is used elsewhere in Scripture to mean a longer or indefinite amount of time.

The passage certainly does not say no one dies.
"Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
he who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere youth;
he who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
It says there will never be a person who does not "live out" his years, and that anyone who doesn't live to be 100 will seem like he's been cursed. I agree with you that probably it is an idiom implying that people will live forever, but why are you allowed to discount this as a figure of speech, but then insist that Genesis means 6 literal 24-hour days when that has likewise been proven a "figure of speech" for a much longer time?

also is it not much more reasonable that when God said 6 days he meant 6 days.
See above ... the early Hebrews for whom the creation story was originally intended, and who kept it and passed it down to us, did not understand the word used as "day" in Genesis always to mean a literal 24-hour day. Tim, Sunrise and others have shown that the word can mean a longer period of time.

By your interpretation it seems as if he is delibratly trying to confuse us. Whenever God talks about something important in the Bible he makes it quite plain so that a baby Christian can understand it.
Daniel? Revelation? The mysteries of repentance, atonement, grace? The apostles said angels had desired to look into these matters! Not everything is so crystal clear, it seems to me.
if Genesis said, "And the Lord God created the heavens and the earth over billions of years using Evolution until he got to presant man."
As Sunrise pointed out, that would have made no sense to Moses and the early people who were to receive this revelation. The story form of Genesis makes clear that it is not a science lesson.
But I cannot find and you have not given me sound BIBLICAL evidence that God used Evolution.
There's no biblical evidence that malaria is spread by mosquitos, but there is nothing in the Bible which contradicts it, so you can believe the science. The Bible isn't a science book, it is not going to explain everything that you cannot see with your eyeballs. As the science seems to indicate an Old Earth, and the Scriptures do not raise any real objection to that, it seems to me unless God were being deceitful with the geologic record, you can trust the science.

lieke

12-14-2007, 04:29 PM

To say those who aren't at least 100 when they die are accursed does not mean there are curses. It's an expression. Like saying you'd have to be a fool to buy a used car from Charlie.

Understand how English would sound translated into two or three different languages over several centuries. "Wow a wind from that actually swept me away!" (That really blew me away!)
Ok, thanks! And the understanding of English is already hard enough without all the 'old English' stuff in between:p

It seems to me that the first fully formed human being (mind, consciousness, spirit, moral awareness, etc.) was brought about by some other cause than the natural forces we know about, i.e. natural selection. So at this point, in the evolution of life on earth, I do believe that this required a "fiat" miracle, and if I'm right (along with sunrise and inkspot who also believe something like this as far as I can tell), it would be beyond the realm of science to find a full answer to this question of how exactly human life evolved.

But at the same time, in my opinion, we should not resent or hamper those who do try to find an answer to this question from within science. If they did in fact find a way to answer this question scientifically, I do not think it would invalidate anything in Genesis. Because again, who's to say that God didn't endow the universe with some special consciousness-giving property or something of that nature? (Highly unlikely in my mind, but logically possible.) If this were the case, like all natural law, this law is ultimately attributable to God, who is the author of the Universe.
Yeah, definately. Whether God used evolution or a 6 days creation: in the end it's not about what He used, but the fact that HE used it, to create us... *humble feeling*

But thanks for your answer (and the questions are not personal bound, so please continue to answer them :p)

Also, regarding the "death before the fall" question - we've discussed this before, but I'll bring it up again, in a question for you: if you don't believe anything died prior to the fall, how do you explain the design of animals that are clearly predators, like T-Rex, vultures, and venomous things like spiders and scorpions? Do you think these animals ate grass before the fall and then were changed afterwards as part of the curse? Do you think that bacteria that feed on decaying matter (dead stuff) just did not exist as part of the created order? Does all the plant death as the animals ate not count?

It's worth noting that Genesis does not say anything about God making herbivores into carnivores, or specially creating bacteria that would feed on dead matter after the fall...in fact most literal creationists insist that God did NOT do any more creating after the Genesis week. So how do you reconcile these positions? Just some food for thought.
Actually, inkspot, ES and me already walked down the road of animal and human death before the fall, so i've had my share of the 'food for thought' about that i guess... though it stil interests me.

To be completely honest with you (and the rest of the folks), i don't think the idea of intelligent design/longer than 6 days creation/creation by evolution is a bad one, or a ridiculous one. (I mean, if it was scientifically ridiculous it wouldn't be such an issue now would it?) I agree that there is lots of proof of evolution, and that there isn't that much proof against it (there is some i believe, but it's outnumbered). I'm somewhere on the doubt between the two believes, but the actual point of death before the fall is what keeps me with creation still. Now maybe one day i will see it the way you see it, i mean: until not extremely long ago i never even thought of evolution being true (and it's kinda annoying, because almost no one in my surroundings believes it that way, so there isn't really someone i can talk to about it, and ask questions, except for this place), and now i do see things a bit different. But i guess going back to the topic of death before the fall would only lead us (at least, would lead me) to repeating that which i have already posted about a month ago or something.

If you debate me using Bible then we can have an argument but if you debate using youre ideas and traditionalism then I have won already because the final authority is God's word and what it says.

i did not post of my Proffessor to intimidate anyone. Simply to state the source of my fact so you knew i wasn't just going off on a tangent, but that credible scholars agree with me. As far as I can see your belief in Theistic Evolution is an argument from silence and speculation. You said God said this but didn't say that. Well if we are going to reason that way (and it's no REASON at all) then we will chase our tails all day and you will never get anywhere. an argument from speculation in that you are speculating that by one day God means to tell us a billion years. My belief however is one that makes sense. God said this THEREFORE this and cursing of the ground and slaying of animals makes sense. also is it not much more reasonable that when God said 6 days he meant 6 days. By your interpretation it seems as if he is delibratly trying to confuse us. Whenever God talks about something important in the Bible he makes it quite plain so that a baby Christian can understand it. in Genesis said, "And the Lord God created the heavens and the earth over billions of years using Evolution until he got to presant man." then I would believe you. But I cannot find and you have not given me sound BIBLICAL evidence that God used Evolution. As I said you have argued from silence and speculation NOT reason and definatly not staying within the parameters of God's character.
That makes it impossible to debate with you about this, since the bible does not mention evolution literally. The points ES, Sunrise, CT, inkspot, and the others are giving are based on science for a lot. (And on hebrew too, that part is biblical then).
The final authority is not always God's word, i mean: the part where Jozua (sp?) 'stops the sun', did Jozua really stop the sun, or was it the earth that actually stopped, and did they in that time and that place just thought it was the sun because it looked that way?
Even though i do not agree with everything they are saying, i do agree when they say that the bible is not a science book.
I found CT's answers to your questions very good actually. (and that's coming from a not-yet-convinced-still-creationist)

And btw, CT, i never thought i would get a few lessons of Hebrew language in this thread, thanks for making some thigns clear!

There's no biblical evidence that malaria is spread by mosquitos
*looks at eleven commandments* Well, not in your bible maybe:p

I now know where the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy got the words: 'In the beginning the universe was created... this made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move:D'

Praise the Lord that He is so patient with us!

OOHH, I ALMOST FORGOT: i have a question left still for the 'evolutionists' (you get me): how do you view the 'creation' of Eve, do you take that part literally from Genesis, or do you believe she evolved too?

Doffen

12-14-2007, 07:03 PM

P.S. My Proffesor is a brilliant man who has studied the Bible nearly all his life as well as Hebrew culture he knws Hbrew Aramaic Greek and Latin all fluently and has writting a 400 page book on the Character of God, he might know what hes talking about!

I bow to your mighty professor; clearly, I see now how mistaken I have been. I turn from my beliefs and follow thee (seriously, the guy HAS really written a book with 400 pages, and knows less languages then me)

P.P.S. I am still not completely convinced Lewis was Theistic Evolutionist but if he was then I would indeed say that he had false beliefs for even the greatest have them.

So would I, honestly, but I wouldn't be so cocky to say that his believes was false openly.

Even though I'm not into religious believes, I can see your questions (and obviously not answer them), and it seems like you miss the point everyone tells you. Go back in the thread and look up in the discussion. I'm sure 99% of your questions are already answered, but you want them freshly written, again, which I would find awefully tirefull if I had a long debate and people urged me to write my arguments over and over again.

(And to your information: I have a atheistic science teacher who has practiced for about 40 years, speaking as many languages and me and writing books of 300 pages and more for the school system. Would I ever use this as a argument to my beliefs? No, I would not)

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-14-2007, 11:11 PM

Notice that Adam and Eve don't ask, "What does He mean? What is "die"?" Of course we aren't given every detail, but it does seem like they might wonder what He was threatening with, unless, of course, they were already familiar with the concept. I think it was understood as a bad thing, God didn't need to explain it to them because all they needed to know was that this would displease him.
Physical death is merely the cessation of biological function in an organism, and is a necessary part of the life cycle. There is nothing evil about this, and when God called His creation "good" I believe Him.
there is a simply yet dire mistake you are making. you are putting what you know of life and thrusting it onto the precurse world. before sin there was no death of men or animals and no pain or fear. Death is evil. I know this because Romans 3:23 "For the wages of sin is DEATH!!" if death were a normal thing then why would it be a big deal to punish the world with it? God cares for Men above all but he also cares for the Animals and their death is also evil and a direct result from sin. You are telling me that death is necesary for life, in the perfect pre curse/sin world this is completely wrong the only thing necesary for life is God.
It does not malign His character, it maligns he character very much. God is just and Loving. he calls death the payment for sin not very good. why would he repay sin for something very good?
Even in Eden, plants were dying daily as they were being eaten. Does that not count as death? Our fossil record shows many species that were clearly carnivorous - T-Rex, Sabertooth Tigers, scorpions, etc. What do you think they lived on, if nothing ever died? You are equating plantlife with human life! something is wrong with this. you are saying that We are no better then plants? there are three levels of life.
1, that which has the breath of God and is made in his image. Humans.
2, that which is made and has the Breath of God, Animals.Ge 6:17* And I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is in the earth shall die.
3, that which is created. plants.
before the curse everything survived on plants. there was no eating of mean only plants and this wasn't a problem with death for 1 because plants doen't have "LIFE" and 2 gen. 2: 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: God gave us plants to eat.
We don't look at the verse: "You knit me together in my mother's womb" and use it to say: "See? God did it all! This doesn't say anything about eggs or sperm or chromosomes or cells dividing, so it's wrong to believe in all that stuff!"
So why do you insist that we look at the verse: "So God made the animals according to their kinds..." etc. and say, "See? God made them! It doesn't say anything about gene mutation or natural selection or differentiation of species, so it's wrong to believe in that!"
there is a problem with youre argument. you talk about God knitting in the womb. that is poetry. God is using poetry to talk about him bringing all that together in the womb. Also it says that he does this very plainly.
In youre other statement you want us to jump to millions of years and genetic mutation and speciecs dying and evolving. it's a little bit of a stretch. But like I said the first is Poetry (we know this from Hebrew syntax) the second is narrative of what actually happened (we also know this from Hebrew Syntax)
One more topic before I quit. You bring up the "and there was evening and there was morning," phrase, which Charn_Tim has rightly described as an idiom - a figure of speech in the original Hebrew used to designate the fact that a period had an end and a beginning. Did you notice that the Seventh Day in the text does not include this phrase?
Old-Earthers take this to mean that we are still in the Seventh Day - a period of however many thousands or millions of years during which God is no longer specially creating - having set His creation in motion, He is resting. (Note: He's only resting from creating, not from everything else.)
ahh you are getting close. Evening and Morning are both literal and idiomatic. (and if you think they can't be both i've got something to tell you!) I did notice that seventh day day does not have this phrase and it is an amazing and beautifal thing. however your second paragraph there is not quite right. in the idiomatic sense we are srill in the 6th day. 6 being the number of man meaning we are in the day of Man, makes sense no? We will be in this day of man until Christ returns at which time we will enter the idiomatic 7 day. 7 representing perfection and in this passage God's rest. Also note because of the lack of the phrase evening and morning we have not entered the 7 day nor does it have an end. this day is also the weekly sabbath! however the sabbath has no evening nor morning which means you can enter the sabbath any day of the week and it simply means rest shabbot whichs is why people will take a sabatical for a year or two! So as you see I don't deny that the days are idiomatic infact i embrace it but i think they are idiomatic AND literal.

I must apologize. I had a larger argument but I lost it because i presse the wrong button. I will get it up as soon as I get it back

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-14-2007, 11:16 PM

Few areas of science have posed a greater challenge to Young-Earth Creationism than radiometric dating of rocks and minerals. These techniques, which have been in use for nearly a hundred years, show that rocks from the earth and moon, as well as some meteorites, are as old as 4.0 to 4.5 billion years. That observation is clearly at odds with the belief that world is only around 6000 years old. To counter the conclusions of radiometric dating creationists have formed the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) Group. This team, supported by several creationist organizations, exists to disprove the validity of radiometric dating. RATE’s latest undertaking concerns some microscopic zircon crystals recovered from a well near Fenton Hill, NM. The argument, presented in a creationist journal[1] goes like this: The rock formation is radiometrically dated at about 1.5 billion years of age. The zircons contain uranium and thorium which have decayed to their daughter products including helium. Most of the radiogenic helium is still present in the zircon crystals. If the crystals were really 1.5 billion years old the helium should have all diffused out into the surrounding mineral formations. Thus, the crystals cannot really be 1.5 billion years old rather they are only a few thousand years old. Otherwise the helium would be gone. The RATE research includes some limited analyses of helium contents of some zircon crystals, some diffusion rate measurements and calculations to support their claims about the short time of the diffusion process. A general critique of this work by Dr. Kevin R. Henke appears elsewhere[2] and I will not repeat most of those issues here, beyond mentioning that there are some serious questions as to how RATE calculated the ratios of theoretical to actual residual helium contents in the zircons (their Q/Q0 values). Rather, I will discuss the ability of the RATE conclusions to predict what is observed in other studies of helium in zircon crystals.

Any valid scientific theory must have predictive power. The authors of the RATE zircon-helium study claim that their primary thesis, that the earth is only 6000 years old, is vindicated by their calculations of the expected residual helium levels in the Fenton Hill zircon crystals. They claim that their "theory" has predictive power because they can use it to correctly calculate the remaining helium levels in zircons from various depths (and temperatures) in the well. The question remains, can this theory accurately predict the radiogenic helium levels in zircon specimens from sites other than the Fenton Hill well? To answer this question, I will make some predictions based on RATE’s data and conclusions and then compare them with field observations.

First, one needs to consider why anyone is interested in the helium levels in zircon crystals. Natural zircons (ZrSiO4) often contain uranium and thorium which decay (through a series of steps) to lead and helium.[3] The ratios of uranium and thorium to the corresponding daughter product lead isotopes can be used to date the time of formation of the crystal, based on the known half-lives of the original uranium and thorium isotopes. In theory, the helium contents can also be used for dating the crystals, but generally are not because at elevated temperatures the helium will rapidly diffuse out. In recent years, researchers like Dr. Kenneth Farley of the California Institute of Technology and Dr. Peter Reiners of Yale University have used helium-based age measurements to determine something of the cooling history of the zircon crystals. The uranium/lead age gives the time of initial formation, while the helium age tells when the crystal cooled to a temperature at which the helium was essentially all retained. These techniques can also be applied to other minerals such as titanate and apatite. Farley and Reiners and have developed the sophisticated laboratory equipment needed to accurately analyze microscopic crystals for the different isotopes of concern.[4]

To make any predictions about diffusion of helium out of crystals, one needs a diffusion rate at the temperature of concern. Table II of the RATE study[5] presents diffusion rates for helium in the Fenton Hill zircons over a range of temperatures. That data is reproduced in Figure 1, below. The diffusion rates are plotted on semilog axes against the reciprocal of the temperature in degrees Kelvin. The result is a line with a negative slope, which is typical of the Arrhenius Law behavior of a thermally activated process. Note that at lower temperatures the line breaks into a shallower slope. That indicates a different diffusion activation energy and hence that a different diffusion process is rate controlling. While such behavior is more typical in polycrystals where grain boundary diffusion becomes rate controlling at lower temperatures, there is apparently some structural factor in these monocrystals that promotes low temperature diffusion. In any case, the low temperature diffusion rates are critical for this discussion. Figure 2 shows the diffusion rate data for the four lowest temperatures evaluated in that study (175, 205, 225 and 255EC). The data points definitely form a straight line. Extrapolating these data can be a little risky so I will not try to extend the trend line much farther than the range of abscissa values covered by the four existing data points. That extrapolation will extend nearly to a value of 0.00268 or about 100EC. The diffusion rate extrapolated to that temperature is approximately 1E-18 cm2/sec.

The next step of this analysis is to estimate the rate at which helium would diffuse out of a zircon crystal at 100EC. For that calculation I used the degassing formula that estimates the average helium level left in the crystal after some diffusion time. That formula is given as an infinite series of the following expression.[6]

Where CO = the original helium concentration, C = the average concentration at some time t, D = the diffusivity and R = the particle radius. To estimate the remaining helium levels at various times I calculated the first 20 terms of the series (higher order terms are so small as to be irrelevant to the total). Figure 3 shows, for various times, the predicted helium level, as a fraction of the original for zircon crystals of 30 micron radius and a diffusion rate of 1E-18 cm2/sec. That radius is typical of the zircons studied by the RATE group and others and the diffusion rate is extrapolated from their data. The figure shows that the helium concentration needs nearly 50,000 years to drop to approximately 0.1 times the original level, while nearly 100,000 years are needed for the residual level to reach 0.02 times the original.

Having made these predictions, the next step is to compare them with data from studies on zircons that are found at ambient temperatures and are not likely to have been at elevated temperature during the last 6000 years (RATE’s estimate of the age of the earth). There are several studies in the literature that report such data. The first was published by Reiners, Farley and Hickes[7]. In that work, zircon specimens were obtained from the Gold Butte formation in southeastern Nevada (near Lake Mead). That is an unusual formation which geologists interpret as having formed vertically about 1.5 billion years ago (roughly the same age as the Fenton Hill formation). About 15 million years ago this igneous rock mass was tilted on its side as the earth’s crust shifted, exposing rock that had previously been buried as deep as 15 km (about 9 miles). After the formation had tilted the deeper rock quickly cooled. The authors reasoned that the rock closest to the surface before tilting would have probably cooled sooner that the deeper rock. To estimate the time of cooling they measured the age as indicated by the uranium, thorium and helium contents for zircons from different locations along the now tilting rock formation. Keep in mind that the helium dating method gives the time at which the rock cooled to low temperature, not its total age. Their results indicated that the deepest rocks (near 15 km from the original ground surface) did not cool until about 15 million years ago, or about the time the vertical rock formation tilted and the lower level rock was brought to the surface where it could cool. Rock which had been at shallower depths before tilting (about 4 km or 2.4 miles) showed helium-based ages of over 160 million years. That stands to reason since rock closer to the surface would have cooled sooner than deeper rock. Reiners has demonstrated very similar results for helium based ages of crystals of the mineral titanate also extracted from various positions along the Gold Butte[8]. The zircons from the deepest section, prior to tilting, have helium contents only about 1 percent of the theoretical helium that should have formed during 1.5 billion years of radioactive decay. The helium level of the uppermost rocks is about 10 percent of the theoretical maximum. Those helium levels are hard to reconcile with RATE’s ideas about the age of the earth. According to RATE this rock formation is only about 6000 years old. How then could zircons from near the surface (at temperatures even lower than the 100EC I used for my diffusion calculation) have lost so much of their helium?

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-14-2007, 11:26 PM

In a similar work, Reiners[9] reported the ages of zircons found in Missouri River sediments. He found that most of the zircons with uranium/lead ages greater than 1.2 billion years had helium-based ages less than 50 million years. Some had helium ages of only 50 - 70 million years. Reiners also reported that zircons from sediments in the Kamchatka region of Siberia showed helium-based ages less than ten percent of the uranium/lead ages.[10] Reiners’ colleague, Ian Campbell, conducted similar experiments on sediments from the Ganges and Indus Rivers of India[11] and found even more dramatic results with helium ages often less than one percent of the uranium/lead age. Figure 4, below, shows a plot of data from Campbell’s article, comparing the uranium/lead and helium ages of these sediments. The heavy line added to the plot represents a ratio of one percent. Thus, many of the zircons from these sediments have helium ages of less than one percent of the uranium/lead age as well as correspondingly low helium contents. The results of helium measurements from these detrital samples are significant because there is no conceivable scenario for those zircons to have been exposed to elevated temperature (>100EC) during the last 6000 years. These sediments must have been eroded from near the surface in the mountains of northern India. To have eroded during the last 6000 years they could not have been at great depths beneath the surface. Thus, they could not have been exposed to elevated temperatures during the last 6000 years. This leaves the question of how the zircons that have certainly been at low temperatures during a time span that exceeds the creationist estimate of the age of the earth could have lost most of their helium. There simply has not been enough time for the helium to have diffused out. Clearly the real answer to this question is that the zircons are millions or billions of years old and that most of the helium diffused out during a time when the crystals were exposed to higher temperatures that corresponded to much faster diffusion rates. The trouble is that RATE’s idea of the age of the earth does not admit enough time for that to have happened.

The RATE study claims to have correctly predicted the helium contents of zircons from various depths (and temperatures) in the Fenton Hill well. That may or may not be the case, depending on the validity of the residual helium calculations in that study. In any case, the RATE "theory" totally fails to predict the helium contents of other zircons found at different sites in Asia and North America. The zircons have clearly lost more helium than could be explained by 6000 years of diffusion at low temperatures.

In the interest of responsible science, the RATE team members should carefully consider why their results are so different from everyone else’s. In particular they should have more carefully evaluated the possibility that helium from external sources got into their zircons and added to the radiogenic helium formed by uranium and thorium decay. They should have also considered the very complex thermal and geologic history of a site so close to a volcano[12]. They should have examined whether their specimen preparation technique might have induced some unusual behavior in the zircon crystals that accelerated the diffusion rate measurements. Finally, they should have repeated their lower temperature (down to at least 100C) experiments with helium in the zircons from the Fenton Hill well to show that they had reproducible results. Real science needs to be duplicated to prove its validity. RATE certainly has no grounds to declare the entire science of radiometric dating to be invalid based on a study that apparently involved only two published diffusion tests (only one of which actually showed the low temperature fast diffusion rates essential to their "theory"). In short, RATE needs to do a better job of explaining their results if they want to be taken seriously by mainstream scientists.

I am sorry for the double posting but I was only allowed 10,000 characters per post and this is an extensive paper that I found. This is a subject i also happen to know quite a bit about and I think it definitavly scientifically dissproves Old Earth possibility

PunkMaister

12-15-2007, 12:04 PM

Cymro you are sure taking one huge arrogant assumption here! I mean wow!
Just because one or two scholars agree with you does not make it the irrefutable truth! I mean for crying out loud there are scholars out there that believe that some ancient Obelisks are some kind of interdimensional stargates that are powered of all things by human sacrifice! Now because this other few scholars say this is so should we take that as an objective truth as well?

Now this are the facts:

1. You have yet to prove without a shadow of a doubt that your argument that Earth and the Universe as a whole is just a few 1000 years old. So far what you have provided does not hold any water against any serious scrutiny.

2. You have totally and deliberately disregarded the fact that the very Bible states that for God a day could be a 1000 years which just means that the concept of Time as we know it is really irrevelevant to God which makes sense because he is eternal and what is time to the All mighty anyway?:rolleyes:

3. And I got to finish with this: Every time we learn something new about nature and the universe as a whole. One cannot help but wonder at the superp complexity of it all! The mind of God is so vast that defies comprehension and it is very arrogant for anyone to simply say this is the way it has to be because I say so and believe so so it is! Now why is the universe and the Earth so old in comparison to us and so on are questions that only God himself can answer. You see the Bible was not written as an scientific piece but a guide for humankind's spiritual salvation. That's why God did not wrote about Quasars and Blackholes even though they do exist.

EveningStar

12-15-2007, 12:31 PM

I say this in earnest concern for your wellbeing, not in angry reproach. Do not misinterpret this.

We all agree that the question of whether God created the world in six days or six million is not a salvation issue.

We should all agree, however, that our love for one another as members of the Body of Christ is a salvation issue.

Discuss, wrangle, argue--that's fine. Contempt, hatred, bitterness--that is not. I am not pointing at specific people nor am I consenting to tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how guilty I think Polly and Billy and Sally Ann are. I am giving general unsolicited advice to everyone--including me--to remember Christ's injunction to love one another as he loves us.

PunkMaister

12-15-2007, 01:37 PM

*IOWW the Iasc*

12-15-2007, 01:47 PM

PunkMaister

12-15-2007, 01:54 PM

I have a question:

I've been reading through the last couple pages and have seen many posts about death being the result of sin. Is this true for all cases? I can not see how a baby, barely a few weeks old, can contract a disease and die because of sin. How are they to commit it?
Even more, the devout Christian who has spent all their life praising God and repenting his/her sins, yet they die in a terrible house fire, a car accident, or a plane crash?

Is sin really the only reason we die?

Death came upon mankind as a result of the sin commited by Adam and Eve. Jesus defeated Death on the cross however. But we will remain in this mortal bodies for as long as we get to exist in this Earthly realm or up 'till Jesus returns to take his rightful Kingdom. So no a baby is not sinful nor is anyone who has truly accepted Christ into his or her heart and has subsequently persihed in some accident.

EveningStar

12-15-2007, 03:24 PM

PunkMaister

12-15-2007, 03:44 PM

*IOWW the Iasc*

12-15-2007, 05:29 PM

Let's not go too far down the lane of Theodicy--why bad things happen to good people. Because we're left asking why God thought a five year old girl that was tortured, raped and strangled deserved to die. When obviously she didn't. Which makes the murderer a sinner, not God's agent of death.

I meant not to go that route, I was simply asking why people who haven't done anything sinful die even when nobody has sinned to cause it. I just didn't understand.

I kind of get it now, though. Thank you both.

PunkMaister

12-15-2007, 06:13 PM

I meant not to go that route, I was simply asking why people who haven't done anything sinful die even when nobody has sinned to cause it. I just didn't understand.

I kind of get it now, though. Thank you both.
No prob! You are welcome!:D

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-15-2007, 06:52 PM

the problem with this is that all the evidence I am giving to you you either don't bother reading it or you simply refuse to believe what is staring you in the face. If I post again in this thread (and I probly won't because it's useless) then it will only be to restate the evidences I have already given. Someone said something stupid about just because a few people believe it doesn't make it true. Well duh, but I could say the same thing. Well just because a few people believe Theistic Evolution doesn't make it true. You say I have brought no evidence. But my evidence is that God said he created in 6 days. So why can't God mean what he says? You use this silly argument about "Well God is too deep for us to understand and the people who wrote the Bible then didn't understand what was happening. and a day with God is as a thousand years with man!" what a silly argument, and I don't say that alone i know many people who would agree with me. Yes God istoo deep for us to understand and yes there are parts of the Bible that are hard to understand. However when it comes to core issues God speaks plainly. He speaks so that we can understand because it is so important that we do understand. You are nearly saying that God can't speak at a level that we understand so we might as well not try to understand. There is not any passag in the Bible where God says one things and meansa completely different, it's not the way God works.
By interpreting the Bible the way you do then I can take a verse like "The wages of sin is death" well because the Bible is too deep for us to understand then this verse probly actually means if you do bad things God is gonna slap youre hand but it's okay you'll be fine.
Yes a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. All this means is that God is outside of time and he is not bound by the laws of time because he created time. It is paired with a verse "God inhabits eternity," this means god lives outside of time because he is eternal.
(using youre reason for a bit) "since the Bible isn't a text book (which I believe it is) I will no longer use science to prove my theory but by God's Character and the Bible.

PunkMaister

12-15-2007, 07:34 PM

*sigh* The how of creation is not relevant to our salvation Cymro is just too bad you simply cannot understand that little fact. I refuse to continue to triffle with you any longer as you obviosly have already made up your mind and consider the rest of us here as heretics damned to hell for not taking literally that Earth was created in 6 days as in actual present day Earth time days. Never mind what timezone!:rolleyes:

Cymro, Knight of Narnia

12-15-2007, 09:13 PM

I do not consider you damned to hell. If you had read my posts as you boviously don't youu will have realized this. However, I do think you heretics for believing in Theistic Evolution. And sonce neither of us will be turned from our ways I bid thee all adiou for this has deteriorated into a useless argument.

Sunrise

12-15-2007, 11:15 PM

It's unfortunate that you are leaving again, Cymro, because I have a quibble with the article you posted.

I didn't read it all, because I find it difficult to wrap my head around the processes and numbers involved in radiometric dating, but I read enough to understand that its author was actually criticizing the Young-Earth theory, not agreeing with it. In your zeal to find something scientific to support your argument, you seem not to have read, or at least, understood the whole article yourself.

This last bit of the article, added emphasis mine:
This leaves the question of how the zircons that have certainly been at low temperatures during a time span that exceeds the creationist estimate of the age of the earth could have lost most of their helium. There simply has not been enough time for the helium to have diffused out. Clearly the real answer to this question is that the zircons are millions or billions of years old and that most of the helium diffused out during a time when the crystals were exposed to higher temperatures that corresponded to much faster diffusion rates. The trouble is that RATE’s idea of the age of the earth does not admit enough time for that to have happened.

The RATE study claims to have correctly predicted the helium contents of zircons from various depths (and temperatures) in the Fenton Hill well. That may or may not be the case, depending on the validity of the residual helium calculations in that study. In any case, the RATE "theory" totally fails to predict the helium contents of other zircons found at different sites in Asia and North America. The zircons have clearly lost more helium than could be explained by 6000 years of diffusion at low temperatures.

In the interest of responsible science, the RATE team members should carefully consider why their results are so different from everyone else’s. In particular they should have more carefully evaluated the possibility that helium from external sources got into their zircons and added to the radiogenic helium formed by uranium and thorium decay. They should have also considered the very complex thermal and geologic history of a site so close to a volcano[12]. They should have examined whether their specimen preparation technique might have induced some unusual behavior in the zircon crystals that accelerated the diffusion rate measurements. Finally, they should have repeated their lower temperature (down to at least 100C) experiments with helium in the zircons from the Fenton Hill well to show that they had reproducible results. Real science needs to be duplicated to prove its validity. RATE certainly has no grounds to declare the entire science of radiometric dating to be invalid based on a study that apparently involved only two published diffusion tests (only one of which actually showed the low temperature fast diffusion rates essential to their "theory"). In short, RATE needs to do a better job of explaining their results if they want to be taken seriously by mainstream scientists.

I rest my case. Your article is basically saying that radiometric dating is perfectly valid and that RATE's attempt to discredit it is hooey.

Now, on the death issue, although I suppose it is a moot point now: I understand your qualms, believe me. I'd love a world where nothing ever died and the animals all made friends. But it does not seem to be the way things were created, given the fossil record (which you still have not addressed - why have we had carnivores since the beginning of time?)

I simply think that the "wages of sin" is spiritual death, not physical. If it were physical, we'd cease to breathe the instant we threw our first tantrum. God in His mercy allows us to continue living, even under the curse of spiritual separation, that we might repent and turn to him and be made new. If we who are saved are released from the curse of Adam, then why do we still physically die? Is it - possibly - because this was part of the original plan, in which we would have lived out our lives and then peacefully, willingly departed to be with God in eternity? The dreadfulness of death, after all, lies in its possibility of eternal separation from Him - but without sin, we would not have needed to fear this possibility. I certainly agree that pain and suffering and disease are results of the fall, however. I am also frank about the possibility that I could be entirely wrong on any of these issues.

I am sorry you consider me a heretic for these beliefs, but I will take comfort in the thought that once, a few people were considered heretics for believing that the earth was round and revolved around the sun.

PunkMaister

12-16-2007, 12:27 PM

Charn_Tim

12-18-2007, 05:25 AM

Cymro brought up several arguments for a young earth interpretation, that is a 24 hour day and thus the complete rejection of any sort of theory of biological evolution bringing about species change over the course of the history of the earth or cosmological evolution throughout the history of the universe:

1) In post#1130 (http://narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6373&page=113) he putatively "disproved" both the "theory of evolution" and "proved that God exists" (his words) but all he did was show that there exists something non-material (information). This does nothing, of course, to show the invalidity of the theory of evolution by natural selection which is a theory of how biological species change, as sunrise pointed out ( post#1131 (http://narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6373&page=114)).

2) He claimed that the word yom which is translated in Genesis 1 as "day" is only used to denote a 24 hour time period:

The Hebrew word used is "yom" which everywhere in the bible is translated day as in 24 hours

which I showed was absolutely incorrect and gave 6 verses, including one in the following chapter, where yom indisputably represents a time period longer than 24 hours, and sometimes an indefinite time period (post#1156 (http://narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6373&page=116)).

In post#1170 (http://narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6373&page=117)there were a number of objections raised:

3) Cymro contended that the promise "if you eat from the tree of life, then you will surely die" implies that there is no death of any kind to any species before the fall.

4) He also proposed that the Hebrew word bara used in Genesis 1 should be interpreted as "created from nothing" like a pure fiat miracle, akin to Jesus using 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed thousands of people (which for the record, I absolutely believe happened).

5) Finally, he argued that the wording "and then there was evening and there was morning, day x" implies the author's intent to communicate a 24 hour day.

Every one of these objections have been answered. For number 3, inkspot and sunrise handled this best, in posts 1161, 1173, and 1174 where it was argued that physical death does not necessarily imply a curse,nor was it necessarily the result of the fall, and that the "death" the curse refers to is spiritual death, not physical death. I would add that Paul's discussion in Romans chapter 5 especially supports this death as referring to spiritual, rather than physical.

For number 4, I pointed out in post 1171, that:

It is well known that "Evening and morning" is an idiomatic expression in Semitic languages (see this article (http://www.leaderu.com/offices/o_helweg/eve-morn.html) by Dr. Otto Helweg for more detail). And thus, like all idioms, its meaning is nonliteral and clearly understood by native speakers.

Furthermore, this Hebrew phrase is used in Daniel 8 to refer unequivocally to a time period of many years or longer. Thus, it does not follow that evening and morning is used to signify 24 hours.

And sunrise added in post 1173 that the phrase "and there was evening and there was morning, day x" is missing from day 7, perhaps implying that "day" 7 continues up to the present where God has ceased creating.

Oh, and most recently, Cymro tried to use an article about radioactive dating to show that the earth is not be as old as scientists say it is, but sunrise blew that out of the water in my mind by pointing out that the article was saying the scientists arguing against radioactive decay need to prove that their results are reproducible (a staple of science and of common sense) if they want anyone to take them seriously, which hasn't happened to date.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A couple final thoughts:

Notice that nowhere once in this discussion did we (those of us arguing for a non 144 hour creation week) use scientific reasons to argue our point. We used the Bible alone to argue that the time scales of the Genesis creation story do not necessarily refer to a 24 hour creation day. However, if anyone feels like there are still reasons to believe that the Bible says the universe was created in 144 consecutive hours, thousands of years ago, please state your reasons or questions/objections to our arguments.
By the end we all (thankfully) agreed that this is not a salvation issue.
I'd also like to get to questions such as the one Punkmaister raised (and Doffen and Ephine responded to) in post#1142 (http://narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6373&page=115) where he asserted that scientists' inability to propose a cause of the strong interaction (strong nuclear force) is good evidence for a creator. Essentially, I would like to examine "Design arguments," and "God of the Gaps" fallacies.
Lieke's questions (post 1152) of how the first humans were created could perhaps use some more discussion. Sunrise, Inkspot, and I have given our speculations as have others (posts 1160, 1166, 1168, 1169, 1174), but this is still an area I'm trying to understand-mainly what can we conclude happened to bring about human life based on scripture alone? And also, what can we conclude happened based on science? Does the Bible say that the creation of man must be a fiat miracle, or does it leave open the interpretation that it could have been a God-directed natural law which accomplished His Purposes?

inkspot

01-03-2008, 04:27 PM

I'm trying to understand-mainly what can we conclude happened to bring about human life based on scripture alone? And also, what can we conclude happened based on science? Does the Bible say that the creation of man must be a fiat miracle, or does it leave open the interpretation that it could have been a God-directed natural law which accomplished His Purposes?
OK, to me, the description from Genesis sounds as if it could have been the process of "God-directed natural law which accomplished His Purposes" as Tim says:
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
The order of creation seems to have been the same as scientific evidence would suggest: building from simple to more complex. The animals first, then man (fish and birds having already been created). So I do not think there is anything in the Scripture which rules out that the First People could have been merely the first perfected humans, the ones God breathed His llife, a soul or consciousness, into. This would imply that maybe there were, before the appearance of Adam and Eve, those evolutionary steps toward humanity which science does uncover from time to time.

lieke

01-03-2008, 05:27 PM

Hm, question, maybe one of you knows it:

Does evolution think that the order in which things 'came into being' is the same as the order in Genesis? Because i always thought that science thought that first there were like small 'animals' in the sea, and they became more complex and eventually came on the land, but that birds came later. While the bible says that there were first fishlike things and birds, and only after that animals on the land...

What do you think?

inkspot

01-03-2008, 05:40 PM

The way I understand it, Intelligent Design theory, or Old Earth Creationism, looks at Genesis as a re-telling of creation as it would have appeared to someone on earth at the time, for instance, in Genesis 1:2, it would have appeared to an observer, on earth, that God was "hovering" over the waters. And so on, the "lights" created early on represent the moment the light of the stars was first visible through the dusty primoridal atmosphere, and then the creation of the sun and moon represent the moment the atmosphere cleared enough for a "day" and "night" to be observable by someone on earth.

Also, some who believe the "days" of Genesis were longer than 24 hours also believe they may have overlapped with one another, so that birds could have developed out of small dinosaurs on day 5, and so forth.

In general, the Genesis 1 account does agree with science when it is looked at as told by someone (had there been anyone) observing the creation process on earth. As I understand the theory, I may not be saying it just right.

lieke

01-03-2008, 05:45 PM

I find that a bit strange. I can understand why someone would not call the days of genesis one literal days, but more like 'some amount of time', but it would seem to me that it does look like one thing came before or after the other one, instead of at the same time, if you get me?

But i don't know what science says about it...

inkspot

01-03-2008, 05:58 PM

I guess because in any scientific experiment, you describe what you observe, so if God had "shown" someone what creation looked like (so he could tell it to his children and so forth), he would have "seen" it as it happened on earth, not as it would have looked to God from outer space, but as it would have looked to a man on earth?

Doffen

01-21-2008, 01:18 PM

has anyone read up on Richard Carrier? I just saw a documentary on him and he's certainly one of the smartest men I've ever seen. I've seen him discussing evolution with Muslims before (against Hassanain Rajabali and Michael Corey, although I think Michael is a Christian) and it was very delightfull to see, especially when the theists was as intellectual and gave the atheists a very fair fight compared to evidences and so on. Check up on these people. I just found out it's much more complex then it looks like :p

Charn_Tim

01-21-2008, 06:16 PM

Doffen, I haven't heard of him before, but I looked him up online and I might check out some of his writings. That's good that you've recognized that the problem goes beyond the simplistic "science" vs "religion" that the media often portrays. It's FAR more complex than that.

Some of my favourite authors I've discovered recently in this growing field of "science and religion" are John Polkinghorne, Ian Barbour, and Richard Swinburne. These men don't just over-generalize and overly simplify their opponent's position or the traditional Christian theistic perspectives like other Christian Fundamentalist or Scientific materialist authors are prone to do.

Galadedrid Damodred

03-07-2008, 01:29 AM

Well, here's my two cents: creationism and intelligent design should not be thought of as valid scientific theories. Genesis is a creation story; a metaphor, something that (relatively) unenlightened people of ages past told to explain why everything exists. There are thousands of others like it; the Japanese story of Amaterasu, the Aboriginal Australian story of the Dreaming, the Hindu story of Creation and Destruction having sex (which created the universe) - yet for some reason, Christians seem most determined to make sure theirs is accepted by everyone. If we were to take Genesis literally, to avoid being rightfully accused of hypocrisy, we would need to take Leviticus seriously too. We'd go kosher, stone unto death anyone who worked on Saturdays, consider breeders of mules to be sinners, be homophobic and hemaphobic.

Malacandra

03-07-2008, 07:07 AM

Well, here's my two cents: creationism and intelligent design should not be thought of as valid scientific theories. Genesis is a creation story; a metaphor, something that (relatively) unenlightened people of ages past told to explain why everything exists. There are thousands of others like it; the Japanese story of Amaterasu, the Aboriginal Australian story of the Dreaming, the Hindu story of Creation and Destruction having sex (which created the universe) - yet for some reason, Christians seem most determined to make sure theirs is accepted by everyone. If we were to take Genesis literally, to avoid being rightfully accused of hypocrisy, we would need to take Leviticus seriously too. We'd go kosher, stone unto death anyone who worked on Saturdays, consider breeders of mules to be sinners, be homophobic and hemaphobic.

Careful what you wish for, Galadedrid. There are people who do seriously advocate all of the above. :)

PrinceOfTheWest

03-07-2008, 08:40 AM

Well, here's my two cents: creationism and intelligent design should not be thought of as valid scientific theories. Genesis is a creation story; a metaphor, something that (relatively) unenlightened people of ages past...Boy, the chronological snobbery is oozing all over the place here! And we enlightened moderns, who brought you the bloodiest century in all human history, the threat of nuclear holocaust, and the ongoing slaughter of tens of millions of humans each year - all courtesy of our "enlightened" outlooks and technology - have improved the world so much since those ancient knuckle-draggers! Hey, chuckles, ever read any Plato? Or Aristotle? Or Euclid? I doubt you could make it through a page written by those "(relatively) unenlightened" ancients! People of ancient times may not have had as much data as we have (for all the good it's done us), but they could think perfectly well.

I think the Genesis creation account a poetic description of historical happenings, but not an account that had been dumbed-down in order to be accessible to simplistic intellects. Consider these two accounts of the same historical event:

1) The outside temperature was 75 degrees, with minimal overcast, 60% humidity, and southwest winds at 5-7mph. People were evenly arrayed in clustered, structured groups, and were standing facing the central axis of the grouping. A regularly spaced line of gender-separated participants stood stationary at the front of the axis, facing the group, while the final participant proceeded at a speed of 1-2mph down the axis toward the front of the group.

2) The sun was bright in the clear sky and the breezes were balmy as the bride floated down the aisle. All the guests rose quietly and turned toward her as the processional floated through the garden. She recognized familiar faces, gracing them with a smile, but her eyes always returning to the front, where he stood waiting for her - he, who had waited for so long and worked so hard for this day.

Which of those descriptions is "right"? Depends on what you mean by "right". The first contains more facts, but the second more accurately captures what was "really" happening. And while I agree that the Genesis creation account was never intended to be a strictly factual account of creation as a modern rationalist would like it presented, I also firmly affirm that it is an accurate account of actual historical events - simply told in a form suitable for the message being conveyed.

Wolverine

03-07-2008, 09:13 AM

I think the world was created by God. Yes, I have thought about all the other religions out there with creation in them, but this is a thread about Creation and Evolution, by the way, I believe the creation told in the Bible is true, but I certainly don't believe in evolution. By the way Prince Of The West, I've read Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid, they were somewhat interesting, yes and somewhat hard to get through, but I think more people should read them.

PrinceOfTheWest

03-07-2008, 09:27 AM

Good for you! More people should read those ancient authors, if only to dispel the post-Enlightenment illusion that we moderns have some sort of monopoly on brainpower. I remember reading somewhere a list of what a student entering the University of Paris in the 13th century had to know - I could answer perhaps 20% of the questions, and I've got a bachelor's degree!

inkspot

03-07-2008, 01:26 PM

Well, here's my two cents: creationism and intelligent design should not be thought of as valid scientific theories. Genesis is a creation story; a metaphor, something that (relatively) unenlightened people of ages past told to explain why everything exists.
Welcome to the discussion, I did not see you post before. I would encourage you to check out one of the intellligent design sights so you actually understand what it is the I-D Creationists are saying.

www.answersincreation.org is a good one.

Christians, speaking for myself as one, are not trying to make everyone believe in a literal 6-day creation. We are trying to get people to see that science reveals a great similarity to the poetic description of creation in Genesis.

Galadedrid Damodred

03-07-2008, 09:30 PM

Boy, the chronological snobbery is oozing all over the place here! And we enlightened moderns, who brought you the bloodiest century in all human history, the threat of nuclear holocaust, and the ongoing slaughter of tens of millions of humans each year - all courtesy of our "enlightened" outlooks and technology - have improved the world so much since those ancient knuckle-draggers! Hey, chuckles, ever read any Plato? Or Aristotle? Or Euclid? I doubt you could make it through a page written by those "(relatively) unenlightened" ancients! People of ancient times may not have had as much data as we have (for all the good it's done us), but they could think perfectly well.

I think the Genesis creation account a poetic description of historical happenings, but not an account that had been dumbed-down in order to be accessible to simplistic intellects. Consider these two accounts of the same historical event:

1) The outside temperature was 75 degrees, with minimal overcast, 60% humidity, and southwest winds at 5-7mph. People were evenly arrayed in clustered, structured groups, and were standing facing the central axis of the grouping. A regularly spaced line of gender-separated participants stood stationary at the front of the axis, facing the group, while the final participant proceeded at a speed of 1-2mph down the axis toward the front of the group.

2) The sun was bright in the clear sky and the breezes were balmy as the bride floated down the aisle. All the guests rose quietly and turned toward her as the processional floated through the garden. She recognized familiar faces, gracing them with a smile, but her eyes always returning to the front, where he stood waiting for her - he, who had waited for so long and worked so hard for this day.

Which of those descriptions is "right"? Depends on what you mean by "right". The first contains more facts, but the second more accurately captures what was "really" happening. And while I agree that the Genesis creation account was never intended to be a strictly factual account of creation as a modern rationalist would like it presented, I also firmly affirm that it is an accurate account of actual historical events - simply told in a form suitable for the message being conveyed.

My philosophy teacher would absolutely adore you. He quite likes Plato. Plato's good, but I've always been more of an Socratic fan. And by the way, I wasn't referring to the philosophers of Greece as unenlightened. I worship them! They were brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! They bowed to their gods, then, by degrees, proceeded to destroy them! They posed the questions that sustained me through the last decade of my life! I owe them so much! Okay, enough fandude-ish ranting... I digress.

There is a difference between stating facts and telling what happened. The first states facts, it says truths, but it doesn't tell us what happened. It doesn't present them in a way that would make sense to any normal human being. BUT... I maintain the stance that the story of the six-day Creation and Adam and Eve are purely metaphors. Creation stories, like any other. Sorry about my "chronological snobbery". People always tell me I read too much Wilde for my own good.

Wolverine

03-08-2008, 08:29 AM

Just trying to define terms here, but what do you mean by "purely metaphors".

Galadedrid Damodred

03-08-2008, 09:24 PM

I mean just that. A metaphor. Nothing more or less.

Solya

03-09-2008, 06:11 AM

Mmmm, I see most of the story in Genesis as a description of something that took thousands of years in reality. I believe it happened as the Book says it did, but I simply believe that it took longer for the world to be created. I've previously said that "God's six days would perhaps be thousands of years to us humans" and that is the stance I maintain on the subject. It's some kind of metaphor, as all creation stories are, but it is something I believe to be true nonetheless.

Wolverine

03-10-2008, 09:38 AM

My father believes that the creation of the world took thousands of years. Me personally, I'm not sure. I do believe that what is in the Bible is real, and not a metaphor, it actually took place as it says, I'm just not sure about the timeline.

Charn_Tim

03-10-2008, 11:55 AM

Welcome to the discussion Wolverine, Solya, Galadedrid Damodred. :) I realize this thread is impossibly long to read, but throughout I've summarized the recent arguments that have taken place for newcomers. Here is the latest summary of some of the most recent arguments (http://narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1391020#post1391020), in case you all are interested. There has been much discussion on different interpretations of scripture and which one is most consistent with the rest of scripture and with common sense and secondarily with the record of nature.

Please feel free to browse over the recent posts, but of course if you have questions (either new to this thread or some that have been repeated) please ask them; we don't mind repeating discussion that has already taken place and perhaps you have new insights to bring.

With respect to the recent posts:

POTW, I couldn't agree more with your commentary on intellectual snobbery. And your anecdote on the 2 descriptions of a historical event is very helpful in understanding the Genesis account of creation, and I would like to think about just how far the analogy can be pressed with respect to Genesis 1 and other Biblical texts.

And I have gone to great lengths in this thread to show why the Genesis account was not meant to be taken literally by its hearers (i.e. it was not the authors intent to communicate "thousands of years" or any other timetable), by examining the original wording, syntax, etc. Some of these arguments are summarized in the post I link to in the first paragraph, in case others are curious.

Dernhelm

03-10-2008, 01:09 PM

I really appreciate the article by Dr. Otto J. Helweg, CT.

No matter what people decide to believe in the end, I think it's important for both to realize the other side is not holding scripture less infallible. Just interpreting it differently. I'm willing to consider that six day creationists may be right; we all make mistakes in our understanding of the bible, and science has been wrong before. But I won't be embarrassed if that happens, because I don't think either view is infallible. They are both interpretations of God's infallible word.

EveningStar

03-10-2008, 01:18 PM

What a wonderful post, Dernhelm! There are so many things we have believed in the past about our world...that the Earth is flat, or that the sea kept getting hotter as you went south until it was boiling. So long as we know that God made the world for a sacred purpose and made it blossom and flourish through his power and out of his love and wisdom, the details are surely a matter for humans to interpret variously and with varying degrees of accuracy. The saving power of the Gospel is in the recognition of sin, our inability to earn Heaven, the all-sufficient atonement of Jesus, and the faith to accept God's grace through Christ. Knowing the average rainfall in Sebastopol or the water temperature in the Marianas Trench is dandy, but has nothing to do with sin, redemption and faith. The same is true about knowing genetics, paleontology, or even whether you interpret Joseph's coat as being "of many colours" or "with long sleeves."

Wolverine

03-11-2008, 09:52 AM

Excellent posts Dernhelm and Evening Star. I couldn't agree with you more. I think it is interesting how the conversation has migrated, it started out as Creation vs. Evolution, and now it seems to Old Earth vs. New Earth creation. Hmm, interesting.

Wolverine

03-11-2008, 09:54 AM

One interesting note, which I just thought of, how do you explain the fact that the earth appears to be thousands of years old, or that we can see stars that are light years away. Just wondering. I am not sure what I believe on the length of creation, but I do know, I am a Christian, and the information that I will decide on will only help boost my knowledge, and honor of God.

inkspot

03-11-2008, 10:28 AM

The starlight issue is one that even organizations like Answers in Genesis admit cannot be explained. They say that eventually Christian scientific people will discover why it appears that starlight is coming from millions of years away when actually it is only 6,000 years old. But actually, I believe the reason we can see the starlight from so many light years away is that the stars have been shining for millions of years. It is one of the things which strengthens the Old Earth model.

I don't know if there are any flat-out Darwin/Natural Selection Evolutionists in this discussion. I think most of us believe, along with CS Lewis, that if there was any kind of evolution, God was guiding it and making it happen because if there had been no guiding force, we simply could not have the variety and complexity of plants and animals we have now.

fernshirehobbit

03-11-2008, 10:37 AM

im a younge earth creationist.

i find it hard to believe in evolution and an old earth.

many of the old earth christians i know believe that the "millions of years" took place somewhere between the first few verses of Genisis. This view doesnt seem to allow for the curse which happened after Adam and Eve ate ate the forbidden fruit.
if the earth was aging before that, then it could not have been completely "good". Personally, i dont believe the second law of thermodynamics was in place until after the curse.

hope i havent just rambled but spoken at least a little logically lol.;)

inkspot

03-11-2008, 12:10 PM

Doffen

03-11-2008, 12:54 PM

I don't know if there are any flat-out Darwin/Natural Selection Evolutionists in this discussion. I think most of us believe, along with CS Lewis, that if there was any kind of evolution, God was guiding it and making it happen because if there had been no guiding force, we simply could not have the variety and complexity of plants and animals we have now.

Sorry I haven't followed this thread as much as I should, so naturally I couldn't find any posts containing info on your last statement about plants and animals ... Why is there that this couldn't have happened if Darwin was right? And yes, I'm a flat out Darwin/natural selection evolutionist :p

inkspot

03-11-2008, 04:27 PM

:p yourself you socialist Darwinist bunny-eating Norseman! :)

I suggest you read the book Darwin's Black Box which details the insane complexity of many living organisms and calculates the astronomical odds of random chance (or natural selection) causing these things to happen.

There is a better chance, they say, of an explosion in a publishing house "randomly" throwing out a dictionary than there is that the Big Bang could churn out the variety and complexity of life we have on earth by chance, or without the guidance of some intelligent force.

Add to this there has never been one proven instance of one species becoming another, which is what straight Darwinism/natural selection insists happened. "Mutation" is said to be responsible for some of the improvement of organisms, but in fact the only mutations scientists have observed have been backward -- things that retard an organisms growth, never forward, things that would improve the species.

And then there is the rapidity with which this complexity of life developed. Left to random chance and natural selection, it ought to have take much longer than the scant time which has elapsed from unicellular "first life" to conscious human being.

But if you allow there was a designer who introduced the rapid development and improvements, then it is all quite possible.

Does this make sense? I don't really think you are a Socialist, Darwinist, Bunny-eating Norseman, Doffen. Oh, wait, I guess I do ... but in the nicest way. :D

Doffen

03-11-2008, 06:42 PM

I suggest you read the book Darwin's Black Box which details the insane complexity of many living organisms and calculates the astronomical odds of random chance (or natural selection) causing these things to happen.

Doesn't both theories bring a insane complexity of living organisms? The chances of something holy to create the universe, wouldn't that be of the same astronomical odds that you describe when talking about darwin-evolution?

There is a better chance, they say, of an explosion in a publishing house "randomly" throwing out a dictionary than there is that the Big Bang could churn out the variety and complexity of life we have on earth by chance, or without the guidance of some intelligent force.

Yes, for once we may agree. I don't find the big-bang as a satisfying answer to the start of our universe, but neither do I find a holy-being creating it as one either. Neither of them are proved, and I think that both of them is as likely to have happened. I'm open to the big-bang, but I need alot more before I actually believe in the big-bang

Add to this there has never been one proven instance of one species becoming another, which is what straight Darwinism/natural selection insists happened. "Mutation" is said to be responsible for some of the improvement of organisms, but in fact the only mutations scientists have observed have been backward -- things that retard an organisms growth, never forward, things that would improve the species.

Never been proven? I think we disagree here. We could look at the smaller life-forms that mutate all the time. one to two years ago, we were deathly scared about the bird-flu, but why? Surely it could only go from birds to birds, but the scientifical evidence we have that a virus can transform and make it dangerous to humans are indeed very real. A virus is a form of life. Bacterias is a form of life. They're "living" creatures, even though very small.
The reason to why we haven't seen any animals evolve is because humans hasn't lived to see it, because it takes such a long time.

Here's a question I've been wondering alot with the Christians who believe in the old earth. Now it's scientificly proven that the Sabre-tooth tiger has existed, just as the mammut has existed. The earlier form of "humans", which I can only describe as "neandertalere", because I have no idea how to say that in English, is also proven to have existed. Species die all the time. How many species did God create, and how many have we on earth today? If creatures don't evolve, then it means that the animals are not replaced in any way. Do we then, in a long distant future, only have a few species left? (which again proves the statement "Survival of the fittest", which is very "darwin-like", isn't it?).

Another question that just randomly popped up in my mind (I like it when things pop, but only popcorn. With or without peanut-butter). I'm now talking to the people who believe in a old earth because this doesn't apply to a young earth. As already stated, they have analyzed many species from the distant past (I almost wrote "paste") that don't exist anymore. I don't remember right now how old the scientists has concluded the T-rex to be (about 22 million years or something?), but it's atleast a very long time. Has there been any scientific evidence that for example a normal bird, like the duck to have existed at that time? Seriously; I don't think that there has ever been found a fosil or a sceleton of a elephant, tiger, or whatsoever being that old before. But they've found species that was VERY different from those we have today. And yes, they can prove how old things are, via DNA and light technology (or somfin) ... I'm actually going to check that up 'cuz I'm not sure if they've found something like that. But if any of you have heard of it before, please tell me! ... Please let me say at the end that I'm not ignorant, and I'm very ready to say myself wrong on this subject (as with any, if ya can break my argument).

But if you allow there was a designer who introduced the rapid development and improvements, then it is all quite possible.

Well yes, but if you "allow" there was a designer, you could surely "allow" there to be a big-bang, couldnt you? =/ ... Wouldn't that be the same thing?

Does this make sense?

As usual, not at all dear Inky ;) ... Nah, I think you make very much sence, even though I feel we don't agree on much. Atleast we agree the world to be alittle older then 5000 years.

I don't really think you are a Socialist, Darwinist, Bunny-eating Norseman, Doffen. Oh, wait, I guess I do ... but in the nicest way.

:p yourself you socialist Darwinist bunny-eating Norseman!

Oh now you go on discriminating bunny-eaters again! Okey! If that's how you like it! =O

I feel rude today. Am I rude today? I slept for like 3 hours last night and I think I'll fall asleep now, so please, bare (or is that "bear"? Sounds alot more macho) with me.

fernshirehobbit

03-11-2008, 08:26 PM

Your position is a familiar one, and you stated it very well. Why do you say "If the earth was aging before that, then it could not have been completely good"?

And why would that matter -- do you think there was nothing that was not completely good before the Fall of Man?

The effects of aging imply deteriation. deteriation implies that there are processes of death. (second law of thermodynamics).
I believe that when man was curse (after going against God and eating the fruit) that everything was cursed, not just humanity. This is when i think the world began showing sings of ageing, when "good" was starting to disapeer and the earth to leave its pristine condition.
Had mankind not sinned, i dont think the world would have began to deteriate (age).

And, i dont accept the "gap theory" that some christians do which involves God creating and then creating again later. (this is supposed to happen in the middle of Gen. 1:1). I dont think God is stupid and would have to start over. He would have known what He was doing all along.
Also, unlike some of my old-earth minded friends, I believe that God created a mature earth. Some of my friends believe that, instead, he planted seeds and then the earth began to grow.

Finally (perhaps:p), I believe that the Bible is to be interprated literally unless it itself says that the passage is not literal (as in the passages that are hebrewism/poetry). I dont believe Genesis is a hebrewism or poetry.

ok, i wrote that off the top of my head while multitasking on a research paper, hope its relavent to the question, now i need to get back to my paper.
if i have still not answered your question, please rephrase it and i will try to work on it tomorrow.
besides, i still need to read some of these posts from the rest of you guys. im interested in your points of view as well.
-fernie

Wolverine

03-12-2008, 09:20 AM

Okay, first off, I wanted to say that I believe in Creation. Second, Doffen, I believe your points are valid and need to be considered, some of them I have wrestled with myself. Now, let's see if I can answer a few. Yes, both theories bring an insanse complexity of life to the table, one views God as the creator, the other views evolution, and it's aspects as the creator and their God, so it's a matter of belief there. I choose the God with rational thinking, love, justice, power over the one that lets things happen by chance. With viruses, that is a very good point, but I think what happens is, you don't have any evolution between species, just within the bacterium. What happens is it takes just about all of it's previous DNA and adds some new information to its general makeup, not completely new information to new makeup. That way, it still acts as a bacterium but can attach to new lfie forms. It's kind of like the people living at higher altitude's their bodies find new ways to breath better. I don't know if this made any sense, but moving on. I think with the Neanderthal bones, they're not 100% sure, they're pretty sure, but they found the different bones all over the place, never in one spot. Also, they don't have the complete bone makeup.
I agree with fernshirehobbit about the earth only starting to decay once man sinned.
Um, inkspot, you said that mutation only results in backward growth, that's not entirely true, yes, there is backward growth, but there is also forward growth at the same time in some.

fernshirehobbit

03-12-2008, 10:00 AM

with mutation being positive, it is only ever in just the species itself (microevolution) and positive microevolution is rare

Doffen

03-12-2008, 10:31 AM

Okay, first off, I wanted to say that I believe in Creation. Second, Doffen, I believe your points are valid and need to be considered

Thank you ;) Now, let me challenge you abit.

With viruses, that is a very good point, but I think what happens is, you don't have any evolution between species, just within the bacterium. What happens is it takes just about all of it's previous DNA and adds some new information to its general makeup, not completely new information to new makeup. That way, it still acts as a bacterium but can attach to new lfie forms. It's kind of like the people living at higher altitude's their bodies find new ways to breath better.

Evolution is not a form of "deleting your DNA code" and replace it with another. Merely changing your DNA code, just by "adding" something is a form of evolution. We have a organ in our body designed so that we can eat grass. The organ doesn't work anymore, because we don't eat grass, but on cows, the organ is huge. But why was it ever put in humans when it wasn't going to be used anyway? Just a way of taking up some space?

The fact that a specie evolves is a direct proof that species can change. There are alot that indicates that species has changed too. Look at the similarities between the species that lived before and the species that live today. Like the mammut and the elephant, or the sabre-tooth and the big cat animals. Of course, this can all be wrong from my side, but I think it's way to much evidence pointing in my direction to think anything else.

The clear differences we have between human species are also a proof towards evolution (atleast I think so). A pure-breed norseman is white, has blue eyes and often blonde hair. The only reason he has that is because the sun is poor in the northlands compared to the south. His body needs all the vitamine the sun can give him, because surely, the sun is the greatest source of energy (and the only one, in fact) we have. If you put me in Africa (I'm Norwegian myself, and my family has been tracked back in history atleast a thousand years, all of them living in Scandinavia) and try to get me to live there, I'd look like a tomato in a matter of minutes. I don't tolerate the sun very much. An African would be different. He could take so much more sun then me because of his dark skin, but he would probably get the lack of energy and vitamine if he came to my country (because his skin doesn't absorbe it as much as mine). This is a clear sign of evolution. Humans ARE different, and all of it is based on WHERE THE HUMANS HAS LIVED IN THE PAST.

If you've boxed before (I'm sure most here hasn't, but I have for a long time), you surely get to know the differences between the "species" we have. If you're facing a colored man in the ring, you can be sure that he has evolved his quickness. Yes, I dare to say that a colored man is much quicker then a white one. A white man also has his good things, like toughness. I think that there are many differences between the "species" of humans. I'm going to check if I can find some background info on that aswell.

(Also, a question for ya, who's the world's fastest runner? ;) )

I think with the Neanderthal bones, they're not 100% sure, they're pretty sure, but they found the different bones all over the place, never in one spot. Also, they don't have the complete bone makeup.

Yes they do. They've found a neanderthal woman in a swamp in Netherlands who was complete (They also found out that this woman was executed by a sledge by looking at her scull). They also found "Utzi", who was shot and killed several thousand years ago. They even found the arrow that killed him. He was complete. Neanderthals is PROVEN to have existed. Neanderthals was NOT humans.

inkspot

03-12-2008, 11:00 AM

The effects of aging imply deteriation. deteriation implies that there are processes of death. (second law of thermodynamics).
I believe that when man was curse (after going against God and eating the fruit) that everything was cursed, not just humanity. This is when i think the world began showing sings of ageing, when "good" was starting to disapeer and the earth to leave its pristine condition.
Had mankind not sinned, i dont think the world would have began to deteriate (age).
Do you think, then, that Adam and Eve were never supposed to have children? Because if there was no aging, then their baby could never have grown up. I am not sure what you are saying here is scriptural. There is nothing in Genesis which says there was no aging or no death before the Fall of Man. God created a "good" world, but that doesn't mean there was no death in it, as I read it.

And, i dont accept the "gap theory" that some christians do which involves God creating and then creating again later. (this is supposed to happen in the middle of Gen. 1:1). I dont think God is stupid and would have to start over. He would have known what He was doing all along.
But He did precisely this with humanity at the flood, no? Wiped it all out and started over with just Noah. The Bible says He regretted that He made men at all. So the "gap" theory would be no more weird (and no more disrespectful to God) than the Flood, right?

Finally (perhaps:p), I believe that the Bible is to be interprated literally unless it itself says that the passage is not literal (as in the passages that are hebrewism/poetry). I dont believe Genesis is a hebrewism or poetry.
But the early Hebrews saw it that way. Jewish people today do not feel that the story was ever to be interpreted as 6 literal days. Their style of story-telling in that day made clear that this was a simple re-telling of an event which could have lasted a long, long time. The very word for "day" which is used in Genesis one is used elsewhere in the Bible to mean various periods of time -- in fact, it is used in Genesis 2 to mean longer than a single 24-hour day.

ok, i wrote that off the top of my head while multitasking on a research paper, hope its relavent to the question
It was just fine, you're doing great. I am just curious what you think about some of these other points.

Um, inkspot, you said that mutation only results in backward growth, that's not entirely true, yes, there is backward growth, but there is also forward growth at the same time in some.
I believe Ferny answered you here:
with mutation being positive, it is only ever in just the species itself (microevolution) and positive microevolution is rare

Doffen, a virus might mutate, but it doesn't become a bacteria. A duck might mutate, but it doesn't become a turkey. This is a problem with Darwinism/Natural Selection: Darwin found similarities between species (such as that grass-eating enzyme!) and concluded that one species must have come from another ... but never could anyone find any evidence, fossil or otherwise, which showed the one species in the process of becoming another. There has never been a "missing link" which proved one species evolved into another.

Yes, there are similarities, like dinosaurs have scales and birds have scales on they're feet. But the Old Earth Creationist or Intelligent Design Creationist sees this as evidence that God began with the same set of building blocks and shaped each animal as He wanted it to become. Perhaps birds did evolve from dinosaurs, but only because God set the process in motion. This is what our point is:

I don't necessarily believe evolution did not happen, but I believe if it did happen, it happened because God was using evolution as a tool to create His next big thing. This is why I believe in the Neanderthals and other prot-humans: they were God's work in progress as He shaped the human being he wanted to breathe His life into ... This is my own personal belief, as a believer in Old Earth and in a timeless God.

The only holdovers I no from earth's origins still alive today are in the sea -- sharks and coelecanths come to mind -- and I think cockroaches also! But no, I don't think most modern animals were around in ancient times.
Doesn't both theories bring a insane complexity of living organisms? The chances of something holy to create the universe, wouldn't that be of the same astronomical odds that you describe when talking about darwin-evolution?
No, supposing there is a Designer, it is quite easy to see how all this earth and consciousness and humans could have come about. Without a Designer, it is all but impossible that rational human beings would have evolved by chance on a world where they could live and thrive.

For me, the "Big Bang" is quite possible -- as a description of the moment God began the creative process.

Hope you had a good nap, Doffen! :)

EveningStar

03-12-2008, 02:46 PM

Ageing and deterioration...what shall I say?

If it's cheese, definitely, it will spoil sitting out on the counter.

If it's my car, definitely, it can only get worse if I don't perform maintenance.

On the other hand certain things are DRIVEN toward improvement with age rather than deterioration. Most of them involve some form of behaviour.

In the business world that's called experience. A fresh typist would be preferable to one with two years of being used up if everything was covered by the laws of thermodynamics. Matter of factly, though, many businesses won't hire you "fresh" but wait for you to have the first two years worked out of you. Why? Because a typist with two years experience is a better typist.

As for mutations and natural selection, I will exaggerate for effect but what I say is valid. You have 1000 people on an island. Every one of them gets a package to open. Nine out of ten packages explode causing immediate death. One of out ten packages makes the person that opens it ten percent more intelligent. At the end of the day merely 100 people are left alive. They meet, fall in love, and have substantially above average children. When the population works back up to 1000 again, another round of packages are handed out. After 2000 years have passed a traveller from the big world finds this island. The people that live there are so brilliant they can move things with the power of their mind, travel to other planets at faster-than-light speed and cure all diseases.

Take that and scale it back to something more realistic. Let's say mutation packages help one out of every 20,000 individuals and only make them 5 percent better in some area or another. And let's give the world several million years.

Natural selection is often poorly understood by people that reject evolution entirely. In fact, it's often poorly understood by people that accept evolution entirely. But whether you embrace it or deface it, take the time to learn more about it since it is an idea that has profoundly affected society.

inkspot

03-12-2008, 05:30 PM

Wonder what's in this pretty package?

***BOOM!!!:eek:***

Inky didn't make it to the next round ...
:(

Doffen

03-12-2008, 05:52 PM

Wonder what's in this pretty package?

***BOOM!!!:eek:***

Inky didn't make it to the next round ...
:(

:o ... I didn't have to open anyway. I'm as smart as you can get already.

inkspot

03-13-2008, 08:41 AM

:o ... I didn't have to open anyway. I'm as smart as you can get already.
LOL! Doffen is so evolved!
:)

fernshirehobbit

03-13-2008, 09:07 AM

sheesh you quote me so many times. my head aches lol:p

Do you think, then, that Adam and Eve were never supposed to have children? Because if there was no aging, then their baby could never have grown up. I am not sure what you are saying here is scriptural. There is nothing in Genesis which says there was no aging or no death before the Fall of Man. God created a "good" world, but that doesn't mean there was no death in it, as I read it.
hmmm... never thought of that before. but obviously Adam and Eve were supposed to have children, that was one of their main jobs "fill the earth" etc.

But He did precisely this with humanity at the flood, no? Wiped it all out and started over with just Noah. The Bible says He regretted that He made men at all. So the "gap" theory would be no more weird (and no more disrespectful to God) than the Flood, right?
Him having to start over again after the flood was humanitites fault. had he needed to start over again after Creation, it would have been his fault. perhaps?

But the early Hebrews saw it that way. Jewish people today do not feel that the story was ever to be interpreted as 6 literal days. Their style of story-telling in that day made clear that this was a simple re-telling of an event which could have lasted a long, long time. The very word for "day" which is used in Genesis one is used elsewhere in the Bible to mean various periods of time -- in fact, it is used in Genesis 2 to mean longer than a single 24-hour day. perhaps, perhaps not. i admit, im no biblical theologian lol. it just seems feasable, with the family trees given in OT that it could have been 6 literal days. i dont think God needed anymore time than that.

I don't necessarily believe evolution did not happen, but I believe if it did happen, it happened because God was using evolution as a tool to create His next big thing. This is why I believe in the Neanderthals and other prot-humans: they were God's work in progress as He shaped the human being he wanted to breathe His life into ... This is my own personal belief, as a believer in Old Earth and in a timeless God.

so, do you think that Adam and Eve were some kind of ancient looking Neanderthal thing?

inkspot

03-13-2008, 09:30 AM

fernshirehobbit

03-13-2008, 10:16 AM

No, but I think there could have been Neanderthal people who lived before Adam and Eve, who didn't yet have God's Spirit breathed into them as Adam did.

Of course God could have made everything in 6 days or instantly or whatever He liked. But when the Scripture does not compel you to believe in 6 literal 24-hour days, and science indicates a much oler universe, why cling to the literal 24-hour day interpretation?

so, did these neaderthal people reproduce? then why did God find it necessary to make Eve out of Adam's rib if there were plenty of other women on the earth. so Adam was not the first human? what type of relationship did these neanderthals have with God, their creater. was Adam a discendant of the Neanderthals?

Darth Sparhawk

03-13-2008, 10:50 AM

If Neanderthals were a different species to humans, a children would not have been possible, at least not healthy kids. Try to cross lion and a tiger - yes, there is a result, liger, but it is not able to reproduce itself.

inkspot

03-13-2008, 04:55 PM

I don't think the Neanderthals were human. I think Adam and Eve were the first humans. I think they were just part of the evolution, as it were, animals. I don't think anyone was human until God breathed His life into them.

Wolverine

03-13-2008, 08:44 PM

Hmm, some interesting posts, just a thought for you people. Did anybody else notice that when Cain killed his brother he said that people would hunt him down, or something like that, there are some other verses saying that there were cities. There's no way that Adam and Evecould propogate that much, that fast, and also the fact that it was not mentioned in the Bible as them having that many kids. Evening Star is right, we need to know our facts. Which, so far, people are pretty good at.

Doffen

03-15-2008, 08:55 PM

Well, with neanderthals, it's a question "IF" they existed, because it's PROVEN that a neanderthal has existed. I think it's also HIGHLY possible that the neanderthals was able to reproduce. It's right what Inkspot says. They were not humans. They were (my belief) the earlier form of human. Many scientists has already concluded that the humans actually killed them and made them extinct. Basicly because the humans was smarter.

Wolverine

03-17-2008, 10:46 AM

One question, how do they know the bones they found are neanderthals? :confused:

EveningStar

03-17-2008, 10:57 AM

One question, how do they know the bones they found are neanderthals?Either by looking up the serial number on the base of the skull, OR by interpreting the rather striking anatomical differences. Much as you might tell a wolf skull from that of a German shepherd.

Doffen

03-17-2008, 12:24 PM

One question, how do they know the bones they found are neanderthals? :confused:

Neanderthals is very much like the human specie, though there are clear differences between us and them. If you've never seen a neanderthal skull before, I recommend you do, as you will be able to see clear differences.

Much like what Eveningstar said. It's like the difference between a wolf and a german shepherd. You would see the differences between the two, wouldn't you?

Wolverine

03-18-2008, 09:44 AM

I don't know, I'm a little loath to believe that they're real, one reason is probably because I've never believed in them or macro evolution before.

inkspot

03-18-2008, 11:03 AM

Neanderthals are real.

The discovery in 1856 of a skullcap and partial skeleton in a cave in the Neander valley near Dusseldorf, Germany, signaled the first recognized fossil human form. While it was later realized that several Neanderthal sites had previously been discovered, their remains were not recognized as those of an archaic form of human until the discovery of "Neanderthal Man." In 1864 a new species was recognized: Homo neanderthalensis.

Neanderthals inhabited Europe and western Asia during the latter part of the Pleistocene. The climate in these regions was much colder than it is today, and several glaciations, or Ice Ages, are known to have occurred during the time of Neanderthal occupation. Neanderthal localities are known today from Spain to Uzbekistan (near Afghanistan). Several important sites in the vicinity of Qafzeh Cave, Israel, suggest that Neanderthals arrived in the region after modern Homo sapiens. This would indicate that the population of modern humans in this area was not descended form Neanderthals, and that there was some period of coexistence, or an alternating series of migrations into this region by the two species. Neanderthals are known from Europe and western Asia from about 200,000 years to about 30,000 years ago, when they disappeared from the fossil record and were replaced in Europe by anatomically modern forms.
http://anthropology.si.edu/HumanOrigins/ha/neand.htm

Doffen

03-18-2008, 04:50 PM

There's no good in not "believing" in the neanderthals. That's like not believing in the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs DID exist, and it's proven through the sceletons we've found. And they have also proven that it was sceletons that was older then 5 000 years (about 20 million years or something). It's like not believing what you see even when it's slapping you in the face.

Another way of proving that the world is older then creationists believe is by looking at the rocks we have. By the color of a rock, scientists can actually measure out how long it was since it was last exposed to sun. I just saw an expert on Discovery channel measuring a stone to be several million years old just by looking at the color of it. He drilled a hole in a mountain wall and took some stone out.

There's to much evidence now to believe that the world is around 3-5 000 years old. Tellus is so much older then that.

inkspot

03-18-2008, 05:58 PM

Not all Creationists believe in a Young Earth. I am a Creationist, but I believe God started creating billions of years ago, as science suggests.

EveningStar

03-19-2008, 07:03 AM

God does not rush things, nor does he work his schedule around us. He could have sent Christ to die on the cross right after Adam sinned. Instead generations had to wait. Everyone acknowledges this to be the truth. No one is exactly sure why. Only just because he COULD have done it earlier did not compel him to, and he didn't.

The same thing goes with an old earth versus a literal six day creation.

Perhaps this will strike you as unreasonable or even slightly blasphemous. But it looks like a God that could say "Let there be light" and it just instantly happened wouldn't need SIX DAYS any more than he needed FOUR POINT SIX BILLION YEARS. Why not say "Let there be life?"

Even the most conservative literalists admit he took five days, 23 hours and 49 minutes longer than was ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED. Could he have done it in one day? One hour? One minute? Sure he could. So why six days? God had his reason, we can say. So why 4.6 billion years? The same reason. Everybody knows that he took longer than he had to, so saying he didn't create an old earth because he didn't have to is not a valid strategy.

What bothers young earth folk is that they, being human beings, couldn't imagine doing ANYTHING in 4.6 billion years. Heck, there is one person in this forum who started a thread excoriating his parents for not letting him go to the midnight showing of Prince Caspian and having to wait several hours for the "regular" premiere day showing.

God is infinite in every way. Including infinite attention span and infinite patience. He's not in a hurry, he has nowhere else to go and nothing better to do. We have to come to terms with that.

Of course what bothers humans most about this is that God wasn't so all fired anxious to rush to big old wonderful humanity. As if earth was strangely unfulfilling and meaningless without us. I think God enjoyed himself every day of that 4.6 billion years. I think for him, as for me, it's not the destination but the journey he savours.