Can Creation according to Genesis be honestly taught as Science

Do you have names I can research for the tablets, their location, contents and who discovered them?

 

Much is in the material I posted above in three parts. You will see the essays by the original authors and the references there.

 

God definitely told Moses the truth about everything he told him.

Genesis is definitely 100% true. However, I would say there is no single human interpretation of Genesis that is 100% true even though many YECs claim that position for their interpretations.

 

Reading it as a straightforward account that simply means what it says requires no 'interpretation'.

 

I read the articles. They simply stated that toledoth was used as a colophon in mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and didn't reference any specific tablets.

 

I'm glad you believe your understanding to speak for God. I would never be so bold as to make such a statement.

At the same time, I do have faith that the Bible is God's authoritative and trustworthy scriptures to mankind that we can understand through the work of the Holy Spirit.

 

But, from a theological perspective, they were also written from a first person perspective since it is the Word of God.</font>[/QUOTE]God only communicates in the first person? What does that mean, to be third person grammatically and first person theologically? I don't understand what first/third person theologically means.

 

See my response in the other thread on this very same topic (why we need two threads about the same topic is beyond me..but oh well). Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God or not? This is a theological statement and not a grammatical statement. Therefore, as it is the Word of God, although humans may have written it in 3rd person from their perspective, since it is inspired by God, it is also a 1st person perspective coming from God. Really this seems so simple that I am surprised I actually have to explain it.

Joseph Botwinick

 

I read the articles. They simply stated that toledoth was used as a colophon in mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and didn't reference any specific tablets. </font>[/QUOTE]I lost this post by you and answered in the other thread on this subject. Here is what I have there for you about this!

Gold Dragon, did you just edit out your question about sources? If so, you did it after I started looking up some stuff!

Here is an interesting article about all of this:
http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/genesis.htm

The material seems to consistently go back to Wiseman and his book New Discoveries About Genesis, written in 1936.

 

Interesting. This article suggests that Wiseman did not believe Genesis to be a result of divine revelation.

 

To the ones I debated recently, their answer is that this disproves God, or at least disproves that any God inspired the scriptures. So we have to beware accepting some of these claims, and trying to just stick God back into it, because to most, God would not be needed if this stuff was true. (the thing to debate on is how the universe came to be, and how life started in it. This is where they claimed not to be able to explain; calling that a whole different branch of science called "abiogenesis", and when I kept pressing it, they eventually gave up)

On the other hand, with the evidence earlier given; I think we have to at least admit that if Genesis is literal, than the laws of the universe were vastly different back then. This is actually possible, as string theory even posits that the laws can change suddenly, based on a combination of tiny space dimensions, and how they are arranged. So the Fall could have affected this (but not enough to destroy all of life). I think this is what we should go with now.

 

Joseph B. wrote,

Joseph,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us in this and your other posts in this thread.

Yes, it is true that every soul burning in the fires of hell is burning there because of their sins. However, we, as Christians, have the responsibility to warn those who are in danger of the fires of hell of their impending doom. And when Christians, in the minds of those in that danger, are babblers of “nutty theories,” the force of that warning is almost completely invalidated, and the blood of those in the fires of hell are upon the hands of the babblers.

The bottom line is that there are countless thousands of people burning in the fires of hell that would not be there today had it not been for the babblers of “nutty theories.” And we have the responsibility as Christians to warn the babblers and to warn the sinners in an effectual manner.


Ezek. 3:16. At the end of seven days the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
17. "Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me.
18. "When I say to the wicked, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.
19. "Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself.
20. "Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand.
21. "However, if you have warned the righteous man that the righteous should not sin and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; and you have delivered yourself."
22. The hand of the LORD was on me there, and He said to me, "Get up, go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you." (NASB, 1995)

 

Yes but rejection of Genesis as a straight forward accounting of events is terribly inconvenient to those who presuppose naturalism and evolution.

 

I'm glad you believe your understanding to speak for God.</font>[/QUOTE] Ummm. That would be those who say that Genesis doesn't mean what it says but rather means something entirely different without one shred of scriptural evidence to support such a notion. No one in the NT or OT treated the Creation account as anything other than a literal event. Not one of the inspired writers insenuated that Adam and Ever were not real people created by a direct act of God and not by an evolutionary process.

You're doing it!!! Only much worse.

You are not only saying that your understanding and interpretation of natural history speak for God... you say that understanding redefines the meaning of what He actually said He did.

But only when such an understanding is not contradicted by the explanations of evolutionists operating under the premise of naturalism?

You create an oxymoron. The Holy Spirit gives you understanding of the scriptures... but only as governed and limited by a naturalistic human theory?

 

To the ones I debated recently, their answer is that this disproves God, or at least disproves that any God inspired the scriptures. So we have to beware accepting some of these claims, and trying to just stick God back into it, because to most, God would not be needed if this stuff was true.</font>[/QUOTE] They deserve credit for being intellectually honest and consistent... though tragically wrong.

This is where many theistic evolutionists will insert an anemic god who cannot clearly express himself.

Or that God at various times suspended natural law. If one believes in the resurrection then this should not be difficult to allow.

 

Scott J wrote,

The insistence by some very naïve Christians that Genesis is a straight forward accounting of events is terribly inconvenient for the Holy Spirit when He is trying to show a sinner that the Bible is a believable book.

Those Christians who are attempting, at all cost, to keep the Church in the dark ages apparently do not realize the consequences of their actions. But, come the judgment day, ….

 

In either case, you no longer have a straightforward literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11. A straightforward literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 has been absolutely proven to be incorrect because it depicts that which according to given natural laws could NOT have occurred.

 

In either case, you no longer have a straightforward literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11. A straightforward literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 has been absolutely proven to be incorrect because it depicts that which according to given natural laws could NOT have occurred.

</font>[/QUOTE]Is God or his Word bound by natural law? What about the ressurection? Could that have occured according to natural law? Craig, I hate to say it, but the more you talk, the more you sound like a fellow of the Westar Institute.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Joseph B.

Joseph,

God is bound by the limitations that He, by His sovereign will, has imposed upon Himself. Most fundamentally, God can do no wrong.

The New Testament makes it expressly clear than the greatest miracle of all time was the resurrection of Christ. Genesis 6-11 makes it expressly clear that no miracles or violations of any natural laws were involved in the story of the Ark. Genesis 6-11, therefore, can NOT be an accurate historical account of an actual event. That much we know for certain. We can write off Genesis as being nothing but fiction, or we can seek to understand it more accurately as a part of the divinely inspired body of literature that we know as the Holy Bible. I choose to understand it more accurately as a part of the divinely inspired body of literature that we know as the Holy Bible.

 

The problem here is that those arguing for literalism have been doing so under the premise that the natural evidence supports the literal events, and then trying to get this taught in schools as 'science'. Now, we're saying "suspension of natural law". (And was the entire flood such as "suspension", on the order of the instant Resurrection?)
If we want to go this way, then it's as I said, we should argue on how the universe and life started in the first place. Once we have proven that nature cannot be the eternal all-in-all they have made it out to be, then we can prove a God who can suspend or change laws, whether we can prove it 'naturally' or not.