Evolutionists - Willingly Ignorant of the Truth

I can always count on you, Gup20, as a perfect illustration of the historical errors committed by Martin Luthor, the Catholic church, and all the other clerics who opposed the findings of science in the centuries before us.

Biblical hermeneutics and the rules of Hebrew literature as well as contextual clues.
</font>[/QUOTE]Sure, as long as those clues are present. When those clues are absent, what do you do?

You have to read the passage in Luke 14:26 in the context of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus is talking about separating yourself from all worldly considerations to be his disciple. He said that you have to be willing to give up your family – even your own life – to follow him. </font>[/QUOTE]Now I want to mention right here that I do not disagree with your interpretation of these words. I too follow similar reasoning in order to not have to ascribe Jesus as commanding me to "hate". We are of one mind in how to interpret that passage.

I merely wish to point out exactly why we decide to look for a non-literal interpreation. We do it because otherwise it would be completely inconsistent with the truth of the whole message of Love that Jesus and God consistenly present to us in the Bible and in our lives.

See, what I am saying is, the reason you search for and find the reasons to interpret this in a non literal fashion is precisely because you know it isn't literally true.

It’s good to see that you at least realize that “winged insects” is translated improperly, as the Hebrew word can mean animals, reptiles, or other creeping things. However, you should realize that there ARE in fact winged creatures that move about on all fours – such as the pterosaurs, which most scientists believe walked on all fours. Moreover, there are a host of flying lizards, flying squirrels, etc that probably qualify. </font>[/QUOTE]Pterosaurs don't count, they had two wings and two feet. It is true they had claws on their wings capable of rudimentary grasping. "Flying" lizards merely glide, they do not have true flight, and the same is true of "flying" squirrels. Besides, the Bible names some of the creatures stated to have "four" feet, saying they are clean and may be eaten!

Once again, I agree with your method of interpreting these scriptures completely. I too say that our scriptures are in no way invalidated merely because they don't happen to literally describe the truth about the rotation of the earth.

But my point is, the reason why today even consider talking about these verses as not being literal is based on one thing and one thing only: We know that literally they are not true.

Historically the literalistic intepreters of scripture persecuted the scientists who were telling them the truth about the earth and the sun and the moon. They were even accused of lacking credibility in their day, as well, merely because they tried to persuade people by presenting (gasp) evidence. A strange way to lose credibility then as now.

Accepting the truth is not being a humanist. Denying the truth is, of course, only too humanistic.

It is not in our flesh that we are in the image of God, but in our spiritual nature. Be careful about how you ascribe to God the nature of our physical bodies; God is a Spirit, and we do not worship a being of flesh. When God took it upon Himself to become flesh, it was an emptying of Himself, a great condescention.

(sigh) You are trying to tell me the scientists don't have everything figured out yet? You think I don't know that? What is your point in bringing that up? God certainly has it all figured out how He did it and He doesn't need any of us to get it all figured out, He'll manage just fine without us knowing how He really did it all.

Humphrey's starlight time model is contrary to known facts. It predicts a blue shifting of distant objects and they are red shifted.

400 scientists are a tiny minority among the scientists. The theory of evolution started out among a tiny minority of scientists and has swept over the whole field due to the strength of the science. The opposition to evolution today consists solely of those who do not understand it and those who are driven to oppose it strictly on the grounds of their prior religious commitment against it.

See, there you go, adding words to what the Bible said. It does not say "from Israel's perspective", that is your own addition.

As I stated before, I do not quarrel with the right to reinterpret scripture based on a new knowledge as to what is literally true, the very thing you do with regards to the rotation of the earth; I merely ask the same right to do that with regard to the new knowledge as to the common descent of life and the age of the universe.

By denying me that right while taking obvious advantage of that right before all our eyes in this very forum you simply fulfill the words of Christ:

 

"This article also has some VERY interesting theories in it regarding the starlight travel time problem"

Let us know when any of these ideas make some testable predictions that are different from the predictions of standard cosmology and thus allow them to be tested by observation. Also let us know when any of these ideas get developed enough to be reviewed and published by the experts in these fields and in their journals.

 

Gup20, thank you for the interesting link you provided, which I also duplicate here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v17/i2/cosmology.asp

Did you actually read the link? The writer does a wonderful job of pointing out the shortcomings of the various cdk theories out there including Setterfield's theory and Humphrie's theory.

He then modestly proposes his own. Did you catch what it was? He proposes that the earth was frozen in time going veeeerrrryyyyy sloooowwwwww for all the billions of years of the universes actual observed age until the earth experienced six days of time from the beginning of the big bang until about 6 or 10 thousand years ago. Then the earth's time suddenly speeded up to match the time of the rest of the universe.

No, I am not kidding. That is what he really proposes. Go read it for youself, if you don't believe me! He feels as if this explanation makes perfect sense. In other words, preserving the literal words of Genesis is so important to him that he will propose this absolutely fantastic cosmology just to get away from accepting the literal teachings of the very stars themselves.

Please pardon me for not taking that proposal very seriously, especially in light of the fact that the earth itself bears the marks of billions of years of history on its face.

 

The problem with these various theories is their authors lack imagination. They are making them up out of whole cloth anyway, so lets reveal how they can rescue their theories.

Setterfield CDK theory can be rescued quite simply by the simple process of joining it with a collapsing universe. Instead of the stars being at a constant distance from us, they are rushing towards us at fantastic speeds, just enough to cause a compensating speedup of their motions that reverses the missing slow down of their motions implied by his theory.

Remember, folks, you read it here first.

That creationist link can be rescued by an alternate universe. Simply prepare the earth initially in an alternate universe and on the fourth day bring it over to our own solar system and pop the earth into its orbit.

Remember folks, you read it here first.

Now lets try to think of some way of making a scientific test to discern which of these two alternatives was the real one?

 

"For example, you MUST assume a uniformitarian mindset - even though the history in the Bible is irrefutably clear that things have changed between creation and now."

Yes, please show me your verse that shows that the laws of physics have changed. THis should be good.

"For those of you who may have missed it, that's called "peer review" - iron sharpening iron."

Where exactly is the peer review? Where are the astronomy experts who were doing the reviewing?

 

For those of you who may have missed it, that's called "peer review" - iron sharpening iron. One thing that IS clear from the article is that creationists don't have this problem fully worked out yet - and I think that is ok. Point is, theories and problems are being worked through, and continue to move closer to resolution and clarity. Each time a new discovery is made, it opens doors to answering these questions.
</font>[/QUOTE]These creationist theories do not represent new discoveries. These creationist theories represent arbitarary ideas thrown out for possible consideration as a way to rescue YEC from the obvious evidence against it. They all fail, as discussed in the article above. You can call it peer review, you can call it iron sharpening iron, that's fine, as long as you realize the creationist article you refer to really does show how they all fail, and its time to quit treating those theories as if they were viable! If you don't quit doing that, if you keep touting them as viable, your iron hasn't sharpened anything after all.

Just like Martin Luther before them, who denied that the earth rotates based on interpretation of scripture. Real scientists have always used evidence and will continue to use evidence, no matter how much you beg of them to accept your interpretation of scripture instead.

Actually, the evidence from the real world is utterly inconsistent with a single world wide flood having occurred. The greenland ice sheet shows annual layers going back 400,000 years which wouldn't be possible if there were a flood that had intervened - the ice wouldn't be there. The grand canyon is composed of sedimentary layers that couldn't possibly have been deposited in a single flood - some of them are sandstone, some of them are limestone, for example. The Hawiian Islands are clearly each created in its turn by a single volcanic flow working on a moving crustal plate, and the uniformity of the island chain including undersea mounts going way past Midway Island is clear to any objective observer, and it is equally clear such a chain is not possible to be created in a mere 6000 years.

For these reasons, it is clear that the flood of Noah must be interpreted as the world as known to Noah, a perfectly logically correct view of the language used. Noah's actual flood occurred at the time of the ending of the last ice age, when melting glaciers were a handy cause of the event.