Have I changed my stance?

Hear hear!

 

Well, that about sums up the whole of the anti-science argument, right there in a nutshell. Its all about that level of understanding.

 

If that is what the evidence was, I would not accept it either. Good thing it is way better than that.

OTOH, that was a good parody of the way it is normally represented by those who do not accept. I'll take it as humor.

 

Mareese - you have to realize that these guys actually don't believe the Bible. We have been trying to get them to give us a 'non-literal' or 'allegorical' exegesis of Genesis that would be compatible with evolution... they have not. Instead, they replace the Word with evolution (substituting man's word in place of God's Word). They don't even attempt to reconcile the scripture with their belief - why? Because the two are completely incompatible.

 

UTEOTW - you have to realize these guys don't actually believe God's handiwork. We've been trying to get them to give us the evidence from the actual universe that would be compatible with their interpretation of biblical creation . . . they have not. Instead, they replace the evidence from God's own creation with their literalistic interpretation (substituting man's ideas in place of God's very deeds.). They don't even attempt to reconcile their interpretation of scripture with the facts - why? Because the two are incompatible.

 

PoE -

1Jo 5:9 If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son.

Jhn 13:16 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.

The creation is not greater than the Creator. The Creator has proclaimed clearly in His Word the truth. If his 'handi-work' seems to be saying something different, then you must take what the Creator says as being higher. Then you must examine your interpretation of what the handiwork is saying and align it with what the Creator is saying.

In fact, all the evidence for both sides is the same. It is the interpretation of that evidence we disagree on. In fact, we have given you scripture after scripture that confirms Creation science. This forms the framework from which to re-interpret the facts/hard data.

Let me give you a real example: The Bible describes that there was a world wide flood. It also sets up a chronogical record of time in the geneologies that put us at approximately 6000 year old earth. Using this framework, we look at rock formations. We see the layers and don't immediately assume one layer per year over millions of years - why? Because the Bible rules that out. We see a cataclysm to the scale reported by the Bible in Noah's flood and suddenly we have an interpretation of the physical evidence that makes sense with the framework of scripture. For us to see this any other way you must FIRST and FOREMOST give us cause from scripture to intepret the scripture differently. In order to convince a creationist that his science is wrong, you have to show how their interpretation of scripture is wrong.

This is the one area that all the evolutionists here have tried to avoid. You would like us to ignore the scripture and concentrate on the evidence... however, we look at any evidence you present through "rose colored glasses" - or through the glasses provided by the Bible's framework.

We interpret the fallen world through the framework of scripture. Evilutionists try to do it the other way. Evilutionists look at a fallen, sinful world and try to interpret God's Holy Word according to the framework invented by atheists to explain how the universe could have come into being naturally, and without God.

Facts in and of themselves mean nothing. They must be interpreted. We interpret the facts with the Bible as the framework for interpretation. Evilutionists start with the fallen world and use that to interpret holy scripture.

We have shown you repeatedly and given you sound Biblical exegesis which overwhelmingly demonstrate we are using the correct interpretation of scripture. You have yet to give us a non-literal exegesis of scripture that supports evolution (despite our asking). As a matter of fact you don't give us any exegesis of scripture. YOu claim that scripture is silent regarding evolution. You claim there is no mention of evolution in the Bible just as there is no mention of cars or computers.

 

God has at least TWO ways of declaring Himself. One is through His word, the other is through His creation.

I personally expect that these two ways will agree. If they don't agree then we need to examine both our interpretation of the data collected from the created world (science) AND ALSO our interpretation of His written word.

Additionally we need to recognise that what we currently know may be only part of the picture, we may need to collect more data.

Failure to closely examine BOTH methods of revelation can lead to serious error.

If you can't see at least a hint of an old earth in the revealed word of God perhaps you have too tightly closed your eyes to it.

Rob

 

Thank you Deacon for your words of wisdom. The Bible itself asserts that God speaks through the creation itself - "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork". How one can say he believes the Bible and refuse to listen to God's word in His creation is beyond me!

 

Gup20 - is it your heartfelt belief that whenever there is a teaching of scripture on one side and a teaching of science on the other that it is always the teaching of scripture that should win out in the mind and heart of the true believer?

( ) yes, always

( ) no, only the parts of science I personally don't accept yet. The parts I am convinced by I am willing to accept in place of the plain literal teaching of scripture.

 

Ok deacon - give us an exegesis of Genesis that supports evolution.

Oh that's right... you guys already admitted you can't find anything supporting evolution in the Bible. You say the Bible doens't talk about it at all ... just like it doesn't talk about cars or computers. So when you say "failure to closely examine BOTH methods of revelation" you are actually saying "we have ignored the Bible and looked only at the physical/natural revelation" - seeing as how you admit there is nothing about evolution in the Bible.

It is presumptuous to imagine that a fallen world marred by sin would reveal more about pre-sin, pre-fall earth than the Word of God which remains infallible and pure.

Yet with Creationism, you have models that agree both with the evidence, and with the scriptures. When the models are shown to disagree with either, they are changed and updated. While evolution is based solely on physical evidence, creation incorporates BOTH methods of revelation. The problem with evolutionists is that, since they are not used to incorporating scriptural data into the mix, they fail to realize that many of their previous interpretations of evidence (which have been based solely on the natural world revelations) must be re-interpreted within the Biblical framework - thereby reconciling the evidence with BOTH natural and scriptural 'revelations'.

Evolutionists just don't get it - when you show me (or a creationist) evidence of evolution, I am only more convinced of creation because my interpretation of that evidence takes the scriptures into account. You guys admittedly don't find evolution in the scripture, so according to your own words you do not take the scripture into account when developing your evolutionary theories. When you look at the evidence, you look through 'rose colored glasses' that intentionally omit any scriptural revelation, and focus solely on this 'revelation through the creation'. When we creationists look at the evidence, we look through 'rose colored glasses' that intentionally include scriptural revelation AND revelation through creation. Therefore, when looking at "evidence" (which means nothing on it's own and must be interpreted) we both proclaim - How beautiful... can't you see what I see? No, we can't see what the other sees because we are looking at it thorugh a different framework (different glasses).

The trouble is, evolutionists refuse to acknowlege their intentional ommission - unless they are atheists or agnostics... they they freely admit evolution disproves the Bible & God - or any rational belief in the supernatural. So the only one here who refuses to open their eyes is CHRISTIAN evolutionists. Perhaps it's because as christians they are already versed in excercising faith, that faith in evolution is just easier to accept than standing up for Biblical Authority.

 

Gup, I'm no believer in the grand theory of evolution. I've placed my preference with old-earth creationism. The OEC's stance accepts evolution with certain (undefined or to be discovered) limits. ALMOST ALL creationist groups today accept some form of evolution; the science is that good.

You'll never get a satisfactory answer to your question here becasue the topic and question is too broad. You'll need to widen your scope of your own reading material to truely satisfy your curiosity.

Include a few ideas that challange what you currently believe.

Try Don Stoners book,
"A New Look at an Old Earth", it's on-line and downloadable without cost.

Hugh Ross is a prolific writer promoting Progressive creationism. His newest book, "A Matter of Days" is quite comprehensive.

Alan Hayward's "Creation and Evolution" has some interesting ideas.

The theistic evolutionist's may encourage you to read Howard Van Till's works. The AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC AFFILIATION has an interesting array of articles promoting this idea.

As with all of our attempts to guess HOW God created you will probably be left with more questions than answers. You will not agree with some of what you read, but you may agree with more than you'd originally guess.

Rob

 

OK, Gup, give us a sound exegesis that supports quantum mechanics. Or an sun orbiting earth. Or special relativity.

The Bible is not a book of science. Deceiving folks into looking at a false view of the mechanics of creation reather than the meaning behind Genesis is part of Satan's plan for using YE to divide believers and cast stumbling blocks in the way of allowing non-believers to become saved.

 

The idea that Bible triumphs over scientific observation has been tried before in history and the result was a loss for the literalistic interpretations in the court of all public opinion. I refer to the discoveries of Copernicus and Gallileo and their contemporaries that the cause of day and night is actually the rotation of the earth instead of the rising and setting of the sun.

The Bible is filled with literal statements that the sun rose and set. Besides countless mere statements in passing to that effect, there is the famous passage referring to the motion of the Sun coming to a halt in the sky at the call of Joshua; cited by Martin Luther himself to criticize the works of Copernicus.

Since the writings are there, literally teaching against the earth's rotation as a cause of the apparant motion of the sun across the sky, I call on Gup to be consistent and announce to us all that yes, he does indeed believe that the idea that the earth rotates is false, just because it is, indeed, against the literal teaching of scripture, and as he has maintained consistently, mere scientific knowledge is to be discarded in the face of literal biblical teachings.

OK Gup, its time for you to be true to your principles! Lets hear from you on this!

 

Yet again, you have admitted that evolution is found no where in the Bible. However, the Bible is NOT silent on the origins of man and the earth ... therefore the only conclusion one can draw is that you have ignored the scripture entirely when it comes to your views on origins.

AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT CREATIONISTS HAVE BEEN CLAIMING HERE!! That you have taken a supernatural event and removed the 'super' (removed God) from it and focused solely on the natural. THAT is why you can't give an exegesis. THAT is why you only want to discuss the natural evidences. THAT is why you will always be wrong. I can at least have some respect for Decon (Hugh Ross et al) because they attemtp to use scripture. While we may argue the interpretation of scripture, we both agree it is the foundation. Your approach, UTE, removes God as the direct creator and contradicts the whole of scripture. Yours is the view of atheists and evil men who proclaim "there is no God".

Psa 14:1 [[To the chief Musician, [A Psalm] of David.]] The fool hath said in his heart, [There is] no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, [there is] none that doeth good.

Two points - First, UTEOTW has demonstrated (even admitted) that he is all together ignoring the written Word and looking exclusively at 'the revelation in creation'. Secondly, the situations you refer to (I would guess flat earth, geocentrism, etc) were cases where there was no imperical biblical evidence, but rather figures of speech. In contrast, creation is very specifically laid out - in order, in substance, and in timescale.

And every newscast in America uses the terms sunrise and sunset in their broadcasts. Do you think that all meterologists are geocentrists? Must be a figure of speech. Or - perhaps it is a matter of perspective.

You see, geocentrists have it wrong. The earth is not the center of the solar system, but our solar system may very well be at (or near) the center of the universe. This AiG article provides some evidences for that. This has some implications to explaining several unresolved problems for the creationist models (indeed there are problems for our models as there are many for evolutionary models). For example, starlight time, which is a problem for big bangers as well, but a particular problem for creationists. How do we see light from stars that are billions of light years away if the earth is only 6000 years old?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v17/i2/cosmology.asp

Quite simply, Paul, science and science texts are revised regularly. The best policy is to admit when you are wrong, and don't rigorously hold to anything that is not clearly stated in scripture. Science will always be changing. For example, if you look at the evidence that was used in favor of evolution in the Scopes trial, you will see that almost all of it has since been refuted as incorrect. The Bible, however does not change. God does not change. If we hold to the concepts in the Bible tightly while holding to the details loosely, we'll probably come out somewhere pretty close to truth. Eventually, science always comes around to prove the Bible is true in every word.

BTW, UTEOTW:
According to Einstein's theory of relativeity, if a space ship leaves earth and travels at (or very near) the speed of light, 1 day will pass on the ship while 1000 years pass on earth. Realativity.

2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

 

And every newscast in America uses the terms sunrise and sunset in their broadcasts. Do you think that all meterologists are geocentrists? Must be a figure of speech. Or - perhaps it is a matter of perspective.

</font>[/QUOTE]The terms sunrise and sunset were believed to be literally true until the rise of science caused us to realize the earth rotates. This was not accomplished without opposition from the Biblical Literalists, but that oppostion has now ceased.

But our Biblical Texts date back to the time when the rotation of the earth was denied and the belief was solely that the Sun moves across the sky.

Unfortunately, you inconsistently bring in scientific knowledge to judge whether to assess the daily rising and setting of the sun is in fact not literal. To be consistent, disavow the hard won scientific advances dating back to Copernicus and Gallileo and go back to the mind set and literary conventions of the Hebrews. There, find a way to justification for abandoning the literal statements of the text and accepting that the earth rotates.

You cannot do this, such justification is not there.

The real difference between us, Gup20, is not that one of us allows science to inform the way we interpret scripture and the other does not; the real difference between us in how much science we have come to understand and accept. You accept science when you know it is really true, and that's all I do as well.

 

Yet no where in the Bible does it literally say that the sun rotates around the earth. A proper exegesis of the scripture reveals that.

However, in Genesis 1 it says that day and night did not start until there was a point of reference - light. Therefore, we know that movement occured as oscillations of day and night began. We know that this light wasn't the sun in our solar system - that wasn't created until day 4, but none the less periods of day and night occured demonstrating movement of some kind. No where in the Genesis account does it say the sun rotated around the earth. As a matter of fact, it puts day and night in reference to the light (which became the sun on day 4). That would seem to suggest that the sun was the fixed point in relation to the earth. Whether you subscribe to that or to geocentrism, neither clearly states it one way or the other. Both involve a semantic implication rather than direct clear (aka literal) fact. One lesson creationists can learn is to hold loosely to these kinds of 'facts', and only hold tightly to ideas that are clearly stated in the Word - such as Man was formed from dust on the sixth day of creation (rather than from monkeys after a few billion years), or that there was no death before sin (since death is the result of sin or "wage of sin").

Actually, our Biblical texts date back to a lot earlier than that.

Actually we have already demonstrated that "one of us" does not believe the scripture has anything to say about how we were created or what the origins of man are. Therefore "one of us" has chosen to completely ignore scripture when it comes to evolution. "One of us" has decided that ONLY natural history can be counted on to provide a reliable indication of where we came from and what we are doing here. "One of us" has admitted that there is nothing in the scriptures regarding evolution.

The 'other of us' has demonstrated that clearly the Bible refutes evolution. The 'other of us' has demonstrated that the Bible has a lot to say about how we came into being - and the origin of man.

In order to accept this statement we must first decide on a definition of science. If science is that which is observable and repeatable, then I could argue that you have not come to accept science, but rather a faith in a secular humanist doctrine.

How do I reconcile truth? I reconcile it by the written Word of God. If the science that I learn of agrees with the scripture, then I accept the science. Why? Because I have already accepted the pre-supposition. I have already accepted scripture 100% and if a science agrees with that scripture, then I probably accept it. If you want to convince me of a different scientific interpretation, you must first convince me that my interpretation of the scripture the science supports is wrong. Why do I do that? For the simple reason that the Bible is ultimate truth and ultimate authority on every thing that it touches upon. I can know and be satisfied that this is so because of my faith. My faith in the Bible as absolute truth is unshakeable. My faith in scientists as knowing absolute truth is not - especially when scientists change their minds so frequently. God and His Word never change, and are therefore static and absolute. If I am going to base my belief system (be it spiritual or scientific on something, I am going to base it on something solid... not something fluidic.

 

"Yours is the view of atheists and evil men who proclaim "there is no God"."

Absolutely not and you should apologize for such a reckless charge against a fellow believer.

"Secondly, the situations you refer to (I would guess flat earth, geocentrism, etc) were cases where there was no imperical biblical evidence, but rather figures of speech."

And it is not considered a figure pf speech to speak of a sun rise and a sunset for days before there was a sun?

It was pretty literal when the author said that the sun stood still for Joshua. It was pretty literal when the Gospels say the Satan took Jesus to a mountain so high He could see the whole world.

"The earth is not the center of the solar system, but our solar system may very well be at (or near) the center of the universe. This AiG article provides some evidences for that. "

Which amount to mainly a misunderstanding of the BB. Because of inflation, every point in the universe should appear to the casual observer as the center. I see they threw in Tifft's crusade for quantized reshift for good measure. Too bad others fail to replicate his results.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0306/0306042.pdf

"For example, starlight time, which is a problem for big bangers as well, but a particular problem for creationists. How do we see light from stars that are billions of light years away if the earth is only 6000 years old?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v17/i2/cosmology.asp"

First of all, just how are distant objects and the time it takes the light to get here a problem for an OLD universe?

Second, this idea violoates ideas from relativity because all frames of reference would not NOT be equivelent.

"For example, if you look at the evidence that was used in favor of evolution in the Scopes trial, you will see that almost all of it has since been refuted as incorrect."

Could you tell us the top five items presented as evidence for evolution at Scopes that are now refuted.

You have made this claim before and been shown that there was no scientific evidence presented in open trial. That borderlines bearing false witness. Unless I have you confused with another poster which is possible.

"BTW, UTEOTW:
According to Einstein's theory of relativeity, if a space ship leaves earth and travels at (or very near) the speed of light, 1 day will pass on the ship while 1000 years pass on earth. Realativity.

2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

You really got to be kidding me. Does God travel around at just the right speed to make this a mention of relativity. That is pure speculation and reading unintended meaning into the Word.

So if God goes around at exactly 0.999999999996667c then this is true. Any other speed and, well, maybe it is figurative.

"In order to accept this statement we must first decide on a definition of science. If science is that which is observable and repeatable, then I could argue that you have not come to accept science, but rather a faith in a secular humanist doctrine."

Nope. For evolution, two different scientists can examine the same fossils and repeat their observations. We can do genetic testing in the present. Astronomers can repeat others.

 

Yet no where in the Bible does it literally say that the sun rotates around the earth. A proper exegesis of the scripture reveals that.
</font>[/QUOTE]It says so literally time after time. In our Joshua passage, it is quite clearly a biblical literal statement that it was the Sun that stopped its movement across the sky. And time after time the words come that the sun "rose" and the sun "set". No proper exegesis can change the meanings of these words; they are what they are and you choose to interpret them non-literally. You do it because you are aware, based on scientific non-biblical sources, that they are not literally true. No matter how many times you deny you are doing that, we watch you do it before our very eyes.

It makes us feel a little less concerned about your demands we give up the science we know, since you refuse to do it yourself with the science you know.