Which is more reliable science or the Bible?

You're suggesting that the tree of life is something natural?

You say that after quoting a verse in Revelation. And yet, a couple posts up you stated that you don't believe that the bowls of God's wrath are literal. The bowls and the tree are in the same book. Neither is emphatically called a symbol. And yet, in one case you take the bowls symbolically, and in the other case you imply it would be denying God's word to take the tree as anything but literal. You're not being consistent here.

God is also telling the truth when he inspires a vision of his wrath being poured out of seven bowls, or inspires an account of his creative work described in seven days. Please do not confuse symbolism with lying. God does not lie, yet his word does contain symbols.

[ October 15, 2005, 11:06 PM: Message edited by: Mercury ]

 

This is word games.

Show me a bowl of wrath.

But I can show you pictures of a tree with fruit on it.

http://7art-screensavers.com/screenshots/fruits/oranges-on-the-tree.jpg

 

I have a Kevin Trudeau book I'd like to sell you.

Your'e referring to a Revelation analogy. You have no idea what the analogy means. None of us will know until the days of revelation come to pass.

You're actually wrong about that. It says that he created evening and then morning. The Jewish day begins at the start of evening. The Genesis days start when the sun sets.

There's a difference between truth and fact. Scripture is 100% truth. It never claims to be 100% fact. Yes, there are many many instances where the scriptural events are indeed factual, but there are many where they are not. I'm not taking a side on the C/E debate, I'm simply stating scriptural reality here.

 

Can you show me a tree with immortality on it? That is, after all, what the tree of life is supposed to impart. I don't think eating oranges will make one live forever. Such a tree is as impossible naturally as a bowl full of God's wrath.

 

My wife tells me that it makes me a sweet kisser. Will that make me live longer, if not forever???

 

The problem with all of you science buffs is that you cannot think outside the box.

God by definition is supernatural. Therefore He cannot be explained or measured by science.

But that does not mean He doesn't exist.

I believe the serpent spoke to Eve because God's Word said so. I believe there is a Tree of Life and a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because God's Word says so.

I do not understand it all. I do not stay awake nights worrying about it either. I believe it by faith.

Hbr 11:6 But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

This is not a blind faith. The Bible has many proofs in history and archaeology. Many prophecies have come true.

But if you believe it can all be explained naturally, you have missed the boat completely.

If God was natural, then He would not be supernatural.

 

Cop-out. God is supernatural, therefore his existence cannot be proved by science. Yes, we believe in God. We also believe that God is a God of order and that he made creation to work by a certain set of rules. If you postulate divine intervention every time you simply don't understand or can't imagine how something happened, you're just clinging to a God of the Gaps, who is weakened every time one of those gaps is filled by a better understanding of the working of creation. You are unable to think outside the box of a simplistic literal six-day creation. I think that God set up the natural laws and is pleased by them and is happy when his creatures try to discover how God engineered the universe. To me now the universe seems much more marvellously intricate and grand than when I thought it was a mere 6000 years old.

 

I heartily agree.

And yet you don't believe that God's wrath will be poured out of bowls even though God's word says so. Of course, you don't believe that because you think the bowls are symbolic, and you believe that something symbolic can still be true without being literal. I feel the same way. We just disagree about whether certain other things are also symbols, even though they meet the same criteria you've outlined for the bowls.

I believe that you were the one trying to find a natural explanation for the tree of life, not me. I agree that trying to naturalize something that was not meant to be a literal description is completely missing the boat.

 

I would disagree.

I think you rob God of His supernatural power. He says he made all creation in just six days. He does not describe any evolving creatures.

Personally, I think it is plain stupid to imagine that God created man in some sort of primitive "caveman" state. What is the purpose of that?

And it does not agree with His word. Adam, the first man named all the animals. That would take a very intelligent man.

Call it a cop-out if you want. I am just tired of arguing with you.

You say you believe the Bible. I have asked many times for verses that point to evolution. No one has mentioned even one verse.

But you are completely skeptical of God's simple account of creation in Genesis.

You are so smart? Explain to me how Jesus walked on water.

 

No one said Adam was stupid, nor did anyone say he was a "caveman," although it is definitely possible that Adam lived in a cave for at least a while no matter what time you think he was created because shelter-building takes a while to figure out and caves are convenient.

We have repeatedly said that God does not address evolution anywhere in Scripture any more than he does relativity, electromagnetism, calculus, or enzyme kinetics.

We have also repeatedly said that believing God did not use miraculous means to create the various species of life on earth does not mean that he did not perform miracles at other times. Unfortunately, the phenomenon of Jesus walking on water did not leave any evidence as to the mechanism such as a fossil record, ancient starlight, genetic relationships, or the myriad other data that we have for an ancient universe and evolution of species. I'm afraid you'll just have to wait and ask Jesus how he did it. I personally think it was a miracle.

 

Well, I wrote this before I saw Petrel's post and now some parts are redundant, but I'll post it anyway.

I think God made the universe in a moment, and he has been sustaining and working out his purposes in the universe for the 13.7 billion years since then. I think creation is outlined over six days, with rests overnight and rest on the seventh day, in order to give a template for the human work week.

Genesis does not explicitly describe evolving creatures any more than it describes the adapting or "devolving" creatures that young-earth creationists accept. Its description of how breeding can influence traits in Genesis 30 is quite different from what we presently believe.

Genesis also doesn't describe bacteria or many other kinds of living things, but that doesn't mean God didn't create these creatures. All of creation, whether it's itemized in Genesis 1 or not, is made and sustained by God. Later passages such as Psalm 104 and Job 38-41 are clear that God is involved in making present creatures too, and also providing their needs. God is not just the creator of some distant archetypes of each kind. In Matthew 6 Jesus says that even the grass of the field is clothed by God, showing that natural processes do not indicate that God is absent. Just because we have a natural explanation for how the grass grows does not mean it happens apart from God.

Could you please provide the verses that support electromagnetism? If there are none, why do you accept the electromagnetic explanation of lightning even though the Bible says that God creates lightning? Once again, you are imposing a double standard: one for evolution, and a lower standard for the science you accept.

In any case, there are hints in the Bible that point toward evolution and common descent. Maybe these things are just coincidences; I'm not sure. God commanded the earth to produce vegetation (Genesis 1:11-12) rather than creating it ex nihilo. God commanded the earth to bring forth all kinds of living creatures (Genesis 1:24). The repeated statements of things reproducing "after their kind" fit extremely well with the nested hierarchy of living things. When speciation occurs, new species remain within the kinds of their ancestors. Dogs may be bred into various breeds, but they are all still dogs. Mammals may speciate into creatures as diverse as camels and whales and bats, but they are all still mammals. No matter what level one looks at (aside from single-celled creatures that Genesis doesn't mention), we see that speciation forms clades where all descendents of a common ancestor are within the same clade, just as branches on a tree can diversify into many smaller branches and twigs, but these twigs always remain on the same branch. A population of a "kind" (or clade) can have descendents that are split into sub-kinds, but animals of one "kind" cannot give birth to creatures of another kind.

Genesis 2 says that humans and animals are made of the same material (Ecclesiastes goes even further with listing similarities). Genesis 3 says that it was pursuing knowledge (good and evil) apart from God that led humans into rebellion against God (and so does Romans 1:19-23). It says that one of the results of obtaining this knowledge is that women will have increased pain in childbirth; compared to early hominids, humans have a far larger skull which in turn requires a longer birthing process with more dilation (differences in the pelvis also make childbirth far more dangerous for humans). Maybe this is all just coincidence, but maybe not.

No more than you are completely skeptical of God's simple account of pouring out his wrath from seven bowls. The difference is that with Genesis we have more to work with because the evidence of how things did happen are still with us. For Revelation, aside from preterist or historical interpretations, we do not have any evidence yet of how it happened.

My position has been consistent: God created everything natural as well as everything supernatural. God works his purposes through natural and supernatural means. One does not write God out of the picture by saying that there is a natural explanation; that would only be true if nature were not God's creation that is sustained by his power.

I think it was a miracle! I don't claim to know how it happened. There is no evidence to examine to see how it happened. With creation, however, the evidence is all around us! From analyzing that evidence, we can see how God has worked in creation, as long as we assume God didn't try to cover his tracks or be otherwise deceptive.

It is not enough for me to imagine an alternate universe or imaginary realm that could have been created just like certain interpretations of Genesis state. I believe God created this world, and I believe that reality really is real. As such, reality can adjust my interpretations, just as the reality of the earth's rotation and orbit around the sun adjusted other interpretations, and the reality of the brain's utility in thinking adjusted how we read statements about thinking with our heart or kidneys.

What you offer instead is for me to give up certain portions of reality and instead take your word for how things are to be interpreted. You have no problems adjusting your interpretation to match reality in some cases (I doubt you believe we think with our kidneys), so it is not a fundamental difference in how we read the Bible. You use some of the same techniques in detecting the symbolism in the bowls of Revelation that I use to see other indications of symbolism. Where you are unwilling to compromise is not in how you read the Bible, but in what you accept from science. When someone uses the same interpretational methods you accept elsewhere in order to show that Scripture does not conflict with some evidence from creation that you don't accept, you cry foul.

The unforgivable sin that we've committed, it seems, isn't that we read the Bible differently, but rather that we've accepted more details about God's creation than you do.

 

That comment is specious. There is no contradiction between electromagnetics and anything the Bible says. The same cannot be said for evolution.

A.F.

 

And you, my friend, have repeatedly been mistaken. Evolution is directly contradicted by a clear reading of Genesis.

A.F.

 

I agree. There is no contradiction if the Bible says God makes lightning (Psalm 135:7, etc.) and science says lightning is caused by the electromagnetic force. Science merely explains some of the ways God works.

Actually, it can.

 

And why, Bro. Petrel, do you and your friends feel that you have to repeat yourselves so. We have heard you. We have understood your doctrine. We have rejected it.

A.F.

 

Uh . . . AntennaFarmer - the "repetition" to which you object came from replying to your unsolicited "repetition". If you don't like "repetition" why do you indulge in it?

 

I said:
"The same cannot be said for evolution."

Only by wresting the Scriptures.

A.F.

 

Examples please......

A.F.

 

Example:

The difference seems to be that many (not all) young-earth creationists repeat assertions while we've repeated arguments and evidence.

There would probably be less repetition if young-earth creationists did not frequently respond to an argument against their assertion by repeating the original assertion. If they could get to the next step and actually address what has been presented, we might cover some less-trampled ground in these discussions. This does happen from time to time, and I even thought the discussion with JWI was making progress for a while, but then with [this post] it was back to repeating a bunch of disparate assertions.

[ October 18, 2005, 12:30 AM: Message edited by: Mercury ]

 

Poor examples Merc..


No one here can compare to the mass of verbiage produced by your tag team.

A.F.