OEC ... where do you get your belief [Archive]

Jezz

June 5th 2003, 11:32 AM

SherBear:
OEC ... Where does your belief come from? What support in Scripture? IOW, what led you to that conclusion?
I think the universe is both 6-and-a-bit days old or 15 billion years old. While it may seem contradictory that I believe these simultaneously, that's actually not necessarily the case. Relativity teaches us that the flow of time depends on your point of reference.

Where I think that YEC people make the mistake in their exegesis is in assuming that the 7 days in Genesis 1 were measured from the same point of reference (hereafter POR) as the rest of the Bible (the Earth). A careful reading of the Bible will indicate that this is not the case.

Clearly, time in the second creation account and onward is measured from an Earth-based POR, as all topics discussed thereafter are discussed from an Earth-based perspective. Noone disagrees with this.

What about the 6 days of creation? Well, one thing we can conclude fairly decisively, is that whatever POR was for the 6 days, it was the same POR for the entirety of the 6 days, as there does not appear to be a switch anywhere. This leads us to an important conclusion - because the Earth did not exist for the entirety of the 6 days, then this is evidence that an Earth-based POR is not in mind for measuring those 6 days.

It is also worth noting that a day is normally understood as the time from sunrise to sunrise. But the sun wasn't created until day four. This is more evidence against a "real" day interpretation of Genesis.

It is also quite evident that the literary style of Genesis 1 is completely different to the rest of the historical parts of the Bible. This is further evidence that they are using different PORs for measuring time. The Bible quite clearly divides time into two categories: 1. the time since Adam, and 2. all the time before Adam.

Of course, the Bible has it's own version of the theory of relativity that OECers typically spout: For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4). This also lends support to the argument that the 6 days are not what they seem.

What was the POR for the 6 days of Genesis, then? Well, given that it must have existed for the entire time of the 6 days, the only POR I could think of is a "universal" POR.

According to my interpretation, the 6 days of Genesis were actually 24 hours long each, but as measured from the universal POR. From this POR, we are currently living in the seventh day. This leads nicely into Genesis 2:3 - And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Remember, that the Sabbath is modelled after God's seventh day. Effectively, in my interprtation, we are living in God's Sabbath.

There are two key points here that tie in nicely with my OEC view:
1. God blessed time after the first humans appeared. This is consistent with the idea that God's concern is for humans. We continue to live in times blessed by God (for which we can be thankful - to live in a universe not blessed by God would, I think, be hell). In the YEC view, this day concluded 6000 years ago (from an Earth-based POR), so it would seem an insignificant detail to note that God blessed it. This point also ties in very nicely with Jesus' statement: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." God blessed the seventh day after his ultimate creation - humanity - was completed, so He declared it a Sabbath after man was made. In other words, He made the Sabbath for man.

2. God's Sabbath was, like ours, a day of rest. God rested on his Sabbath, so in my understanding, I take this to mean that God has been resting since the creation of humankind. "resting" would be taken to mean "not doing any of the work He did on the first six days" - ie, not doing any more creation. But just as Jesus showed us that "rest" didn't mean that we were not to do good and necessary tasks on our Sabbath, I interpret this to mean that although God is "resting" on his Sabbath (ie, during humanity's time in the world), He still does the necessary and good things in this universe as required.

I like my interpretation much better than the YEC position, because it makes more sense out of more of the Bible (eg, the seemingly useless "seventh day" suddenly has a new significance associated with it) and has less apparent contradictions in it (eg, measuring time from the Earth's perspective when the Earth did not yet exist).

So the above does not prove that the Earth is old. It does tell you that, even if you interpret Genesis as history, it does not automatically follow that the Earth is only 6000 years old. All that you can conclude from a literal reading of the Bible is that 6000 years have elapsed since God breathed life into Adam, and that there was time before Adam, but we can't be sure how that time was measured. Thus this is not proof of an old Earth, but proof that the Bible is not inconsistent with an old Earth. In fact, in my opinion, the Bible could easily be harmonised with any finite age of the universe greater than ~6000 years.

Note: despite what YECers will claim, this is not merely a revisionist examination of the text trying to force it to fit modern science. The idea that the Genesis 1's measure of time is different from the rest of the Bible predates both the Big Bang theory and Darwin by centuries. I am pretty sure there are ancient commentators that shared my interpretation.

If you want to try and calculate the age of the universe based on the above information, you need to have a guess at what the POR for Genesis was. I've seen one guy (a physicist by the name of Gerald Schroeder) do just that. He acknowledges that the POR for the 7 days must be a universal POR. So what in the universe is universal? The cosmic background radiation (CBR). Now, I'll gloss over some details, but basically what he does is take the CBR as a form of "universal clock", and assumes that this is the POR that the Genesis account's time is measured from. And because we can measure the CBR today, we can calculate how long would have passed in Earth-based time for a given amount of time in the CBR-clock POR.

Guess what? Using the above method, Schroeder calculated that in the time it took 6 days to pass on the Genesis clock, 15 billion years would have elapsed in Earth time. :smile:

Schroeder goes further. He proceeds to use the CBR-clock to calculate the length of time each individual day took. And I won't go into the details now, but there is a reasonably good match with modern cosmology, paelentology, and geology.

Socrates

June 5th 2003, 12:33 PM

Today @ 02:32 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=118376#post118376)
Jezz:

I think the universe is both 6-and-a-bit days old or 15 billion years old. While it may seem contradictory that I believe these simultaneously, that's actually not necessarily the case. Relativity teaches us that the flow of time depends on your point of reference.

Exactly -- that's what the Christian Dr Russell Humphreys points out -- the unsaved Kabbalist Schroeder has it completely back to front -- www.answersingenesis.org/docs/405.asp

Where I think that YEC people make the mistake in their exegesis is in assuming that the 7 days in Genesis 1 were measured from the same point of reference (hereafter POR) as the rest of the Bible (the Earth).

Then Moses made the same "mistake" in Exodus 20:8-11 when he compared the Creation Week to the ordinary working week.

A careful reading of the Bible will indicate that this is not the case.

A careful reading of the Bible shows that YEC is the case, and only compromise with so-called "science", backed up in Schroeder's case with Kabbalistic numerological hocus-pocus, can long ages be seen. See this critique of his flaky idea at www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4355news8-1-2000.asp

Clearly, time in the second creation account and onward is measured from an Earth-based POR, as all topics discussed thereafter are discussed from an Earth-based perspective. Noone disagrees with this.

Clearly, there is no such thing as a "second creation account" -- this is Wellhausenian fantasy. There is a shift to a focus on the creation of man.

What about the 6 days of creation? Well, one thing we can conclude fairly decisively, is that whatever POR was for the 6 days, it was the same POR for the entirety of the 6 days, as there does not appear to be a switch anywhere. This leads us to an important conclusion - because the Earth did not exist for the entirety of the 6 days, then this is evidence that an Earth-based POR is not in mind for measuring those 6 days.

Come off it -- in the BEGINNING, God created the heavens and the Earth.

It is also worth noting that a day is normally understood as the time from sunrise to sunrise. But the sun wasn't created until day four. This is more evidence against a "real" day interpretation of Genesis.

Not at all -- it's evidence of supernatural inspiration, because pagans would have stressed the sun. Yet all you need for a day-night cycle is a rotating Earth and a light source, created on Day 1. It's the OECs who have the problem, because all billions-of-years views have the Sun existing before the Earth. Note that the text cannot possibly mean that the sun "appeared" on Day 4.

It is also quite evident that the literary style of Genesis 1 is completely different to the rest of the historical parts of the Bible.

It's really quite evident that Genesis 1 is written as historical narrative, because of the repeated waw consecutives.

Of course, the Bible has it's own version of the theory of relativity that OECers typically spout: For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4). This also lends support to the argument that the 6 days are not what they seem.

So are you saying that a watch in a night is really a thousand years? Of course, this passage contrasts a short and long period of time to show that God is outside time, not that time is meaningless to us.

What was the POR for the 6 days of Genesis, then? Well, given that it must have existed for the entire time of the 6 days, the only POR I could think of is a "universal" POR.

According to my interpretation, the 6 days of Genesis were actually 24 hours long each, but as measured from the universal POR.

Back to front. They were 24 hours long measured from the Earth's reference frame, while in a galactic frame, billions of years might have passed.

From this POR, we are currently living in the seventh day. This leads nicely into Genesis 2:3 - And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

How does this mean that the seventh day continues, just because the rest continues? In Australia, we start a vacation on Saturday that continues to Monday. But this doesn't mean that Saturday continues to Monday.

In fact, in my opinion, the Bible could easily be harmonised with any finite age of the universe greater than ~6000 years.

And you miss all the problems, such as death before sin.

Note: despite what YECers will claim, this is not merely a revisionist examination of the text trying to force it to fit modern science.

And you show the opposite below :whack:

The idea that the Genesis 1's measure of time is different from the rest of the Bible predates both the Big Bang theory and Darwin by centuries. I am pretty sure there are ancient commentators that shared my interpretation.

Please find them then! The Church Fathers and Reformers were practically unanimous that the earth was <6000 years old.

Schroeder goes further. He proceeds to use the CBR-clock to calculate the length of time each individual day took. And I won't go into the details now, but there is a reasonably good match with modern cosmology, paelentology, and geology.

Which of course is his motivation for his outlandish eisegesis.

Sher

June 5th 2003, 02:36 PM

:hi: Jezz ... Great to see you over here :smile:

Today @ 11:32 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=118376#post118376)
Jezz:

I think the universe is both 6-and-a-bit days old or 15 billion years old. While it may seem contradictory that I believe these simultaneously, that's actually not necessarily the case. Relativity teaches us that the flow of time depends on your point of reference.

Where I think that YEC people make the mistake in their exegesis is in assuming that the 7 days in Genesis 1 were measured from the same point of reference (hereafter POR) as the rest of the Bible (the Earth). A careful reading of the Bible will indicate that this is not the case.

Clearly, time in the second creation account and onward is measured from an Earth-based POR, as all topics discussed thereafter are discussed from an Earth-based perspective. Noone disagrees with this.

Well, I think some do disagree ... in fact, I think Soc may cover that in his post following yours (but I haven't read all of his post yet at this point ... I scanned past it and saw the "fantasy" portion :poke: and thought I better come back to it).

I do personally believe that there was a second creation account ... not from two different authors ... but I think there is support that there was a creation of animals for Adam to name and plants mature enough to eat (I've actually been discussing this with Joe Alward (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5355) in the Religion 101 section) and that this is a Biblically supported belief. I'm always open for gentle correction though :teeth:

And while I see where you are going with the POR thing ... I disagree because the Bible was written for human consumption ... with the POR, as far as I have understood, consistant for the reader ... but shifting ... (see below where I attempt to clarify this strange statement)

What about the 6 days of creation? Well, one thing we can conclude fairly decisively, is that whatever POR was for the 6 days, it was the same POR for the entirety of the 6 days, as there does not appear to be a switch anywhere.

This leads us to an important conclusion - because the Earth did not exist for the entirety of the 6 days, then this is evidence that an Earth-based POR is not in mind for measuring those 6 days.

This is where we disagree. While I don't subscribe to any gap theories that might claim a difference in POR during the Creation ... there is a shift in POR from the heavens and the Earth being created to the things on earth being created ... but it is always from the POR of the reader in that it is written for us.

I don't see how you cannot see the shift. Think of it this way. If I build a house, then furnish that house ... there is a shift in POR from outside the house (while it was being built) ... to inside the house (while it was being furnished).

It is also worth noting that a day is normally understood as the time from sunrise to sunrise. But the sun wasn't created until day four. This is more evidence against a "real" day interpretation of Genesis.

I don't believe this is true. From day 1, God called it "Day" ... creation of the sun and moon, notwithstanding. I have thoughts on this ...

/ot ... ever wonder why the D in Day is capitalized there? If you want we can explore this in a different topic ... my thoughts on this ... as on many things ... are too lengthy to post on this thread ...

... but will move on.

It is also quite evident that the literary style of Genesis 1 is completely different to the rest of the historical parts of the Bible. This is further evidence that they are using different PORs for measuring time. The Bible quite clearly divides time into two categories: 1. the time since Adam, and 2. all the time before Adam.

Um ... I don't get you here. There are divisions like that throughout the Bible ... in fact, one much more noticable is the division before Christ ... during/after Christ .... walked the Earth.

Of course, the Bible has it's own version of the theory of relativity that OECers typically spout: For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4). This also lends support to the argument that the 6 days are not what they seem.

Ack ... okay ... I'll leave that one alone for a moment ... I'm sure Soc provided a link or something :rofl:

<snip>Remember, that the Sabbath is modelled after God's seventh day. Effectively, in my interprtation, we are living in God's Sabbath.

I agree ... except for the time frame. There is too much that has to be taken as "symbolic" about the Sabbath for this to correlate to other Scripture.

There are two key points here that tie in nicely with my OEC view: <snip>

I disagree ... but appreciate you sharing them. As I indicated above, the Sabbath becomes too symbolic in this interpretation. The Sabbath being the observance of the actual 7th day of rest is a prevalent theme .... even outside of Genesis.

Note: despite what YECers will claim, this is not merely a revisionist examination of the text trying to force it to fit modern science.

Heh ... You're not supposed to make our points for us :poke:

:teeth:

The idea that the Genesis 1's measure of time is different from the rest of the Bible predates both the Big Bang theory and Darwin by centuries. I am pretty sure there are ancient commentators that shared my interpretation.

I don't think so, really, though Jezz. I think it has been shown somewhere ... and again I'm betting Soc has a link in his post since I think he was involved in the conversation ... that the forefathers would in retrospect be considered YEC.

Thanks for a well thought out reply, even though I disagree. :smile:

In His Holy Name,
~ Sherry ~
:angel:

Sher

June 5th 2003, 03:10 PM

Today @ 12:33 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=118416#post118416)
Socrates:

Exactly -- that's what the Christian Dr Russell Humphreys points out -- the unsaved Kabbalist Schroeder has it completely back to front -- www.answersingenesis.org/docs/405.asp

:: bookmarks yet another article to read :: :lol:

<snip>

Clearly, there is no such thing as a "second creation account" -- this is Wellhausenian fantasy. There is a shift to a focus on the creation of man.

:read: ... :idea: ... Oh, okay ... I saw fantasy ... and had to quick search the Wellhausenian part.

As I told Jezz above, (while I don't disagree about there not being two writers {how's that for a triple negative :tongue:} ... which I assume is what you were getting at there) I do think that there are two creations ... one bigger and worldwide ... one lesser for a different purpose. The problem I see with this? Though I see support for it in the Bible ... as I outline in the discussion with Joe (link above) ... I am not sure yet how this answers the inevidible question of why? Why God didn't create everything else in front of Adam in the first place ... a/k/a why not humans on an earlier day? It isn't a complete theory yet ... but I do see Biblical harmonization to it.

Come off it -- in the BEGINNING, God created the heavens and the Earth.

Soc! I agree with your point ... but geeze ... :bonk:

Not at all -- it's evidence of supernatural inspiration, because pagans would have stressed the sun. Yet all you need for a day-night cycle is a rotating Earth and a light source, created on Day 1. It's the OECs who have the problem, because all billions-of-years views have the Sun existing before the Earth. Note that the text cannot possibly mean that the sun "appeared" on Day 4.

I alluded to something with Jezz that is off-topic ... but what about Rev 22:5? This would seem to allow for a day 4 sun creation ... as it is, I think, the antithesis to Gen 1:3-5.

It's really quite evident that Genesis 1 is written as historical narrative, because of the repeated waw consecutives.

Explain please ... for those of us who don't read/understand Hebrew, it isn't "really quite evident" ...

... Doc :poke: :teeth:

Back to front. They were 24 hours long measured from the Earth's reference frame, while in a galactic frame, billions of years might have passed.

Hey? :huh: Expound on this .... old universe theory? (or is it outlined in that link I haven't read yet?)

How does this mean that the seventh day continues, just because the rest continues? In Australia, we start a vacation on Saturday that continues to Monday. But this doesn't mean that Saturday continues to Monday.

:thumb: And where Hebrews 4 speaks of rest ... this seems to be well supported.

Please find them then! The Church Fathers and Reformers were practically unanimous that the earth was <6000 years old.

Hey! I was counting on you to provide the link. Where was that conversation?

~ Sher, who just knows someone is going to bust me as frootloopy on the Rev thing.
:angel:

Waterrock

June 9th 2003, 09:31 PM

Dear SherBear,

Just to bring you up to speed on something: When Socrates refers to "Wellhausenian fantasy" he is alluding to the theory popularized by a scholar of generations past named Wellhausen, who proposed that what we know as the "Books of Moses" are actually a rather unelegantly thrown-together mishmosh of at least four compositions, none of which actually are as old as the time of Moses:
J - The Yahweh (or, in German, Jahweh) source,
E - The Elohim source,
P - the Priestly source, or "Priestly Code",and
D - the writings of"The Deuteronomist."

Wellhausen proposed that since Genesis 1 refers to God as "Elohim" and Gen. 2 refers to God as "Yahweh" (that is, in most English translations, "The LORD"), we are looking at narratives which were part of two separate works at some point.

Whereas Mosaic production of both narratives may be maintained by counter-proposing that
(a) This is just a typical example of an author using two names for the same divine entity; this sort of thing happened all the time in the ancient Middle East, or
(b) Moses intentionally chose to use different names for God when God was acting in different capacities, or
(c) Moses himself was relying on some ancient source-materials or oral traditions which the Spirit did not lead him to drastically alter; thus some of their features, reflecting the writing-style and vocabulary of their producers more than Moses' writing-style and vocabulary, have been preserved.

In other news, I don't think it would be profitable to consider any "It was 6 days but it was 13.7 billion years" sort of approach for any purpose other than entertainment. Though one could imagine that Godcreated everything in an incarnate form moving really, really fast, so that by the time He was finished, His incarnate form had aged six days. But that seem a way to shelve the problem rather than solve it, to me.

The universe appears to be very ancient. The Biblical texts appear to state that the earth is about 6,000 years old -- positing enormous gaps in the genealogies, let's say that 50,000 years = the outermost limits of a "youth earth" view (I'm not saying that such gaps can be justified; I just want to show the scope of the real problem.)

Since we believe that God speaks truthfully through nature and through the Word, one of those appearances must be *merely* an appearance. The question is, "Which one?" Astronomers could have some things wrong. Or, Biblical interpreters could have some things wrong. But they can't both be right, anymore than the earth can revolve around the sun and the sun can revolve around the earth at the same time.

A 6,000-year-old earth, or a 50,000-year-old earth, poses some profound problems for astronomers who assume that the speed of light is a constant. We should not be able to see any stars (or quasars, or galaxies, or anything else) more than 50,000 light years away if the universe is only 50,000 years old -- because the light would still be on its way here.

But we *do* see things 50,000 light years away, and much, much farther away than that. When astronomers see Type Ia supernovae explode in galaxies millions of light years away (when a particularly "hungry" star and a particularly "delicious" star meet, one could say), they do not assume that God created the light that communicates the idea that there was an explosion there just 50,000 years ago (or less). They assume that the light has traveled across millions of light years of space (i.e., taking millions of years to go from there to here at 186,000 miles per second).

They figure that any astronomer who does otherwise would be somewhat like a person who looks through a telescope across the city and sees two people kill each other, and assumes that no homicide has occurred -- what he has actually experienced was nothing but light-messages hitting his eyes, telling of an event which never happened.

Ultimately, that is the sort of thing which YEC'ers must say is in fact the case: the universe looks old, and it looks like things have happened in the ancient past (millions of years ago), and it looks like the visual echo of those events is still ringing in our ears (i.e., it looks like we can look into the distant past by looking over vast distances) -- but such is not actually the case. Why is that not actually the case?

Here views differ. Some YEC'ers would say that such is not the case because the astronomers are all wrong, and if they would only use better methods they would get the right results (for instance, if they would only say that the speed of light is not constant, or reject strontium-90 and mass spectrometry-dating methods and so on). Imho that approach will not be persuasive in the long run.

Other YEC'ers say that things do indeed appear to be millions, even billions, of years old, but that this is because God instantaneously willed into being a fully-formed universe, embedded with ubiquitous features which *look* like the result of age and history but which actually are the result of a Capital-M Miracle, making scientific observations about them entirely moot.

Any scientist, had there been one present 10 minutes after Jesus turned water to wine, would have said, "This wine could not have been water; clearly it is grape juice which has undergone a process of fermentation," and so forth. His completely-correct data on how the wine appeared *when he analyzed it,* though, would not be accurately. Miracles are immune to analysis that assumes a closed continuum (i.e., an absence of events which work beyond the laws of physics and nature). And if one thus concludes that if the creation of the universe occurred 6,000 years ago, and that it occurred in a way that is undedectable to scientific ananysis, the whole question becomes basically philosophical rather than scientific.

However, what is there to commend such a view more than the view that creation occurred 10 minutes ago, and God willed us all into being instantaneously with artificial memories, scars, etc.? For one thing, there's the Biblical account.

Which brings us back to the real question: what does the Bible really say/mean about the age of the universe and earth? Or to put it another way: does this mean what YEC'ers say it means?

(That's a cue for someone to bring up a specific passage or two for consideration. Genesis 1, Ex. 20:11 are the major ones.)

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

Sher

June 9th 2003, 10:53 PM

Today @ 09:31 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=118953#post118953)
Waterrock:

Dear SherBear,

Just to bring you up to speed on something: When Socrates refers to "Wellhausenian fantasy" he is alluding to the theory popularized by a scholar of generations past named Wellhausen

Thanks Waterrock ... I'm sorry I wasn't clearer that I had actually found the information ... I didn't comment further because I agree that it is fantasy.

Whereas Mosaic production of both narratives may be maintained by counter-proposing that
(a) This is just a typical example of an author using two names for the same divine entity; this sort of thing happened all the time in the ancient Middle East, or
(b) Moses intentionally chose to use different names for God when God was acting in different capacities, or
(c) Moses himself was relying on some ancient source-materials or oral traditions which the Spirit did not lead him to drastically alter; thus some of their features, reflecting the writing-style and vocabulary of their producers more than Moses' writing-style and vocabulary, have been preserved.

From a Trinitarian standpoint, I'd go with the second option. I think that the Christophany (thanks Boom for the correct word!) is the reason for the differences in "title" ... Both God ... but delineated differently for a purpose.

But that seem a way to shelve the problem rather than solve it, to me.

Agreed :thumb:

The universe appears to be very ancient.

I'm in the appearance "camp" ... Of course I have to "defend" often the "God doesn't deceive" arguments ... but I think there is an easy understanding here (which you also touched on in your post). I believe that science *does* support an old Earth ... 6,000 years is old after all ... it is only fallible man that has made fallible assertions that time has been around much longer than that.

But even if you look at it from the "appearance" of being much older, one has to presuppose the science of man as the final decision maker ... which we know is faulty both by definition and by past experience.

[mining your quotes out of sequence so my point continues ...] Any scientist, had there been one present 10 minutes after Jesus turned water to wine, would have said, "This wine could not have been water; clearly it is grape juice which has undergone a process of fermentation," and so forth. His completely-correct data on how the wine appeared *when he analyzed it,* though, would not be accurately. Miracles are immune to analysis that assumes a closed continuum (i.e., an absence of events which work beyond the laws of physics and nature). And if one thus concludes that if the creation of the universe occurred 6,000 years ago, and that it occurred in a way that is undedectable to scientific ananysis, the whole question becomes basically philosophical rather than scientific.

In your example of the wine, if we take the Bible as the first (& final) authority, it would be used as the beginning information source to make a hypothesis ... We read that the wine was freshly made ... and seeing that Jesus liked to party :smile: ... it was for a wedding ... I think we can agree that the assumption is that it was not grape juice but fully fermented wine. If we *were* able to test that minutes afterward, we would determine it was "aged" ... but we would have *known* that Jesus just made it and that would figure into our understanding ... if one sees science happen before him, and concludes differently than the evidence of the truth ... the science is faulty, not the truth. I think that it is often the indoctornation in education that says if one sees A, it is B ... if one see B, it is C ... etc. If one learns from this, he will see what he has learned to see. However, if one embraces a different framework for a basis, not ignoring evidence that doesn't agree because of "religious biases" or "young earth biases", one will see the truth ... in true science.

Likewise, even without this intimate knowledge, *if* we accept that the Bible is true ... that God can not lie ... as Theists, we *must* use that authority as support for our science. I believe that there are many things that we cannot see for whatever reason ... past events that are not repeatable, our technology is insufficient, etc. But scientists can reasonably look at the same evidences, and come up with theories and laws from a Creationist perspective just as a secular scientist can ... it is only the interpretations that differ. One uses Biblical authority as a "tool" ... one denies that that "tool" is authoritative. I think Creationists (ack, I really hate labels like that to be honest ...) are better scientists for not ignoring the evidence of Scripture ... and I maintain that those who do, are purporting an incomplete science, garnered by incomplete evidence.

Likewise, I think the age of the earth dispute is resolved in YEC for the same reasons. OEC appear to me to be relying more on man's science than God's Word. I don't mean to be harsh ... but there it is ... and my reason for questioning where you guys "see" anything that refutes my understanding in Scripture ... something I may have missed.

And in re: to starlight ... AiG has some great info on their site ... you can find some of it linked through here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/astronomy.asp There are scientists, far wiser than me, that have written some interesting articles on there (about 1/2 down the page for the links)

But they can't both be right, anymore than the earth can revolve around the sun and the sun can revolve around the earth at the same time.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but you aren't proposing here that the Bible claims that the sun revolves the Earth, are you? I'll let you answer first, in case I read this wrong.

They figure that any astronomer who does otherwise would be somewhat like a person who looks through a telescope across the city and sees two people kill each other, and assumes that no homicide has occurred -- what he has actually experienced was nothing but light-messages hitting his eyes, telling of an event which never happened.

I think this is a false conclusion to what you were saying here, I'm sorry. I don't think that scientists say that events didn't happen ... just that the time reference is incorrect ... that we misunderstand the theories drawn from presuppositions. But I'll let someone else grab that portion to answer more fully.

Which brings us back to the real question: what does the Bible really say/mean about the age of the universe and earth? Or to put it another way: does this mean what YEC'ers say it means?

I believe it does ... but I won't go on about YEC here because of the intent of this thread.

Thank you for a well thought out answer ... even though we disagree :poke: (:teeth:)

~Sherry, who may not be as frootloopy as she thought she was :teeth:

:angel:

Socrates

June 9th 2003, 10:56 PM

06-06-2003 @ 06:10 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=118491#post118491)
SherBear:

As I told Jezz above, (while I don't disagree about there not being two writers {how's that for a triple negative :tongue:} ... which I assume is what you were getting at there) I do think that there are two creations ... one bigger and worldwide ... one lesser for a different purpose. The problem I see with this?

This is problematic, since Jesus quoted both Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 t refer to the same man and woman (Matthew 19:3-6, Mark 10:6-9). And Genesis 2:4bff. has no mention of the creation of the heavenly bodies. So this is in line with common ANE literature patterns to provide a summary outline of the whole (Genesis 1:1-2.4a) and then focus in on one aspect (in this case, creation of mankind, Genesis 2:4b ff.). It could be that Genesis 2:4b was originally written by Adam under God's inspiration, while Genesis 1:1-2:4a was written directly by God.

Though I see support for it in the Bible ... as I outline in the discussion with Joe (link above) ... I am not sure yet how this answers the inevidible question of why? Why God didn't create everything else in front of Adam in the first place ... a/k/a why not humans on an earlier day? It isn't a complete theory yet ... but I do see Biblical harmonization to it.

I believe the correct harmonization is to interpret the wayyiqtol (waw consecutive) form of the verb "to mold" in Genesis 2:19 as the pluperfect "had molded". This is supported by expert Hebraists such as Keil and Delitzsch, Leupold and Jouon, and the NIV and Darby, as well as by AiG and Tektonics (see www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_03_03.html ) , and even by my debate opponent John Ransom (it says a lot when opponents agree on something!). The main opposition to this view comes from those who are determined to manufacture contradictions at all cost to maintain their faith in the Wellhausenian fantasy (which Waterrock has summarized correctly).

I alluded to something with Jezz that is off-topic ... but what about Rev 22:5? This would seem to allow for a day 4 sun creation ... as it is, I think, the antithesis to Gen 1:3-5.

You're right of course -- this shows that God does not NEED the sun to provide light to earth.

[Waw consecutives showing Hebrew narrative]

Explain please ... for those of us who don't read/understand Hebrew, it isn't "really quite evident" ...

I explain this in my post http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=49433#post49433

I don't think so, really, though Jezz. I think it has been shown somewhere ... and again I'm betting Soc has a link in his post since I think he was involved in the conversation ... that the forefathers would in retrospect be considered YEC.

I did, and Steadele, Wienerdog and Waterrock agreed that Ross overstated his case by claiming that a lot of them were day-agers -- see www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=53088#post53088

Socrates

June 9th 2003, 11:42 PM

Today @ 12:31 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=118953#post118953)
Waterrock:

The universe appears to be very ancient.

Yes, as ancient as 6,000 years old, in fact! Age is not something we can see, but we interpret observations as "age", and these interpretations depend on our assumptions. See The earth: how old does it look? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp)

The Biblical texts appear to state that the earth is about 6,000 years old -- positing enormous gaps in the genealogies, let's say that 50,000 years = the outermost limits of a "youth earth" view (I'm not saying that such gaps can be justified; I just want to show the scope of the real problem.)

The only "problem" of for those who refuse to take God at His Word. And no, the gaps cannot be justified (although I won't die on a hill about this) -- see my post www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=22112#post22112

Since we believe that God speaks truthfully through nature and through the Word, one of those appearances must be *merely* an appearance. The question is, "Which one?" Astronomers could have some things wrong.

Which astronomers? Dr Danny Faulkner, Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina — Lancaster, thinks the universe is about 6000 years old -- see
www.answersingenesis.org/docs/287.asp

Or, Biblical interpreters could have some things wrong.

Then demonstrate it. It boggles the mind that there was so much unanimity on the days of creation before Endarkenment "science" challenged the biblical timescale.

A 6,000-year-old earth, or a 50,000-year-old earth, poses some profound problems for astronomers who assume that the speed of light is a constant. We should not be able to see any stars (or quasars, or galaxies, or anything else) more than 50,000 light years away if the universe is only 50,000 years old -- because the light would still be on its way here.

Guess what -- big bangers have EXACTLY the same problem, and propose many of the same solutions, in principle, as creationists do. I'm referring to the "horizon problem" -- all regions of space are almost exactly the same temperature as shown by the CMB ~3 K radiation. Yet the big bang would have produced wide fluctuations in temperature, so the only explanation for the uniform temperature is if the various regions had had time to equibrate by exhanging radiation. But the regions of space are far too distant for radiation to have had time to travel between these regions, even given big bang timescales.

So Bible believers should not abandon the plain meaning because of a problem which the opponents have as well! In any case, creationists have made good progress in solving their own "light travel time", while big bangers have not.

Ultimately, that is the sort of thing which YEC'ers must say is in fact the case: the universe looks old, and it looks like things have happened in the ancient past (millions of years ago), and it looks like the visual echo of those events is still ringing in our ears (i.e., it looks like we can look into the distant past by looking over vast distances) -- but such is not actually the case. Why is that not actually the case?

Informed creationist reject the "light created in transit" idea, and point out instead that time is dilated by gravity -- see How can we see distant stars in a young Universe? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/405.asp) Please stop knocking down straw men.

Any scientist, had there been one present 10 minutes after Jesus turned water to wine, would have said, "This wine could not have been water; clearly it is grape juice which has undergone a process of fermentation," and so forth. His completely-correct data on how the wine appeared *when he analyzed it,* though, would not be accurately. Miracles are immune to analysis that assumes a closed continuum (i.e., an absence of events which work beyond the laws of physics and nature). And if one thus concludes that if the creation of the universe occurred 6,000 years ago, and that it occurred in a way that is undedectable to scientific ananysis, the whole question becomes basically philosophical rather than scientific.

In a way, yes. A scientist would be culpable if he analyzed the wine and ignored the eye-witness testimony that Jesus had created it instantaneously. They are similarly culpable if they ignore the revelation that God created the universe about 6000 years ago, according to the time reference frame of Earth. See Parable of the Candle (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1247.asp).

Sher

June 9th 2003, 11:48 PM

Hey Doc, :bunny:

Today @ 10:56 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=119015#post119015)
Socrates:

This is problematic, since Jesus quoted both Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 t refer to the same man and woman (Matthew 19:3-6, Mark 10:6-9). And Genesis 2:4bff. has no mention of the creation of the heavenly bodies. So this is in line with common ANE literature patterns to provide a summary outline of the whole (Genesis 1:1-2.4a) and then focus in on one aspect (in this case, creation of mankind, Genesis 2:4b ff.). It could be that Genesis 2:4b was originally written by Adam under God's inspiration, while Genesis 1:1-2:4a was written directly by God.

Well, I'm not being dogmatic on this (really ...) but here's my take, and I still think it falls in line here (but is probably better posted on that other topic) ... I don't disagree it is the same man/woman at all (and :argh: for not being clearer on that point) ... but think it is possible that there was a second creation of animal and plants only ... in the midst of the creation of man and woman (Gen 2:8-9) ... hence the "second creation" to which I was referrring. It still meets all the stipulations you outline above, but for me, harmonizes the two more fully. (and I can just see many of you making this face right now ==> :xmm:) I think perhaps we might be talking past each other here, probably based on my inability to be clear on my point.

I believe the correct harmonization is to interpret the wayyiqtol (waw consecutive) form of the verb "to mold" in Genesis 2:19 as the pluperfect "had molded". This is supported by expert Hebraists such as Keil and Delitzsch, Leupold and Jouon, and the NIV and Darby, as well as by AiG and Tektonics (see www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_03_03.html ) , and even by my debate opponent John Ransom (it says a lot when opponents agree on something!). The main opposition to this view comes from those who are determined to manufacture contradictions at all cost to maintain their faith in the Wellhausenian fantasy (which Waterrock has summarized correctly).

And I agree, it is fantasy. :thumb:

I have discovered one thing ... I really have to fit Hebrew 101 in the middle of my housework and home education classes :lol: ...

... but seriously, does it really contradict, then, what I clarified in my previous paragraph? I have no problem whatsoever with thinking "different chronologies" here ... I just think that goes hand-in-hand with what I am proposing to Joe (and repeating here) ... an emphasis on the 6th day ... with secondary creation of plants and animals in the Garden ...

... As I spoke with Alward about, the plants appear to be immature in the first chapter ... and ready for food in the second ... and the animals appear to have been created for the specific purpose of naming in the second chapter ... after the Creation of Adam. I think that this more clearly clarifies any supposed "contradictions" ... to me anyway. (but let's continue this in that thread if anyone wants to move forward with this "issue" ... just post here that you posted there) ... Let's keep this on topic to OEC.

You're right of course

:teeth: (isolated ... to bask for a moment ... :lol:)

-- this shows that God does not NEED the sun to provide light to earth.

:cheers:

~Sher~
:angel:

Jezz

June 11th 2003, 12:40 AM

Socrates:

Sherbear wrote:

I don't care if this thread is YEC vs. OEC reasons, but let's keep it nice, okay?
Which part of "let's keep it nice" did you not understand?

This is the second time I've seen you respond in an antagonistic way to someone who did not antagonise you first. Let's count how many misrepresentations and misunderstandings of my statements you manage to squeeze in in your haste to crush me and my position. :smile:

Socrates:
Exactly -- that's what the Christian Dr Russell Humphreys points out -- the unsaved Kabbalist Schroeder has it completely back to front -- www.answersingenesis.org/docs/405.asp
Throw in a couple of ad-hominems - "unsaved" is a good one. It is of course obvious that you can't have any good ideas unless you are saved...?

Also note that I hadn't mentioned Schroeder at all up to this point.

Then Moses made the same "mistake" in Exodus 20:8-11 when he compared the Creation Week to the ordinary working week.
Not at all. God worked for 6 days in his POR and then rested on the 7th, so too do we work for 6 days in ours and rest on the 7th. They are 7 literal days in each case - just measured in different PORs. There is no mistake.

Consider Fred travelling on space ship travelling at (say) 0.99c. If I was to say "For as Fred worked for 6 days and then rested on the 7th, so shall we.", would that necessarily imply that when 7 days elapsed on the space ship, the same amount of time passed here on Earth? Of course not. Some years would have passed here on Earth in that time. Does that mean I am in error for referring to those days as 7 literal days and comparing them with 7 of our own days? Again, of course not.

That's one misrepresentation (one, I see, that you lifted from the AiG rebuttal).

A careful reading of the Bible shows that YEC is the case, and only compromise with so-called "science", backed up in Schroeder's case with Kabbalistic numerological hocus-pocus, can long ages be seen. See this critique of his flaky idea at www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4355news8-1-2000.asp
I read this critique some months ago. I must say, I was less that impressed. It was as if the critic didn't read Schroeder's work properly. I won't go into details now as I don't have the time, but the primary complaint I have is the way they handle the calculations. They say that Schroeder pulled the numbers out of a hat (and I see that you are implying the same thing with your "numerological" description), which clearly is not the case to anyone who reads Schroeder's material carefully. He uses two physical constants to calculate the ratio, and gives a justification for their choice.

Clearly, there is no such thing as a "second creation account" -- this is Wellhausenian fantasy. There is a shift to a focus on the creation of man.
Clearly, in your haste to bash me over the head you have misrepresented me again.

There is an account of the creation of the heavens and the Earth. Then (as you say) it shifts to a focus on the creation of man. Count them - that's two creation accounts.

I did not mention Wellhausenian or the JEDP theory, nor did I even suggest that there was more than one author.

I did not say that the two creation accounts were both accounts of the creation of the universe.

So that's two misrepresentations.

The fact that Sherbear correctly interpreted my meaning here shows that it was not my fault for writing a misleading statement. You are simply reading strawmen into my statements in your haste. This displayed lack of comprehension makes me question your claim to be comprehending Genesis correctly... :wink:

Come off it -- in the BEGINNING, God created the heavens and the Earth.
And what does the next bit say? "And the Earth was formless and void."

If you look at the Hebrew words used for "formless" and "void", you'll note that they are actually nouns, not adjectives. I'm not sure if nouns in ancient Hebrew are readily converted into adjectives, but if not (and it would seem from the reference I looked up that they are not), a better translation would be "And the Earth was formlessness and voidness." The Earth wasn't merely there and formless - it was formlessness. In other words, it hadn't yet been formed at all, to any extent.

Also, if you read Exodus 31:17, you'll note that it says "For in 6 days God created the heavens and the Earth..." Ie, the formation of the heavens and the Earth took the entire six days. Did Moses make a mistake there?

In my opinion, the only satisfactory way of resolving these apparent contradictions is if the initial statement "God created the heavens and the Earth" refers to the creation of the building blocks (ie matter) that would be used to form the heavens and the Earth over the next 6 days.

Indeed, it would seem to me that ancient Hebrew had no better phrase to use for the word "universe" than "the heavens and the Earth".

Not at all -- it's evidence of supernatural inspiration, because pagans would have stressed the sun.
I agree.

Yet all you need for a day-night cycle is a rotating Earth and a light source, created on Day 1.
So what you are saying is that there was a light source on one side of the Earth, and the Earth rotated on its axis to give day and night? Tell me, wouldn't that light source have to be in the same location as the sun and with the same intensity, in order to give the same "day/night" effect?

And tell me, why is a rotating Earth necessary? Why not simply create an Earth that was not rotating, and turn the light on and off to make the night/day?

It's the OECs who have the problem, because all billions-of-years views have the Sun existing before the Earth. Note that the text cannot possibly mean that the sun "appeared" on Day 4.
I don't see why not. In my NIV translation, the word "sun" is not even mentioned on day 4. It says that God created a greater light in the sky to rule the day. For all we know, the sun was already there from day 1, but not visible. Making the sun distinctly visible in the sky would certain be one way of creating the greater light referenced on day 4.

It's really quite evident that Genesis 1 is written as historical narrative, because of the repeated waw consecutives.
I never said that Genesis 1 wasn't a historical narrative. In fact, I said "different "to the rest of the historical parts", meaning to imply that Genesis 1 was itself a historical part. If I had meant to imply that Genesis 1 wasn't historical, I would have simply written "different to the historical parts".

All I said was that Genesis 1's style is such that it is obviously measuring time differently to the other historical parts of the Bible.

That's three.

So are you saying that a watch in a night is really a thousand years? Of course, this passage contrasts a short and long period of time to show that God is outside time, not that time is meaningless to us.
I never said that time was meaningless to us. What I said was that this passage demonstrates that time is relative to the observer.

That's 4.

Back to front. They were 24 hours long measured from the Earth's reference frame, while in a galactic frame, billions of years might have passed.
Well, seeing as how that's the very point at issue, this amounts to nothing other than a bald assertion. I appreciate that you probably do have support for this assertion, but I'd like to focus on my position for now.

How does this mean that the seventh day continues, just because the rest continues? In Australia, we start a vacation on Saturday that continues to Monday. But this doesn't mean that Saturday continues to Monday.
You do understand relativity, don't you? I've seen you comprehend it before in other posts, so I don't know why you've shelved that knowledge when attempting to understand my position now (actually, I do know - it's because it's easier for you to attack a strawman than the argument that I presented :smile:). Anyway...

It's quite simple. Remember, what I am proposing is that the Genesis 1 POR is one where time is flowing at a different speed than in our frame. Thus it is a straightforward claim to say that God's literal 24-hour-Sabbath in the Genesis 1 frame continues today in our frame, even though we experience years while only a day passes in that frame. Just as Fred on his spaceship would experience a single day while we experience years.

Oh, btw - don't we call them "holidays" in Australia instead of "vacations"? Specifically, "long weekends" in the case of a holiday that adjoins a weekend? It is also interesting to note that in your zeal you apparently didn't notice that I also live in Australia.

And you miss all the problems, such as death before sin.
I don't miss them at all. I read the AiG list of "problems" before I made my original post, and consider them mountains made out of molehills. They are reminiscent of "Well, if the Earth isn't at the centre of the universe, then that must mean that we are not the focus of God's attention. And because the Bible says we are the focus of God's attention, then that would mean the Bible was in error."

I will focus on the single objection that you raised: the "death before sin" objection. It is interesting to note that AiG themselves have recognised a problem with this objection, because plants must die to support animal populations (although, one wonders why AiG don't simply claim "well, God can sustain them without food, so they don't need to die", but anyway...) AiG resolve this apparent contradiction by noting that plants are never classified as "nefesh" (living creatures) in the Bible. So, they argue, things with "nefesh" didn't die before the fall.

I see no reason why I can't use this same argument, extended one notch up the food chain. Just as "nefesh" is not applied to plants, it is also the case that "neshema" (the "breath of life" that God breathed into Adam's nostrils) is only ever attributed to humans. "neshema" is the immortal soul, and it is what makes us moral agents. Just as AiG argue that nothing with nefesh died before the fall, I see no reason why I cannot argue that nothing with "neshema" died before the fall. Thus there was no death before sin. In fact, there can be no sin with the neshema, because without neshema, we aren't moral agents. You can't have sin without morality (does a lion sin when it kills its prey?).

Jesus died to save our immortal neshema, not our nefesh, so questions raised about Jesus' suitability as an atonment for sin are also demolished by this observation.

And to counter one last common objection - in my opinion, Adam was a real human being, and not some vague concept of the first human.

And you show the opposite below :whack:
I show no such thing.

Please find them then!
Ok. Here are a couple.

Nahmanides (a Jewish rabbinic scholar) was one who said that the 6 days of creation were literally 6 days (with which I agree). He also said that those 6 days contained the secrets of all the ages of the universe. Sounds a lot like the "relativity" interpretation I am proposing, doesn't it?

Nahmanides also noted that the original Hebrew of Genesis contains what would appear to be a grammatical error - Gen 2:7 actually says "...and man became to a living soul". The "to" seems out-of-place, and is left out of English translations. Working on the assumption that the Bible is inerrant and should not contain errors, Nahmanides postulated that this extraneous "to" must be there for a reason. One of the possiblities that Nahmanides proposed was that perhaps man progressed through stages of mineral, plant, animal, and finally "became to" human. Sounds a lot like evolution, doesn't it?

Nahmanides lived in the 13th century. He was 600 years too early for you to accuse him of bending his interpretation to fit the science of the day. All he had to draw his conclusions from was the Bible itself.

The Talmud also speculates about the existence of creatures who looked exactly like humans but who weren't because they didn't have neshema. The Talmud was written ~500 AD - more than a millenium too early to be influenced by Darwin.

The Church Fathers and Reformers were practically unanimous that the earth was <6000 years old.
I never said that the Church Fathers or Reformers believed that the Earth was more than 6000 years old (I have no doubt you are correct on this matter).

It is also worth remembering that the Church also unanimously believed that the sun orbits the Earth until Gallileo came along. That didn't make them right. And it didn't make the Bible wrong, either - it merely meant that they weren't interpreting the Bible correctly. As AiG notes, the language used by the Bible is equivocal in the as to things like the shape of the Earth, and whether or not the Earth orbits the sun or vice versa. They claim that God did this deliberately so that as scientific knowledge improved, the Bible would remain accurate in the new understanding. I use the same argument in releation to the creation accounts.

Which of course is his motivation for his outlandish eisegesis.
It can hardly be called eisegesis when he is drawing on sources that predate Darwin and the Big Bang theory.

You may think it's wrong, and you may have a good reason for rejecting the arguments of people like Nahminides. If so, I'm willing to hear it. But one thing you cannot do is reject this line of thought as an attempt to accomodate the prevailing science of the day, as you continually attempt to do. The seeds were sown centuries before Darwin.

----
One last note:

While I recognise the validity of the "riposte" paradigm that you employ with your posts, you don't seem to know when it is appropriate to use it. A Christian shouldn't be so keen to launch into such a role. The only time the "riposte" paradigm is justifiably applicable is when:

-Your debate opponent starts it first, and
-The debate is being conducted in a public forum (if not in a public forum, your best approach is to leave them alone).

Although this is in a public forum, I defy you to claim that I was debating in an unreasonable or antagonistic way (how could I have been unreasonable, when noone had countered any of my reasons yet?). You should also know from past experience (where I've always been arguing "on your side") that I don't argue like that.

To be too eager to jump into an adversarial, riposte mode also makes one prone to errors in comprehension. Now, everyone makes such errors, but the fact that you made 4 such errors in one post does tend to indicate that you weren't thinking clearly.

So in short, I'd ask that as long as I am being civil to you, that you would be civil back. And Sherbear (as the starter of this thread) apparently would also appreciate it if you could do the same.

I look forward to reading a reply devoid of insults, but full of the well-reasoned arguments that I know you are capable of.

Sher

June 11th 2003, 01:37 AM

Jezz,

Just to clarify ... I think Socrates was right on with his rebuttal of several of your points ... and I only "found issue" (as another member, not moderator) with that one comment. I just don't want my one comment on one point to be mistaken for a condemnation of the whole post.

(PM me if you have questions on the edit)

Sher

Socrates

June 11th 2003, 02:04 AM

Today @ 03:40 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=119948#post119948)
Jezz:

This is the second time I've seen you respond in an antagonistic way to someone who did not antagonise you first.

Who says? A professing christian to use the writings of unsaved Jewish scholars to oppose the consistent Christian commentaries such as the Church Fathers and Reformers, and even that of Josephus ...

How boring -- it's common for compromisers to claim that they have been "misrepresented".

Throw in a couple of ad-hominems - "unsaved" is a good one. It is of course obvious that you can't have any good ideas unless you are saved...?

No, it should make you a lot more sceptical of his credentials. It was hardly abusive ad hominem since it was true.

Also note that I hadn't mentioned Schroeder at all up to this point.

How petty -- you mentioned him in your post, so why not refute him up front.

Consider Fred travelling on space ship travelling at (say) 0.99c. If I was to say "For as Fred worked for 6 days and then rested on the 7th, so shall we.", would that necessarily imply that when 7 days elapsed on the space ship, the same amount of time passed here on Earth? Of course not. Some years would have passed here on Earth in that time. Does that mean I am in error for referring to those days as 7 literal days and comparing them with 7 of our own days? Again, of course not.

That's one misrepresentation (one, I see, that you lifted from the AiG rebuttal).

Where is the misrepresentation? Fact is, Schroeder has it back to front. The days were measured on Earth clocks.

I read this critique some months ago. I must say, I was less that impressed. It was as if the critic didn't read Schroeder's work properly. I won't go into details now as I don't have the time, but the primary complaint I have is the way they handle the calculations.

Which you have not shown. So I am not impressed. And they also showed that his eisegesis was pathetic.

There is an account of the creation of the heavens and the Earth. Then (as you say) it shifts to a focus on the creation of man. Count them - that's two creation accounts.

I did not mention Wellhausenian or the JEDP theory, nor did I even suggest that there was more than one author.

I did not say that the two creation accounts were both accounts of the creation of the universe.

So that's two misrepresentations.

Then you misrepresented yourself. How could it be a creation account when it was so narrowly focused.

The fact that Sherbear correctly interpreted my meaning here shows that it was not my fault for writing a misleading statement. You are simply reading strawmen into my statements in your haste. This displayed lack of comprehension makes me question your claim to be comprehending Genesis correctly... :wink:

Rather, it's hard to comprehend compromisers who don't make themselves clear.

And what does the next bit say? "And the Earth was formless and void."

If you look at the Hebrew words used for "formless" and "void", you'll note that they are actually nouns, not adjectives. I'm not sure if nouns in ancient Hebrew are readily converted into adjectives, but if not (and it would seem from the reference I looked up that they are not), a better translation would be "And the Earth was formlessness and voidness." The Earth wasn't merely there and formless - it was formlessness. In other words, it hadn't yet been formed at all, to any extent.

Then find a translation that does NOT render these adjectivally.

Also, if you read Exodus 31:17, you'll note that it says "For in 6 days God created the heavens and the Earth..." Ie, the formation of the heavens and the Earth took the entire six days. Did Moses make a mistake there?

No, "heavens and earth" is a merism, where two opposites are combined into a whole, in this case meaning the universe. Similarly, "open day and night" means "open for the entire cycle".

Indeed, it would seem to me that ancient Hebrew had no better phrase to use for the word "universe" than "the heavens and the Earth".

That's right. So Moses said that the whole universe was created during a week which was as long as the working week. This confirms that the days of creation were measured on Earth clocks.

So what you are saying is that there was a light source on one side of the Earth, and the Earth rotated on its axis to give day and night? Tell me, wouldn't that light source have to be in the same location as the sun and with the same intensity, in order to give the same "day/night" effect?

No, just a directional light. Then, as Calvin, Augustine and Basil suggested, God replaced this light with the sun and moon as the primary light givers.

And tell me, why is a rotating Earth necessary? Why not simply create an Earth that was not rotating, and turn the light on and off to make the night/day?

Why not do it the way I suggested? So what's your beef? Or is it too hard for God?

I don't see why not. In my NIV translation, the word "sun" is not even mentioned on day 4. It says that God created a greater light in the sky to rule the day.

:dufus: Find any commentator who doubts that this was the sun.

I never said that Genesis 1 wasn't a historical narrative. In fact, I said "different "to the rest of the historical parts", meaning to imply that Genesis 1 was itself a historical part. If I had meant to imply that Genesis 1 wasn't historical, I would have simply written "different to the historical parts".

All I said was that Genesis 1's style is such that it is obviously measuring time differently to the other historical parts of the Bible.

That's three.

And it's three times you fail.

You do understand relativity, don't you?

Better than you, probably (see below). And I showed that AiG also has a relativistic solution that doesn't butcher the text like the anti-Christian Schroeder does.

Oh, btw - don't we call them "holidays" in Australia instead of "vacations"?

Yep, but most people here are Yanx, so I needed to communicate with them. I don't just write for your benefit, you know :tongue:

It is interesting to note that AiG themselves have recognised a problem with this objection, because plants must die to support animal populations (although, one wonders why AiG don't simply claim "well, God can sustain them without food, so they don't need to die", but anyway...) AiG resolve this apparent contradiction by noting that plants are never classified as "nefesh" (living creatures) in the Bible. So, they argue, things with "nefesh" didn't die before the fall.

And your refutation of AiG's argument is, what? There is no problem at all! It's only compromisers who raise a straw man by bringing up plant death as though there is an issue. But Genesis 1:29-30 teaches that teh original diets were vegetarian, so deal with that.

I see no reason why I can't use this same argument, extended one notch up the food chain. Just as "nefesh" is not applied to plants, it is also the case that "neshema" (the "breath of life" that God breathed into Adam's nostrils) is only ever attributed to humans. quot;neshema" is the immortal soul, and it is what makes us moral agents.

A red herring, because of the original vegetarian diet for both humans and animals. And even your position has problems, because there are fossils of anatomically modern humans "dated" well before any acceptable biblical date for Adam.

Just as AiG argue that nothing with nefesh died before the fall, I see no reason why I cannot argue that nothing with "neshema" died before the fall. Thus there was no death before sin. In fact, there can be no sin with the neshema, because without neshema, we aren't moral agents. You can't have sin without morality (does a lion sin when it kills its prey?).

No, but this is clearly post-Fall.

Ok. Here are a couple (of alleged old-earth scholars).

Nahmanides (a Jewish rabbinic scholar) was one who said that the 6 days of creation were literally 6 days (with which I agree). He also said that those 6 days contained the secrets of all the ages of the universe. Sounds a lot like the "relativity" interpretation I am proposing, doesn't it?

Right, so the best Jezz can come up is a fanatically anti-Christian kabbalist, hardly representative.

Nahmanides also noted that the original Hebrew of Genesis contains what would appear to be a grammatical error - Gen 2:7 actually says "...and man became to a living soul". The "to" seems out-of-place, and is left out of English translations.

What nonsense. The Hebrew idiom for "to become" is the verb "to be" plus the preposition "to".

Working on the assumption that the Bible is inerrant and should not contain errors, Nahmanides postulated that this extraneous "to" must be there for a reason. One of the possiblities that Nahmanides proposed was that perhaps man progressed through stages of mineral, plant, animal, and finally "became to" human. Sounds a lot like evolution, doesn't it?

That's if Schroeder has represented him correctly, and it's based on a faulty premise anyway.

Nahmanides lived in the 13th century. He was 600 years too early for you to accuse him of bending his interpretation to fit the science of the day. All he had to draw his conclusions from was the Bible itself.

Actually, he was influenced by the rediscovery of Aristotle's writings, and Aristotle believed in an infinite universe for pagan philosophical reasons.

The Talmud also speculates about the existence of creatures who looked exactly like humans but who weren't because they didn't have neshema.

Since when is the Talmud reliable? This is the writing down of the oral traditions that Jesus condemned in Mark 7.

I never said that the Church Fathers or Reformers believed that the Earth was more than 6000 years old (I have no doubt you are correct on this matter).

I am. See http://capo.org/creationstudies.html

It is also worth remembering that the Church also unanimously believed that the sun orbits the Earth until Gallileo came along. That didn't make them right.

They WERE right -- humph, and you accused ME of not understanding relativity! :whack: This is an even simpler expression of relativity, from Galileo. The sun DOES orbit the Earth -- relative to the Earth! They were wrong only to claim that Galileo was in error, because Galileo was also right in his description -- relative to the sun. Reference frames -- they solve the problem, although the various infidel groups don't understand this (i.e. that all reference frames are equally valid).

And it didn't make the Bible wrong, either - it merely meant that they weren't interpreting the Bible correctly.

Before Galileo, the errant notion of an absolute reference frame wasn't even an issue, so it's wrong to use this as an argument against Genesis.

As AiG notes, the language used by the Bible is equivocal in the as to things like the shape of the Earth, and whether or not the Earth orbits the sun or vice versa. They claim that God did this deliberately so that as scientific knowledge improved, the Bible would remain accurate in the new understanding. I use the same argument in releation to the creation accounts.

In that case, you don't understand equivocal language one bit. The days of creation are anything but equivocal -- HALOT even gives the meaning of 24 hours to yom in Genesis 1:5.

While I recognise the validity of the "riposte" paradigm that you employ with your posts, you don't seem to know when it is appropriate to use it.

Actually, I have a good understanding, which is why the Infidels resent me. :poke:

A Christian shouldn't be so keen to launch into such a role.

Yes he should, when people are undermining Scripture with Kabbalistic fantasies from anti-Christian sources.

Dee Dee Warren

June 11th 2003, 04:49 AM

I know there are passions on various sides of this subject, but let's tone it down between believers no matter what side is being argued.

Wesley's son

June 11th 2003, 10:29 AM

Brother Socrates,

You have written that Dr. Schroeder is unsaved. From what I have read in his books I believe this is correct.

You have also stated that his present state causes us to be dubious of his credentals. If he made any commentary on the New Testament writings or the work of Jesus this would be reasonable. However, from what I have read, the scope of his work is limited to the Old Testament. He quotes rabbis who also only comment on the Old Testament.

Dr. Schroeder is no Reform Jew. He does indeed believe in the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.

Albert Einstein was not saved either. In fact his belief (from what I understand) hung somewhere between atheism and deism. From my experience the Christians I have met hold his contributions to modern physics to be true.

Dr. Schroeder's modivation for writing, in part, is to reach out to skeptics and show the work of the Creator.

Jezz

June 11th 2003, 08:35 PM

Wesley's son:
You have also stated that his present state causes us to be dubious of his credentals. If he made any commentary on the New Testament writings or the work of Jesus this would be reasonable. However, from what I have read, the scope of his work is limited to the Old Testament. He quotes rabbis who also only comment on the Old Testament.

Dr. Schroeder is no Reform Jew. He does indeed believe in the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.
Wes,

I know for certain that Schroeder is either Christian or Jewish, but I'm not sure which. He doesn't explicitly state anywhere in his writings. However, on his web site it does mention that he worked under the tutition of a couple of rabbis, which would tend to indicate that he was Jewish, not Christian (which is what Socrates is trying to get at). However, this is far from certain.

Dee Dee Warren

June 11th 2003, 08:40 PM

I dunno Jezz.... when you gotta wonder if someone is Christian when, especially when expounding on transcendental things, like creation, I would say they probably aren't. Hiding lights under a bushel and all that.

Socrates

June 11th 2003, 09:04 PM

Indeed, DD is right, and I fail to see why any Christian would want to defend Schroeder. And among the best biblical texts against long ages are found in the New Testament (NB every bit as Jewish as the Talmud and the Kabbalists, and havingthe advantage of divine inspiration). AiG responded to a disgruntled Schroeder fan at www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative_11june2001.asp which includes:

I fail to see how he can be saved, because the creationist nuclear physicist Dr Russell Humphreys (whose book Starlight and Time (http://www.answersingenesis.org/onlinestore/gateway.asp?PageType=detail&UID=10-2-043) is much more biblical and scientific), asked Dr Schroeder:

‘Is Jesus the Messiah, and is He your personal savior?’

Schroeder replied:

‘I teach with Christians, Moslems and Jews. Genesis is the heritage of Christians Moslems and Jews. Therefore, rather than risking alienating any part of that group of searching human beings, I keep my beliefs to myself.’

Jesus clearly stated: ‘But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 10:33), and ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’(John 14:6), and the Apostle Peter said: ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.’ (Acts 4:12). So how could Schroeder be saved? His love affair with the 13th century anti-Christian Kabbalist Nahmanides and his outlandish eisegesis is also cause for concern.

Similarly, we should likewise be skeptical of Meert's claim to be a Christian since he will also not come clean about what he believes (and there is nothing in his actions or his beliefs about origins that bear any resemblance to the true Christianity of the Bible).

Oh, BTW, one can be both Jewish and Christian, e.g. Jews for Jesus and Ariel Ministries www.ariel.org/ since a Jew is biblically defined as a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Jezz

June 11th 2003, 09:44 PM

Socrates:
Jesus clearly stated: ‘But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 10:33), and ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’(John 14:6), and the Apostle Peter said: ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.’ (Acts 4:12). So how could Schroeder be saved? His love affair with the 13th century anti-Christian Kabbalist Nahmanides and his outlandish eisegesis is also cause for concern.

"Disowning" means to announce that Jesus is not your saviour. Schroeder hasn't done that. And even if he were, remember that the apostle Peter did the same thing - so if it's an unforgivable sin, I guess Peter is in trouble, too? :smile: Not all Christians are perfect, you know...

Aside from that, I already admitted that it seems likely (in fact, I'd go so far as to say "very likely") that Schroeder is Jewish, not Christian. All I'm saying is that it wouldn't surprise me too much if Schroeder was actually a Christian. But anyway, the question is ultimately irrelevant, because his argument is the same whether he is Christian or Jewish.

Oh, BTW, one can be both Jewish and Christian, e.g. Jews for Jesus and Ariel Ministries www.ariel.org/ since a Jew is biblically defined as a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
True enough. But it should be clear from the context that I was referring to "Jewish" as a member of that religion, and not a member of the race of the same name.

Food for thought, though: does one have to be biologically descended from Jacob to be a Jew, or culturally descended? I mean, weren't their "naturalised" citizens within ancient Israel, who were considered Jews, but not descended from Jacob?

Jezz

June 11th 2003, 09:54 PM

Dee Dee Warren:
I dunno Jezz.... when you gotta wonder if someone is Christian when, especially when expounding on transcendental things, like creation, I would say they probably aren't. Hiding lights under a bushel and all that.
Actually, I just thought of something. Schroeder lives in Israel. I believe that you are not allowed to live in Israel if you are Christian. Which would be a good reason to not proclaim the fact, if he was one.

Having said that, the fact that he lives in Israel makes it more probable that he is Jewish.

Jezz

June 12th 2003, 12:12 AM

Socrates:
Who says? A professing christian to use the writings of unsaved Jewish scholars to oppose the consistent Christian commentaries such as the Church Fathers and Reformers, and even that of Josephus ...
What, Josephus? You mean that unsaved Jewish scholar? What are you considering his position for? :smile:

How boring -- it's common for compromisers to claim that they have been "misrepresented".
It's also common for people who have been misrepresented to claim that they have been misrepresented.

Maybe the reason you find "compromisers" to commonly claim that you have misrepresented them is because you commonly misrepresent them? :wink:

No, it should make you a lot more sceptical of his credentials. It was hardly abusive ad hominem since it was true.
Even if your ad hominem is true (and it's probable, though not certain that it is), my complaint was not that it was abusive. My complaint was that it was irrelevant. An ad hominem attack is only warranted when your opponent makes an argument from authority. I was not.

How petty -- you mentioned him in your post, so why not refute him up front.
Because it was irrelevant. Nothing I had written up to that point depended on the credentials of Schroeder. Attack the argument. You've done so in a couple of places, and they have proven to be the most fruitful part of the discussion.

Where is the misrepresentation?
The misrepresentation was that you claimed my position meant that the days weren't measured in 24 solar hours, which would contrast with Moses in Exodus 20:8-11. This is simply not the case. My position is that God really did create the world in six days consisting of 24 solar hours each. It's just that the clock that measured these hours was running in a different POR.

Fact is, Schroeder has it back to front. The days were measured on Earth clocks.
I agree that they were 24 hours long. It remains the topic of debate as to which POR they were measured from. You have yet to give me a reason why I should prefer an Earth-based frame over a universal frame. Argument by assertion doesn't suffice. That's not to say that you're incorrect in your view - it's just that I need a little more than "you're wrong because I say so" before I will believe you.

Which you have not shown. So I am not impressed. And they also showed that his eisegesis was pathetic.
Granted, I have not done an in-depth analysis of the critique, so you are entitled to be unimpressed (hopefullly, if I get the time, I will point out the most glaring errors). However, I have critiqued a couple of their arguments indirectly, because you have been using the same ones (eg the Exodus 20:8-14 argument above, and the "yom" argument below). These objections don't hold, because in my view, creation did literally last for a week

Then you misrepresented yourself. How could it be a creation account when it was so narrowly focused.
Who said a creation account had to be broadly focussed? All a "creation account" has to be to be a "creation account" is be an account of a creation. Genesis 2 is an account of a creation - the creation of man. Therefore, it is a creation account. It doesn't get much simpler than this.

Rather, it's hard to comprehend compromisers who don't make themselves clear.
Heh, nice sound bite. :thumb: Tell me, is it hard to understand non-compromisers who don't make themselves clear, too? Or is it only the unclear compromisers who you have trouble comprehending? :wink:

Fact remains, Sher didn't have problems understanding me. You did. The primary difference is your posting attitude - Sher is simply taking more care to try and understand my position.

Then find a translation that does NOT render these adjectivally.
There isn't one. That's because it sounds funny that way in English. However, plenty of commentators point out that "emptiness" is literally what is meant, and it is actually translated this way elsewhere in the Bible.

Which commentators? Well, there's the "unsaved" Nahmanides, of course, but there's also a couple of others. I will list here two that I found after a quick search (I am sure with more time and access to sources other than online sources, I could find more):

Matthew Henry, who wrote between 1706 and 1714 (http://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/mhc/Gen/Gen001.html): There was nothing in it desirable to be seen, for it was without form and void. Toho and Bohu, confusion and emptiness; so these words are rendered, Isa. 34:11.
"confusion" and "emptiness" are interpreted as nouns by this commentator, just as I interpreted them as nouns.

Similarly, Robert Jamieson (1871):
2. the earth was without form and void--or in "confusion and emptiness," as the words are rendered in Isa 34:11.

No, "heavens and earth" is a merism, where two opposites are combined into a whole, in this case meaning the universe. Similarly, "open day and night" means "open for the entire cycle".
I fully agree. Which is why I read the first sentence as meaning "In the beginning, God created the universe", and not literally as meaning that the Earth as we know it was created at that point. God created the universe and the matter within it. He then later used that matter to build the Earth as we know it.

The above two commentators seem tagree with this interpretation. Henry in particular:
II. Here is the work of creation in its embryo, v. 2, where we have an account of the first matter and the first mover.

1. A chaos was the first matter. It is here called the earth (though the earth, properly taken, was not made till the third day v. 10), because it did most resemble that which afterwards was called earth, mere earth, destitute of its ornaments, such a heavy unwieldy mass was it; it is also called the deep, both for its vastness and because the waters which were afterwards separated from the earth were now mixed with it. This immense mass of matter was it out of which all bodies, even the firmament and visible heavens themselves, were afterwards produced by the power of the Eternal Word.

This commentator wrote, not only before Darwin or the Big Bang theory, but even before Newton and gravitation. It would be difficult to accuse him of being a "compromiser". Yet he said the Earth was not actually made until the third day.

That's right. So Moses said that the whole universe was created during a week which was as long as the working week. This confirms that the days of creation were measured on Earth clocks.
Yes to the first statement. No to the second. Your conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. All it confirms is that the creation week was a week long. It doesn't say which reference frame that week was measured in (see the "twin trip" example again).

Why not do it the way I suggested? So what's your beef? Or is it too hard for God?
The question is, why do it the way you suggested? Why choose your method over mine? I submit that it was within God's power to do it either way, so why are you so certain he did it the way you say he did it?

Find any commentator who doubts that this was the sun.
Above, you asked me to find a translation which rendered "tohu and bohu" as "formlessness and voidness". I could not do so, but instead offered commentators who interpreted it that way. I hope you will consider that a fair tactic, given that I am now accepting commentaries for this verse, instead of demanding that you produce a Bible translation that render it "sun".

No commentator, of course, doubts that the source of the "greater light" was the sun. What they disagree over is whether or not the sun was created on this day, or if it was already there and the light in the sky was made by making the ready-made sun visible. I submit that if God had meant that the sun itself was created that day, he would have had Moses write "sun" and not "greater light". If it is meant to be a historical narrative, why would it use a metaphor for the sun instead of the actual word for sun?

Because I believe that it is a historical account, the only resolution is that the sun wasn't actually created that day. It was merely the light in the sky that was created - exactly as the text says.

Jamieson agrees:
14. let there be lights in the firmament--The atmosphere being completely purified, the sun, moon, and stars were for the first time unveiled in all their glory in the cloudless sky; and they are described as "in the firmament" which to the eye they appear to be, though we know they are really at vast distances from it.

That's three.

And it's three times you fail.
Let me recap:

Me: Genesis 1 uses a different timescale to other Bible histories.
You: Genesis 1 is a historical narrative.
Me: You misrepresent me, because I never claimed that Genesis 1 wasn't historical.

Do you admit that your initial appraisal of my position was a misinterpretation or not?

Better than you, probably (see below).
Possibily, but I doubt it (see below).

And I showed that AiG also has a relativistic solution that doesn't butcher the text like the anti-Christian Schroeder does.
Now this one is an abusive ad hominem. Unless you have evidence that Schroeder is an anti-Christian that I am not aware of, that is.

I promise to look at the AiG relativistic explanation if/when I get a chance.

Yep, but most people here are Yanx, so I needed to communicate with them. I don't just write for your benefit, you know :tongue:
Compromiser! :wink:

I realise that you're not writing just for my benefit... in fact, I get the distinct impression that my benefit is the least of your concerns... :smile:

And your refutation of AiG's argument is, what? There is no problem at all! It's only compromisers who raise a straw man by bringing up plant death as though there is an issue. But Genesis 1:29-30 teaches that teh original diets were vegetarian, so deal with that.
Soc, soc, soc... you've done it again. :smile: I had no refutation of AiG's argument, simply because I agreed with it. I liked it so much, I extended it slightly and used it for my own purposes. Thus your comments about vegetarianism are red herrings (red broccoli, perhaps? :smile:)

Let me recap my argument, without reference to AiG:

Alleged problem with OEC: there was death before sin.

My proposed solution: The neshema (which only humans possess - ie the immortal soul) did not exist before Adam. Adam did not die until after he had sinned. Therefore, there was no "neshema death" before sin.

And even your position has problems, because there are fossils of anatomically modern humans "dated" well before any acceptable biblical date for Adam.
The simple resolution: they looked like people, but they weren't human because they didn't have neshema.

No, but this is clearly post-Fall.
Wow, an entire sentence in a civil tone! I'm so proud of you Soc! :wink:

Right, so the best Jezz can come up is a fanatically anti-Christian kabbalist, hardly representative.
I never claimed that it was representative. It didn't have to be to prove its point. Nahmanides was offered as a counter-example to your claim, which was "The only people who try and fit Genesis with evolution and the Big Bang are modern-day compromisers." If your claim is true, then this would mean that there are no examples of commentators who interpreted the Bible in a way consistent with evolution and the Big Bang prior to the advent of these theories. However, as I have shown, Nahmanides predates both of these by centuries, yet had an interpretation that was consistent with evolution and the Big Bang.

In fact, I can offer my two new-found Christian commentators who pre-date the Big Bang (and one of them Darwin too) as both offering interpretations which have parts consistent with an OEC view, and against your view (see above). Of "In the beginning", Jamieson writes:

1. In the beginning--a period of remote and unknown antiquity, hid in the depths of eternal ages; and so the phrase is used in Pro 8:22, 23.

So do you concede this point now - ie, that some commentators held OEC-compatible views before the advent of the science that is supposedly the motivation for the modern day OECer's "compromise"?

What nonsense. The Hebrew idiom for "to become" is the verb "to be" plus the preposition "to".
You may be right, I don't have time to look into it now. But even if you are right, it doesn't detract from the core of my argument: ie, that some commentators had OEC-compatible interpretations before the advent of Darwin and the Big Bang. These commentators cannot be accused of eisegesis.

That's if Schroeder has represented him correctly, and it's based on a faulty premise anyway.
So now you are intimating that Schroeder has misrepresented Nahmanides? Do you have any evidence of that?

Actually, he was influenced by the rediscovery of Aristotle's writings, and Aristotle believed in an infinite universe for pagan philosophical reasons.
Nahmanides believed in a Creator, and obviously did not share Aristotle's philosophical position that the universe must be infinite. Moreover, I am not so sure that Aristotle held an "evolutionary" view of mankind's creation (which is the specific part of Nahmanides' commentary we are considering). This comment amounts to a red herring.

Since when is the Talmud reliable? This is the writing down of the oral traditions that Jesus condemned in Mark 7.
Again, reliability is not the main issue. The issue was whether or not Darwin-compatible commentaries existed before Darwin.

They WERE right -- humph, and you accused ME of not understanding relativity! :whack: This is an even simpler expression of relativity, from Galileo. The sun DOES orbit the Earth -- relative to the Earth! They were wrong only to claim that Galileo was in error, because Galileo was also right in his description -- relative to the sun.
My my, you do have a short memory. :smile: It was not that long ago that I made exactly the same point, backing you up in the same thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=4053&perpage=16&pagenumber=4).

However, I admit I chose a misleading example for my analogy. I will try and use a better one: Galileo's discovery that the sun and moon had abberations (eg hills, sunspots). The church thought that the Bible taught that they were flawless, and so Galileo was afraid to publish his findings. Or perhaps the finding that the sun was not sitting on the outermost solid dome, which the church considered unbiblical because it took away the place where they thought that heaven existed. In these cases, it was not the Bible that was wrong, but the church's interpretation of it, and the church's interpretation changed to fit with the science of the day, without being in conflict with the Bible.

Reference frames -- they solve the problem, although the various infidel groups don't understand this (i.e. that all reference frames are equally valid).
Yep, you're right! And I claim the exact same thing of the apparent discrepancy between a 6-day creation and a 15-billion -year creation - both are correct, as both frames are equally valid.

In that case, you don't understand equivocal language one bit. The days of creation are anything but equivocal -- HALOT even gives the meaning of 24 hours to yom in Genesis 1:5.
But it's not (and never was) the length of each day that I am claiming is equivocal. Where I claim that the Bible is equivocal is that it gives no clear indicator of which POR the 7 days of Genesis are measured in. You haven't yet provided me with one, apart from the Exodus 20:8-11 passage which can easily fit either way.

Actually, I have a good understanding, which is why the Infidels resent me. :poke:

Yes he should, when people are undermining Scripture with Kabbalistic fantasies from anti-Christian sources.
But I'm not trying to undermine the Scriptures, Soc. I'm trying to understand them. As a Christian, it is also your job to aid me in that understanding. You have to balance the need to share the truth with the need to vigorously defend it. The decision about which to use should be based on the disposition of your opponent - whether they are willing to accept your argument, or whether they simply want to attack you.

Watch how JP Holding does this balancing act - he argues politely and rationally as long as his opponent does likewise. He never first to take a more aggressive stance.

Socrates

June 12th 2003, 05:39 AM

Today @ 03:12 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=120934#post120934)
Jezz:

What, Josephus? You mean that unsaved Jewish scholar? What are you considering his position for? :smile:

Just to demonstrate that the Kabbalistic flakes that you and Schroeder are so besotted are hardly representative of Judaism. Josephus's exegetical methods would be far more similar to those of the NT writers, since he wrote only a few decades later.

It's also common for people who have been misrepresented to claim that they have been misrepresented.

Maybe the reason you find "compromisers" to commonly claim that you have misrepresented them is because you commonly misrepresent them? :wink:

Or rather, because they resent being exposed for what they are.

Even if your ad hominem is true (and it's probable, though not certain that it is), my complaint was not that it was abusive. My complaint was that it was irrelevant. An ad hominem attack is only warranted when your opponent makes an argument from authority. I was not.

Sure looked like it to me, i.e. citing these flaky Kabbalistic numerologists.

I agree that they were 24 hours long. It remains the topic of debate as to which POR they were measured from. You have yet to give me a reason why I should prefer an Earth-based frame over a universal frame.

I have -- the comparison with the days of our working week (Exodus 20:8-11). You have failed to provide the slightest reason that they were anything but ordinary-length days. It's just double-talk to claim that you believe they were 24-hour days but not from any frame of reference that the original readers would have understood.

Granted, I have not done an in-depth analysis of the critique, so you are entitled to be unimpressed (hopefullly, if I get the time, I will point out the most glaring errors). However, I have critiqued a couple of their arguments indirectly, because you have been using the same ones (eg the Exodus 20:8-14 argument above, and the "yom" argument below). These objections don't hold, because in my view, creation did literally last for a week

Only because you have a non-literal use of the word "literal".

Heh, nice sound bite. :thumb: Tell me, is it hard to understand non-compromisers who don't make themselves clear, too? Or is it only the unclear compromisers who you have trouble comprehending? :wink:

In my experience, compromisers are usually evasive.

Matthew Henry, who wrote between 1706 and 1714 (http://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/mhc/Gen/Gen001.html): There was nothing in it desirable to be seen, for it was without form and void. Toho and Bohu, confusion and emptiness; so these words are rendered, Isa. 34:11.
"confusion" and "emptiness" are interpreted as nouns by this commentator, just as I interpreted them as nouns.

Doesn't seem like this at all -- it is possible to use nouns adjectivally. And this is a red herring since it has no bearing on the issue of the age of the Earth whatever.

The question is, why do it the way you suggested? Why choose your method over mine? I submit that it was within God's power to do it either way, so why are you so certain he did it the way you say he did it?

I'm not. I'm certain that He did it the way HE said He did it, which is the way most people understood it apart from loopy Kabbalists and uniformitarian compromisers.

Above, you asked me to find a translation which rendered "tohu and bohu" as "formlessness and voidness". I could not do so, but instead offered commentators who interpreted it that way. I hope you will consider that a fair tactic, given that I am now accepting commentaries for this verse, instead of demanding that you produce a Bible translation that render it "sun".

They don't, quite deliberately, because it seems that a major purpose was to make it clear that the sun and moon were not to be worshipped, so they were not named.

No commentator, of course, doubts that the source of the "greater light" was the sun. What they disagree over is whether or not the sun was created on this day, or if it was already there and the light in the sky was made by making the ready-made sun visible. I submit that if God had meant that the sun itself was created that day, he would have had Moses write "sun" and not "greater light". If it is meant to be a historical narrative, why would it use a metaphor for the sun instead of the actual word for sun?

As above. And the use of a metaphor (actually a straightforward descriptive term rather than a metaphor) does not contradict its historical character. But there is no doubt that the greater and lesser light were MADE on the 4th day, and that these WERE the sun and moon.

So your comparison was flawed.

Me: Genesis 1 uses a different timescale to other Bible histories.
You: Genesis 1 is a historical narrative.
Me: You misrepresent me, because I never claimed that Genesis 1 wasn't historical.

Do you admit that your initial appraisal of my position was a misinterpretation or not?

No. You DO deny it was historical under any reasonable definition of the term. I.e. you deny the timescale and order of events, and YOU like Schroeder are motivated by so-called "science".

Now this one is an abusive ad hominem. Unless you have evidence that Schroeder is an anti-Christian that I am not aware of, that is.

Of course. Christ said you are either for Him or against Him.

Let me recap my argument, without reference to AiG:

Alleged problem with OEC: there was death before sin.

My proposed solution: The neshema (which only humans possess - ie the immortal soul) did not exist before Adam. Adam did not die until after he had sinned. Therefore, there was no "neshema death" before sin.

And this ignores the clear teaching that both humans and animals were vegetarians before the Fall, so it was the nephesh that was the issue.

The simple resolution: they looked like people, but they weren't human because they didn't have neshema.

Talk about special pleading. They looked human, buried their dead like humans, painted pictures like humans, but you claim without evidence that they lacked neshema.

Wow, an entire sentence in a civil tone! I'm so proud of you Soc! :wink:

And when I use civility, I mean it.

In fact, I can offer my two new-found Christian commentators who pre-date the Big Bang (and one of them Darwin too) as both offering interpretations which have parts consistent with an OEC view, and against your view (see above). Of "In the beginning", Jamieson writes:

Jamieson was 1871, you told me, so he was well indoctrinated in uniformitarian geology and biology.

You may be right, I don't have time to look into it now. But even if you are right, it doesn't detract from the core of my argument: ie, that some commentators had OEC-compatible interpretations before the advent of Darwin and the Big Bang. These commentators cannot be accused of eisegesis.

Yes they can. Old-age ideas were around before Darwin, but became popular in Europe only with the rise of the Endarkenment. Hence the proliferation of conservative compromises arose only then, as shown by Doug Kelly in his book Creation and Change. And the Kabbalism of Nahmanides et al. was pure eisegesis in itself quite aside from the nonsense about Genesis.

So now you are intimating that Schroeder has misrepresented Nahmanides? Do you have any evidence of that?

Simply that Schroeder is hardly a reliable guide.

Nahmanides believed in a Creator, and obviously did not share Aristotle's philosophical position that the universe must be infinite.

But he imbibed much of Aristotle's teachings.

My my, you do have a short memory. :smile: It was not that long ago that I made exactly the same point, backing you up in the same thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=4053&perpage=16&pagenumber=4).

Yes, and you did well, although I had made it before you came to TWeb.

However, I admit I chose a misleading example for my analogy. I will try and use a better one: Galileo's discovery that the sun and moon had abberations (eg hills, sunspots). The church thought that the Bible taught that they were flawless, and so Galileo was afraid to publish his findings. Or perhaps the finding that the sun was not sitting on the outermost solid dome, which the church considered unbiblical because it took away the place where they thought that heaven existed. In these cases, it was not the Bible that was wrong, but the church's interpretation of it, and the church's interpretation changed to fit with the science of the day, without being in conflict with the Bible.

But where DID the Bible teach that the sun or moon lacked aberrations? Very poor analogy, since my argument is based on actual texts of Scripture.

But I'm not trying to undermine the Scriptures, Soc. I'm trying to understand them. As a Christian, it is also your job to aid me in that understanding.

That's exactly what I'm doing, in discrediting these flaky anti-christian Kabbalists whom you love so much.

Watch how JP Holding does this balancing act - he argues politely and rationally as long as his opponent does likewise. He never first to take a more aggressive stance.

There is more than one way to be agressive. E.g. accusing me of "misrepresentation" is merely a smarmy euphemism for "lie", and various other witless smart-assed comments. So don't squeal at me. Instead be thankful that my aggression is up-front instead of masked by a dishonest superficial civility. JPH is also very astute about this sort of thing.

Ahem :frown: ... lighten up on the overly abundant negative adjectives ... please?

Jezz

June 13th 2003, 05:44 AM

Socrates:
Just to demonstrate that the Kabbalistic flakes that you and Schroeder are so besotted are hardly representative of Judaism. Josephus's exegetical methods would be far more similar to those of the NT writers, since he wrote only a few decades later.
I'm sorry, but I can't help but detect a double standard emerging here.

When I use a Jewish source that contradicts YEC, you attack it because it's author was unsaved.

But when you use a Jewish source that agrees with YEC, that's OK?

I'm quite sure that Nahmanides' interpretation was not necessarily indicative of all of Judaism at the time. But as I said earlier, that's not the point. The point is that you claim that OEC ideas only came about because modern Christians tried to compromise to fit with science. But clearly some of the ideas were around earlier than that.

Maybe the reason you find &quot;compromisers&quot; to commonly claim that you have misrepresented them is because you commonly misrepresent them? :wink:

Or rather, because they resent being exposed for what they are.
In the interests of trying to keep this civil, I will not be responding to remarks like this any more. Note to readers: this is not to be taken as an admission of their veracity. :smile:

Sure looked like it to me, i.e. citing these * edited by a moderator * Kabbalistic numerologists.
Up until the end of my original post, I didn't mention any sources for my ideas at all, and I was not using my personal credentials as support for my argument. An ad hominem attack was therefore irrelevant.

I have -- the comparison with the days of our working week (Exodus 20:8-11). You have failed to provide the slightest reason that they were anything but ordinary-length days. It's just double-talk to claim that you believe they were 24-hour days but not from any frame of reference that the original readers would have understood.

From AiG (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4169.asp):
Put another way: if today we say ‘the sky is blue’ to a person who is a member of a ‘primitive’ society, and they happen to define the ‘sky’ as ‘the solid expanse over our head’, this does not make our original statement, ‘the sky is blue,’ in error. Their thought-concept is indeed in error, but our original statement is not — even if we both happen to use the same word, ‘sky’, to describe different concepts. So it is that God, using an inspired penman under the constraints of human language, did not err in Genesis. The cosmology has been kept so basic and equivocal that one must force certain meanings into the text and analyze what the writer ‘must have been thinking’ (as well as pay no attention to the fact that God, not man, is the ultimate author of the text) in order to find error.

In other words, it doesn't matter if the original readers, or even the author, would have been confused by the idea that the "firmament" wasn't solid. What matters is that the text can be legitmately interpreted as meaning that the firmament isn't solid.

Applying the same logic to the current topic of discussion: It doesn't matter if the original readers would have been confused by the idea that the first six days were written in a different FoR as the rest of the Bible. What matters is if the text can be legitmately interpreted that way.

Only because you have a non-literal use of the word "literal".
Not at all. I refer to the twin-trip example again. If your twin travels at such a speed that 1 year elapses on his ship while 10 years elapse on Earth, does that mean I am in error if I say that his trip literally took 1 year? No, it doesn't. It's only an error if I say that it took 1 year, as measured here on Earth. If I don't mention the reference frame, then my statement is equivocal and could be interpreted either way.

Doesn't seem like this at all -- it is possible to use nouns adjectivally. And this is a red herring since it has no bearing on the issue of the age of the Earth whatever.
You think it's a red herring because you've forgotten the original context.

This line of argument has progressed something like this:

Me: It seems clear to me that the FoR must have been other than the Earth itself because the Earth was not there for the entire 6 days.
You: "In the BEGINNING, God created the heavens and the earth."
Me: Yes, but the earth so created was "formless and void.", ie the Earth had not been formed yet. Also, as you yourself pointed out "the heavens and the earth" is a merism, it actually means "universe". The text seems to indicate that the Earth wasn't properly made until later in the week - only the matter from which it was formed.

In other words, my statement stands - it seems that the Earth was not present for the entire creation week. Which supports my position that the FoR most likely was other than Earth.

I'm not. I'm certain that He did it the way HE said He did it, which is the way most people understood it * edited by a moderator *
But Soc, there is no mention anywhere in the Bible (let alone the creation account) that the Earth was rotating. Your assertion that He said He created a rotating Earth and a directional light source on the first day is therefore reading your own interpretation into the text. Certainly, your interpretation is consistent with the text, but it is not the only interpretation that is consistent with the text.

They don't, quite deliberately, because it seems that a major purpose was to make it clear that the sun and moon were not to be worshipped, so they were not named.
Well, that's certainly a legitmate reason for why they might not be named. Incidentally, this fits just as well (if not better) in my interpretation, because in my interpretation not only are the sun and moon not referred to as the sun and the moon, but their creation is not even referred to directly.

As above. And the use of a metaphor (actually a straightforward descriptive term rather than a metaphor) does not contradict its historical character. But there is no doubt that the greater and lesser light were MADE on the 4th day, and that these WERE the sun and moon.
That's just an argument by assertion. The text does not say that they are the sun and the moon. It says that they are the greater and lesser lights. To insist that they are the sun and the moon is to read your own interpretation into the text - ie, doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing.

Clearly, the source of these lights is the sun and the moon, but an equally valid interpretation of the text is that the light sources were already present, and the lights in the sky were made by making the pre-existent sources clearly visible. This is perfectly consistent with the text of the Bible. Just like the Bible can be read consistently with a solid sky or without one.

No. You DO deny it was historical under any reasonable definition of the term. I.e. you deny the timescale and order of events, and YOU like Schroeder are motivated by so-called "science".
I don't deny the timescale and order of the events in the Bible. I deny the timescale and order of the events as you interpret them.

I admit, my interpretation is influenced by (not motivated by) science, but then so is yours. So was Galileo's, when he reinterpreted "firmament" to mean something other than "solid dome". So long as the text still supports the interpretation, it doesn't really matter.

You might be surprised to learn that I was a YECer at one point in my life. I'm not adverse to changing my mind if the argument compells me to. But it must be the argument that compells me, and not ad hominems or shouts of "compromiser".

And this ignores the clear teaching that both humans and animals were vegetarians before the Fall, so it was the nephesh that was the issue.
There are problems with the idea that death of "nephesh" is a product of sin too. If something with "nephesh" dying is inherently evil, then why is it that God later not only allowed the killing of animals, but in some cases required it? And how can something without neshema sin, and therefore deserve death?

I propose the vegetarianism restrictions had some other purpose, or perhaps weren't restrictions. It does say that the plants were for food, but it doesn't actually say that animals weren't.

Talk about special pleading. They looked human, buried their dead like humans, painted pictures like humans, but you claim without evidence that they lacked neshema.
I don't claim without evidence. The Bible is my evidence. The Bible says that Adam was the first to receive the neshema and become human, therefore any human-like animals before Adam weren't human.

Incidentally, from this point of view it seems that civilisations started springing up almost immediately once the neshema was introduced. That would be archaelogical evidence for the introduction of the neshema.

Yes they can. Old-age ideas were around before Darwin, but became popular in Europe only with the rise of the Endarkenment. Hence the proliferation of conservative compromises arose only then, as shown by Doug Kelly in his book Creation and Change. And the Kabbalism of Nahmanides et al. was pure eisegesis in itself quite aside from the nonsense about Genesis.
That's interesting, I was not aware that old-age ideas predated Darwin, though in hindsight this makes sense. Having found this out, I did a little research, and discovered that old-Earth ideas started to surface in the 1600s (or even before, if you include de Vinci's assertion that not all fossils were laid by the flood). It is interesting to note that the first scientists to come up with these ideas were Christian (eg, Rene Descarte was the first to propose a creation that was not compatible with the 6 days of Genesis). Is it valid to consider that they were compromising their Biblical interpretation to fit the science of the day, when they were the ones responsible for creating the very science of the day they were supposedly compromising to?

So now you are intimating that Schroeder has misrepresented Nahmanides? Do you have any evidence of that?

Simply that Schroeder is hardly a reliable guide.
Kinda begging the question, isn't it? He's hardly reliable because he misrepresents sources, as evidenced by the fact that he misrepresented Nahmanides?

But he [Nahmanides] imbibed much of Aristotle's teachings.
It's still a red herring. I'm sure you've imbibed much of Einstein's teachings, but you still don't believe that the world is older than 6000 years.

Yes, and you did well, although I had made it before you came to TWeb.
Thanks. Note also that I had made it before I came to TWeb, too.

However, I admit I chose a misleading example for my analogy. I will try and use a better one: Galileo's discovery that the sun and moon had abberations (eg hills, sunspots). The church thought that the Bible taught that they were flawless, and so Galileo was afraid to publish his findings. Or perhaps the finding that the sun was not sitting on the outermost solid dome, which the church considered unbiblical because it took away the place where they thought that heaven existed. In these cases, it was not the Bible that was wrong, but the church's interpretation of it, and the church's interpretation changed to fit with the science of the day, without being in conflict with the Bible.

But where DID the Bible teach that the sun or moon lacked aberrations? Very poor analogy, since my argument is based on actual texts of Scripture.
Well, when God looked at all that he had made, and said "it was very good"? Wasn't everything that God made perfect? Point is, that the people claiming that the sun and moon were flawless thought that their argument was Biblically based, too. And it was, but only with a superficial understanding of the Bible.

With the above example, it was poor because the biblically based understanding of a flawless sun & moon was very superficial. Fortunately I have an even better analogy that you didn't respond to - the solid dome view. This one is actually a very legimate interpretation of the Bible, and a reading of the Bible could easily lead one to that conclusion (so much so that AiG felt compelled to write the article about it). In fact, as the AiG article itself admits, it is even quite possible that this is what the human author Moses meant in his own mind when he wrote it, and also what the target audience would have understood.

Was Galileo a "compromiser" for adapting his interpretation of the Bible to suit his scientific observation that the sky was not a solid dome?

That's exactly what I'm doing, in discrediting these * edited by a moderator * Kabbalists whom you love so much.
But as I tried to point out, ad hominems are ineffective because I'm not relying on the credentials of these people to support the argument. I'm compelled to believe it by the argument itself. That's why you need to attack the argument.

There is more than one way to be agressive. E.g. accusing me of "misrepresentation" is merely a smarmy euphemism for "lie", * edited by a moderator * be thankful that my aggression is up-front instead of masked by a dishonest superficial civility. JPH is also very astute about this sort of thing.
If I was being aggressive, then (at the risk of sounding like a kindergarten student) you started it! :wink:

I wasn't actually accusing you of lying (at least, I wasn't trying to), and I'm sorry if you got that impression. A "misrepresentation" is only a lie if done intentionally - I don't think that you deliberately misrepresented me, but rather your adversarial posture made you predisposed towards making those misrepresentations (unintentionally).

Peace,
-Jezz

Jezz

June 15th 2003, 03:24 AM

Sher:
Jezz ... Great to see you over here :smile:
Heh, no worries. I normally don't bother with this forum as I consider these issues of far less importance than issues discussed in the Religion 101 forum. After all, if the issue of "which version of creationism is true" was fundamental to Christian faith, then it would be in the creeds. But it's not in any of the apostle's, Nicene, or Athanasian creeds, so I have to conclude that the issue is simply not that important. So I'd rather spend my time on the other forum. :smile:

I happened to drop by because somebody saw a post I made in Religion 101, and asked me to stop by.

I'm in the appearance "camp" ... Of course I have to "defend" often the "God doesn't deceive" arguments ... but I think there is an easy understanding here (which you also touched on in your post). I believe that science *does* support an old Earth ... 6,000 years is old after all ... it is only fallible man that has made fallible assertions that time has been around much longer than that.
Sher, I have no problem with the argument that because humans are fallible, our understanding of science might be fallible. But fallibility is a two-way street - humans, being fallible, may also have interpreted the Bible incorrectly. And this is where I think YEC people tend to stack the deck - they apply the "fallibility of man" argument to science, but don't apply it to Biblical interpretation. I have no problem with scientists using the Bible as extra evidence in their "origins" theories (as you suggested later in your post), but so long as they recognise that this evidence (like their other evidence) is subject to misinterpretation by we fallible humans.

Let's consider two examples in history that have since been resolved. The first is one I used in my last couple of responses to Soc - the solid sky. The Bible's usage of the word "firmament" can imply that the sky is a solid dome. This was the prevailing view of the ancients - and I believe it was the view that was held even up until Galileo and the invention of the telescope. This scientific discovery showed that the sky wasn't solid. Was the Bible wrong? No - the interpretation was wrong. The word used for "sky" in the Bible is ambiguous enough that it could be read either way.

Now a second example: Right up until the 1950s, the scientific world believed that the universe was infinitely old (a beliefe that began with Aristotle, I believe). Their attitude to the Bible? "Oh, that's just a fairy tale that you tell to kids at night to make them feel good. We scientists know better." In the late 1950s, a poll was conducted in the US and showed that 2/3rds of them were of this attitude. Of course, in this instance, Biblical interpretation was correct but science was wrong (a fact that was more-or-less confirmed only a few years after that poll with the discovery of the cosmic background radiation). But again, the Bible itself wasn't wrong.

So as I see it, any time there is an apparent contradiction between science and the Bible, there is one of three possibilities:
1. scientific understanding is wrong, or
2. Biblical understanding is wrong, or
3. the Bible is wrong.

I do not tend to concern myself too much with which of these is the case. But it seems to me that secular scientists are too quick to assume 3, whereas YEC scientists are often too quick to assume 1. For this reason I am hesitant to take anything that either camp says. And unless a contradiction is important to my faith (which they rarely are), I am content to believe that it must be either 1 or 2 (or perhaps both) and not 3, without worrying too much about trying to resolve which one it is. Which is why I don't bother too much with this forum. :smile:

Sher

June 15th 2003, 05:12 AM

Hi Jezz,

I'm going to assume you were looking for a reply, even if you "don't bother too much with this forum" :teeth: ...

Today @ 03:24 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=123553#post123553)
Jezz:

Heh, no worries. I normally don't bother with this forum as I consider these issues of far less importance than issues discussed in the Religion 101 forum. After all, if the issue of "which version of creationism is true" was fundamental to Christian faith, then it would be in the creeds. But it's not in any of the apostle's, Nicene, or Athanasian creeds, so I have to conclude that the issue is simply not that important. So I'd rather spend my time on the other forum. :smile:

I disagree. I think it is fundamental to faith, to be honest ... because I've seen the end result of those that compromise ... bending to science ... and how it affects people's faith ... or the seeds of faith. It is the pinnacle on a slippery slope that I think is important for us to "shore up".

And I think perhaps one reason that it isn't in the Creeds is that it wasn't a big dispute like it is in modern times.

Sher, I have no problem with the argument that because humans are fallible, our understanding of science might be fallible. But fallibility is a two-way street - humans, being fallible, may also have interpreted the Bible incorrectly.

Of course ... except some things are not open to interpretation by Christians, AFAICS ... we affirm certain things as mature Christians*, a personal statement of faith, as it were ... as fundimental principles ... and most of us know that we would question if someone were waffling on those issues (Virgin Conception, Christ's Resurrection, etc.).

Likewise, I feel strongly that because Christ taught about Creation from a YEC standpoint ... not vast gaps/ages/millions of years ... that we should also prompt mature Christians to take a stand on this issue as well ... that it too is a fundimental issue.

It has been my experience that OEC cannot rightly say that they rely on Scripture for their OEC viewpoint. It is science PLUS an interpretation of Scriptures ... one that isn't clearly evidenced in the Bible.

* ... please note that I am not being insulting by adding "mature" ... but distinguishing maturity in Christ from a "new" Christian who may have little/no Biblical background ... I think that we have to make that distinction because there are many who are mislead for that reason ... coming from a secular background and twisting Scripture to the secular world viewpoint

And this is where I think YEC people tend to stack the deck - they apply the "fallibility of man" argument to science, but don't apply it to Biblical interpretation. I have no problem with scientists using the Bible as extra evidence in their "origins" theories (as you suggested later in your post), but so long as they recognise that this evidence (like their other evidence) is subject to misinterpretation by we fallible humans.

My point was NOT using the Bible as the final authority ... and it just isn't for so many Christians ... and frankly, I don't understand that

... any more than I understand the scientists that ignore it ... working with only part of the evidence ...

<snipped examples>

So as I see it, any time there is an apparent contradiction between science and the Bible, there is one of three possibilities:
1. scientific understanding is wrong, or
2. Biblical understanding is wrong, or
3. the Bible is wrong.

I do not tend to concern myself too much with which of these is the case. But it seems to me that secular scientists are too quick to assume 3, whereas YEC scientists are often too quick to assume 1. For this reason I am hesitant to take anything that either camp says. And unless a contradiction is important to my faith (which they rarely are), I am content to believe that it must be either 1 or 2 (or perhaps both) and not 3, without worrying too much about trying to resolve which one it is. Which is why I don't bother too much with this forum. :smile:

I disagree ... but I think that is evident by now :smile:

As I said ... I don't see it as a secondary issue. It can, and does, ruin the faith ... or the seeds of faith ... for many people. There are many who would believe ... except that they see the Bible as fallible because it doesn't match science ... getting it "back to front" ... because all things should be measured against scripture.

I think the lack of education in these principles is damaging and dangerous ... and that is why I do bother with the forum.

Socrates

June 15th 2003, 05:35 AM

Today @ 06:24 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=123553#post123553)
Jezz (is this short for Jezzebel? Just curious):

Heh, no worries. I normally don't bother with this forum as I consider these issues of far less importance than issues discussed in the Religion 101 forum. After all, if the issue of "which version of creationism is true" was fundamental to Christian faith, then it would be in the creeds. But it's not in any of the apostle's, Nicene, or Athanasian creeds, so I have to conclude that the issue is simply not that important. So I'd rather spend my time on the other forum. :smile:

This is fallacious. Historically, creeds were a response to heresies, so dealt with the key points where orthodoxy was being attacked. Back then, creation in six ordinary days was hardly disputed, so there was no need to defend it.

Sher, I have no problem with the argument that because humans are fallible, our understanding of science might be fallible. But fallibility is a two-way street - humans, being fallible, may also have interpreted the Bible incorrectly. And this is where I think YEC people tend to stack the deck - they apply the "fallibility of man" argument to science, but don't apply it to Biblical interpretation. I have no problem with scientists using the Bible as extra evidence in their "origins" theories (as you suggested later in your post), but so long as they recognise that this evidence (like their other evidence) is subject to misinterpretation by we [sic] fallible humans.

Another fallacy, which fails to recognize that Scripture is propositional revelation, therefore should be interpreted under the rules of grammar and historical context. It should never be interpreted to mean something contrary to what the readers would have understood. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 indicates that God wrote Scripture so we could understand it, not wait centuries for unbelieving scientists and kabbalistic numerologists to tell us what it "really" means".

Conversely, the data of nature are not propositional, and theories are formed about them which are strongly dependent on the paradigm by which we interpret the data.

Let's consider two examples in history that have since been resolved. The first is one I used in my last couple of responses to Soc - the solid sky. The Bible's usage of the word "firmament" can imply that the sky is a solid dome.

No it's equivocal language, as JP Holding showed -- see Is the raqiya‘ (firmament) a solid dome? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4169.asp) Rather, we should blame the LXX translators for being influenced by Greek ideas and mistranslating raqiya‘ as stereoma, which Jerome incorporated into his Vulgate as firmamentum. The King Jimmy translators just Latinized it. But the correct meaning is "expanse". So once more, Jezz has it back to front -- the "solid dome" idea is the result of incorporating current "science" into the Bible.

This was the prevailing view of the ancients - and I believe it was the view that was held even up until Galileo and the invention of the telescope.

Was this an issue for Galileo? He was more into geokineticism.

Now a second example: Right up until the 1950s, the scientific world believed that the universe was infinitely old (a beliefe that began with Aristotle, I believe). Their attitude to the Bible? "Oh, that's just a fairy tale that you tell to kids at night to make them feel good. We scientists know better." In the late 1950s, a poll was conducted in the US and showed that 2/3rds of them were of this attitude. Of course, in this instance, Biblical interpretation was correct but science was wrong (a fact that was more-or-less confirmed only a few years after that poll with the discovery of the cosmic background radiation). But again, the Bible itself wasn't wrong.

How on earth does this have the slightest relation to the issue at hand? These people denied its authority altogether, not naively taking the Bible at its plain meaning. This is hardly an example of why we should supposedly not believe the straightforward meaning of Scripture.

So as I see it, any time there is an apparent contradiction between science and the Bible, there is one of three possibilities:
1. scientific understanding is wrong, or
2. Biblical understanding is wrong, or
3. the Bible is wrong.

I do not tend to concern myself too much with which of these is the case. But it seems to me that secular scientists are too quick to assume 3, whereas YEC scientists are often too quick to assume 1.

With good reason, e.g. Piltdown Man, embryonic recapitulation, about 80 useless organs in the human body, Ostraea-Gryphaea oyster evolution series ... All these had intimidated compromisers into accepting evolution, but are all discredited now.

It's also a matter of the role of Scripture as a guide for us -- would God have allowed most godly scholars to misunderstand Him for 1800 years, even thought he promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church?

Jezz

June 16th 2003, 12:56 AM

Hi Sher,

Sher:
I'm going to assume you were looking for a reply, even if you "don't bother too much with this forum" :teeth: ...
Once I start posting in a thread, I usually see it through to its conclusion. It's just unlikely that I will return to the forum often or post in other threads.

I disagree. I think it is fundamental to faith, to be honest ... because I've seen the end result of those that compromise ... bending to science ... and how it affects people's faith ... or the seeds of faith. It is the pinnacle on a slippery slope that I think is important for us to "shore up".
That's the answer I expected. :smile: Here's a response I prepared earlier... :wink:

The typical slippery-slope argument is something like "if we don't believe Adam existed as a real person and was sinless before the fall, then that casts doubt on the necessity of Christ's sacrifice, which is the underpinning of Christianity." This is the argument as I saw it on AiG, where the gave an example of an apostate who apparently fell down this slope.

I personally don't put much stock in this argument. I regard this as a non-sequitur. We don't need to know that Adam was sinless in order to know that we are sinful and we need a Saviour.

Besides, there is more than one slipperly slope. For every person you can find who started to doubt the resurrection because they weren't a YEC (I know there is one example on AiG), I can find another person who started to doubt because they were YEC and eventually couldn't reconcile that belief. Many of these turn into the biggest oppressors of Christianity - there are a couple of obvious examples I could point to in the Rel 101 forum (in fact, of the "fundaliteralist atheist" apostates we have on Rel 101, it is my impression that most of them were YEC when they were Christian).

And on the other hand, I know Christians who believe the entire creation story is a myth and make little-to-no attempt to try and harmonise it with scientific observation. This is personally a view that I cannot accept, yet their faith in Christ and the necessary and sufficient nature of the crucifixion and resurrection is still strong despite this view of Genesis.

People who lose their faith because they can't resolve the creation account, in my opinion, simply didn't have a strong enough faith to begin with. It was built on sand. I think it has little or nothing to do with holding or not holding a YEC view.

Remember that missionaries always translate the NT first, and often won't even bother translating most of the OT until much later (if at all). Is the faith of the people they are witnessing to in trouble because they don't have access to Genesis (and hence to the fact that God created the universe in 6 days)? I don't think so. As long as you 1. accept the need for a saviour, and 2. accept Christ as that Saviour, then that's all you have to do. It's called Christianity, not Genesisianty. :wink:

And I think perhaps one reason that it isn't in the Creeds is that it wasn't a big dispute like it is in modern times.
Also the response that I expected. :smile: There might be some truth in that.

It is, of course, worth noting that the creeds all mention that the Father created the heavens and the earth. But doesn't mention that He made them in 6 days. It would have been a simple addition, if it was important enough.

Of course ... except some things are not open to interpretation by Christians, AFAICS ... we affirm certain things as mature Christians*, a personal statement of faith, as it were ... as fundimental principles ... and most of us know that we would question if someone were waffling on those issues (Virgin Conception, Christ's Resurrection, etc.).
Technically, everything is open to interpretation by Christians. Understanding without interpretation is impossible.

What you mean to say, I think, is that there are some things that, unless you interpret them a certain way, you won't be a Christian. With that I agree, but I don't think YEC is one of those.

Likewise, I feel strongly that because Christ taught about Creation from a YEC standpoint ... not vast gaps/ages/millions of years ... that we should also prompt mature Christians to take a stand on this issue as well ... that it too is a fundimental issue.
I'm not sure of the passages that you are referring to, but in my interpretation there wouldn't be a contradiction between Moses or Christ or anyone referring to the creation week as a period of 7x24-hour-days. I tried to explain this with my twin trip example.

It has been my experience that OEC cannot rightly say that they rely on Scripture for their OEC viewpoint. It is science PLUS an interpretation of Scriptures ... one that isn't clearly evidenced in the Bible.
My response has two aspects. Firstly, I certainly admit that parts of my interpretation of the creation account relies somewhat on science. However, there are large parts that do not. Please note that in my initial post, the majority of it did not mention science (other than the relativistic concept of a "frame of reference", which is generally accepted by YECers as well). I used biblical evidence to try and show that the frame of reference used for the creation account was probably not the Earth (given that the Earth was apparently not there for the entire 7-day period). As I noted in that post, this in itself does not prove that the Earth is older than 6000 years, but (if accurate) it does prove that Genesis is not inconsistent with an Earth that is older than 6000 years.

Secondly, I'll note that the Scriptures, while being the ultimate authority, do not exist in a vacuum. Interpretation of Scriptures always relies on information other than that contained in the Scriptures themselves. You need to know linguistics, social context, etc in order to understand anything contained therein - without this information, there would be no interpretation and the Scriptures would just be scribbles on pieces of paper. So it is always necessary to bring "outside knowledge" to the table when interpreting Scripture - I don't see why science should be excluded (eg, we can use science to show that the darkness at Jesus' death was not a normal eclipse).

* ... please note that I am not being insulting by adding "mature" ... but distinguishing maturity in Christ from a "new" Christian who may have little/no Biblical background ... I think that we have to make that distinction because there are many who are mislead for that reason ... coming from a secular background and twisting Scripture to the secular world viewpoint
I understood what you meant, and I was not offended.

My point was NOT using the Bible as the final authority ... and it just isn't for so many Christians ... and frankly, I don't understand that

... any more than I understand the scientists that ignore it ... working with only part of the evidence ...
Oh, I understand it perfectly. It's called sinful human nature. :smile: If one can undermine the authority of the Bible in any area, then one is free to substitute one's own authority for any of the parts that one does not agree with. Especially handy for some of the more pesky moral teachings in the Bible. :wink:

As I said ... I don't see it as a secondary issue. It can, and does, ruin the faith ... or the seeds of faith ... for many people. There are many who would believe ... except that they see the Bible as fallible because it doesn't match science ... getting it "back to front" ... because all things should be measured against scripture.
I already answered the part about ruining people's faith - I've seen YEC ruin people's faith too.

As for those who would believe, to them I would offer the observations I made in my last post: Humans aren't infallible. Therefore either our interpretation of science or Genesis might be wrong. But if we had omniscience, we would know that they both reflect the same reality. One doesn't necessarily have to know how they harmonise - only that it is possible that they can be harmonised.

I think the lack of education in these principles is damaging and dangerous ... and that is why I do bother with the forum.
Well, that is your prerogative, of course. But not all the body can be an ear... so I'll continue to focus elsewhere... :wink:

Jezz

June 16th 2003, 02:50 AM

Hi Soc,

Jezz is a nickname my friends use - it's short for "Jeremy" (my full name). If I was to choose a nickname for myself, it wouldn't be one that meant "evil and scheming woman" - especially as I have marked my gender as male. :smile:

Socrates:
This is fallacious. Historically, creeds were a response to heresies, so dealt with the key points where orthodoxy was being attacked. Back then, creation in six ordinary days was hardly disputed, so there was no need to defend it.
Possibly. But did creeds always confine themselves to the key points where orthodoxy was being attacked? This might be true, but I'm by no means certain that this is the case (perhaps you could clarify).

I have no problem with scientists using the Bible as extra evidence in their "origins" theories (as you suggested later in your post), but so long as they recognise that this evidence (like their other evidence) is subject to misinterpretation by we [sic] fallible humans.
A minor nit: I didn't understand why you put "sic" in there. "we fallible humans" is a valid way to write "we humans who are fallible".

Another fallacy, which fails to recognize that Scripture is propositional revelation, therefore should be interpreted under the rules of grammar and historical context. It should never be interpreted to mean something contrary to what the readers would have understood.
This is in direct contradiction to the AiG article on the raqiya', which claims that even the ancient readers of Genesis may have thought that raqiya' implied a solid expanse.

2 Timothy 3:15-17 indicates that God wrote Scripture so we could understand it, not wait centuries for unbelieving scientists and kabbalistic numerologists to tell us what it "really" means".
I don't think that's a valid interpretation of that passage in 2 Timothy. Firstly, the passage says nothing about fully comprehending everything in the Scripture - scripture can be useful for teaching even if not fully understood.

Secondly, it seems that the focus on teaching is for equipping people for doing "every good work" - not for understanding everything in the cosmos. So long as any mis-comprehension does not interfere with your ability to use it for this purpose, it does not contradict with this passage.

Thirdly, it contradicts the idea of "progressive revelation". There are parts in the OT that are not completely understood without the NT (eg, the cryptic Trinitarian references in the OT that don't make sense until the Trinity concept is fully revealed in the NT). As this example shows, things in Scripture are not always fully understood by the original audience - and possibly not even by the original (human) author. The Scriptures that Paul was talking about in his letter to Timothy would have referred to the OT Scriptures only, as the NT canon hadn't been formed yet. So therefore, when Paul wrote that letter there were crucial bits of the puzzle missing from Scripture that meant one could not rely on Scripture alone for the understanding.

Conversely, the data of nature are not propositional, and theories are formed about them which are strongly dependent on the paradigm by which we interpret the data.
I don't think that interpretation of scientific data is any different to interpretation of scriptures in this respect. That is why different Biblical interpretations exist.

No it's equivocal language, as JP Holding showed -- see Is the raqiya‘ (firmament) a solid dome? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4169.asp) Rather, we should blame the LXX translators for being influenced by Greek ideas and mistranslating raqiya‘ as stereoma, which Jerome incorporated into his Vulgate as firmamentum. The King Jimmy translators just Latinized it. But the correct meaning is "expanse". So once more, Jezz has it back to front -- the "solid dome" idea is the result of incorporating current "science" into the Bible.
The AiG article on the topic allows for the opposite to what you claimed in the last sentence: "Perhaps the ancient readers of this text did envision a solid dome with an ocean above it, but if so, they read things into the inspired and equivocal language of the text every bit as much as Seely or I have." It seems that the AiG author accepts that the original Hebrew readers may have read raqiya' as meaning a solid expanse - even well before Aristotlian influence or the LXX translation. However, it is also quite clear that the author feels that even if true, it doesn't matter - it just means that the original Hebrew readers were reading their own meaning into the text that wasn't there, just as we sometimes (often? :smile:) do today.

Was this an issue for Galileo? He was more into geokineticism.
The system that Galileo and Copernicus were debunking was the concept of solid domes on which the stars were placed. These were the heavens. The new systems displaced the solid dome concept.

How on earth does this have the slightest relation to the issue at hand? These people denied its authority altogether, not naively taking the Bible at its plain meaning. This is hardly an example of why we should supposedly not believe the straightforward meaning of Scripture.
The point I was trying to make is that whenever someone sees an apparent contradiction between science and Scripture, then it is either their understanding of science or their understanding of Scripture that is incorrect - not the Scripture itself. In other words, contradictions are merely apparent, not real. The "solid sky" example was an example of the latter case, whereas the "infinitely old universe" example was an example of the former case. I was simply giving one example of each of these cases.

With good reason, e.g. Piltdown Man, embryonic recapitulation, about 80 useless organs in the human body, Ostraea-Gryphaea oyster evolution series ... All these had intimidated compromisers into accepting evolution, but are all discredited now.
None of those pieces of evidence were convincing to me in the first place. I write computer software for a living, and some of the software I write is full of code that would seem useless to someone without a thorough knowledge of the code. That doesn't mean that the code evolved! In fact, sometimes there really is code in there that once served a function but is now redundant, yet the code stays there anyway because it works with the code there and there is no point to removing it. Thus the existence of "vestigial code" in my software does not mean that the software evolved without the direction of a intelligent creator.

It is obvious to me that people who accepted such evidence as proof of evolution weren't being objective. I've spent plenty of time debunking this evidence myself in a past life on the Kansas Citizens For Science and the Intelligent Design web boards.

It's also a matter of the role of Scripture as a guide for us -- would God have allowed most godly scholars to misunderstand Him for 1800 years, even thought he promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church?
A few points in response:
1. Is a misunderstanding over the duration of the days in Genesis really an example of Hell prevailing against the Church? I argued in my response to Sher that it is not.
2. The idea of a solid dome prevailed from a very early time right up until ~Galileo. Even if you accept that it was only the LXX translators that got it wrong, it was still about 1500 years that most godly scholars misunderstood it for. If we allow for the possibility that even the original audience misunderstood it (as the AiG article allows for), then it was much longer (about 2800 years, I think). If YEC is incorrect, this is no more an example of hell prevailing against the Church than the faulty solid-dome belief (more examples, and more serious ones at that, are give below).
3. Even if we accept that this would be an example of hell gaining ground against the Church, God hasn't necessarily broken His promise. In the end, if we understand it correctly, then God has kept his promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. This is the case regardless of whether or not understanding comes now, in 100 years, in 1000 years, or at the end of time.

I have a couple of other examples of more serious cases of godly men being wrong about Biblical interpretations for thousands of years. These are even more serious than any mix-up over creation or solid skies, because they deal with moral issues. Assuming you are not Catholic (which is a fair bet if you believe in a 6000-year-old Earth, but even if you are nominally Catholic the following may apply to you!), then presumably you think that the Bible does not teach that contraception is immoral. Yet this is the belief that most godly men held for most of the time since Christ up until about 1930 - nearly 2000 years. Similarly, if you believe that the Bible allows women's ordination. Or papal infallibility, etc...

It's not that I don't think x-thousand-year-traditions shouldn't be taken seriously. If we come up with a new interpretation that is in contradiction to an x- thousand-year-tradition, we should certainly check and double-check that our new interpretation isn't the one in error. However, I think it is important to recognise that even an x- thousand-year-tradition is still a tradition of fallible humans, and still prone to error (something that the Catholics seem to forget).

wienerdog

June 16th 2003, 03:14 AM

Jezz: ...if the issue of "which version of creationism is true" was fundamental to Christian faith, then it would be in the creeds. But it's not in any of the apostle's, Nicene, or Athanasian creeds, so I have to conclude that the issue is simply not that important.

Sher: I disagree. I think it is fundamental to faith, to be honest ... because I've seen the end result of those that compromise ... bending to science ... and how it affects people's faith ... or the seeds of faith. It is the pinnacle on a slippery slope that I think is important for us to "shore up".
My experience is contrary to this: I've seen Christians who were so tied up in their theology and interpretation of Scripture that when they reach "the straw that broke the camel's back" stage, they end up rejecting Christianity as a whole, rather than admit that the problem was with them instead of the Bible. I haven't just seen this with young earth creationists, but with Calvinists, Catholics, and I suspect it would apply to all of us at some level. None of us have the "correct" theological system. As Peter Kreeft wrote, we'll all have to go before God and admit we were wrong, so it might be a good idea to start practicing now.

Socrates

June 16th 2003, 04:17 AM

Today @ 05:50 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=124222#post124222)
Jezz:

Possibly. But did creeds always confine themselves to the key points where orthodoxy was being attacked? This might be true, but I'm by no means certain that this is the case (perhaps you could clarify).

Simple. The Nicene Creed was primarily designed to combat the Arian heresy (you know, denying the deity of Christ, like your favorite commentators on Genesis do/did?). So the Creed had statements that Christ was "true God from true God, begotten not made", addressing the Arian claim that Christ was not the true God and was a created being.

Note also, the Creed didn't mention the inerrancy of Scripture, because once again this was assumed by both sides. I.e. both Orthodox and heretic tried to derive their doctrines based on an authoritative Bible, but the Orthodox demonstrated that the heretics were twisting it. But now the liberals, wrenching the creed from its context, might claim that inerrancy of Scripture isn't important because it was not mentioned.

A minor nit: I didn't understand why you put "sic" in there. "we fallible humans" is a valid way to write "we humans who are fallible".

No, it should have been "us", because of the grammar of the sentence. The rule to work out which is correct out of I/me or we/us is to see which is correct in isolation. Your sentence was "... but so long as they recognise that this evidence (like their other evidence) is subject to misinterpretation by we [sic] fallible humans." So let's remove the "fallible humans" and consider what would happen if the 1st person plural pronoun ended the sentence. It would be correct to say "misinterpretation by us," not "misinterpretation by we." The words "fallible humans" change nothing, so the word "us" belongs in your sentence.

Similarly, many unfortunate products of the "away-with-grammar" godless public school systems mix up I/me. The rule is the same -- remove everything else conjoined to it and see which follows. E.g.

1. "Me and my mate went to the pub;" or
2. "My mate and I went to the pub."

2 is correct, because we would say "I went to the pub," not "Me went to the pub."

But what about
1. "My wife dropped my son and me off at the game;" or
2 "My wife dropped my son and I off at the game."

Here, 1 is correct, because we would say "My wife dropped me off at the game," not "My wife dropped I off at the game."

This is in direct contradiction to the AiG article on the raqiya', which claims that even the ancient readers of Genesis may have thought that raqiya' implied a solid expanse.

No, the whole point was that it was a word for expanse that was equivocal and not dependent on any views of the human authors. Similarly, they may well have believed that blood was homogeneous rather than colloidal, but this is not in the word for blood itself. So saying "the sky is blue" or "blood is red" is correct regardless of what views they had of these things. The words describe the phenomenological aspects understandable to everyone.

I don't think that's a valid interpretation of that passage in 2 Timothy. Firstly, the passage says nothing about fully comprehending everything in the Scripture - scripture can be useful for teaching even if not fully understood.

But Scripture cannot be useful for anything unless people could understand it, not wait for Endarkenment god-haters and the Kabbalists (the lunatic fringe of Jewish exegetes, much like Rapture date-setters today) to tell us what Gos really meant.

Secondly, it seems that the focus on teaching is for equipping people for doing "every good work" - not for understanding everything in the cosmos. So long as any mis-comprehension does not interfere with your ability to use it for this purpose, it does not contradict with this passage.

Not at all. The whole Scripture is inspired, so whatever it teaches upon is without error. Scripture does not make distinctions between matters of faith and matters of history -- they are closely connected. E.g. the bodily/physical Resurrection is a fact of history as well as a foundational article for the Christian faith. The 4th Commandment is based on the historical fact of the Creation Week.

Thirdly, it contradicts the idea of "progressive revelation". There are parts in the OT that are not completely understood without the NT (eg, the cryptic Trinitarian references in the OT that don't make sense until the Trinity concept is fully revealed in the NT). As this example shows, things in Scripture are not always fully understood by the original audience - and possibly not even by the original (human) author. The Scriptures that Paul was talking about in his letter to Timothy would have referred to the OT Scriptures only, as the NT canon hadn't been formed yet.

Not at all. Most of the NT was written by then. This was one of Paul's last letters, and in 1 Timothy he cited Luke as Scripture.

So therefore, when Paul wrote that letter there were crucial bits of the puzzle missing from Scripture that meant one could not rely on Scripture alone for the understanding.

Progressive revelation is hardly news to me or any YECs. But along with that is the notion that the canon is now complete, so that Scripture is now sufficient. There is also a huge difference between the NT fully revealing by expanding upon the OT and evolutionary teaching contradicting the previous understanding.

The AiG article on the topic allows for the opposite to what you claimed in the last sentence: "Perhaps the ancient readers of this text did envision a solid dome with an ocean above it, but if so, they read things into the inspired and equivocal language of the text every bit as much as Seely or I have." It seems that the AiG author accepts that the original Hebrew readers may have read raqiya' as meaning a solid expanse - even well before Aristotlian influence or the LXX translation. However, it is also quite clear that the author feels that even if true, it doesn't matter - it just means that the original Hebrew readers were reading their own meaning into the text that wasn't there, just as we sometimes (often? :smile:) do today.

The author is saying that this was only a possibility which was not proven, and this subtext is not in the actual word itself.

1. Is a misunderstanding over the duration of the days in Genesis really an example of Hell prevailing against the Church? I argued in my response to Sher that it is not.

I would suggest that it could be. After all, if nearly all Godly commentators such as the Church Fathers and Reformers interpreted the days straightforwardly, and it took Kabbalists and Endarknment philosophers to say otherwise, then the Church was unguided for most of its history.

2. The idea of a solid dome prevailed from a very early time right up until ~Galileo.

Then show that this was actually an issue with the Church. Like the alleged perfection of the sun and moon and geocentrism, this was an outside idea imposed upon Scripture.

Even if you accept that it was only the LXX translators that got it wrong, it was still about 1500 years that most godly scholars misunderstood it for. If we allow for the possibility that even the original audience misunderstood it (as the AiG article allows for), then it was much longer (about 2800 years, I think). If YEC is incorrect, this is no more an example of hell prevailing against the Church than the faulty solid-dome belief (more examples, and more serious ones at that, are give below).

Actually, this passage was hardly ever discussed, unlike Creation Week, which had numerous orthodox commentaries without single one getting the idea of long creation days.

3. ... I have a couple of other examples of more serious cases of godly men being wrong about Biblical interpretations for thousands of years. These are even more serious than any mix-up over creation or solid skies, because they deal with moral issues. Assuming you are not Catholic (which is a fair bet if you believe in a 6000-year-old Earth, but even if you are nominally Catholic the following may apply to you!), then presumably you think that the Bible does not teach that contraception is immoral.
Yet this is the belief that most godly men held for most of the time since Christ up until about 1930 - nearly 2000 years.

Well, since life begins at conception (fertilization), any control method which has the aim of preventing implantation is wrong, because it destroys a new human life. This definitely rules out the IUD and 'morning after' pill. And even many 'contraceptive' pills that have a back-up effect of hindering implantation are wrong, because there is a definite chance that an actual embryo could be destroyed as a direct result of using this.

But to argue your case, you would need to present actual exegetical arguments, not merely people's opinions. That's the point of my argument, not that majority opinion in Christendom accepted the plain meaning of Genesis, but the majority of Godly knowledgeable exegetes interpreted it that way. You have yet to provide a single godly interpreter who saw long ages in this passage before the perceived need to harmonize with Endarkenment old-age ideas.

Similarly, if you believe that the Bible allows women's ordination.

It doesn't. The so-called biblical feminist movement resorts to the same sort of Scripture-twisting that the anti-YECs do, and for the same reason -- making worldly fashions authoritative over the Bible.

Or papal infallibility, etc...

It doesn't -- this was an example of a bad tradition, which never had any basis in Scripture. Here the Roman church explicitly denied Sola Scriptura -- which long-agers are doing now. And this was never a part of Eastern Orthodox tradition.

It's not that I don't think x-thousand-year-traditions shouldn't be taken seriously. If we come up with a new interpretation that is in contradiction to an x- thousand-year-tradition, we should certainly check and double-check that our new interpretation isn't the one in error. However, I think it is important to recognise that even an x- thousand-year-tradition is still a tradition of fallible humans, and still prone to error (something that the Catholics seem to forget).

The Catholic error is to deny the sufficiency of Scripture. But the onus is still on those who propose novel interpretations of Scripture itself.

Sher

June 16th 2003, 04:47 AM

Jezz,

Once I start posting in a thread, I usually see it through to its conclusion. It's just unlikely that I will return to the forum often or post in other threads. That's the answer I expected. Here's a response I prepared earlier...

Oh … and I do so hate being predictable … :wink:

The typical slippery-slope argument is something like "if we don't believe Adam existed as a real person and was sinless before the fall, then that casts doubt on the necessity of Christ's sacrifice, which is the underpinning of Christianity." This is the argument as I saw it on AiG, where the gave an example of an apostate who apparently fell down this slope. I personally don't put much stock in this argument. I regard this as a non-sequitur. We don't need to know that Adam was sinless in order to know that we are sinful and we need a Saviour.

Well, that wasn’t my argument …

(And I disagree … if one believes that parts of the Bible are myth, it DOES cast doubts … look at several of those who have fallen away, yet keep searching, in Rel. 101 … they keep asking about this and that “contradiction” … and they are generally to a man admitting that it would be damaging to the validity of Christianity. Ever ask yourself what they are really doing here?)

… but don’t let me get in the way of a good telling … carry on …

Besides, there is more than one slipperly slope. For every person you can find who started to doubt the resurrection because they weren't a YEC (I know there is one example on AiG), I can find another person who started to doubt because they were YEC and eventually couldn't reconcile that belief. Many of these turn into the biggest oppressors of Christianity - there are a couple of obvious examples I could point to in the Rel 101 forum (in fact, of the "fundaliteralist atheist" apostates we have on Rel 101, it is my impression that most of them were YEC when they were Christian).

Yet, how do we prove that this was the reason for their “apostasy” and not something else (or a combination of several things)? I really didn’t say that it was the slippery slope … but that it was the pinnacle on a slippery slope … the top of one. If it were shorn up, that point would not be accidentally traversed. Belief in evolution, even theistic evolution, does harm ones outlook on the Bible … whether to take it as Truth.

And on the other hand, I know Christians who believe the entire creation story is a myth and make little-to-no attempt to try and harmonise it with scientific observation. This is personally a view that I cannot accept, yet their faith in Christ and the necessary and sufficient nature of the crucifixion and resurrection is still strong despite this view of Genesis.

Their faith may be “strong” to your observance, but they are not mature Christians … I’m sorry to be blunt here.

People who lose their faith because they can't resolve the creation account, in my opinion, simply didn't have a strong enough faith to begin with. It was built on sand. I think it has little or nothing to do with holding or not holding a YEC view.

That’s not necessarily true. They can be so discouraged by college professors that preach logical reasons that God doesn’t exist, scientific reasons that say God is a liar, and indoctrinated into a humanistic mindset by peer pressure. Some of the strongest people can still be mislead and herded by majority … told that they are the ones in the wrong … that their prior “uneducated” peers didn’t know any better … that these new “friends” of theirs, these “highly educated” people that they are now with, are too “smart” to fall for that “myth”.

Doesn’t sound familiar? Search the Biology section for the topic regarding (in part) “highly educated people” … where there have been assertions made that people move away from the “myth” when they receive more education … a fairy tale akin to claims that Creation Scientist’s publications don’t count because they aren’t “peer reviewed” … which they equivocate to mean evolutionary “peers”.

Remember that missionaries always translate the NT first, and often won't even bother translating most of the OT until much later (if at all). Is the faith of the people they are witnessing to in trouble because they don't have access to Genesis (and hence to the fact that God created the universe in 6 days)? I don't think so. As long as you 1. accept the need for a saviour, and 2. accept Christ as that Saviour, then that's all you have to do. It's called Christianity, not Genesisianty.

What? What does this have to do with anything we are discussing? Besides the fact that you miss that in the NT, Luke 13:14, Jesus spoke of the observation of the Sabbath in relation to the rest of the week:But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, "There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day." If missionaries aren’t preaching this as an observance of Creation week, shame on them!

And that is NOT the only thing necessary, I’m sorry. That is the only thing necessary to be a Christian, yes … but only an immature Christian … not a mature one, as outlined in Hebrews 5:12-14:For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Also the response that I expected. There might be some truth in that.
It is, of course, worth noting that the creeds all mention that the Father created the heavens and the earth. But doesn't mention that He made them in 6 days. It would have been a simple addition, if it was important enough.

I’m sorry but that is simply, and erroneously, begging the question.

Technically, everything is open to interpretation by Christians. Understanding without interpretation is impossible.

Not really … some things are straightforward fundamentals. There are secondary issues that are interpreted … but the basic essentials are not open for interpretation … and I don’t personally view Creation as a secondary issue … (how and when one is baptized, yes, but not Creation)

What you mean to say, I think, is that there are some things that, unless you interpret them a certain way, you won't be a Christian. With that I agree, but I don't think YEC is one of those.

No … I said what I meant … although there ARE some things that one has to accept as truth (not interpret) to be considered a Christian … just like one has to have Scots heritage and/or have lived in Scotland to be a true Scot … there is no fallacy there. (I believe Dee Dee said, “Going into a doughnut shop doesn’t make you a policeman”)

Someone’s Christianity isn’t determined by their belief (or lack of belief) in a “young” Earth (as much as I abhor that label) … However, I do think they cannot be considered a mature Christian without coming to grips with the truth of Genesis Creation.

I'm not sure of the passages that you are referring to, but in my interpretation there wouldn't be a contradiction between Moses or Christ or anyone referring to the creation week as a period of 7x24-hour-days. I tried to explain this with my twin trip example. My response has two aspects. Firstly, I certainly admit that parts of my interpretation of the creation account relies somewhat on science. However, there are large parts that do not. Please note that in my initial post, the majority of it did not mention science (other than the relativistic concept of a "frame of reference", which is generally accepted by YECers as well). I used biblical evidence to try and show that the frame of reference used for the creation account was probably not the Earth (given that the Earth was apparently not there for the entire 7-day period). As I noted in that post, this in itself does not prove that the Earth is older than 6000 years, but (if accurate) it does prove that Genesis is not inconsistent with an Earth that is older than 6000 years.

I believe I’ve covered already why I think your reasoning is wrong there … Biblically and otherwise.

Secondly, I'll note that the Scriptures, while being the ultimate authority, do not exist in a vacuum. Interpretation of Scriptures always relies on information other than that contained in the Scriptures themselves. You need to know linguistics, social context, etc in order to understand anything contained therein - without this information, there would be no interpretation and the Scriptures would just be scribbles on pieces of paper. So it is always necessary to bring "outside knowledge" to the table when interpreting Scripture - I don't see why science should be excluded (eg, we can use science to show that the darkness at Jesus' death was not a normal eclipse).

Of course … but the linquistics … and allowing scripture to interpret scripture … give us this truth. And I’ve also said that science shouldn’t be excluded … so you are preaching to the choir here. What I said was it shouldn’t have final authority in understanding.

I understood what you meant, and I was not offended.

:lol: That’s good … because I’ve used it again.

Oh, I understand it perfectly. It's called sinful human nature. If one can undermine the authority of the Bible in any area, then one is free to substitute one's own authority for any of the parts that one does not agree with. Especially handy for some of the more pesky moral teachings in the Bible.

Yup … exactly.

I’ve snipped the rest because we would be rehashing previous sections.

Sher

Socrates

June 16th 2003, 05:14 AM

Today @ 07:47 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=124359#post124359)
Sher, replying to:

Jezz: Remember that missionaries always translate the NT first, and often won't even bother translating most of the OT until much later (if at all). Is the faith of the people they are witnessing to in trouble because they don't have access to Genesis (and hence to the fact that God created the universe in 6 days)? I don't think so. As long as you 1. accept the need for a saviour, and 2. accept Christ as that Saviour, then that's all you have to do. It's called Christianity, not Genesisianty.

What? What does this have to do with anything we are discussing? Besides the fact that you miss that in the NT, Luke 13:14, Jesus spoke of the observation of the Sabbath in relation to the rest of the week:

Scripture Verse: But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, "There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day."

If missionaries aren’t preaching this as an observance of Creation week, shame on them!

Go Sher! :thumb:

Another thing, so much missionary activity of the type Jezz described is counterproductive. Many so-called conversions are nothing of the sort, because the "converts" merely add Jesus to a list of other gods. The New Tribes Mission are far more successful because (humanly speaking--I realize that conversion is the Holy Spirit's doing) they put the Gospel in its proper Scriptural perspective, i.e. the Biblical history starting with Genesis. Only in this framework of Creation and Fall, and the idea of blood sacrifice for sin, does the substitutionary atonement of Christ make coherent sense -- see www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0123new_tribes.asp In fact, they are doing what Paul did in Athens -- first preach that there is one Creator God (Acts 17). And John started his gospel by showing that Jesus is God and Creator, alluding to Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning ...".

Furthermore, the common altar call also has much to answer for, preaching about Jesus as the answer to one's problems, and basing so much on emotional appeals to "make a decision". But the so-called converts have an insufficient idea about the fact that Christ came to save us from our sins, and this requires the foundation in Genesis. A Jamaican pastor said he didn't even want any more American missionaries. This is because they have rallies and report loads of converts, but then a few weeks later these so-called converts are nowhere to be found in churches or discipling classes. But this pastor realizes that true and thus lasting converts are more likely to be produced if the Gospel has a secure biblical foundation rather than taught in isolation -- see www.answersingenesis.org/australia/newsletters/pn-aus_10-2000.asp.

Without Genesis, it's meaningless to say that Jesus died for our sins, because Genesis is the foundation for the idea of sin as disobedience to God and falling short of His glory.

wienerdog

June 16th 2003, 01:36 PM

Jezz: And on the other hand, I know Christians who believe the entire creation story is a myth and make little-to-no attempt to try and harmonise it with scientific observation. This is personally a view that I cannot accept, yet their faith in Christ and the necessary and sufficient nature of the crucifixion and resurrection is still strong despite this view of Genesis. ”

Sher: Their faith may be “strong” to your observance, but they are not mature Christians … I’m sorry to be blunt here.
I disagree with this as well. C. S. Lewis believed the creation account was a divine myth, but I can't consider him immature in his walk with Christ. I would have difficulty taking anyone seriously who did think so (check this out: http://www.balaams-ass.com/journal/homemake/cslewis.htm). B. B. Warfield accepted evolution, but he was far from being an immature Christian.

The problem here is that anyone can say that someone is not a mature Christian until they agree with your theology and interpretation. A Calvinist could say that anyone who is not a Calvinist is not a mature Christian, by nature of not agreeing with them. Maturity is about the closeness of our walk with Jesus, not about our systematic theologies.

Jezz

June 17th 2003, 11:37 AM

Hey Soc,

Socrates:
Simple. The Nicene Creed was primarily designed to combat the Arian heresy (you know, denying the deity of Christ, like your favorite commentators on Genesis do/did?). So the Creed had statements that Christ was "true God from true God, begotten not made", addressing the Arian claim that Christ was not the true God and was a created being.

Note also, the Creed didn't mention the inerrancy of Scripture, because once again this was assumed by both sides. I.e. both Orthodox and heretic tried to derive their doctrines based on an authoritative Bible, but the Orthodox demonstrated that the heretics were twisting it. But now the liberals, wrenching the creed from its context, might claim that inerrancy of Scripture isn't important because it was not mentioned.
Neither JP Holding nor Glenn Miller seem to think that inerrancy is important. Both happen to believe in inerrancy, but they don't consider it necessary to faith. I am of the same opinion.

Holding writes (http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_IHI.html):

In contrast, the Bible's messages are mostly straightforward and simple. The Bible has two primary components, OT and NT, that may be summarized easily in a few words. Jesus and the Jews of His time and before summarized the OT with the two commands to love God with all that was in you, and love your neighbor as yourself. The NT, too, may be summarized with just a few words - notably those of John 3:16, although certainly there are other good candidates.

As noted earlier, neither the Bible nor belief in its inerrancy is required to become a Christian. All that is needed is acceptance of these few words and what they represent; the rest is equivalent, spiritually speaking, of enforcement codes - how to live the life that God has called you to. Thus there is no need for inerrant copies when the basic message, all that is essentially needed, is so crystal-clear.

No, it should have been "us"...[snip]
So in short, what you are saying is that the phrase "we fallible humans" was the object of a preposition ("by") which takes the accusative, and thus I should have used the accusative form of the 1st person plural pronoun ("us") instead of the nominative ("we"). Why didn't you just say so? :wink:

While I never learned English grammar (and I did go to a private school for my last two years!), I have learned 4 foreign languages to varying levels of proficiency so I know a little about grammar...

No, the whole point was that it was a word for expanse that was equivocal and not dependent on any views of the human authors. Similarly, they may well have believed that blood was homogeneous rather than colloidal, but this is not in the word for blood itself. So saying "the sky is blue" or "blood is red" is correct regardless of what views they had of these things. The words describe the phenomenological aspects understandable to everyone.
And likewise, my argument re: the creation week is that the Bible is equivocal on the FoR that the days were measured in and not dependent on any views of the human authors. Thus your original complaint "the original audience would not have understood it" does not stand.

But Scripture cannot be useful for anything unless people could understand it, not wait for Endarkenment god-haters and the Kabbalists (the lunatic fringe of Jewish exegetes, much like Rapture date-setters today) to tell us what Gos really meant.
It's not quite that black-and-white. It is not necessary to have a complete understanding of Scripture in order for it to be useful for something.

It is necessary to understand the following things about the opening chapters of Genesis:
1. God created the universe and everything in it.
2. God rested on the 7th day (from whence we get our Sabbath).
3. God created humankind especially to have a relationship with Him.
4. God created humankind sinless, but with the free will to allow them to sin.
5. Humankind sinned.
6. The consequences of sinning was suffering and death.

Various people believe they were six days measured on Earth, six days as measured in some other reference frame, six long epochs, or six mythical days. But these details don't really matter. The foundations of Christianity aren't in these details - they are in the 5 points outlined above.

Not at all. The whole Scripture is inspired, so whatever it teaches upon is without error. Scripture does not make distinctions between matters of faith and matters of history -- they are closely connected. E.g. the bodily/physical Resurrection is a fact of history as well as a foundational article for the Christian faith. The 4th Commandment is based on the historical fact of the Creation Week.
Not all matters of history in the Bible are crucial to faith. In fact, I'd argue that most of them aren't. The apparent accuracy of the historical events recorded in the Bible give me a good reason to trust what the Bible has to say on matters of faith and morality, but I'm not going to give up on Christianity if it has a few historical errors (though, as I stated earlier, I do not believe it has any). Would you?

As for the 4th commandment being based on the Creation week - well, I'm Lutheran so we group the commandments slightly differently anyway... for us that's the 3rd commandment. :smile:

Anyway, as I already noted, in the interpretation I was proposing does not contradict with a literal 6-day creation, but I might start a new thread on that because I note that Sher is still sticking on that point too and I think to address it here it would get lost in the noise of the rest of the post.

Not at all. Most of the NT was written by then. This was one of Paul's last letters, and in 1 Timothy he cited Luke as Scripture.
I'm sure that most of the NT was written, but do we have any evidence that Paul considered any of it Scripture (apart from Luke)?

Progressive revelation is hardly news to me or any YECs. But along with that is the notion that the canon is now complete, so that Scripture is now sufficient. There is also a huge difference between the NT fully revealing by expanding upon the OT and evolutionary teaching contradicting the previous understanding.
True enough.

The author is saying that this was only a possibility which was not proven, and this subtext is not in the actual word itself.
I agree with that assessment. The summary of the author's argument is:

1. The Bible is equivocal enough that it could be legitmately interpreted to support a solid or non-solid sky.
2. It is possible that the original audience interpreted the Bible to mean that it had a solid sky (though this hasn't really been proven one way or the other).
3. The truth or otherwise of 2 doesn't matter, because the Bible can also be legitimately interpreted to support a non-solid sky.

Do you agree with this summary?

I would suggest that it could be. After all, if nearly all Godly commentators such as the Church Fathers and Reformers interpreted the days straightforwardly, and it took Kabbalists and Endarknment philosophers to say otherwise, then the Church was unguided for most of its history.
I have to strongly disagree.

Firstly, I would have to note that the word "prevail", to me at least, carries with it a connotation of "having the final victory". It's not just a matter of how long the Church gets things wrong, but 1. how serious was the error, and 2. did the Church get it right (prevail) in the end?

The Church Fathers and Reformers were mistaken about a good many things - they were human, after all. If you agree with the modern (non-Catholic) position on contraception (see below), then you'd realise this. The fact that we eventually came up with the correct interpretation of the contraception passage (even after 1800+ years of getting it wrong) proves that the gates of hell didn't prevail against the Church. And also, the contraception error was not a serious one (as it was erring on the side of caution) until the 20th century (by which time it was corrected).

Then show that this was actually an issue with the Church. Like the alleged perfection of the sun and moon and geocentrism, this was an outside idea imposed upon Scripture.
With regard to the first sentence, the one reference that I found on the issue mentioned that Galileo was to afraid to mention these findings for fear of Church reprisals. As a result he was actually beaten to the punch by a later astronomer. There may or may not be stronger evidence that the Church took it seriously, but now that I have my new favourite precedent case (contraception), I won't bother looking for them.

Regarding your second sentence, I propose that the same may be true of YEC.

Actually, this passage was hardly ever discussed, unlike Creation Week, which had numerous orthodox commentaries without single one getting the idea of long creation days.
Does the frequency of a passage's discussion have any bearing on the argument? Isn't all Scripture God-breathed and useful for teaching? :wink:

Besides, I've now got another new favourite example of "compromise" to modern science - contraception - which was the topic of much discussion through the ages.

Well, since life begins at conception (fertilization), any control method which has the aim of preventing implantation is wrong, because it destroys a new human life. This definitely rules out the IUD and 'morning after' pill. And even many 'contraceptive' pills that have a back-up effect of hindering implantation are wrong, because there is a definite chance that an actual embryo could be destroyed as a direct result of using this.
Well, technically, any form of birth control that does not prevent conception is not contraception, by definition. I agree with the argument you just produced against those methods of birth control which are abortive in nature, rather than contraceptive.

But the Catholic position (and the position of all churches prior to 1930) was that all forms of contraception were wrong - even the withdrawal method - simply because "they wasted the man's seed". The Reformers reaffirmed this position. This was based on an interpretation of Genesis 38:8-10, plus about 1800 years or so of tradition. But, common opinion now is that the position was incorrect, and Onan was not punished for the simple "wasting of seed", but rather the deliberate and repeated failure to produce an heir for Tamar. The only reason the Catholic church still persist with with the old view (and the only church, AFAIK, that still does) is because of their dogmatic adherence to papal infallibility...

Interestingly, I believe that the misinterpretation was due, in large part, to a limited understanding of the biology of reproduction. It was thought that to waste the man's seed was akin to murder. As biological understanding improved, so did our understanding of the passage in question.

But to argue your case, you would need to present actual exegetical arguments, not merely people's opinions.
That's what I tried to do from the start! Unfortunately we've been sucked down this meta-argument, hopefully I'll get back to the real argument later.

That's the point of my argument, not that majority opinion in Christendom accepted the plain meaning of Genesis, but the majority of Godly knowledgeable exegetes interpreted it that way. You have yet to provide a single godly interpreter who saw long ages in this passage before the perceived need to harmonize with Endarkenment old-age ideas.
And until the advent of modern biology, there was not a single godly interpreter who thought that the Bible permitted contraception (as opposed to abortive birth control methods).

Do you believe in that the Bible permits contraceptive (ie non-abortive) birth control methods? Because this interpretation is relatively new (less than 100 years as opposed to ~1800 years) and only came about after the advent of modern biology. Was this new exegesis merely a "compromise" to science? Or does the Biblical exegesis that supports it stand on its own?

That's the point of my argument - that your point is invalid. :smile: In its present form, it is simply a more watered-down ad-hominem. It shouldn't matter who did the exegesis that I put forward in support of an old Earth (and by "old", I mean older than 6000 years - I just thought I'd point that out so that you can't use the "But I do believe in an old Earth - 6000 years is old, after all" quip. :wink:). What matters is whether or not the exegesis stands by itself. Of course, as noted below, it is indeed the burden of the one breaking with the well-established tradition to prove their case, which gets back to the Biblical arguments I was making. Unfortunately, these seem to have gotten lost in the meta-argument we are having at the moment about fallibility, tradition and interpretations, etc, so I think it will be fruitful to start a new thread to get back to these issues. I might do this tomorrow, as it is getting late (and I've already run out of time to respond to Sher... :frown:)

It doesn't. The so-called biblical feminist movement resorts to the same sort of Scripture-twisting that the anti-YECs do, and for the same reason -- making worldly fashions authoritative over the Bible.
I tend to agree with you on this issue, though I'm less convinced either way. But because you don't believe in women's ordination, this is no longer relevant to this thread (or this forum), so I won't pursue it further with you. I'd be interested to hear Sher's opinion on this point, though...

It doesn't -- this was an example of a bad tradition, which never had any basis in Scripture. Here the Roman church explicitly denied Sola Scriptura -- which long-agers are doing now. And this was never a part of Eastern Orthodox tradition.
Funnily enough, they do actually try and find a scriptural basis for their doctrine that Scripture is not the ultimate authority, which is kind-of a self-defeating effort.

The Catholic error is to deny the sufficiency of Scripture. But the onus is still on those who propose novel interpretations of Scripture itself.
I completely agree! The onus is indeed on the one who wants to break with tradition. That's what I meant when I said that tradition is not to be taken lightly. However, what I am also trying to point out is that to say that the tradition of the uninspired Church Fathers and Reformers is infallible (for example, in a matter such as YEC) is to make the same error that the Catholics make.