Young Earth bigotry?

[Diggo23]

This is a repeat of a thread i began on another site that i would like to start here.

I am posting this thread in order to alert Christians to an alarming trend in Christendom that pastor Jack Hayford referred to as "Young Earth bigotry". This represents a certain part of the Christian community that is dividing and backbiting over a doctrine that is not central to the scriptures. The position held by these segments of the christian community is what is known as young earth creationism. It is the belief that the days of creation MUST be held as 24hr periods (though the Hebrew word for 'day' is far more broader in its usage then how the English is normally taken) and the Earth/universe must be held as being no more then a ridiculous 10,000yrs old. Anyone who dares hold to anything outside these bounds is labelled a Bible compromiser or a heretic.

The christian church as a whole down through the centuries has never held this issue to be a central doctrine that is a matter of orthodoxy. Going straight to the Bible we see precisely why this doctrine is peripheral to it's over all message. NOWHERE in the Bible is there clear teaching as to the age of the Earth or the universe - it doesn't even address it!! - and NOWHERE in the Bible is this connected to any issue that will affect your salvation. The Bible is a book of salvation and was never intended to give dates on natural phenomena, that is why God has given us science and his revelation in the natural order. Too label another Christian as a Bible compromiser or a heretic based on one's beliefs as to the length of creation days/age of earth is slander and not consistent with Christian ethic.

What inspired me to raise such an issue was the response that "Charisma" magazine recieved from many "christians" who sent venemous mail to the editor for daring to have Hugh Ross on the front cover. Hugh Ross is an ardent defender of Biblical innerrancy and his ministry holds the approval of some of the most respected Christian apologists in Christendom: Gleason Archer, Norman Geisler, J P Moreland, R C Sproul, Walter Kaiser, William Lane Craig and Dallas Willard etc. This man is being persecuted purely for a belief in a literal 6 long periods of time creation scenario. What is more shocking is the venemous letter written by Answers in Genesis attacking Charisma for having him on their cover, this letter can be read on their website. Christians everywhere need to grow up and stop the pharisee like backbiting that is threatning to split churches everywhere.

For an insight into this issue go to http://www.reasons.org/resources/mu...ndex.shtml?main and listen to the real audio file entitled Jack Hayford introduces Hugh Ross. I have not scene a controversy in Christendom cause so much strife and attack as what this absurd young earth nonsense has caused! It is not my purpose to paint all young earthers with the one brush but the unchristian behaviour reported in this post has all come from that particular segment. Groups such as Answers In Genesis and Institute for Creation Research and Kent Hovind etc have been found guilty!
Any feedback on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

PS The Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary has posted an excellent article addressing this issue at http://www.wts.edu/news/creation.html

Below is a statement from the Internation Council on Biblical Inerrancy that is held to by Hugh Ross and his organisation Reasons To Believe reasons.org

International Council on Biblical Inerrancy Statements
We affirm that any preunderstandings which the interpreter brings to Scripture should be in harmony with scriptural teaching and subject to correction by it.
We deny that Scripture should be required to fit alien preunderstandings, inconsistent with itself, such as naturalism, evolutionism, scientism, secular humanism, and relativism.
We affirm that since God is the author of all truth, all truths, biblical and extrabiblical, are consistent and cohere, and that the Bible speaks truth when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else. We further affirm that in some cases extrabiblical data have value for clarifying what Scripture teaches, and for prompting correction of faulty interpretations.
We deny that extrabiblical views ever disprove the teaching of Scripture or hold priority over it.
We affirm the harmony of special with general revelation and therefore of biblical teaching with the facts of nature.
We deny that any genuine scientific facts are inconsistent with the true meaning of any passage of Scripture.
We affirm that Genesis 1-11 is factual, as is the rest of the book.
We deny that the teachings of Genesis 1-11 are mythical and that scientific hypotheses about earth history or the origin of humanity may be invoked to overthrow what Scripture teaches about creation.


- Damien

[Socrates]

Today @ 07:27 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=163405#post163405)
Diggo23:

This is a repeat of a thread i began on another site that i would like to start here.

I am posting this thread in order to alert Christians to an alarming trend in Christendom that pastor Jack Hayford referred to as "Young Earth bigotry".

Hayford :rofl: Using this hypercharismatic who supports the pro-abortionist and pro-homosexual Wilhelm Klinton, "word of faith" heresy and the modalist heretic Paul Crouch as an authority is enough to shatter Diggo's credibility.

This represents a certain part of the Christian community that is dividing and backbiting over a doctrine that is not central to the scriptures.

Depends what you mean. Of course, it's more an issue of authority -- if you have the Scriptures alone, then 24-hours is the only meaning you'd get for the days of Genesis 1. HALOT is very clear that Genesis 1:5 is defining "day" as 24 hours long.

The position held by these segments of the christian community is what is known as young earth creationism.

YEC was held by nearly all Church Fathers and Reformers.

It is the belief that the days of creation MUST be held as 24hr periods ...

As indeed they must in the specific context of Genesis 1, i.e. with evening/morning and a numeric.

... (though the Hebrew word for 'day' is far more broader in its usage then how the English is normally taken) ...

Piffle. It's only taken as a long period of time in compound forms like beyôm, "in the day", usually an idiom for "when". In Genesis 1, yôm is NOT prefixed by the preposition be.

... and the Earth/universe must be held as being no more then a ridiculous 10,000yrs old.

Then call Augustine, Luther and Calvin "ridiculous" for stating this explicitly.

Anyone who dares hold to anything outside these bounds is labelled a Bible compromiser or a heretic.

Not heretic, but certainly compromiser.

The christian church as a whole down through the centuries has never held this issue to be a central doctrine that is a matter of orthodoxy.

Rather, it was not in dispute. The creeds were mostly negative statements, designed to refute heresies. E.g. the Nicene Creed was largely a rebuttal to Arianism.

Going straight to the Bible we see precisely why this doctrine is peripheral to it's over all message. NOWHERE in the Bible is there clear teaching as to the age of the Earth or the universe - it doesn't even address it!!

It does so, by the teaching of creation in six 24-hour days and the fact that man and women were created "from the beginning of creation". See Jesus and the age of the world (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp#jesus_age).

- and NOWHERE in the Bible is this connected to any issue that will affect your salvation.

The Virginal Conception isn't either, but we should still defend it. And the Gospel message in 1 Corinthians 15 IS connected to the real history that Adam brought real bodily death through sin.

The Bible is a book of salvation and was never intended to give dates on natural phenomena, that is why God has given us science and his

And compromisers confuse this with the interpretations of this natural order with materialistic presuppositions. Conversely, the Bible is propositional revelation.

Too label another Christian as a Bible compromiser or a heretic based on one's beliefs as to the length of creation days/age of earth is slander and not consistent with Christian ethic.

:bawl: Poor baby. It's quite OK for anti-YECs to slander though, isn't it, you hypocrite. Just look at your thread title!

But see also Answering some Hugh Ross supporters (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative12-11-2000.asp) to refute similar bellyaching from squealing Rossites, blind to the failings of their master.

What inspired me to raise such an issue was the response that "Charisma" magazine recieved from many "christians" who sent venemous mail to the editor for daring to have Hugh Ross on the front cover.

Like what?

Hugh Ross is an ardent defender of Biblical innerrancy and his ministry holds the approval of some of the most respected Christian apologists in Christendom: Gleason Archer, Norman Geisler, J P Moreland, R C Sproul, Walter Kaiser, William Lane Craig and Dallas Willard etc.

Guess what? R.C. Sproul withdrew his endorsement. Gleason Archer explicitly defended a global Flood in Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Geisler explicitly argued that God created animals vegetarian, in his reply to Chuck Templeton quoted in Lee Strobel's book A Case for Faith.

This man is being persecuted purely for a belief in a literal 6 long periods of time creation scenario. What is more shocking is the venemous letter written by Answers in Genesis attacking Charisma for having him on their cover, this letter can be read on their website.

Here it is: Shame on Charisma! (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0529charisma.asp) So what precisely in this article are you whinging about?

And of course our latest whinging compromiser thinks it was OK for Ross to slander YECs, aided and abetted by Charismania. E.g. YEC views ‘encourage a form of Gnosticism’, and his earlier comparison of YECs with Galatian Judaizing heretics. And Ross's crass claim, ‘Young-earthers sentimentalize the deaths of nonsoulish animals because it makes them think of their pets.’ Never mind that it undermines Geisler too. Of course, Geisler is inconsistent.

Christians everywhere need to grow up and stop the pharisee like backbiting that is threatning to split churches everywhere.

Oh, but like most anti-YEC bigots, it's OK to backbite AGAINST YECs. There is one rule for them and another for us.

It is not my purpose to paint all young earthers with the one brush but the unchristian behaviour reported in this post has all come from that particular segment.

I'm just touched by your generosity.

Groups such as Answers In Genesis and Institute for Creation Research and Kent Hovind etc have been found guilty!

Where is the jury? :huh:

Any feedback on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Be careful for what you wish for -- you might get it!!

PS The Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary has posted an excellent article addressing this issue at http://www.wts.edu/news/creation.html

Yet, the Westminster confession was explicit in section 4:1:

It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good.

See also this detailed article on the views of the Church Fathers and the Westminster Divines, Holding Fast to Creation (http://capo.org/creationstudies.html).

Below is a statement from the Internation Council on Biblical Inerrancy that is held to by Hugh Ross and his organisation Reasons To Believe
Guess what? I have FREQUENTLY appealed to this myself.

We deny that the teachings of Genesis 1-11 are mythical and that scientific hypotheses about earth history or the origin of humanity may be invoked to overthrow what Scripture teaches about creation.

Yet that's what old-earthers do!!

[Sher]

Today @ 04:27 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=163405#post163405)
Diggo23:

This is a repeat of a thread i began on another site that i would like to start here.

I am posting this thread in order to alert Christians to an alarming trend in Christendom that pastor Jack Hayford referred to as "Young Earth bigotry". This represents a certain part of the Christian community that is dividing and backbiting over a doctrine that is not central to the scriptures.

What doctrines do you hold as central to scriptures? Do you read the Bible? Think for yourself? Or are you allowing someone to spoonfeed you this nonsense unchecked?

2 Tim 3:16-17 tells us that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." If you break scripture in Genesis 1-11, the very foundations, refered back to as truth by Jesus Himself, where does the next denial come? The Virgin Conception? The Resurrection? The very deity of Christ?

The position held by these segments of the christian community is what is known as young earth creationism.

Also known, and better defined, as Biblical Creationism ... because it is straight from scripture.

It is the belief that the days of creation MUST be held as 24hr periods ...

It is actually the agreement that Scripture must remain unbroken ... that Scripture tells us very clearly that the days are literal days ... by grammar, by construct, by context.

... (though the Hebrew word for 'day' is far more broader in its usage then how the English is normally taken)

It is no broader ... "in my father's day" ... "on this day" ... etc. It is the context that determines the meaning ... not the compromises to humanistic science. The context of Genesis demands the proper understanding of literal days ... by cardinal and ordinal numbers, usage of "morning and evening", comparison by Jesus to the work week, etc.

... and the Earth/universe must be held as being no more then a ridiculous 10,000yrs old.

Actually it is held to the lineage of Christ, which outlines it closer to 6,000 years old, give a bit. But I suppose one who denies the foundations, also denies the genealogy of our Saviour.

Anyone who dares hold to anything outside these bounds is labelled a Bible compromiser or a heretic.

Rightly so ... it is a compromise and it is heretical ... if the shoe fits, they must wear it.

The christian church as a whole down through the centuries has never held this issue to be a central doctrine that is a matter of orthodoxy.

Oh ... please do prove this Revisionist history :ahem:

Going straight to the Bible we see precisely why this doctrine is peripheral to it's over all message. NOWHERE in the Bible is there clear teaching as to the age of the Earth or the universe - it doesn't even address it!!

Beginning in Genesis 1, dear ... "In the Beginning God ..."? Remember those verses from Sunday School ... time to pick your Bible up again.

- and NOWHERE in the Bible is this connected to any issue that will affect your salvation.

Not directly itself no ... but once one destroys the foundation, how will the building stand? Salvation cannot find a firm footing when one white ants the foundation away. It is as the foolish man's house on the sand ... crumbling to dust eventually because there is nothing to hold it there.

The Bible is a book of salvation and was never intended to give dates on natural phenomena, that is why God has given us science and his revelation in the natural order.

The Bible is more than that! It is a compilation of books ... history, science, instruction ... etc. God did give us HIS science ... it is man that twists it and then tries to make the Bible conform ... to millions of years of death and suffering ... not God's vision of "Very Good" creation.

Too label another Christian as a Bible compromiser or a heretic based on one's beliefs as to the length of creation days/age of earth is slander and not consistent with Christian ethic.

It is VERY consistant ... Christian ethic is based on Christ ... who was not the wimp that others evidently are ... WFJ who feel they have to nicey-nice people ... straight to hell.

What inspired me to raise such an issue was the response that "Charisma" magazine recieved from many "christians" who sent venemous mail to the editor for daring to have Hugh Ross on the front cover.

And good for them ... that article needed a strong Christian response ... especially since it had nearly nothing of Christ present in it.

Hugh Ross is an ardent defender of Biblical innerrancy ...

Who doesn't even know the definition of the word!

... and his ministry holds the approval of some of the most respected Christian apologists in Christendom: Gleason Archer, Norman Geisler, J P Moreland, R C Sproul, Walter Kaiser, William Lane Craig and Dallas Willard etc.

Which just goes to prove how far the churches have fallen in their responsiblity to keep ALL Scripture unbroken.

This man is being persecuted purely for a belief in a literal 6 long periods of time creation scenario.

Oh, he has plenty of other things that he does wrong too. See the link I provide below for a whole table of things that Ross denies from Scripture.

What is more shocking is the venemous letter written by Answers in Genesis attacking Charisma for having him on their cover, this letter can be read on their website.

No ... that is not shocking at all. AiG is a fine ministry ... and they were right to hold the light up to the erroneous teachings. And please ... here is the link (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0529charisma.asp) you "forgot" to add ... that will allow the reader to see for themselves how Hugh Ross compromises.

Christians everywhere need to grow up and stop the pharisee like backbiting that is threatning to split churches everywhere.

Yes ... I agree. The churches should go back to Scripture ... and stop believing and supporting the secular world. We are to be IN the world, not OF the world ... and the churches have failed miserably to teach the Truth.

I Jn 2:15 "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

:shersig:

[Sher]

Bwahaha Soc! :lmbo: You must have been posting while I was composing.

I could have saved myself a bit of typing there :highfive:

Good Job :yipee:

Sher

[chickenman]

The Bible is more than that! It is a compilation of books ... history, science, instruction ... etc. God did give us HIS science ... it is man that twists it and then tries to make the Bible conform ... to millions of years of death and suffering ... not God's vision of "Very Good" creation.

mans science includes a lot of things which aren't in the bible but which you no doubt accept, you draw the line at evolution. Its the acceptance of the reliability of methodological naturalism up to the point that it conflicts with a literal interpretation of the bible, and its terrible inconsistent

Chickenman, please read the guidelines for this area ... and the update here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6071).

[Diggo23]

"Depends what you mean. Of course, it's more an issue of authority -- if you have the Scriptures alone, then 24-hours is the only meaning you'd get for the days of Genesis 1. HALOT is very clear that Genesis 1:5 is defining "day" as 24 hours long" The Bible was never written to give an age of the Earth/universe etc and there is plenty of evidence that those "days" should not be taken as 24hrs. The Bible is simply silent on the age of the Earth issue.

"YEC was held by nearly all Church Fathers and Reformers" This is nonsense, there are many quotes that can be marshelled to show that there were a lot of Church Fathers who supported periods of "days" as more then 24yrs. One thing is for sure is that they never made it an issue of orthodoxy. One must remember that the church fathers did not have the insight into God's revelation in nature that we have today.

"As indeed they must in the specific context of Genesis 1, i.e. with evening/morning and a numeric." This is not evidence for 24hrs. The times when the numeral is used with the 24hr day is always in the context of human activity, so we are dealing with diferent contexts. The time when the numeral is used in Hos 6 within the context of divine activity is clearly long periods of time.
Besides this as Hebrew scholar Gleasan Archer points out this isn't a rule of Hebrew grammar anyhow

"Piffle. It's only taken as a long period of time in compound forms like beyôm, "in the day", usually an idiom for "when". In Genesis 1, yôm is NOT prefixed by the preposition be" Again this not a rule of Hebrew grammar so cannot be invoked as proof. This point avoids the fact that due to the language used in Gen 1 the prefix could NOT have been used! So if "day" was intended to be used as a long period of time then the prefix simply was not an option.
Having said this there is one simple proof that puts to rest both of the above quotes. Gen 1 is anthropomorphic in it's language intending to give us a blue print for a work week. Being anthropomorphic language then we should avoid pushing literalism too far. Similar to taking the statements in the Bible that God has a hand or breath too far. Isaiah tells us that God's ways are not our ways and Moses tells us that God's days are not the same as ours also (ps 90 "For a day(yom) unto the Lord is as a thousand years").

"Then call Augustine, Luther and Calvin "ridiculous" for stating this explicitly." Perhaps they did (could u give references?), but these men spoke in a period when we knew very little of God's revelation in nature. Today the evidence speaks loud and clear from general revelation that the universe is NOT 6-10,000 yrs old. And in Augustine's work "A Literal Meaning of Genesis" he clearly states that the "day" in Genesis is to be taken as other then what we normally consider a day. The church fathers never made this a point of contention in any case, collaboratively they didn't state much about the age issue.

"Not heretic, but certainly compromiser." I would call young earth bigotry to be comprimising since they are adding to God's word. Namely they are gleaming from the scriptures something that was never intended to be taught: The age of the Earth!

"It does so, by the teaching of creation in six 24-hour days and the fact that man and women were created "from the beginning of creation". See Jesus and the age of the world." There is excellent Biblical evidence that those days are not to be taken as 24hr periods so having said that then we have no way of calibrating the age of the Earth from the BIble. The age issue isn't stated in the Bible anywhere! Oh and your reference to Mark 10:6 doesn't help the young earth issue one bit since Jesus is referring to the creation of MAN not the natural order. Otherwise this would be an error since man was not made at the beginning of creation but at the end! On the 6th day. This is obvious from the context since Jesus is clearly referring to the beginning of man and the institution of marriage

"The Virginal Conception isn't either, but we should still defend it. And the Gospel message in 1 Corinthians 15 IS connected to the real history that Adam brought real bodily death through sin."
The virginal conception is connected since it is conected with Christ's deity and incarnation! The age issue is not! Oh and 1 Cor 15 says that death came to MAN, it does not say to the created order. A 24 hr interpretation is not going to help this issue anyhow since a over a 72hr period since the first animals were created occurs when Adam fell, and certainly something is going to die somewhere in that time period.

"And compromisers confuse this with the interpretations of this natural order with materialistic presuppositions. Conversely, the Bible is propositional revelation." Materialistic presuppositions are not required to see the absurdity of 10,000yr old Earth! The Bible is not propositional on the age of the Earth issue!

"Poor baby. It's quite OK for anti-YECs to slander though, isn't it, you hypocrite. Just look at your thread title!" This is typical young earth rantings, when they don't have facts they just make more noise! My thread is condemning the action of many YEC ATTITUDES not someone's character in labeling them as a "Bible compromiser".

"But see also Answering some Hugh Ross supporters to refute similar bellyaching from squealing Rossites, blind to the failings of their master" HAHAH someone is getting a little emotional, i will refrain from such immature ramblings.

"Guess what? R.C. Sproul withdrew his endorsement. Gleason Archer explicitly defended a global Flood in Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Geisler explicitly argued that God created animals vegetarian, in his reply to Chuck Templeton quoted in Lee Strobel's book A Case for Faith" RC Sproul withdrew his comments on OEC because of the pressure he was under from YEC. GA does defend a global flood but still upholds an ancient universe. And Geisler may have made such comments but he is still old earth in his orientations, he makes this clear in his book "When Critics Ask".

"And of course our latest whinging compromiser thinks it was OK for Ross to slander YECs, aided and abetted by Charismania. E.g. YEC views ‘encourage a form of Gnosticism’, and his earlier comparison of YECs with Galatian Judaizing heretics. And Ross's crass claim, ‘Young-earthers sentimentalize the deaths of nonsoulish animals because it makes them think of their pets.’ Never mind that it undermines Geisler too. Of course, Geisler is inconsistent" Ross was right though! The apparent age nonsense that YEC carry on about is bordering on heresy! It defiles the very character of God! the God's revelation in nature can't be trusted theory is very similar to gnostic tendencies. And the bit about the pets hahaha, his point there while a bit tongue and cheek is actually quite true.

"Oh, but like most anti-YEC bigots, it's OK to backbite AGAINST YECs. There is one rule for them and another for us" I am backbiting against back biting not against people's character like many YEC do.

"It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good." I don't deny this, they didn't say 24hr days.

"We deny that the teachings of Genesis 1-11 are mythical and that scientific hypotheses about earth history or the origin of humanity may be invoked to overthrow what Scripture teaches about creation." Yet that's what old-earthers do!!" No we are extremely careful to observe the Hebrew rules of grammar and vocabulary and interpret the Bible as a whole. There is nothing wrong with using science to shape your interpretations as long as the historical-grammatical interpretation of the Bible is upheld. YEC freq down plays the God's revelation in nature in order to support their INTERPRETATION of God's word.

I suggest you cool down Socrates, you are getting way to emotional over this issue.

- Damien

[Diggo23]

"What doctrines do you hold as central to scriptures? Do you read the Bible? Think for yourself? Or are you allowing someone to spoonfeed you this nonsense unchecked?

2 Tim 3:16-17 tells us that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." If you break scripture in Genesis 1-11, the very foundations, refered back to as truth by Jesus Himself, where does the next denial come? The Virgin Conception? The Resurrection? The very deity of Christ?" I don't deny any of this! Gen1 should be taken literally! However we need to observe that God's general revelation needs to be considered also. And the most consistent interpretation of Gen1 is NOT the YEC way

"Also known, and better defined, as Biblical Creationism ... because it is straight from scripture." No it is straight from a superficial reading of the KJV of Genesis. If you bother probing further u won't come to this.

"It is actually the agreement that Scripture must remain unbroken ... that Scripture tells us very clearly that the days are literal days ... by grammar, by construct, by context" Taken in context of the whole Bible it does yield a literal day, but not a 24hr day!

"It is no broader ... "in my father's day" ... "on this day" ... etc. It is the context that determines the meaning ... not the compromises to humanistic science. The context of Genesis demands the proper understanding of literal days ... by cardinal and ordinal numbers, usage of "morning and evening", comparison by Jesus to the work week, etc." I have already answered this in the above post.

"Actually it is held to the lineage of Christ, which outlines it closer to 6,000 years old, give a bit. But I suppose one who denies the foundations, also denies the genealogy of our Saviour." No the geneologies were never intended to be counted to get an accurate age for something, that is not it's purpose. I do not deny the foundations, just your interpretation of them.

"Rightly so ... it is a compromise and it is heretical ... if the shoe fits, they must wear it." No it is good commonsense and YEC will one day be done away with just like the flat earth theory.

"Oh ... please do prove this Revisionist history " Show me any place where they fought over the age issue as a matter of orthodoxy!

"Beginning in Genesis 1, dear ... "In the Beginning God ..."? Remember those verses from Sunday School ... time to pick your Bible up again." Those statements in Gen1 are anthropomorphic and summary verses not intended to give detailed science theirein.

"Not directly itself no ... but once one destroys the foundation, how will the building stand? Salvation cannot find a firm footing when one white ants the foundation away. It is as the foolish man's house on the sand ... crumbling to dust eventually because there is nothing to hold it there." This is tied in with the whole "day" debate, which i am sure will be adressed elsewhere.

"The Bible is more than that! It is a compilation of books ... history, science, instruction ... etc. God did give us HIS science ... it is man that twists it and then tries to make the Bible conform ... to millions of years of death and suffering ... not God's vision of "Very Good" creation." No this is nonsense, the Bible is not a science book and was never intended that way. God has given us another book for that and it is called nature!

"It is VERY consistant ... Christian ethic is based on Christ ... who was not the wimp that others evidently are ... WFJ who feel they have to nicey-nice people ... straight to hell." I agree, but Christ advocated testing and rightly dividing the Word of Truth, many creationist actions are opposed to this, building a "God made it look like that so that we would think the Earth is old", that goes against the idea of observing and testing that are paramount to understanding truth.

"Which just goes to prove how far the churches have fallen in their responsiblity to keep ALL Scripture unbroken." No these are the top dogs as far as defenders of the faith are concerned.

"Oh, he has plenty of other things that he does wrong too. See the link I provide below for a whole table of things that Ross denies from Scripture." Please if anyone is going to provide a point in an debate do not give it as a link, bring to the debate so that everyone can see and test it.

[Sher]

I'm in a rush out the door ... but this killed me ... and I had to quickly respond ...

Today @ 06:53 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=163468#post163468)
Diggo23:

Please if anyone is going to provide a point in an debate do not give it as a link, bring to the debate so that everyone can see and test it.

You do realize, don't you, that you were the one who first brought up these things ... and providing NO link ... attempted to ridicule something you didn't offer up for refutal. The link was provided because you failed to do so ... so your attempts here to instruct on the finer points of debate are laughable.

More later when I return ... this should be hilariously simplistic to counter ... but I'm just out of time this morning.

:shersig:

[Diggo23]

"You do realize, don't you, that you were the one who first brought up these things ... and providing NO link ... attempted to ridicule something you didn't offer up for refutal. The link was provided because you failed to do so ... so your attempts here to instruct on the finer points of debate are laughable." While i didn't offer up a link my portrayal of the controversy was accurate. I haven't attempted to refute the YEC claim yet, but i can provide plenty of Biblical evidence against it. It is not commendable for one to bring up links in a debate since no one has time to side track and go reading and sifting through data.

- Damien

[dizzle]

I am moving this to Cosmogony. It is an inhouse debate in the faith.

[scienceandgod98]

Creation-Date Debate
http://www.geocities.com/darrickdean/cr2.html

This site gives a good introduction to why young-earthism is not biblical or supported by science and how it is used by skeptics to claim the Bible's innaccuracy. Has links to many on-line resources as well.


Science Watch
http://www.geocities.com/darrickdean/sciencew.html

This regularly updated site reviews naturalistic and young-earth psuedoscience. One recent article
is an answer to Answer in Genesis' "scholarly" rebuttal to Charisma's article on Dr. Ross. See http://www.geocities.com/darrickdean/sarfati.html

[dizzle]

SandG98 - We do not allow debating by weblink but request that the relevant informatin be brought here so that it can be debated here. A good synopsis (not a blurb) can be given with a link for further information or used to support a point thoroughly made, but as it stands now, your post reads somewhat like an advertisement and has been double posted in two threads. Since you are very new, I iwll cut you some slack.

[Warcraft3]

Hello Socrates and Sher.........I do want to once again discuss the scriptural evidence for/against YEC but before I do I just wanted to comment on Socrates latest post...

YEC was held by nearly all Church Fathers and Reformers.
Yeah, Socrates is quite correct on this one. The Day-agers do not have much support among the fathers or reformers so I wouldnt even bother arguing this one. The framework view guys can make a somewhat decent argument here, but the majority still support the YEC view.



As indeed they must in the specific context of Genesis 1, i.e. with evening/morning and a numeric.
I find this to be a big problem for the day-age viewpoint. They have a very weak explanation for this one. I also think it can be shown that this is a problem for the YEC view as well........more on that later........


Then call Augustine, Luther and Calvin "ridiculous" for stating this explicitly.
Again.......Soc is pretty much on target with reference to the fathers and reformers......


Rather, it was not in dispute. The creeds were mostly negative statements, designed to refute heresies. E.g. the Nicene Creed was largely a rebuttal to Arianism.
Yep....Soc is right about the creeds too.

It does so, by the teaching of creation in six 24-hour days and the fact that man and women were created "from the beginning of creation". See Jesus and the age of the world (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp#jesus_age).
I have read that article several times and have seen the chart at the end of the article......So my question is this.........How is the 6th day the "beginning"? I could say that Jesus said, "In the beginning"...not "After 5 days had already passed".
Now you could say Im being silly here and that there is a BIG difference between 5 days and millions of years.....but tecnically the 5th day is no more the "beginning" than millions of years later is. But what if the entire "week" is an elaboration or continuation of the verse "In the beginning.....", then we could say that the 6th "day" is in the beginning.

I just dont think you can be so literal about the "beginning" here, since being strictly literal rules out day 5 as the beginning.

Ill post more later on.



Russ

[Diggo23]

Nice post Steadele however i am not so sure about your comment on the church fathers. I will admit right off the bat
that they were not unanimously OEC but i wouldn't argue that
they were that way inclined towards the YEC view either. I present my point from Augustine's comments as well as Justin Martyr and there were others too that believed those days
were more then 24hrs in length. As far as i know too the church fathers didn't go into details about whether or not there was plant and animal death before the fall.
As for your last comment on Jesus' comments on creation, i already made that point in one of my last posts.

- Damien

[Sher]

Okay ... first comments: Quote feature ... please learn to use it ... your posts are almost incoherent in that you are running the other person's reply into your own. It isn't a hard feature to get down pat ... only slightly more to master. Add the bracketed word quote before each of your own words, ending each section with the same thing with a closing quote tag ... [ /quote ] without the spaces there.

Today @ 06:53 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=163468#post163468)
Diggo23:

SHER: What doctrines do you hold as central to scriptures? Do you read the Bible? Think for yourself? Or are you allowing someone to spoonfeed you this nonsense unchecked?

2 Tim 3:16-17 tells us that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." If you break scripture in Genesis 1-11, the very foundations, refered back to as truth by Jesus Himself, where does the next denial come? The Virgin Conception? The Resurrection? The very deity of Christ?

I don't deny any of this! Gen1 should be taken literally! However we need to observe that God's general revelation needs to be considered also. And the most consistent interpretation of Gen1 is NOT the YEC way

I'm sorry ... you are just wrong. Proper scholarship will show you how the context proves that Genesis 1's usage of day is consistant with the literal usage ... and it is approved as such anywhere else in the Bible ... it is only in Genesis 1 that people compromise and try to make it something different to bend to secular science. If someone were to tell you in plain English that you had to do something for a morning and an evening ... which is exactly how that translates ... you would evidently still be doing it for millions of years then? Bah!

SHER: Also known, and better defined, as Biblical Creationism ... because it is straight from scripture.

No it is straight from a superficial reading of the KJV of Genesis. If you bother probing further u won't come to this.

Sorry dearie ... I'm not a KJVO ... try again. You are the one who needs to "probe further" because the language and context are exact to literal days.

SHER:It is actually the agreement that Scripture must remain unbroken ... that Scripture tells us very clearly that the days are literal days ... by grammar, by construct, by context

Taken in context of the whole Bible it does yield a literal day, but not a 24hr day!

Yes ... the same whine here too. Prove it outside of your assertions here. You started the topic ... the burden of proof ... is yours.

I have already answered this in the above post.

I'll let Soc deal with you there then.

SHER: Actually it is held to the lineage of Christ, which outlines it closer to 6,000 years old, give a bit. But I suppose one who denies the foundations, also denies the genealogy of our Saviour.

No the geneologies were never intended to be counted to get an accurate age for something, that is not it's purpose. I do not deny the foundations, just your interpretation of them.

Proof please? ... beyond your assertions that is. It has been a perfect system for the Jews for thousands of years of record keeping. Do you really want to go against them as well?

SHER:Rightly so ... it is a compromise and it is heretical ... if the shoe fits, they must wear it.

No it is good commonsense and YEC will one day be done away with just like the flat earth theory.

Oh ... Puuuuleeze ... tell me you are not one of those people ... who really believe that flat earth was a prevalant theory beyond some fiction ... or one of "them thar" wacky groups of people who live in hippy communes in Texas storing up guns and ammo :ahem:

SHER:Oh ... please do prove this Revisionist history

Show me any place where they fought over the age issue as a matter of orthodoxy!

No need ... because they accepted the young age ... until secular science began white anting the foundations. The burden of proof to your assertions lies with you.

SHER:Beginning in Genesis 1, dear ... "In the Beginning God ... Remember those verses from Sunday School ... time to pick your Bible up again.

Those statements in Gen1 are anthropomorphic and summary verses not intended to give detailed science theirein.

Proof please.

SHER:Not directly itself no ... but once one destroys the foundation, how will the building stand? Salvation cannot find a firm footing when one white ants the foundation away. It is as the foolish man's house on the sand ... crumbling to dust eventually because there is nothing to hold it there.

This is tied in with the whole "day" debate, which i am sure will be adressed elsewhere.

Sorry dearie ... it was your stipulation that this not be pulled to links ... or other areas on the web ... so be consistant ... bring your "proof" here ... if you actually can find anything concrete to support this drivel.

SHER:The Bible is more than that! It is a compilation of books ... history, science, instruction ... etc. God did give us HIS science ... it is man that twists it and then tries to make the Bible conform ... to millions of years of death and suffering ... not God's vision of "Very Good" creation.

No this is nonsense, the Bible is not a science book and was never intended that way. God has given us another book for that and it is called nature!

It's not nonsense ... and I never said it was a science book ... but rather argue that it gives us the foundations by which to interpret science ... and understand history. It is the fault of the modern churches that teach "just-so" stories ... and never get to the meat of the Bible ... teaching Geology, Biology, Anthropology, History, and Astronomy ... if the secular science community is right, then the Bible must be wrong ... and if the Bible is wrong, it can't be trusted to tell us about the Virgin Conception, the Resurrection, or the deity of Christ. If the history isn't true, if the geneology cannot be trusted ... then how can the birth, death, and Resurrection of Christ be trusted either?

In John 3:12, Jesus said, "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"

(My thanks to Ken H. for this last bit based on the new DVD from AiG (http://shop.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/AIGUS.storefront/3f29b34c0242e7a92719ac1410010617/Product/View/30&2D9&2D025) ... Genesis: The Key to Reclaiming the Culture ... it's only $5 and is packed with so much great information to pass on! I'm already planning on incorporating it into teaching my son.)

SHER: It is VERY consistant ... Christian ethic is based on Christ ... who was not the wimp that others evidently are ... WFJ who feel they have to nicey-nice people ... straight to hell.

I agree, but Christ advocated testing and rightly dividing the Word of Truth, many creationist actions are opposed to this, building a "God made it look like that so that we would think the Earth is old", that goes against the idea of observing and testing that are paramount to understanding truth.

Yes ... good ... now you are beginning to think for yourself. Now go to 2 Pet 3:5-6:

"For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water."

Just as Adam and Eve were created fully formed, ready to procreate ... "very good" ... the Earth was prepared by the Holy Spirit (Gen 1:2b), ready to be inhabited ... "of old".

SHER:Which just goes to prove how far the churches have fallen in their responsiblity to keep ALL Scripture unbroken.

No these are the top dogs as far as defenders of the faith are concerned.

And as Soc has shown, many have been now outspoken against what Ross purports. A person can be dead on right in many areas, and still be subject to compromise in others. I hate to see great men fall to such depths ... because it so hurts others who look up to them.

SHER:Oh, he has plenty of other things that he does wrong too. See the link I provide below for a whole table of things that Ross denies from Scripture.

Please if anyone is going to provide a point in an debate do not give it as a link, bring to the debate so that everyone can see and test it.

Addressed already ... but to refute your answer ...

While i didn't offer up a link my portrayal of the controversy was accurate. I haven't attempted to refute the YEC claim yet, but i can provide plenty of Biblical evidence against it. It is not commendable for one to bring up links in a debate since no one has time to side track and go reading and sifting through data.

It is very commendable when someone brings the topic of that link up ... and fails to provide the link as a common courtesy. Your reply here is, again, quite humerous. You attempted to bring something here to THIS forum ... no links ... and paraphrase it to your own liking ... to ridicule ... and when I posted the link, you got your knickers in a knot about it. What are you afraid of? That someone may actually read the article and see how silly you are speaking? :rofl:

Now ... let's see something more than hot air ... where's your proof? Where's the beef of your topic?

:shersig:

[Socrates]

Yesterday @ 08:42 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=163457#post163457)
chickenman:

mans science includes a lot of things which aren't in the bible but which you no doubt accept,

Of course -- most branches were founded by biblical creationists!! :whack:

... you draw the line at evolution. Its the acceptance of the reliability of methodological naturalism up to the point that it conflicts with a literal interpretation of the bible, and its terrible inconsistent

Not at all. Where the Bible gives an eye witness account of special miraculous activity, we should believe it. But where the Bible is silent, we can assume that God is sustaining the universe in a repeatable, regular way, which we describe as natural law.

<yawn, stretch> It's all about the difference between operational/observational science and origins/inferential science -- see Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism)

[Socrates]

Yesterday @ 09:34 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=163464#post163464)
Diggo23, replying to:

Socrates: Depends what you mean. Of course, it's more an issue of authority -- if you have the Scriptures alone, then 24-hours is the only meaning you'd get for the days of Genesis 1. HALOT is very clear that Genesis 1:5 is defining &quot;day&quot; as 24 hours long

The Bible was never written to give an age of the Earth/universe etc and there is plenty of evidence that those &quot;days&quot; should not be taken as 24hrs.

Well, prove it.

YEC was held by nearly all Church Fathers and Reformers

This is nonsense, there are many quotes that can be marshelled to show that there were a lot of Church Fathers who supported periods of &quot;days&quot; as more then 24yrs.

Prove it --- but first see the thread I linked to on this in my first reply. I'll roast you alive if you raise things already addressed there. Steadele, who is NOT a YEC, agrees that you're mistaken there, as he shows in his fairminded post above.

One thing is for sure is that they never made it an issue of orthodoxy.

It wasn't an issue then. But actually Augustine explicitly stated that the pagans who denied the <6000 year timescale of Moses were deceived by "mendacious documents".

One must remember that the church fathers did not have the insight into God's revelation in nature that we have today.

You mean, they were not so prone to let fallen man's fallible interpretation of a creation we know to be curse to override the perfect propositional revelation of Scripture.

As indeed they must in the specific context of Genesis 1, i.e. with evening/morning and a numeric.

This is not evidence for 24hrs. The times when the numeral is used with the 24hr day is always in the context of human activity, so we are dealing with diferent contexts.

What a desperate dodge, esp. with the link between the divine activity and human in Ex. 20:8-11. For God to use time indicators although he is outside time is to instruct MAN (2 Timothy 3:15-17), so He wrote in ways man would understand. And it's special pleading to claim that Genesis 1 is one exception to the normal rule.

The time when the numeral is used in Hos 6 within the context of divine activity is clearly long periods of time.

Hosea 6:2 is a special case of the X//X+1 rule, and even there the days make more sense as ordinary days.

Besides this as Hebrew scholar Gleasan Archer points out this isn't a rule of Hebrew grammar anyhow.

Actually, Archer says that the grammar does seem to point to ordinary days, but he doesn't believe it because of "science".

Piffle. It's only taken as a long period of time in compound forms like beyôm, &quot;in the day&quot;, usually an idiom for &quot;when&quot;. In Genesis 1, yôm is NOT prefixed by the preposition be

Again this not a rule of Hebrew grammar so cannot be invoked as proof. This point avoids the fact that due to the language used in Gen 1 the prefix could NOT have been used! So if &quot;day&quot; was intended to be used as a long period of time then the prefix simply was not an option.

:dufus: I wasn't using it as proof. Rather, I was using it as disproof of those people who claim that Genesis 2:4 could be used to prove non-literal days. The point was, it is fallacious to use examples of day with a preposition to try to prove that the days of Genesis 1, without a preposition, can be long days. But there were plenty of words God could have used to indicate long periods, e.g. 'ad, 'ôlam.

Isaiah tells us that God's ways are not our ways

Not that God means something different by a word from what we mean, otherwise revelation is impossible. Where do you stop -- does God mean something different by "eat", "murder", "six" from what we mean?

and Moses tells us that God's days are not the same as ours also (ps 90 &quot;For a day(yom) unto the Lord is as a thousand years&quot;).

And he says that a thousand years is like a watch in the night too. Does this mean that a watch in the night could last a millennium? No, God is contrasting short time periods (night watch and day) with a long one (millennium) to show that He is outside of time. AiG answered this canard long ago, so Diggo is pitifully informed.

Then call Augustine, Luther and Calvin &quot;ridiculous&quot; for stating this explicitly.

Perhaps they did (could u give references?),

Already in that thread I pointed out.

but these men spoke in a period when we knew very little of God's revelation in nature. Today the evidence speaks loud and clear from general revelation that the universe is NOT 6-10,000 yrs old.

A typical Rossite revisionism of "general revelation". This means revelation accessible to all people at all times and all places. So how can the alleged modern science be general revelation if people had no access to it until only recently?

And in Augustine's work &quot;A Literal Meaning of Genesis&quot; he clearly states that the &quot;day&quot; in Genesis is to be taken as other then what we normally consider a day.

Augustine knew no Hebrew, and claimed the days were an instant. So this is the opposite of what Rossites need.

It does so, by the teaching of creation in six 24-hour days and the fact that man and women were created "from the beginning of creation". See Jesus and the age of the world.

There is excellent Biblical evidence that those days are not to be taken as 24hr periods so having said that then we have no way of calibrating the age of the Earth from the BIble. The age issue isn't stated in the Bible anywhere! Oh and your reference to Mark 10:6 doesn't help the young earth issue one bit since Jesus is referring to the creation of MAN not the natural order. Otherwise this would be an error since man was not made at the beginning of creation but at the end! On the 6th day. This is obvious from the context since Jesus is clearly referring to the beginning of man and the institution of marriage.

No, he said "beginning of creation", not "beginning of their creation". See also 2 Peter 3 where the same phrase is used. And the creation was about 4000 years old when He spoke, so six days from the beginning was about the beginning, about 0.0004% off. Considering the Bible normally has only nearest-whole-number precision, this is an incredible precision. (This addresses the one point by Steadele I disagree with)

But see also Answering some Hugh Ross supporters to refute similar bellyaching from squealing Rossites, blind to the failings of their master

HAHAH someone is getting a little emotional, i will refrain from such immature ramblings.

No refutation of course -- once again, it's OK for him to attack us, but not for us to counterattack.

Guess what? R.C. Sproul withdrew his endorsement. Gleason Archer explicitly defended a global Flood in Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Geisler explicitly argued that God created animals vegetarian, in his reply to Chuck Templeton quoted in Lee Strobel's book A Case for Faith.

RC Sproul withdrew his comments on OEC because of the pressure he was under from YEC.

Also, he never actually read the book first but endorsed it as a favor to another friend, and same with Bill Bright.

GA does defend a global flood but still upholds an ancient universe.

And that is inconsistent -- if there was a global Flood, then that would have laid down most of the rock record that is used as evidence for millions of years. Ross is more consistent in emasculating the flood to a local one, but Archer firmly says that the Hebrew doesn't allow it.

And Geisler may have made such comments but he is still old earth in his orientations, he makes this clear in his book When Critics Ask

And that's my point -- he hasn't thought through the implications, and how billions of years undermines his key apologetic against Templeton. Neither has Strobel thought carefully.

The apparent age nonsense that YEC carry on about is bordering on heresy!

What apparent age nonsense? Functional maturity is hardly heretical, because it is necessary. If people ignore God's revelation, then God is not the deceiver; rather they deceive themselves. See The Parable of the Candle (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1247.asp).

BTW, AiG rejects the "light created in transit" view because that really would be a problem of light indicating non-existent objects. But affirm that Adam was created as a functional adult, and trees were created bearing fruit.

It defiles the very character of God! the God's revelation in nature can't be trusted theory is very similar to gnostic tendencies.

Here we go again with the gnostic heresy accusation, which is apparently OK for anti-YEC. Fact is, nature is not propositional revelation, so the data must be interpreted. Why should we trust man's fallible interpretations when they go against God's Word?

And the bit about the pets hahaha, his point there while a bit tongue and cheek is actually quite true.

What crap -- prove these ridiculous assertions. They were thoroughly rebutted by the AiG article. The fair thing to do would be to hear the YEC's own reasons for their beliefs, but then Rossite anti-YECs don't know the meaning of "fairness".

Oh, but like most anti-YEC bigots, it's OK to backbite AGAINST YECs. There is one rule for them and another for us

I am backbiting against back biting not against people's character like many YEC do.

Oh right, right, calling leading YECs bigots and all sorts of other nasty things.

[WCF] It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good.

I don't deny this, they didn't say 24hr days.

They didn't have to. If you asked your boss for six days leave,m would you need to tell him that they were 24hr? How crazy -- I can't think of any language where numbered days can mean anything else. "In the space of six days" was the same language as Calvin, who was explicit that they were 24 hours.

We deny that the teachings of Genesis 1-11 are mythical and that scientific hypotheses about earth history or the origin of humanity may be invoked to overthrow what Scripture teaches about creation.&quot; Yet that's what old-earthers do!!

No we are extremely careful to observe the Hebrew rules of grammar and vocabulary and interpret the Bible as a whole.

Ross wouldn't know Hebrew grammar if it bit him on the nose. He couldn't even say "yes" or "no" in Hebrew :lol:

There is nothing wrong with using science to shape your interpretations as long as the historical-grammatical interpretation of the Bible is upheld. YEC freq down plays the God's revelation in nature in order to support their INTERPRETATION of God's word.

Nonsense. What we should do is interpret the propositional revelation of Scripture by the rules of grammar and context to find out the meaning the original audience would have understood.

[Socrates]

Yesterday @ 08:28 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=163455#post163455)
Sher:

Bwahaha Soc! :lmbo: You must have been posting while I was composing.

Sure looks like it! :rockon:

I could have saved myself a bit of typing there :highfive:

Not at all -- I was glad of your input, which complemented mine well :highfive:

Good Job :yipee:

You too :cheers:

Soc. :sher:

[dizzle]

I am backbiting against back biting not against people's character like many YEC do.

Oh pluuuhease. Do you intend to have credibility starting a thread calling YEC bigots and state something like that? What a load of patookey.

Whether or not OEC or YEC or Ross' "evolution by another name" Progressive Creationism is right or not, the FACT is that the brethren on one side consistently side with the unbelievers, some of whom are rabidly antiChristian (not all of course) to war agaisnt the brethren.

Though not directly on point, I do believe that Paul's admonition about taking brethren to heathen courts applies here, and certainly the admonition of what fellowship hath light with darkness. Be careful who you get into bed with, you will not like the children.

[Diggo23]

[/quote] Okay ... first comments: Quote feature ... please learn to use it ... your posts are almost incoherent in that you are running the other person's reply into your own. It isn't a hard feature to get down pat ... only slightly more to master. Add the bracketed word quote before each of your own words, ending each section with the same thing with a closing quote tag ... without the spaces there. [/quote] Testing here

[Sher]

Today @ 06:40 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=164456#post164456)
Dee Dee Warren:

Be careful who you get into bed with, you will not like the children.

You rock Sister! :cheers:

:cool:

:shersig:

[Diggo23]

to Sher

"Okay ... first comments: Quote feature ... please learn to use it ... your posts are almost incoherent in that you are running the other person's reply into your own. It isn't a hard feature to get down pat ... only slightly more to master. Add the bracketed word quote before each of your own words, ending each section with the same thing with a closing quote tag ... [ /quote ] without the spaces there."

I have added a space so as it wont be confused with my writing, i will learn it one day but i am not computer literate.

"I'm sorry ... you are just wrong. Proper scholarship will show you how the context proves that Genesis 1's usage of day is consistant with the literal usage ... and it is approved as such anywhere else in the Bible ... it is only in Genesis 1 that people compromise and try to make it something different to bend to secular science. If someone were to tell you in plain English that you had to do something for a morning and an evening ... which is exactly how that translates ... you would evidently still be doing it for millions of years then? Bah!"

I think this segment of the debate is going round in circles so i will provide my Biblical case for long period creation days at the end of this post.

"Sorry dearie ... I'm not a KJVO ... try again. You are the one who needs to "probe further" because the language and context are exact to literal days."

Didn't say you were, many YEC are KJ lovers and can't get past what a superficial reading of Gen 1 seems to imply based on English spoken western world presuppositions.

"Yes ... the same whine here too. Prove it outside of your assertions here. You started the topic ... the burden of proof ... is yours"

This i will endeavour to do.

"Proof please? ... beyond your assertions that is. It has been a perfect system for the Jews for thousands of years of record keeping. Do you really want to go against them as well?"

The Jews never used the chronologies for the purpose of dating Biblical events, this was not their purpose, the purpose was to draw up a chronology linking Abraham etc with the coming Messiah and to list the important persons in their history. Many names were omitted in the Biblical geneologies, both the OT and
NT does this, this is not a Bible error it is simply the Jews using the geneologies for different purposes then you would have them do to get an accurate date for Adam etc. Further proof is the fact that in Gen 11 Terah lived 70yrs and then had triplets born to him. His total life span was 205 yrs. However something does not add up since Abram left Haran after his father died, but he was only 75yrs old at time and not 135, which he should have been had the figures been intended in a way that current usage would approve! Hence the numbers don't add up so how could we expect to use such data as an age estimate of Biblical events! We can get an estimate but that is as far as it can be pushed.

"No need ... because they accepted the young age ... until secular science began white anting the foundations. The burden of proof to your assertions lies with you."

Here we go the old, science is EVIL trick. If it was a central issue we would expect SOMETHING from the church fathers, they by no means went around parrading the necessity of defending the age issue like they did the incarnation etc.

"It's not nonsense ... and I never said it was a science book ... but rather argue that it gives us the foundations by which to interpret science ... and understand history. It is the fault of the modern churches that teach "just-so" stories ... and never get to the meat of the Bible ... teaching Geology, Biology, Anthropology, History, and Astronomy ... if the secular science community is right, then the Bible must be wrong ... and if the Bible is wrong, it can't be trusted to tell us about the Virgin Conception, the Resurrection, or the deity of Christ. If the history isn't true, if the geneology cannot be trusted ... then how can the birth, death, and Resurrection of Christ be trusted either?"

Yes i agree it does give us the foundations for interpreting scripture, eg putting things to the test, apparent age theory flies in the face of this since we can't test evidence that is illusionary, for if God made everything LOOK old regardless of it's functionality then testing and experimenting which the Bible advocates is made redundant. Secular science is right about a lot more then you give it credit for, and it is not in conflict with scripture.

"In John 3:12, Jesus said, "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?""

Jesus is not saying here that our scientific observations etc are false and part of earthly things since all knowledge: Biology, geology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology etc finds its ulitimate meaning under the banner of theology. Jesus' reference to earthly things is with regards to the vain philosophies etc of this world.

""For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.""

Not sure what your point is with this vs, it isn't a proof of the global flood senario since it is told from a particular frame of reference that regarded the whole world as the surrounding region.

"Just as Adam and Eve were created fully formed, ready to procreate ... "very good" ... the Earth was prepared by the Holy Spirit (Gen 1:2b), ready to be inhabited ... "of old"."

Yeah i agree however this does not prove that the Earth was made to LOOK old.

"And as Soc has shown, many have been now outspoken against what Ross purports. A person can be dead on right in many areas, and still be subject to compromise in others. I hate to see great men fall to such depths ... because it so hurts others who look up to them."

The only "proof" that Soc came up with was a hearsay comment about RC Sproul.

- Damien

[GrayPilgrim]

אני חושב שאתה היית לקרוא את בקאשית בעברית







I think you should read Genesis in Hebrew!

[Diggo23]

"Prove it --- but first see the thread I linked to on this in my first reply. I'll roast you alive if you raise things already addressed there. Steadele, who is NOT a YEC, agrees that you're mistaken there, as he shows in his fairminded post above."

I am not going to the link, bring your points up and put them on the table so that everyone can see them and test them. I am sure that is not too much trouble. Roast me all you like but i am not about to wade through endless amounts of links to reply to comments made that no one visiting the site can see, it makes things confusing for them. The old earth examples will be given in another post with my Biblical evidence.

"It wasn't an issue then. But actually Augustine explicitly stated that the pagans who denied the <6000 year timescale of Moses were deceived by "mendacious documents"."

Perhaps your right, one comment out of thousands of commentary by the church fathers is far from supporting your case. YOU have a greater burden of proof resting on you then me from the church fathers. Since you claim that they dogmatically asserted that the Bible teaches an age of the Earth/Universe of 10,000yrs you are going to have to produce a lot of data, i on the other hand since i assert that none of them really gave it any attention need only to point to the absence of dogmatism on the issue which is there for all to see. My postulation is that the Bible does NOT yeild an age for the Earth etc so we have no need to shout HERETIC when someone claims the Earth is 4.566 b yrs old.

"You mean, they were not so prone to let fallen man's fallible interpretation of a creation we know to be curse to override the perfect propositional revelation of Scripture."

The Bible is propositional over the incarnation, the trinity, salvation by grace, substitutionary atonement etc it is NOT propositional on how old the Earth is. A chronology that was never intended by the Jews to yeild dates and a language in Gen 1 that is anthropomorphic quickly refutes such claims.

"What a desperate dodge, esp. with the link between the divine activity and human in Ex. 20:8-11"

HAHAHA You need to learn the rules of logic and argumentation a little better if you are going to succed in breaking ground in a debate. Take a look at that passage, the passage that gives the divine activity is REFERRING TO GEN 1 so you can not invoke it as proof! This passage actually underlines my point that Gen 1 is anthropomorphic language signifying the work rest pattern, it must not be taken overly literally like any anthro language, God resting and the period for which he creates should not be extrapolated in too literal a sense.

"For God to use time indicators although he is outside time is to instruct MAN (2 Timothy 3:15-17), so He wrote in ways man would understand."

Yes i agree that underlines my point that the language is anthropomorphic.

" And it's special pleading to claim that Genesis 1 is one exception to the normal rule."

We don't have another "rule" to call upon where God is creating over periods of time, so this can not be appealed to.

"Hosea 6:2 is a special case of the X//X+1 rule, and even there the days make more sense as ordinary days."

Makes sense that way ofcourse based on your presupposition. Many Bible commentators see these as long periods of time.

"Actually, Archer says that the grammar does seem to point to ordinary days, but he doesn't believe it because of "science"

This seems highly unlikely since he used the issue of the Hebrew grammar to argue for long periods in a book that was recently published where he vigorously defended the day age view.

"I wasn't using it as proof. Rather, I was using it as disproof of those people who claim that Genesis 2:4 could be used to prove non-literal days. The point was, it is fallacious to use examples of day with a preposition to try to prove that the days of Genesis 1, without a preposition, can be long days. But there were plenty of words God could have used to indicate long periods, e.g. 'ad, 'ôlam."

This is a rather ridiculous way to dodge the Gen 2:4 issue, if it isn't a rule of Hebrew grammar then there is nothing stopping us using the Gen 2:4 passage as evidence. It is clearly a summary of the whole creation week with "yomm" used clearly meaning more then a 24hr period. If God wanted to use yomm as a long period of time in the language of Gen1 there would be no other way of doing it. If God is giving us a creation week to go by but took long periods of time to do it, which is my argument then there was no other language that could of been used so appealing to 'ad and 'olam as better alternatives goes no where. Oh and your response here actually hasn't answered my post.

"Not that God means something different by a word from what we mean, otherwise revelation is impossible. Where do you stop -- does God mean something different by "eat", "murder", "six" from what we mean?"

When the Bible says that God has a hand do you take that literally? No you would say that this is to signify that God has acted, so too if God acted over a "yomm" then the semantic range would suggest that it can be taken as a certain period of time, but like the hand example we must ensure that this isn't taken too far. Gen 1 is merely a summary of creation, and God gives it in the language of a creation week so we can understand what has happened and follow his model, common sense would tell us that the length of time for our actions is not going to be the same as God's.

"And he says that a thousand years is like a watch in the night too. Does this mean that a watch in the night could last a millennium? No, God is contrasting short time periods (night watch and day) with a long one (millennium) to show that He is outside of time. AiG answered this canard long ago, so Diggo is pitifully informed."

There is no reason to believe that Ps 90 is proof that God acts outside of time, maybe he does maybe he doesn't, Titus 1:2 and 2 Tim 1:9 suggest God acting in cause and effect before time began so this would suggest God is acting in atleast some form of time. You are reading far too much into Ps 90, it is merely stating that God's concept of time is different to ours, so his creation week should not be expected to ressemble ours.

"A typical Rossite revisionism of "general revelation". This means revelation accessible to all people at all times and all places. So how can the alleged modern science be general revelation if people had no access to it until only recently?"

Yes it is accessible to all people in all places, but not ALL people have had sufficient instrumentation to gleam a great deal from it. The 20th century has seen much in the way of knowledge of general revelation and i am afraid it has left YEC, flat earth and geocentricism in the trash years ago.

"Augustine knew no Hebrew, and claimed the days were an instant. So this is the opposite of what Rossites need."

If Augustine knew no Hebrew then why are YOU appealing to him as "proof" for young earthism? In the Literal Meaning of Genesis book that Augustine wrote he also stated that the solar days of creation that we know of are not similar to the Gen 1 days. He also said the seventh day extends toward eternity. I can give the quotes directly if you wish.

"No, he said "beginning of creation", not "beginning of their creation".

He didn't need to specify since the context was marriage, this clearly gives away what creation he was referring to, it was the creation of man!

"See also 2 Peter 3 where the same phrase is used. And the creation was about 4000 years old when He spoke, so six days from the beginning was about the beginning, about 0.0004% off. Considering the Bible normally has only nearest-whole-number precision, this is an incredible precision. (This addresses the one point by Steadele I disagree with)"

the time issue has nothing to do with this. creation on the 6th day is NOT the beginning of creation, it is the END of creation, so this can't be his point. The concept of beginning or ending has nothing to do with the length of time, it has to do with chronology!

"No refutation of course -- once again, it's OK for him to attack us, but not for us to counterattack."

Attacking is not necessarily against Christian ethic, the key is what is BEHIND your attack. My preposition that young earther's stand on falsity and block the truth from the revelation of nature gives me a means to counter attack Young Earth bigotry. I do not question your sincerity with your actions, nor the sincerity of Jihard bommers, it is the truthfulness of their testimony which counts.

"Also, he never actually read the book first but endorsed it as a favor to another friend, and same with Bill Bright."

More hearsay comments

"And that is inconsistent -- if there was a global Flood, then that would have laid down most of the rock record that is used as evidence for millions of years. Ross is more consistent in emasculating the flood to a local one, but Archer firmly says that the Hebrew doesn't allow it."

Don't be foolish! One catistrophic event isn't going to lay down layer upon layer of sediment etc Esp when that layer is interdispersed with grains of pollen etc that correspond with annual cycles of spring time, like in the example of the Green River Formation of Colorado which has literally over a million of these layers! Or maybe God zapped them there to make us think that the Earth is old but really it isn't HAHAHA And for that matter maybe u guys don't exist! Oh my! Perhaps God has implanted my memory of you so that i would THINK you exist but u really don't (twilight zone music goes off in the back ground). See what happens when this absurd argument gets pushed to it's natural ends.

"And that's my point -- he hasn't thought through the implications, and how billions of years undermines his key apologetic against Templeton. Neither has Strobel thought carefully."

More adhominim arguments. Geisler is far to intelligent a scholar to fall into young earth nonsense

"What apparent age nonsense? Functional maturity is hardly heretical, because it is necessary. If people ignore God's revelation, then God is not the deceiver; rather they deceive themselves. See The Parable of the Candle."

This assumes that functionality is the most accurate guage for something's age, fact is that we have better methods to test Adam's age (hypothetically ofcourse), eg level of cholesterol in his bloodstream, scar tissue, chipped teeth etc this would have recorded an accurate age for Adam as 5 mins old if he was indeed that old. So even if the functionality of Adam threw us then there are a lot of other factors we have to go by that would give us an accurate age. This analogy doesn't work for a second reason, Adam HAD to have been created fully functional, so we would know that even though he looks say 24 that he would be much younger then that given that he couldn't survive being created as a new born babe or a 5 or 10 yr old. Bit of common sense here goes a long way.

"BTW, AiG rejects the "light created in transit" view because that really would be a problem of light indicating non-existent objects. But affirm that Adam was created as a functional adult, and trees were created bearing fruit."

That's too your credit then, cause that theory is garbage. Just curious as to how u account for the light travel problem?

"Here we go again with the gnostic heresy accusation, which is apparently OK for anti-YEC. Fact is, nature is not propositional revelation, so the data must be interpreted. Why should we trust man's fallible interpretations when they go against God's Word?"

any data needs to be interpreted, that is a given, the non-propositional nature of GR does NOT give us the permission to say that it is saying something that it is not saying eg that all the evidence indicates that it is old but it really isn't

"What crap -- prove these ridiculous assertions. They were thoroughly rebutted by the AiG article. The fair thing to do would be to hear the YEC's own reasons for their beliefs, but then Rossite anti-YECs don't know the meaning of "fairness"."

Don't know the meaning of fairness? Sarfati and Ham both participated in a Ross slandering match in your radio broadcast after the Hovind/Ross debate, you wouldn't even let Ross in on the discussion despite him offering to even fly Ham over to the US to dialogue on this issue. Fact is you guys are avoiding discussion with Ross like the plague, if u were confident in your position then you would have no problems with dialogue

"Oh right, right, calling leading YECs bigots and all sorts of other nasty things."

Accusations are not wrong, it is the truthfulness of those accusations that counts, and this is what we are discussing.

"They didn't have to. If you asked your boss for six days leave,m would you need to tell him that they were 24hr? How crazy -- I can't think of any language where numbered days can mean anything else. "In the space of six days" was the same language as Calvin, who was explicit that they were 24 hours."

Merely repeats of past points that i have dealt with. Ofcourse i would see the days my boss suggested as 24hr periods since the context (human to human, the typical work week etc) clearly gives this away. God does not behave in the same way as we do.

"Ross wouldn't know Hebrew grammar if it bit him on the nose. He couldn't even say "yes" or "no" in Hebrew"

Again another YEC that likes to appeal to ad hominim arguments for verification of his position. Ross doesn't need to be a Hebrew scholar, he has them as part of his team, along with GA. AIG wouldn't know astronomy, geology, physics, etc if it bit them on the nose but that doesn't stop them from commenting these disciplines!

"Nonsense. What we should do is interpret the propositional revelation of Scripture by the rules of grammar and context to find out the meaning the original audience would have understood."

Yes the original audience wasn't written to by Moses to give them an age of the universe and Earth, so there goes your theory.

And then we see here some AIG propoganda cartoons. Replace "God's perfect Word" with "AIG's interpretation of God's perfect Word" and you have a more accurate concept.

Response to Dee Dee Warren:

"Whether or not OEC or YEC or Ross' "evolution by another name" Progressive Creationism is right or not, the FACT is that the brethren on one side consistently side with the unbelievers, some of whom are rabidly antiChristian (not all of course) to war agaisnt the brethren."

Actually if you understood Ross' position a little better then you recognise that he has done a nice job of constructing a mathematical model that refutes macro evolution. AiG and ICR are the ones that appeal to rapid natural process evolution to explain the animals in the fossil record post flood and the sudden appearance of carnivorous animals.
So AiG and ICR are really theistic evolutionists, the sad thing is that they appeal to it much more strongly then any secular scientist would, how ironic all this turns out to be.

Will give a post giving Biblical evidence for day age view shortly but it is very late here in NSW

- Damien

Damien, since you are new here I will assume that you were unaware that identity speculation is a violation of the campus decorum.

[Sher]

Today @ 09:37 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=164534#post164534)
Diggo23:

Testing here

Quoted text in the middle

produces:

Quoted text in the middle

[Sher]

Today @ 09:41 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=164538#post164538)
Diggo23:

to Sher

I have added a space so as it wont be confused with my writing, i will learn it one day but i am not computer literate.

That will be a bit better, I guess ... but it really isn't that hard of a feature to use ... and it just makes it easier for the reader to understand who is saying which part.

SHER: I'm sorry ... you are just wrong. Proper scholarship will show you how the context proves that Genesis 1's usage of day is consistant with the literal usage ... and it is approved as such anywhere else in the Bible ... it is only in Genesis 1 that people compromise and try to make it something different to bend to secular science. If someone were to tell you in plain English that you had to do something for a morning and an evening ... which is exactly how that translates ... you would evidently still be doing it for millions of years then? Bah!

I think this segment of the debate is going round in circles so i will provide my Biblical case for long period creation days at the end of this post.

It is only going around in circles because you were making blind assertions ... moving on to see what you come up with.

SHER: Sorry dearie ... I'm not a KJVO ... try again. You are the one who needs to &quot;probe further&quot; because the language and context are exact to literal days.

Didn't say you were, many YEC are KJ lovers and can't get past what a superficial reading of Gen 1 seems to imply based on English spoken western world presuppositions.

It was implied ... and while many are ... it has nothing to do with the position of Biblical Creation ... found in any correct version.

SHER: Yes ... the same whine here too. Prove it outside of your assertions here. You started the topic ... the burden of proof ... is yours

This i will endeavour to do.

Still moving on ... then ...

SHER: Proof please? ... beyond your assertions that is. It has been a perfect system for the Jews for thousands of years of record keeping. Do you really want to go against them as well?

The Jews never used the chronologies for the purpose of dating Biblical events, this was not their purpose, the purpose was to draw up a chronology linking Abraham etc with the coming Messiah and to list the important persons in their history. Many names were omitted in the Biblical geneologies, both the OT and
NT does this, this is not a Bible error it is simply the Jews using the geneologies for different purposes then you would have them do to get an accurate date for Adam etc. Further proof is the fact that in Gen 11 Terah lived 70yrs and then had triplets born to him. His total life span was 205 yrs. However something does not add up since Abram left Haran after his father died, but he was only 75yrs old at time and not 135, which he should have been had the figures been intended in a way that current usage would approve! Hence the numbers don't add up so how could we expect to use such data as an age estimate of Biblical events! We can get an estimate but that is as far as it can be pushed.

They were used for the purpose of record keeping ... and have suited that purpose perfectly for thousands of years ... even if you found one error ... and I'd have to look that up to confirm that it is indeed one ... that is only a difference of 50 years! Not millions of years!! So your point is still moot regardless.

SHER: No need ... because they accepted the young age ... until secular science began white anting the foundations. The burden of proof to your assertions lies with you.

Here we go the old, science is EVIL trick. If it was a central issue we would expect SOMETHING from the church fathers, they by no means went around parrading the necessity of defending the age issue like they did the incarnation etc.

What are you blathering about? No one said science is EVIL! That is a straw man! I love science ... but the secular science community has been white anting the foundations of Christianity for years ... and the churchians allow it to happen ... so bad on them both.

And I'll let Soc beat on you on the church fathers since he did all the great research :popcorn:

SHER: It's not nonsense ... and I never said it was a science book ... but rather argue that it gives us the foundations by which to interpret science ... and understand history. It is the fault of the modern churches that teach &quot;just-so&quot; stories ... and never get to the meat of the Bible ... teaching Geology, Biology, Anthropology, History, and Astronomy ... if the secular science community is right, then the Bible must be wrong ... and if the Bible is wrong, it can't be trusted to tell us about the Virgin Conception, the Resurrection, or the deity of Christ. If the history isn't true, if the geneology cannot be trusted ... then how can the birth, death, and Resurrection of Christ be trusted either?

Yes i agree it does give us the foundations for interpreting scripture, eg putting things to the test, apparent age theory flies in the face of this since we can't test evidence that is illusionary, for if God made everything LOOK old regardless of it's functionality then testing and experimenting which the Bible advocates is made redundant. Secular science is right about a lot more then you give it credit for, and it is not in conflict with scripture.

Good ... then stop using secular science as your framework for interpretation ... and open your eyes ... and your Bible ... and see the Truth. Secular science has its foundations established in Christianity ... with the founders of almost all science coming from Christian background ... so of course they are bound to get a thing or two correct once in awhile. And if you think the wrong things are not in coflict with Scripture ... you certainly haven't been reading the same Scripture as everyone else ... nor my post where I pointed out some of the conflicts.

SHER: In John 3:12, Jesus said, &quot;If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"

Jesus is not saying here that our scientific observations etc are false and part of earthly things since all knowledge: Biology, geology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology etc finds its ulitimate meaning under the banner of theology. Jesus' reference to earthly things is with regards to the vain philosophies etc of this world.

Very good ... and when the secular community uses those "vain philosophies" to color their interpretation ... denying the Word of God ... who was there to give us the history ... then it means that our human observations are false ... not that the Bible is.

SHER: For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

Not sure what your point is with this vs, it isn't a proof of the global flood senario since it is told from a particular frame of reference that regarded the whole world as the surrounding region.

It was for two purposes ... to answer your old Earth question ... "of old" ... as I explained ... and to show that it referred to a global flood ... no "senario".

SHER: Just as Adam and Eve were created fully formed, ready to procreate ... &quot;very good&quot; ... the Earth was prepared by the Holy Spirit (Gen 1:2b), ready to be inhabited ... &quot;of old&quot;

Yeah i agree however this does not prove that the Earth was made to LOOK old.

But in conjunction with the last verse ... that you separately addressed ... it proves the point exactly. And you should see now that if the Earth is "of old" ... if Scripture is to be trusted ... then this part you agree with gives the perfect explanation to the other part. If you don't trust Scripture there, it doesn't remain unbroken ... and your foundation crumbles.

SHER: And as Soc has shown, many have been now outspoken against what Ross purports. A person can be dead on right in many areas, and still be subject to compromise in others. I hate to see great men fall to such depths ... because it so hurts others who look up to them.

The only &quot;proof&quot; that Soc came up with was a hearsay comment about RC Sproul.

You need to look again dearie ... Soc. provided you with a link where this was covered completely ... so your ridicule is asinine.

And to the part you skipped:

SHER: Now ... let's see something more than hot air ... where's your proof? Where's the beef of your topic?

:huh: ??? Where is all that proof you kept me waiting for? You said:I think this segment of the debate is going round in circles so i will provide my Biblical case for long period creation days at the end of this post.

But your post ended without a shred of proof?

That's okay dearie ... I understand ... I really do ... It's far easier to keep whining ... than to actually provide anything of substance.

:shersig:

[Diggo23]

Much of what i present below i am sure u have seen before, however it makes a good case collabarively.

It must be said here that i do not believe the Bible teaches a 13.7b yr old Universe or a 4.566b yr old Earth, what i am showing here is that it does not teach a 6-10,000yr old so there is no need to defend such a position. It is absurd to think a book about salvation is going to give u details about the Earth/universe's age. YEC defend what really isn't in the Bible. The statements in Gen1 while factual are not to be taken too literally since they are anthropomorphic: Proof for this is God resting on the seventh day, an omnipotent God doesn't need to rest, surely this was put in there for our benefit and needn't be taken to literally. Since Socrates didn't refute my argument here i site Isaiah saying that God's ways are not our ways and also his days (Ps 90) are not our days as Moses himself writes in the Psalm.

A long period of time is clearly acceptable with the definitions of yowm, 'ereb, and boqer.
The Hebrew word yowm, translated day may be used (and is) within the Bible, as it is in English, to indicate any of four time periods: a) from sunrise to sunset, b) from sunset to sunset, c) a segment of time without any reference to solar days (usually several years), and d) an age or epoch.

The Hebrew word 'ereb, translated evening also means "sunset," "night," or "ending of the day." The word boqer; translated morning also means "sunrise," "coming of light," "beginning of day," or "dawning," with possible metaphoric usage (see Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, also Harris, Archer, and Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Chicago: Moody Press, 1980).

Some have argued for 24hour days on the basis that yowm, when attached to an ordinal (second, third, fourth, etc.) elsewhere in the Bible always refers to a 24-hour period. This argument is inconclusive. The Bible, afterall, has no other occasion to enumerate epochs of time. More importantly, there is no rule of Hebrew grammar stating that yowm attached to an ordinal must refer to 24-hour days. It must also be stated here that the ordinal argument ignores the fact that everytime it is used it is inconjunction with human activity not divine activity.


The unusual syntax of the sentences enumerating specific creation days suggests indefinite time periods.
Looking at the literal Hebrew, one finds this phraseology: "and was evening and was morning day Xth." The New International Version renders the time markers in this way: "And there was evening, and there was morning-the Xth day." The word arrangement, in both cases, is a departure from the simple and ordinary. It creates an ambiguity. If "day Xth" were intended as the noun complement for the one evening and morning together, the linking verb should appear just once, in plural form (as the King James Version renders it) "And the evening and the morning were the Xth day." We would expect the literal Hebrew to say, "and were evening and morning day Xth." But, that is not the case. This syntactic ambiguity does not constitute a proof. However, it does at least suggest an indefinite period for each phase of the creation.

The seventh day in Genesis 1 and 2 is not closed out. This is a
knockout argument in my opinion. Of the first six creation days the Genesis writer says (New International Version): "...there was evening, and there was morning-the Xth day." This statement indicates that each of the first six creation days had a beginning and an ending. However, for the seventh creation day no such statement appears either in Genesis 1 - 2 or anywhere else in the Bible. Given the parallel structure for marking the creation days, this distinct change in form for the seventh day strongly suggests that this day has (or had) not yet ended.

Further information about the seventh day is given in Hebrews 4 and Psalm 95. In these passages we learn that God's day of rest continues even now. The writer of Hebrews says, "'On the seventh day God rested from all his work.' ... It still remains that some will enter that rest.... There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore. make every effort to enter that rest (4:4-10, NIV)." He indicates, here, that the seventh day of the creation week carries on through the centuries, from Adam and Eve, through Israel's development as a nation, through the time of Christ's earthly ministry, through the early days of the church, and on into future years. King David in Psalm 95:7-11 also refers to God's seventh day of rest as an ongoing event. From these passages we gather that the seventh day of Genesis 1 and 2 represents a minimum of several thousand years and a maximum that is open ended (though finite). It seems reasonable to conclude then, given the parallelism of the creation account, that the first six days also were very long time periods.

The events of the sixth day cover more than 24 hours.
Genesis 1 tells us that all the land mammals and both Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day. Genesis 2 provides further amplification, listing events between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve. First, God planted a garden in Eden, making "all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground." Then Adam worked and cared for the garden of Eden. After that, he carried out his assignment from God to name all the animals. In the process Adam discovered that none of these creatures was a suitable helper for him. Next, God put Adam into a deep sleep, performed an operation, awakened Adam, and introduced him to the newly created Eve. Adam's exclamation upon seeing Eve was happa'am. This expression is usually translated "now at length" (cf Genesis 29:34-35, 30:20, and 46:30 and Judges 15:3), roughly equivalent to our English expression, "at last." Finally, Adam and Eve received instructions from God concerning their responsibilities in managing the plants, animals, and resources of the earth. Many weeks', months', or even years worth of activities took place in this latter portion of the sixth day.

The wording of Genesis 2:4 suggests a long time span for the creation week.
This verse, a summary statement for the creation account, in the literal Hebrew reads, "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day of their making" Here, the word day refers to all six creation days (and the creation events prior to the first creative day). Obviously, then, it refers to a period longer than 24 hours. More significantly, though, Hebrew lexicons verify that the word for generation (toledah) always refers to a long time period, never to anything as short as a week. Note that in Genesis 2:4 the plural form, generations, is used, indicating that even more time must have elapsed.

In describing the eternity of God's existence, Bible writers often compare it to the longevity of the mountains or of the "foundations of the earth."
The figures of speech used in Psalm 90:2-6, Proverbs 8:22-31, Ecclesiastes 1:3-11, and Micah 6:2 all serve to depict for us the immeasurable antiquity of God's presence and plans. If these literary devices are used appropriately and accurately (as we know they must be, for they were inspired by God), then the earth and its foundations must reach back at least a few orders of magnitude beyond the relatively brief span of recorded history. Habakkuk 3:6 directly declares the mountains to be "ancient" and the hills to be "age-old.


The Church Fathers: It must first be said here that my position on the age debate, namely that the Bible is silent on the age issue requires far less from the CF then the YEC position does. YEC premise is that the Bible states unanimously that the Earth is X date, given this they need to produce a whole slew of examples where CF and the creeds clearly stated this. To prove my point i only need the CF be silent since if the age issue isn't taught in the Bible we would expect very little, if any comments from the CF

Many of the early church fathers and other Biblical scholars interpreted the creation days of Genesis 1 as long periods of time. The list of such proponents includes the Jewish historian Josephus (1st century); Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, apologist, and martyr (2nd century); Origen, who rebutted heathen attacks on Christian doctrine (3rd century); Basil (4th century); Augustine (5th century); and, later, Aquinas (13th century), to name a few.

The significance of this list lies not only in the prominence of these individuals as Biblical scholars, defenders of the faith, and pillars of the early church (except Josephus), but also in that their scriptural views cannot be said to have been shaped to accommodate secular opinion. Astronomical, paleontological, and geological evidences for the antiquity of the universe, of the earth, and of life did not come forth until the nineteenth century.


In the Literal Meaning of Genesis book that Augustine wrote he also stated that the solar days of creation that we know of are not similar to the Gen 1 days. He also said the seventh day extends toward eternity in his book Confessions. I can give the quotes directly if you wish.

Augustine: "seven days by our reckoning after the model of the days of creation, make up a week. By the passage of such weeks time rolls on, and in these weeks one day is constituted by the course of the sun from its rising to its setting; but we must bear in mind that these days indeed recall the days of creation, but without in any way being really similar to them.

In addition Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, ch 81) and Iranaeus (Against Heresies) both used Ps 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 as support for their view that the creation days were each a thousand yrs long.

Having said all this lets also remember that the YEC veiw point puts the creation of the sun on day 4, after the plants were created on day 3! The temp of Earth with out the sun is about -370 degrees, obviously such a blunder of interpretation needs to be revised. young earthers are also in the embarrassing predicament of having the sun show up on the fourth day which means that there is no possibility of having a 24hr solar day in the three days prior to that! You can't have an evening and morning with out the sun, obviously there are more holes in the YEC viewpoint then a pin cussion.

It is my prediction that Young Earth nonsense will soon be done away with by the Christian church and it will sadly look back on it as an embarrassment the size of the Galileo incident. Skeptics will surely point to Geocentricism, flat earthers, and Young Earth nonsense in an effort to point out the absurdity of the Bible, Christians must defend against this.

YEC explain the existence of a huge amount of fossils and carnivorous animals after the fall by appealing to rapid natural process evolution, they are therefore theistic evolutionists. More over they think that God created nature too look old even though it isn't, so God can't be trusted in his revelation. Surely scholarship like this must be rejected by the Christian community and fought against as vigorously as possible

- Damien

[dizzle]

It is absurd to think a book about salvation is going to give u details about the Earth/universe's age.

Really? Prove why. Or is that just your unsupported assertion. Actually the Bible reveals God as protologically and eschatological, and the Beginner and the Consummator, so it is perfectly valid that such things WOULD be included, but nice touch anyways. And remember I warned you about the children.

[Socrates]

Today @ 02:46 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=165211#post165211)
Diggo23:

Much of what i present below i am sure u have seen before, however it makes a good case collabarively [sic].

Of course, because it's basically a mindless cut and paste job from www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/longdays.shtml?main :dunce: It makes exactly the same crass blunders.

The statements in Gen1 while factual are not to be taken too literally since they are anthropomorphic: Proof for this is God resting on the seventh day, an omnipotent God doesn't need to rest, surely this was put in there for our benefit and needn't be taken to literally.

The Hebrew word shabat means "cease" and is usually translated that way, so it IS meant literally.

Since Socrates didn't refute my argument here i site Isaiah saying that God's ways are not our ways and also his days (Ps 90) are not our days as Moses himself writes in the Psalm.

I did so, in my post #17 -- try listening for a change, and remove your anti-YEC hatred :dufus:

Some have argued for 24hour days on the basis that yowm, when attached to an ordinal (second, third, fourth, etc.) elsewhere in the Bible always refers to a 24-hour period. This argument is inconclusive. The Bible, afterall, has no other occasion to enumerate epochs of time. More importantly, there is no rule of Hebrew grammar stating that yowm attached to an ordinal must refer to 24-hour days.

Rules of grammar are not prescriptive but descriptive, based on regular usage. And everywhere else, numbered days mean 24-hour days. What would be the sense of saying six indefinite long periods of time? That's the same as one indefinite long period of time.

It must also be stated here that the ordinal argument ignores the fact that everytime it is used it is inconjunction with human activity not divine activity.

So what? God wrote Scripture to instruct, so uses words so we can understand them.

The unusual syntax of the sentences enumerating specific creation days suggests indefinite time periods.
Looking at the literal Hebrew, one finds this phraseology: &quot;and was evening and was morning day Xth.&quot;

A Ross cockup -- this is just wrong. The first day has a cardinal number (i.e. one, two, three …), (yôm echad) Day One. The others have ordinal numbers (second, third, fourth …). Also, days 2–5 lack a definite article (ha, ‘the’), while days 6–7 have one on the numeric. So a literal translation of Creation Week would be Day One, a second day, a third day, a fourth day, a fifth day, the sixth day, the seventh day.

Andrew Steinmann, Associate Professor of theology and Hebrew and Concordia University, Illinois, has analyzed this pattern in Genesis ([Echad] as an ordinal number and the meaning of Genesis 1:5, JETS 45(4):577–584, December 2002). He showed that it was strong SUPPORT for 24-hour creation days (and he is a real Hebrew scholar, unlike Ross who couldn't even say "yes" or "no" -- see his blunder under "Is the word ‘high’ in the original Hebrew?" in www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0529charisma.asp :umbo:) Steinmann concluded:

[Yôm], like the English word “day”, can take on a variety of meanings. It does not in and of itself mean a twenty-four hour day [ref]. This alone has made the length of days in Genesis 1 a controversial subject [ref]. However, the use of [Echad] in Gen 1:5 and the following unique uses of the ordinal numbers on the other days demonstrates that the text itself indicates these as regular solar days.’

Diggo dutifully parrots Ross further:

The seventh day in Genesis 1 and 2 is not closed out. This is a knockout argument in my opinion. Of the first six creation days the Genesis writer says (New International Version): &quot;...there was evening, and there was morning-the Xth day.&quot; This statement indicates that each of the first six creation days had a beginning and an ending. However, for the seventh creation day no such statement appears either in Genesis 1 - 2 or anywhere else in the Bible. Given the parallel structure for marking the creation days, this distinct change in form for the seventh day strongly suggests that this day has (or had) not yet ended.

Another Ross furphy. Systematic theologian Doug Kelly replied to his pathetic argument (Creation and Change: Genesis 1:1–2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms, Mentor (Christian Focus Publications), Ross-shire, UK, p. 111, 1997):

‘To say the least, this places a great deal of theological weight on a very narrow and thin exegetical bridge! Is it not more concordant with the patent sense of the context of Genesis 2 (and Exodus 20) to infer that because the Sabbath differed in quality (though not — from anything we can learn out of the text itself — in quantity), a slightly different concluding formula was appended to indicate a qualitative difference (six days involved work; one day involved rest)? The formula employed to show the termination of that first sabbath : “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:2) seems just as definite as that of “and the evening and the morning were the first day”.’

Diggo is not finished shattering his own credibility by regurgitating Ross's nonsense:

Further information about the seventh day is given in Hebrews 4 and Psalm 95. In these passages we learn that God's day of rest continues even now. The writer of Hebrews says, &quot;'On the seventh day God rested from all his work.' ... It still remains that some will enter that rest.... There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore. make every effort to enter that rest (4:4-10, NIV).&quot; He indicates, here, that the seventh day of the creation week carries on through the centuries, from Adam and Eve, through Israel's development as a nation, through the time of Christ's earthly ministry, through the early days of the church, and on into future years.

Also nonsense. Even if God's rest started on that day and continued, it would not follow that the day itself continued. If you started a vacation on Monday and it continued to Friday, it would not mean that Monday itself continued to Friday. See also Is the seventh day an eternal day? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4103.asp).

The events of the sixth day cover more than 24 hours.
Genesis 1 tells us that all the land mammals and both Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day. Genesis 2 provides further amplification, listing events between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve. First, God planted a garden in Eden, making &quot;all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground.&quot; Then Adam worked and cared for the garden of Eden. After that, he carried out his assignment from God to name all the animals.

And why should that take more than a few hours, considering that there was a small subset — all the ‘livestock’, the ‘birds of the air’ and all the ‘beasts of the field’. Also, "kinds" were broader than today's "species", the numbers were very small. See www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1112animals.asp

Adam's exclamation upon seeing Eve was happa'am. This expression is usually translated &quot;now at length&quot; (cf Genesis 29:34-35, 30:20, and 46:30 and Judges 15:3), roughly equivalent to our English expression, &quot;at last.&quot;

More fairy tales from the Ross woods. Happa‘am is merely pa‘am with the definite article added, so the ‘p’ is doubled. Although Ross and his parrot Diggo claim this is ‘usually translated as “now at length”’, this is simply not supported by major translations such as the KJV, NKJV, NIV or NASB. Nor is it supported by other parts of the Bible. Rather, the lexicons show that while pa‘am has a variety of meanings, and is most often translated ‘time’, with the definite article it means ‘this time’. , This is illustrated by passages Ross and his parrot conveniently omit: Judges 6:39―Gideon says to God, ‘may I speak once more … let me make a test once more’. Both times, ‘once more’ is the NASB translation of happa‘am, but the second test is only 24 hours after his first test. The KJV has ‘but this once’.
Genesis 18:32―Abraham said to God, ‘I shall speak only this once’ (NASB); ‘I will speak yet but this once’ (KJV). Here, happa‘am is translated ‘this once’, and it is used at the end of a short dialogue about the coming destruction of Sodom.
Finally, Adam and Eve received instructions from God concerning their responsibilities in managing the plants, animals, and resources of the earth. Many weeks', months', or even years worth of activities took place in this latter portion of the sixth day.

Pure assertion.

The wording of Genesis 2:4 suggests a long time span for the creation week. This verse, a summary statement for the creation account, in the literal Hebrew reads, &quot;These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day of their making&quot; Here, the word day refers to all six creation days (and the creation events prior to the first creative day). Obviously, then, it refers to a period longer than 24 hours. More significantly, though, Hebrew lexicons verify that the word for generation (toledah) always refers to a long time period, never to anything as short as a week.

Not so -- here is what Ross's lexicon actually says:

‘It is reasonable to translate Genesis 2:4, “these are the toledot of the heaven and earth,” as meaning, not the coming of heaven and earth into existence, but the events that followed the establishment of heaven and earth.’

Diggo really digs himself in a hole with the next Ross howler he parrots :lol::

Note that in Genesis 2:4 the plural form, generations, is used, indicating that even more time must have elapsed.

:dunce: The word is ALWAYS used in the plural -- according to Ross's own lexicon!!

‘It (toledot) occurs only in the plural, and only in the construct state or with a pronominal suffix.’

Yet Diggo isn't finished ruining his reputation:

In describing the eternity of God's existence, Bible writers often compare it to the longevity of the mountains or of the &quot;foundations of the earth.&quot;
The figures of speech used in Psalm 90:2-6, Proverbs 8:22-31, Ecclesiastes 1:3-11, and Micah 6:2 all serve to depict for us the immeasurable antiquity of God's presence and plans. If these literary devices are used appropriately and accurately (as we know they must be, for they were inspired by God), then the earth and its foundations must reach back at least a few orders of magnitude beyond the relatively brief span of recorded history. Habakkuk 3:6 directly declares the mountains to be &quot;ancient&quot; and the hills to be &quot;age-old.

First of all, this is a relative term (how long is a piece of string?) Second, the words used Habakkuk 3:6,
‘...the ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal.’ provide no evidence for Ross's claims.

‘Ancient’ is ‘ad, which has a variety of meanings, many of which are clearly connected with events thousands, not billions, of years ago. One example is Job 20:6, here it is translated ‘of old’:
‘Do you know this from of old, from the establishing of man [Hebrew ‘Adam’] on the earth?’
The beginning of mankind was thousands, not billions, of years ago, even according to Ross.
‘Age-old’ is 'ôlam. Even in Genesis 6:4 it is applied to humans, again showing that it’s compatible with thousands of years:
‘Those were the mighty men who were of old ...’


Many of the early church fathers and other Biblical scholars interpreted the creation days of Genesis 1 as long periods of time. The list of such proponents includes the Jewish historian Josephus (1st century); Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, apologist, and martyr (2nd century); Origen, who rebutted heathen attacks on Christian doctrine (3rd century); Basil (4th century); Augustine (5th century); and, later, Aquinas (13th century), to name a few.

I address this very Ross claim in my post http://theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=53088&highlight=josephus+origen+augustine#post53088 I've cited this post earlier in this thread, and warned that I would roast you alive if you persisted with making claims that are refuted there. This completely blows away this lie by Ross (even in the opinion of non-YECs such as Steadele and Wienerdog), and your own credibility for repeating it regardless

Having said all this lets also remember that the YEC veiw point puts the creation of the sun on day 4, after the plants were created on day 3! The temp of Earth with out the sun is about -370 degrees, obviously such a blunder of interpretation needs to be revised. young earthers are also in the embarrassing predicament of having the sun show up on the fourth day which means that there is no possibility of having a 24hr solar day in the three days prior to that! You can't have an evening and morning with out the sun, obviously there are more holes in the YEC viewpoint then [sic] a pin cussion[sic] .

What nonsense. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, Basil the Great and Calvin had no problem believing in a day-night cycle before the sun was created -- see my post www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?action=showthread&postid=154913#post154913

You need only a light source (created on Day 1) and a rotating Earth to have a day night cycle. And what about OECs who must logically have the plants existing for millions of years before the sun was created. And it means "made" not "appeared", for which there was the perfectly good word ra'ah as in
Genesis 1:9, let the dry land appear

It is my prediction that Young Earth nonsense will soon be done away with by the Christian church and it will sadly look back on it as an embarrassment the size of the Galileo incident. Skeptics will surely point to Geocentricism, flat earthers, and Young Earth nonsense in an effort to point out the absurdity of the Bible, Christians must defend against this.

Yes, by standing firm for the Bible and refuting discredited 19th century myths about widespread flat earth beliefs and using Galileo as the poster-child of the "science v religion" struggle, when it was really a science v science struggle. See the thread was it the Church or secular scientists that condemed Galileo? (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?action=showthread&postid=62732#post62732) and my post The Columbus v flat earth story is a total fabrication (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?action=showthread&postid=160891#post160891).

YEC explain the existence of a huge amount of fossils and carnivorous animals after the fall by appealing to rapid natural process evolution, they are therefore theistic evolutionists.

What piffle, parroting dishonest atheist equivocation about the term "evolution", as usual for Rossites. Rather, we believe that this is natural variation within a kind, by sorting and loss of pre-existing genetic information. Evolution from goo to you via the zoo requires NEW information. See Definitions as slippery as eels (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Definitions).

More over they think that God created nature too look old even though it isn't, so God can't be trusted in his revelation

Why does Diggo bleat worse than a New Zealand sheep about such straw men?! We think it looks young but mature, and that age is the result of interpretation of certain physical processes. See The earth: how old does it look? Even many of those who believe that the earth is ‘young’ think that it looks ‘old’. But does it? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp)

One day a Rossite might surprise us all and check Ross's sources, as well as find out what YECs actually say before posting bigoted attacks against it!

[Socrates]

Diggo is so keen to portray YECs as bigots and Hugh Ross as a saint, But he ignores the way Ross mocked the fine scholar Ussher (Ross, H. and Bundschuh, R., Destination: Creation, Reasons to Believe Comix, p. 5, 1997) in the pic below. Again, AiG has never to my knowledge written anything so insulting of a OEC scholar. The AiG website www.answersingenesis.org/ overwhelmingly focues on the issues not personalities.

Ross (Creation and Time pp. 26-27) also claims that Ussher was ignorant of Hebrew scholarship.

‘Both Lightfoot and Ussher ignored Hebrew scholarship and assumed that no generations were omitted from mention in the biblical genealogies. They also assumed, based on the wording of the King James Version, that the numbered days of the Genesis creation account could only be six consecutive twenty-four-hour periods.’

I would say that it's inflammatory for Ross to claim that these two men were ignorant of Hebrew scholarship.

In fact, Ussher was recognized as one of the greatest scholars of his time, being an expert on Semitic languages and ancient history. He was one of only six theologians allowed to address Parliament and the King. In 1628, King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) appointed him to his Privy Council in Ireland. Ussher was critical of Oliver Cromwell’s rebellion against James’ son and successor Charles I. However, Cromwell also held Ussher in great esteem. When Ussher died in 1656, Cromwell held a magnificent funeral for him and had him buried in Westminster Abbey.

Lightfoot was an expert in Hebrew, including the Old Testament, and later Jewish writings called the Talmud and the Midrash, as well as being skilled in Latin and Greek.

While not inflammatory, it's just plain daft to claim that they were misled by the KJV wording -- both these scholars published exclusively in Latin and relied on the Hebrew. Most of Christendom throughout Church history agreed that the world was <6000 years old at the time of writing, so this rough figure was hardly an invention of Lightfoot and Ussher. All they did was try to be more precise, but this was what a lot of scholars of their day tried to do, including Kepler as shown below.

I wonder if Ross would dare to mock Ussher's rough contemporary Kepler who calculated a creation date of 3992 BC. Newton also strongly defended Ussher's chronology.

By contrast to Ross's disgraceful cartoon, the late atheistic evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould treated Ussher very fairly. While obviously Gould thinks Ussher was completely wrong, he shows that Ussher used the best scholarship available in his day:

‘I shall be defending Ussher’s chronology as an honourable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past. …

‘Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology. …

‘I close with a final plea for judging people by their own criteria, not by later standards that they couldn’t possibly know or assess.’

Interesting that an anti-Christian like Gould treat Ussher more fairly than Diggo's hero Ross who of course is sooooo respectful.

[Jedidiah]

You did claim that young earth advocates accuse old earth advocates of all sorts of things. Then several young earth advocates proved your point.

It is true that the age of the earth is not a salvation issue. I would like to ask our rather disrespectful yec folks (you can decide if you fall in that catagory or not) what impact a different understanding of the creation story has that makes you so unpleasant?

You all and Diggo are confessing Christians with a belief in Biblical inerrancy and authority. Why are you so emotional with a non salvation issue?

Let his love guide your words and your attitude.

beeman

[Socrates]

Today @ 07:32 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=165327#post165327)
beeman:

You did claim that young earth advocates accuse old earth advocates of all sorts of things. Then several young earth advocates proved your point.

You mean by actually documenting his falsehoods and Ross's inflammatory cartoons? But then I forget -- there's one rule for YECs and another rule for their opponents.

It is true that the age of the earth is not a salvation issue. I would like to ask our rather disrespectful yec folks (you can decide if you fall in that catagory or not)

So we should be respectful of a man like Ross with cartoons like the above? And how respectful are you?

Let his love guide your words and your attitude.

That's what I'm doing -- see TheFiveSolas' post on the love of Jesus www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?action=showthread&postid=124217#post124217 which addresses your WFJ misunderstandings.

[dizzle]

A lot of respect will be shown when the thread starter make the request to a Moderator that he wishes to change the title of this thread.

[Socratism]

Beeman wrote:

Why are you so emotional with a non salvation issue?

Christianity is in a crisis in denominations that do not respect the authority of scripture. Thus, we have seen recently that a pastor who announced to his flock that "god does not exist" was not condemned by his flock, but instead defended on the grounds of his "free thinking" and outstanding character.

Those who think that defending the authority of scripture is not important are playing into the hands of the enemies of Christ.

Faith based on a foundation of sand is in great danger of being washed away when the rains of misfortune inevitably arrive in each person's life.

[GrayPilgrim]

Okay I will now show why it is Ross' "Hebrew Facts" are לא כל כך בסד!

First, on the issue of יום. As Claus Westermann and James Barr, neither of whom are known his evangelical leanings, both point out, the use of יום in Genesis 1 paired together with ויהי-ערב ויהי-בקר יום and then add a number is only used to refer to 24 hour days. Barr, whose career can be summed up as a methodological critic and is no friend of evangelical approaches, actually finds absurd anyone view of the text that does not find this to equal 7 24 hour days.

Now I will give you the entry for יום from Koehler Baumgartner's A Hebrew Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament


—2. day of twenty-four hours:

To be sure they do have an entry for period of time, however I will not put up, because I am too busy to convert all of the Hebrew fonts into Unicode, that will be necessary to show you that when it means a period of time it is heavily modified by other time indicators such as the word for year or month, and then, it is that word that gives its length of duration not the use of יום.

Issue number two the used of תלדות. תלדות is used in Genesis as literary marker to designate a new narrative section of the book. The word generally combined with אלה and a proper noun. It is often translated "These are the generations of x". Interestingly enough the narrative that this formula introduces always deals with their children and not them, prompting some scholars to see the phrase as conclusionary, but hits is a minority view which I disagree with. Here are the 10 uses of אלה תלדות in Genesis.

Gen 2:4
Gen 5:1
Gen 6:9
Gen 10:1
Gen 11:10
Gen 11:27
Gen 25:12
Gen 25:19
Gen 26:1
Gen37:2


As you will note Genesis 6:9 is kind of and anomaly, in that Noah is part of the main them of this particular narrative section. However, that does not concern us, now. The point that I want to make with this is that the word תלדות as used in Genesis is a literary framing device and does not mean long periods of time.

Now we will enter into a little schooling on the Hebrew verbal system, which is actually one of my favorite things to discuss. Okay in Biblical Hebrew there are only the following clause options
wayyiqtol
w+yiqtol
w+x+yiqtol
0+yiqtol
0+x+yiqtol
w+qatal
w+x+qatal
0+qatal
0+x+qatal
0+yaqom
0+x+yaqom
w+yaqom
w+x+yaqom
w+qetol
w+x+qetol
0+qetol
0+x+qetol
0+NC
w+NC
NomAbs

Now in Genesis 1 the preferred clause type, which you referred to as convoluted (or words to that effect), is in fact number one. Oddly enough this is the base/unmarked narrative tense. That is when someone tells a story that is just the main clause type they used. For example in the Account of David & Bathsheba, the author simply used a string of wayyiqtols "he saw, he desired, he took. Thus when you say convoluted, I don't think you mean the clause type. Now let us address the use of ויהי. Now if you will look at the beginning of any Biblical narrative you will see that this very versatile verb היה generally will be used in the wayyiqtol verb as an introductory formula. It will be used at the end of narratives as a part of a concluding formula. Thus if you had said enigmatic (for היה is definitely that) I would have figured that you were using the Hebrew to make your argument, but your use of the NIV (another way I could tell you weren't using the Hebrew) shows that in fact it just seems odd to you in the English (I bring this out because of your ad homonym earlier about people using the KJV, which no one who has interacted with you on this debate uses). Thus your Hebrew argument needs a little work as well.

Thus we see that:

יום in context means a 24 hour period. You cannot find every possible use of the word in a diachronic study to eviscerate the clear context. In fact this old style of lexicography was soundly excoriated by Barr in his work Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament. Thus your faulty diachronic studies do nothing but weaken your argument, for when יום does mean more than a 24 hour period it modified by other durational words such as month or year.
תלדות which simply means generation does not mean long periods of time. It always occurs in the plural so nothing can be taken from that. Moreover, it is a narrative introductory formula in the book of Genesis and thus you cannot eviscerate it here with out mythologizing the other nine.
היה used as a wayyiqtol is rather normal Hebrew syntax, and does not need any modification or mitigate for an OEC and militate against YEC as you attempted to argue.

[Sher]

Today @ 10:10 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=165376#post165376)
GrayPilgrim:

I hoped you'd ring in with something like this :thumb: WTG!

:shersig:

[dizzle]

As Dee Dee hits "save this thread" to her computer. Thank you GP. We are so blessed to have someone who knows the Hebrew and Jaltus who knows the Greek.

[Socrates]

Yesterday @ 02:59 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=164700#post164700)
Diggo23, replying to Socrates:

Prove it --- but first see the thread I linked to on this in my first reply. I'll roast you alive if you raise things already addressed there. Steadele, who is NOT a YEC, agrees that you're mistaken there, as he shows in his fairminded post above.

I am not going to the link, bring your points up and put them on the table so that everyone can see them and test them.

I linked to a thread on Theology Web, so that is not "arguing by weblink" but not having to repeat something I have already "put on the table" here. So once again, it's For Wienerdog (and Staedele): what did the early writers say about Genesis? (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?action=showthread&postid=53088#post53088) This post has citations by the people Ross claims support his view. Neither of the people I wrote for are YECs but they agreed that Ross had overstated his case. But you were asking me to cross-post, which is against the rules.

I am sure that is not too much trouble. Roast me all you like but i am not about to wade through endless amounts of links to reply to comments made that no one visiting the site can see, it makes things confusing for them.

There was only one link, and it was part of TWeb so it is fair game.

Your attitude is "don't confuse me with the facts; my mind is made up" :saywhat:

Hosea 6:2 is a special case of the X//X+1 rule, and even there the days make more sense as ordinary days.

Makes sense that way ofcourse based on your presupposition. Many Bible commentators see these as long periods of time.

Then find them.

Actually, Archer says that the grammar does seem to point to ordinary days, but he doesn't believe it because of &quot;science&quot;

This seems highly unlikely since he used the issue of the Hebrew grammar to argue for long periods in a book that was recently published where he vigorously defended the day age view.

It's hardly unlikely. Here is what he said (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Moody, Chicago, p. 187, 1985):

‘From a superficial reading, the impression received is that the entire creative process took place in six twenty-four hour days. If this was the true intent of the Hebrew author (a questionable deduction, as will be presently shown), this seems to run counter to modern scientific research, which indicated that the planet Earth was created several billion years ago.’

Soc: I wasn't using it as proof. Rather, I was using it as disproof of those people who claim that Genesis 2:4 could be used to prove non-literal days. The point was, it is fallacious to use examples of day with a preposition to try to prove that the days of Genesis 1, without a preposition, can be long days. But there were plenty of words God could have used to indicate long periods, e.g. 'ad, 'ôlam.

This is a rather ridiculous way to dodge the Gen 2:4 issue, if it isn't a rule of Hebrew grammar then there is nothing stopping us using the Gen 2:4 passage as evidence.

Misleading, and ignoring what I said about the compound form in Genesis 2:4, bey&ocirc;m.

It is clearly a summary of the whole creation week with &quot;yomm&quot; used clearly meaning more then a 24hr period.

No, it was an idiomatic phrase for "when", in a totally different context from Genesis 1.

Consider Numbers 7:10–84. In verses 10 and 84, bey&ocirc;m is used in relation to the whole 12 days of sacrifice at the dedication of the tabernacle. But in between these at verses 12, 18, 24, etc. we have yôm used with a number to refer to each of the 12 literal days. (Actually, these verses have bayôm, where the ‘a’ represents the definite article, ‘the’, meaning ‘on the day [xth]’, unlike bey&ocirc;m , which lacks the article.) No one doubts that these 12 days were literal. This is a good parallel with Genesis 1 and 2 -- here we also have bey&ocirc;m used to described the whole six days of creation week, with yôm with a number referring to each of the separate days.

If God wanted to use yomm as a long period of time in the language of Gen1 there would be no other way of doing it.

Rubbish. Try answering my point about the many other words God could have used.

If God is giving us a creation week to go by but took long periods of time to do it, which is my argument then there was no other language that could of been used so appealing to 'ad and 'olam as better alternatives goes no where.

Why not? These are common words for long periods of time. In fact, some of Ross's spoof texts for long ages could have been used during creation week, e.g. to say that the mountains were "of old" when Adam was created.

When the Bible says that God has a hand do you take that literally?

Why, do you? A dishonest straw man of hyperliteralism.

Augustine knew no Hebrew, and claimed the days were an instant. So this is the opposite of what Rossites need.

If Augustine knew no Hebrew then why are YOU appealing to him as &quot;proof&quot; for young earthism?

I wasn't. I was disproving Ross's claims that he was an ally, by showing that he explicitly taught that the world was <6000 years old when he wrote.

No refutation of course -- once again, it's OK for him to attack us, but not for us to counterattack.

Attacking is not necessarily against Christian ethic, the key is what is BEHIND your attack. My preposition that young earther's [sic]stand on falsity and block the truth from the revelation of nature gives me a means to counter attack Young Earth bigotry. I do not question your sincerity with your actions, nor the sincerity of Jihard [sic] bommers [sic], it is the truthfulness of their testimony which counts.

Right right, so you actually justify your own bigotry but squeal :rant: when we counterpunch. Notice the above comparison of YECs with terrorists.

One catistrophic event isn't going to lay down layer upon layer of sediment etc Esp when that layer is interdispersed with grains of pollen etc that correspond with annual cycles of spring time, like in the example of the Green River Formation of Colorado which has literally over a million of these layers!

Oh really? Actually, turbidity currents can lay down a pair of varves, and self-sorting processes can lay down thick, finely laminated formations. And the GRF has preserved fish and even coprolites, which couldn't have lasted for more than a day. See Green River Blues (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/213.asp), Fish preservation, fish coprolites and the Green River Formation (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/15n1_green_river.asp) and Sandy Stripes (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/458.asp). BTW, the GRF was probably formed by post-Flood catastrophism.

Or maybe God zapped them there to make us think that the Earth is old but really it isn't HAHAHA And for that matter maybe u guys don't exist! Oh my! Perhaps God has implanted my memory of you so that i would THINK you exist but u really don't (twilight zone music goes off in the back ground). See what happens when this absurd argument gets pushed to it's natural ends.

Well, you are pretty good at pushing absurd arguments!! :poke:

And that's my point -- he hasn't thought through the implications, and how billions of years undermines his key apologetic against Templeton. Neither has Strobel thought carefully.

More adhominim [sic] arguments. Geisler is far to intelligent a scholar to fall into young earth nonsense

But he is not intelligent enough to see the contradiction between his long-age views and his belief that there was no carnivory before Adam's fall.

Just curious as to how u account for the light travel problem?

Easy, with Dr Humphreys' white hole cosmology explained at How can we see distant stars in a young universe? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/405.asp) I'm curious to know how you account for the light travel problem of the big bang, known as the horizon problem. See my post Big bangers have their own light-travel problem--so don't point the finger at YECs (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?action=showthread&postid=126029#post126029).

Ross wouldn't know Hebrew grammar if it bit him on the nose. He couldn't even say &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; in Hebrew

Again another YEC that likes to appeal to ad hominim [sic] arguments for verification of his position.

No, pointing out that Ross is a complete Hebrew ignoramus.

Ross doesn't need to be a Hebrew scholar, he has them as part of his team, along with GA.

Hahah, pity they never review his work then, e.g. to correct his crass claim in the first edition of The Genesis Question that behema was plural and behemoth was singular (other way round :dunce:)!

AIG wouldn't know astronomy, geology, physics, etc if it bit them on the nose but that doesn't stop them from commenting these disciplines!

Oh, right, right, it just has Dr Danny Faulkner, full professor of astronomy at a secular university, Dr Russ Humpheys, Ph.D. physics, Drs Andrew Snelling and Steve Austin, Ph.D. geologists ...

And then we see here some AIG propoganda cartoons. Replace &quot;God's perfect Word&quot; with &quot;AIG's interpretation of God's perfect Word&quot; and you have a more accurate concept.

No, the interpretation that most exegetes held until they felt the need to kowtow to deist-founded uniformitarian "science".

[dizzle]

Thanks Soc for linking to that one thread... (note to self - archive that thread)


Rubbish. Try answering my point about the many other words God could have used.

Music to my preterist ears.... oops, sorry, couldn't resist, it is a compulsion.

Right right, so you actually justify your own bigotry but squeal :rant: when we counterpunch. Notice the above comparison of YECs with terrorists.

Yep. But this one is really rich... I want to frame it as a Textbook example of Cognitive Dissidence...





More adhominim [sic] arguments. Geisler is far to intelligent a scholar to fall into young earth nonsense

Let me translate. You keep calling names when we all know that Geisler isn't as stupid as you!!!! :rofl: I heard Geisler speak on this, and though I respect the man, it was beyond lame.



AIG wouldn't know astronomy, geology, physics, etc if it bit them on the nose but that doesn't stop them from commenting these disciplines!

Oh and this is just another fine example. The double standard here is just gross.

[Diggo23]

“Of course, because it's basically a mindless cut and paste job from www.reasons.org/resources/apologeti...days.shtml?main It makes exactly the same crass blunders."

My cut and paste job was done simply because it was worded better in the RTB site. This was an action that really doesn't need to be defended.

"The Hebrew word shabat means "cease" and is usually translated that way, so it IS meant literally."

While it is true that shabat can mean "cease" it can also mean "rested". If it is usually translated "ceased" then why does the KJV, NKJV, NIV, Amplified, NASB, ESV, MKJV, WEB etc all translate it rest? Being in the context of a work week the same as what the Israelites were given with the clear intention of the Israelites to literally "rest" the same as the agricultural land being given to "rest" on the 7th yr then clearly the language of Gen 1 should be used the same. Ofcourse knowing the character of God, we would deduce that God does not need to rest and thus we have anthropomorphic language, and knowing that according to Isaiah God's ways are not our ways and Moses writing in Ps 90 that his concept of a day is disimilar to ours then there is absolutely no reason to believe that Gen1 is referring to 24hr periods. I know you responded to this point of mine but i rufuted your rebuttal in post #24 so i am free to use it.

"I did so, in my post #17 -- try listening for a change, and remove your anti-YEC hatred"

I don't hate anyone! But i hate people persecuting other people on false charges which is what many YEC do. You try changing your Hugh Ross hatred.

"Rules of grammar are not prescriptive but descriptive, based on regular usage. And everywhere else, numbered days mean 24-hour days. What would be the sense of saying six indefinite long periods of time? That's the same as one indefinite long period of time."

You really need to learn some debating skills. You are merely repeating what you have said in earlier posts that i have rebutted for which you have failed to answer. I'm not sure what you mean about being decriptive instead of prescriptive. I would concur that if the text were referring to human activity in Gen 1 then you would have an excellent point using the ordinal argument, fact is though we have a TOTALLY different being that is acting here whose concept of time is not the same as ours. God would have suited the 7 day week to work with our biological clock and circadium rhythum that demands a 24hr cycle.

"So what? God wrote Scripture to instruct, so uses words so we can understand them."

Yes he does, u still haven't answered my point. The Gen 1 work week is written in language for us to use as a guide and our biological requirements demand it a 24hr period for us, God does not have those restrictions on him

"A Ross cockup -- this is just wrong. The first day has a cardinal number (i.e. one, two, three …), (yôm echad) Day One. The others have ordinal numbers (second, third, fourth …). Also, days 2–5 lack a definite article (ha, ‘the’), while days 6–7 have one on the numeric. So a literal translation of Creation Week would be Day One, a second day, a third day, a fourth day, a fifth day, the sixth day, the seventh day."

Are you blind? U have not understood the point! I am not referring to the ordinal numbers i am referring to the linking verb "were", this is not in the original, so the "evening" "morning" are not linked to the "day", this departure from normal Hebrew suggests (does not prove) that we are not dealing with ordinary 24hr days. The lack of link in the text certainly makes sense in light of the fact that there is no "evening" and "morning" for the 7th day, which would seem extremely perculiar if they were meant as markers for the solar days. Obviously then the "evening" and "morning" terms fail as proof for a solar day but should rather be taken as "ending" "beginning" which is within it's semantic range. The lack of ending then for the 7th day fits nicely with Heb 4 reference to it still being in process. This is a point that the great Hebrew scholar Gleasan Archer makes and also the NIV translates the Hebrew exactly as Ross has stated it.

"Andrew Steinmann, Associate Professor of theology and Hebrew and Concordia University, Illinois, has analyzed this pattern in Genesis ([Echad] as an ordinal number and the meaning of Genesis 1:5, JETS 45(4):577–584, December 2002). He showed that it was strong SUPPORT for 24-hour creation days (and he is a real Hebrew scholar, unlike Ross who couldn't even say "yes" or "no" -- see his blunder under "Is the word ‘high’ in the original Hebrew?" in www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0529charisma.asp :umbo:) Steinmann concluded:

“ [Yôm], like the English word “day”, can take on a variety of meanings. It does not in and of itself mean a twenty-four hour day [ref]. This alone has made the length of days in Genesis 1 a controversial subject [ref]. However, the use of [Echad] in Gen 1:5 and the following unique uses of the ordinal numbers on the other days demonstrates that the text itself indicates these as regular solar days.’ ”

I am not a Hebrew scholar and nor are u, so i am not entirely comfortable commenting on this. I don't see how the use of ordinals in front of the "days" and there subsequent deviation is any more proof for the 24hrs then your earlier allusions to it. Oh and this is still ignoring the context point that i have supplied earlier.

Another Ross furphy. Systematic theologian Doug Kelly replied to his pathetic argument (Creation and Change: Genesis 1:1–2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms, Mentor (Christian Focus Publications), Ross-shire, UK, p. 111, 1997):

“ ‘To say the least, this places a great deal of theological weight on a very narrow and thin exegetical bridge! Is it not more concordant with the patent sense of the context of Genesis 2 (and Exodus 20) to infer that because the Sabbath differed in quality (though not — from anything we can learn out of the text itself — in quantity), a slightly different concluding formula was appended to indicate a qualitative difference (six days involved work; one day involved rest)? The formula employed to show the termination of that first sabbath : “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:2) seems just as definite as that of “and the evening and the morning were the first day”.’ ”

The point here that Doug is making, namely that Gen 2:2 is an "alternative" to the absent "and the evening and the morning were the first day" is not a viable point. The evening and morning statements are signalling the beginning and ending of the DAY not God's activity which is what the Gen 2:2 is referring to. So he is comparing apples to oranges.

"Also nonsense. Even if God's rest started on that day and continued, it would not follow that the day itself continued. If you started a vacation on Monday and it continued to Friday, it would not mean that Monday itself continued to Friday. See also Is the seventh day an eternal day?."

Again i point out that you need to aquaint yourself with the rules of argumentation. Your conclusion here is based on your presupposition that yomm is a 24hr period. If the text says that God rested ON the seventh day and Heb 4 etc says that we can NOW enter His rest and the text has actually linked it to the seventh day of Gen 1 then we must STILL be ON that seventh day. Your analogy does not work since Monday cannot carry over till Fri by it's very definition since Mon HAS to mean 24hrs, there is nothing in the def of mon that could suggest anything else, and to get to fri would require that mon cease, mon CANNOT by def carry over to fri.

"And why should that take more than a few hours, considering that there was a small subset — all the ‘livestock’, the ‘birds of the air’ and all the ‘beasts of the field’. Also, "kinds" were broader than today's "species", the numbers were very small. See www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1112animals.asp"

I stated before i am not chasing every nonsense AIG link that surfaces. Adam goes through 2 careers! He tills the ground and names all those animals. Kinds by definition is animals that are distinguished based on their breeding range, this would leave at least thousands in the whole region of Mesopotamia. Adam also would have had to get to know them in a close manner such that he would have felt the need for a female companion. It defies belief that you would believe this could all be done in a max of a few hours!

"More fairy tales from the Ross woods. Happa‘am is merely pa‘am with the definite article added, so the ‘p’ is doubled. Although Ross and his parrot Diggo claim this is ‘usually translated as “now at length”’, this is simply not supported by major translations such as the KJV, NKJV, NIV or NASB. Nor is it supported by other parts of the Bible. Rather, the lexicons show that while pa‘am has a variety of meanings, and is most often translated ‘time’, with the definite article it means ‘this time’. , This is illustrated by passages Ross and his parrot conveniently omit:
Judges 6:39―Gideon says to God, ‘may I speak once more … let me make a test once more’. Both times, ‘once more’ is the NASB translation of happa‘am, but the second test is only 24 hours after his first test. The KJV has ‘but this once’.

Genesis 18:32―Abraham said to God, ‘I shall speak only this once’ (NASB); ‘I will speak yet but this once’ (KJV). Here, happa‘am is translated ‘this once’, and it is used at the end of a short dialogue about the coming destruction of Sodom."


I am afraid Socrates has once again done a fine job of selecting evidence that suites him to make his point. Here are the rest of the details.

Near the close of the sixth creation day, Adam greets the woman that the Lord had made for him.
Genesis 2:23 reads,

“The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.’” (NIV)
“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.” (KJV)
“Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman for out of Man this one was taken.’” (NRSV)

“now” or “at last” in Hebrew is pa’am or pa’amah (6471). This is not the most common word to be translated “now” and is used also in these instances in the Bible: Genesis 29:34, 30:20, 46:30; and Judges 15:3.

Genesis 29:34 “Again she [Leah] conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.”

Genesis 30:20 “Then Leah said, “God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.”

Genesis 46:30 “Israel said to Joseph, ‘Now I am ready to die, since I have seen for myself that your are still alive.”

Judges 15:3 “Sampson said to them, ‘This time I have the right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them.”

In each of these cases, the word “pa’am” was used in response to finally getting something that has been long awaited. In several of these cases, we know that a minimum of several years between the desire and the conclusion.

The translation of "at last" makes perfect sense within the context. Adam has just gone through 2 careers and has become well aquainted with the animals, only to find that they are no "mate" for him, so upon seeing Eve "atlast" is a translation we would very much likely see.

"“ The wording of Genesis 2:4 suggests a long time span for the creation week. This verse, a summary statement for the creation account, in the literal Hebrew reads, "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day of their making" Here, the word day refers to all six creation days (and the creation events prior to the first creative day). Obviously, then, it refers to a period longer than 24 hours. More significantly, though, Hebrew lexicons verify that the word for generation (toledah) always refers to a long time period, never to anything as short as a week. ”



Not so -- here is what Ross's lexicon actually says:

“ ‘It is reasonable to translate Genesis 2:4, “these are the toledot of the heaven and earth,” as meaning, not the coming of heaven and earth into existence, but the events that followed the establishment of heaven and earth.’ "

While Ross has used the "generations" point here i don't think it is a viable option for proof of long ages. However you still haven't dealt with the fact that "yomm" is used as a summary of the entire week. This is right in context evidence that those days are not to be taken as 24hrs.

"The word is ALWAYS used in the plural -- according to Ross's own lexicon!!"

This is typical AiG bigotry, they can't find any holes in the argument so they go and pick on tiny details in order to discredit Ross. When the young earth bigots run out of facts they just get louder.

"First of all, this is a relative term (how long is a piece of string?)"

While it is to an extent a relative concept it is not so relevant as to save the young earth position. If the "hills" and "mountains" are only a few days older then mankind himself then why is God trying to give the Israelites an idea of his "ancient" and "eternal" in this comparison? Surely this analogy would lose all impact if it the mountains were but 3000yrs old at that time.

"I address this very Ross claim in my post http://theologyweb.com/forum/showth...stine#post53088 I've cited this post earlier in this thread, and warned that I would roast you alive if you persisted with making claims that are refuted there. This completely blows away this lie by Ross (even in the opinion of non-YECs such as Steadele and Wienerdog), and your own credibility for repeating it regardless"

If you have valid points then bring them to the board and post them, i am not chasing every link that you put up.

"What nonsense. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, Basil the Great and Calvin had no problem believing in a day-night cycle before the sun was created -- see my post www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthrea...4913#post154913"

More adhominim arguments from YEC. Just because they believed it doesn't make it factual. It is a scientific absurdity to say there was a solar day before the sun was created, or to believe that plants were in existence before the sun. Theophilus etc all lived in an age before we had good knowledge of these things.

"You need only a light source (created on Day 1) and a rotating Earth to have a day night cycle. And what about OECs who must logically have the plants existing for millions of years before the sun was created. And it means "made" not "appeared", for which there was the perfectly good word ra'ah as in"

This is ignorance in all it's glory. You need more then just a light source: The sun has to give off the right energy amount, it has to give off a certain amount of UV rays, it needs to be the correct mass in order to maintain the planets in the right orbit, it needs to be metal rich ad infinitum, the fine tuning elements of the sun are so extreme that it could only BE the sun that would maintain the Earth and plants at this stage.
The text in vs 14 is literally translated as seen in the NIV as "let there be" and the NLT translates it as "appeared", so if the story is being told from the perspective above the waters then it would be perfectly consistent to say that "let there be" is the sun becoming visible: The purpose in vs 14 also suits this since they were made to seperate light and dark on Earth, as markers to light days and seasons etc This brings up another point, it is obvious here that the language is similar to that of day 1 where the light was doing exactly the same as what it is doing now in day 4 so proof that the sun was there in day 1.

"What piffle, parroting dishonest atheist equivocation about the term "evolution", as usual for Rossites. Rather, we believe that this is natural variation within a kind, by sorting and loss of pre-existing genetic information. Evolution from goo to you via the zoo requires NEW information."

New information or not, you are just being fiddly here, you appeal to exactly what the Darwinists do in your definition of natural selection. Predatory pressure, environmental stress and reproduction competition are what you appeal to and the most durable of the species is what gets past on. This is Darwinism through and through, and actually scientifically possible outside of the species level. AiG propose the absurd notion that it happens right up to the Family level! Eg the whole cat family has evolved from 2 pairs from the Ark.

"Why does Diggo bleat worse than a New Zealand sheep about such straw men?! We think it looks young but mature, and that age is the result of interpretation of certain physical processes. See The earth: how old does it look? Even many of those who believe that the earth is ‘young’ think that it looks ‘old’. But does it?"

I refuted this nonsense in an earlier post which i will repeat here.
apparent age theory flies in the face of this since we can't test evidence that is illusionary, for if God made everything LOOK old regardless of it's functionality then testing and experimenting which the Bible advocates is made redundant. Secular science is right about a lot more then you give it credit for, and it is not in conflict with scripture. This assumes that functionality is the most accurate guage for something's age, fact is that we have better methods to test Adam's age (hypothetically ofcourse), eg level of cholesterol in his bloodstream, scar tissue, chipped teeth etc this would have recorded an accurate age for Adam as 5 mins old if he was indeed that old. So even if the functionality of Adam threw us then there are a lot of other factors we have to go by that would give us an accurate age. This analogy doesn't work for a second reason, Adam HAD to have been created fully functional, so we would know that even though he looks say 24 that he would be much younger then that given that he couldn't survive being created as a new born babe or a 5 or 10 yr old. Bit of common sense here goes a long way.

"Diggo is so keen to portray YECs as bigots and Hugh Ross as a saint, But he ignores the way Ross mocked the fine scholar Ussher (Ross, H. and Bundschuh, R., Destination: Creation, Reasons to Believe Comix, p. 5, 1997) in the pic below. Again, AiG has never to my knowledge written anything so insulting of a OEC scholar. The AiG website www.answersingenesis.org/ overwhelmingly focues on the issues not personalities."

This was a comic! The whole thing is intended to be amusing for kids! There is nothing insulting about it.

"“ ‘Both Lightfoot and Ussher ignored Hebrew scholarship and assumed that no generations were omitted from mention in the biblical genealogies. They also assumed, based on the wording of the King James Version, that the numbered days of the Genesis creation account could only be six consecutive twenty-four-hour periods.’ "

This is a fair point! There are obvious omissions in the geneologies that Ussher failed to take into consideration. There is nothing in this quote that is derogatory! AiG should know the meaning of derogatory given the way they speak about Ross, though i suppose when you lack the ability to answer someone you ultimately try and destroy their credibility instead. Desperation and desperate means. This is why the likes of Ham and Sarfati won't face Hugh on radio, they know their interpretations won't stand up to Biblical and scientific scrutiny

When the young earth crown have no answers they just make more noise. They can't bare to have their interpretations questioned and tested.

So it looks like my thread heading has been proved! Many in the YEC are bigotted! They can't bare to have their interpretations questioned and when someone does they get persecuted!

- Damien

[dizzle]

/ot PLEASE learn to use the quote feature. This is how you do it. Simply put then insert the quoted text and Your posts are nearly impossible to follow.

So it looks like my thread heading has been proved! Many in the YEC are bigotted! They can't bare to have their interpretations questioned and when someone does they get persecuted!


Sigh..... How about this, "You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny, and not only that, you're defensive about it!!!"

And when you try to defend yourself against the charges that you are ugly by showing that you are actually an underwear model and that your clothes are quite stylish, I can gloat about how that proves how defensive you are that you are a bridge troll.

:flaming:

[$cirisme]

Dee Dee Warren:

/ot PLEASE learn to use the quote feature. This is how you do it. Simply put Your posts are nearly impossible to follow.


In other words, if you type THIS:

<<<<OPPONENET'S ARGUMENT HERE>>>>

You will get THIS:

<<<<OPPONENET'S ARGUMENT HERE>>>>

[Sher]

We YEC, OTOH, must be the best dressed crowd ...

... because we can't bare [sic]

:lmbo:


:shersig:

[Diggo23]

Reply to Socrates:

I can't believe your weak evidence for Ross insulting Ussher! Ross simply pointed out an error in his argument! You say i "parrot" Ross and that i "bleet like a NZ sheep", so you hardly having anything to whine about

Oh and you have failed to address the Heb 4 argument that clearly refers to the 7th day still being in action to this day. Even young earth creationist John Mark Reynolds concedes this as a viable point and sees the 7th day as a long period of time.

I am only replying to Socrates now since the odds are getting a little unfair.

- Damien

[Diggo23]

"It's hardly unlikely. Here is what he said (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Moody, Chicago, p. 187, 1985):

“ ‘From a superficial reading, the impression received is that the entire creative process took place in six twenty-four hour days. If this was the true intent of the Hebrew author (a questionable deduction, as will be presently shown), this seems to run counter to modern scientific research, which indicated that the planet Earth was created several billion years ago.’"

Notice that word "superficial" there at the beginning of the paragraph? In other words if one reads it in a blazzay manner with no regards for probing the text further and weighing the evidence then indeed one might conclude they are 24hr periods. There is NO mention here from Archer about the Hebrew grammar! Was this your "proof" that Archer considered the Heb grammar to indicate 24hr periods? This is a total misuse of evidence! And Archer's point about the scientific evidence is a good one.

"Misleading, and ignoring what I said about the compound form in Genesis 2:4, beyôm."

Again ignoring the fact that "day" for the Lord is not the same as "day" for humans so an appeal to the language of Gen 1 is fallacious.

"No, it was an idiomatic phrase for "when", in a totally different context from Genesis 1."

I don't agree, the fact that the word "generations" is used would indicate the history of the heavens and the earth, the phrase is clearly a summary.

"Consider Numbers 7:10–84. In verses 10 and 84, beyôm is used in relation to the whole 12 days of sacrifice at the dedication of the tabernacle. But in between these at verses 12, 18, 24, etc. we have yôm used with a number to refer to each of the 12 literal days. (Actually, these verses have bayôm, where the ‘a’ represents the definite article, ‘the’, meaning ‘on the day [xth]’, unlike beyôm , which lacks the article.) No one doubts that these 12 days were literal. This is a good parallel with Genesis 1 and 2 -- here we also have beyôm used to described the whole six days of creation week, with yôm with a number referring to each of the separate days."

Again you are kicking at a dead horse. There is no alternative but for those days in Num to be 24hr periods, it is again referring to the context of human activity.

"Rubbish. Try answering my point about the many other words God could have used.

“ If God is giving us a creation week to go by but took long periods of time to do it, which is my argument then there was no other language that could of been used so appealing to 'ad and 'olam as better alternatives goes no where. ”


Why not? These are common words for long periods of time. In fact, some of Ross's spoof texts for long ages could have been used during creation week, e.g. to say that the mountains were "of old" when Adam was created."

There were NO other words that could have been used that would fit a creation week. The abiguity of day as meaning 24hrs or a long period of time is surely ingenius here. "day" was the only word since you wouldn't use Olam in the context of a working week. So you don't have a point. Oh and Olam by Lexicon definitions wouldn't be suitable for a long period of time till after the Biblical period ended.

"Why, do you? A dishonest straw man of hyperliteralism."

Can you understand English properly? That was a retorical question. My point was that divine activity is not the same as ours, so why should his working week have to be exactly the same?

"Right right, so you actually justify your own bigotry but squeal when we counterpunch. Notice the above comparison of YECs with terrorists."

Again your emotions cloud your judgements (freq problem with YECs). If you bother to understand my point you will realise that i am not claiming that YEC are like terrorists, my point was that sincerity and zealousness is not necessarily equal to accuracy.

"Oh really? Actually, turbidity currents can lay down a pair of varves, and self-sorting processes can lay down thick, finely laminated formations. And the GRF has preserved fish and even coprolites, which couldn't have lasted for more than a day. See Green River Blues, Fish preservation, fish coprolites and the Green River Formation and Sandy Stripes. BTW, the GRF was probably formed by post-Flood catastrophism."

This is outright garbage and a blant REINTERPRETATION of the facts. Catastrophism has NEVER been observed to lay down layers interdespersed with polin grays in a cycle that correlates with spring seasons. Fish fossilisation is not the same thing, a catastrophe isn't intelligent activity that would lay such a need pattern down one after another.

"Easy, with Dr Humphreys' white hole cosmology explained at How can we see distant stars in a young universe? I'm curious to know how you account for the light travel problem of the big bang, known as the horizon problem. See my post Big bangers have their own light-travel problem--so don't point the finger at YECs."

Humphrey's work was a joke, Hugh Ross who is a real astronomer pointed out the absurdities in his equations. Humphreys posits that time was running slower in other parts of the universe that accounts for starlight that is getting to us from billions of years away but really isn't. We have stars that pulsate regularly and we observe them at these limits and guess what! There speed is NO different so time was clearly moving at the same rate. His paper would not stand up to scientific scrutiny, i am embarrassed to think that others calling themselves Chrisitians would posit such nonsense.

"Hahah, pity they never review his work then, e.g. to correct his crass claim in the first edition of The Genesis Question that behema was plural and behemoth was singular (other way round )!"

Difference between plural and singular? If you look at that reference you will see that this mistake takes NOTHING away from the point of the text, actually Ross had the fortitude and humility to recognise the minor error and fix it.

"Oh, right, right, it just has Dr Danny Faulkner, full professor of astronomy at a secular university, Dr Russ Humpheys, Ph.D. physics, Drs Andrew Snelling and Steve Austin, Ph.D. geologists ..."

Having a few letters after ones name doesn't always guarantee accuracy. Flood geology should be enough to convince anyone that YEC don't know science.

- Damien


Damien,
Please go to the following link and read TWeb's Decorum on posting.
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/view.php?pg=decorum


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[Socrates]

Diggo23, replying to:

Socrates (post #30): Diggo is so keen to portray YECs as bigots and Hugh Ross as a saint, But he ignores the way Ross mocked the fine scholar Ussher (Ross, H. and Bundschuh, R., Destination: Creation, Reasons to Believe Comix, p. 5, 1997) in the pic below. Again, AiG has never to my knowledge written anything so insulting of a OEC scholar. The AiG website www.answersingenesis.org/ overwhelmingly focues on the issues not personalities.

This was a comic! The whole thing is intended to be amusing for kids! There is nothing insulting about it.

Can you believe this? "Nothing insulting" about portraying Ussher in a dunce cap counting on his toes? :saywhat:

Evidently it's impossible to get through to this person. :argh: But what can you expect from someone who calls us "bigots" then squawks :bawl: when we counterattack.

Socrated quoting Ross: "“ ‘Both Lightfoot and Ussher ignored Hebrew scholarship and assumed that no generations were omitted from mention in the biblical genealogies. They also assumed, based on the wording of the King James Version, that the numbered days of the Genesis creation account could only be six consecutive twenty-four-hour periods.’

Diggo: This is a fair point!

Oh, right, right, a fair point to accuse Ussher of being misled by the King Jimmy although he was one of the leading Hebrew scholars of his day, and wrote in Latin. Sheesh :metro:

Diggo23:

Reply to Socrates:

I can't believe your weak evidence for Ross insulting Ussher!

I gave you hard visual evidence!! :poke: I reproduced the cartoon of Ussher in a dunce cap counting on his toes. Here's the other one from that comic below.

[GrayPilgrim]

Diggo23,

could you please respond to my post?

[Diggo23]

Greypilgrim i will try and respond, but it will take a bit of time to
do the research.

I have some more responses to Socrates posts after a bit of research:

"A Ross cockup -- this is just wrong. The first day has a cardinal number (i.e. one, two, three …), (yôm echad) Day One. The others have ordinal numbers (second, third, fourth …). Also, days 2–5 lack a definite article (ha, ‘the’), while days 6–7 have one on the numeric. So a literal translation of Creation Week would be Day One, a second day, a third day, a fourth day, a fifth day, the sixth day, the seventh day.

Andrew Steinmann, Associate Professor of theology and Hebrew and Concordia University, Illinois, has analyzed this pattern in Genesis ([Echad] as an ordinal number and the meaning of Genesis 1:5, JETS 45(4):577–584, December 2002). He showed that it was strong SUPPORT for 24-hour creation days (and he is a real Hebrew scholar, unlike Ross who couldn't even say "yes" or "no" -- see his blunder under "Is the word ‘high’ in the original Hebrew?" in www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0529charisma.asp :umbo:) Steinmann concluded:

“ [Yôm], like the English word “day”, can take on a variety of meanings. It does not in and of itself mean a twenty-four hour day [ref]. This alone has made the length of days in Genesis 1 a controversial subject [ref]. However, the use of [Echad] in Gen 1:5 and the following unique uses of the ordinal numbers on the other days demonstrates that the text itself indicates these as regular solar days.’

I quote Steinmann here:

""[The cardinal] echad may be used in place of the
ordinal rashon when enumerating time periods, but only
in two special idioms. One of these designates the
day of a month, the other the year of a reign of a
king. In all other cases of periods of time (days,
months or years) the ordinal number is used.
Moreover, this use of the cardinal number echad is not
exclusive to it, since any Hebrew cardinal number may
be used in the same expressions, (italics) and only in
those expressions.(end italics) In addition, it
should be noted that (italics) in every case for
numbering a time period where a cardinal number is
used to represent an ordinal number as well as in
every case where a cardinal number is used to number a
time period, the number is always explicitly definite,
(end italics) either by the presence of the article or
by the governing noun having a pronominal suffix or
because the governing noun is a proper noun."

So by using the ordinal number, the first day of
creation is contrary to the usual system of numbering
in Hebrew, and is not "normal." Moreover, since the
first five days do not have a definite article, this
makes it even more unusual, since "every case where a
cardinal number is used to number a time period, the
number is always explicitly definite." Steinmann
indeed concluded that the days of creation were 24
hour periods, but he did so due to the use of
"evening" and "morning" not because of the use of the
numbers." So you are hardly bringing anything new to the
table.

My point ""Some have argued for 24hour days on the basis that
yowm, when attached to an ordinal (second, third,
fourth, etc.) elsewhere in the Bible always refers
to a 24-hour period. This argument is inconclusive.
The Bible, afterall, has no other occasion to
enumerate epochs of time. More importantly, there is
no rule of Hebrew grammar stating that yowm attached
to an ordinal must refer to 24-hour days."

His reply "Rules of grammar are not prescriptive but
descriptive, based on regular usage. And everywhere
else, numbered days mean 24-hour days. What would be
the sense of saying six indefinite long periods of
time? That's the same as one indefinite long period
of time."
Sure, rules of grammar are prescriptive. But this
would only be a valid argument if numbers made ALL
nouns "literal" which they don't."

Socrates wrote: "Also nonsense. Even if God's rest started on that day and continued, it would not follow that the day itself continued. If you started a vacation on Monday and it continued to Friday, it would not mean that Monday itself continued to Friday. See also Is the seventh day an eternal day?."

The reason is because Hebrews 4:4, in reference to
God's Sabbath REST quotes Genesis 2:2 which refers to
God's Sabbath DAY. There's no biblical reason to make
a dichotomy between God's Sabbath rest and Sabbath
day.

"And why should that take more than a few hours, considering that there was a small subset — all the ‘livestock’, the ‘birds of the air’ and all the ‘beasts of the field’. Also, "kinds" were broader than today's "species", the numbers were very small. See www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1112animals.asp"

It must be pointed out here that Henry Morris claimed that Adam named a few thousand animals ("The Genesis Record," 97).

Also i add a quote here: "Ancient thought attached much greater importance to the names than we do. Words were more than a means of communication and the use of appropriate names was
anything but arbitrary. Naming an animal properly
indicated that one had understood and characterized
its properties, that one had established a
relationship with and one's rule over it." (Aldert Van
Der Ziel, "Genesis and Scientific Inquiry," 59)
Doing this to a few thousand animals is hardly going to take a few hrs.

This was in response to my argument about Adam coming to Eve and exclaiming "At Last": "More fairy tales from the Ross woods. Happa‘am is merely pa‘am with the definite article added, so the ‘p’ is doubled. Although Ross and his parrot Diggo claim this is ‘usually translated as “now at length”’, this is simply not supported by major translations such as the KJV, NKJV, NIV or NASB. Nor is it supported by other parts of the Bible. Rather, the lexicons show that while pa‘am has a variety of meanings, and is most often translated ‘time’, with the definite article it means ‘this time’. , This is illustrated by passages Ross and his parrot conveniently omit:
Judges 6:39―Gideon says to God, ‘may I speak once more … let me make a test once more’. Both times, ‘once more’ is the NASB translation of happa‘am, but the second test is only 24 hours after his first test. The KJV has ‘but this once’.

Genesis 18:32―Abraham said to God, ‘I shall speak only this once’ (NASB); ‘I will speak yet but this once’ (KJV). Here, happa‘am is translated ‘this once’, and it is used at the end of a short dialogue about the coming destruction of Sodom."
This was in response to the Gen 2:4 argument: "Not so -- here is what Ross's lexicon actually says:

“ ‘It is reasonable to translate Genesis 2:4, “these are the toledot of the heaven and earth,” as meaning, not the coming of heaven and earth into existence, but the events that followed the establishment of heaven and earth.’
Actually Socrates It's more fairy tales from the BDB woods.
The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon states that "hapa'am"
means "now at length" (BDB, p. 822 [6471:3d:(2)]).
The BDB makes a distinction between when this term is
used by itself, and when it's used with the adverb
'ak, which it translates as "this once" (p. 822
[6471:3d:(1)]). Both of his examples are when
"hapa'am" is used with "'ak."

"hapa'am" is indeed just the word "pa'am" (time or
instance) with the definite article. This doesn't
mean THE time, but THIS time (that's the way Hebrew
works; hayowm means THIS day, not THE day). The
statement "this time" implies the passage of previous
"times" (or instances).

With regards to the debate about the church fathers i would like
to quote young earth church fathers researcher Robert Bradshaw:

""Early drafts of my manuscript clearly indicate my intention -
to demonstrate that the early church fathers were forerunners of the
modern young earth creationists. As time passed this began to change
and I began to gain a greater appreciation for the writings of the
fathers' themselves. The final result is not a wholesale endorsement of
the young earth creationist position, but I hope, an accurate summary of
diversity of opinion that existed during the formative centuries of
Christianity.""

This is exactly what i have noted having explored this topic a little, it actually lends support to my premise that the Bible is silent on the age issue and therefore we have arguments from both sides from the church fathers, highlighting the ambiguity of it all, if the Bible taught explicitly (or even implicitly) the age issue then we would expect consensus from the CF, but obviously we do not.

- Damien

[Jedidiah]

So we should be respectful of a man like Ross with cartoons like the above? And how respectful are you?


Have I been rude to you? Have I indulged in name calling?

No.

[dizzle]

This is exactly what i have noted having explored this topic a little, it actually lends support to my premise that the Bible is silent on the age issue .....

You have got to be kidding me. I am more sorry but that has simply no credibility.



and therefore we have arguments from both sides from the church fathers, highlighting the ambiguity of it all, if the Bible taught explicitly (or even implicitly) the age issue then we would expect consensus from the CF, but obviously we do not.

You have not dealt with Soc's treatment of the CF, you simply keep making assertions. Unsupported assertions. Also please get some backbone and admit the Ussher cartoon was derogattory. Until you can do that, I do not think we can expect any unbiased evaluation from you. That reeks of deciding upfront that Ross can do no wrong.

Also do you want to extend that pronouncement into other doctrinal areas? You do know that people use that same argument or a variaton of it to say that the Christain faith cannot be right since there is no consensus. Is your devotion to this issue so great that you will sacrifice consequences elsewhere doctrinally to prop it up?

[Socrates]

08-03-2003 @ 01:14 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=165892#post165892)
Diggo23, replying to:

Socrates: A Ross cockup — this is just wrong. The first day has a cardinal number (i.e. one, two, three …), (yôm echad) Day One. The others have ordinal numbers (second, third, fourth …). Also, days 2–5 lack a definite article (ha, ‘the’), while days 6–7 have one on the numeric. So a literal translation of Creation Week would be Day One, a second day, a third day, a fourth day, a fifth day, the sixth day, the seventh day.

Are you blind? U have not understood the point!

Perfectly! Ross said the sequence was X in a vain attempt to prove a point, and I showed that the sequence was actually Y. Why not concede a point once in a while?

I am not referring to the ordinal numbers i am referring to the linking verb &quot;were&quot;, this is not in the original,

Oh yes it was! In fact it's there twice! Weren't you listening when Gray Pilgrim clearly said the the word ויהי was there and it's the wayyiqtol form of היה?

... so the &quot;evening&quot; &quot;morning&quot; are not linked to the &quot;day&quot;,

Weren't you listening when Gray Pilgrim clearly said it was:

יום ... in Genesis 1 paired together with ויהי-ערב ויהי-בקר יום and then add a number is only used to refer to 24 hour days.

Diggo blusters:

I am not a Hebrew scholar and nor are u, so i am not entirely comfortable commenting on this.

You know nothing about me, but Gray Pilgrim is undisputably a Hebrew scholar and he has addressed many of your points! Why don't you heed him?!

Not so -- here is what Ross's lexicon actually says:

‘It is reasonable to translate Genesis 2:4, “these are the toledot of the heaven and earth,” as meaning, not the coming of heaven and earth into existence, but the events that followed the establishment of heaven and earth.’

While Ross has used the &quot;generations&quot; point here i don't think it is a viable option for proof of long ages.

Finally, a concession! :thumb: :yipee:

Soc: The word is ALWAYS used in the plural -- according to Ross's own lexicon!!

This is typical AiG bigotry, they can't find any holes in the argument so they go and pick on tiny details in order to discredit Ross. When the young earth bigots run out of facts they just get louder.

Poor baby. Ross made much of the fact that it was in the plural; I blow his case away by showing it's always in the plural, and Diggo squawks.

And again you didn't listen to GrayPilgrim when he said:

"[Toled&ocirc;t] as used in Genesis is a literary framing device and does not mean long periods of time."

Then Diggo splutters about science, and his science is as incompetent as his theology, and that's really saying something!

New information or not, you are just being fiddly here, you appeal to exactly what the Darwinists do in your definition of natural selection.

Not at all. Rather, Ross follows the Darwinists in equivocating all "change" with evolution, since both are ignorant of the information issue.

This is Darwinism through and through, and actually scientifically possible outside of the species level.

So please explain the proven production of new species. Oh, that's right, your master Ross says that they were just examples of reproductive isolation. He's too biologically ignorant to realise that this means a new species by definition! :dunce:

AiG propose the absurd notion that it happens right up to the Family level!

What they actually say, although Ross and his minion Rana can't grasp this simple point, is that the "kind" sometimes corresponds to the man-made category of "family". This is shown by the fact that the false killer whale and bottlenosed dolphin produced a hybrid which had a baby of her own. This means they should be classified as a single biological species, so certainly the same kind.

This is a fair point! There are obvious omissions in the geneologies that Ussher failed to take into consideration.

So please tell me where they are — from the text, please! And even if we granted gaps, Ross ‘dates’ the Flood to ‘between twenty thousand and thirty thousand years ago’ (The Genesis Question p. 177). But since the Genesis 11 people had sons at age 35 or less, to add even 10,000 years would take over 250 missing generations!

08-04-2003 @ 01:04 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=166101#post166101)
Diggo23:

I quote Steinmann here:

[The cardinal] echad may be used in place of the
ordinal rashon when enumerating time periods, but only
in two special idioms. One of these designates the
day of a month, the other the year of a reign of a
king. In all other cases of periods of time (days,
months or years) the ordinal number is used.
Moreover, this use of the cardinal number echad is not
exclusive to it, since any Hebrew cardinal number may
be used in the same expressions, and only in
those expressions. In addition, it
should be noted that in every case for
numbering a time period where a cardinal number is
used to represent an ordinal number as well as in
every case where a cardinal number is used to number a
time period, the number is always explicitly definite,
either by the presence of the article or
by the governing noun having a pronominal suffix or
because the governing noun is a proper noun.&quot;

So by using the ordinal number, the first day of
creation is contrary to the usual system of numbering
in Hebrew, and is not &quot;normal.&quot; Moreover, since the
first five days do not have a definite article, this
makes it even more unusual, since &quot;every case where a
cardinal number is used to number a time period, the
number is always explicitly definite.&quot; Steinmann
indeed concluded that the days of creation were 24
hour periods, but he did so due to the use of
&quot;evening&quot; and &quot;morning&quot; not because of the use of the
numbers.

So you are hardly bringing anything new to the table.

I am so -- Steinmann explicitly stated that the numbering pattern clearly taught that the days were ordinary days!!

The reason is because Hebrews 4:4, in reference to
God's Sabbath REST quotes Genesis 2:2 which refers to
God's Sabbath DAY. There's no biblical reason to make
a dichotomy between God's Sabbath rest and Sabbath
day.

And there is no reason to state that just because the rest is long that the day in which it started is long, as already explained. And according to Is the seventh day an eternal day? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4103.asp):

Hebrews 4:1–11 teaches that the seventh day of Creation Week was a parallel to the spiritual rest found through Christ alone. Only those who have believed in Christ enter this rest. If the Bible was speaking of an actual continuation of the seventh day of rest, then all would already be in this rest. The rest referred to is obviously a spiritual rest.

Diggo, who condones calling Ussher a dunce and inflammatory comments about YECs but squeals :bawl: when YECs counterattack, further spruiks forth:

With regards to the debate about the church fathers i would like to quote young earth church fathers researcher Robert Bradshaw:

&quot;Early drafts of my manuscript clearly indicate my intention —to demonstrate that the early church fathers were forerunners of the modern young earth creationists. As time passed this began to change and I began to gain a greater appreciation for the writings of the fathers' themselves. The final result is not a wholesale endorsement of the young earth creationist position, but I hope, an accurate summary of diversity of opinion that existed during the formative centuries of Christianity.

I.e. they had different concerns from YECs, as he makes clear, since the ECFs were less concerned with scientific matters. E.g. the ECFs were keen to see Christological significance in all passages of Scripture. What Bradshaw meant was clear in what he said at www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/Chapter8.htm

Creation-science as above defined is a modern phenomenon, because it is dependent on modern science for most of its terminology and concepts. It would be anachronistic to appeal the early church for answers to questions they did not ask relating to science they did not practice.

It would be equally incorrect, however, to argue that all of the central tenets of creation science are of modern origin. Mark A. Noll, for example implies that the belief that the earth is less than 10 000 years old was invented by Ellen G White.(5) In fact the early church, together with the majority of the church up to the eighteenth century, held that the world was less that 10 000 years old.(6) The majority of the church up until the mid-seventeenth century also believed that the Flood was both geographically and anthropologically universal.(7) Belief in creation ex nihilo, far from being a modern development became an established part of the church’s tradition by the end of the second century. The length of the days of Genesis 1 was clearly an issue of debate in the early church. Nevertheless, the literal 24 hour view has a long history and sound Biblical support.

This is what I have maintained on TWeb. I.e. the central biblical truths of modern creationists are the traditional views of the Christian church. Only the scientific models proposed as apologetic explanations of these truths are new.

This is exactly what i have noted having explored this topic a little, it actually lends support to my premise that the Bible is silent on the age issue and therefore we have arguments from both sides from the church fathers, highlighting the ambiguity of it all, if the Bible taught explicitly (or even implicitly) the age issue then we would expect consensus from the CF, but obviously we do not.

Are you kidding? Just look at his page www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/Chapter3.htm This completely demolishes Ross's claims about the Church Fathers and other early writers teaching long creation days. He lists 25 of them, and 9 explicitly taught 24 hour days. This includes Lactantius, Basil, Ambrose, Victorinus and Methodius, whom Ross claimed as believers in long creation days! Like his mentor Ross, Diggo is incapable of realising that his own source naysays him.

Also, Bradshaw says:

Even those who rejected literal 24 hour days still believed in a young earth as Table 3.4 demonstrates. Origen believed that the world was less than 10 000 years old and Clement thought it was still younger. In my view Davis A. Young is right when he concludes that the early church fathers “...did not believe that the creation had taken place over six thousand years, but that the totality of human history would occupy six thousand years, a millennium of history for each of the six days of creation.”

Bradshaw regards 12 of the names as "unclear", but one of them was Irenaus of whom he said:

So Irenaeus seems to have seen no contradiction here. For him the days of Genesis were 24 hours long and served as a pattern for the history of the world.

And about the others, Bradshaw wrote:

We cannot be sure of the views of most writers for a variety of reasons already mentioned above. My own view based upon the style of exegesis of other passages of Scripture would lead me to think that the vast majority of those listed as having an unclear view would opt for 24 hours had they discussed the subject. The shortage of references does not mean that they thought the issue of the age of the earth was unimportant. On the contrary it was clearly an contentious issue in the early church, because the Greeks believed that the world was extremely ancient.

Lactantius wrote:
Therefore let the philosophers, who enumerate thousands of ages from the beginning of the world, know that the six thousandth year is not yet completed, and that when this number is completed the consummation must take place, and the condition of human affairs be remodelled for the better, the proof of which must first be related, that the matter itself be plain. God completed the world and this admirable work of nature in six days, as is contained in the secrets of Holy Scripture, and consecrated the seventh day, on which He rested from His works.

Note that Ross claimed Lactantius as a day-ager! Not that Diggo cares, because according to him, Ross can do no wrong.

I also wonder if Diggo checked out Bradshaw's analysis of the early writers on the Flood, showing that they believed it was global, not local www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/Chapter6.htm

[Diggo23]

I haven't looked at this website in weeks since no one had responded to my last posts in such a long time. I thought Socrates had had enough embarrassment but obviously i was wrong. The young earth bigots are at it again i see! Lets get back on track then

"Oh yes it was! In fact it's there twice! Weren't you listening when Gray Pilgrim clearly said the the word åéäé was there and it's the wayyiqtol form of äéä? "

Socrates the phase äéä is literally translated as "and (there) was" The Hebrew is relating the completion of "evening" and "morning" as being sequential. The 1611 ver of the KJV acknowledged this in it's margin note "Hebr. and evening was and morning was &c."
The time interval between the completed evening and the completed morning is not stated. So if the correct translation is "and (there) was evening and (there) was morning, one time" tell me where the linking verb is? Gray Pilgrim i would appreciate your input.

The verb åéäé is vowel marked as a "waw-consecutive Qal imperfect" which translates as a completed action NOT a linking verb! The KJV translates the verb "and it had come to pass" 320x. This gives us a clue as to "when" the "evening" and "morning" are completed. åéäé often appears at the beginning of a sentence and the KJV phrase "and it came to pass" indicates that:
1. There has been a time interval of unstated length
2. Events have occurred which may or may not have been stated.

So this verb does not show any sense of immediacy. This lack of immediacy is consistent with the creative "yom" being long periods of time and is consistent with the translation "and (there) was evening and (there) was morning, one time." Which is also how the NIV translates it.

“ éåí ... in Genesis 1 paired together with åéäé-òøá åéäé-á÷ø éåí and then add a number is only used to refer to 24 hour days. ”

This is not a valid point since the sentence structure of Gen1 is totally different to anything else in the Bible, different to any other example where "day" is used in conjuction with "evening" and "morning" this unusual syntax suggests that the definition of "day" should be taken differently then normal.


“ “ Soc: The word is ALWAYS used in the plural -- according to Ross's own lexicon!! ”

This is typical AiG bigotry, they can't find any holes in the argument so they go and pick on tiny details in order to discredit Ross. When the young earth bigots run out of facts they just get louder. ”

Poor baby. Ross made much of the fact that it was in the plural; I blow his case away by showing it's always in the plural, and Diggo squawks."

No the difference there between the plural and the singular is hardly a means of accusation at distorting the Bible. The AiG science farce that is pulled everytime they release a magazine should show anybody that they are not worthy of credibility at all. Flood geology is an embarrassment to the credibility of Christian apologetics. It is used by Satan to bring ridicule on the Christian faith and show nonchristians that christianity has no factual basis and that the proponents of creation science are either grossly incompetent at science or deliberately misleading; what else could one conclude when they see so called "scientific evidence" for a 10,000 yr old earth! May God rescue us from such madness.

"So please explain the proven production of new species. Oh, that's right, your master Ross says that they were just examples of reproductive isolation. He's too biologically ignorant to realise that this means a new species by definition!"

There is no evidence for evolution producing new species! That is why the noted biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich of Standford University claim that "the production of a new animal species in nature has yet to be documented". You might be able to get something under man made experiments but not in nature. I find it ironic that AiG believe in evolution to such a large extent.

"What they actually say, although Ross and his minion Rana can't grasp this simple point, is that the "kind" sometimes corresponds to the man-made category of "family". This is shown by the fact that the false killer whale and bottlenosed dolphin produced a hybrid which had a baby of her own. This means they should be classified as a single biological species, so certainly the same kind"

Just because there is interbreeding doesn't mean that evolution is producing a new species! All the members of the killer whale and dolphin would have to be interbreeding for this to be true. What is more the whale and dolphin examples as well as the Liger are all under man controlled experiments, you don't see this occuring in nature! Nor is the Liger or the wolfin going to survive in nature. Since AiG posit a lion and tiger etc evolving from a single cat pair does that mean a domestic cat would be able to mate with a lion and produce viable offspring? Surely this is young earth nonsense at it's best. It is not their natural tendencies to breed. Atheists evolutionists don't even use this as evidence for natural speciation. We have NEVER seen a new species emerge via evolution, again i quote biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich in their book on extinctions at pg 23 "Biologists have not been able to observe the entire sequence of one animal species being transformed into 2 or more". AiG need to go back to kindergarten with the absurd pseudoscience they are positing.

"So please tell me where they are — from the text, please! And even if we granted gaps, Ross ‘dates’ the Flood to ‘between twenty thousand and thirty thousand years ago’ (The Genesis Question p. 177). But since the Genesis 11 people had sons at age 35 or less, to add even 10,000 years would take over 250 missing generations!"

The gaps are easile inferred since the Jews focused on mentioning the most important characters in their treatment of geneologies, so there is every bit a great chance that there is much that is missing. Even if there are no gaps in the geneologies you simply cannot just add up the ages and come to a date for the age of the Earth since we know that the Jews never intended for it to be used in such a fashion. An example is Gen 11 where Terah is said to have fathered Abraham and his 2 siblings at age 70 where his >total life span was 205yrs. The figures do not add up though since Abraham left Haran after his father died (Acts 7:4) but he was 75yrs at the time not 135! There is a 60yr error here if the numbers were intended to add up for a consistent age. So if you factor this in and even a small number of gaps in the geneologies then you can get a figure that is out by thousands of years!

"And there is no reason to state that just because the rest is long that the day in which it started is long, as already explained. And according to Is the seventh day an eternal day?:"

Socrates you need lessons in logic and argumentation. Since there is no dichotomy between the "day" and the long period of God's rest then why would you conclude that the day gets left behind and God continues on his rest. Why does Heb 4 actually quote Genesis and mention the seventh "day" specifically? Heb 4 doesn't draw the distinction that you do!

"Diggo, who condones calling Ussher a dunce and inflammatory comments about YECs but squeals when YECs counterattack, further spruiks forth:"

He was a dunce when he made that calculation and then concluded the exact date for man and nature's creation, he is using a purpose of the Bible that is foreign to it. He was just competing with Lightfoot in this instance, he even gave the TIME of Adam's creation which is totally ridiculous.

"I.e. they had different concerns from YECs, as he makes clear, since the ECFs were less concerned with scientific matters. E.g. the ECFs were keen to see Christological significance in all passages of Scripture. What Bradshaw meant was clear in what he said at www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/Chapter8.htm"

I don't deny that many of the CF did lean towards the 24hr view.
However just as Bradshaw points out that just because the ECF held to a particular persuasion doesn't necessarily hold that we must follow suite since they could be wrong!
The ECF came to their conclusion of a 10,000yr old Earth based on what they observed from the Latin/Greek translation that they had (few had access to the original language), this being the case the fact that the Latin/Greek are very different languages would cause for errors in interpretation of Gen1. The KJV as i have demonstrated is a poor translation when it comes to Gen 1 and it is the source of much of YEC. So the LXX that spawned the text that many of the ECF were utilising is the source for much of this error. Their apocalyptic beliefs were another source for their young earth position, since they held to a 6 "thousand year days" and that Christ would return at the end of this 6,000 yr period.

"Are you kidding? Just look at his page www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/Chapter3.htm This completely demolishes Ross's claims about the Church Fathers and other early writers teaching long creation days. He lists 25 of them, and 9 explicitly taught 24 hour days. This includes Lactantius, Basil, Ambrose, Victorinus and Methodius, whom Ross claimed as believers in long creation days! Like his mentor Ross, Diggo is incapable of realising that his own source naysays him."

They may have taught it but their emphasis on that particular topic was negligable. The ECF spent very little time on the topic of the "when" of creation. It just wasn't important to the early church which is evidenced by the fact that none of the seven Church Councils concentrated on creation! That is because it is not a central doctrine of the Bible. The age issue is the domain of the scientist moreso then the Theologian. Gen 1 was not written with the purpose of conveying the age of the Earth.

The young earther's desperate cling to ECF is indicative of the depravity which they find themselves in as a result of a severe lack of evidence!

[Socratism]

the sentence structure of Gen1 is totally different to anything else in the Bible, different to any other example where "day" is used in conjuction with "evening" and "morning" this unusual syntax suggests that the definition of "day" should be taken differently then normal.

No, it suggests that the syntax was designed so that no one could possibly take the phrase to mean anything other than an ordinary day (except people who have no common sense).

The idea that these phrases were intended to convey a sense of long periods of time is about the silliest thing I have ever run into in my entire life.