Who wrote this?

[Cerebrum123]

With regard to the term raqia: it bears mentioning that the root of the word means "to stamp, beat out, hammer." It would be a poor choice of words, indeed, for the author to use raqia in describing an "airy expanse." And given that virtually all ancient recorded cultures believed that the sky was a solid dome wherein things could become fixed (e.g., arrows, lances, stars), it would be strange for the author to be using a word that sits in agreement with conventional cosmology while purposefully intending to contradict the same.

For people who support the "plain meaning" of the Creation account, it seems clear that the author(s) of the Creation story plainly meant to suggest that the sky was solid and fixed.

P.H. Seely makes a point I had not heard before:

P.H. Seely. "The Firmament and the Water Above". The Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991), p. 237-238.

On the contrary. For when God divided the light from the darkness (two intangibles) nothing was made. But in order to divide the tangible upper ocean from the lower ocean the raqia was made [see attached]. The combination of dividing two tangibles (as opposed to intangibles) with something that was made [see attached], a verb which often means "manufacture," implies a tangible, i.e., solid divider. It would be unnatural to use [see attached] to say that God made space. Nor is it a particularly apt word for saying God made air. If a nonsolid divider had been in mind for separating the primeval ocean, the idea could have been communicated in a much more natural way. It could have simply been said that God put room [see attached] or space [see attached] as in Gen 32:16 [see attached], or space [see attached] as in Josh 3:4, between the two bodies of water. If air (a word never appearing in the OT) had been in mind as the divider, [see attached] ("wind") could have been used, as in Exod 14:21, or [see attached] ("breath") as in Gen 2:7; Ps 150:6.

© source where applicable

Image attached below for Hebrew words omitted in citation:

Attachment 76425

—Sam

For one, the root of a word, and the word itself can, and often do mean entirely, and sometimes even the OPPOSITE of the root. An example of a very different one would be Islam. Said to be the "religion of peace", because it has the root "salam" which means peace, but Islam means "submission", and due to they way Islam works, and spread, this would be submission through conquering. Hardly "peaceful". I have a full refutation to Seely's work here http://creation.com/is-the-raqiya-fi...t-a-solid-dome
This was done by James Patrick holding, and he has his own forum here on TWeb.


Wattsr1, I gave some of it, and I will give more, but I am going to take a little time to make sure I get it right. You do understand that, right?

[Jorge]

Jorge, that wasn't an attack on you. It was more an observation on how he would probably feel if someone who he so vehemently disagrees with most of the time, were to agree on something that they mostly fight on. Kind of like a hostile witness situation. I'm going to respond to Roy, and the others in a while, but I want to get all my information in order first, and try to present in a more coherent way(I'm not always the best with words). Surely they can understand that I at least am TRYING to get my information straight.

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I didn't take it as an attack on me (I forgot the smiley after my "low blow" line).

Watch out with Roy ... he will twist and distort and alter and never concede regardless
of how much evidence you present. The harder you try to "get your information straight',
the more time you will waste on him. If I should read a post of his genuinely conceding
the point that you are making, I will retract what I've just said. Any bets?

Jorge

[Ansgar Seraph]

For one, the root of a word, and the word itself can, and often do mean entirely, and sometimes even the OPPOSITE of the root. An example of a very different one would be Islam. Said to be the "religion of peace", because it has the root "salam" which means peace, but Islam means "submission", and due to they way Islam works, and spread, this would be submission through conquering. Hardly "peaceful".

You know those two examples aren't anything close to equivalent, even if one were to accept your premise concerning Islam, right? That's just not how etymology works.

I have a full refutation to Seely's work here http://creation.com/is-the-raqiya-fi...t-a-solid-domeThis was done by James Patrick holding, and he has his own forum here on TWeb.

Holding has never much impressed me. His cart is all too often put before his horses. Take this example:

http://creation.com/is-the-raqiya-firmament-a-solid-dome

There is a flaw in this line of reasoning as well. Seely has asserted that the ‘air’ or ‘space’ which surrounds us is ‘intangible,’ and this is correct from a strictly phenomenal point of view. But in actuality, the ‘air’ and ‘space’ around and above us is not strictly ‘intangible’ at all. It is rather composed of gas molecules (oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.) that are too small for us to feel or otherwise perceive unaided, and further out into space there is a wide variety of material such as spaceborne dust, gases, and so on. There is no reason why ‘made’ should be an inappropriate verb for the creation of such things, unless Seely can show elsewhere that creation of something similar required a different verb—and that he certainly cannot do, unless he has some hidden passages in the Old Testament up his sleeve. This is indeed a key problem for Seely’s thesis: he has no way of proving that raqiya‘ would not also be used for the creation of something made of gas, dust, or liquid because he has no comparison points within the text of the Old Testament to offer.

© source where applicable

Whereas Seely is working inside the text, armed with knowledge of what contemporary cosmologists thought about the sky, Holding, being just as bound as Seely is to the idea that God had to be separating something in the sky, argues that the author(s) of the Creation account recorded that God was separating atomic elements invisibly suspended in the air! Not that he or they would understand what was being recorded:

Ibid

Now I am by no means asserting that the human writer of Genesis 1 had some knowledge of terrestrial gases or extraterrestrial objects; that is not the point. That author (and later readers) could very well have understood the raqiya‘ as Seely supposes; but in being inspired to say that a raqiya‘ was ‘made’, without saying anything about its nature, the word permits us today to recognize the raqiya‘ for what it most likely is: An ‘expanse’ of terrestrial gases—or perhaps also extraterrestrial matter within our solar system or throughout space.

© source where applicable

So Holding, grasping to inerrancy as hard as he can, makes numerous attempts in his essay to dismiss Seely's argument by saying that God knew the technical details of what was being written but hid such knowledge for the authors so that what they misunderstood in the recorded history would be seen by us moderns as accurate descriptions of atomic theory.

It's simply not a believable argument — it's certainly not plausible. It's the opposite of Occam's Razor in a situation that the Razor was made for.

—Sam

[rogue06]

I also believe that Wise has been misrepresented several times

Out of curiosity is Wise being misrepresented when he said

"I am a young-age creationist because the Bible indicates the universe is young. Given what we currently think we understand about the world, the majority of the scientific evidence favors an old earth and universe, not a young one. I would therefore say that anyone who claims that the earth is young from scientific evidence alone is scientifically ignorant”.

Or

“Substantial supporting evidence of macroevolutionary theory can be found in the fossil record of stratomorphic intermediates. Additionally, the creation model is not well enough developed at present to properly evaluate this evidence or to develop an adequate alternative scenario or explanation.

[rogue06]

*****************************************************************



The above quote is from the same guy that unashamedly has this in his sig :

"Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional."

That notorious line is a direct quote from you Jorge

*******************************************************

Surely you jest ?
Are you trying to waste my time (again!) responding to your nonsense?

Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

I do agree that it is laughable

[lao tzu]

The thing is that Darwin, Hutton, and Lyell, were all trying to explain AWAY the idea of God. I believe it was Lyell who was most open about his intent, and I believe it was he who said that he wanted to "free science from Moses". Darwin had long been agnostic, but he still was rather hostile towards the Biblical conception of God. He did do his best to hide this from others, especially his wife.

This sounds a bit like the rumours of Darwin's death bed confession.

Do you have any evidence for your claims?

Which one, Roland? The first — that Darwin, Hutton, and Lyell, were trying to explain away the idea of God — is surely conspiracy theory. Makes me think of a guy with legs sprawled across the sidewalk complaining that somebody stepped on his ankle, on purpose. Shouldn't have had his legs blocking the path to begin with. That's the only statement I find hard to swallow.

The rest of it looks mostly right, if phrased hysterically. Lyell was prominent among the host of 19th century geologists whose studies were misled by Biblical geology, especially the flood tales. He had good reason to wish science freed from Moses. And the conflict between Darwin's discoveries and his sensitivity to his wife's beliefs is well known. Calling it "hiding" is socially autistic. Simple human kindness toward one's spouse demands tactful presentations.

The "Documentary Hypothesis" is garbage. There is no real evidence for it, and other ideas fit what information we have far better than it does. Here is an article that discusses some of this "Hypethesis", and shows evidence against it(please don't just disregard it because it's from creation.com it doesn't even talk about ToE) http://creation.com/did-moses-really-write-genesis

The "Documentary Hypothesis" is ridiculous in light of what we do have available, and it is an argument that is based primarily on different names used for God. Following this hypothesis is self contradictory, because you get even single sentences being attributed to multiple authors.

None of the flaws of the DH can make Mosaic authorship more probable. At best, we'd have two failed theories, where previously there was only the one. Your source is a bit high-strung. He also misrepresents, likely deliberately, the real objection to Mosaic authorship of the Hebrew sacred texts. The problem isn't that writing was unknown in 1400 BCE, but that the Hebrew language, especially the language used in the Torah, had not yet emerged. it's simply absurd to claim scholars writing about the origins of the Bible would be that ignorant of writing in the ancient world. It's well known that writing was introduced to the region at the end of the fourth millennium or beginning of the third millennium BCE.

Hebrew, however, was not. One can't write a book in a language that hadn't yet emerged. In fact, the earliest abecedary for Hebrew we have is in Phoenician script, likely from the mid-10th century BCE.

A is for Ancient

alphabet.583.192.jpg

As ever, Jesse

[Cerebrum123]

The first — that Darwin, Hutton, and Lyell, were trying to explain away the idea of God — is surely conspiracy theory.

So quotes like these from Darwin supporters don't lend any credence to this?

Micheal Ruse
‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.

‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’

Sir Julian Huxley

‘Darwin’s real achievement was to remove the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.’

Professor Steven Jay Gould

‘Darwin constructed the theory of natural selection in large measure as a direct refutation of the argument from design’.

This one isn't from a Darwin supporter, but from someone who was reviewing Darwin's Origin of Species.

Professor Adam Sedgwick

‘From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked and served up…And why is this done? For no other reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.’

Not to mention his arguments against the God of the Bible calling Him a "revengeful Tyrant".
I'll try to respond to the rest later, but this one caught my eye.

[DuraGizer]

There is NO CONTRADICTION in the Bible

I've heard that same tune tuned in regards to the Star Wars prequels when compared to the original films. Of course, I am able to recognize fanw**king, retconning, and willful ignorance when I see it and safely disregard it all as the claptrap that it is.

[rogue06]

So quotes like these from Darwin supporters don't lend any credence to this?

Micheal Ruse
‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.

‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’

Sir Julian Huxley

‘Darwin’s real achievement was to remove the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.’

Professor Steven Jay Gould

‘Darwin constructed the theory of natural selection in large measure as a direct refutation of the argument from design’.

This one isn't from a Darwin supporter, but from someone who was reviewing Darwin's Origin of Species.

Professor Adam Sedgwick

‘From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked and served up…And why is this done? For no other reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.’

Not to mention his arguments against the God of the Bible calling Him a "revengeful Tyrant".
I'll try to respond to the rest later, but this one caught my eye.

As I noted back at post #69 "Unfortunately history shows that many scientific advances are treated as attacks on religion in some quarters" and showed how in the case with Newton and gravity that some of his supporters did the same thing that you cite here:

Newton himself was concerned that his laws of motion would be used to devise anti-Scriptural theories concerning the origin of the Earth and Solar System – which is precisely what William Whiston, who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair at Cambridge, and others would do.

Supposedly Pierre-Simon de Laplace (mathematician and astronomer whose work was crucial to the development of mathematical astronomy and statistics though best known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system) while explaining Newton’s theory concerning the origin of the Solar System to Napoleon (a former pupil, and before he became Emperor) was asked by Napoleon about the role of God and replied, “Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" ("I have no need for that hypothesis"). Even if this quote is apocryphal in nature it still betrays an attitude or at the very least a fear that it led to atheism.

Btw, you left out the quote from Richard Dawkins that is probably the most notorious.

And as to the quote by Ruse... I used to have a nice link, "Michael Ruse on the misuse of his religion comments" where he discusses how his remarks have been misinterpreted but it is no longer a working link

Essentially his actual position is the same that has been expressed by those who could be described as TEs over the years such as Benjamin Warfield, the biblical inerrantist par excellence and whose influence can be seen in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, who expressed it well during his class lectures on evolution prepared in 1888 & used until at least 1900:

"The upshot of the whole matter is that there is no necessary antagonism of Christianity to evolution, provided that we do not hold to too extreme a form of evolution. To adopt any form that does not permit God freely to work apart from law and which does not allow miraculous intervention (in the giving of the soul, in creating Eve, etc.) will entail a great reconstruction of Christian doctrine, and a very great lowering of the detailed authority of the Bible.”

Another influential defender of evangelical doctrine, vocal critic of theological liberalism and a contributor to The Fundamentals, James Orr, also contrasted between naturalistic/materialistic evolution and evolution itself maintaining that God supernaturally guided the evolutionary process leading to humanity (the position advocated by Alfred Wallace -- the co-discoverer of the ToE).

Similarly when John Paul II issued his statement on evolution in his address, "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth" in 1996 he clearly distinguished between "materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations," rejecting as "incompatible" with Scripture views, for example, that "consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter."

Even some of those cited as opponents of evolution appear to have held this view when asked to elaborate. For instance Charles Hodge said in "What is Darwinism" that evolution by chance is atheism (p156), but he did in fact allow evolution, "If God made them it makes no difference so far as thequestion of design is concerned how he made them; whether at once or by aprocess of evolution." (p95). He rejected naturalistic or materialistic views of evolution but accepted that evolution might be established and directed by God.

It is the purely naturalistic/materialistic views of evolution (such as that promoted by Richard Dawkins) that TEs reject and that Ruse is describing in the quote as being like a religion.

That Ruse recognizes this distinction is seen in his later works such as "Is Evolution a Secular Religion?" where he distinguishes between evolution and what he termed "Darwinism" (much in the manner that Orr did) and places much of the blame for confusion on Thomas Henry Huxley and his desire for reform in Britain.

Ruse feels that Huxley saw the Anglican Church as being the primary opponent to social change and reforms in the country and thinks he therefore "saw the need to found his own church" based upon naturalism and employed evolution to this end. This apparently is what he meant when he complained that evolution was "promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality" from the beginning.

IOW, Ruse clearly distinguished between "professional evolutionary biology: mathematical, experimental, not laden with value statements" and "evolution as secular religion, generally working from an explicitly materialist background and solving all of the world's major problems, from racism to education to conservation." It is the latter view that TEs have consistently rejected.

This is why Ruse concluded: "if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry" (emphasis added)

[Ansgar Seraph]

And as to the quote by Ruse... I used to have a nice link, "Michael Ruse on the misuse of his religion comments" where he discusses how his remarks have been misinterpreted but it is no longer a working link

Wayback Machine Link.

[lao tzu]

So quotes like these from Darwin supporters don't lend any credence to this?

Micheal Ruse
‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.

‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’

That's an amusing viewpoint, but not one I find biologists, or even Ruse supporting. C, what you need to watch for is creationist sources quote-mining and supporting dishonest behavior. The "[sic]" behind the reference to Gish as "Mr." is a giveaway. No one outside creationism views Gish's diploma mill doctorate as any more meaningful than $2595's.

I think this paragraph, the introduction to a book review (for which I was never paid) in a Canadian newspaper some 10 or so years ago, has received more attention and more repetition (especially on the Internet) than anything else I have ever written. More even than my claim that morality is an illusion put in place by the genes to make us social animals. No matter that I qualified it then and have qualified it before and ever since. "Ruse recants! Evolution is a religion! Read all about it!" Or more accurately, don't read all about it, because then you might find that that is not quite all that I had to say.

That's from Is Darwinism a Religion? by, yeah, you guessed it, Michael Ruse. This is called citing the source of text written by someone else so as to avoid plagiarism. That's what you've done here, by the way. It's an academic no-no, and frowned on on the boards, too, but coming from someone who thinks that the "Mr." in front of Gish is in error, I'm hardly surprised.

Bad habits are socially infectious.

Sir Julian Huxley

‘Darwin’s real achievement was to remove the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.’

And well it should be. There is no rational discourse possible after inserting God into such a conservation. But Huxley is not speaking here of Darwin's intent, but rather the effect of his discoveries. He was born five years after Darwin died. I sincerely doubt they spent much time discussing the finer points of his scientific motivations.

Professor Steven Jay Gould

‘Darwin constructed the theory of natural selection in large measure as a direct refutation of the argument from design’.

True. But in even larger measure as a direct refutation of the idea of the fixity of species. Neither of which are grounds for claiming he was intent upon explaining away God. To the contrary, refuting false arguments used to support a belief system can only benefit the belief system. That is assuming there are good arguments available as well.

This one isn't from a Darwin supporter, but from someone who was reviewing Darwin's Origin of Species.

Professor Adam Sedgwick

‘From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked and served up…And why is this done? For no other reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.’

Not to mention his arguments against the God of the Bible calling Him a "revengeful Tyrant".
I'll try to respond to the rest later, but this one caught my eye.

Poor Sedgwick. He opened up the box of geological time, and was then appalled by what came out. But surely there are no lack of Christians similarly appalled by the doctrine of eternal damnation. Most of them, in fact. If Darwin was opposed to this doctrine, and Sedgwick supportive, it speaks well of Darwin alone. It has no bearing on God and his actions, except as proposed by those who feel a need to "get even" with the unbelievers and assume their God must therefore feel the same.

The letter from which this quote is taken lacks necessary detail which Darwin himself apologizes for omitting in the letter itself. It is clearly an abbreviated aside on the way to explaining his personal beliefs, which by then he identified with the newly-minted term "agnosticism."

If you'd care to leave a citation for your above source in your next reply, it would be appreciated.

As ever, Jesse

[rogue06]

Wayback Machine Link.

Thank you

[lao tzu]

And as to the quote by Ruse... I used to have a nice link, "Michael Ruse on the misuse of his religion comments" where he discusses how his remarks have been misinterpreted but it is no longer a working link

Wayback Machine Link.

Damn ninjas.

Also, tofu.

[phank]

This thread has become very interesting to me. I admit I had never quite visualized the contest here this way. I'd always seen it as a battle between those who understood what evolution is, and those whose religion had pretty well short-circuited any real understanding. After all, in the many years I've been reading this stuff I have never once seen a single creationist attack against what practicing biologists understand evolution to be.

So this perspective is fascinating - evolution-the-science, accepted by those trying to understand what all the empirical evidence is telling us about biological processes and history, against evolution-the-social-and-religious-doctrine, accepted by those who see their comfort threatened by something opposing it directly on a social or religious playing field. And I can see that for this to happen, evolution-the-science must be uprooted and transported to that playing field, even when this transplantation process leaves nothing but a rather absurd caricature by the time it's replanted and ready to attack.

And so what such as Magellan, Jorge, Cerebrum123 and others are rejecting and dismissing bears no substantive relationship with the scientific theory, or any of the scientific concepts underlying that theory. In fact, I sincerely doubt that ANY theories, ideas, or concepts make sense to such people UNTIL they have been transplanted onto familiar territory, however much insult must be done in the process. Asking what scripture has to say about genetics is like consulting Aristotle to understand quantum entanglement. The only way to do this is to put genetics into scriptural terms (if anything of genetics can survive this), or putting quantum entanglement into Aristotelian terms, with the same danger.

[magellan004]

This thread has become very interesting to me. I admit I had never quite visualized the contest here this way. I'd always seen it as a battle between those who understood what evolution is, and those whose religion had pretty well short-circuited any real understanding. After all, in the many years I've been reading this stuff I have never once seen a single creationist attack against what practicing biologists understand evolution to be.

So this perspective is fascinating - evolution-the-science, accepted by those trying to understand what all the empirical evidence is telling us about biological processes and history, against evolution-the-social-and-religious-doctrine, accepted by those who see their comfort threatened by something opposing it directly on a social or religious playing field. And I can see that for this to happen, evolution-the-science must be uprooted and transported to that playing field, even when this transplantation process leaves nothing but a rather absurd caricature by the time it's replanted and ready to attack.

And so what such as Magellan, Jorge, Cerebrum123 and others are rejecting and dismissing bears no substantive relationship with the scientific theory, or any of the scientific concepts underlying that theory. In fact, I sincerely doubt that ANY theories, ideas, or concepts make sense to such people UNTIL they have been transplanted onto familiar territory, however much insult must be done in the process. Asking what scripture has to say about genetics is like consulting Aristotle to understand quantum entanglement. The only way to do this is to put genetics into scriptural terms (if anything of genetics can survive this), or putting quantum entanglement into Aristotelian terms, with the same danger.

Maybe you could do a bit of objective, empirical observation on your own memory - try to sort out fact from fiction. I have never rejected or dismissed scientific theory or the concepts underlying that theory. Quite the opposite. I have used science and mathematics to show that some disciplines - especially Evolution - are shams.

For an example refer to 'Are we apes - a mathematical approach. ' That was not a dismissal nor a rejection. All you have to do is to have an empirical, objective gawk at any of the threads I have started . None dismiss. They all analyse.
I know it makes you feel good to repeat the same hogwash over and over - but it 'Is not a good look'. Next time, at least quote me. You wouldn't want to end up like poor old Rogue , would you?

Magellan