Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for empirical types of sciences, it’s just when ‘so-called science‘ wanders off into philosophical and metaphysical areas does it get concerning.
Bodies From The Flood
- Thread starter VictorianLady
- Start date
I think you misunderstood me. I do NOT encourage evolution in any way what so ever!
Sorry, what you described sounds like 'theistic evolution'. What would you call it? Why millions of years?
I agree!
You see.......having pastored a church 1 mile from a Large University, I saw thousands of kids over the years who were confused and had left the church.
They could not grasp that there are actual bones of animals that lived 100 million years ago, buried in 3 miles of dirt were only 6000 years old. That caused them to question the legitimacy of the Scriptures. It did the same for me many years ago as well.
There has to be another answer.
You see, Christians who accept theistic evolution, and who also accept the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ on the cross, do so because they do not realize that the theology of both positions is mutually exclusive. Evolution, because its foundational tenet is death as a creative force, denies the cross, and the cross denies evolution. They cannot both be true. And there is the problem!!!!!
This is why so many Christian children, who are raised in the church, leave the faith in college.
As an Old Earth proponent, I say to you that I believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God and believe the Genesis creation account to be historical narrative—not myth, allegory, legend or poetic expression. While YECs believe a “plain reading” of the English translation of Genesis 1 necessitates belief that God created the world in six 24-hour days some six to ten thousand years ago, I believe that textual and grammatical nuances of the original Hebrew suggest six long epochs of time. Indeed, the Old Earth idea contends a literal reading of the Biblical creation accounts in Hebrew provides certain exegetical clues pointing to prolonged creation “days.”
Now, just so that we are on the same page, allow me to say that The Bible does not specify the age of creation. The Young Earth belief that God created the world 6,000 years ago originated from a mid-17th century examination of the Genesis genealogies by Archbishop James Ussher and theologian John Lightfoot. Based on the ages of patriarchs, Ussher and Lightfoot both calculated the universe, earth, and life were created in 4004 B.C. Over the next several centuries, this date became firmly entrenched in Christian belief. The cornerstone of belief in a 6,000-year-old earth rests solely on the genealogies providing a totally accurate and complete chronology.
THAT is where the 6000 year age comes from!
John Lightfoot went so far as to tell the month day and hour of Adams' creation, Which is why his timeline was rejected. These two were engaged in a game of one upmanship. It would seem Ussher won that game, but , I believe his dates are wrong as well.
I just wouldn’t allow unbelieving students, with their doubts and speculations to formulate my convictions regarding God’s Word.
Noah faced millions with contrary opinions.
So we tailor God’s Word in order to make it pallatable? As a Christian, that would go against my conscience.
As an old earth proponent, are you saying there was millions of years between Day 5 and 6 or? Where would you place the Fall?
Ok, we don’t need any straw man arguments. There are plenty of Hebrew scholars including some early Church Fathers who held to a young earth without setting exact dates and times of creation.
True, the Bible doesn’t mention the age of creation but it does specifically say “In 6 days God created”, going on to define a day as ‘evening and morning’. I won’t deny their may be gaps in the geneaologies…but millions of years would be too much for me to swallow.
I originally said that I would not argue between Old Earth and Young earth. However, it seems to me that is what we are doing now.
It never ever ends well.
Just so that you are clear on where I stand, allow me to say that I am firmly on the side of the traditional creationists, seeing nothing substandard or suspect in the idea of God intervening in the world. Intervention has become a term of abuse in much of contemporary theology, but it is a good term. We certainly like it when doctors intervene to save our lives, and it seems that much of the history of Christian doctrine has embraced God acting in both salvation and natural history in ways that are not reducible to purely natural or material forces, that is, in miraculous ways for which the term “divine intervention” is entirely appropriate.
So, to put out my cards, I am a biblical inerrantist, a Literalist, accepting the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and the conventional authorship of the books of the Bible. Thus, in particular, I accept Mosaic authorship of the entire Pentateuch I and reject the documentary hypothesis. In particular, I accept that the events described in Genesis 1–3 happened in ordinary space-time, and thus that these chapters are as historical as the rest of the Pentateuch. Finally, I believe that Adam and Eve were real people, that as the initial pair of humans they were the Federal head of the whole human race, that they were specially created by God, and thus that they were not the result of an evolutionary process from primate or hominid ancestors.
After all of that, I am also saying that the earth is much older than 6000 years.
I understand that to be correct. Lightfoot said that man was created at 9 AM on Sunday, September 12, 3928. BC.
James Ussher in 1656, who, based on a literal biblical interpretation, concluded that the world began on Sunday evening, October 23, 4004 B.C.
This sounds crude.........but really, I do not care!!!
Neither Old or Young Earth can be proven but both can be believed but neither one matter! All I do know is that I am alive, I am a sinner and the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Son of God, the God-Man died to pay for my sin!
Everything else I will learn in time. All I am saying, that IMHO, the earth has to be more than 6000 years old!
Exactly! That's what some don't seem to get. If evolution and old earth is true, then death occurred before the sin of Adam which makes the whole sin nature, fall of man and Jesus dying for our sins wrong or nonexistent. Then where does that leave Christianity?
I understand what you are saying.
But have you considered that when Adam and Eve ate a plant, or a fruit....that KILLED that specific plant? = DEATH!
Was there no death of any plant or insect before the fall?
Doesn't that fact make the whole idea of death before the fall irrelevant?
Have you also considered that animals do not sin?
Have you considered that the DEATH in Romans 5 is "contextually" about SPIRITUAL death?
Have you considered that death means separation from God, therefore, Satan and his demons had died before the garden of Eden.
Satan was already dead spiritually!
Just some things to think about.
Thinking about this topic further,
Maybe if everything was under water and all destroyed, maybe we ended up eating dead flesh of animals because that’s all there was and cooked it until the trees and herbs grew again. By that time we were used to eating meat
If They were frozen, under ice, all the better. Maybe we had to eat it raw or cooked I don’t know.
Maybe if everything was under water and all destroyed, maybe we ended up eating dead flesh of animals because that’s all there was and cooked it until the trees and herbs grew again. By that time we were used to eating meat
If They were frozen, under ice, all the better. Maybe we had to eat it raw or cooked I don’t know.
Interesting thought.Thinking about this topic further,
Maybe if everything was under water and all destroyed, maybe we ended up eating dead flesh of animals because that’s all there was and cooked it until the trees and herbs grew again. By that time we were used to eating meat
If They were frozen, under ice, all the better. Maybe we had to eat it raw or cooked I don’t know.
Not necessarily. WWII provided an excellent demonstration of the fact that carnivores can survive on vegetables just fine. Germany fed their lions and other zoo carnivores on vegetables alone since all meat was reserved for their war effort. What this suggests is the possibility that, before the fall, they ate plant life only until sin changed their nature...considering that the fall of man affected the entire universe, as is stated in scripture. Therefore, looking at animals now, and superimposing that upon the pre-fall environment is purely assumption.
As to stepping on worms and thus killing them, we cannot assume that either. Perhaps sin changed their outer skin and internal organs to much softer than they were then. (shrug) The first animal ever killed that's on record in scripture is the one used for Adam's covering.
When it comes to "built-in defense mechanisms," again, the nature of man and all of nature changed with coming of sin, given that all of creation groans under the weight of sin.
It's unfortunate that it was not ever inspired to be written a more detailed description of the pre-sin environment and all within it, but it is a fallacy to assume into that environment what has never been observed nor studied to this day as proof for the theistic evolutionary views. My half brother holds to that one, and now refuses to discuss it because he simply can't defend his views about it, which he got from people like Hugh Ross.
MM
Given that Genesis is the foundation for the rest of scripture, it leaves us with no written authority were we to be forced to discredit Geneis.
MM
To go one step further, were we to believe the criticisms about the Hebrew of Genesis, such as "morning" and "evening," the ensuing chaos through the rest of scripture would be devastating. The idea that the Lord used long ages to create what He spoke into existence in a matter of hours, that tends to cast limitations upon His unlimited power. Sort of like the flat earth theory. Those who follow that train of thought also believe the stars and galaxies are a mural rather than real.
Given the scope of size difference between the two, the flat earth theorists render their god to be a cheap, parlor trickster magician rather than the gloriously powerful, in the immeasurable sense, God who created the vastness of all this universe, with ONLY mankind dominating this earth, with no other life out there. Carl Sagan now knows that to be true....that this little, allegedly insignificant, spec of dust is the most valuable spec in ALL of the cosmos!
The long ages theory also postulates that there were humans before the garden with whom God allegedly failed to bring to whatever state of existence He allegedly wanted them to arrive. In other words, God's initial creation allegedly failed, and so He started over again...turning the earth into a bubble of water, and brought forth land once again...gradually, over long ages of time. That's Gnosticism in a nutshell.
It's unfortunate that what today parades about as "science" can be, and has been, hijacked by Hollywoodesque movie script writers, incorporating their own brand of adult fantasy in their "findings." They get institutions to attach all kinds of letters to their names, thus causing stars to sparkle in the eyes of the ignorant masses of the world when they stand before cameras and write books masquerading as "scientific authorities."
You know, they really ARE "scientific authorities" in the sense of their manufactured world and universe models. Out here where the rubber meets the road of reality, THIS is the world they avoid like the plague, given that it refuses to bow to their imaginative story-telling antics that corrupt only the minds of the easily swayed because of their enjoyment of ear-tickling giggles and gleeful indifference for listening to that One Voice that can and does lead and guide those whose hearts are set upon the One who created it all, and gave to us the eye-witness record that originated from a level of inspiration that surpasses any and all the literature in the world conceived in the minds of men.
1 John 2:27
Far too many ignore the devastation that the long ages theory introduces throughout ALL of scripture. The enemy of our souls is cunning. Failing to recognize that his modus operandi is to keep himself painted into the walls, and thus camouflaging his presence to those who are blind to his presence, he operates freely at levels of subtlety that go beyond the line of genius.
MM
Given the scope of size difference between the two, the flat earth theorists render their god to be a cheap, parlor trickster magician rather than the gloriously powerful, in the immeasurable sense, God who created the vastness of all this universe, with ONLY mankind dominating this earth, with no other life out there. Carl Sagan now knows that to be true....that this little, allegedly insignificant, spec of dust is the most valuable spec in ALL of the cosmos!
The long ages theory also postulates that there were humans before the garden with whom God allegedly failed to bring to whatever state of existence He allegedly wanted them to arrive. In other words, God's initial creation allegedly failed, and so He started over again...turning the earth into a bubble of water, and brought forth land once again...gradually, over long ages of time. That's Gnosticism in a nutshell.
It's unfortunate that what today parades about as "science" can be, and has been, hijacked by Hollywoodesque movie script writers, incorporating their own brand of adult fantasy in their "findings." They get institutions to attach all kinds of letters to their names, thus causing stars to sparkle in the eyes of the ignorant masses of the world when they stand before cameras and write books masquerading as "scientific authorities."
You know, they really ARE "scientific authorities" in the sense of their manufactured world and universe models. Out here where the rubber meets the road of reality, THIS is the world they avoid like the plague, given that it refuses to bow to their imaginative story-telling antics that corrupt only the minds of the easily swayed because of their enjoyment of ear-tickling giggles and gleeful indifference for listening to that One Voice that can and does lead and guide those whose hearts are set upon the One who created it all, and gave to us the eye-witness record that originated from a level of inspiration that surpasses any and all the literature in the world conceived in the minds of men.
1 John 2:27
Far too many ignore the devastation that the long ages theory introduces throughout ALL of scripture. The enemy of our souls is cunning. Failing to recognize that his modus operandi is to keep himself painted into the walls, and thus camouflaging his presence to those who are blind to his presence, he operates freely at levels of subtlety that go beyond the line of genius.
MM
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What about the plants. If Adam ate a Celery stalk before the fall, didnt he kill that plant material????
Now if Lions and carnivores ate grass and plants, why do you think that God gave them teeth to rip and tear flesh instead of the teeth of cattle and sheep that were made for chews and grinding?
I agree that the fall affect the entire universe.
I also agree that it is ......"a fallacy to assume into that environment what has never been observed nor studied to this day as proof for the theistic evolutionary views".
But that same reasoning can and should be applied to the idea of as you said.........
"What this suggests is the possibility that" and.......
"perhaps sin changed their outer skin and internal organs".
We just do not know! Within the story of the Fall, there’s a lot we aren’t told. That’s because it’s not important for the message of the story. We have to learn to live with that. What we are talking about is interesting, but actually unanswerable.
Romans 14:5..........
"One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind."
Good question, Major. When we study cells, one thing that becomes clear is that cells are a bio-mechanical system, not life itself. Cells comprise us humans as the vessel through which we interact as spiritual beings since Adam alone had life "breathed" into him by God when first formed, and that same life was transferred over to Eve when her physical substance was derived from Adam, and thereafter at conception for all others.
So, when people say, in very broad, general terms, that the tree "died," or the cells of the celery stick "died" when digested, that cannot be thought to assume life anywhere near the sense of what we as humans have. These bodies of ours are bio-mechanical machines that have within them a soul and spirit far above that of any animal, and even moreso than plants.
So, yes, when relying upon the most loosely broad application of the term "life" in relation to even all things not human, then death too is equally misapplied to the extent that people like Hugh Ross can trip up the ignorant Christians in his classes, leading them to atheism.
Therefore, when it comes to scripture, and its defining authority for life and death, it most generally is in relation to human physical death (which is the point that the bio-mechanical machine we inhabit no longer functions for us to remain on this earth), and spiritual death, which is separation from God in the spirit realm, casting it out there like a net to include plants and animals is where the most confusions are introduced into world views, and thus more easily corrupting the young minds of students who simply were not prepared to handle the clear distinctions that would otherwise have protected them from the machinations of evil professors who are the pawns of Satan.
You are correct that it goes both ways when it comes to our inability to observe the realities in the garden. We can't say one way or the other that Adam ever did any harm to any creature in the garden, no matter what size, and if he did, it was only to something what was a bio-mechanical machine with instincts programmed into their makeup by God.
What I was getting at in the overall thesis of my responses is that the mere suggestions from naturalistic and theistic evolutionists bring to the table is the only reason anyone is questioning the language of Genesis. Had evolutionary beliefs not ever been posited, we would likely not be having this conversation at all. Those people trying to say that "science says this," is nothing but an attempt to keep anyone from realizing that "Science" doesn't say anything. It's "scientists" who say things, much of which is false.
MM
I agree! Well thought out.
You said........
"So, when people say, in very broad, general terms, that the tree "died," or the cells of the celery stick "died" when digested, that cannot be thought to assume life anywhere near the sense of what we as humans have."
Agreed. However, lets say this. A fruit/plant that Adan ate ......no longer existed!!!
Hmm. That makes me think of the title given to that one tree...perhaps the only "plant" that is ever said to have anything akin to life, or associated with it....the Tree of Life.
Hmmmmmm. Major, this all has set me upon a path of thought I had never considered before. Every indication is that the Tree of Life was indeed a tree....but.....
Hmmmmm.....
MM
