Posted on 05/16/2014 12:34:41 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
He never says he created it billions of years ago. That is man attempting to place an age on the universe independently of God.
He has already told us sufficient information to perform every good work He has Planned from eternity past.
No need to read into Scripture what we think it means. Simply understand what He provides.
The wise scientist would investigate origins from the perspective that His Word is infallible.
tell me where God told us everything to begin with
Tell me why God doesn’t let us know everything at once
Tell me why you need to know God’s secrets
Tell me how you know all that nuclei exists in the first place by empirical knowledge and not theory
“At the “end of the day” “
I believe that the word “day” in Genesis is a Hebrew word that also includes such ideas as “era”, “period of time”, etc. And of course there is the problem with the early days in Creation before the sun was created.
What is amazing to me, is how this Creation “story”, revealed somehow to a fairly primitive culture, is so close to what science is only revealing to us now. I imagine the more we learn about the universe, the better we will understand the Creation story.
With regard to the young or old earth - I am definitely an old-earth person. Just as with people, or nations, or the world, God usually doesn’t just snap His fingers to do something. There are layers and layers of things tied together. One thing preparing for the next (just like the earth was created). Sometimes the next major milepost is not even seen in one’s lifetime. And in spite of all of the chaos, God somehow brings order into it all.
So, you have no theory other than to pump me for more of my ideas.
Have a good day.
Since God inspired stories to be told that can benefit us, it seems He may have meant for us to just pick those that we take literally or allegorically.
God did not have to tell us that He made the universe ~14 billion years ago. The evidence is all around for us to see. It is there in the light coming from stars billions of light-years away, it is there in the background radiation of the universe, it is there in the geological record of the earth, it is there in the paleontological record. Humans do not "attempt to place an age" on anything--we merely observe and measure the evidence that is already there.
The wise scientist would investigate origins from the perspective that His Word is infallible.
Indeed. That is why wise scientists so carefully measure, observe, and analyze, and do not try to twist or "creatively interpret" their observations to fit a story that is clearly meant to teach morality.
God does not lie. Therefore, the age of the universe is what we have measured it to be.
Without assuming the speed of light is constant, what direct evidence do you have those 'remote' galaxies having been there for billions of years?
Or perhaps you would say God didn’t actually create Adam? That the story God told us in Genesis isn’t really true?
We do not actually know if Adam was a real person, or if he was a literary construct meant to embody a human quality. However, if Adam was a real man, then we can take the moment that God revealed Himself to Adam as the time when Adam was "born-again"--the way that many Christians are born-again when they receive the word of Jesus into their hearts.
This “consistent and ubiquitous evidence of great age” you speak of makes an unwarranted assumption about what the earth looked like when God created it - namely, that it looked “new”. What does a “new” earth look like?
Scientific observation is not about making assumptions. It is about observation and extrapolation, about making and testing hypotheses, about continually adding to the body of knowledge about the physical universe and revising the framework (aka the theory) of that knowledge as it expands. We know what the earth looked like at any given point in its creation, because astronomers can look with their telescopes and see other solar systems at any stage of development, from the time they are coalescing from clouds of interstellar dust, to the time they are full systems with a sun and planet, to the time when that sun dies. We have a pretty good idea of the life cycle of stars and planets, and can apply that knowledge to understand our own planet. And so on--as I said previously, the evidence of great age is thorough and ubiquitous.
But that is MAN’S assumption. If God’s account of creation is true, that assumption doesn’t fit the facts and can therefore be discarded.
If my faith has to be maintained by pretending that the physical universe is not what it appears to be, what breaks here is the faith. Even if you could round up every scientist and force them into reeducation camps until they renounce their confidence in the actual evidence, that evidence will not disappear. Unfortunately, this rigid requirement by creationists that we must perform all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to literally believe the stories of creation in Genesis is not conducive to bringing young people to Christianity.
They tie God’s hands and say He not allowed to create anything unless He makes it look as old or as new as they think it should. But God doesn’t submit to man. It is man who ought to submit to God.
Observing that the universe is billions of years old does not "tie God's hands." I would say that those who pretend the evidence of an old universe does not exist so that they can try to believe that a moral lesson in the Bible is literal are the ones trying to tie God's hands. To believe that the evidence of an old universe, the evidence of continuing evolutionary processes of everything, is an illusion planted by God is to say that God is a liar and deceiver. As I have pointed out before, the term "Prince of Lies" does *not* refer to God.
You say the “the story of Genesis is meant to teach morality,” but do you even believe it? What sort of morality can we learn from One who lies to us about the creation and makes up stories from the very start?
Human beings have made up stories to teach moral lessons ever since we have had language. The fact that God inspired primitive peoples to record the moral lessons that He told them does not make God a liar. It makes God a teacher.
I'll even go out on a limb here and guess that you do not literally believe every word in the Bible--that there are passages in the Bible that you accept are moral lessons, not literal accounts. It's just that, for whatever reason, you want to believe that Genesis is a literal account. For me, trying to believe that the Genesis creation stories are literal hurts my brain--the stories aren't consistent with each other, and they don't even have internal consistency. It is much easier to believe that any description of creation there is highly allegorical--Occam's razor applies here.
You say that the Bible “is not a scientific document, and should not be used like one.” That’s a cop-out for those who don’t believe the Bible. What will you say next? Will you deny the record of Jesus’ death and resurrection because “the Bible is not a history book and should not be used like one”? I hope not!
It is hardly a cop-out. I do not use the Bible for scientific insight. I do not use the Journal of Biological Chemistry for spiritual guidance. The Betty Crocker Cookbook is not a mathematical treatise, nor is the Ford Lincoln maintenance manual a vacation guide. And so on. It is not a "cop-out" to observe that a document that was written for one purpose cannot be used for a different purpose.
No one here is looking to the Bible for scientific instruction. We are looking to it to find out how the heavens and the earth came into existence. And that’s what we find, in as much detail as God chooses to give us.
When you say that "we" are looking to the Bible to find out how everything came into existence, you are saying that you are using the Bible as a scientific document--which it is not. God gave us curiosity and intelligence so that we could make direct observations and learn about our universe. This is one way that God gives purpose to our lives, by letting us discover the universe.
Excuse me? Assuming that a fundamental constant of the universe is not a fundamental constant is a non-starter. The laws of physics (God's laws) are absolute and invariant--we cannot change them through "assumptions."
Only 2 men in all of human history were born with perfect body, soul, and spirit, not requiring rebirth. That was Adam and the second Adam, our Lord and savior Christ Jesus.
Adam was already born with a human spirit, so wasn't in need of being reborn, until after the fall.
Read it directly, but only through faith in Christ and let God direct your heart.
There you go again,..making assumptions.
Start first with God.
human history goes back well before 6000 years
Just a recent story that appeared last week
I am not asking for any of your ideas :)
I know the Bible is right, and when people add in long dates they are not using the Bible for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmgs4a-Gbrc
We can estimate the age of man on the earth, but we don't know how old the earth itself is.
The Young Earth defenders are defending a young earth because they figure that a shorter time span makes evolution impossible.
What makes evolution impossible isn't the time span, but the simple fact that something cannot come from nothing!
Adding zeros doesn't change that fact!
Your ignorance is forgiven.
Those are the only two examples of DOGMATIC DEFINITIONS presented Ex-cathedra. But each Infallible Dogma of Fact, are “Ex-cathedra”. Those would be canonizations and condemnations of heresies. As those are given under the authority of “The Chair of Peter”.
You do realize, that believing the Bible is not a prerequisite for a believing God, don’t you?
I'm glad you agree on the two ex-cathedra statements....which is the point I was making earlier.
sadly these further entrenched the catholic church on the false doctrine of mariology.
Your question makes no sense. How can you believe someone without believing what he says? The two are the same thing.
Since God is capable of anything, perhaps He speaks differently, to different individuals?
God isn’t just someone, is He?
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