Posted on 10/03/2011 5:29:32 AM PDT by spirited irish
When you “take umbrage” with parts of the Bible, or interpretations thereof,
you are inherently applying a standard which you hold above the written Word or the interpretation thereof.
Carefully think about what you are holding as the measuring stick and what you are measuring.
I use the example of telling a child to go get a stick out of the yard, then handing a ruler to him and asking him to tell me how many “sticks long” the ruler is.
"Gerald Schroeder's scheme for matching up the days of Genesis doesn't work. He has to invent the idea that "waters above the heavens" is when the Milky Way formed, but the earth wasn't even around at the time so the text is pretty meaningless if his interpretation is correct.
Also, he says that "let there be light" on Day 1 is when the cosmic background radiation thermally separated from the primordial plasma. However, the problem with that is the Bible describes the period before that event as having darkness on the surface of the earth's waters, whereas the primordial plasma was intensely bright before the light decoupled thermally from it.
Just because the light had a very short mean free path (wasn't yet statistically decoupled) doesn't mean that it wasn't there. The light in the primordial plasma was many times brighter than under a noon day sun on Earth today.
So again, if Schroeder's interpretation is correct, then the Bible text makes no sense. Bottom line: he is really stretching to make his scheme work."
God bless!
Phil Metzger (NASA Scientist (Physics) who is also a Christian)
Admitting that you haven't looked into it very deeply.
I don’t hold God in a prison of time. Time is his creation.
From His perspective it took 7 days. From our perspective it was 4.6 billion years. The longer I’m aware of that the easier it is to accept.
Before Abraham was He Is. And -
He is in the universe 16 billion years ago.
He is at the genesis of the Earth 4.6 billion years ago.
He is in the world right now.
Typical that creationists are unable to argue against a scientific theory without making an argument against atheism - while being too ignorant to recognize the difference.
As I remember it, he argues against scientists rationally and dispassionately observing the evidence, but that scientists project their own beliefs on the evidence before them. He goes on to say that science must be redeemed from the atheistic worldview to one where God is ultimate authority.
On a different note: To those that state that the Bible is the authoritative word of God, and yet that there can be two interpretations, there is only one conclusion: at least one of the interpretations is wrong.
If that were true you could read the Bible through once and put it away. Nothing more to get out of it.
Instead there is something new every time you read it. People have been writing commentaries about it for 2000 years. It is still the source of new insights. There is no one interpret ion of the Bible. There are infinite interpretations.
Only if our understanding of radiometric dating is correct. Since we have no observation for anything more than a couple of hundred years, they are all speculation and based upon incomplete data. In other words, they are guessing. The law of entropy states that an isolated system in a given state will get to a more probable state, until it reaches thermodynamic equilibrium. Basically saying warm stuff gets cold. 4.6 billion years would have expired all thermodynamic energy and our planet would have been long dead some time ago.
God did indeed create time, but He also gave us an understanding of that creation, how to measure it and how to define it. When God says He did something in a day and uses the same word to describe a 24-hour period, then I take Him at His word. There are those in the faith that subscribe to a young Earth theory but I do not as the 6,000 year attestation came from an account where the analyst could only account for 6,000 years. That does not mean we do not have a longer history, but I certainly do not subscribe to a 4.6 billion year old Earth either.
First, there is a difference between insight and interpretation. There are many text books that I have read that I have gained new insight as I have better understood what the author was trying to convey. What the author said has not changed, but how I understand it has changed.
Second, if there are two opposite interpretations of a text, at least one must be wrong.
Third, the reasons for the "infinite interpretations" and also for the unfortunate mess of multiple denominations is that man has fallen, and brings his own sinful nature to the text and to his faith. So each interpretation is a mixture of truth and error. The question is how much of our fallen nature are we projecting on to the text.
Let’s say you were listening to a boring lecture. Your mind wanders and you see a person sitting beside the speaker peeling potatoes. You watch the man and notice that every time the second hand of the clock reaches 12, he reaches into the basket and peels a potato. Just before it reaches 12 again, he tosses a fully peeled potato in a second basket and then reaches in the basket of unpeeled potatoes and gets another one… just as the second hand reaches 12 again. You have observed the process and timed it. So far, so good. That’s science!You wonder… how long has he been doing this? You get up (everyone else is so bored by the lecture they’ve fallen asleep so you feel free to move around) and go to the basket of peeled potatoes. You count 18 of them. You build a model of the unobserved past and say, “It takes one minute to peel a potato and deposit it in the basket. There are 18 in the basket. Therefore, this man has been peeling potatoes for eighteen minutes.” Most people would nod their heads and say “That makes sense.” Except… it doesn’t.
Too many assumptions were made in this example. You might be correct, but you might be way off. Was the rate of potato peeling constant throughout the unobserved history of this event? You have no way of knowing. It could be that the man peeled potatoes much faster at first but has now slowed down because he is tiring. It could be that he was much slower at first but is speeding up because he is getting better at it. You simply have no way of knowing. For you quantum buffs, you also have to assume that time progresses in a strictly linear fashion and — you know who you are — that just can’t be assumed!
Also… did anyone or anything add peeled potatoes to the basket? Did anyone or anything take away peeled potatoes from that basket? You don’t know. You weren’t there and neither was any other observer other than the potato-peeler himself and he isn’t talking. Were there peeled potatoes in the basket before the peeler got there?
And those are the very same (possibly) false assumptions used by those who use radiometric dating. They assume a constancy in the rate, an isolation from the environment that might have caused a change in the rate, and they assume what the original state of the rock was. All three of these are assumptions made without observation or measurement. They are, then, not strictly science.
Your problem is simple, modern day science misinterprets the age of the earth and universe. No where does the scientific method allow for discarding any/all data contradicting a theory, but many do it anyway.
http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
That’s a cop out answer on your part.
YOU implied purpose with your statement. YOU need to back it up.
To be fair, 5 years ago, I was where he is now. I have an engineering degree, and all the requisite “science” courses to go along with it. Everywhere along the way, my “education” made the assumptions of old earth and evolution, it was all that was taught, so it was all that I knew, until...
a few years ago I started studying the contradictory evidence, put on “new glasses”, and looked at the evidence cited for evolution/old earth in a new way, and saw where the errors were.
And just how old was Adam the day that God created him as an adult human being?
Was he one day old, as Scripture tells?
Or was he (for the sake of argument) say, 30 years old, as the physical, *scientific* evidence would indicate?
Then what? Did God create Adam as an adult human for the purpose of deception? Or functionality, because you simply cannot lay an egg and sperm on the ground and expect anything to happen?
So, until you know the purpose of God creating the universe with the appearance of age, it is simply not possible to accuse Him of doing it to be deceptive. If it appears that way to you, then the problem again, is with your reasoning, not with God.
The main point of that is to address the time dilation and perspective issue.
Adam appeared, what, 20 something perhaps,
when he was 1 millisecond “old”.
What’s happening is that those who claim to be scientists and criticize the Bible for being wrong, are working on the baseless assumption that what we know from science is right, or truth. Scripture is being held up to and compared to and judged by very weak standard, one that is constantly in a state of flux.
Our knowledge of the universe is woefully lacking in so many ways. the more we learn, the more unanswered questions arise and the more we realize we don’t know.
To presume that we have the correct answer based on incomplete and faulty knowledge is the height of arrogance.
Yes, and the goal is the same as it was then: the seizure of the Fruit of the Tree of Eternal Life.
[T]he Great Work... is the establishment of a techno-utopia for the Revolutionary Vanguard, and the scouring of the rest of humanity from the face of Mother Earth. The Revolution's ultimate goal: the enlightened few, walking alone and in silence among the unspoiled beauty of a depopulated world. Heaven will be a Place on on Earth. They Will have Gotten Themselves Back to the Garden. These eternal Mandarins will eat freely of the digital trees of a technocommunist Paradise, their lives extended to the maximum by technological means, their humanity — and the hole in their souls they cannot plug with all their orgasms, hedonism, and soma — genetically engineered away. This is C.S. Lewis’ “Abolition of Man”: they will do away with humanity — their own included — to build by the wisdom of Solomon the new Temple of Hiram Abiff, incarnate the goddess Liberty upon the Holy of Holies, and by so doing realize the promise of Genesis 3:22.They've never hidden their purpose.
It's right there in plain sight for those who can see it.
One of the promises of the communist utopia is immortal man, accomplished through aiding evolution in culling out, as in animal husbandry, the traits that lead to death.
I did not and do not accuse Him of deception.
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