Posted on 02/06/2014 8:33:34 AM PST by PapaNew
Creationist Ken Ham is having his 15 minutes, following a live debate on evolution held between himself and Bill Nye “The Science Guy” on Tuesday.
And while you’d expect most folks to deem Nye the winner (which they have), Ham is receiving criticism from a source you might not expect: televangelist Pat Robertson.
On the Wednesday edition of his TV show, “The 700 Club,” Robertson indirectly implored Ham to put a sock in it, criticizing Ham’s view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
“Let’s face it, there was a bishop [James Ussher] … who added up the dates listed in Genesis and he came up with the world had been around for 6,000 years,” Robertson began. “There ain’t no way that’s possible … To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.”
“We’ve got to be realistic that the dating of Bishop Ussher just doesn’t comport with anything that’s found in science,” Robertson continued, “and you can’t just totally deny the geological formations that are out there.”
“Let’s be real,” Robertson begged, “let’s not make a joke of ourselves.”
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
One of the issues I see is how our culture and even the Church interprets our scientific discoveries.
The “Scientific” Community is very proud to say that they are always learning and the beauty is that they can correct for previous errors. In the meantime, trust us and what we know so far.
This has led generations of people to be either indifferent on one end, to being completely absurd on the other. The absurdity comes by way of the popularity of shows like “Ancient Aliens” and from other more critically thinking scientists that promote theories that are wholly unprovable. String theory, multi-verse etc...
All these seem like desperate attempts to avoid God.
Yes, Darwinism has failed, and I get the sense that most of the critical scientists know this. This IMHO, is why we are seeing greater acceptance of the absurd. They are looking for an out. Something they can sell to the public while they work on resolving the conflicts within their theories.
Carbon dating is notoriously inconsistent.
The Geologic Column is not uniform.
The birth of new stars should not be seen.
Comets should have burned out long ago.
So-called living fossils.
The Cambrian explosion.
And the list goes on...
In the meantime, Bill Nye decided that he would try to convince people there is no difference between “Observational” science and “Historical”.
What I see is an effort among secularists, an attempt to convince us that we must embrace uncertainty.
This “embrace” is destroying the moral fabric of God and is attempting to replace him with the “knowledge of man”.
St. Augustine weighed in on this centuries before Bishop Ussher and Charles Darwin came along:
“North African bishop Augustine of Hippo (354–430) had no skin in the game concerning the current origins controversies. He interpreted Scripture a thousand years before the Scientific Revolution, and 1,500 before Darwin’s Origin of Species. Augustine didn’t “accommodate” or “compromise” his biblical interpretation to fit new scientific theories. The important thing was to let Scripture speak for itself.
Augustine wrestled with Genesis 1–2 throughout his career. There are at least four points in his writings at which he attempts to develop a detailed, systematic account of how these chapters are to be understood. Each is subtly different. Here I shall consider Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis, which was written between 401 and 415. Augustine intended this to be a “literal” commentary (meaning “in the sense intended by the author”).
Augustine draws out the following core themes: God brought everything into existence in a single moment of creation. Yet the created order is not static. God endowed it with the capacity to develop. Augustine uses the image of a dormant seed to help his readers grasp this point. God creates seeds, which will grow and develop at the right time. Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage. Yet Augustine has no time for any notion of random or arbitrary changes within creation. The development of God’s creation is always subject to God’s sovereign providence. The God who planted the seeds at the moment of creation also governs and directs the time and place of their growth.
Augustine argues that the first Genesis Creation account (1:1–2:3) cannot be interpreted in isolation, but must be set alongside the second Genesis Creation account (2:4–25), as well as every other statement about the Creation found in Scripture. For example, Augustine suggests that Psalm 33:6–9 speaks of an instantaneous creation of the world through God’s creative Word, while John 5:17 points to a God who is still active within creation.
Further, he argues that a close reading of Genesis 2:4 has the following meaning: “When day was made, God made heaven and earth and every green thing of the field.” This leads him to conclude that the six days of Creation are not chronological. Rather, they are a way of categorizing God’s work of creation. God created the world in an instant but continues to develop and mold it, even to the present day.
Augustine was deeply concerned that biblical interpreters might get locked into reading the Bible according to the scientific assumptions of the age. This, of course, happened during the Copernican controversies of the late 16th century. Traditional biblical interpretation held that the sun revolved around the earth. The church interpreted a challenge to this erroneous idea as a challenge to the authority of the Bible. It was not, of course. It was a challenge to one specific interpretation of the Bible — an interpretation, as it happened, in urgent need of review.
Augustine anticipated this point a millennium earlier. Certain biblical passages, he insisted, are genuinely open to diverse interpretations and must not be wedded to prevailing scientific theories. Otherwise, the Bible becomes the prisoner of what was once believed to be scientifically true: “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines our position, we too fall with it.”
http://silouanthompson.net/2009/06/augustines-origin-of-species/
Hey, you don’t need a priest to add up the time span from Adam. It takes some digging, but it’s all there in the Bible. Start with the genealogy of Adam in Genesis 5 (about 1000 years from Adam to Noah’s flood).
Purely volcanic? Except for 1/2 the top of the mountain that got blown off, of course.
>> “Years ago a priest added up all the time spans given in the Bible and put together a timeline of 6000 years. He guessed at most of it” <<
.
No, there was no guess work to it. It is based on careful scholarship, studying the genealogies and the exceptions to the genealogies that are in the Prophets, to cover the stated gaps in the genealogies.
It took Usher several years of work to develop his calculations.
Does God have a naval? Adam and Eve were created in His image?
Fortunately, your ignorant worthless post took only two seconds to read.
The “Jewish” religion is about 3500 years old.
Usher’s work is true science; don’t make a fool of yourself.
Old earthers are the embarrassing dishonest, devious uncle of freerepublic.
>> “What is PFL??? Do tell.” <<
.
Perfectly Foolish Lunacy?
(it fits both ways)
Pat Robertson has been corrupted by money for decades.
Agreed. Darwinists I'm sure are happy to pull people off the track on such an irrelevant discussion especially when they know their opponent believes in this 6000-year-old earth stuff.
Schools are teaching utterly evidence-lacking Darwinism (no evidence of transference between basic animal groups) as truth ignoring the boundless evidence of intelligent design as overwhelming support of an Intelligent Designer. That should be the debate so children can get taught the truth, not these fables that help generate confusion and an atheist society.
Hilarious!
Seriously? You're not even going to finish the verse you're quoting for a proof-text? ". . . and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."
There's nothing in Romans 5 to indicate that sin brought about animal death, only human death due to being separated from God by sin and from the Tree of Life by God.
The more I've learned to read the original Hebrew of Genesis, the more comfortable I am that the six days of creation can just as easily be six ages or epochs of creation without requiring doing violence to or allegorizing the text.
Shalom
“But I’ll stand by my statement about identifying something as human through fossil remains.”
About the human whose fossilized remains don’t prove they had a mind or soul?
It’s extraordinary what people believe to be true, even some Christians.
The so-called scientific community claims to be the most open minded.
Liberals claim to be the most open minded.
And in the end, they claim certainty in their ever changing conclusions.
They place their faith in a process.
No, there was no guess work to it. It is based on careful scholarship, studying the genealogies and the exceptions to the genealogies that are in the Prophets, to cover the stated gaps in the genealogies.
It took Usher several years of work to develop his calculations.
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Are there not a few gaps in the timeline?
The Bible is, as far as I can tell by reading it in English, mute on the amount of time a) between placing Adam in the Garden of Eden and God creating Eve, and b) the amount of time between Eve being created and the incident with the tree of knowledge.
I confess my ignorance here on this point, so please, try to avoid making this about me and my ignorance (which on this point is freely admitted), and provide the information I lack instead.
Thanks E-S.
Look...THE BIBLE! DOES NOT SAY THE EARTH IS 6000 YEARS OLD ...PERIOD...so do not claim that as a biblical point..the 6000 years is one mans weak interpretation..if you want to accept that interpretation fine..but if I do not im not doubting God or the Bible..im doubting a fallible man
Gap theory is foolishness.
Quantum Physics proves the age of the Earth at 6-10 thousand years in a general sense. One has to account for the expansion of the universe, which expands time in proportion to space, and fits perfectly.
Barry Setterfield has several papers on this http://www.setterfield.org/
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