Posted on 09/08/2004 11:27:48 AM PDT by truthfinder9
8 Myths About Reasons To Believe: Untruths other Christians Unknowingly (and some knowingly) Spread... http://www.reasons.org/about/8_myths_about_rtb.shtml?main
Ping for later
Actually, this is untrue. Old-earth creationism is the foundation of the intelligent design movement (most all of ID leaders are OECs), and evolutionists have been taking ID as a very serious threat. As design critic Robert Wright writes, “Instead of being a bunch of yahoos, they are a bunch of ‘academics and intellectuals’ with new, ‘more sophisticated’ ideas. The "yahoos" he refers to are young-earthers. Evolutionists and skeptics have long used YECism as a reason not to trust the Bible, because YEC theories are biblicaly contradictory with no scientific backing.
Further problems to Christians are created, as detailed in Is the Truth out There?:
The point here is to show that young-earthism is not based on sound science or biblical scholarship, but on preconceived beliefs fit onto science and the Bible. Based on the fallacies that old age equals evolution and that 24-hour days are the literal interpretation, creationists have claimed Earth is young (with no evidence) and that the Bible supports this (with very problematic interpretation). This is why their critiques of Neo-Darwinism have been minimized when naturalists and skeptics point to the problems of “young-earth evidences” to question their credibility. It also directly feeds the belief promoted by skeptics that young-earthism is proof that Christianity is not based in reason and fact and this is the foremost reason why young-earthism needs to be addressed.
This problem can be reworded as the question, “How can I believe the Bible or in Christianity when it claims Earth is only a few thousand years old and was covered by a global flood?” This is a major stumbling block for skeptics and Christians, which is why Christian scholars should focus on solving this problem. It is not uncommon to hear accounts of people who struggle in the separation of their “religious life” from their career or the science they are exposed to because of the contradictions young-earthism causes (6)(such as the claim that Earth is only 6000 or so years old when civilization is easily traced further back than that). Instead of resolving this issue, too many blindly choose sides or sweep the problem under the rug.
6. Andy Butcher, “He Sees God in the Stars.” Charisma Volume 28, Number 11 (June 2003): pp. 38-44. On page 44, this article gives a good example of the dichotomy Christians often find themselves in:
“Mark Clark, professor of political science at California State University…says [Dr. Hugh] Ross’ ministry [Reasons to Believe] ‘saved my faith.’ He had embraced young earth creationism because ‘it seemed to make sense.’ But he found himself developing ‘Christian schizophrenia’ because he could not bring his weekend and workday worlds, and their conflicting realities, together.”
*****
A clear and detailed introduction to the problems/issues with young earthism can be found in Introduction to the Creation-Date Debate including a number of detailed and revealing discussions/refutations of a lot of the propaganda spewed by AIG.
"RTB scholars proclaim the powerful message that logic and science support, rather than erode, trust in the transcendent God of the Bible. The harmony becomes clear as they present testable truth."
Thanks
No different than the objection, "How an I believe the Bible or in Christianity when it speaks of people rising from the dead?"
Humanly speaking it is impossible to believe many of the things written in the Word of God. It requires supernatural intervention, saving faith. Unbelievers need no reason to disbelieve the Scriptures as they are given. It is part of their nature. Their nature must be overcome by an act of God in their hearts. Well-intentioned Christians who advocate the same basic theories as unbelievers are not doing anyone any favors.
Any attempt to deny a process of creation involving a series of successive divine fiats stretching out over a period of only six literal days is manifestly contrary to the plain, historical sense of Scripture. The Hebrew word yom ("day") in the Genesis 1 account of creation should be understood in a normal sense of a 24-hour period, for the following reasons:
(1) Argument from primary meaning. The preponderant usage of the word yom ("day") in the Old Testament is of a normal day as experienced regularly by man (though it may be limited to the hours of light, as per common understanding). The word occurs 1704 times in the Old Testament, the overwhelming majority of which have to do with the normal cycle of daily earth time. Preponderant usage of a term should be maintained in exegetical analysis unless contextual forces compel otherwise. This is particularly so in historical narrative. R. L. Dabney points out:
The narrative seems historical, and not symbolical; and hence the strong initial presumption is, that all its parts are to be taken in their obvious sense.... It is freely admitted that the word day is often used in the Greek Scriptures as well as the Hebrew (as in our common speech) for an epoch, a season, a time. But yet, this use is confessedly derivative. The natural day is its literal and primary meaning. Now, it is apprehended that in construing any document, while we are ready to adopt, at the demand of the context, the derived or tropical meaning, we revert to the primary one, when no such demand exists in the context.5
(2) Argument from explicit qualification. Moses carefully qualifies each of the six creative days with the phraseology: "evening and morning." The qualification is a deliberate defining of the concept of day. Outside of Genesis 1 the words "evening" and "morning" occur together in thirty-seven verses. In each instance it speaks of a normal day. Examples from Moses include:
Exodus 18:13: "And so it was, on the next day, that Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning until evening."
Exodus 27:21: "In the tabernacle of meeting, outside the veil which is before the Testimony, Aaron and his sons shall tend it from evening until morning before the LORD." R. L. Dabney argues that this evidence alone should compel adoption of a literal-day view:
The sacred writer seems to shut us up to the literal interpretation, by describing the day as composed of its natural parts, ’morning and evening.’... It is hard to see what a writer can mean, by naming evening and morning as making a first, or a second ’day’; except that he meant us to understand that time which includes just one of each of these successive epochs: — one beginning of night, and one beginning of day. These gentlemen cannot construe the expression at all. The plain reader has no trouble with it. When we have had one evening and one morning, we know we have just one civic day; for the intervening hours have made just that time.6
(3) Argument from ordinal prefix. In the 119 cases in Moses’ writings where the Hebrew word yom stands in conjunction with a numerical adjective (first, second, third, etc.), it never means anything other than a literal day. The same is true of the 357 instances outside the Pentateuch, where numerical adjectives occur.
Examples include:
Leviticus 12:3: "And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised."
Exodus 12:15: "Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel."
Exodus 24:16: "Now the glory of the LORD rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud."
The Genesis 1 account of creation consistently applies the ordinal prefix to the day descriptions, along with "evening and morning" qualifiers (Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31).
(4) Argument from coherent usage. The word yom is used of the creative days of four, five, and six, which occur after the creation of the sun, which was expressly designated to "rule" the day/night pattern (Gen. 1:14). The identical word (yom) and phraseology ("evening and morning," numerical adjectives) associated with days four through six are employed of days one through three, which compel us to understand those days as normal earth days.
(5) Argument from divine exemplar. In Exodus 20:9-11 (the Fourth Commandment) God specifically patterns man’s work week after his own original creational work week. Man’s work week is expressly tied to God’s: "for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth" (Ex. 20:11). On two occasions in Moses’ writings this rationale is used:
Exodus 20:11: "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."
Exodus 31:15-17: "Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. . . . It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed."
Dabney’s comments are helpful: "In Gen. ii:2, 3; Ex. xx:11, God’s creating the world and its creatures in six days, and resting the seventh, is given as the ground of His sanctifying the Sabbath day. The latter is the natural day; why not the former? The evasions from this seem peculiarly weak."7
(6) Argument from plural expression. In Exodus 20:11 God’s creation week is spoken of as involving "six days" (yammim), plural. In the 608 instances of the plural "days" in the Old Testament, we never find any other meaning than normal days. Ages are never expressed as yammim.
(7) Argument from alternative idiom. Had Moses intended to express the notion that the creation covered eras, he could have employed the term olam. Even the resting of God on the "seventh day" does not express his eternal rest, for it would also imply not only his continual rest but also his continual blessing of creation, as if sin never intervened: Genesis 2:3 — "Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."
From Reformed Theology and Six Day Creation by Dr. Kenneth Gentry
Taken from a recent discussion her on FR...
"... Calling into question the historicity of the first chapters of Genesis has the effect of calling into question the resurrection also. Theologically, Genesis is of critical importance. EVERY theological concept in the Bible has its origin in Genesis.
If you don't trust the historicity of events recorded in the Bible, how can you know the resurrection actually occurred? If you were to submit the resurrection event to the bar of modern science it would be completely rejected. To the modern, scientific mindset the resurrection is not scientifically possible.
Here is the basic argument.
It is recorded in the scriptures that Jesus viewed the creation of man as literally happening in a six day period and that God created a literal man and a woman.
"The Sabbath was made for man..."
Mark 2:27
The Sabbath, the literal seventh day of the week, was created for man (i.e. man-scaled) to rest on. Jesus saw the Sabbath as a literal, 24hr, once a week, period of rest CREATED specifically for man by God. If the seventh day was on the scale of a geological age then Jesus statement looses all comprehensible meaning.
"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,"
Matthew 19:4
Jesus is treating the written account of Genesis as literally true and the basis of moral decisions.
In addition, he states that humans were created male and female from the very BEGINNING - a concept that evolution would utterly reject. Jesus is speaking of a literal, special (non-evolutionary) creation of man. Man was not created an asexual organic blob that evolved sexual reproductitive abilities eons later. Jesus said we were created as male and female from the beginning
So you can't have it both ways. Either the evolutionists are right and Jesus is wrong or Jesus is right and the evolutionists are wrong. If Jesus was wrong about creation -wrong about such a central event in the Bible, then how do you know he's not also wrong about any of the other statements he made?
Here is a very serious question for you to consider...
If you consider yourself more informed and more knowledgeable than Jesus Christ about the Bible and history, would you find it hard to be his follower?
PM: In addition, he states that humans were created male and female from the very BEGINNING - a concept that evolution would utterly reject. Jesus is speaking of a literal, special (non-evolutionary) creation of man. Man was not created an asexual organic blob that evolved sexual reproductitive abilities eons later. Jesus said we were created as male and female from the beginning
If you look at Item #3 in truthfinder9's link, you will see that Reasons-To-Believe claims that Man was not evolved but was miraculously created. I find this a bit troublesome from a logic standpoint and it seems to point to a chink in their theology. On one side, they want to attribute the creation of Man as a miraculous event (Man created from dust) but they want to say that all other creatures were created from "an asexual organic blob" as you so aptly mentioned. So evolution was only in force for the animal species but not for humans.
If you can believe that man was created literally from dust, why can you not believe that God created all things in 6 days? I think this organization (RTB) has just succumbed to the years of misinformation/disinformation coming out of the "scientific" secularized community. The evolutionists need to be confronted by real facts that will eventually lay bare their blatant humanistic theologies.
Evolution (transpeciation) is a lie, or at best a very poorly supported theory.
Wrong again. "Yom" has three literal meanings and the Genesis Hebrew does not explicitly say 24hr days, so one has to look at contexual issues. In the YEC interpretation you have contradictions such as life appearing before the Sun, etc. You also seem to be equating "plain sense" with superficial interpretation: I.E. "plain sense" doesn't mean we ignore context, the point of view of the writer, etc. "Plain sense" doesn't mean we don't engage our brains in good biblical scholarship!
Here's what a little critical thought tells us (and notice and simply & easily it shows YECism to be false and problematic) [I should also note that old-earthism does not equal evolution as some YECs claim]:
1. Genesis 1:3 has light appearing a few days before the Sun is mentioned in Genesis 1:16. Is it rational for God (a rational being) to have light existing before the sources are created? Does it really make sense to think life existed before the Sun formed? Or that Earth could exist without the Sun? Consider that starting with verse Genesis 1:2, the account is written from the perspective of what someone on the planet’s surface would have seen. In other words, he was writing what would have been seen from Earth if someone had been there at that time (and all creationists would probably agree that no one was actually around during these creation “days”). Light existed in Genesis 1:3, but the Sun and stars were not seen until later. This matches precisely with scientific evidence that tells of a cloudy early Earth, with the Sun only visible later. The sky is already clear in Genesis 1:14 while canopy proponents require it to exist until Noah’s day). Chapter 1:16 writes “God made two great lights...” which some scholars believe is better translated as “God had made.” “Made” is translated from a Hebrew word that would seem to indicate the light coming from something created previously.
2. Genesis 1 does not refer to the “days” as 24-hour days. The text only reads as day, so you have to look at the context. The New International Version (NIV) and some other translations set the days off differently, and more accurate to the Hebrew, than do other translations. The King James Version (KJV), or ones that over-simplify such as The Living Bible (TLB), are not as accurate to the Hebrew and make it sound as if these were 24-hour days. Compare and you will see the difference. KJV: “And the evening and morning were the first day.” NIV: “And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.” The Hebrew matches the latter translation more precisely, which shows that a 24-hour day is not as obvious as some claim. If it were a 24-hour day, one would expect it to obviously say so. The text, however, seems to be indicating something else.
3. The attaching of an ordinal (such as “first”) or other appendage (such as “long”) to day does not always indicate a 24-hour day. See Zechariah 14:7, which uses “one day” or “a day” depending on the translation and Hosea 6:2. Scholars have long interpreted the use of day in these prophetic verses as meaning years or longer periods. There is no good reason to dismiss these examples simply because they are considered prophecy. In 1 Samuel 7:2, the word for day is translated as “long time” or “the time was long” and refers to twenty years. In Deuteronomy 10:10, day is translated as “the first time” and refers to forty days. In 1 Chronicles 29:27 the word for day is translated as “the time” and refers to forty years (some translations leave it out since the context makes it repetitive).
4. Similarly, the Hebrew for the phrase “evening and morning” or “evening, and there was morning” has usages not limited to 24-hour days. In fact, there are numerous usages in the Bible that this phrase, or variants of it, refer to continuous processes or activities. Exodus 18:13, 27:21, Leviticus 24:2-3 and Daniel 8:14,26 all use this phrase in a context of something that occurs on a continual basis over more than one 24-hour day.
5. The third day must have been longer than 24-hours, since the text indicates a process that would take a year or longer. On this day, the text specifically states that the land produced plants and trees. After they were produced, the text refers to seed bearing fruit being produced by these trees. Any horticulturist knows that fruit-bearing trees require several years to mature before they produce fruit. Note the text states that the land produced these trees (indicating a natural process) and that it all occurred on the third day. Obviously, such a “day” could not have been only 24 hours long.
6. Is it really reasonable to believe that Adam named the animals, had time to get lonely and meet Eve all in one day? Being sinless does not make one superhuman. Even if Adam only named the animals in Eden, there still would have been quite a few. From Genesis 2:20 it seems apparent Adam was in need of a companion. With God and all those animals, would Adam really get lonely in only one day? In fact, in Genesis 2:23 we find an indication that a lot of time did indeed pass between Adam and Eve’s creation. The NIV reads, “This is now...[my wife Eve],” while the New Revised Standard Version reads, “This at last…[is my wife Eve].” The latter seems to bring out the meaning of the Hebrew more accurately and indicates Adam had been waiting for more than a few days or hours. Even the NIV rendering seems to indicate anticipation rather than shock of Eve’s arrival. We also find in the overview of the creation of humans in Genesis 1:26-29, and the details in Genesis 2, God gave a lot of mandates to Adam and Eve to accomplish or initiate. Also consider that Adam was not created in Eden (Genesis 2:7), so did time pass before he was placed in Eden (in Genesis 2:8)? In any case, it is only reasonable for days, if not years, to have passed amidst these verses and perhaps more before the events recorded in Genesis 3.
7. Eve’s childbirth pains were increased (Genesis 3:16) after the fall of man. This tells us two things: 1. There was pain before the fall; and 2. She may very well have had kids before Cain and Able. Various clues in the text indicate that the Cain-Able-Seth births may not have been sequential or necessarily close in time. If Cain is able to find a wife so “soon” in Genesis 4:17 and able to build a “city,” then other siblings must have been born close to his age. Genesis 5:4 indicates that Adam and Eve had many kids not listed. The timescale in these passages is obviously compressed, the events do not make sense otherwise. One could also conjecture that births might have occurred before the fall, which would also make the growing population afterwards easier to explain.
8. Are God’s days the same as our days? No, because as the creator he would be outside of time by virtue of the fact that he created time along with the rest of the universe’s attributes. The Bible alludes to this in Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 which seems to foreshadow future discoveries concerning the universe’s multi-dimensional structure. The bottom line is that since Genesis writes about God’s creative acts, this is a strong indication that the days are not 24-hour days. 9. We see that when God rested, he ceased creating and each “day” previous to that was closed out. The seventh day is not closed out like the others. As each of the previous days represent eras before man (and the sixth includes early man), the “seventh day” is mankind’s entire existence up to and including the present. The Bible speaks of the Sabbath not being closed out (as indicated in Hebrews 4) until the new creation when God starts creating again (Revelation 21).
10. Genesis 2:4 reads, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens...” This is the NIV translation, but in this case the KJV better renders the verse in accordance with the Hebrew. The Hebrew for this verse contains yom (day) which is left out of the NIV. Read the KJV: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens...” This verse serves as a summation of Genesis 1 and an introduction to Genesis 2. If the creation days were 24-hour days, why would this verse refer to the creation as “in the day” God made? This is a clear usage of the “long period of time” definition for day. A similar usage is found in 2 Peter 3:10-12.
11. The Bible makes clear statements on Earth’s antiquity in 2 Peter 3:5 and Habakkuk 3:6. Allusions to an ancient world can be found in Job 15:7, Psalm 90:2-6, Proverbs 8:22-32, Ecclesiastes 1:3-11 and Micah 6:2. These verses are also interesting because they seem to confirm what many people perceive. Many people look around them at the natural processes, geologic formations and so forth and find it hard to envision the world being very young. The signs of age are all around us.
12. Exodus 20:11 is often held up as undeniable proof of 24-hour creation days. If that is true, what of Leviticus 25:1-4, which uses the creation week pattern in terms of years? Apparently the creation week is used as a pattern of “one out of seven” in both cases, not a real-time reference. A similar type of pattern is the eight day “Feast of the Tabernacles” in Leviticus 23:33-36. It celebrated God’s protection in the desert that lasted forty years — obviously eight days is not a one-to-one correlation with forty years. Moses authored both of these verses, which adds further strength to this conclusion.
13. Both 1 Chronicles 16:15 and Psalms 105:8 refer to God commanding his word to “a thousand generations.” This seems to confirm that the genealogical listings were incomplete. A “thousand generations” also seems to roughly confirm scientific datings on human origins.
14. Some young-earthers claim Jesus endorsed the young-earth view when he said, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’” (Mark 10:6). Their suggestion is that this verse proves God did not create man millions of years after creation. However, read that verse again. If we take it literally, then it is in error, because God did not create man at the beginning of creation in either old- or young-earth creationism. The latter claims it was six days later. So “beginning” must be referring to a time period or era early in history, not a particular day.
If "he" means Jesus, then you have a logical problem: Some young-earthers claim Jesus endorsed the young-earth view when he said, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’” (Mark 10:6). Their suggestion is that this verse proves God did not create man millions of years after creation. However, read that verse again. If we take it literally, then it is in error, because God did not create man at the beginning of creation in either old- or young-earth creationism. The latter claims it was six days later. So “beginning” must be referring to a time period or era early in history, not a particular day.
>On one side, they want to attribute the creation of Man as a miraculous event (Man created from dust) but they want to say that all other creatures were created from "an asexual organic blob" as you so aptly mentioned.
Also untrue. RTB and most OECs don't attribute all other creatures to a "blob" but fiat miracles. I'm not sure how you derived that from item 3.
>why can you not believe that God created all things in 6 days?
Because the bible explicitly does not say that. As the link below explains, a plain reading of the bible (that doesn't turn the brain off and ignore the precepts of good biblical interpretation) shows YECism to be most obviously wrong.
> think this organization (RTB) has just succumbed to the years of misinformation/disinformation coming out of the "scientific" secularized community
No, all that they believe can be traced to Christian scholars and theologians whose scholarship is independent and verifiable. YECs "scientific" theories have never been proven outside their circles, while OEC and its related intelligent design has been. If you study the history of YECism, it is based on one fallacy after another, especially the one that says "old earth = evolution." Science has proven this false over and over: The universe is not old enough for evolution to work, and could NOT be any younger for life to exist.
Is The Truth Out There? Chapters 10,11,12,14
>If you don't trust the historicity of events recorded in the Bible, how can you know the resurrection actually occurred
Indeed, that's why YECism is a problem, it contradicts the natural record and hence undermines the historicity of the Bible, which is why so many skeptics hold it up as a reason not to trust the Bible.
>And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female," Matthew 19:4
Some young-earthers claim Jesus endorsed the young-earth
view when he said, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’” (Mark 10:6). Their suggestion is that this verse proves God did not create man millions of years after creation. However, read that verse again. If we take it literally, then it is in error, because God did not create man at the beginning of creation in either old- or young-earth creationism. The latter claims it was six days later. So “beginning” must be referring to a time period or era early in history, not a particular day.
>The Sabbath, the literal seventh day of the week
Major, simple problems with this as well:
We see that when God rested, he ceased creating and each “day” previous to that was closed out. The seventh day is not closed out like the others. As each of the previous days represent eras before man (and the sixth includes early man), the “seventh day” is mankind’s entire existence up to and including the present. The Bible speaks of the Sabbath not being closed out (as indicated in Hebrews 4) until the new creation when God starts creating again (Revelation 21).
The point is that a complete and enaging look at what the Bible actually reads shows that YECism is unture and only OECism harmonizes the Bible and nature (both must agree if God really created both).
Again I should point out that the foundational fallacy to YECism is that "old age = evolution." However, as science has shown, the universe is NOT old enough for evolution to work. But if it were much younger, the materials for life would NOT exist. This is one of intelligent design's most powerful evidences.
The only reason for "progressive creationism" to exist is in order to support this entirely natural, evolutionary doctrine.
...
Ross’s poor scholarship extends to biblical studies as well. For instance, Van Bebber and Taylor have shown that Ross has cited lexicons and word books to support his claims to meanings of Hebrew words, when in reality those references say exactly the opposite of what Ross claims. From this one can only conclude that either Ross is dishonest or that he is a careless and incompetent researcher. Neither possibility should be palatable to those who rely upon his apologetics. The biggest puzzle is why so many Christian leaders and seminary professors have not abandoned him already.
It is true that nature does reveal the power and deity of God, so that man is without excuse (see Romans 1). However, here the step from observations of nature to God is dependent upon the conscience of man, formed in the image of God, rather than upon cosmological theorizing. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that God reveals knowledge of the past through nature. Rather, it stresses man's deficient knowledge of such matters (cf. Job 38:1-5; Is. 41:21-24).
Ross takes issue with those who hold to the "single-revelation" view that the Bible is the only authoritative source of knowledge.[15] He contends that those who, on the basis of the Bible, believe in a young universe are denying the truth that God has revealed through nature. He goes so far as to assert that to believe in a young universe means rejecting such basics as Newton's laws, relativity, and hydrostatics.[16] But this is hardly the case. Ross fails to distinguish between, on the one hand, our observations of nature and the natural laws that we can discern to be presently in effect and, on the other hand, our theoretical explanations and extrapolations of those observations. There is no conflict between what we read in the Bible and what we see in nature; the clash occurs only once we commence our theoretical speculations. Creationists need not reject mechanics or hydrostatics, although they should be cautions in applying these to speculations about origins.
This is another untrue myth spread by YEC leaders. Anyone who actually reads Ross can confirm this.
4. RTB exalts science over the Bible.
FALSE
We believe that God has revealed Himself to humanity in at least three ways—the words of the Bible, the record of nature, and the human conscience. Our mission at Reasons To Believe is to work rigorously to integrate all of God’s revelations into one harmonious picture revealing the identity and character of the Creator. LEARN MORE...
Books and Other Resources God’s Two-Part Harmony (CD or 3 Audio Tape Set)
Without a Doubt, by Kenneth Samples
Speculative? Another myth spread by YEC leaders. Saying the Big Bang is speculative reveals that one has not studied the actual science in the least.
The Big Bang: The Bible Taught It First!
Extensive evidences for big bang are discussed in Creator And The Cosmos
The Big Bang: Differentiating the Facts from Fiction
To be frank, these obvious stock YEC responses show me that some here have not studied these issues in detail, other than what the YEC groups have told them is true. The Bible tells us to test everything, yet many YECs unconditionally believe what they are told. And YEC leaders bristle everytime their "authority" is questioned. How is this good scholarship? I like to compare it to liberal thinking where all other contrary info is censored, ignored or minimized. Funny how liberal patterns are found even in conservatism! (P.S. I actually have bothered reading through the YEC materials over the past few years, and when you directly compare them to OEC ones, one finds an amazingly obvious higher level of scholarship in the latter!) The bottom line is why follow something blindly simply because it says "Christian" on the label? Who gave YEC groups this untouchable authority they claim to have?
The problem with this assertion is that there are no such things as brute facts. There are no "facts of nature." Science does not deal with facts. It deals only with observations. All observations of facts are are dependent upon God's special revelation for proper understanding and interpretation.
Unbelievers apply presupportions to their observations in order to suppress the truth (Rom. 1). Modern, secular science is the perfect example of this reality. Hugh Ross doesn't appear to begin with Scripture on order to understand science, rather vice versa.
>The problem with this assertion is that there are no such things as brute facts. There are no "facts of nature." Science does not deal with facts. It deals only with observations.
Then you don't understand science. Science develops theories, that by constant verification, become fact for all intents and purposes. Is gravity not a fact? Evn when Newton's Law of Gravitation was supersceded by the more precise equations of relativty, did gravity cease being a fact? No, in fact, in became more of a fact because more uncertainity was chiped away.
>All observations of facts are are dependent upon God's special revelation for proper understanding and interpretation.
This sounds exactly like relativism. It's like saying "we can only observe what God wants us to observe." No, the Bible is clear that God is not mysterious and never hides his way (Isaiah 45:19, Romans 1:19-20), in fact He puts a lot of emphasis on the validity of general relevation (including Psalms 19:1-4, 50:6, 85:11, 97:6 and 104). Note that Ross does not state that general rev. supercedes special rev. They have different roles. The former gives people no excuse in not believing the latter.
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