Posted on 02/18/2009 3:30:46 PM PST by DallasMike
I became a Christian in my sophomore year of college. The people who had led me to the Lord immediately began my discipleship. They taught me to evangelize and they taught me what they felt a Christian should believe. But most importantly they were a loving family of believers which was a welcome oasis for someone like me whose home life had been less than familial. Thus, when I was told that Christians must believe in a young-earth and a global flood, I went along willingly. I believed. Being a physics major in college I had not taken any geology courses. I knew there were physics problems, but I thought I could solve them.
When I graduated from college, physicists were unemployable since NASA had just laid off many. I did graduate work in philosophy, and then decided to leave school to support my growing family. After six months, I found work as a geophysicist working for a seismic company. Within a year, I was processing seismic data for a major oil company.
This was where I first became exposed to the problems geology presented to the idea of a global flood. I would see extremely thick (30,000 feet) sedimentary layers and wonder how the flood could have deposited all that sediment and still given time for footprints to be formed if it was all deposited in one year. One could follow beds with footprints from the surface down to those depths where they were covered by such thicknesses of sediment that much time would have been required. I would see buried mountains which had experienced more than ten thousands of feet of erosion, which required more time than a single year. Yet, my belief system required that the sediments in those buried mountains had to have been deposited by the flood. I would see karsts (sinkholes due to limestone erosion) and salt sandwiched in the middle of the geologic column (supposedly during the middle of the flood). Yet the flood waters would have been saturated with limestone and incapable of dissolving lime. And salt can only be removed from the ocean waters by evaporation. It was inconceivable that salt could be deposited during the Flood. It became clear that more time was needed than the global flood would allow. But my faith in the young-earth interpretation told me that the data were not to be believed.
...
Eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationism. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology had turned out to be true. I took a poll of all eight of the graduates from ICR's school who had gone into the oil industry and were working for various companies. I asked them one question, "From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true?"
That is a very simple question. One man, who worked for a major oil company, grew very silent on the phone, sighed, and softly said, "No!" A very close friend that I had hired, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. No one else could either.
Being through with creationism, I was almost through with Christianity. I was thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that if the earth were not young and the flood not global, then the Bible was false. I was on the very verge of becoming an atheist. During that time, I re-read a book I had reviewed prior to its publication. It was Alan Hayward's Creation/ Evolution (Triangle, 1985). Although I had reviewed it prior to its publication in 1985, I had not been ready for the views he expressed. He presented a wonderful "Days of Proclamation" view which pulled me back from the edge of atheism. Although I believe Alan applied it to the earth in an unworkable fashion, applied differently, his view had the power to unite the data with the Scripture. That is what I have done with my views. Without that I would now be an atheist. There is much in Alan's book I agree with and much I disagree with, but his book was very important in keeping me in the faith. While his book may not have changed the debate totally, it did change my life.
It was my lack of knowledge that allowed me to go along willingly and become a young-earth creationist. It was isolation from contradictory data, a fear of contradictory data and a strong belief in the young-earth interpretation that kept me there for a long time. The biggest lesson I have learned in this journey is to read the works of those with whom you disagree. God is not afraid of the data.
Yes, I do.
That’s two questions. How many more before we get to a revelation?
Not when I am responding to his comment claiming to speak for all Judaism
I'm just making sure I understand where you're coming from, that's all.
I find it puzzling, that a professing Christian would deny His Creation.
How do you rationalize this? It certainly doesn't seem to be by faith.
If one gets caught up in a literal interpretation you can lose the actual meaning of the scripture.
One would not read Psalm 104:5 to think that the Earth was motionless, the meaning of the passage is that God created a safe and stable Earth.
I linked to a statement issued by the Rabbinical Council of America, which speaks for Orthodox Rabbis in the United States.
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There are creationists (those who believe God's word is true and that Almighty God created -- caused to exist where nothing had existed before -- everything: space, time, mate, energy, life -- the universe as we observe it...
Then, there are the YEC (Young Earth "Creationists") who place their own constraints upon God, and who demand that all believers must adhere to their own literal misinterpretation of Genesis and, who, thereby, worship at the feet of the MAN/MEN who wrote this:
For as much as our Christian epoch falls many ages after the beginning of the world, and the number of years before that backward is not only more troublesome, but (unless greater care be taken) more lyable to errour; also it hath pleased our modern chronologers, to adde to that generally received hypothesis (which asserted the Julian years, with their three cycles by a certain mathematical prolepsis, to have run down to the very beginning of the world) an artificial epoch, framed out of three cycles multiplied in themselves; for the Solar Cicle being multiplied by the Lunar, or the number of 28 by 19, produces the great Paschal Cycle of 532 years, and that again multiplied by fifteen, the number of the indiction, there arises the period of 7980 years, which was first (if I mistake not) observed by Robert Lotharing, Bishop of Hereford, in our island of Britain, and 500 years after by Joseph Scaliger fitted for chronological uses, and called by the name of the Julian Period, because it conteined a cycle of so many Julian years. Now if the series of the three minor cicles be from this present year extended backward unto precedent times, the 4713 years before the beginning of our Christian account will be found to be that year into which the first year of the indiction, the first of the Lunar Cicle, and the first of the Solar will fall. Having placed there fore the heads of this period in the kalends of January in that proleptick year, the first of our Christian vulgar account must be reckoned the 4714 of the Julian Period, which, being divided by 15. 19. 28. will present us with the 4 Roman indiction, the 2 Lunar Cycle, and the 10 Solar, which are the principal characters of that year.We find moreover that the year of our fore-fathers, and the years of the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews were of the same quantity with the Julian, consisting of twelve equal moneths, every of them conteining 30 days, (for it cannot be proved that the Hebrews did use lunary moneths before the Babylonian Captivity) adjoying to the end of the twelfth moneth, the addition of five dayes, and every four year six. And I have observed by the continued succession of these years, as they are delivered in holy writ, that the end of the great Nebuchadnezars and the beginning of Evilmerodachs (his sons) reign, fell out in the 3442 year of the world, but by collation of Chaldean history and the astronomical cannon, it fell out in the 186 year c Nabonasar, and, as by certain connexion, it must follow in the 562 year before the Christian account, and of the Julian Period, the 4152. and from thence I gathered the creation of the world did fall out upon the 710 year of the Julian Period, by placing its beginning in autumn: but for as much as the first day of the world began with the evening of the first day of the week, I have observed that the Sunday, which in the year 710 aforesaid came nearest the Autumnal Æquinox, by astronomical tables (notwithstanding the stay of the sun in the dayes of Joshua, and the going back of it in the dayes c Ezekiah) happened upon the 23 day of the Julian October; from thence concluded that from the evening preceding that first day of the Julian year, both the first day of the creation and the first motion of time are to be deduced.
— J. Ussher, The Annals of the World iv (1658)
...and further "refined"
..."heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
by one
John Lightfoot (1602-1675), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University was a contemporary of Ussher. Lightfoot published his calculations in 1644, before Ussher's were completed.
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To quote one of the cleareast thinkers here on FR:
Be wary of those who would have you place their own constraints upon God.
I realize it was a link, but I responded to your statement.
If Judaism, as you linked to, believes that evolution is compatible with the Bible, then Judaism does not believe the Bible.
For us (the Rabbinical Council of America), these fundamental beliefs do not rest on the purported weaknesses of Evolutionary Theory, and cannot be undermined by the elimination of gaps in scientific knowledge.”
If you faith is not inherent in the incorrectness of a scientific theory, it can also never be undermined by the furtherance of knowledge under that theory.
If one doesn’t take literal statements spoken literally, they tend to believe error, also
Remember, I asked you to define creationism and you didn’t. I believe that there was and is a creation, but that the biblical account of the event is allegorical. In fact, I support the theory of evolution, and further believe that evolution is God’s way of getting us here.
And, as I said, I am a Christian. How can you say that my position in any way denies creation?
Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.
“If one doesn’t take literal statements spoken literally, they tend to believe error, also”
Is the Bible exhaustive, that is, does it contain an account of everything that happened? For brevity, let’s only consider the Old Testament.
Does anybody ever raise Walt Brown's theory presented in “In the Beginning? He explains in great detail how the phenomena mentioned could have happened in the flood.
I am reading Velikovsky's “Earth in Upheaval” which he wrote in 1955 in answer to all his critics over “Worlds in Collision”. I think his explanation is wrong, but his catalog of evidence is stunning.
I agree, but from my experience, old-earthers often seem to understand this. Perhaps it's the crowd I run with.
C.S. Lewis described the universe as a book, with God standing outside as the author. When Jesus took on human form, the author stepped into his own book.
The "young earth" Creationists attempt to derive a timeline for Creation from a strictly Biblical basis, and fervently defend that on faith.
Old earth Creationists attempt to constrain God to linear, earthly time, in an attempt at accomodating worldly concerns.
Science does what science does, or at least once did, seeking to learn how the world works, and following that where ever it may lead. In my lifetime, though, science has begun to behave as if a path leading to a Creator is invalid.
Ugh. There was a post a couple of days where I was advised to read an article by Brown. To put it nicely, he was playing out of his intellectual league. I have no doubt that he's a good, solid Christian man, but his ideas are easily refuted.
In your opinion, was there a literal, Biblical deluge ...a flood, sent by God to wipe sin and depravity from the world, in order to start anew, Buck W.?
I can believe that there was a flood, but that it was not a global deluge. Was that the event that God used to wash away sin? I don’t know. However, it is a good allegory for that action.
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