The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

Malty_T said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Very interesting video. Thank you.

The guy at the start is quite right - if Genesis is God's story, then it is historical narrative. But if it is the invention of pious Jews in heathen captivity, then of course metaphor would be the only honest intent of the authors. Anything else would be a deliberate deception.

Creationists hold to the historic view of the Church - that it is historical narrative. The problems suggested in the video - supposedly conflicting accounts in Chapter 1 and 2, and the impossibility of day/night without the Sun, have been ably explained by Creationists.

Some difficulties for any Christian holding to a metaphorical view:
1. They disagree with the historic view of the Church.
2. They have a problem accounting for where metaphor leaves off and history begins - Abel? Noah? Abraham? Israel? Moses? David?
3. They have to account for the fact that Jesus and the NT writers appear to refer to Genesis as history.

A Christian would probably be better here than me, but I'm gonna try anyway.

As I understand, they don't see the stories of Abel,Noah, etc etc as objective facts.

I have trouble regarding those who deny the existence of Abel, Noah, etc. as real Christians. May as well deny the existence of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus and have the mature Jesus a theophany.

They also don't follow the Church; the bible is seen as the supreme authority on the message of salvation on Jesus Christ and the understanding of God.

Quite so, but they do take the historic beliefs of the Church into account, and not lightly set aside the consensus of some 1800 years.

However, this does not mean that it is regarded as a scientific or literal text.

It is like any other literature or communication - literal and metaphorical in parts. The key is using a proper principle of interpretation, not an ad hoc system.

Galileo put it succinctly
Quote:
The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

Galileo was right - just as we in other literature may address facts of nature without going into scientific explanations. The sun rises for all but pedants.

It doesn't explain nature.

But it does give us facts about nature. It does not tell us how water turns to ice, but it tells us it does. It does not tell us how God spoke and the earth produced the grass and the trees in one day, but it tells us that's what happened:
Genesis 1:11 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 So the evening and the morning were the third day.

(How could it when it contradicts itself?)

No, it doesn't.

I believe, Galileo's philosophy which he got from some theologians (cannot remember who but it wasn't just one generation of them) was that if nature contradicted the teachings in the bible then it was merely the bible's interpretation that had been mistaken : the bible is interpreted by science and knowledge; not the other way around.

I'm not sure what he taught, but if science affirms that something is definitely so, we should of course re-examine our interpretation of the Bible if it's contrary. We are not infallible interpretors.

But that is what Creationists have done. And we see no way to reconcile evolution with the Bible. That has caused us to re-examine the science, and we have found the solid ground of the evolutionists to be a swamp of ideology, or at best a house built on the sand.

I've read Geophysics texts by Christians citing biblical quotes in their introductions and then dealing with science of old earth tectonics that shows how beautifully these citations can interpreted.

So have I. Their interpretations are wildly off, no matter how beautiful they may sound to some.

As for Jesus referring to the Genesis account, it's easy. He told parables all the time didn't He? Do we take these literally or do we learn the "metaphorical" lesson from them? The people at the time of Jesus passed on their teachings through stories and allegories and it is well documented that the people at the time of Jesus didn't even take these stories as objective historical facts; neither did Jesus. So, there would be no need to state to His followers
"Oh and by the way this stuff isn't to be taken literally you know"
because the culture at that time pretty much knew it wasn't meant to be.

So I'm not to divorce my wife because:
a. There's a fictional story about God making Adam & Eve and making them one flesh, so it would not be like the story if I did so.
OR
b. God made Adam & Eve and made them one flesh, so it violates God's intention for us.

Here's what Jesus said:
Matthew 19:4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

He's relating history there, not telling a parable.

Malty_T wrote: »

JC, your probably missed this in all the commotion, but can I ask you to give your answer on this..

Hmm JC,

Sorry, If I'm impatient but I'd love an answer to this?

JC,

Just curious (I'm throwing you a bone here), creation scientists worked out to perfection the age of the earth. So I'd image you must know what age was Jesus when He died and when was He born?

Also,
Seeing as you class us as materialists? I'm curious to know what "non materialism" is defined as?
(Specifically with regard to non materialistic process in reality.)

I decided to have a quick read of the first article and after reading this

Nonsense peddlers wrote:

One myth promulgated by some evolutionists says that some whales have been found with hind legs, complete with thigh and knee muscles. However, this story probably grew by legendary accretion from a true account of a real sperm whale with a 5.5 inch (14 cm) bump with a 5-inch (12 cm) piece of bone inside. Sperm whales are typically about 62 feet (19 m) long, so this abnormal piece of bone is minute in comparison with the whale—this hardly qualifies as a ‘leg!’18

two minutes of googling brought me to this page:
http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2006/11/dolphin-hind-limbs-response-to-aig.html

Which contains this photo:



and many more direct refutations to the nonsense of the nonsense peddlers at AIG

Edit: also my very own refutation. The above quote points out that the vestigial leg is tiny in comparison to the whale to suggest that it couldn't be a leg but, and I can't believe it's even necessary to point out something so blatantly obvious, the ancestral legs were bigger and the ancestral whales were a lot smaller. It was only possible for them to grow so large once they moved into the sea full time and didn't need the legs anymore. The stupidity and ignorance of that statement is truly mind boggling

Have pictures and videos of dolphins and whales with little stumpy legs finally left the creationists...ahem, stumped :pac:

Wicknight wrote: »

I sincerely doubt you will, but have a read of this article

http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Read&cat=1&itemid=106

where it describes first the 1961 assertions that the Ark could hold 2 of every species of land animal, and then later assertions in 1973 (repeated no doubt in your "reprint" :rolleyes:) that the species classification is wrongly describing Biblical kinds.

Here's my original comment:
In all the years I have followed up the creation science case I have never heard them deny speciation/diversification. In fact, they insisted that it was a relatively small number of animals that emerged from the Ark and that from them all the breathing animals have arisen.

There may have been an eccentric here or there who said otherwise, but I'm not aware of them.

Can you give the references?

Here's what The Genesis Flood said:
1961:
Not only so, but also the great numbers of animals of all kinds, and certainly the birds, could easily have moved out of the danger zone also, without having to be stored in a barge for an entire year!

1973:
A barge of such gigantic size, with its thousands of built-in compartments (Gen. 6:14) would have been sufficiently large to carry two of every species of air-breathing animal in the world today (and doubtless the tendency toward taxonomic splitting has produced more “species” than can be justified in terms of Genesis “kinds”) on only half of its available deck space.

Where does it say that speciation did not occur? In fact this phrase affirms it: and doubtless the tendency toward taxonomic splitting has produced more “species” than can be justified in terms of Genesis “kinds” That is, many of today's species have arisen from the much fewer 'kinds' that were represented on the Ark.

A couple of interesting news articles:
Birds Did Not Evolve from Dinosaurs, Say Evolutionists
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/06/12/birds-did-not-evolve

Charles Darwin and the children of the evolution
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article6905259.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Have pictures and videos of dolphins and whales with little stumpy legs finally left the creationists...ahem, stumped :pac:

... don't Evolutionists have great imaginations??!!!!!:):D

Sam Vimes wrote: »

As Malty said, males have nipples because females have nipples, we're made from the same template ....

...we sure are made from the same template... exactly like Gen 2:20-23 says

Ge 2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 ¶ And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Malty_T wrote: »

Why would an all powerful God need to take someone's else's rib to create something? The mind boggles.

...the same reason an all powerful God died on a cross to save YOU ... because He wants to show how special and unique Mankind is!!!!

...and yes indeed, every Human Mind SHOULD 'boggle' (with awe and love) at such a God!!!

J C wrote: »

... don't Evolutionists have great imaginations??!!!!!:):D

Yes. We find that infinitely preferable to getting all our ideas on anything and everything from one very old book.

It never ceases to amaze me how the creationists think we get all our ideas from Darwin's book.
We've moved on well past that book (if it were written today it would be a vast improvement), JC, you clearly haven't.

Malty_T wrote: »

We've moved on well past that book (if it were written today it would be a vast improvement)...

...one could be forgiven for thinking that Evolutionists haven't moved on much from Darwin's Victorian 'musings', given all of the "Darwin Worship' and frenzied adulation surrounding the 'double-anniversary' and all of it's associated 'double-thinking' !!!:eek:;)

J C wrote: »

...the same reason an all powerful God died on a cross to save YOU ... because He wants to show how special and unique Mankind is!!!!

...and yes indeed, every Human Mind SHOULD 'boggle' (with awe and love) at such a God!!!

That why he spent a lot of the Old Testamtent wiping humanity out with plagues and floods?

krudler wrote: »

That why he spent a lot of the Old Testamtent wiping humanity out with plagues and floods?

...God is BOTH Merciful AND Just....He visits His Mercy on those who love Him ... and His Justice on those who hate Him.

..and this was how the people who were wiped out, were behaving before The Flood:-
Ge 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 ¶ And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
8 ¶ But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 ¶ The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 ¶ And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth