Your education is wanting.
creation vs evolution
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Your education is wanting.
SonOfCaleb
Active member
I know this isnt a scientific answer but the Bible tells us that God is eternal having no beginning nor end. Its a difficult concept for humans to grasp because we think in a linear fashion, EG beginning and end.
Not neccesarily. Fundamentally we're talking about constructs that we simply do not understand, and yet at the same time we impose the limitations of human knowledge to them. Regardless Science posits that there was a beginning to the Universe. I've heard Hawkings posit theorys that the Universe is eternal but these aren't mainstream theories accepted by current science as they conflict with the current inflationary model. There also seems to be some conflicts in science regarding the conventional theory of the Big Bang which some scientists are saying is unscientific.
So these laws developed before the big bang? By themself? And by chance? I take it this is just your opinion on the matter? Regardless there's no empircism or model that can be used to prove this so how can this be called Science when it flys in the face of all thats logical? Laws spontaneously created themself which eventually produced life? There's so much wrong with this kind of 'logic' i dont really know where to start...
Again this is entirely speculative. Biology is an absurdly complex topic. But the fundamentals of it seem to be dismissed by proponents of the Big Bang and Evolution when discussing how life came about on this planet. Life which can be found NO WHERE else in the observable cosmos.
I have no clue. This isn't my area of expertise nor am i that read up on the subject. Our viewpoints are different. Your focus is on the HOW. I focus on the WHY. It is throughly illogical in my opinion to conclude that order can come from nothing. Every house has a maker. This is a logical assumption. Science and your opinion concludes there is no maker for the house only random casuality that 'magically' produced order. Non-intelligience cannot produce intelligience. Disorder or a lack of order cannot produce order. Chance equally cannot produce order. If this was the case man would not have been able to send men to the moon nor been able to develop hydrogen bombs. There is order from an intergalatic to an infinitesimal scale. Order equals intelligience.
Henry T Ford was one of the first men to use an assembly line to produce his automobiles producing the SAME vehicles again and again in rapid succession in order to reduce defects. The same occurs throughout nature via DNA each species reproducing LIFE again and again for millenia according to its DNA. (Where did that DNA come from? Interestingly the human genome has only just been sequenced) Henry T Fords system revolutionised not just the motor industry but manufacturing and Information Technology the world over via his automation. It became THE model to emulate making Ford a fabulously wealthy and influential man. And the same happens in nature the world over the result being conciousness and life and Science puts this down to random causality? Im afraid in my opinion thats a distinctly unintelligient, illogical and unscientific conclusion.
SonOfCaleb
Active member
With all due respect but this is a load of waffly, bloviated pseudo intellectual mumbo jumbo. I only used the example of the house merely as an illustration. I would have thought that was obvious.....
6days
New member
SonOfCaleb said:
Answer with logic and science....
Anything which begins to exist, has a cause. If the universe began to exist, then the cause already existed. So what was the ultimate cause? Either a person has to belueve that nothing caused everything (not logical or scientific)...Or, that the cause of everything existed eternally.*
the evidence from science is that the universe is 13-14 billion years old, the earth 4.5 billion years old, life evolved. Makes no difference to that information as to the cause of the universe. to claim that the scientific evidence supports a 1 week creation about 6000 +/- years ago, a global flood about 4000 +/- years ago and special creation of all living things is flat our wrong.
SonOfCaleb
Active member
The Bible or rather the Genesis account doesnt say creation occured in a literal 7 days. Each creative 'day' or epoch is over a period of undertermined time detailing the activities for that creative day. Its not a literal day as in a 24 hour period.
Do note there is no anthropological evidence from antiquity that goes back further than circa 4000 years. The oldest anthropological material dates to around 2300BC. Evidence of civilisation emerges suddenly in the archaeological & anthropological record. And by civilisation i mean advanced civilisations including writing, religion, culture, societys, poetry, pottery, Citys, townships, legal systems of laws, kingship etc all of which were the hall marks of the very ancient semitic and hamitic civlisations of Ur, Babylon, Egypt or Akkad.
Science claims earlier dates but in all cases there is simply no proven anthropological evidence that can be verified and dated via extant sources outside of carbon dating which is obviously not anthropological.
Your position on Genesis is at odds with many here, who must accept a 6 day creation week several 1000 years ago. That includes the creation of the universe and the earth.
Do you question the accuracy of carbon dating?
SonOfCaleb
Active member
Yes i know. Most of mainstream Christendom believes the 6 creative days to be literal 24 hour days. We as Jehovahs Witnesses though do not.
Yes. The flaws in carbon dating method are well known and accepted by Science.
Interplanner
Well-known member
There is no question that the Genesis account was about days as is found in echoes in the commands etc. There are other text or reference-point questions though. How much time was between the 'formless and void' stage and the week of creation? 2, is the account referring to our celestial locality? This can help on the question of some general light before the sun is placed on day 3.
The cause for the 'formless and void' stage that is literarily sourced would probably shock most moderns.
The 13B figure is a geomorphological problem in the celestial sense. Spiral-shaped galaxies have not moved that much, which is why we see a fuzzy S shape. If they were 13B years, they would look merely like concentric rings. These are questions of rate x time.
Explain, please
6days
New member
Zero in between time if we trust God's Word. He tells He created our universe empty...without form; then God tells us He formed and filled the earth over the next six days. There was no re-creation as you seem to suggest because we Know God created the heavens and earth and EVERYTHING IN THEM in six days,,,not re-create. (Ex. 20:11)Interplanner said:
6days
New member
We should believe something because of what God tells us...not what our religion tells us. If you study the CONTEXT of the word day / yom in Genesis 1, it can't be anything other that what we refer to as a normal day / night period. The Hebrew demands it. James Barr, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University, former Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford."Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; .. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.".SonOfCaleb said:
'Caleb'... Also consider, if you compromise the clear teaching of Genesis...it contradicts the teaching of Jesus about humanity from the beginning...AND, adding deep time into Genesis destroys the Gospel. Can you explain why Jesus had to go to the cross defeating death, if death was part of God's original design, and not a result of sin.
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SonOfCaleb
Active member
Its a method based on a slew of assumptions. There's numerous sources on the net that can do a better justification explaining the deficiencies with this dating method than i can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
Are all radiometric dating methods subject to the same slew of assumptions?
jsanford108
New member
This particular point is slightly off topic. However, if you make a new thread on this particular topic (literal 6 days/young earth), I would very much enjoy reading it and participating in such a discussion. Granted, that is your choice and prerogative.
Sent from my iPhone using TOL
Really, that's what you took from Wiki? C14 deficiencies?
Interplanner
Well-known member
That is not what the grammar or Moses usual writing structure meant. The grammar implies 'already formless and void' and Moses uses several section titles which are NOT action in the story, they are simply titles.
I remember debating you last year, and while you have a lot of good creation information, I don't know why you are obstinate about these two things. Rabbi Cassuto's commentary was where I learned Moses structure which Cassuto used to show that Genesis was not by several authors.
I do not believe the universe is sterile of other types of life, and that leaves 'formless and void' open to describing a place where such creatures were imprisoned, like the blackness of darkness in 2 Peter 2 and Jude. We know there are 'principalities and powers' which operate in this universe; it is not barren of such as uniformitarians want to think. Whether they are demons or otherwise, I don't know, but the unity of the church in Christ 'speaks' to them of God's power to reconcile and restore enemies (Eph 3), so they are not an irrelevant party to what is going on in the Bible.
We have very little info about them, about the Sons of God in Gen 6, about the giants, etc., yet they are there and they make things messy and we have to accept that. It is actually better that way because otherwise all there is is "Nature" (in Lewis' vocab = uniformitarianism). All animal and human life are simply Nature as well unless there are some unNatural creatures out there.
Interplanner
Well-known member
Quote Originally Posted by Greg Jennings View Post
In terms of a creator, I've never understood why your question doesn't apply to Him. Why, if the universe must have a beginning, must God not? What "began" God? Did He poof into existence one day and start creating?
I wish to answer Greg's question here, although I didn't find the original quote. I certainly didn't like the JW's answer to this because it was Biblicist--not considering any of the logical questions involved.
What Greg has done is Sartrian. Ie, the French existentialist who said "the basic philosophic problem is that 'something' is 'there.'" In other words, in uniformitarianism, nothing should be there. This is a huge internal flaw, forcing most people to reject U'ism out-of-hand, not to mention the more subjective/personal objections, which JonahD recently expressed: 'there is no siginficance to anything.' (If there really isn't, why are you bothering?)
As the Christian philosopher Schaeffer said, the Christian position on the metaphysical problem (that's our topic here) is that there is no problem. God was there the whole time. That is the revealed position (the JW is right about that), but it is not true for the sole reason that it is expressed there and expressed that way. It has made sense to other philosophers that there has to be an Uncaused Cause, an Unmoved Mover. The problem is the closed system of U'ism is flawed. Us 'children' have 'parents.' It is for non-children to ponder why their non-parents do 'not exist,' isn't it?
In terms of a creator, I've never understood why your question doesn't apply to Him. Why, if the universe must have a beginning, must God not? What "began" God? Did He poof into existence one day and start creating?
I wish to answer Greg's question here, although I didn't find the original quote. I certainly didn't like the JW's answer to this because it was Biblicist--not considering any of the logical questions involved.
What Greg has done is Sartrian. Ie, the French existentialist who said "the basic philosophic problem is that 'something' is 'there.'" In other words, in uniformitarianism, nothing should be there. This is a huge internal flaw, forcing most people to reject U'ism out-of-hand, not to mention the more subjective/personal objections, which JonahD recently expressed: 'there is no siginficance to anything.' (If there really isn't, why are you bothering?)
As the Christian philosopher Schaeffer said, the Christian position on the metaphysical problem (that's our topic here) is that there is no problem. God was there the whole time. That is the revealed position (the JW is right about that), but it is not true for the sole reason that it is expressed there and expressed that way. It has made sense to other philosophers that there has to be an Uncaused Cause, an Unmoved Mover. The problem is the closed system of U'ism is flawed. Us 'children' have 'parents.' It is for non-children to ponder why their non-parents do 'not exist,' isn't it?
Interplanner
Well-known member
To GregJ, cont.
I thought you might be interested to know the summary of the Schaeffer book in which he takes up these questions. He was American but lived in Switzerland and thousands of students from all over the world visited him, because of his own unusual conversion from U'ism.
The book is HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT, Tyndale, 1970.
Section 1 is The Metaphysical Problem
2 is The Moral Problem (better known as the problem of evil)
3 is the Epistemological Problem
In each case, he shows that the 'problem' exists (as per Sartre) because of U'ism's own blinder. The same problem does not exist in the Christian world view as found in the Bible. His own conversion consists of his coming to the untutored realization that THAT was what the Bible was saying in each of those areas. Not that it was written with the 20th century person in mind directly, but that it has a way of 'speaking' to each problem.
Lewis said the same thing about science in "Religion and Science" in the illustration of the guy accumulating a coin a day in his study drawer. That steady 'accumulation' is how U'ism does science (Lewis called it Nature); nothing outside of mathematically-steady accumulation can be understood or conceived of. Yet odd things happen and a person has to ask someone from another profession how to explain them--a detective, a psychologist, a psychic--in the illustration. The article is in GOD IN THE DOCK; I have put it in a few threads here, possibly this one.
If the God of the Bible is not confined by the closed, mathematical processes of U'ism, but can re-direct and re-order things, then any number of things can and did happen in its history . There are enough of them so that people will have enough 'evidence' to believe on Him, but they don't keep happening all the time, just as apple trees don't ALWAYS have apples on them ready to pluck, yet there ARE apple trees, and there will be RIPE ones in season. Do we stop calling those trees apple trees, or stop believing on apples, just because RIGHT NOW there is nothing going on?
I thought you might be interested to know the summary of the Schaeffer book in which he takes up these questions. He was American but lived in Switzerland and thousands of students from all over the world visited him, because of his own unusual conversion from U'ism.
The book is HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT, Tyndale, 1970.
Section 1 is The Metaphysical Problem
2 is The Moral Problem (better known as the problem of evil)
3 is the Epistemological Problem
In each case, he shows that the 'problem' exists (as per Sartre) because of U'ism's own blinder. The same problem does not exist in the Christian world view as found in the Bible. His own conversion consists of his coming to the untutored realization that THAT was what the Bible was saying in each of those areas. Not that it was written with the 20th century person in mind directly, but that it has a way of 'speaking' to each problem.
Lewis said the same thing about science in "Religion and Science" in the illustration of the guy accumulating a coin a day in his study drawer. That steady 'accumulation' is how U'ism does science (Lewis called it Nature); nothing outside of mathematically-steady accumulation can be understood or conceived of. Yet odd things happen and a person has to ask someone from another profession how to explain them--a detective, a psychologist, a psychic--in the illustration. The article is in GOD IN THE DOCK; I have put it in a few threads here, possibly this one.
If the God of the Bible is not confined by the closed, mathematical processes of U'ism, but can re-direct and re-order things, then any number of things can and did happen in its history . There are enough of them so that people will have enough 'evidence' to believe on Him, but they don't keep happening all the time, just as apple trees don't ALWAYS have apples on them ready to pluck, yet there ARE apple trees, and there will be RIPE ones in season. Do we stop calling those trees apple trees, or stop believing on apples, just because RIGHT NOW there is nothing going on?
6days
New member
Actually the grammar is clear that you are wrong, and that there was nothing before day 1.*Interplanner said:
Something interesting in the Hebrew to help confirm that...
I'm going to use Young's Literal Translation to show this, since most translations don't properly reflect an important nuance.
Genesis 1
8 ....day second.
13 .... day third.
19 .... day fourth.
23 ....day fifth.
31 ... day the sixth.
In the Hebrew, these are called 'ordinal'numbers.
But... Why is Day 1 not an ordinal number...IE. Why doesn't the Hebrew call it 'the first day'? or, 'day first'?
Again Youngs Literal translation says this...
Genesis 1:5 "and God calleth to the light `Day,' and to the darkness He hath called `Night;' and there is an evening, and there is a morning -- day one."
"Day one"... not, 'first day'. This is significant because it is now a 'cardinal' number in the Hebrew.
There was no other days before this time. And, it was so far thee only day. There was only that one day.... Thus the cardinal number is apt.
Also of course significant in this verse is that God Himself defines what a days is...a period of darkness and light; one day. One rotation of the earth...one day.
*You always repeat that as if it means something. In all ancient literature...and in the Bible...and even in much modern literature, the author starts with an overview then fills in details later.*Interplanner said:
Ha... not quite. I'm simply defending what God says "In six days God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them". You are saying tbat isn't true, aren't you? You seem to think the heavens and earth pre-existed.*Intetplanner said:
Interplanner said:
And.....??? We could discuss that if you think that pertains to God's Word plainly says.*
*
People who reject Genesis as a critical foundation to the Gospel often believe in aliens.*Interplanner said:
To believe in aliens you seem to believe in an illogical God...who put life in the universe which He says was created after the earth. You *then seem to believe that these aliens suffer from first Adams sin but are eternally lost, since salvation is possible because of what Last Adam did for us... the descendants of first Adam.*
The belief in aliens makes sense from a Godless evolutionary worldview; in that if life came from non life on earth, it likely happened elsewhere. However that belief is inconsistent with scripture.*
No...*Intetplanner said:
For in six days, God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them.
When does God say He created principalities and powers?Interplanner said:
His Word tells us "For in six days God created the heavens and the earth and EVERYTHING in them". Interplanner.... you seem almost heretical in your thoughts of adding time, creatures in chains, and all types of other unbiblical ideas into God's Word. The created (now demonic?) creatures in the verses you refer to surely were not part of the creation God called very good.