Bible Defense

[kevdog]

I believe God is gay, so it must be correct.

Hare Krishna!

 

[TonyC]

To say God created the appearance of age means He created a lie and in doing so was not patient.

How old was Adam when God created him?

 

[Super 80]

How old was Adam when God created him?

The Bible doesn't say.

It is an assumption on your part reinforced by centuries of depictions made by unscientific men that did not think to examine the theological point that God could create something with the appearance of age as being against the nature of God being patient and being the Truth.

I think a reasonable example that God can wait for a new born to become an adult before He enters into a personal relationship is shown in the figurative language God describes the nation of Israel to Ezekiel.

EZE 16:6 " `Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" 7 I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.

EZE 16:8 " `Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine.

God was not anxious that Israel would ever be destroyed in its infancy; He had commanded that nation to live. From what was rejected of the world, thrown out naked and helpless, God elevated as the nation of Israel to its height with King Solomon.

Likewise, God breathed life into Adam, literally meaning from the earth: adama. After which, Adam as a man was put in the garden. The sequence of events allows for an interpretation from a single whole fertilized egg to the adult, just as you and I were formed. Life for an individual is one long continuation of growth and does not begin as our law teaches at birth. Furthermore, the Genesis account does not necessitate one and then instantly the other.

God does not give us the 'how.' But then again, He doesn't answer to our demands or questions; or haven't you ever read Job?

Timebuilder is right that belief requires faith, for as much evidence as I see that demands a verdict for faith, if God were to provide absolute proof, faith would not be required of us, and it is.

 

[Iceman21]

I like to say that God so loved the world that He took 14 billion years to lead us to Christ. God is patient. God is truth. And to Him a thousand years is like a day. So to look at the majesty of His creation spread across a universe 12 billion years in diameter shows how much He loves you and me.

I agree with just about everything you have written on these forums concerning theology, however, the above is one area that you and I can disagree on.

I believe in the literal 7 day Creation account given in Genesis. What you have written above does give me a kick in the pants to do a bit more research in the area though. It is an area that is debated upon within the pale of orthodoxy, but belief one way or the other doesn't make a difference concerning salvation.

Thanks for yet another door of research you have opened for myself and the others.

 

[Super 80]

It is an area that is debated upon within the pale of orthodoxy, but belief one way or the other doesn't make a difference concerning salvation.

Like eschatology, this interpretation is not a lynch pin of faith. However, it is useful to be able to present the Gospel to those of a scientific bent that stumble over a dogmatic interpretation of the word yom that insists on a 24 hour period.

It is interesting that before the King James Version came out 400 years ago, the Church view to the age of the earth -in a tongue in cheek writing here- was that the world was seven days old, because the seventh day does not end in the Genesis account; so they considered it still to be Saturday.

All I am saying is that there is more than one valid interpretation to the Genesis account and caring Christians can hold separate views without jeopardizing the essential truth about Jesus.

 

[TonyC]

The Bible doesn't say.

It is an assumption on your part reinforced by centuries of depictions made by unscientific men that did not think to examine the theological point that God could create something with the appearance of age as being against the nature of God being patient and being the Truth.

(You're assuming what I'm assuming - - let's skip that and get to substance.) Are you suggesting that God creating things with apparent age is untruthful? Surely you can't accuse the Lord of trickery or deception when he told us exactly what He did!

The principle of "apparent age" applies to all of creation. Every thing that God created appeared to have an age. Though newly created, the plants appeared to be plants. Beasts appeared to be be beasts. Fowls of the air appeared to be... eggs? No - - fowls of the air.

I think a reasonable example that God can wait for a new born to become an adult before He enters into a personal relationship is shown in the figurative language God describes the nation of Israel to Ezekiel.

...

Likewise, God breathed life into Adam, literally meaning from the earth: adama. After which, Adam as a man was put in the garden. The sequence of events allows for an interpretation from a single whole fertilized egg to the adult, just as you and I were formed. Life for an individual is one long continuation of growth and does not begin as our law teaches at birth. Furthermore, the Genesis account does not necessitate one and then instantly the other.

And this single, whole, fertilized egg... did it have an apparent age? How do you suppose it gestated? And then how do you suppose it survived to adulthood? Or did God charge the egg, zygote, embryo, infant, or adolescent Adam to "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth?" (Gen 1:28)

God does not give us the 'how.' But then again, He doesn't answer to our demands or questions; or haven't you ever read Job?

Many times. Last week, in fact, in its entirety. I was struck by the relevance of the reading to our topic here, particularly in Chapter 38 where Jehovah tells Job of His powers of creation. HE laid the foundations of the earth. HE contained the seas, HE commanded the morning, HE caused it to rain, etc., etc., etc. God didn't play any tricks - - He told us exactly what He did.

If God made Adam a baby instead of a grown man, how would God have created a baby that did not appear to have gone through the complete 9-month gestation period like all other babies? The same would hold true for other things. If God were to create an atom, how would He make it appear as if it had not always been there? What does a "newly created" atom look like?

A day after God created Eve from the side of Adam (no room here for a egg theory), how old did she appear to be? Keep in mind, Genesis 1:28 requires that she was old enough to reproduce.

 

[Super 80]

(You're assuming what I'm assuming - - let's skip that and get to substance.) Are you suggesting that God creating things with apparent age is untruthful? Surely you can't accuse the Lord of trickery or deception when he told us exactly what He did!

No, I am not accusing God of trickery or deception. While God does say what He did, God does not say how He did it. At one point there is a poignant verse at Genesis 1:2 which describes God's actions as hovering. Gen 1:2; “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

The word for hovering, rachaph (or moved in KJV) is used only three times in the whole Bible. In Jeremiah 23:9 it is translated as tremble. In Deuteronomy 32:11, it is interpreted as hovering. rachaph means to be moved or affected. The word for Spirit here can also be translated as breath or wind. This passage could be interpreted as a showing God's involvement as expressed in Dt 32:11; "like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young." There is no need for this to take a short time, and by a similar word usage in the Law, can show a process of maturation that takes place over time.

Because God does not provide the level of detail our modern post-Renaissance scientifically trained minds leaves us with ambiguity that does not sit well with us. We in the West tend to want all the facts laid out in chronological order like some newspaper account. However, that is not what the Bible is about. That is how we take our cultural assumptions and apply it to another culture from antiquity though.

The Genesis account establishes all that is germane for a person to know. One, God brought forth everything in Creation. Second, He created us in His image with a soul. Third in the parallel account starting at Genesis 2:3, explains the relationship between God and man.

What is important in light of modern science is the sequence is right. And considering how long science has been wrong at how the universe came into being, that's even more amazing.

Now, while science agrees with the Genesis account we have to able to read it within the allowable parameters of the word usage. yom can mean more than one thing.

If you insist yom means just 24 hours, then you are then saying God did create the "appearance" of age. I am not saying that at all. I am saying that since there is more than one allowable interpretation and since God does not say how He did it, there is no need for Him to create the appearance of age when yom can easily encompass all the time we now know it took for the universe to come about.

Furthermore, God is the supreme physicist, chemist and biologist all rolled into one, and He designed all the laws that we use to determine age, carbon-14, Potassium-Argon and Fission-track dating methods. He has given us the tools to explore His creation and find it is very old.

Since God is eternal, the fact that universe is old should come to no surprise to us, or that God took this much time to create all the conditions for life to form. In fact it may have taken this long with the billions of stars going through their life cycles for the heavy elements we have to have formed.

To say that God can create the appearance of age, means then that He did not have to create the universe, just the images of light streaming outward. That to me is to create a falsehood, and there is no evidence God did that.

Likewise, there is no information on how God formed Eve from Adam's rib. There is a word play in the Hebrew between rib and bone, being the same letters but reversed. The figurative significance goes to it being from his side, to show how man and woman are to be aligned and close to his heart showing the bond of love between man and wife. How ever God formed Eve, what is important is that she is of the same substance as man. Indeed until about six weeks gestation, the fetus is indistinguishable between male and female. After that organ differentiation begins, with the same tissue becoming the female reproductive parts or male reproductive parts because of the hormones developed in the fetus.

Hebrew is not a scientific language like English. It uses word pictures to convey a story. The rib account falls along that perfectly and while it does not satisfy our thirst for knowledge, it does establish the relationship between man and woman.

God is eternal.
God is patient.
God is truth, being the origin and truth defined as fidelity to the original.

With these attributes, there is no need to have a hasty creation.

 

[TonyC]

The answer to your question, which is a good one, revolves around how you interpret the word day in the Bible from the Hebrew word yom. There are 74 different words in the English translation that are discerned from the Hebrew yom. yom is pretty much like our present day usage of day. yom can mean the hours of daylight; a 24 hour period; an intermittent length of time like present day; and an age, such as the day of the dinosaur. yom is also translated one time as eternity. Likewise, morning and evening have multiple meanings, one being beginning and ending.

One possible translation is a single day. It by no means is the only possible translation. An equally valid translation for yom is age or even epoch of time. Thus the first epoch of time can span 8 billion years. These days do not even have to be equal in length. Thus the sixth day could have started 50,000 years ago when we find the first modern man species, homo sapiens. The difference between the start of man, and Adam, could be hidden in plain sight within the Genesis account, in that God made man, and then created the soul. There can be quite an allowance of time between the two.

The word "day" appears in the King James version of the Bible some 1747 times, and all but a handful in the Old Testament come from the Hebrew yôwm (pronounced yome) from an unused root meaning "to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literally (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figuratively (a space of time defined by an associated term).

Yôwm means "daylight; day; time; moment; year." It first appears in Genesis 1:5 :"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." The second use is the one you want to debate.

It seems pretty simple, despite your claim of the difficulty of interpreting Hebrew, to draw a conclusion as to the intended meaning of yôwm here. Any living human being can observe an evening and a morning, and discern a day. Granted, divining the meaning of a single word out of context is difficult if not impossible. Yet there is a clear context here that makes the discernment quite plain.

We can know that these were literal 24 hour days based on God's establishment of the Sabbath. God based the Sabbath day's rest on His 6 days of creation. God did not work "6 long periods of time." Exodus 20:9-11 "six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, ...; For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

We must interpret an ancient foreign language correctly, not an easy task, especially with Hebrew. For instance this is Genesis 1:1 in Beowulf’s English: “On anginne gesceop God heofenan and eoroan.” This is our language from just a thousand years ago. Or read an original version of our Declaration of Independence and see how difficult it is to read modern post-Renaissance English. Hopefully, you'll get the idea how difficult it is to discern original intent from another language from a different culture 3500 years ago and not get locked into saying day means just 24 hours.

Again, to say that the interpretation in this case is difficult is simply disingenuous. The context makes the meaning quite clear. It is only a man's deire to fit falsehoods of so-called science into the framework of Genesis that introduces any need to cloud the meaning of the word yôwm.

For those Christians that hold onto a strict Ussher chronology, I ask you to consider this aspect of your theology. Certainly God could create everything in 144 hours, but does this align with what we know God says He is? The young Earth creationists place the age between five and ten thousand years, while science has a plethora of evidence between the various dating methods of an Earth much older. To reconcile the disparity the young Earth creationists maintain God created the world with the appearance of age. Unfortunately, this goes against a systematic theology of God as being truthful and patient. To say God created the appearance of age means He created a lie and in doing so was not patient.

The "plethora of evidence" that science supposedly has is simply not there. I've discussed the troubles with several of these methods in the previously deleted thread, so I won't go into depth on that issue now. I will, however, revisit radiometric dating again.

In order for the procedures of radiometric dating to work, one must assume: (A) uniformitarianism is true (i.e., rates at which processes are now being observed to occur remained constant through geological time; (B) the Earth's environment is a closed system (i.e., no outside forces could be allowed to alter processes, or the rates at which they occur); and (C) the initial conditions of the system's components are known with certainty (i.e., it is known that the radioactive elements being measured must be the result of decay over time, and could not have been present at the rock's formation). However, we know today that: (A) process rates do change; substantive uniformitarianism is false; (B) the system is not closed; conditions on the Earth may interfere with, or alter, the system; and (C) radioactive elements may appear during initial rock formation, and are not always the end result of radioactive decay over geological time. The three major assumptions, then, upon which evolutionary dating methods have been based are now known to be incorrect. Science has not "proved" the age of the Earth.

I like to say that God so loved the world that He took 14 billion years to lead us to Christ. God is patient. God is truth. And to Him a thousand years is like a day. So to look at the majesty of His creation spread across a universe 12 billion years in diameter shows how much He loves you and me.

Sounds cute, but unfortunately, that doesn't make it true.

 

[Super 80]

Tony,

Your own definition of yom gives multiple meanings that go well past a single day. Likewise, another hang up is the use of 'evening' and 'morning,' from the Hebrew words ereb and boqer. These words do carry the standard definition as translated to English, but they can also be used to signify a continuing process, and even in the singular, may be used with multiple days. They can also be used to signify an ending and a beginning. In this context, the text could legitimately be interpreted: “And there was an ending, and a beginning, the first period of time.”

This translation is allowable within normal parameters of the Hebrew language. So to say this has to be a literal 24 hour day is not supported in the original Hebrew language. This is not fitting falsehood into the Bible. Furthermore, none of your objections to radioactive dating methods apply to fission-track dating.

Furthermore, since the institutions God sets up are like the things in heaven, our literal week is in the image of God's week, and to Him a thousand years are but a day. Like I said before, the Church used to maintain that we were still in the seventh day because God's Word never says that it ends.

 

[TonyC]

Likewise, there is no information on how God formed Eve from Adam's rib. There is a word play in the Hebrew between rib and bone, being the same letters but reversed. The figurative significance goes to it being from his side, to show how man and woman are to be aligned and close to his heart showing the bond of love between man and wife. However, God did form Eve, what is important is that she is of the same substance as man.

I just wasted 20 minutes of work with a pair of keystrokes - - Ctrl+A (instead of SHIFT+A) followed by any other key.... I just saw the work I had done evaporate, and I'm not inclined at this moment to recreate it. grrrrrrr

I take issue with your assertion that God created "the conditions for life to form." Genesis shows that he created life - - all forms of life - - not just the conditions for life to form. I had a much more elaborate tretise on the subject, but the call of my Sun afternoon nap is getting louder.

On this other point, since I hadn't gotten to it, I'll go on. Genesis 2:21 gives a detailed account of the origin of Eve, and for the benefit of those who are not familiar and not inclined to look it up, I'll repeat it here:

"And the (oh, that's where I hit the CTRL+A instead of SHIFT+A) Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, (call it just a bone, I don't care) and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man."

God formed Adam from the earth. You can contend that he formed Adam as a whole fertilized egg, and he grew to adulthood before being addressed by God. You cannot claim the same about Eve, as we see here she was taken from Adam's very body, and presented immediately to Adam as a mature woman.

How old did she appear to be then?

What does a newly created atom look like? How does it appear that it always existed?

You challenge people to examine their theology - - I encourage you to examine your "science."

 

[Herman Bloom]

Scientific "dating" is actually a fairly insignificant piece of the evidence for evolution.

Literaly all of modern chemistry and biology (especially molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics) centers entirely upon this "theory". It is considered among scientists (i.e., people who spend their lives searching for truth) to be the central, unifying theory.

It might also be interesting to note that scientists are "religious" in roughly the same proportion as the population in general.

Evolution was and continues to be true, and I can think of no clearer proof of the existence of God than seems evident in this beautifully elegant process.

 

[Super 80]

Well, Tony, I'm sorry I gave you the impression that life evolved by using the phrase "the conditions for life to form." But in order to "form" life, God first created the Earth where conditions were just right for the narrow band of conditions we need to survive. Now there are life forms in very extreme environments on Earth which show God can create life in such places, but human life in His image is a little more fragile.

Now as far as science, decay rates are random in an individual atom, but overall, they are very steady, known, and measurable. Every type of radioactive decay method has a band of time which it can measure within the statistical bounds of measurement. There are gaps between Carbon-14 and Potassium-Argon, but that does not invalidate the respective useful measures. Carbon-14 goes back to about 50,000 years reliably, and Potassium-Argon measures from hundreds of thousands to millions. It is not as precise as Carbon-14, but one thing is for certain: the methodology has passed the scientific standards. To reject it, or say it could be easily faulted is not true.

If you insist on a 24 hour day, then things have to happen very fast, and God would have to form an adult Adam and Eve, as well as everything else for Adam to name. However, since there is considerable latitude with the definition of yom, I think a more reasonable approach means God can form Adam and Eve differently. How He did it, though, is not explained. So if you want to insist on a literal 24 hour day, go ahead. It does not change the need for Salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. I do not mean to destroy an element of your faith, only to show that there is a possible explanation that removes a stumbling block for Western-minded individuals that reject the Bible in the first three pages because it does not make rational sense as translated.

Again, I do not need to reject the natural processes and laws God has given us to discover His Creation. The evidence in His Creation and His Word are both in agreement: God took His time. This is not unlike the attribute of God to be patient. Since I see a possibility that everything between science, language and theology does line up in synchronicity, I go with it because it all "fits."

 

[Super 80]

God formed Adam from the earth. You can contend that he formed Adam as a whole fertilized egg, and he grew to adulthood before being addressed by God. You cannot claim the same about Eve, as we see here she was taken from Adam's very body, and presented immediately to Adam as a mature woman.

How old did she appear to be then?

The problem here is that you are saying she was presented immediately because of the construct of the grammar in Genesis 2:22. In the English, it carries an immediacy that is not found in the original Hebrew.

Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

But in the Hebrew, the words "then" and "and" both come from a single letter prefix called wa or waw. It can mean and, so, then, when, now, or, but, that. How it is interpreted has to do with the context it is put.

Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament:
These usages are not really different meanings of the conjunction. They derive from the fact that Hebrew is more paratactic than English. We subordinate some clauses and specify relationships. Hebrew often puts clauses and phrases side by side leaving the sense and juxtaposition to specify the precise relationship.

In this case all we really have is a sequence. God performs an operation upon Adam. He forms Eve. He presents Eve to Adam. The use of wa just sets the order, it does not mean God immediately presented Eve to Adam, because there is nothing in the use of the conjunction to ever suggest that meaning. You derive it solely by the grammatical construct of the English as it is presented to you in your Bible version.

 

[Super 80]

It is considered among scientists (i.e., people who spend their lives searching for truth) to be the central, unifying theory.

Evolution was and continues to be true, and I can think of no clearer proof of the existence of God than seems evident in this beautifully elegant process.

I too used to think this way. However, the fossil record does not agree with Darwin. That is why modern evolutionists had to radically change his theory which far from unifies the scientific community. Instead of having a gradual and slow change of one species into another, since the fossils record species coming into existence intact and remaining unchanged through their existence until their extinction in most cases, they threw out that tenet of evolution and replaced it with the notion of punctuated equilibrium.

It is true that the Bible does not say how God created other than His speaking. This gets to the nature of the Holy Spirit, being breath literally in the Hebrew. However, one thing that is evident in life is design. Some ascribe this to the forces of evolution, but the greater evidence is for a designer.

Still there is not one shred of evidence that one species evolved into another. So as a theory, evolution remains unsupported. What really angered me was to find some of the classic evolutionary examples were frauds. I think any reasonable scientist or reasonable man searching for the truth would be offended to learn they had been essentially lied to in the presentation of doctored drawings and other "evidence" for the icons of evolution. Haeckel's embryos are a prime example, and in most textbooks, they are still being taught as truth.

 

[wms]

The Bible does not need to be defended or rationalized. God said the things that did happen would, and they did. So if He says the things that will happen will, they will.
Jesus directed the apostles to brush the dust from their feet and move on when they were rejected, and they did it just as He did before them. Paul and Barnabas did the same. In these cases souls were led to Christ elsewhere. That may not have happened had time been wasted on those who would continue to reject.

 

[Super 80]

COL 4:2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

1PE 3:15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

God does not need my defense, but I need His strong arm to save me.

However, I stand ready to give an answer with gentleness and respect, seasoned with salt and grace for all that those weak in faith would grow stronger, and those doubting would come to believe.

That is my fervent hope.

 

[Herman Bloom]

I didn't say anything about Darwin. You're right, much of his work has now been "discredited" so to speak. But that's only because we have made legitimate progress in our understanding of the world. Just becuase science has altered the story doesn't mean they were lying about it before. Darwin mixed up some of the detail, but he's not famous for getting it "right", just for giving us a vocabulary. That is like saying that since men first thought the world was flat - or that the earth was the center of the universe- and then "changed their minds" (ie, came to understand the world more thouroughly), that we must reject the new theories and assume that science is just getting things wrong. Obviously not the case.

No evidence? I'm no scientists (just maintain an interest), but how does the fact that every singe living creature on this earth -- both plant and animal -- is built using the code.

There is so much evidence that, as I said before, scientists are really unable to examine the natural world without using evolution as the basic technical "lexicon". Why is that so scary?

 

[Super 80]

Herman,

It is isn't scary, in fact since the same code basis is used, it points also to a common design and design points to a designer.

This is one of the things that solves the problem of parallel development of the eye among vertebrate & invertebrate and skeleton & exo-skeleton simultaneously.

You see, there is more than one rational explanation for the creation of the world.

 

[TonyC]

No evidence? I'm no scientists (just maintain an interest), but how does the fact that every singe living creature on this earth -- both plant and animal -- is built using the code.

There is so much evidence that, as I said before, scientists are really unable to examine the natural world without using evolution as the basic technical "lexicon". Why is that so scary?

Using your line of reasoning, I suppose I could open a Timex watch from the back, lay it beside an opened Seiko, and place yet another timepiece - - oh, say a Breitling - - and you could tell me how the Timex evolved into the Seiko which in turn evolved into the Breitling.

Right???

Ney, I do believe I'd have a much easier time convincing someone that each of the watches had a builder, a master designer, a creator.

 

[Dash8]

Using your line of reasoning, I suppose I could open a Timex watch from the back, lay it beside an opened Seiko, and place yet another timepiece - - oh, say a Breitling - - and you could tell me how the Timex evolved into the Seiko which in turn evolved into the Breitling.

Right???

Ney, I do believe I'd have a much easier time convincing someone that each of the watches had a builder, a master designer, a creator.

oh for the love of....
that stupid watch argument????? haven't seen that in a long time....