Off Topic Posts aka Rabbit Trail Thread - Mostly YEC Geology

I agree.But Genesis is plainly wrong about the age of the earth. If God's word must be accurate about science, then Genesis clearly is not the word of God.

How do you conclude that the Bible is the word of God? Doesn't it have to conform to reality in some way to be considered reliable?Reality is that the geological record could not have accumulated in 6000 years. The Bible is wrong about that, period. You can't just say that the sky "must be" green because the Bible sez so. Looking out the window proves it isn't so. Reality is where you have to start.

In the context in which it is used in Genesis 1, yes, it always means 24 hours. Hebrew scholars seem to agree on that. No. In Genesis 1 it refers to the whole world of ancient Hebrew cosmology, a flat disk with a bowl-shaped firmament over it. The sun was a lamp hanging from the "ceiling" of the firmament.I don't think there's any reason to think "the whole world" was meant to refer to somebody's back yard.

I don't try to read the minds of the people who wrote, compiled and redacted the Genesis story. What it says quite plainly is that the world was created in 6 literal 24-hour days. I don't see any reason to think the authors believed otherwise. (Personally, I've never understood why an omnipotent God would take that long.) Certainly. I've seen a few local floods in my own lifetime and they all reach "as far as the eye can see." However, that would entirely negate the substance of the story. "I'm going to destroy sinful mankind," would be a pretty lame boast if it happened every year.

As far as anybody knows, it looks like it was modified by a series of people as it was handed down from generation to generation. It's unlikely that a single original author could be traced. Neither do you. The difference between your opinion and mine is that mine is based on scholarly research and I don't even particularly care whether it's true or not. It just seems like it probably is. That seems like a possible interpretation. But you just said, "We know as a fact that there was an evolution of homonids all the way from australopithicus to homosapiens," so you seem to agree that Genesis is wrong about homo sapiens being a special creation. I suppose that's barely plausible. Is there a shred of evidence to back up any of it?But why go through all of those gymnactics when the much more likely conclusion is that the Bible is just factually wrong? Why is it so important to reduce the Bible to a mere news item?Edited by ringo, : Spellelling

Our own minds are all we've got. You use your own mind too to conclude that the Bible is the word of God just like anybody else uses theirs. Your conclusion is just as fallible as anybody else's. Unfortunately, you stop at "knowing" that science is wrong. You don't have either the faith or the intellectual honesty to test what you think you "know".If petroleum can be made in a short period of time, make some. Get rich. (Or even just do the calculations: How much vegetable matter would it take to make all of the world's petroleum reserves? How many generations of plants would it take? How much carbon dioxide would they have to take out of the air?)

It isn't about certainty. It's about testability.Science can test the age of the earth and it has and that age is NOT what Genesis claims. Creationists have never been able to test their own claims and come up with a reliable alternative age. That's like saying you oppose the left front wheel of your car but you accept all of the others. You can't do that. They only work all together. In other words, what you call "real science" isn't science at all but a figment of your imagination. What you oppose is the science that scientists do. Clearly. Any further testing would necessarily lead you to a different conclusion. I'm not asking you to imagine it. I'm asking you to calculate how much it would take. It isn't a question of how long it would take to make some oil. It's a question of how long it would take to make all of it.

You have that almost right. There is evidence of floods almost everywhere because there have been floods almost everywhere. The problem for your interpretation is that there's no evidence linking all of those floods into one big flood. You're seeing leaves in every yard and assuming that they all came from one big tree.

But thinking people do. They don't assume one big flood or one big tree unless there is some reason to link them. It takes a downright perverse stubbornness to insist that the Bible is right when plain evidence shows that it's wrong.