YEC without the bible, possible?

Abrahamic religions aren't the only ones who've held young-Earth beliefs - or close enough.Most religions never attempted to actually date the beginning, so far as I can tell. Even Genesis only did so indirectly through its massive genealogies - without them, the Genesis account would be yet another creation myth with an undefined "in the beginning."Seriously, just look at the list on Wiki."In the beginning, (deity x) did and this was the Earth. Then (deity x) did (something else, or the same thing again) and this was the water." etc.

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Some have the Earth begin "formless and void." In others, the Earth is already there, and the deity only "creates" life.

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But the fact is, "creationist" beliefs do not solely stem from the Bible. Clearly, it is possible to conclude that the Earth is thousands of years old and was divinely Created without the Bible.

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But all creation myths rely on ignorance. They're based on making the most rudimentary observations about the world, and using imagination to fill in the gaps. The sun appears to move, so obviously the sun orbits the Earth, for example. The sun is bright and yellow, like polished gold...the sun must be the pure, perfectly polished gold wheel of Apollo's chariot!

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The common thread to Creationist beliefs of all flavors is ignorance, and of mistakenly raising up the speculations of ancient ancestors as absolutely true regardless of what modern technology allows us to discover. The Bible is simply the most commonly used source of ignorant mythology in the modern world; it doesn't have a patent on denial of reality.

I refer you to Message 105 and the OPEdited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

What I meant is that given the evidences we know of now, it seems that noone would argue for a YEC without the Bible (or some other religion) if we are to base our conclusions on this discussion. There may be some who would do argue for YEC without religion but none of them have come up in this thread so far. So I thought the thread mostly closed until such a person (or one who know of such a person) came.

Hi Minority, I understand that you are appealing to our common faith. BUT what I don't understand is this.Why does YOUR interpretation of Genesis have precedence over mine, and over observational evidence?A variety of interpretations of Genesis have existed throughout the Church, many have had valid arguments. But you seem convinced of the inerrancy, not of the Bible itself, but of your interpretation of it. That's what confuses me. You say scripture should interpret the evidence for us. But first you have to interpret the meaning of Scripture. So if 50 Christians interpret Genesis in 50 different ways, they will have 50 different interpretations of the evidence and no common ground to argue from. I agree with you that Scripture is the true Word of God, but that doesn't show me how to interpret evidence. Your interpretation? My interpretation? Or one of the many other theological interpretations of Genesis?In short, why are you convinced that a "young earth" interpretation of Genesis is sufficient reason to interpret evidence from a young earth perspective? Yup, most definitely. I don't advocate treating anything as metaphor unless there is sufficient reason to believe that's what was intended. Heck, I'm not a trained theologian, I don't claim to understand the ins and outs of scripture, and I'm careful not to read to much into the text. I would argue however, that reading 24-hours into the Genesis text to describe "days", before there was a sun to mark that timescale, is as great a stretch of the imagination (if not greater) than simply reading it as unspecified lengths of time. Anything is self-evident from a plain reading if that's what you believe it says. Even YEC. The perspective you have as you read the text plays a large role in determining what seems "self-evident". I for one do not believe it is self-evident that the Earth was created 4004bc on October 23rd, in seven days, and that a flood covered the entire "planet" at the time of Noah. (Exaggerating a little, but even with less specifics I don't see why it's self evident). Here I was just talking about perspective and reading things into the text, and you give me a perfect example! Tell me, where in the above passage does Jesus say the entire planet was covered with water? Perspective perspective... No. Because nature reveals that ordinary people under purely natural circumstances don't rise from the dead. However, we don't believe Jesus was an ordinary person, so your argument doesn't apply.It is true, however, that there is no physical evidence of it actually happening. I'm willing to take it on faith because there is no physical evidence AGAINST it. That's the difference between the Resurrection and creationism. The former has no observational evidence in support of it, but nonetheless would be possible for an omnipotent God. The latter not only does not have proper support from evidence, but has heaps upon heaps of evidence to the contrary.While I believe an omnipotent God is perfectly capable of creating an earth with appearance of age, my faith holds that God is not deceptive. What about cold hard fact? It seems to me that you rely heavily on your interpretation of Genesis being correct. If you interpreted the flood as being non-global, you would see no reason to interpret (skew) the evidence in favor of a world-wide flood.It strikes me that your belief in YEC is remarkably faith-based. But not faith in the Bible per se, but faith in that Genesis is indeed referring to a six, 24 hour day, creation.Why am I wrong?

Yes I have, but maybe I should clarify. For an omnipotent, eternal Deity, the creation of a planet directly, and the creation of a chain of events and the natural processes to acheive some end-goal would not be very different. I think if God created the universe in the Big Bang, designed with the processes needed to produce planets, He'd still consider the planets His creation. It would be absurd to give credit to the universe as a creator, if God created it in the first place. Therefore, I think "the earth bringing forth" refers to the processes that God ultimately created bringing forth His creation. Good point. If you assume that Adam was the first human. If he wasn't, Adam may simply have been the most ancient reference in Jewish genealogical records. A fruit off a metaphorical tree is a metaphorical fruit. Show me the verses you refer to. I don't think it's self-evident that Adam and Eve were to have an eternal physical life.

To return to the topic:Given the number of posts referencing the bible, is there any doubt that the YEC belief comes from that source?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Hi BobAliceEve, Is it possible that this is a metaphor that conveys a specific message to the reader. Let me ask you; Since God could create humans directly from dust, why bother with a rib? Perhaps the passage is metaphorical but conveys a message that Moses wanted to get across. You are assuming that the death they were warned about was physical. Can you speak for the views on creation of all the individuals you are naming? This reminds me of a quote by a former governor of Texas: An appeal to authority where the authority figure is ASSUMED to have agreed with her. While I respect your opinion BobAliceEve, I know of no support whatsoever for the above quote. Be careful to distinguish between "your thinking" and established scriptural and scientific support.This response has been entirely off-topic, and while I really want YECs to participate on this thread, PLEASE make your next post have some bearing on the OP. I will not respond to anymore posts unless I can see relevance to the topic. If you can connect your posts to the topic of this thread I will be happy to discuss them with you.

I agree. But I'm interested to see how Minority Report reconciles his earlier statements that evidence played an important role in coming to his conclusions, with his faith-based statements that all evidence must be interpreted according to a young-earth interpretation of Genesis.Edited by Meldinoor, : No reason given.Edited by Meldinoor, : No reason given.

Hello Meldinoor, Because it is consistent with the rest of scripture. Scripture itself is the test for any interpretation of any one particular verse. Scripture interprets scripture.I think you are missing a point here, that there are standard rules for interpretation, which can be applied to any text including the Bible. Yes many people do interpret Genesis differently, but most alternative interpretations come from not following some basic rules of interpretation. For example, you believe 'day' in Genesis to mean something other than the normal meaning of day. One rule is that you should only do so because either the context within the text suggests this, or the normal meaning does not make any sense with the rest of the sentence/paragraph/story. We are only interested here in the Author's intended meaning at this point, irrespective of whether it is scientifically possible or true. Here you question how a day can exist before the sun, as grounds to doubt the author's use of 'day' to mean an ordinary 24 hour day. I have to assume you mean; how can the 'daytime' portion of a 24 hour day exist without a sun, and how can the text make sense with the use of evening & morning without there actually being an evening & morning.The earth can still rotate on it's axis in 24 hours without the sun existing, and God created light(though unspecified) on day one. So a 24 hour day is still possible without our sun. However this does not address the author's intent. The author not only uses the terms 'evening & morning' on days one, two & three, before the sun was created, but also on days four, five & six, after the sun was created. The author uses the same terminology for all six days. This suggests the author wanted us to beleive they were all the same, regardless of when the sun was created. Also, when you cross check this with other verse's such as Exodus 20:11 'For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth...', this further confirms the 'day' in Genesis is intended to mean a normal day. Also, our current 7 day cycle with a sabbath day of rest, is directly linked (by a number of verses), to God creating in Six days & resting on the seventh. It does not make sense for us to follow God's example of Six days work, rest on seventh, unless God had actually worked for Six normal days & rested on the seventh. Also, each day is being qalified by a number(ie 1st day, second day etc), which if not an actual day, is hard to reconcile with an indefined long period of time. In light of all this, I cannot see how the Author's use of 'day' in Genesis, was intended to mean anything other that a normal day. Because if the Bible implies a young earth, and God is the ultimate author of the Bible, and God cannot lie, then it follows that the world must be young, regardless of how old it looks. Think about the verse in JOB 38:4 where God asks rhetorically 'Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?' God is basically saying, who are you to question me, you know nothing, you were not there, so how can you doubt my words? No. Words do have an inherrant plain meaning. Communication would be impossible if there were no agreed upon meanings of words, and grammatical rules regarding their use. Stop means stop. Go means go. Yes they can have an alternative meanings, but only if accompanied with context.

While intersting, it's not really on topic Anyway, do you agree we need the Bible in order to arrive at a YEC conclusion given the evidences? So far (I may have missed it) in this thread, it seems the Bible is need for a YEC.

Hello Son, We are getting a little off topic I agree. I assumed people could see from all the posts, that this question does not have a strictly yes or no answer. There is more too it. It is also based on a hypothetical situation, which also complicates things.So I will try & summarise in order to clarify my answer. I do agree that the Bible is the main reason for YEC, but I also believe it has supporting evidence. I also believe that some of this evidence may not be 'seen' for reasons such as our prior knowledge effecting how we interpret evidence(re-example of staircase drawing). I also believe that because scientists can only ever look for a natural explanation, evidence left from past supernatural events will not be interpreted correctly. I also have yet to argue how the beliefs of scientist effect how they interpret evidence.The OP was based on the idea that YEC is purely a Bible based belief, and if we remove the Bible, would evidence alone support it. But Meldinoor is seemingly arguing that the Bible does not necessarily imply a young earth to begin with. So if YEC is not an obvious deduction from the Bible or evidence, where does it come from? I am trying to first demonstrate, that YEC IS clearly implied in the Bible, and that the Bible is the main source for YEC, before examining whether YEC can be determined from evidence alone. Also, as shown above, I wanted to demonstrate that the way we interpret evidence has some inherrant problems. I felt that this groundwork needed to be laid first before introducing evidence for YEC.Edited by Minority Report, : No reason given.

The "evidence" for YEC has been examined by science and has been found to be nonexistent.Only those with an a priori belief in a particular interpretation of the bible support YEC. Without that a priori belief, nobody comes up with the young earth idea based on scientific evidence.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

But immovable doesn't mean immovable, right? It means "spinning once a day, going around the Sun at 66,000 mph, and travelling with the Sun at 12 miles per second towards Lyra."Right.It's far past time, MR, for you to show some of that non-Biblical evidence for a young Earth.Edited by Coragyps, : typo

Of course. Woe unto the unbelievers!Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Can a discussion be spun off from here so as to not disturb this one? The question main question is: I am not, for this discussion, concerned about scientific support but I wonder what the prevailing thinking (i.e, established scriptural support) here is on the following:
- did Adam and Eve evolve or were they created
- when God took them into the garden were they a basic family
- if created, were they subject to physical death
- was the tree of life not mentioned as a concern along with the tree of knowledge of good and evil because it was not a concern because they were already immortal
- is the tree of life the antidote to either the physical or spiritual death
- if they were a basic family and not subject to death would they live forever as a family
- is the Messiah's mission to restore to it's original state what God created or to change things
- when Isaiah says that the lion will eat hay like the ox will that be a restoration of what was before the fall or will that be a change
- is this knowledge valuable to a discussion regarding how the age of the earth is thought ofA few more answers may pop up but this would be my starting point.Thank you,
BobAliceEve