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Author Topic:   YEC without the bible, possible?
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 20 of 133 (509869)
05-25-2009 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Minority Report
05-25-2009 10:17 AM


Re: RE - YEC without Bible?
If there were no religions and if it were not for the Bible saying so, is it possible that scientists might look more openly at the evidence, and have more freedom to theorise about the age of the earth? Would they hold just as strongly to the current estimated age, or be more tentative?
Thi si curiously paranoid. You seem to be fantasizing that scientists are in some sort of conspiracy to deny Biblical literalism.
The facts show the opposite. Remember that geology started in Christian countries, and the first geologists believed in a young earth and in Noah's flood. They reluctantly abandoned these ideas because the evidence was against their cherished YEC beliefs.
We might better ask: would geologists have considered a 6000 year-old earth at all if it was not for the Bible?
There are many methods to estimate the age of the earth, each one giving a different result, ranging from thousands to billions of years. If it were not for the Bible, would each method receive equal weighting, instead of most attention being paid to one method (radiometric)?
If it were not for the Bible, no-one would spew out unscientific YEC gibberish. As you seem to admit in your post, you wouldn't, either.
Be honest, if the Bible said that the Earth was four and a half billion years old, would you not take scientific confirmation of this fact as a confirmation of the divine authorship of the Bible, instead of talking rubbish about this subject?

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 38 of 133 (510300)
05-29-2009 5:50 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by dwise1
05-29-2009 2:51 PM


Re: Interesting
It wasn't the usual deconversion.
Actually, it was.
I did a survey of "deconversion stories" on the internet, and reading the Bible was the #1 reason given for apostasy. Talking to atheists or reading atheist writings was #2. (BTW, Bertrand Russell is still surprisingly influential. As, less surprisingly, is The Demon-Haunted World.) #3 was the Problem of Evil; #4 was the multiplicity of One True Religions. The motive you cite as "normal", of finding fraud and hypocrisy in the church came further down the list --- I can't find my statistics right now, so I can't say exactly where. Evolution, contrary to the usual claims of fundie whackjobs, was right at the bottom. If, as the nutters claim, it's a cunning plot to destroy religion, then those Evil Atheists would do much better by handing out Bibles.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by dwise1, posted 05-29-2009 2:51 PM dwise1 has replied

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 81 of 133 (510867)
06-04-2009 8:26 AM
Reply to: Message 80 by Minority Report
06-04-2009 5:46 AM


Still trying to catch up with reply's to your earlier posts. In the meantime, for those still crying for evidences for young earth(though not suitable to debate in this thread), published today was an article titled '101 evidences for a young age of earth' at Age of the earth - creation.com, for anyone interested.
Are you familiar with the term "Gish Gallop"?
Not only is this rubbish heaped on rubbish, but they have to start off with a disclaimer that no-one can establish what is really true.
Why do you suppose that they have to do that?
When someone begins their argument by saying that no-one can tell the truth, I brace myself for a thumping great lie. As Dr Johnson put it: "If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons."

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 85 of 133 (510888)
06-04-2009 11:31 AM
Reply to: Message 83 by Minority Report
06-04-2009 10:54 AM


The point I was trying to make, was that as christians, we should give precedence to God's word, over our interpretation of God from the natural world.
To which the answer would be: we should give precedence to God's actual creation over how men interpret the book that they say is God's word.
If there is a God at all, then God is, by definition, the author of the universe, and that is what he wrote.
That follows by definition of God, whereas your pastor's favorite interpretation of your favorite book may just be your pastor's favorite interpretation of your favorite book.
For example, the global flood, being an event started & perhapps maintained supernaturally, would leave behind vast quantities of sedimentary layers containing dead plants & animals. Now if we can only look for natural explanations, to explain the evidence left behind by this supernatural event, how could it ever be interpreted correctly?
Because it would leave behind evidence. Even if someone was so narrow-minded as to think that magical impossible floods that don't actually happen don't actually happen, that person would still be able to tell, from the evidence, that a global flood had occurred.
But it didn't.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 119 of 133 (512115)
06-14-2009 9:12 AM
Reply to: Message 114 by Minority Report
06-12-2009 12:13 PM


Re: YEC is implied in Bible.
Words do have an inherrant plain meaning.
Of course.
As has been shown above, the Bible clearly teaches geocentrism. How do modern creationists get around this? By using the same argument used by theistic evolutionists! Whatever you don't like in Scripture is mere poetry - or worse, the misunderstanding of
"primitive" peoples.
Perhaps no living creationist is more well known than Ken Ham of the ministry Answers In Genesis. I have heard his fine lectures on several occassions. One point that Mr. Ham emphasizes is the sufficiency of Scripture. He quotes, with disapproval, a soft evangelical theologian who admits that his theistic evolution requires "hermeneutical considerations suggested by science". As we have seen above, the greatest minds of all time - Luther, Calvin, Gillespie - each failed to find heliocentrism in the Bible. It took the external suggestions of evil men, and then the clearly geocentric passages were dismissed as "poetry".
[...]
Christian heliocentrists, like "christian" evolutionists, must bring their atheistic assumptions with them when they come to God's Word. A man stranded on an island with only a Bible could never dream up such things.
Woe unto the unbelievers!
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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