Creationism, in its present form, is a fairly recent development in an area where Christians have held many views. It was developed in the late 19 and early 20 centuries and popularised in the 1960s by “The Genesis Flood”. Before then most UK Evangelicals held to some form of Theistic Evolution, though some preferred some form of the Gap theory.
Historically Augustine wrote that “What kind of days these were [in Genesis] it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say.” John Calvin believed that Moses used ordinary language, not scientific language, and that we should not look for science lessons in the Bible. Even William Jennings Bryan, of the 1930s Scopes Trial when asked if the six days of creation were twenty-four hour days declared "My impression is that they were periods."
The case is not so clearcut, and some writers seem overkeen to promote their side yet ignore Paul’s teaching on disputed matters in Rom 14.
Actually, most everyone who fathered the major branches of science were Creationists. They all believed in God and in a creation approximately 6,000 years ago. The Evolution and Big Bang theories are the new theories, having only been around for a couple of hundred years. The only difference between the theory people have had since the Old Testament and today is that we now have scientific backing so that we understand the specifics of it. When a theory came into being, whether through scientific fact or through historical account, has absolutely no bearing on its validity, and therefore should never be a consideration as to whether it is accurate or not. A theory should be considered strictly on its ability to fit the facts, and nothing more.
Just because someone in the past presented the Gap theory of the Day-Age theory doesn't mean they're correct. Jesus disproved the Gap theory when He said "Have you not read that in the beginning, God made them male and female?" If the beginning were billions of years before Adam and Eve were created, then Jesus is a liar. So, which is it? Is the Gap theory incorrect, or is Jesus a liar?
The Day-Age theory also must be incorrect or the Bible is lying, because we see the earth created along with plants well before the Sun is created. If each age is a long period of time, say thousands or millions of years, then how would plants grow? Plants die after 27 days without sunlight. So again, there's no way the Gap theory is correct. Either the Bible is lying about what was created on which day, or the Gap theory is incorrect.
Again, you are citing things that have absolutely no bearing on Theistic Evolution's credibility as opposed to Creationism.
Exactly. Which is why I pointed out the faults with Gap and Day-Age theory up above, as well as Theistic Evolution.
Regardless, though, this has no bearing on the conversation at hand. We're strictly discussing the interpretation of the facts and how well they fit into each theory. Sorry to keep bringing this up. Just trying to keep up from going down rabbit trails that don't shed any light on the discussion.
Actually, do some research on relativity. It is now being disproved by some new experiments that have been done, such as the speed of light slowing and even stopping. That goes to show you that even when we think we've proved something, it may not necessarily be proven.
Besides the fact that there are innumerable holes in Evolution theory, I don't buy Big Bang and Evolution theories because there is no purpose to them. God has a purpose in everything He does, and if we study how He does things in the Bible, we see that He always has a reason and a structure to them. Yet, there is no reason we see for God to have taken billions of years to arrive at humans--none whatsoever.
Also, things were dying all this time. In fact, death is part of survival of the fittest. And so through death, life arises, in a way. However, there's a big problem with that scripturally, because Genesis says there was no death before the fall. So, who is correct? The Bible or man's theories? One is an eye witness account, and the other is strictly a theory. I'm going to believe the eye witness account, personally, but that's just me. Seems far more logical to me.
Creationists use this exact argument, actually. Theistic Evolutionists like to use it against us, and we use it against them. It is clear that certain things are figurative and certain are literal. We know what is literal and what is figurative. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out contextually. In fact, you just proved that, because you pointed a few places we can clearly tell what is figurative and what is literal.
We know Genesis is literal for a few reasons. Never once does the context of Genesis state anything that makes it sound figurative or implies that it is figurative. Also, Jesus references it several times as historical fact, as do several writers of the Old and New Testaments. In the Law God wrote for the Israelites, would you say any of that is figurative? Of course not. It is God's Law, as literal as it gets. And in that law it says multiple times that God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. And there is no confusion on the word used for day, there. It actually defines what a day is. Even in Genesis, it says, "morning, then evening; the first day". There's no confusion here. A day is a day, and those are six days of creation. The Bible points back to it as historical fact, not figurative language.
So, the Bible is either lying or it is accurate. Which is it?
That's a smart position that most do not take. Most are convinced they're 100% correct. At any time, if I see proof completely disproving my position, I'll research it to see if I'm wrong.
Actually, you're misunderstanding a few things. "This is the account of..." is not an admonition of building from older written sources. In fact, it's well known that there were no written sources of the flood story. It was something father passed to son, down on the line, verbally in story. Moses gives us the first written account in the Bible. If that's what you meant by your statement, I apologize for the misunderstanding.
With Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 being contradictory, you're actually misunderstanding how the Hebrews wrote. It's common knowledge that unless a book is said to be ordered chronologically, the Hebrews did not necessarily write in chronological order. Take the Gospels, for instance: they were not written chronologically, except Luke, because he says he wrote his book chronologically (I'm pretty sure it's Luke, but it could be John). The rest take several events during the life of Jesus and simply state them randomly, not in order. The only thing all the books put in order is the birth and death of Jesus. The events in between are not at all in order. Look at the books of the Old Testament. They are not at all in order. Job is the oldest of the books of the Bible, the first written, and yet it comes right before Psalms rather than at the beginning. Some parts are ordered, sure, but some parts are not.
Genesis Chapter 2 is not written chronologically. It was common for the Hebrews to write about the main subject and bring the other things into it. The main subject in Chapter 2 is the creation of man. So, that's what God starts with. Genesis 2 starts out by saying that plants were created, and then a garden was planted and the man was put in it, but it's not giving them in chronological order. It's not meant to do so. That's not how they wrote. God does state plants were made first, but God then goes on to say he planted a garden specifically for the man. So, there were plants in existence, but God planted a separate garden specifically for Adam, possibly even after He created him, and placed him there. So, while it seems there is a chronological problem, there isn't. God never said He created all the plants that would ever bee created on day 3. And He never said he created all the animals that would ever be created on day 6. In Genesis 2, we have two possibilities. Either, Genesis 1's days were chronological, but the events of those days were not chronological, or in Genesis 2 we're seeing God create more things after the fact. Now, granted, God didn't create the plants of the garden--He planted them. But with the animals, He may or may not have created them before Adam. Or, God created more animals, two of each kind, specifically for bringing them in front of Adam to be named.
The common theory is that Genesis 2 is simply not meant to be chronological, just like a lot of Hebrew writings. It doesn't make them figurative in any way. It simply means they were written like several other Hebrew writings--out of order--in order to tell a story in a more understandable way.
You're using reverse logic here. You're saying that because there are so many stories, the Genesis story must come from them, but puts them all in their place. The more logical view is to say that Genesis was created first, and all of the Pagan stories came from Genesis, but altered it to fit their Pagan gods. And that is, in fact, the more likely scenario. So this point proves nothing.
This is where studying Creation theory would help you out a lot. You believe many of the misconceptions of the uneducated in Creation theory.
In the flood account, we're told that every single animal who has breath in his lungs is killed. Every one. Not just a some on the earth. Every single one. Not only that, we're told that there are new mountains after the flood. Why? Because the water came from underneath the crust according to the Bible. It broke through the crust, creating the trenches in the oceans and creating the tectonic plates which is what caused the mountains to spring up. You see, the water was underneath the crust prior to the flood. Not all of it, but most of it. And when it broke through, it displaced itself above the crust. The crust had to then settle down onto the mantle, but there was a problem. The crust had a larger circumference than the mantle, so it could not rest on it without breaking into pieces. Since water had burst out through the crust, the crust was already broken (tectonic plates), so the plates slid underneath one another, creating mountains. The water burst through creating the trenches in the oceans, and if you'll notice, nearly all mountain ranges are parallel to oceans. Look up a video or explanation of the dynamics of the flood and how it effected the terrain.
Mountains today would not be covered by all of the flood waters which are calculated to have been a mile high, but before the flood, when there were no mountains...the water could have covered the earth up to a mile. Later in the flood, the mountains formed, most likely, and popped out of the receding flood waters.
Also, there was one massive continent back then, and only one small ocean, most likely, since most of the water was under the crust. And there were far fewer variations within species. You see, Noah didn't get every type of dog. He didn't need to. He just needed two wolves. All dog breeds evolved from wolves originally. Noah didn't need to bring every dinosaur we've discovered onto the ark. He just needed to bring a pair of each kind on the ark. We know of about 60 different dinosaurs, so that's 120 dinosaurs. He likely brought them in juvenile form, so they were very small. One scientists estimated that the animals would have only filled one quarter of the ark's capacity. A large portion was probably used to grow food (there were holes for light in the upper deck of the ark, most likely, and we know of some windows as well).
You'd get a lot out of studying the creation theory and flood theory. You are just missing some key facts that would pull it all together for you.
Of course the majority of "expert opinion" can be ignored. When you get the whole of the earth being taught only one world view, of course they're going to do all of their research from that standpoint. They won't even consider other world views unless they study them in depth, and most of them consider Creationism impossible. There is a verse in the New Testament that says scoffers will come and be willingly ignorant, and say that there was no flood and no creation. That's exactly what's happening today.
I can teach you how carbon dating works. It doesn't take a scientists to understand it. It's very simple. Carbon 14 has a certain half life. Every 5000 years, there is half of it left, and after another 5000 years, there is only half of that left, and so on. Carbon 12 is also in all living objects, but it does not break down like carbon 14. The ratio of carbon 12 and carbon 14 is typically the same in living objects. However, after that living object dies, carbon 14 decays, which means it reduces, but carbon 12 doesn't. So, the ratio changes. Scientists take the difference in the ratio, and they can supposedly tell how old the object is. But the problem with this is as follows:
Here's a video that explains how carbon dating works:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=udkQwW6aLikAt 3:40 seconds, it talks about how carbon dating it's accurate. And yet, it then shows what causes it not to be accurate. One thing it says is that "certain environments cause it to be inaccurate". That is one of the keys of carbon dating's inaccuracy. The atmosphere prior to the flood had completely different amounts of carbon 12 and carbon 14 being created in the atmosphere, rendering today's attempts at measuring it completely inaccurate. In fact, I don't think carbon 14 was part of the atmosphere prior to the flood due to the firmament canopy. We see this in air samples trapped in prehistoric amber.
To add to the problems with carbon dating, in the past few years, scientists have discovered that the amount of carbon in an object is greatly affected by weathering and water. This corrupts the amount of carbon and we're left completely in the dark about the original amounts, which don't allow us to date the object properly.
And finally, half-lifes of molecules, such as carbon, are not consistent. They change due to weathering and other environmental factors. We've discovered this in just the last few years. Since all dating methods work the same was as carbon dating, but use different molecules off of which to pull dates, this makes all dating methods inaccurate. My wife is a PhD and a research scientist. She says this is what makes all evolution scientists' research studies immeasurable, and without something to measure, they cannot use the Scientific Method, because it requires something measurable. That's why they use a different method of "proving" things, which, in fact, is not meant to prove anything. It's only meant to help figure out if something is more plausible than something else (in other words, it's for theories, not for proving facts). This is why scientific theory changes so often and if often proven wrong.
So, that's why we can't date anything accurately. I've watched creation scientists do demonstrations with carbon dating. They'll take the gun that does the carbon dating and use all the proper calibrations and they'll carbon date something that has just died. I saw them do it to a cow once. One of the cow's legs was 2000 years old, and the other was 6,000 years old, and another was 25,000 years old. The cow had died earlier that day, or the day before...I forget which.
Before a few years ago, scientists had no clue why their carbon dating results would be inaccurate, and yet they constantly found them to be inaccurate. Originally, carbon dating was thought to be accurate up to a few hundred thousand years. But over time, scientists found that it's not useful to date things over about 50,000 years old, because the carbon 14 can't be detected after that. So, dinosaur bones give no carbon reading whatsoever. The assumption is that dinosaur bones are so old, they can't be carbon dated. That is what gave scientists the idea that dinosaur bones are "prehistoric", or very old. That's inaccurate, though, because most dinosaur bones, if not every one, come from the preflood world and were buried in the flood, and very quickly fossilized. Preflood world didn't have carbon 14 in them, and therefore give no reading. Just because scientists don't understand what they're doing doesn't make their theories right. lol
Actually, light is not a problem at all. There is one theory that says the stars were lit immediately when the Big Bang happened, meaning their light was present here immediately, and spread out across the universe. Therefore, there's no need to get light back here. Light was already present. It is only in the theory where stars formed on their own that we need light to come back to our galaxy from stars. But that theory is not only completely unfounded, but it has no scientific evidence to back it. We've never seen a star form. We've only seen them explode.
The Bible seems to support this theory that the stars were close then moved away. God says several times in the Old Testament that He stretched the heavens around the earth. It is likely that He hung the stars in space, fairly nearby, then stretched space that day to create the universe closer to what we see now. Just because man's theories contradict God's Biblical account does not make them anymore right than God's account. God doesn't lie, as far as I can tell, and the scriptures, as far as we can tell, are accurate and not figurative.
I may have given the same arguments you've given here if I had not studied creation and flood theory. But because I've had it laid out for me in detail and studied it heavily, I have a good understanding of how it works. And from an educated standpoint, I can honestly say that the facts backup creation theory much, much better than they do evolution theory.
What's interesting is that you know evolution theory doesn't make sense, and yet you side with it as opposed to creation theory strictly because of man's theories. So, the question here is, do you hold man's opinion over the Bible, or do you hold the Bible over man's opinions?
Yes, I understand that there's the argument of figurative scriptures, but a little research on the subject would've quickly disproved that for you just as I laid out above.
This isn't a personal attack, of course. It's just me asking you to ask yourself that question and see what the answer is. If there's one thing I've found, it's that when people do not take the time to study something properly, they often come to incorrect conclusions on that subject. Such is man's folly.
