The Barbarian

That's another of your additions to scripture, not God's word. And that's not in God's word, either. Why are you not satisfied with His word as it is?

If God prolonged the life of some people, it does not deny the fact that God set the lifetime of humans as seventy years. Your disbelief in His word changes nothing. Believe it or not.

That would be impossible. You couldn't get more C-14 than 100% of new plant growth. Someone was pulling your leg on that one. There are ways to mess up analyses; ancient campfires are contaminated with groundwater, you could get false older results. Organisms that get carbon from geologic sources, like mollusks or their predators, can also give incorrect dates. No one who knows anything about carbon dating would fail to know that. However, you can't use carbon dating for paleontology, since its half-life is so short. Anyone familiar with geochronology would know that,too.

The Bible says "Three score and ten." Which is a little below what we have today. Even if God lengthened the lives of some people, He kept the average live span down to less than we have. Why not just let it be God's way, and stop trying to "fix" things that you don't like?

Any miracle not in scripture is unscriptural. All those miracles you claim whenever your false beliefs are refuted by evidence are unscriptural miracles. Like that. If such inventions are permitted, then all stories are equally plausible.

f you get to call in unscriptural miracles to fix the problems with your new doctrines, than any story become equally plausible. Try to work with what you actually have. But what you imagine requires an unscriptural miracle. Stick with what God says and stop making things up for Him.

Since you offered no evidence whatever, that's what it is. Comes down to evidence. And so far, all of it says that the same laws that operate now were operating then. No point in denying the fact. Would you like to learn some ways that we know? Your godless invention of "well it was different then", not withstanding. Why not set your pride aside, and just accept it his way?

Which brings up the question as to why you feel compelled to make up new things about it.

If you get to call in unscriptural miracles to fix the problems with your new doctrines, than any story become equally plausible. Try to work with what you actually have.

I get God's word from his Bible, not YouTube. Some of that stuff, by professed Christians, couldn't even be linked here. Most of us attend church in person, not on You Tube. Try it. You might get something out of it. Like a literal or non-literal creation week. You're wising up.

I'm just showing you that even Christians over 1500 years ago, knew that Genesis was not a literal history. Augustine was one of those.

Evolution is observed in all sorts of living populations. You've forgotten what "evolution" and "adaptation" mean - again. But yes, evolution of new species have been observed. Would you like me to tell you what those things mean, yet again? This is why you can't be honest about these things. There are honest creationists who admit the truth. Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT be said that traditional creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds. YE Creationist Kurt Wise Toward a Creationist Understanding of Transitional Forms Be honest. God would approve. We can test your denial by looking at the DNA of organisms of known descent. It always works. Evolution is creation. But as you learned, we can observe it happening in all populations. That misunderstanding is why you keep embarrassing yourself here. Faith is for God. Science requires evidence. Barbarian asks: "Show us your math." You're assuming that there could only be one result. But as biology shows, there are millions of them. Sarfati's first goof is to assume chemistry is random. Many configurations are not allowed by the way atoms are confirgured. Here's a way to check Sarfati's second goof: Take a deck of cards and shuffle it well. Then deal out the cards one at a time, documenting the order. The likelihood of that order is one divided by 52! or about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000012 Do it again; you'll get an equally unlikely result. Even worse, try to calculate the likelihood of you, given the genes of your great-great-great grandparents. Lots more zeros. So now Safarti has "proven" that you and poker games are so unlikely as to be impossible. Sarfati's attempt is so easily disproved that I'm surprised anyone still tries to use it. Genetics shows you are wrong. For me, genetics needs evidence. I put my faith in God. You should, too. He might not think so highly of those who spend their time trying to lead others away from Him.

It's directly observed in all sorts of living populations. Did you forget what biological evolution is, again? God says otherwise: Gen. 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And science, studying abiogenesis, has found that this is very likely correct. Why not just accept it God's way? Show us your math. I'm thinking you just tossed that out, without ever doing any math whatever. But maybe I'm wrong. Let's see what you have. Or simple bacterial DNA without telomeres. Or even simpler viral RNA. BTW, all the components of DNA are known to form in the absence of life. Would you like to learn about that? Sorry, genetics shows you are wrong. It turns out that DNA shows the same tree of life first discovered by Linnaeus, hundreds of years ago. And we know this works, because we can test it on organisms of known descent.

Anyway, the book where he talks about that is Book V of his work, On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis (Latin: De Genesi Ad Litteram), and since that isn’t available for free online (not yet anyway) I thought I’d share a few quotes that illustrate the point. If you’re looking for quotes from St. Augustine about evolution, these are them. Specifically, we’re talking about Book V Chapter 7 Paragraph 20, where he lays out what his topic is: “the production of things in the course of time following the creation of the world.” And the first point he makes is this: “The [Book of Genesis] appropriately begins with [water,] from which all kinds of animals, plants, and trees are born [and] develop in time...each according to its nature.” This is interesting because what he’s going to try to show is that every type of animal, plant, and tree was generated from water and earth and gradually developed into their present forms. In the same paragraph he also speaks of “primordial seeds, whence all flesh and all vegetation are brought forth.” The reference to “seeds” is an analogy that he’ll get into a bit later: he compares the origin of species to the bringing forth of trees, which start out as a seed and then grow out of the earth into their mature form. Moving on, a couple of paragraphs later he gets to the heart of it: “The things [that God] had potentially created…[came] forth in the course of time on different days according to their different kinds…[and] the rest of the earth [was] filled with its various kinds of creatures, [which] produc[ed] their appropriate forms in due time.” (Chapter 7 Paragraph 22) That is evolutionary thinking. God didn’t create all species of animals all at once, according to St. Augustine; He created them in a potential kind of way, so that they would develop later, “producing their appropriate forms in due time.” But he has more to say about that: “It is obvious that in accordance with those kinds of creatures which He first made, God makes many new things which He did not make then.” (New species from an old genus.) “It is thus that God unfolds the generations which He laid up in creation when first he founded it.” (Chapter 20 Paragraph 41) After that he explains this by means of the tree analogy I mentioned earlier. “Th[e] tree surely did not spring forth suddenly in [a mature] size and form, but rather went through a process of growth with which we are familiar. …[It] took its shape as it [gradually] developed with all its parts. … One [form of tree] comes from the other [form of tree], therefore, in succession, but both come from earth and not earth from them. Earth, then, is prior and is their source. The same is true of animals.” (Chapter 23 Paragraph 44) That’s an awesome set of quotes right there: because he says the same thing is true of animals, it follows that he thinks animals “did not spring forth suddenly in a mature size and form” but gradually “went through a process of growth” through which they “took their shape” and “developed all their parts.” That’s not just true of individual animals growing from an immature state to a mature state; he’s talking about animal kinds -- the Latin word is genus. Animal kinds (canines, felines, etc.) gradually came to look like what they do today. St. Augustine continues with the seed analogy in Chapter 23 Paragraph 45: “In the [tree], then, there [is] invisibly present [in its seed] all that [will] develop into the tree. And in this same way we must picture the world [when it was created]... This includes not only heaven with the sun, moon, and stars...but it includes also the beings which water and earth produced in potency and in their causes before they came forth in the course of time.” And finally: “The works which God produces even now as the ages unfold have their beginning in [the original creation].” (Chapter 23 Paragraph 46) https://cainaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/AugustineonEvolution.pdf Maybe, instead of reading bits and pieces that people cut for you, it would be worth reading the entire article. You might learn something important. Worth a try?

It was probably a bad idea for you to post parts of his writing that supports my argument. I get that. You probably didn't read it very carefully. He went with the evidence he had at the time. As you know, Augustine said that one should always be willing to change one's opinions, if new facts show a need to do so. He'd be OE today. And Augustine was willing to learn from God's creation: "Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe our books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren, ... to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call on Holy Scripture, .. although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. " St. Augustine, Confessions He's talking to you. Listen to him.