Jorge S

I'm very sorry for the misunderstanding and I assure you there was no intention to accuse you of such a thing. I cannot possibly blame you for claims which are not originally yours. I had in mind the militant atheistic position that denies God of His Glorious Creation for the sake of an exclusively naturalistic explanation. 1. Yes. 2. Nowhere. The sun is not the only source of light. The Bible.

It will always be a matter of contention and it will only end at the End! We can only grasp where we are and where we're heading to when we know where we're coming from. That's the point of the Creation account and Genesis as a whole, e.g. to provide a story of beginnings: the universe, its inhabitants, the first family, how sin entered the world, how nations were formed, the promise of Redemption and the human genealogy of the Redeeming Seed. It's exciting, though.

I'm missing the point entirely. Perhaps I'll understand better if you provide an exegetical analysis for your position.

You're quoting a generalization. Go back to chapter 1 and see how days are described. It's totally different. I'm not afraid of knowledge and I'm proud of practical, useful science that helps us advance, understand, mitigate suffering and improve our quality of life. Speculation about origins with a naturalistic agenda to dishonour our Creator is not useful, practical science. Miracles do not have a scientific explanation yet they are nonetheless real. Creation out of nothing in the short span of six solar days was the first recorded miracle in the Bible. Dogmatism is bad for any cause whether religious or scientific, but there's nothing wrong with being dogmatic about revealed truth. So those who hold the essentially volatile and upgradable nature of human knowledge as a dogma need to learn their lesson as well.

I beg to differ. The Bible is meant to be understood for what it plainly says when the context is inescapably and literally narrative as opposed to figurative. For me to say that the days in Genesis do not mean 24 hours is to believe that the text is wrong because the billions of years proposed by retrograde scientific speculation are right. I disagree both biblically and scientifically.

Do not trivialize such important an issue. What is here at stakes is the inerrancy of God's Word and His Providential Hand in conserving and transmitting His Oracles as first recorded under His inspiration, which in the case of Genesis involved a face to face talk with Moses. If Genesis cannot be trusted as a faithful record of the historicity of the miraculous creation of 'heavens and earth and all of its inhabitants' then everything else loses credibility as well. A day on earth lasts 24 hours both now and at the time when Genesis was written. If your only verifiable source on origins were Genesis, as it was for its first hearers in Mt Sinai, you would not have a choice to understand it otherwise. It is undoubtedly explicit in terms of context, use of language and re-iteration (like at the solemn occasion of giving the Ten Commandments!) The only reason why you fail to accept it is because the prevailing scientific paradigm differs radically from it. I'm sorry but I don't feel any compulsion to compromise on that issue for I esteem divine revelation higher than human speculation. If that means living inside a box I'm more than happy to dwel in it!

My most frequent feeling in that regard is that I've done something wrong which has rendered me worthless to receive an answer. But then I think about what the Lord has done for me in the past and realize I don't have grounds to feel negative or ungrateful about the current annoyance. Certain things require to sink in or mature into something recognisable before we're even ready to pray for them. At other times I've received my answer but missed it somewhere somehow because I've been busy trying to force God into my own understanding of what was right for me rather than allowing Him to do His job. I don't know. It's complicated. But one thing I know is that we need to surrender our own expectations to His Will and trust Him with all our might. This verse has never failed to uphold me: Psa 71:1 In You, O Jehovah, I put my trust; let me never be put to shame. Or this one: Pro 3:5 Trust in Jehovah with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding. Psalm 37 is also very comforting.

And AMEN!

There is only One Gospel, One Bible and One Saviour. Paul was a Jew preaching the Gospel of Grace to a Gentile audience that had not been exposed to the Old Testament oracles. I don't see in his theology a different doctrine from what can be understood from the basic unity of Old Testament prophecy and its fulfilment in Jesus' life and teachings. Paul understood and taught the concept of universal Salvation through Jesus as God intended and announced since the time of the fall. The destruction of the Temple and its associated Law Covenant, as prophesied even by Jesus Himself, proved the divine inspiration of Paul's message.

Someone said that a Muslim would always expect a Christian to believe that Jesus IS THE ONLY WAY. And I add that the day Christians stop propagating that message is because the rapture has already occurred and some were left behind. Everything else is politics.

I agree that the credibility of the entire Bible balances on the inerrancy of Genesis 1, what it does not ride on is the need for a 24 hour day. The dogmatic attraction to the idea of a 24 hour day adds nothing and raises many questions that don't have a good answer. On the contrary, there is nothing dogmatic but rather a conviction that the Bible needs to be believed for what it plainly asserts regardless of our inability to answer whatever questions. "I don't know yet but this is what the text seems to imply" is a very good answer that avoids the troubles of scepticism and adding to/substracting from the Word of God. I contributed these ideas to a similar discussion: http://www.worthychristianforums.com/6000-...86#entry1079586 What do you think? We Christians live by the promise of spending eternity future with God. Moses will also be there. All questions will have an answer.

Hi, brethren! My apologies to Simian, Lorax and everyone else interested in this thread for my late reply. Work commitments and connection problems limited my chances of pursuing our contributions. I'll try my best to catch up. In a purely naturalistic world it does. Grupal cooperation amongst unicellular organisms does not make them a multicellular individual and tells nothing about evolution. It is a stumbling block and atheistic evolutionists are not forced to shoot their own foot by speaking about it. The theistic evolution position fares worse: as a Christian you overcome the difficulty through the external agency of a Creator while as a non-literalist you deny the Genesis account given by Him. The answers to your questions 1 through 6 require differentiating between quantitative and qualitative informational changes. How do they impact upon the specificity of species is unknown and in this regard I agree with your assertion that knowing the genome of species does not explain why they are what they uniquely are and nothing else. Evolution neither predicts nor explains the reasons for the existence of one universal biological code and the surprising disparity in the amount of genetic material (genes, chromosomes) among species at different levels of complexity does not follow the expected simple-to-complex pattern. Single nucleotide polymorphism and larger-scale mutations fail to account for the diversity of life. Most of them are either fatal or neutral, most of them are not inheritable, some of them are reversible/repairable, some of them may represent normal variants of gene expression, none of them will create a new 'kind'. By all accounts of the evidence progeny ressemble their parents and variations are kept within the same kinds. This is encoded in and directed by the genetic material contained in the cells. In other words, genotypes precede and determine phenotypes. The DNA (RNA in some lower species) instructs what is to be made, when and how, not only regarding cell reproduction but cell function in general. The reasons why you deny the informational character and nature of the genetic material are a puzzle to me.

Gotcha! See, brother? One thing leads to another. The Word provides a consistent and harmonious worldview that is at odds with the evolutionary conception. One cannot accept evolution without making major and unwarranted biblical concessions. Like it or dislike it we're dealing with an either/or type of situation. But rejoice and praise the Lord for Science. It has provided and will continue to provide further confirmation of His Truthful Word. Let the Word help you discern reality as God intended IT to be.

Lorax, Come back after you have some sleep (e.g. more than ranting you're losing focus). When you do, let us take direction B and address your arguments for: 1- Informational energy that bypasses entropic principles (although I read you didn't want to discuss chemical evolution.) 2- Evolution from single cell to universal biota.

Brilliant! Let us work it out. The historic Jesus by whom our sins are forgiven created the world, gave us Genesis through Moses and referred to Genesis as historic during His earthly Ministry. What else do we need? Nothing more than preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ from where it exactly begins: Genesis 1!

Agreed, partially. There are groups of living organisms bearing resemblance that are taken as different species thanks to the essentially arbitrary nature of definitions and systematics. God said He created different kinds which do not necessarily correlate with our definition of species. That aspect alone can greatly undermine the overrated issue of observed speciation. Can you provide any online reference in this regard?

How's that?

Be Blessed Beloved Love, Joe Yes, brother Joe. I can second that: AMEN!

Physical laws are universal, Lorax. There's no scientific answer as to how life (non-random, code-bound, complex information) could have spontaneously emerged against the odds of entropic principles. The biological realm of evolution is likewise untenable. Descent with modification is limited. There's NO way the diversity of life could have sparkled from a single cell. Atheists use evolution as a naturalistic substitute for God. How do they react when you preach them theistic evolution?

Why should an Eternal Being talk to finite creatures in equivocal terms? What do we know about 'God's time'? He dwels outside His Creation while we are bound to the finite dimensions of our physical world. When He speaks about time He is referring to human time, the one He created for us: And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to divide between the day and the night. And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. (Gen 1:14) The textual evidence for the 24h-duration of the creative days is fourfold: 1- They are individually defined as one cycle of darkness -'the evening', plus light -'the morning'. (Jews counted days from sunset to sunset.) 2- Each one is called a day. Words signifying durations longer than a day were available to Moses, or he could have qualified day with an adjective meaning longer periods of time, yet he used a word that his hearers could undoubtedly understand as an ordinary solar day. 3- The same expression "and the evening and the morning were the ... day" is used both before and after the creation of the sun in the fourth day, which means that we are to take the duration of all days as equal, e.g. 24 hours. 4- The days are chronologically added to conform the first week of history. A week is a fairly unaffected time counter because whatever the duration of a month or a year it is always the cyclical repetition of 7 days. There are instances of prophecy whereby a day means other than 24h but usually the interpretative key is also provided. This is not the case in Genesis. Wrong. They were childless at the fall. See how there's no mention of children when God clothed them before their eviction from Eden (Gen 3:21.) We don't know how old was Adam when Cain and Abel were born but the Bible says he was 130 years when he fathered Seth (Gen 5:3) Gen 5:4 And the days of Adam after he had fathered Seth were eight hundred years. And he fathered sons and daughters. I personally believe almost the same. I would just substitute 'Religion' for 'The Bible' in your statement.

Your disappointment notwithstanding, I did elaborate upon the question but it looks you hold a card up your sleeve. There's no naturalistic explanation for such a conundrum. KL von Bertalanffy -a Biologist concerned with the formulation of the General System Theory and its applicability to Biology, Cybernetics and Social sciences- was quoted saying that "the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory [is] one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in Biology". That's an oversimplification, a sugary coating to mask the bitterness of the pill we are expected to swallow. We both know that within the context of Creation-Evolution debates the latter refers to molecule-to-man evolution over incredibly long time spans. The concept includes Cosmology, Geology and Biology. Restricting the definition to Biology alone doesn't make the cut. The authors I quoted clearly established that point. Current mainstream Science is secular and attempts to explain the processes of our physical reality as caused by purely naturalistic mechanisms, which obviously leaves God out of the picture. That's how Darwin 'evolved' from non-ordained priest to agnostic. I do acknowledge the existence of Theistic Evolution as a religious position. I'm only pointing out its errors on both accounts: biblical (for disregarding the historicity of Genesis) and scientific (for taking at face value a questionable theory.) Have you tried the theistic element on atheistic circles? What responses do you get?

The phenomenum of life requires transformation of energy and as such it is affected by thermodynamics. You cannot 'disconnect' biological processes from their physical determinants. Evolutionists like to say that the earth is an open system and could somehow bypass this law but physicists acknowledge that it is also operational in open systems. I argued against that reasoning -with quotes from evolutionists!- on this post. Well, evolution is an atheistic theory. Throwing in the theistic element does not solve the problems, particularly because the Word of the One True God stands against it. Let us not forget that the Gospel of Jesus Christ starts in Genesis 1.

I hope you realize how little you're contributing to this discussion. Capitalizing the word 'no' so liberally as you have done makes your statements emphatic but not an ounce truer. Allow me to borrow another of your favourite litanies for an answer: Learn some science. Or, better still... LEARN SOME BIBLE!

??????? Popularity does not validate what still needs to be proven. Based on your previous sentence you don't seem to understand the difference.