Why Creation Is Right and Evolution Is Wrong.

[one.opinion]

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

How do you know it is not possible?

Do you suppose God gathered all the aquatic animals as well as the terrestrial to stack them up in warehouse-style fashion so Adam could walk through and name them? And keep those aquatic animals alive through the process?

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

Were you there?

No, were you?

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

How many animals were there?

That depends on whether or not one accepts speciation, and I'm guessing that you don't. Therefore, the animals that Adam would have to name would include everything we see today as well as all of the extinct animals.

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

An all-powerful, all-knowing God could not possibly effect a situation that goes outside the limited scope of what you can conceive as possible?

God certainly could have done all that would be required for Adam to do what you suggest he did. He also could have used figurative language in a portion of the Bible used to convey humanity's dominion over the animals.

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

And since you say it was "figurative,"  I would remind you that you are making a textual argument that should be based on textual evidence.  So when you use the term "figurative,"  what is it figurative of???

Figurative of the special place God inserted humans - with dominion over creation.

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

The word simply means "side."  The side or rib area is where God took flesh and bone and made Eve.   Again, where are the textual indicators that tip us off that this means something non-literal?

If I say my wife has been by my side for 26 years, am I suggesting that we are conjoined? I think the concept of the special relationship between men and women is evident here. It is not important what part of Adam that Eve came from, but that they are part of one another, intended to supplement each other in a manner that allows the sum to be greater than the individual parts.

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

The fact that the Bible places the fault with Adam and not with Eve does not suggest a figurative meaning at all. Eve, was deceived, but Adam was not (I Tim. 2:14).

1  Timothy 2:14 (NIV) reads "And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner." It is abundantly clear that eve became a sinner, despite having been deceived.

 

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

But Adam and Eve are understood to be literal, historical people.

Agreed, the genealogy in Luke fully supports that.

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

The deception by the serpent is taken literally:  "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."  (2Co 11:3)

This is a good argument, but not necessarily air-tight. References can be made to non-literal events in order to convey meaning. If we describe an incredible effort of a person as "herculean", does that mean that Hercules is a literal figure?

 

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

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I believe Adam and Eve were special in a spiritual sense as the first couple that God chose to relate with.

No, the Bible says that they were the first people.   You run into serious theological problems if you say otherwise.

While it is true that Adam and Eve as the first "spiritual" people would raise questions regarding how this spiritual capability would spread to others, or how the sin nature was spread, this opens up questions, but I don't know what problems might arise. After all, we are talking about the spiritual realm, and there is no need for a physical explanation for it.

On 1/12/2018 at 5:00 AM, shiloh357 said:

No, it wasn't "their" choice;  it was Adam's choice.   You need to align with the Bible and stop trying to edit it fit your

My previous reference to the text of 1 Timothy 2:14 clearly indicates that Eve sinned. Being deceived does not leave someone blameless for their choices.

[one.opinion]

21 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

Anyone with any commonsense knows that if transitional fossils were real, the earth would be chock full of them down through strata after strata, and scientists would have no problem showing a complete line of evolution for every species. 

The earth is not "chock full" of fossils of any kind down through strata after strata. And there can't physically be more transitional fossils than total fossils. Fossils are hard to find. You are again making claims based on erroneous assumptions.

[Guest shiloh357]

1 minute ago, one.opinion said:

The earth is not "chock full" of fossils of any kind down through strata after strata. And there can't physically be more transitional fossils than total fossils. Fossils are hard to find. You are again making claims based on erroneous assumptions.

And if the earth were 4 billion years old, we would expect it be chock full.  That's the problem.

[one.opinion]

2 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

And if the earth were 4 billion years old, we would expect it be chock full.  That's the problem.

Who is "we" in this case? Does "we" mean geologists and paleontologists? Certainly not. Does "we" mean lay people that are at best guessing what should actually be observed? Sure looks like it.

[Guest shiloh357]

8 minutes ago, one.opinion said:

Do you suppose God gathered all the aquatic animals as well as the terrestrial to stack them up in warehouse-style fashion so Adam could walk through and name them? And keep those aquatic animals alive through the process?

Does it matter how it happened?  The Bible says it happened.  And there is nothing in the text that says it is figurative of something else.   You make textual arguments, but have no textual evidence for those claims.   If you cannot provide a textual/literary device from the text that tells us that this was not a historical event, then the default understanding of the text is that it is a literal, historical event.

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No, were you?

But you were the one who said it was impossible and given that you were not there, and given that you are not omniscient, you are not intellectually or theologically qualified to say that it was impossible.

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That depends on whether or not one accepts speciation, and I'm guessing that you don't. Therefore, the animals that Adam would have to name would include everything we see today as well as all of the extinct animals.

He named the animals that were there.  And we don't know how many there were.   There is no intelligent reason to assume that the same number of different species we have today are the same as what existed then.    God created them after their kind.   That is not the same as our modern term, "species" and the Bible doesn't use same scientifically precise language we have today.  It is not far-fetched to suggest that Adam simply named them after their kind, which would include all of the varieties that existed at that time, which logically would not be that vast.

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God certainly could have done all that would be required for Adam to do what you suggest he did. He also could have used figurative language in a portion of the Bible used to convey humanity's dominion over the animals.

Figurative of the special place God inserted humans - with dominion over creation.

But the problem is that when you run to "figurative"  you need to actually show from the text what the author intends something to be figurative of.  You are trying to arbitrarily assign "figurative" to anything you are not prepared to accept.   And that is simply not how literature works and that is not how figurative devices work.

Your constant attempt to make things figurative is just your intellectual crutch because you  can't really bring yourself to believe the Bible.  Science is ultimately where your faith resides and that is the standard you hold up against the Bible and against which you judge the Bible.

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If I say my wife has been by my side for 26 years, am I suggesting that we are conjoined? I think the concept of the special relationship between men and women is evident here. It is not important what part of Adam that Eve came from, but that they are part of one another, intended to supplement each other in a manner that allows the sum to be greater than the individual parts.

It is IS important if the Bible is the final authority all matters of Christian faith and practice.  It absolutely matters because if we start deciding which parts of the Bible are suddenly not important for us to believe then we will eventually get to a part of the Bible you DO care about.   And who gets to decide which parts of the Bible are not important?   Who gets to decide that for rest of us?

 

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1  Timothy 2:14 (NIV) reads "And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner." It is abundantly clear that eve became a sinner, despite having been deceived.

What the Bible actually says is:  "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (1Ti 2:14)  The reason I say that is that "sinner"  is not in the original Greek.  Eve had committed a transgression, but had not yet become a sinner until after the Fall.  Eve didn't fall before Adam.   If you say otherwise, then you are contradicting the Bible in other places as well.

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This is a good argument, but not necessarily air-tight. References can be made to non-literal events in order to convey meaning. If we describe an incredible effort of a person as "herculean", does that mean that Hercules is a literal figure?

The problem is that the Bible is making a doctrinal argument and the Bible never uses mythology to do that.  The Bible treats it as literal and never makes a non-literal reference to it.   It never claims that it didn't happen.    YOU need it to be non-literal, but you have no biblical evidence for that.   So all you are left with is, imposing it on the text yourself.   Sorry, but you're batting zero.

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While it is true that Adam and Eve as the first "spiritual" people

No, they are the first PEOPLE, period. 

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While it is true that Adam and Eve as the first "spiritual" people would raise questions regarding how this spiritual capability would spread to others, or how the sin nature was spread, this opens up questions, but I don't know what problems might arise. After all, we are talking about the spiritual realm, and there is no need for a physical explanation for it.

Well, the only people Jesus died for are the descendants of Adam.   It is only Adam's line that qualifies for salvation.  If the argument is that there were other people, but only Adam and Eve sinned, it opens up the question about what about those not of Adam's line?    It would mean that we have billions of people who are walking around descended from those other people.

Now we know that Noah was of Adam's line, but since most liberals reject a  global flood and believe that most of humanity survived that event, it would mean that most people are not capable of being saved, and that the Bible's claim that God "so loved the world"  isn't really true.   It means that Paul was wrong when he said that Jesus reconciled the world to himself on the cross.  It would mean that Peter was wrong when he said that it was God's will that all men come to repentance. It would would mean that Jesus lied when he said that if he was lifted up that he would draw all men unto himself.

Your position really casts a pretty bad shadow on the plan of redemption and just who the Bible says is qualified to be saved if most of the world is not really descended from Adam, given that only Adam's line can be saved.

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My previous reference to the text of 1 Timothy 2:14 clearly indicates that Eve sinned. Being deceived does not leave someone blameless for their choices.

No one said she was blameless.   I said she was not a sinner, had not fallen until Adam sinned.   Even if YOU don't accept what the Bible says, Adam is the one that the Bible blames solely for the Fall of man. Adam ate of the tree and mankind fell.  If you can't accept that, then you don't believe the Bible like you try to claim that you do.

[one.opinion]

4 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

Eve had committed a transgression, but had not yet become a sinner until after the Fall.

I'm not arguing this point, but genuinely curious. What is the difference between committing transgression and committing sin?

[Tristen]

16 hours ago, Tristen said:

Hi all, hope no one minds me jumping in mid-conversation.

When Darwin first lamented the lack of transitional fossils, he was referring to fossils with transitional structures. For example, until recently it was believed that reptilian scales evolved into feathers – so a transitional fossil would show an intermediate between scales and feathers. The connotation of transitional fossil has since changed to mean any fossil that can be putatively squeezed between two other creatures on a phylogenetic tree (presumably to make the term more evolution-friendly – since, according to Darwin's usage, there are still no transitional fossils). However, the latter connotation is largely meaningless; since every creature can be considered somewhat mosaic (i.e. every creature has some physical structures in common with other species) – especially given the concept of convergent evolution (i.e. when something doesn't neatly fit, we can just assume the problematic structures evolved separately, independently). The assumption that we are all somewhat mosaic forms the basis of Darwin's tree of life (i.e. Common Ancestry) – and so could not inform his definition of transitional fossil.

Archaeopteryx is, at best, a mosaic. It is readily recognised as a bird (with true feathers), but also shares some structures found in some reptiles. That makes it unique, but not legitimately transitional. This has long been understood in informed secular circles, but Archaeopteryx is too valuable and effective as a propaganda tool to allow it slip from the narrative.

For example, in the 1947 text “Human Destiny”, biophysicist (and ardent evolutionist), Lecomte Du Nouy, wrote;

“In spite of the fact that it is undeniably related to the two classes of reptiles and birds (a relation which the anatomy and physiology of actually living specimens demonstrates), we are not even authorized to consider the exceptional case of the Archaeopteryx as a true link. By link, we mean a necessary stage of transition between classes such as reptiles and birds, or between smaller groups. An animal displaying characters belonging to two different groups cannot be treated as a true link as long as the intermediary stages have not been found, and as long as the mechanisms of transition remain unknown.” (pg 71-72). (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.77857)

In 2011, Nature recognised the iconic significance of Archaeopteryx in the evolutionary mind-set when a group presumed to reclassify it as pre-avian.

“This finding is likely to be met with considerable controversy (if not outright horror), in part because of the historical and sociological significance that Archaeopteryx has held, but also because it may mean that much of what we thought we knew about the origin and early evolution of birds will need to be re-evaluated.” (https://www.nature.com/articles/475458a)

As early as 1977, fossils of undisputed true birds were dated to 60 million years earlier than Archaeopteryx (https://www.sciencenews.org/archive/bone-bonanza-early-bird-and-mastodon?mode=magazine&context=1152). Archaeopteryx is a unique, extinct bird (see http://science.sciencemag.org/content/259/5096/764). There is no objective reason to assume it represents anything more.

I decided to quote myself to add to my original point (which was seemingly 'overlooked').

In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote; “Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.”

Palaeontologist (and renowned defender of evolution theory), Stephen J Gould, said; “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” (Gould (1982). “Evolution Now: a century after Darwin”, p 141)

Neither Darwin nor Gould understood the transitional problem to be about an inability to squeeze species between other species on some assumed tree of life.

If we are not using a meaningful definition of the word “transitional”, then discussions over alleged transitional forms are a waste of everyone's time.

[Guest shiloh357]

4 hours ago, one.opinion said:

Who is "we" in this case? Does "we" mean geologists and paleontologists? Certainly not. Does "we" mean lay people that are at best guessing what should actually be observed? Sure looks like it.

It's just commonsense to any thinking person.   The problem is that some of us think for ourselves;  we are not accustomed to scientists or other telling us what to think.   Science is not infallible and so many of us are not beholden to scientists.

[one.opinion]

1 hour ago, Tristen said:

Palaeontologist (and renowned defender of evolution theory), Stephen J Gould, said; “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” (Gould (1982). “Evolution Now: a century after Darwin”, p 141)

I think its safe to say that more fossils, including those that are considered transitional, have been discovered since 1982. But another thing to consider is that the number of fossils is irrelevant. If a fossil is truly transitional, then it is evidence of evolution.

[Guest shiloh357]

4 hours ago, one.opinion said:

I'm not arguing this point, but genuinely curious. What is the difference between committing transgression and committing sin?

I didn't' compare those two things.   I said she committed the transgression (sin) but did not become a sinner until Adam disobeyed God.  At that point they both became sinners.