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Discussion Forum : Scriptures and Doctrine : Genesis 1 and 2

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dolfan
Member



Joined: 2011/8/23
Posts: 1727
Tennessee, but my home's in Alabama

 Re:

Todd, I get your point and it is well taken. There is a presupposition in it, though, that goes to my point about "surpassing our simpleton abilities to know". It presupposes that our measurement of "a million years old" is the only measurement that matters.

As an aside: If we weren't talking about the character of God in asking whether He may have created a universe that may appear older than it actually is, it wouldn't matter about any other measurement than our own, right? I mean, we live on Earth, we measure with tools that we have, based on verifiable things that we can depend on as standards of measurement. (For example, a second of time is so many gazillion oscillations of a cesium atom, that atom acts dependably the same here, and the measurement is observable, verifiable, repeatable, and it so happens to be smack dab on what we already knew as a second. We can depend on that, and we rightfully do.) Since we measure with pretty good tools, it is okay that we use those measurements to say, "Here's how old a fossil is, here's how old a star is, etc." There's nothing wrong with us making those measurements and saying, "Well, here's what the ruler, scale, clock, etc. shows." It is responsible.

But, when we get into the question of **why** that measurement is right or not and **why** it matters when we inquire about the nature, character (or existence, if someone were an atheist) and being of God we have to bring another question into it --- do we have a grasp on what are the only measurements that matter? Or, as I said in the other post, is there another measurement to know other than what we believe we know? Because, we run the risk of having our limited tools in our little hands and saying, "Okay, if God's activity is not measurable in a way that makes sense by these rulers, scales, clocks, etc. that we understand, then He acts with some motive or intent that we might impugn." That is why I even make the point about "things that surpass our simpleton abilities to know".

So, I look around and say, "Do we know what we believe we know?" And, sure enough, there is a well studied but not well understood something-out-there that mainly theoretical physics is addressing. That is the time dilation stuff I mentioned yesterday. I don't know if it answers anything or not. But, it might very well be consistent with God making a universe that --- by our measurements made from our frame of reference --- is gazillions of years old but that --- from His perspective and what we know about the speed of light and what the Scriptures reveal about Who He Is --- the universe is not old at all. And, this is not even directly an issue about the eternity of God and His being outside of time; this is about two different frames of reference where time is actually different because time is not uniform and it can be drastically different in different frames of reference.

It may be perfectly consistent and certainly not antibiblical at all to say "the universe is 5 billion years old" and to say "the universe is so new and young that you could measure it in the thousands of years as opposed to billions". I know that sounds crazy --- and maybe it is --- but from what I read, that's my understanding of it. Things get really crazy to our perception when we talk about these time-related things and theories. It is easy to arrive at points of knowledge that seem to be contradictory but are not. I do think it is highly possible that this is one of those things, and that in no way is God's nature and character called into question when we say the Earth and the universe itself is "young", and that in no way makes anyone a liberal evolutionist anti-Christ when he says the universe itself is "old".




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Tim

 2016/5/6 12:30Profile
TMK
Member



Joined: 2012/2/8
Posts: 6650
NC, USA

 Re:

I understand the gist of your time dilation point. A guy named Russell Humphries says something similar but I think his theory has been discredited.

But we also have to consider the physicality of things and processes.

For example, we know there are real things like white dwarfs and pulsars and neutron stars and black holes, all of which are various possible stages of a dying star. We know by observation that these processes take far far longer than 6000 years. We know that in several billion years our own sun will not be the same. It will start changing into one of the things noted above, or it might just go nova.

So we must ask whether those black holes and neutron stars etc that we see out there were once regular stars. If so we must acknowledge that the original stars were around more than 6000 years ago because stars take longer than that to become those things.

If we conclude they were never stars to begin with then we are saying that God created burnt out stars.

That would be analogous to him creating petrified dead trees when he created the live ones, or a crater filled moon that was never struck by a meteor. Why would He do such a thing?

EDIT: If you learned that God created caves with cave paintings already there- would that bother you?


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Todd

 2016/5/6 13:12Profile
dolfan
Member



Joined: 2011/8/23
Posts: 1727
Tennessee, but my home's in Alabama

 Re:

If I learned that God created caves with paintings already in them, it would not bother me in the least. There are many many things that I don't know the reason why God did them. In fact, what we know God did design is far more sophisticated than any cave drawing. I suppose in some way someone could say that God has actually deceived by designing and creating a universe that has the appearance that it came out of nowhere. But no one says that and rightly so.


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Tim

 2016/5/6 16:06Profile
TMK
Member



Joined: 2012/2/8
Posts: 6650
NC, USA

 Re:

Hey Tim-

I am glad it wouldn't bother you. My mom and wife would agree.

But bothering is not the issue. The issue is whether such a thing is deceptive and therefore contrary to God's character. There is no shadow of deceptiveness in Him.

And just saying that because God did it, it is not deceptive isn't a great argument, in my opinion.

Of course, my answer is that God didn't create with an appearance of age, or better stated, he didn't create brand new things with evidence they have been through an aging process.

I am not taking about creating grown trees or grown people or full sized mountains. The question is whether he created full sized mountains with signs of erosion.


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Todd

 2016/5/6 17:57Profile
dolfan
Member



Joined: 2011/8/23
Posts: 1727
Tennessee, but my home's in Alabama

 Re:

May I ask this: Mountains themselves are the product of ages of tectonic activity. Like erosion. If God creates a mountain it is already an appearance of age so to speak. Unless a volcano produces a mountain quickly --- and they have --- are there "young mountains"? If a mountain that does not arise from a volcano appears, is that materially different from a mountain that has erosion?


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Tim

 2016/5/6 22:32Profile
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Joined: 2012/2/8
Posts: 6650
NC, USA

 Re:

That's a good question. We know the Rockies and the Himalayas are "young" mountains and the Appalachians are "old". The former are pointy; the latter are rounded and worn.

So it may be that when God created the earth there were no mountains although there were obviously mountains by the time of the flood.

Taking your point further, even dirt or sand is created by a process.

Which leads to my belief(that obviously may be wrong) that God got things started with the Big Bang and let things proceed from there.


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Todd

 2016/5/6 23:03Profile
twayneb
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Joined: 2009/4/5
Posts: 2256
Joplin, Missouri

 Re:

Quote:
All you have brought us back to is the Dinosaurs, and why God let them die?

The plain reading you refer too is simply a single version.

If I go to the store and buy milk and then go again and buy pop and you see me on the return second trip and ask me what I was doing and I say buying pop, you will wonder when you also see milk in the fridge.

The Bible account is only and account of the renewed earth. The way we know this is because there are proofs of a prior life form that predates Adam. Dinosaurs!!



Marc: I am not sure what proof we have that dinosaurs predated man. We have the opinion of secular science, but their interpretation of evidence is determined by their world view, so they would not, could not, come to any other conclusion. We have a lot of evidence that the animals that we commonly call dinosaurs were contemporary with man. The animals we call dinosaurs were simply animals that have gone extinct since the flood. Many animals have done this. God said that animals would reproduce after their kind. He did not guarantee that no species or even kind of animal would go extinct. God made man the steward over creation. He told man to have dominion over the animals. If anything, we would then have to blame man and ask why man allowed these animals to go extinct.


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Travis

 2016/5/9 13:15Profile
TMK
Member



Joined: 2012/2/8
Posts: 6650
NC, USA

 Re:

We apparently have a decent history of early man on the earth in Genesis. But there are no indications of any fighting off of TRex, or 70 ft brachiosauruses raiding vegetable gardens.

I just can't imagine how very early man could have competed with dinosaurs. Unless one argues that dinosaurs did not live where the patriarchs lived- but I don't believe that was the case.

I do believe it is possible that early man came across dinosaur fossils which gave rise to legends of dragons etc.

But the idea of Adam and his offspring living alongside these "terrible lizards" really stretches credulity.


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Todd

 2016/5/9 13:56Profile









 Re:

tayneb,

The challenge you have is OIL.

Going extinct would not explain the time frame Chevron, BP and Shell will tell you it took for them to become oil.

I'm not saying that some cataclysmic event did not take place. Meaning that an event could have taken place that caused all life to die in a very short period of time and this event could have played a role in shortening the time frame for the Dino's to become oil. But now you have to explain death entering the creation and why God allowed it.

I'm out of this thread but saw you addressed me specifically and felt it courteous to reply. Be well.


marcmc

 2016/5/10 6:19
twayneb
Member



Joined: 2009/4/5
Posts: 2256
Joplin, Missouri

 Re:

marc: Actually, oil is produced rather quickly given the right conditions of temperature and pressure. So is coal. The 4000 years since all of that plant matter was buried in the flood gives ample time. If we use oil as our example of long ages, we would have to put the ages between the flood and now, for which we have a pretty solid Biblical chronology of only 4000 or so years. That, in my opinion, creates an even larger problem with Biblical interpretation than putting the ages before Adam...unless of course you are a ruin-reconstructionist who believes in a pre-Adamite flood.

TMK: Written history is replete with tales of dragons, creatures we would, since the late 1800's, call dinosaurs. Artwork abounds by cultures who saw these creatures. For one example, ancient Peruvian art even depicts men riding on the backs of creatures that are so accurately depicted that they are exact matches of the dinosaur types we have in museums today. Job records a land creature and an aquatic creature (Behemoth and Leviathan) that are undoubtedly what we would call dinosaurs from their descriptions. And Job also records the great ice sheets in the post flood ice age, so I am confident that Job was written post-deluge. If all land animals were created on day 6, and if all kinds of land animals were on the ark, then logically what we call dinosaurs had to be represented on the ark as well.




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Travis

 2016/5/10 8:03Profile





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