I think, by now, in mid 2008, we’ve conclusively proved that the probability of any creation, Genesis, or related thread becoming a YECS topic is 1.

Frank (and others), wasn’t a thread about these very same issues just sent to Dead Horses for good reason? Can we please confine discussion to one of the several threads there rather than turning this into yet-another-YECS-thread? Please?

Bob, you’re looking into a dark vortex where good theology/bible reading, science and common sense all disappear into a black hole of nothingness, and you’re left with Adam & Eve hanging out with vegetarian velociraptors in 5000 BC, presumably chewing their tongues off because they feel no pain, while a global conspiracy of an old earth and evolution consumes 99.9% of scientists except for the brave, enlightened YECS souls who believe without YECS, Christianity can’t be true.

That’s an accurate summary of what we’ve discussed in the 435783874578368545683847584356378445738553 posts on this subject to date.

If you’re interested in a straight, evangelical take on what the bible says (and doesn’t say) about creation, I refer you to Sandy Grant’s article on the topic in the October 2006 issue of The Briefing.

You might also be interested in Mark Baddeley’s theological take on the issue here, here and here.

Enjoy!

Luke

1) Thanks for your concern over my intellectual well being.  I don’t think we need to be frightened of acknowledging that someone has presented us with an argument that makes us think.  It doesn’t mean I’ve been brought over to “the Dark Side”!

2) If you think it’s another Dead Horse the best way to prove your point is not to buy into it, as one of the criteria for dead horsing a thread is that the number of participants is too limited.  So far I think this thread has been quite specific in its focus, and therefore not the same as the Apparent Age thread that was moved recently.

3) Mark T moved that thread, and if he thinks this one has outlived its usefulness he will do the same here.

Bob

Hi Bob, I guess it’s a question of who is doing the thinking. The YECS argument has been dissected every which way by many people here and elsewhere (eg the Baddeley posts), but the same old line gets trotted out ad nauseum by YECS supporters regardless, which many people find extremely tiresome.

A topic that is a dead horse is one that has been flogged to death, irrespective of the number of participants, and I think the YECS discussion is, by far, the definition of a dead horse on these forums.

Well then Luke, albeit it’s off-topic (but really Frank took us off-topic), what do you think of the following ‘solution’ to the problem of death and suffering before the Fall which so troubled Arthur Rendle Short (see at Wikipedia) and which Bob finds quite impressive even if you don’t?

‘The system which commended itself most fully
to his mind was this. God had given to all creatures
such a high sense of the rectitude of his government and
the perfect justice of all his ways, that pain ceased to be
pain, suffering was deprived of its power by an all-pervading submission of the will to the Divine law ; so that
when the lion seized the hare and craunched his bones in
his bloody jaws, the timid creature had such a deep sense
of its obligation to be reconciled to the Divine will, and
such a clear knowledge of the object of its creation, that
the cracking of its bones, the tearing of its vitals, became
an actual enjoyment for which it had a keen relish, a
thrilling delight, —

“So that the pleasure was as great,
Of being eaten as to eat ! ! “ ‘

Speaking personally, I would rather have any of the theories about creation etc. that I don’t presently subscribe to, than the above darkest of dark vortices.

The reviewer who cited this in 1852 justly commented:

“Of course this was satisfactory ; for a man who could
accept that would have no difficulty in receiving and inwardly
digesting the [Westminster] Confession of Faith. He received
the blessing of his brethren, and is now enlightening the
world !”

Methinks the church and the world have seen enough of such blessing and enlightenment.

G’day,

It’s off to the dead horse area for this one too.

Yours in Christ,
Mark

Luke said:

The YECS argument has been dissected every which way by many people here and elsewhere (eg the Baddeley posts)

If by dissected and found to be a valid and reliable way of interpreting the Bible and the world we live in, I think I’d agree. Mark and I agreed on most things.

You may not like creationism, but I think that’s because you haven’t taken the time to consider the serious forms of it. At the heart of the matter is the theology of death, and I do not believe you can have a proper understanding of death without being a creationist. It truly is a core gospel matter.

Quite so Dannii.  The issue was decisive in finally causing Dr Rendle Short to adopt the literal six-day view in the closing months of his life.

I can’t easily trace it now, but it wasn’t that many days ago that (I think) Bob aired the view suggested to him by someone or other (sorry to be so vague) that “the sting of suffering is sin”, as though it weren’t really suffering without it.  (In that case, do animals suffer?)

Weird as such a view might seem, it utterly pales compared to the monstrosity I cited in my previous post, which stepped out of the shadows alarmingly early in the current controversy over origins.

Surely a premise which begets such an outrage to common sense ought to be re-examined root and branch.

Hi Luke.  You said:

“...Adam & Eve hanging out with vegetarian velociraptors in 5000 BC, presumably chewing their tongues off because they feel no pain, while a global conspiracy of an old earth and evolution consumes 99.9% of scientists except for the brave, enlightened YECS souls who believe without YECS, Christianity can’t be true.
That’s an accurate summary of what we’ve discussed in the 435783874578368545683847584356378445738553 posts on this subject to date....”

Luke, you are commending science and accuracy, yet many of your statements are inaccurate, and irrationally emotional.

Yes, Adam and Eve did live with vegetarian velociraptors. Right

No, they did not chew their tongues off. We have no way of knowing what the original perfect creation was like for incidents like accidental bumps, but it was very good, so God had some plan to cope with such events.

No, it was not 5000BC. That would make the earth 7000 years old. Genesis 5 and 11 tell us the earth is about 6000 years old, so creation happened about 4000BC.

No, I do not believe it is 99.9% old age evolution. Where did you get that figure?  Have you counted?  Yes, It is certainly a large majority, but did you know that many of the greatest scientists have been young earth creationists?
And even if it was accurate, what does that matter?  The issue is truth, not statistics. Only God knows what really happened at creation. He has told us. The knowledge of the top scientists today is infinitesimal compared to God’s omniscience.  Let God be true, though every man be found false. Anyone who disagrees with God is misinterpreting some of the very few clues available today.

Yes, it certainly takes a lot of courage to stand up for YECS, because it can result in loss of job, ostracism, and heaps of abuse. I admire any scientist or other person who dares. I have copped a bit myself. (Wounds the pride a bit, which may be a good thing!)

Yes, enlightened, because God has given to all the light of his word on this subject.  Let’s follow Jesus and believe what he says.

“without YECS, Christianity can’t be true.”
Hmm.  It is certainly possible to be a genuine Christian without believing in a 6000 year old earth, originally perfect, spoiled by sin, death and suffering the result of sin, globally flooded 4500 years ago, a confusion of languages at Babel shortly after, with most sedimentary layers and fossils caused by the flood.  I was one such for about 20 years. 

But it is hard to make coherent sense of the whole Bible that way.  Once when I was a long age theistic evolutionist an intelligent grade 6 boy asked me in a Scripture class how ape men fitted in with Genesis.  The best I could say was I don’t really know, but all truth was God’s truth, and it fitted somehow.  He was not impressed, and I was left deflated. The Gospel message of Jesus’ Lordship, death and resurrection I was focussing on in my teaching was reduced in its impact on that class.

Are you absolutely sure your own ideas are right?  How could you really know?  Were you there to see what happened? Are you not simply believing what certain mere humans have told you?  Can you be sure they are right?
What if they are wrong? How will you feel when you discuss this with Jesus in heaven, if it turns out you have believed the wrong ideas?

I say all this to encourage you to be a bit more open minded, and do a lot more careful research of both sides of the question before making such strong statements.

I do commend you as a brother in Christ for your sincerity, and your strong desire to stand up for what you believe to be correct. 

Peace and love, in the pursuit of truth

Frank

Frank

What if they are wrong? How will you feel when you discuss this with Jesus in heaven, if it turns out you have believed the wrong ideas?

I reckon a few of us are going to have a good old laugh in heaven about some of the views we held and some of the fierce debates we had!
Bob

HI Bob

Thanks, and yes, I think you are right.

Cheers

Frank

This maybe off topic.......  I’m a non Sydney non Anglican, house churching non conformist, 51yo veterinarian, reformed in theology and confused as to my views on creation (whether long days or literal short days). Go gently with me as I’m new to this site....  Even writing in this forum seems out of place as the conversations seem to run between established war horses battling it out together and it seems you know each other personally (even though it may be a cyberspace friendship) and I might be seen as breaking into the clique.  I grew up in my teens within reformed churches being taught the YEC view and have until recently not given much thought to the glaring anomalies in its theorem.  YEC teaching is that death came through Adam to all of creation.  However for me as a veterinarian I cannot but see that creation itself speaks of death being there by design. Why is it that some animals are obligate carnivores?  Did God really create a lion with it’s dentition seemingly designed to rip, tear, kill etc but yet to eat vegetation?  Were not all the carnivores - land, sea or air - designed as killing machines of other animals??  What of the microscopic world where the whole of the cycle of life (if you will) revolves around death, decay, renewal - one dying, another living off the decaying bodies of of fellow microbes.  Does a ruminant survive if it were not for the death of the microbes within the rumen?  I’m sorry but I cannot as a scientist any longer buy into the YEC view, even though I will be ostracised for saying that.

Now as to the extent of the flood - I have no problem with the view that the flood could be purely local, but seemingly to the inhabited world of that time covering all the earth. (There are other aspects to the flood story which I’m sure have been debated ad nauseum but I will need to do a search on this site, which are probably of more concern to me.)

Hello Keith,

Welcome to the forum!  I’m relatively new myself so I know how you might feel.  And being UK based I certainly don’t ‘know’ the generality of folk here in the proper sense.

I’d like to offer a few brief remarks on your points.

The main thing I’d like to say is that pre-Fall history can’t be ascertained by present experience.  The present cycle of life and death could simply be something God set up to maintain stability even after the Fall.

Also, surely you’ve heard by now about the modern-day lion that refused to eat meat?

And microbes aren’t the issue; the Bible talks about land animals whose breath is in their nostrils.  I take that to mean ones of size and anatomy broadly comparable to our own.

Now regarding the flood - the problem with maintaining that it destroyed all mankind (bar eight) and yet wasn’t global, is that you then have to confine mankind of that time to a very small patch of land indeed.  Any bigger and it’s impossible to contain the waters from spreading far, far more widely - in fact worldwide.

There was nowhere either man or beast could run or even fly to.  And the colossal size of the ark is totally out of kilter with actual space required to house the land fauna of only a very small spot on the earth’s surface.

Moreover, if Noah’s family are ancestors of all modern humans, and the flood happened no more than 5,000 years ago, you still have to defy conventional secular insistence that many cultures are much older.  Over here we’re familiar with the Aussie tourist ad featuring an aborigine who tells us:  “We’ve been rehearsing for 40,000 years!”

There’s so much more to be said - as you’re aware - but I said I’d be brief.

Keith Stewart - 05 August 2008 10:41 AM

This maybe off topic.......  What of the microscopic world where the whole of the cycle of life (if you will) revolves around death, decay, renewal - one dying, another living off the decaying bodies of of fellow microbes.  Does a ruminant survive if it were not for the death of the microbes within the rumen? 

I read in an article where someone noted a distinction between the death of cells (as well as plant life and animals?) and the physical/spiritual death that came to Adam due to sin. The article argued that not all ‘death’ is of the same character and that some forms of death may have existed in Eden. (Wish I could find the article!)

Found this:

Poythress concludes that nothing in scripture necessitates the view that all death originated with the Fall — only the death of mankind created in the image of God.

What do we say about animal death? The later scriptural statements are talking about human death. God created man to have fellowship with him and to enjoy life in the presence of God forever, as the tree of life reminds us (Gen. 2:9; 3:22). For man, death broke up this original purpose. Human death came in as a horror and a curse. Spiritual death in the form of separation and alienation from God is at the heart of our present human condition. And spiritual death entrains physical death as well. The animals and plants, however, did not enjoy the same exalted status as man. .... Moreover, God’s prefall gift to man of plant foods (Gen. 1:29) implies in some cases the death of plant products
Source: Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach by Vern S. Poythress

From a different source:
God wouldn’t have warned Adam and Eve of death if they didn’t know what death meant. They witnessed death in the animals.
Human death is the seperation of soul and body, animals have no souls ... therefore they naturally die

Hi Keith. Welcome to the forum!  If you are seriously wanting to research these important questions, the best place to look is the creationist web sites.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/ (based in Brisbane)

http://www.answersingenesis.org/ (USA)

http://creationsafaris.com/crev200808.htm

http://www.ridgenet.net/~do_while/sage/index.htm

There are many others.  Also many anti-creationist web sites

Do a google search and you will find abundant materials on all your questions.

The bottom line is if you believe God meant us to understand Genesis 1 to 11 as actual history. 

An important distinction is between origin science ( the way things were created - supernaturally miraculously) and operational science (the way things happen today - naturally).

Also to accept that the world as it is now, with defence and attack structures, and death as part of the cycle, is not the way God created it perfect before the fall.

In the end, the conclusions you reach will depend on the assumptions you start with, about God, his power, his word, and his intention to communicate simply and accurately to us.

Happy searching!

Frank

Frank Savage - 05 August 2008 11:38 AM

The bottom line is if you believe God meant us to understand Genesis 1 to 11 as actual history. 

In the end, the conclusions you reach will depend on the assumptions you start with, about God, his power, his word, and his intention to communicate simply and accurately to us.

It’s interesting that you say this as on this anglican website we have a noted theologian JI Packer who would probably arrive at a different conclusion as to actual history in Genesis but have the same biblically derived theology about God (ie in second paragraph).

And then we have another theologian in Vern Poythress who brings a different take on the flood.

All together too confusing.....