Rejecting Six Literal Days - What's the Real Motivation?

[Mark_Smith]

Let me try to sum all of this up in one post.

Dgszweda, AndyE, and a few others seem to “want their cake and to eat it too” when it comes to astronomy. Here is the problem. They want uniformitarianism to work when it works for them, but then to reject it when it doesn’t. They personally see no problem with fusion being the power source for stars, or their being different ages for stars, or their being dead stars and newly forming stars, or measuring distances in the universe, etc.

It isn’t quite we want our cake and eat it to, it is we just don’t know. I don’t have the answer. And lets be honest even about uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism isn’t always uniform. Was it uniform between the Big Bang and 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang? We don’t know? We can’t determine anything beyond the Planck Constant. I don’t know if every natural law was in place the moment the God spoke the world first into existence. I have to hold to my theology and I have to hold to my science. I give precedents to Scripture where it has precedent and I hold to science when it doesn’t conflict with my theology. What happened the first 7 days, we don’t entirely know. God does not choose to reveal Himself entirely, He reveals what he wants us to know about Him and apart from what he reveals we know not. He also did not choose to reveal much about the first 6 days, 1 chapter is probably infinitely smaller than what it would take to truly explain it. Maybe it isn’t even explainable to mortal men. He is not bound by physical elements and He chooses to move in and out of His creation breaking natural laws as He sees fit. Maybe we are totally confused by Space-Time and there is actually much more there than our minds could even grasp. I think we do God a disservice when we sit here with our science expecting to understand it better than Him. I revel in the uncertainty and misunderstanding of His creation. He wants us to explore it, but I think His greatness is so supremely above even our entire combined intelligence that we will never ever begin to scratch the surface. He allows us to study it so that we can interact with it. But the more we know the more questions are really exposed. It could be that God created it to the point where we can make sense in order to interact with it, but in reality what we understand really isn’t it. The fact that he spoke and calmed a storm defies all science. It isn’t we can’t explain it, there isn’t even a comprehension of a model in which this could possibly take place, yet he can interact with his creation in this particular way. You can call it a miracle, but he is able to interact with a physical universe with what we call unbreakable and standard laws, and in an instaneous moment change that without impacting anything else. Miracles aren’t really that mysterious or special, they are just God directly interacting within His creation and when it happens we can’t explain it. It may not even be anything special to Him, it is just His very nature.

[Bob Hayton]

Now the rest of the article says creation is mature, and no one knows what a young earth would look like so it is invalid to call earth old. But I think that is largely a dodge. We know what tree rings and ice cores are for smaller time frames and can extrapolate that out to longer ages.

But to answer your question, this is why. If the earth is meant to look old (and the universe, for that matter), but it isn’t really old, than it would be as if God was deceiving us — which of course, He isn’t. And to go back to my earlier point, since nature speaks, and God invites us to listen and use our senses to learn of Him, then this point about appearance of great age when in fact it is very young, would more clearly be deception. Hence I believe in an old earth.

Why would it be deception? If God wanted to create something that looks old - as he did with a fully mature (or at least mature enough for sexual reproduction) Adam and Eve, and we arrive at an estimate of ten million years old for the earth and galaxies, the flaw is not in God, but the ones who cannot measure it properly.

It seems to me that maybe the problem isn’t ‘deception’ as in our ability to measure isn’t right.

Fine.

[Mark_Smith]

Fine.

After multiple posts I am convinced you’ve missed the entire point of what I am saying.

I understand what you are saying, I am not understanding what you are trying to accomplish. Somehow it appears that even though you are YEC, you seem to feel that a God who created something must have still followed all the rules of natural science that we see and understand today. And if he didn’t, then most of science is pointless. You have a higher view of science than it appears that I do. Although I have no idea how you, yourself resolve your beliefs with science. I personally believe they probably can’t be resolved. I might even state that they purposely cannot be resolved because God purposed them that way, to accomplish what he states clearly in Hebrews 11:3.

It appears that you feel that our approach is pointless, because we must consider science and we can’t just flippantly throw it out. Do I capture this correctly?

[Mark_Smith]

Fine.

After multiple posts I am convinced you’ve missed the entire point of what I am saying.

Thanks for chipping in at the end. I had a 25+ post interchange with dgszweda, and I felt like it wasn’t getting anywhere. I was trying to politely end it.

But yes, what you say is true in general. Take for example the MacArthur salary kerfuffle a few months back. What I was saying had nothing to do with John MacArthur and everything to do with the people at team pyro, but multiple posts accused me of attacking MacArthur and Phil Johnson. Miscommunication even when I tried to be clear. Even when I tried to explain multiple times what I intended I was rejected and told in no uncertain terms I had been rude and improper.

I guess several people here assume the worst about me, so they either ignore my posts or take a negative spin. By the way, this is not conjecture on my part. 4 or 5 people who post regularly have sent me PM’s and said that very thing!

Let me be clear. I will accept the blame for all of that. The miscommunication must be on my end. I blame no one else.

I was trying to get you and others to see the hole in the logic of rejecting science when it measures the age of the universe (sticking to astronomy here), but accepting it almost everywhere else. The same logic that leads to 13.7 billion years leads to 170000 years for light to leave the Sun and it leads to the HR Diagram, nuclear fusion, etc.

I also think you and others are rejecting basic observation, not just conclusions. But any way.

I appreciated the conversation.

Let me say that there are several books that take the view I am advocating, like Starlight, Time and the New Physics by John Hartnett. While I don’t agree with everything he says, the basic idea of using relativistic effects to allow for the age of the universe is commendable, IMHO. Even the old Starlight and Time by Humphreys is like that as well as Jason Lisle formerly of AiG.

would like a YEC person to explain why God would use nuclear fusion to power the Sun and other stars, given all of the time requirements of it, for a universe He only planned to last about 10000 years.

No one ever answers that though! :-)

[dgszweda]

Bob/Mark,

What I struggle with on the other approaches, is 1) where is the ambiguity in the Hebrew, as well as the clarity of Genesis 1 that provides us with the need to re-examine in light of science, and 2) if we decide to recast the story in the light of science, how do we deal with a historic Adam and the theology laid out clearly in the NT? I have no problem looking at the world to help with our interpretation of Scriptures, I just have a hard time find out where the wiggle room exists in Scripture for this specific element around Creation.

To go back to the question about Hebrew scholars - technically, to the best of my knowledge, there are no fundamentalist Hebrew scholars. There are fundamentalist Old Testament scholars (and there are fundamentalists who teach Hebrew - myself being one of them), but few of them focus their research/publish in the area of Hebrew. To answer the question of ambiguity in the Hebrew and the clarity of Genesis 1 - it is important to remember the history of interpretation on the subject within the modern era. In the early 1800s, the prevailing view of Scripture was that it taught a young earth, and a literal six day creationism. With the rise of secular geology, by the time of Lyell’s “Principles of Geology,” some (scientists) within the church felt a need to maintain the relevance of Scripture in light of this position. Thus, the day-age theory arose, argued for and promulgated by Arnold Guyot - a Swiss American geologist (a position which was picked up by the Princetonians). The gap theory arose later, and from the Princeton school arose the Framework theory (Westminster seminary). All other views (Collins, Walton, etc.) are an attempt to maintain the relevance of Scripture in light of scientific inquiry. None of them are simply attempting to interpret Scripture on its own grounds. Instead they come to Scripture with preconceived notions on the nature of the universe based upon their “scientific consensus” and interpret the text as such.

Why is it I feel like I need to take a bath when a man like CAWatson writes “scientific consensus” in quotes? :-)

[Mark_Smith]

Why is it I feel like I need to take a bath when a man like CAWatson writes “scientific consensus” in quotes?

I use quotes around the phrase - scientific consensus - because scientific consensus is a myth. Scientists disagree with each other all the time. I’m also not sure of the purpose of your statement. You did not respond to me in any sort of a reasonable fashion, instead you have placed me in a category “a man like CAWatson.” What do you mean by that? Deal with my response intellectually instead of bathing, and perhaps we can have a conversation. I made the statement that all of the newer interpretations came about because people within the church - (day-age came from a Christian scientist - not a theologian) were attempting to maintain the relevance of Scripture against outside attacks from what appears to be everyone in the scientific world. You should read Terry Mortenson’s PhD Dissertation “The Great Turning Point” who discusses men during the late 1700s, and through the 1800s who believed in the Scriptural account, even though they were geologists.

Again, Mark, let us deal with the issues at hand instead of resorting to an ad hominem argument.

It was humor. Nothing else. Pure and simple. Did you see the smiley face?

By saying “a man like CAWatson” I meant that COMPLETELY as a compliment. I apologize if you took that as something negative.

I was playing on the notion that science is a human philosophy, while creationism is godly. Since I was promoting science, I was “dirty” and needed a bath…

[Mark_Smith]

would like a YEC person to explain why God would use nuclear fusion to power the Sun and other stars, given all of the time requirements of it, for a universe He only planned to last about 10000 years.

No one ever answers that though!

How would anyone answer this? Even if I was an ardent believe in a universe that was billions of years old, why nuclear fusion? Why even atoms and molecules, we could view other scenarios where different building blocks could be used as matter. It doesn’t matter what someone believes, I am not sure this question can be answered.

My question to you is still how do you resolve this issue? How do you specifically resolve the apparent age and your belief in YEC. You throw out the challenges and feel they need to be resolved, but you don’t provide a better model.

I am also quite surprised at your “high view” of science. Look back at science 3,000 years ago and what we know now doesn’t look almost anything like what we developed 3,000 years ago. Where do you feel anything has changed, that in 3,000 years scientists will look back at 2014 and say, wow those guys really still had a basic understanding of their surrounding.

[CAWatson] All other views (Collins, Walton, etc.) are an attempt to maintain the relevance of Scripture in light of scientific inquiry. None of them are simply attempting to interpret Scripture on its own grounds. Instead they come to Scripture with preconceived notions on the nature of the universe based upon their “scientific consensus” and interpret the text as such.

I am leery of such statements that claim to know the motivation of other scholars.

The advances in understanding made in the field of ancient Near East studies are another factor in this. Situating Genesis 1-3 within the similar literature of its day provides ample opportunities to compare and contrast and get closer to the ancient understanding the original audience would have had. So genre is part of this too. Not just “scientific consensus.”

What Mortenson and others seem to downplay are the positive contributions to old earth geology made by Christian scientists. The modern version of flood geology and YEC as we know it has some roots in older scientists, but owes much to the work of SDA geologist George McCready Price who was a direct influence on the work of Henry Morris and his monumental work The Genesis Flood.

I have provided the framework over and over again on the creation threads over the last few months. See the book by Hartlett that I referenced. I don’t think it is THE answer, but something like it.

If relativity (or something like it) isn’t the answer, then I go with “there is no way to do science in the cosmos” answer rather than the buffet version you seem to support (pick and choose what you like).

Have a great day dgszweda!