Scientists Question Darwinism

Omniskeptical

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No, a liar.

The correct answer to Satan — as it is to you — was "no."


The serpent said to the woman: “Has God indeed said: ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”



That's not a "literalist's" account; it's a lie. The answer is "no."

It was a crocodile climbing a tree, and speaking words from Satan. I take it pretty literally, except snakes don't climb trees.
 

Omniskeptical

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The simple answer: God spoke creatures into existence over the course of a couple of days. That's what the text says.

Darwinism is a non-starter.
It didn't all happen on the 6 days. "And it is" was probably what Moses rendered in Hebrew. But God doesn't need his mouth to command(?) things into creation.

Thus everyone thinks there is two different accounts of creation, when there is two combined accounts.
 

Derf

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The text. It doesn't say how God created the diversity of life.
It says how God DIDN'T create the diversity of life! And some of how He did create it. plants and animals that reproduce after their kind.

Death, in the creation story, is figurative, in that it didn't mean what it usually means. God says Adam will die the day he eats the fruit of that tree, but he eats and lives on physically for many years thereafter. The "death" is real, but spiritual.
I guess you need the quotes here, because you aren't really using the word as we normally use it. That seems important. I'll touch more on it later.

While the word "Yom" can mean eternity, it can also mean "in my time" "days" etc. I don't see a problem with that. It's figurative.
It doesn't need to be figurative to mean "in my time" or "era". It already means those things in normal language, and to specify something different usually requires adding modifiers, like "a single" day, or "yester-"day, or "evening and morning, the first" day. If it (or the Hebrew equivalent) already meant that when Adam and Eve were created, I have no problem with the words, but your "figurative" appellation isn't needed--unless you're trying to say it doesn't really mean what it says. For instance if "day" really meant "goose", and "six days" really meant 7,396,112 geese. That would be figurative language. I don't know why God would do that, especially when the text says it is giving us an account of the creation of the world: These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, [Gen 2:4 KJV]

Don't be such a goose, Barbarian!


Yes. You got the message God was intending. That's what all of that allegorical material was saying. I get that you don't see it that way. My point is that if you get the message, it doesn't matter if you take it as figuratively presented or literal history.
Is it possible to get the right message when you are tracking the wrong story? Thankfully, yes. But it's harder. And one would hope that the more we listen to what God says, not what Satan says God was trying to say, we would be working toward the right story.

Jesus tells us exactly what that is, in Matthew 25:31. No specific instruction in Genesis.
There were very specific instructions in Genesis. Eat of any tree in the garden except THAT ONE. Once they ate, the instructions had to change a bit.


Yes. It's why it's laid out so precisely in Matthew.


Yes. But it lacks the two great commandments, only hinting at the first and saying nothing about the second:

Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.




That wouldn't be loving Him with all your heart, would it? So, yes. That's why Genesis suggests the first of the two great commandments without actually saying it.
But maybe you didn't catch Jesus explanation of "love", or at least the result of love:

[Jhn 14:15 NKJV] "If you love Me, keep My commandments.
[Jhn 14:21 NKJV] "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."
[Jhn 14:23 NKJV] Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
[Jhn 14:24 NKJV] "He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me.

It seems to me, that if we love the Lord, we will keep all His commandments. And if we love the Lord with all our heart, we will desire (have a heart for) keeping His commandments. And if we love the Lord with all our soul, we will reflect that in our whole being. And if we love the Lord with all our mind, we will look for (think about) how we can keep His commandments. And if we love the Lord with all our strength, we will put physical effort into keeping His commandments. And if the Lord gives us some simple command, like "don't eat of that one tree", we would not take the very first suggestion from whatever creature (serpent, wife, or whomever) that comes along that overrides that commandment.

Genesis also talks about the second commandment: Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. [Gen 9:6 KJV]
In other words, "Don't murder, because you are in essence trying to kill God." Murder is the height of not loving one's neighbor.

Real people and real incidents can be in allegories, as in Genesis and Abraham's family.
But it's only necessary to say the words are allegorically if you don't agree with what they are saying literally, or if you think they need to say MORE than they really say. Isn't that like adding to scripture or taking away from scripture? Jesus explained when He did that, at least most of the time. God didn't ever explain creation differently. For you to do so, makes you an authority that no one can argue with, because truth is hidden. It puts you in the exact same role as Satan in the garden. God was clear in what He told them. Satan tried to obfuscate. God is a God of light, but Satan's followers love darkness.

He did. But mentioning an allegory doesn't mean it's not an allegory anymore.
Using a historical in an allegory doesn't remove the historicity of the events or the account. You seem to think through things backward, like you've already decided what truth it is you want the words to say, and then working hard to get them to say it.

Paul used the historical story to say something more profound, but didn't in any way minimize its historicity.


If, for example, He doesn't really say "O.K. everyone, sheep on the right, goats on the left", does it mean he wasn't serious about how your eternal home would be decided? No, I don't think so. Likewise, if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is merely a figurative one, does it mean that disobeying God is O.K.? No, it doesn't. And Jesus indicates that the disobedience was real, even if He realized that the story was an allegory about that disobedience.
"Sheep" would be a bit of a clue. If he suddenly started rounding up some sheep and goats and separating them, then I would think He wasn't very serious. But when He started the story with
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth [his] sheep from the goats: [Mat 25:32 KJV]
He makes the intent of the story pretty obvious.


He's presented allegorically. Satan is a spirit. He's not a serpent. The representation of him as such is very deep. In that time and place, a serpent represented wisdom and eternal life. So Satan presented himself deceptively, as he always does.
How do you know what "serpent" represented at creation? What about some of the other things? What did "beasts of the field" represent? What did "evening", "morning", "stars", "water", "spirit", "clay", "sun", "land", "sea", "heaven", "fowls", and "creeping things" represent? What did "light" and "darkness" represent? If all of these things can be allegorized to mean something it doesn't really say, then it makes the story of little benefit for the purpose given--relating how the heavens and the earth were created: These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, [Gen 2:4 KJV]

Like Adam, he's real, just presented allegorically.
Which you seem to need for your theology. Why? Is it because you don't believe those chapters are correct if read literally? Beware, Barbarian, not to be an allegorical Satan. We've enough trouble dealing with the real one.

How do you present a spirit as just a spirit? Aren't they invisible? But why is it that when the text says "serpent", you say "not a serpent"? Why is is that when God said "You will surely die", Satan said "You will not surely die."

He was. He denied that Adam would die the day he ate the fruit. And of course, he didn't die physically that day. But God didn't mean a literal death. Likewise, he told Eve that she would become like God. A partial truth, used to deceive. The fall required them to become like God, as God said.
You do well at thinking like Satan!

No. Those who accept Genesis as it is, say "the six days are figurative for categories of creation, but it's O.K. if you don't accept that, because your salvation does not depend on it."
Those who accept Genesis "as is" would hardly have to explain, as you suggest, how "six days doesn't really mean six days".


In summary, let me say that I am not immune to the idea that the garden scenario is a myth that presents a fanciful story in place of an unknown or only partially known incident. But I think it's a mistake to
1. broaden the scope of the myth to include creation itself, when the only reason for it is to make it fit with current scientific theory, and
2. assume that the events didn't happen as we are told they happened, when the only reason for it is to make it fit with what I would rather believe is the truth.

These are both grave mistakes.
 

The Barbarian

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Those who accept Genesis "as is" would hardly have to explain, as you suggest, how "six days doesn't really mean six days".

Actually "yom", which as you know, can mean various things. Early Christians had no problem with taking Genesis as it is. The modern revision of YE creationism is no older than the last century. So accepting as it is, a figurative account, has been going on for a very long time.

In summary, let me say that I am not immune to the idea that the garden scenario is a myth that presents a fanciful story in place of an unknown or only partially known incident.

I don't think it's a good idea to call God's use of parables and allegories, "fanciful."

But I think it's a mistake to
1. broaden the scope of the myth to include creation itself, when the only reason for it is to make it fit with current scientific theory,

Christians 1600 years ago, didn't even know what evolution is. So that's really not a reasonable objection.

2. assume that the events didn't happen as we are told they happened, when the only reason for it is to make it fit with what I would rather believe is the truth.

That is how the modern doctrine of YE creationism was invented by people;to make it fit what they'd like to believe the truth to be.

These are both grave mistakes.

No. God makes it clear how He will decide on your eternal home, and what you think of the way He created things, is not one of the ways. You can be a YE creationist, and be saved as easily as any other Christian, so long as you don't make an idol of it.
 

genuineoriginal

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Except for the supercritical water coming out of the sea floor.

https://www.nature.com/news/2006/060522/full/060522-15.html
Interesting, but not compelling.

what I said about there being TWO firmaments in Genesis 1, the "firmament of the heavens" and the "firmament CALLED Heaven".
There is only one firmament.
The expanse (firmament) called the sky (heaven) is the expanse (firmament) of the skies (heavens).
When you use unambiguous translations of the words, it makes it harder to get confused.

So you mean to tell me that you don't have any idea of how many meteors or how big they would need to be to cause the Flood of Genesis 7?
We know for sure about two of the largest impacts and that there were many more in addition to those two.

The meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs is assumed to be 65 million years ago, which marks the separation of the Cretaceous and Paleocene time periods.
That means that the meteor struck Earth during the flood.

The Impact That Wiped Out the Dinosaurs

According to abundant geological evidence, an asteroid roughly 10 km (6 miles) across hit Earth about 65 million years ago. This impact made a huge explosion and a crater about 180 km (roughly 110 miles) across. Debris from the explosion was thrown into the atmosphere, severely altering the climate, and leading to the extinction of roughly 3/4 of species that existed at that time, including the dinosaurs.


A larger meteor strike is assumed to have happened 3.5 billion years ago, putting it in the Precambrian time period.
That means that the meteor struck the Earth at the beginning of the flood.

Massive Asteroid Hit Earth 3.5 Billion Years Ago, Dwarfing One That Killed The Dinosaurs

New evidence found in northwestern Australia suggests that a massive asteroid, 20 to 30 kilometers in diameter, struck Earth about 3.5 billion years ago. This impact would have dwarfed anything experienced by humans, and dinosaurs, releasing as much energy as millions of nuclear weapons. Impacts this large can trigger earthquakes and tsunamis, and change the geological history of Earth.


Look, GO, I asked for you to provide scripture to back up your claims. Extra-Biblical accounts of flood stories, while they validate the historicity of the Flood of Noah, because cultures across the world, who have never had any contact with each other, have similar stories, altered by history, do not qualify as scripture themselves, and therefore do not satisfy my request for scripture that describes meteors causing the Flood.
The physical evidence of the meteor strikes that caused the flood is there to be seen, even if the scriptures did not specifically state that meteors caused the flood.
It appears that there were at least 71 impacts that happened during the year of the flood.
The size of the two mentioned above (the one that hit during the Precambrian and the one that hit at the end of the Cretaceous) would have destroyed all life on the earth with earthquakes and tsunamis.

Did Meteors Trigger Noah’s Flood?

Many meteorite impact craters have now been identified across the earth’s surface. These have been imprinted and preserved in layers deposited by the Flood and are also visible on today’s post-Flood land surface, such as the famous Meteor Crater just east of Flagstaff in northern Arizona.

The impact “ages” of 110 craters (as estimated using the secular dating methods) are tabulated in Figure 2.7 Secular geologists thus believe that large meteorites crashed into the earth at a rate of 1–8 every 30 million years, but that the rate was much higher in recent times. However, those scientists who believe that the bulk of the fossil record was deposited during the Flood reach a very different conclusion. According to the Flood model, the first 71 of these 110 impacts would have occurred during the year of the Flood, and the other 39 were spread out over the 4,500 years since the Flood.

The rate during the Flood was catastrophic—71 in one year versus an average of only one impact every 115 years. Even most of those 39 post-Flood impacts likely occurred in the first few decades after the Flood, as the catastrophic processes that triggered the Flood slowed to today’s snail’s pace.


I have consistently provided scripture to back up my claims.
Not really.
Your claims rely upon a deliberate misinterpretation of "firmament".

The dry land He called Earth in verse 3, is the same firmament He made in day 2.
God never called the firmament "earth" or "dry land".
The firmament is the sky.

You're the one saying that the firmament, which is a latin word (Hebrew word used is "raqia/raqiyah" which means "expanse"), is always referring to the heavens, when it's not.

Firmament (Hebrew: raqia) simply means expanse, and describes BOTH the sky AND the firmament called Heaven...

The sky is "the firmament of the heavens."

The earth is "the firmament called Heaven."
The firmament always refers to the sky.
The firmament is never the land.

If I didn't say it before, what I meant was that you made up some theory to try to reconcile the secular interpretation of evidence with the Biblical interpretation, when the two are not compatible.

The secular interpretation says millions of years.

The Bible says 7-10 thousand years.

The secular interpretation says the earth was destroyed by a giant meteor to wipe out the dinosaurs, and man came along afterwards.

The Bible says that dinosaurs and man walked together in the Garden of Eden, and that a worldwide flood wiped out all life on earth, except for 8 people, 4 men and their wives, and an ark with a bunch of air breathing animals on it

The two views are not compatible, yet you've come up with an ad hoc rescue to try to reconcile the two.
I believe that the secular evidence of the flood has been misinterpreted as taking place over millions and billions of years.
There is secular evidence of the meteor strikes that caused the flood, but the times of the impacts have been misassigned to millions and billions of years instead of putting them during the flood when they happened.

Again, you're the one who assumes there is only one firmament, and that it must be the sky.
I assume that the firmament refers to the sky because that is what the Bible states.

You seem to be having a hard time understanding my position, GO. Why?
I understand your position, but I cannot accept the claims that the "sky" is really the "crust of the earth".

Keep in mind when you answer this question that my position is that there are two firmaments, "the firmament called Heaven," which refers to the earth, and "the firmament of the heavens," which refers to the sky, be that just the atmosphere or space itself.
That is nice, but I will go with Paul's claim that he knew a man that went to the third heaven.
The first heaven is the atmosphere, the second heaven would be space, and the third heaven would be where God's throne is.
The earth is never called heaven.


considering that this verse is used as part of my main argument that it means what it plainly says, the only thing you can do is show how it doesn't mean what it plainly says, that God created an expanse in the midst of the waters of verse 2.
Yes, God created an expanse in the midst of the waters and called it the sky.

Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; - Genesis 1:14 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1:14&version=NKJV

Once again, we see the sky being called "the firmament of the heavens", and not "the firmament called Heaven," and not "the firmament."
Once again, we see the sky being called "the expanse of the skies".

H7549 - raqiya` רָקִיעַ, translated as firmament, is always overhead, it is never under foot.


Ezekiel 1:22-26
22 And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above.
23 And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies.
24 And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings.
25 And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings.
26 And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.​

 

genuineoriginal

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It's compelling refutation of your assertion of "zero" evidence.
Yes, it is a refutation of my assertion that there is "zero" evidence of supercritical water under the crust of the earth.

However, it is not compelling evidence that the expanse that God called sky (firmament called heaven) in Genesis is really the crust of the earth.
Nor is it compelling evidence that the flood was caused by supercritical water instead of meteor impacts.

It is more likely that the supercritical water formed after the flood than that supercritical water was the cause of the flood.
 

Stripe

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Nor is it compelling evidence that the flood was caused by supercritical water instead of meteor impacts.
The descriptions of what the flood did rule out meteors as a cause. For example, "all the high mountains" would not be covered even for a moment, let alone for months.

It is more likely that the supercritical water formed after the flood than that supercritical water was the cause of the flood.
Do you know how difficult it is to put water beneath rock?

It becomes more difficult with depth (pressure). After a few 10s of kilometres, it becomes next to impossible.
 
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genuineoriginal

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The descriptions of what the flood did rule out meteors as a cause. For example, "all the high mountains" would not be covered even for a moment, let alone for months.
I am not assuming that the high mountains were completely under water for the entire time.
I am assuming that tsunami after tsunami would crash into the high mountains and wash over them.
I believe this fits the description of "the waters prevailed exceedingly" better than any other explanation.

Genesis 7:19-20
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.​

 

Stripe

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I am assuming that tsunami after tsunami would crash into the high mountains and wash over them.

That wouldn't happen. You'd be lucky to get far up a coastal hillside. Anything more than a few kilometers inland would not be affected at all by water.

Tsunami do not scale with input of energy, they depend almost entirely on the right seabed and coastal morphology to achieve significant progress inland. The first decent slope all but ends them.
 

genuineoriginal

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That wouldn't happen. You'd be lucky to get far up a coastal hillside. Anything more than a few kilometers inland would not be affected at all by water.

Tsunami do not scale with input of energy, they depend almost entirely on the right seabed and coastal morphology to achieve significant progress inland. The first decent slope all but ends them.
You must be thinking about ordinary tsunamis and not the kind of megatsunami that would be produced by a massive asteroid, 20 to 30 kilometers in diameter, such as the one that struck the earth at the beginning of the flood.


Megatsunami

A megatsunami is a very large wave created by a large, sudden displacement of material into a body of water.

Megatsunamis have quite different features from other, more usual types of tsunamis. Most tsunamis are caused by underwater tectonic activity (movement of the earth's plates) and therefore occur along plate boundaries and as a result of earthquake and rise or fall in the sea floor, causing water to be displaced. Ordinary tsunamis have shallow waves out at sea, and the water piles up to a wave height of up to about 10 metres (33 feet) as the sea floor becomes shallow near land. By contrast, megatsunamis occur when a very large amount of material suddenly falls into water or anywhere near water (such as via a meteor impact), or are caused by volcanic activity. They can have extremely high initial wave heights of hundreds and possibly thousands of metres, far beyond any ordinary tsunami, as the water is "splashed" upwards and outwards by the impact or displacement. As a result, two heights are sometimes quoted for megatsunamis – the height of the wave itself (in water), and the height to which it surges when it reaches land, which depending upon the locale, can be several times larger.

 

Stripe

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You must be thinking about ordinary tsunamis and not the kind of megatsunami that would be produced by a massive asteroid.

No, I'm thinking of megatsunami. It can be as high as you want, the most it is going to do is wash up a coastal hill. It will not progress inland more than a few kilometers.

These things do not scale well. Just because you're putting 1,000 times more energy into the water, that doesn't mean the wave will travel 1,000 times farther inland.
 

genuineoriginal

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No, I'm thinking of megatsunami. It can be as high as you want, the most it is going to do is wash up a coastal hill. It will not progress inland more than a few kilometers.

These things do not scale well. Just because you're putting 1,000 times more energy into the water, that doesn't mean the wave will travel 1,000 times farther inland.

Are you assuming that the coastal hills will survive the "rocknami" before the tsunami hits?


What Would Happen if a Ball the Size of Texas Fell Into the Ocean?

Option 1: The ball is gently placed on the surface of the ocean.

Let’s plop our Texaball down in an empty patch of the Pacific, so there’s room for it to do its thing without hitting any land.

You might think that a huge tsunami would result, wiping out cities in a huge wave. And you’d be right, except that the cities will already be flattened.

Texaball creates three great disturbances—one in the air, one in the water and one in the rocks of the crust. Sound travels at different speeds in those materials, from slow in the air (around 343 m/s), to medium speed in the water (1,433 m/s or so), to very fast in the rocks (around 5,000 m/s).

So Texaball would make a huge air blast, and a huge water blast (tsunami), but it would also make a huge rock blast that travels far faster than the others.

As Texaball settles into the ocean, the tsunami gets a head start. Texaball displaces around 4,500 cubic miles of water and sends it out in all directions in a 2-mile-high tsunami.

But just a few moments later, Texaball hits the crust and begins to bore into the center of the Earth due to its massive weight. This impact and boring sends a rock tsunami (tsurocki? Rocknami?) hurtling through the crust at over 11,000 miles per hour. In less than an hour, the earthquake starts to hit the Pacific coastal cities.

They don’t handle it well.

This isn’t an Earthquake so much as it is a complete pulverization of the rocks beneath these cities. Cities don’t just crumble. Buildings are thrown into the sky. Streets, parks, schools, trees are all thrown around in much the same way you might make a Lego city and then whisk it away with your arm.

This wave of devastation flows around the Earth, wiping out everything in its path. On the far side of the globe, the rocknami hits itself and bounces off, ringing the Earth like a bell. A bell whose surface we all live on. Well, lived.

Behind the rocknami comes the tsunami, as slower but still really deadly water waves scour the remnants of what was civilization from the surface of the Earth and carry it out to sea.

Option 2: The ball hits the ocean with a great deal of speed, like an asteroid impact.

It turns out that this increased speed changes almost nothing. Texaball will still make a megatsunami and rocknami, both of which take some time to permeate through the Earth. Texaball gets much farther into the mantle than it does in Option 1, and huge chunks of Earth are launched into the sky, orbit, or even out into interstellar space. But energy isn’t going to be transmitted through the rocks any faster than the speed of sound in those rocks.

 
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