I Have Changed My Mind Concerning Creation - Page 2

S. Spence · #41 (**permalink**) 03-22-2008, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidCPorter

I have always found the fourth commandment to be convincing scripture on this. "For in six days the Lord created...." Written by the finger of God to a people who would have understood it as refering to literal days. Exodus 20 is not a creation myth it is the declaration of God directly to his people.

That's a good point -I hadn't thought of that before.

mark · #42 (**permalink**) 03-22-2008, 10:34 AM

I've held to a YEC for quite some time, and hashed through the issues as well. I have found that Answers in Genesis tends to be very flippant however when dealing with the issue. If we want to redeem the academy (and I think we do) we've got serious work to do in the scientific fields. Mark Noll in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind blasts YEC out of the water, saying how awful it has been for Christian scholarship. There simply are too few scientists doing research in this field. And, to further the dilemma, I don't intend to get a PhD in the natural sciences!

AV1611 · #43 (**permalink**) 03-22-2008, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by S. Spence

That's a good point -I hadn't thought of that before.

PSCF March 1996 Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony by Meredith G. Kline

fredtgreco · #44 (**permalink**) 03-22-2008, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by S. Spence

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidCPorter

I have always found the fourth commandment to be convincing scripture on this. "For in six days the Lord created...." Written by the finger of God to a people who would have understood it as refering to literal days. Exodus 20 is not a creation myth it is the declaration of God directly to his people.

That's a good point -I hadn't thought of that before.

It is more than that. There is a direct correlation between the Sabbath being a day and not a principle, and the days of Genesis (referenced in Exodus 20:11) being ordinary and being typological.

It should be no surprise that Lee Irons, whose review paper was quoted above, denied the abiding validity of the 4th commandment, and was basically defrocked for that.

cih1355 · #45 (**permalink**) 03-22-2008, 12:30 PM

I read the book, Thousands Not Billions, which is edited by Don DeYoung. It provides a summary of the RATE project which was a project performed by young earth creationists who did research regarding the age of the earth. A Hebrew scholar by the name of Stephen Boyd was a part of the RATE project. Boyd studied Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 in order to see if that biblical passage should be interpreted as a literal historical narrative or as poetry. Boyd analyzed the relative distribution of finite verbs in that passage. In biblical Hebrew, there are four finite verb forms: preterite, imperfect, perfect, and waw-perfect (p. 160). Historical narratives in Hebrew uses more preterite verbs while poetic texts use more perfect and imperfect verbs (p. 161). Boyd's conclusion was that Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 is statistically classified as narrative with a probability of 0.9999 (pp. 167-168). A probability of 1 would be the highest value.

Ivanhoe · #46 (**permalink**) 03-22-2008, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark

I've held to a YEC for quite some time, and hashed through the issues as well. I have found that Answers in Genesis tends to be very flippant however when dealing with the issue. If we want to redeem the academy (and I think we do) we've got serious work to do in the scientific fields. Mark Noll in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind blasts YEC out of the water, saying how awful it has been for Christian scholarship. There simply are too few scientists doing research in this field. And, to further the dilemma, I don't intend to get a PhD in the natural sciences!

Noll fails to critique YEC on biblical/theological grounds. He just whines that such people look like fundamentalists and it makes it hard for Christians to be seen as academically and culturally relevant.

The book was okay in some respects but I have a hard time taking Noll's whining (and that's what it is) seriously.

DavidGGraves · #47 (**permalink**) 04-12-2008, 06:35 PM

I always find it ironic that arch-Historical-Critic James Barr identifies Genesis 1 as 24 hour days because of the syntax, yet evangelicals and reformed folk want to do gymnastics to get out of:

"and there was evening and there was morning one day" The Hebrew reads the cardinal not the ordinal in an etiological manner so as to define what a day is, odd that.