Faith and other YEC: why even bother taking part in the discussion?

Why? Well, it's a challenge, it's fun to think about these things. Unfortunately it seems there's really no way to avoid the conflicts, that can get pretty intense here. It's taken me a while, oddly enough, to recognize that in fact it's the Biblical premise for the YEC argument that creates the conflict, for ID too I guess, as before it's seemed to me that this premise shouldn't have to become an issue.Turns out it does, as the rules EvC operates by disqualify this premise up front. Trying to work within them doesn't work so they have to be faced as even defeating the purpose of debate altogether. But that's what is being discussed. That's what I've been posting about yesterday and today, trying to be as explicit as possible about why YECs keep getting suspended here, and realizing, clearly for the first time, that the conflict may very well be completely unresolvable.I'm not willing to have the Bible put at the mercy of science and that may mean there ISN'T any way to continue here. Yes, I also know I lose my temper and that's part of the problem for me personally, though I think I'm getting better with God's help, but that is not the essence of the problem, which IS the Biblical premise which is in head-to-head conflict with the science premise of EvC. Which God reigns is what it comes down to. I wish it could become simply fun and informative, but I guess it isn't going to.But I'm sticking it out for now to see where this goes, with Ben working on his vision of YEC methodology and how it may fit in here, with the thread Irish Rock Hound started to allow the YEC view to be expressed freely, and other thoughts on the subject that have come up lately.

Yes, of course the Bible has to be interpreted, as I most recently said here. HOW it is interpreted, the rules for its interpretation, are the issue. A literal interpretation is still an interpretation, but it aims to understand the written text as closely as possible as it was written, or as true to the intention of the text as possible.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-14-2005 02:11 AM

We assume the evidence is in error, usually meaning data has been wrongly interpreted, and seek to interpret it in terms that are consistent with Biblical revelation. That's basically the entire work of creationism (at least young earth creationism) it seems to me, working out a consistent framework that accounts for the evidence differently than evolutionism and old earth theory do. What is usually caricatured as "rejecting inconvenient evidence" is really what I say above, the judgment that evidence cannot truthfully refute God's word, and therefore any interpretation that does is wrong, and an interpretation consistent with the Bible is to be sought instead. Sometimes reasonable alternatives are found rather quickly, sometimes they have to be sought laboriously.It's also a mistake to think Creationism is seeking to use science to support itself. This is a common idea but it is false. Creationism CHALLENGES the evolutionistic old-earth premises of today's science, not to support itself but to further truth, knowing that God's word IS truth and anything that contradicts it is false.Faith in the Bible as God's word means faith that everything it says, rightly understood, will necessarily be consistent with all scientific evidence, rightly understood. There is no either/or. God is the author of the Bible and Creation both and there can't be any conflict between the two.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-14-2005 03:03 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 09-14-2005 03:08 AM

Charles, I'm sorry but you have apparently completely misunderstood the context, and I can see that the sentence was ambiguous. Of course creationists are using science, that's the wrong end of the sentence to emphasize.I was answering this question:

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Should creationism try to use science to support itself or be faith-based.

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What I meant to disagree with was the idea that science is somehow an alternative to faith as support for belief in creationism, as if creationists are just trying to shore up a lagging faith by insisting on getting involved in science. This is a variation on the common belief that gets expressed at EvC that religious belief doesn't need any evidence whatever to support it, as if faith could just exist in a complete vacuum of anything to have faith IN.Genuine Bible-based faith holds that science and the Bible will be consistent with one another, and this is the driving motive of creationists, not anything having to do with supporting their faith, but on the contrary, the application of their faith in the work they do as creationists. They know the Bible and the physical universe cannot disagree. That's strong faith.So, to repeat, I am not disputing that creationism does science. I'm only saying that there isn't this great divide, as if religion belonged to the nebulous insubstantial ether and has nothing to do with the physical world and scientific investigation of it.They do science BECAUSE of their faith in the rationality of God's word, not in order to support their faith.I hope that's clearer. Well, I had to answer you because your misrepresentation of what I said might otherwise stand unchallenged.

Well, the principle is that God's word is true, so the physical world can't contradict it. So in this case, since I don't remember the creationist position on it, I am guessing that creationists assume that eventually a young earth explanation for the rings will be found, probably having to do with questioning the yearly factor back before a certain point, since creationists dispute the principle of uniformitarianism, or the assumption that the past was the same as the present.Many things are considered to have been very different before the Fall than after, and even more so before the Flood than after, including particularly the climate, which is thought to have been very mild before the Flood. So for instance there is the idea that the (one) ice age began with the Flood -- the frozen giant animals being victims of the Flood as all other life forms were. So while the rings are now yearly markers, at some period in the past some other principle or time factor may explain them.Faith in God's word means that there WILL be a rational explanation and that apparent conflicts with science will eventually be resolved. The past is not measurable or testable anyway, it's all a matter of plausible interpretations. OE theory bases interpretations on the assumption of uniformitarianism, rational enough but not provable; while creationism bases interpretations on Biblical possibilities.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-14-2005 12:41 PM

Sometimes the explanation is not available. I am simply defining how YECs think. Creationism is not a thoroughly worked-out system, it is constantly seeking the principles that make it work. It has many, however, and where they exist they are defended. I don't try to get into the really sophisticated issues as I'm not a scientist, but at every level of science the same basic thinking pattern applies.

Yes, if you approach each sentence in isolation from every other, but if you read it in the context of the entire Bible, which is the way to read it literally, it starts to come together in a coherent picture. That is a big task of course.But I think this one is pretty straightforward: "In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth." Doesn't a natural reading of it pretty clearly mean that the "beginning" is the making of the heavens and the earth?God therefore already exists. In other parts of the Bible God's nature is described as beginningless and endless, or both beginning and end or alpha and omega, that is, eternal. All parts of the Bible illuminate all other parts.

Yes, but it is also my position that God inspired the writers of the Bible. It was written through the Spirit of God not fallen human nature.

Those who believe it are inspired by the Holy Spirit too, to greater or lesser degrees. We are fallen, we inherit the sin nature and death from our father Adam as we were all "in" him at the time. BUT Jesus Christ is the new Adam, the liberator from the sin and death the first Adam bequeathed to us. We are in Christ, or "made alive in Christ" no longer dead in Adam -- if we believe in Him as He is presented in the Bible.

Well, I guess I'll put it this way: Unbelievers' interpretations are certainly fallible. Believers, however, have the Holy Spirit, but are still fallible, only that by believing and trusting in Christ they have the essence of the truth of the Bible that unbelievers don't have, and by the Holy Spirit they recognize the Holy Spirit in the Bible.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-15-2005 12:34 AM

Actually, yes, literally, in that we are literally descended from him physically. This is one of those peculiar Biblical revelations that are found only in the Bible and nowhere else as far as I know. Literally it's even logical, as the genetic potential for every descendant is already present "in the loins of" our ancestors, but this connectedness to them, according to the Bible, extends even to our spiritual nature, to our inheriting the sin nature from Adam, and also spiritual influences from all our closer ancestors. There's a particular passage in the New Testament that states this principle of being literally -- both physically and spiritually -- "in" an ancestor. This is the example of Levi, one of Abraham's grandsons, being said to have "paid tithes" when his grandfather Abraham did though he wasn't yet conceived.

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Hebrews 7:4 Now consider how great this man [Melchizedek] was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. 5 And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham; 6 but he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. 7 Now beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the greater. 8 Here mortal men receive tithes, but there he receives them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives. 9 Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, 10 for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.

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This message has been edited by Faith, 09-15-2005 01:11 AM

I dunno, but maybe it's partly because that father had thousands upon thousands of descendants before he died. He couldn't even have known them all. And don't you think it's human nature to explore new turf? In those days there was plenty of new turf to explore.

Yeah, but only when people get too literal about it. I simply meant that all descendants are physically potential in the ancestors, and the Bible says that souls are too.

OK. But being "in the loins of" an ancestor doesn't read as figurative to me, especially when the text goes on to say that the unconceived descendant "paid tithes" when the ancestor did. Sounds like a spiritual reality being referenced there, so that the tithes really were in some sense paid by the unborn. Figurative would be more of an "as if" they were paid than I get out of the text.Perhaps there's something between figurative and literal? There's plenty in the Bible that IS figurative only I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

Not wrong about anything crucial in the Bible, which is what is implied by having the Holy Spirit.