Who to believe , Ham or Ross?

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I must stress to readers that infact this topic is not to do with me but rather the topic of what is meant by "creationist", and their differences, yet consistent agreement on biblical truths.

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Wondering just how consistent this agreement is if some of us believe the literal Biblical view of creation as occuring some 6000 years ago (5755 years ago by the Jewish calendar to be exact), others add a few thousand years, still others interpret the time factor to allow much greater time periods, even to agreeing with evolution theory completely. What are the different degrees of belief in the literal record of the Bible among creationists? What is the creationist consensus on the literal Biblical report of the Flood?

Just wondering what if any status the Bible has in your view. If it's just the work of human beings I would think it had no particular authority on anything myself. Is that your view as well?

No "inspired word of God" for you then I gather, but it is that for many of us. It's certainly not a science book nor does it present itself as anything of the kind, but it certainly does present itself as history: This happened, that happened, I did, he did, she did, they did, he said, in the days of such and such... etc.. And the parts that aren't presented as factual are obviously not intended to be factual -- such as the commandments and teachings, the psalms, the wisdom books, the prophets.To call something not factual that presents itself as factual, however, is to impose your own view on it, not take it as written, which is pretty insulting to the author, even if the author were merely a human being.Certainly "many" have all kinds of views of the Bible, but the mainstream of Christian believers over the centuries have regarded it as the inspired word of God and God doesn't lie about anything. It's not science but it does include statements of fact about events. If the Flood didn't happen then why should we believe that anything else the Bible reports happened either, say the captivity in Egypt and the Exodus, and the pillars of fire and cloud, and Moses getting the Commandments from God on Sinai, and the settling of the Promised Land, and the miracles of the Book of Judges and David's killing Goliath with a slingshot and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? All these things are described as historical occurrences.How do you decide what to believe and not believe? Do you at least believe the succession of the kings of Israel and Judah, the splitting of the nation into north and south, the captivity and absorption of the northern tribes into Assyria, the captivity of the southern tribes by Babylon, their return to Judea after 70 years under Ezra and Nehemiah and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple? LOTS of history up to this point. MOSTLY history. In the New Testament, the four gospels are presented as history, the Book of Acts is certainly history, then the rest is letters and instruction and the vision of John in Revelation. Which parts do you consider theology to be believed? Can you give a reference to where Augustine said this and preferably the exact quote itself as well? Augustine is a great pillar of the Church but he wasn't right about everything. I understand that he also changed his views over his lifetime of prodigious productivity (in which he produced so many books the most intrepid Augustine scholar doesn't expect to read it all), and that he sounded a lot more like an Evangelical Protestant in his later works and more like a Roman Catholic in his earlier ones. Nevertheless, I'd like to know exactly HOW he said what you say he said, in his own words if you can give the reference. God "wrote" Nature for sure, and if anybody could read it perfectly I wouldn't have a disagreement with you. You don't seem to notice that you are trusting in scientists rather than in God when you put Nature on a revelatory par with the Bible. You can read Nature that perfectly? Nothing scientists come up with is fallible (or falsifiable)? It's all perfect truth just as God would give? God Himself didn't give us any clear instructions on anything EXCEPT in the Bible. Theology means truth about God. So the Bible says God sent a worldwide Flood and saved only a few people and animals from it, but that's not the truth according to you. How can it be true theology then? God either did it or He didn't. It says He did. If we can't trust it about the nature and doings of God it's worthless as theology too.

OK, no point in arguing with you about any of it I see.

God communicates many many things in His word without dictating them word for word. The Trinity is not stated in so many words either but it is derived from a multitude of descriptions of God and Jesus and Holy Spirit. The 6000 year age is calculated from many many time clues given throughout the Bible. The time span from Adam to Noah can be calculated for instance using the exact numbers of years given for the generations in Genesis 5. The angel gave Daniel a formula for the years from his time to the coming of the Messiah. It also seems to me it should qualify as evidence that orthodox Jews count their calendar from the Creation, and the current year is 5755. I don't want to get into the horrific ugly battles these questions so often generate, but I'll venture an answer at least. Since scripture is regarded as God's word by the historical mainstream of Christians, and Moses, Peter, Paul, Josiah and Daniel among others spoke of what they had of scripture in their own times as given directly by God, and since Jesus Himself quoted from I believe all but one of the books of the Bible as authoritative, including Genesis, then there is every reason for a Christian to regard it as God's inspired word, and that means it can't be fallible. If it's fallible then it is not God's word, and I for one would not put my life in God's hands as it describes Him and tells me to do.Do you simply ignore the "all" in "All scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Timothy 3:16)? And do you just dismiss Peter as an imbecile when he says straight out that prophecy did NOT come by mere men, but that all the prophets spoke straight from God's own Spirit to them? "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake [as they were] moved by the Holy Ghost." (2Peter 1:21).And how could David have said the following if the Bible had any flaws in it?:"The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them Your servant is warned, And in keeping them there is great reward." (Psalm 19:7-11)God is perfect, God makes no mistakes. The Bible is His word. He initiated it, He watched over it. Anyone who trusts it completely will find better than gold in it.

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But it doesn't really matter if ANY of them are true. The lessons therein, what GOD wants us to learn and do is still true.

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Just curious. What lessons might we be expected to learn from a false tale about a gigantic Flood?A Flood in fact out which is said to have been saved only eight people, and from which the rest of the Bible proceeds assuming it to have been the case. What can we learn from this? That baldfaced lies are useful for instruction, even though the God they're about said "You shall not bear false witness"?

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The Map is not the Territory!

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No, but we do expect a good map to guide us where we want to go. The miserable excuse for a map you think the Bible is would get us lost at every turn.

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The Bible is not GOD!

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Nobody every said it is. It is HIS WORD, HIS REVELATION, HIS COMMUNICATION, AND GOD CANNOT LIE.

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GOD is not Christianity and Christianity is not GOD!

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Huh? I guess you mean he's also Allah and Krishna and so on? Funny then that he disagrees with them all so many times in the Bible. Got to choose one or none as they all contradict each other. Can't all be the same God.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-28-2005 05:53 PM

Interesting you don't say what exactly one learns. If the Flood is true we learn that sin has real dire consequences and that God won't put up with it forever. What do you learn if the Flood is just a story? That God doesn't really do such terrible things? No, but when it's not it's said plainly that it's not. The story of the Flood is told as straight history. Jesus' life is narrated as straight history also. When He tells a parable it is called a parable, there's no way to confuse it with the historical parts. Jesus referred to the days of Noah as real too, not as a parable.

Not inspired by the one true holy perfect God it can't. Nobody worships the book itself. It is taken by those who trust it as the most reliable information we have about the true God and His works. It is not like any other book ever written. We're not talking about something missing. We're talking about something considered to be false, and that means it can't be trusted as a whole especially considering that it presents itself as a whole, and that wholeness is affirmed by the writers I mentioned and many others and millions upon millions of believers back to Jesus. Well of course it matters. God is always true but we are spiritually flawed and have no sure ways of knowing anything at all about Him or our own condition or our destiny without His merciful revelation to us in His word. If we could understand the truth from His creation alone He wouldn't have needed to give us His word. There is NO way ANYBODY would ever have guessed from the Creation 99% of what the Bible reveals. Nobody would ever guess we are all sinners in need of salvation from Hell, for instance, and how that came about, but the Bible tells us how it happened and how to get out from under the condemnation we are all born into. What we get from natural religion on the other hand is that we're all good but could use a little improvement here and there, or that we're all good and we need to learn to trust ourselves better and that kind of soothing lie. What we get from the eastern religions is that we are under delusion (they are right about that much for sure!) and that our deeds result in either good or bad Karma (and that's pretty close to the Bible's teaching too!) but they treat all this as normal, though they pursue methods for avoiding the suffering of this normal life. Some who grow up under those beliefs have figured out that they can't get out from under the misery by any methods of their own, and are genuinely relieved to find out it's all due to sin and that God as revealed in the Bible has provided the way out of that suffering lifecycle. What we get from Islam is only that we have to earn our way to heaven, just like all the others, and some Muslims also come to recognize their own guilt before God and that they need help they can't get on their own merits if they are going to a good place after death. NONE of these religious systems has an inkling of the need of a Savior from our fundamental sinful nature and its consequences, although most of them at least recognize that we are hopelessly in arrears on the universal moral ledger. Some will say that God will forgive us anyway. But the Bible makes it clear that God can't and won't. He didn't drown the whole world because they were any worse sinners in those days than we are. The problem wasn't with the Law itself as given by God to Moses and written in the Torah, the problem with the Pharisees was their elaborations and embelleshments of the Law, their obsessive allegiance to the letter and failure to grasp its spirit. They had gone way beyond the written Law into complex legalistic burdens that God never intended, and they themselves couldn't even obey it, which is what made them "hypocrites." If only they would listen! It is sad. Of course not! It only means the 66-book canon of the Bible that was established by the Holy Spirit. There is every kind of wrong idea about the Bible, but I really don't know exactly what you are talking about. That's what I said. The Bible gives the numbers, the years, so that we can work it out. We couldn't do that if it didn't hold together historically. The Bible has wonderful depths. If it's there to be understood it's more about God and His ways we can learn if we want to. Scientists as a matter of fact have no direct permission from the Bible to do science, and some people have thought it was an offense to God to try to unravel His physical laws, but the first Western empiricists understood that the Bible shows a rational lawful material universe (an idea you don't get from any pagan philosophy) and that it is therefore subject to human study and understanding.

Which are? Nothing very serious, nothing we really have to worry about I guess, as God didn't REALLY destroy everybody in a Flood and doesn't REALLY intend to destroy the world again, right? There is not the SLIGHTEST clue that it is a parable. The ONLY way it is a parable in any sense at all is that God's parables are told in REAL LIVE events in REAL time. I have to support the fact that if you can't trust parts of a map it's no longer useful as a map? Allah has no Son, neither religion offers a Savior who died for our sins. That's enough for starters.Edited to correct a bunch of quote codes, and erased the record of my edits at the same time since they were accumulating to absurd proportions.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-28-2005 10:04 PM

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The story of the Flood is told as straight history.
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But, as has been pointed out to you some hundreds of times now, there's not a shred of evidence that indicates that it ever happened! Why do you think that might be?

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1) Because evos are blind to the tons of evidence and misinterpret it.
2) In a contest between God's word and Science, God wins.Both of which have been pointed out by me some hundreds of times now.Edited for grammar correction.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-28-2005 10:25 PM

Jude quotes one of the Apocryphal books. I don't think Jesus does. The Apocrypha are good teaching. That doesn't make them canon class.
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{Edited for grammar.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-28-2005 10:26 PM

There is no such thing as a perfect analogy but since you have gone there, I'll up the ante: The kind of altering of the Bible we're talking about is far beyond adding a fictional section of a city, if such a thing even occurs, which is a pretty weird idea I must say. By denying the reality of the Flood, the reality of the creation of the first man and woman with no ancestors, the reality of original sin, the reality of all the miracles from the parting of the red sea to the virgin birth, you are removing THE major centers of the Biblical map and detouring readers to the Slough of Despond, the Badlands and Nowheresville.

Well, you've found the god you like I guess. Can't argue with somebody's preferences, especially if they're invented out of thin air. What can I say? Enjoy.

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Well, it's the one found in the Bible and definitely the one Jesus spoke of.

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Just a FEW verses giving a different picture than the one you have. I could also quote all the passages where Jesus talks about Hell and the "Woe" passages. Or you can put "hell" into the search box at Blue Letter Bible and find them yourself.This is Jesus Himself describing the destruction of the flood and saying that His return will be accompanied by a similar destruction and this is not described as a fiction:
Matthew 24:37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.The following is a quote of John the Baptist:
John 3:35: The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. 36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."The Apostle Peter on the meaning of the flood, not hinting that it wasn't a real event
2Pe 2:5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth [person], a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
1Pe 3:20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.Then the nameless author of Hebrews gives the meaning of the Flood story, and doesn't call it a parable, describes it as actual history:
Hbr 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.The following is the Apostle John on Jesus when He returns:
Rev 19:15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.The following is a quote of John the Baptist:
John 3:35: The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. 36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

Oh the logic chopping. Give me an example of what you have in mind and I'll tell you what I think. And I mean an example of something that PRESENTS ITSELF as true history to be taken as true history. Don't just say "Koran" and leave it to me to tell you that it doesn't present itself as a history, but as a compilation of teachings.