David has touched on an important point below. If one depends on a simple
reading of Genesis, there has been no evening and morning since (day #7).
Ok literalists... What's wrong with this picture???
Genesis (even in Moses's day) was not meant to be a scientific text. This
line of reasoning strains all logic regardless of: Y.E.C., O.E.C., Design
and T.E. positions.
Best Wishes,
William - N6RKY
David Campbell wrote:
>
> >To accomodate evolution the early chapters of Genesis have to be
> >'interpreted', ie forced to say something different from what a simple
> >reading would convey. Have you not considered the problems this creates
> >for our understanding of the Gospel? It undoubtedly invites criticism of
> >the Bible as a whole and, inevitably, leads to liberalism.
>
> There are plenty of passages where a simple reading is wrong. Reading II
> Sam. 1:7-10 by itself, for example, would give a false picture of what
> happened, as is seen by reading I Sam. 31:3-6. Also, there are plenty of
> passages that, by a simple reading, would support a flat earth or a
> geocentric solar system. If we recognize that it was written in the
> language of the day and not as a scientific textbook (for which they had no
> need), these passages are not a problem. The distinction must be drawn
> between inquiring exactly what God intended for the text to convey and
> inquiring what can I get out of it and what do I want to ignore.
> Unwarranted claims that the Bible endorses some position are a threat to
> the credibility of Gospel, just as disregard for the Bible is a threat.
>
> >You do realise that these shaky propositions rest on an even shakier
> >foundation, viz macroevolution - which all TEs assume, but no one has
> >ever observed! The truth is much more straightforward: why not believe
> >the Lord when he says 'It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone,
> >but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God' (Mt.4:4)?
> >Those TEs who believe the Bible to be the Word of God surely have a
> >problem here!
>
> We do not know whether we have seen the formation of a new major kind of
> organisms or not. It takes too long for major groups to differentiate. An
> observer in the Carboniferous would have had no reason to regard the
> development of novel skull configurations (especially the development of
> temporal openings) as especially exciting, but one group eventually led to
> mammals, the other to reptiles and birds. We have to wait a few tens if
> not hundreds of millions of years to find out which lineages will diversify
> into a new major group, which will die out, and which will plod along with
> little change.
>
> David C.
-- William A. Wetzel icq-uin# 13983514 http://home.pacbell.net/n6rky http://www.qsl.net/n6rky mailto:n6rky@pacbell.net mailto:n6rky@qsl.net