In response to my comment "I don't quite agree that there is no difference
[between a floating ax head and a 6-day creation]. There is no physical
evidence left of a floating ax head, " Bill Payne writes
"Ah, but there is. We have a word picture etched into the inerrant Word.
This picture of the floating axhead is as good as any fossil (to a
believer)."
This is, IMHO, playing with words. What I meant to say that we don't have
the ax head itself (I'm not for a moment wishing we had the ax head; au
contraire, it's the absence of the ax head that makes believing the story
easy). If God wanted the ax head to float to show His power, He could do
it. Likewise, if Jesus wanted to show His power by turning water into wine,
He could do it. Again, perhaps fortunately, we don't have any of that wine
to inspect, analyze, taste, etc. Come to think of it, IHMO, making an ax
head float or turning water into wine is 'small potatoes' to raising Lazarus
from the dead. I have no problems with any of these miracles. Of course,
the 'ultimate' miracle is Christ Himself being raised from the dead. Without
that fact, all discussions in this forum would become irrelevant.
To my comment, "... but there is ample physical evidence in God's general
revelation that strongly suggests that it took longer than 6000 years for
the earth to get to the stage we find it in today," Bill replies with:
"There is at least one line of evidence where I agree with you. I sort of
glaze over when I try to understand radioactive dating, magnetic reversals,
heat flow from batholiths, etc., when used to measure time - due to the
possible unknown variables that may affect the calculations. However, there
is one clean measure of time, which as far as I can see, is irrefutable for
YEC."
He then goes on about comets. I'm not an astronomer, and won't comment on
Bill's point re comets. To me, radiometric dating, the Oklo phenomenon, the
magnetic signatures of the mid-Atlantic ridge and other areas where tectonic
plates diverge, form such a coherent picture of an old earth, that fitting
the data to a young earth model (to me, at least) becomes tantamount to
forcing pieces into a jigsaw puzzle where they don't fit.
In response to my comment "I could even accept the concept of a god who
created the earth and, with it, evidence that would strongly suggest a very
old earth, just to tempt believers, but, somehow, I can't imagine the God of
the Bible doing
that," Bill replies,
"I understand, but if He said He created it a short time ago, even though it
looks old, if we accept His Word then we should not be tempted to believe it
is old. Example: the wine of Cana in John 2."
I don't see where it says in the Bible that God created "it" "a short time
ago." All it says is that God created the heavens and the earth "in the
beginning" and this is followed by a more detailed description of six days
of activities, culminating in the creation of man. .
I continued with "Even if one accepts a 6-day "flurry of creation" as
described in Genesis 1, there's the flood to deal with. It occurred well
after creation and well after considerable human activity." Bill responds
with
"Yes, and from my view, there is data to support both YEC and OEC. We have
discussed coal seams of the eastern US, which I now maintain more strongly
than I did two or three years ago are the result of the deposition of
organics transported by water rather than buried in situ from swamps. The
only possible explanation I can envision consistent with the data is
catastrophic erosion of the organics and deposition from floating mats of
vegetation."
Bill, can you date that "catastrophic erosion" and is it consistent with a
catastrophic flooding event worldwide? Of course, to be consistent with
Genesis, this event had to be a one-time event of short duration. If you do
date it, what techniques do you use and how are these different from the
dating techniques that are used in geochronology?
Seems to me that we've gone around this mulberry bush a number of times now.
;-)
Chuck Vandergraaf
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 09 2001 - 11:07:01 EST