Re: [asa] A parable of three investors

On 10/28/06, Glenn Morton <glennmorton@entouch.net> wrote:
>
> I just find it so difficult to understand why people prefer the Bible to
> be
> false to having at least a hope that it contains some history--real
> history.
> As I said to Iain in the discussion about Yeled in Chapter 5. Atheists too
> want the Bible to be false. For us to play their game is insanity. Like
> Henry or Bob

Glenn,

You are studiously ignoring the point I'm trying to make. Please make some
attempt to answer it and stop making insulting suggestions that I'd "prefer
the bible to be false". If you want Adam to be 2.5 Million years ago or
whatever then YOU are making the figures in the genealogies false (or as I
would put it, not literally true), so really this is the pot calling the
kettle black.

Let's go through the whole argument again.

130 years after Adam's birth, he becomes the father of (ancestor of) Seth.
It then says he went on to live another 800 years. How does one interpret
these figures?

(1) As literally true. Adam got to age 130 and then fathered a child and
called him Seth. This pattern leads to the 4000 BC time for the birth of
Adam.

(2) So we can't believe a 130 year old could father a child (probably not
even be alive as the commonly understood life span in those days was 40
years. So there are gaps in the genealogy that account for the 130 years.
In other words, 130 years after Adam was born, Seth was born to one of
Adam's descendents. This allows for a believable generation time. However,
it still means the timescale gives 4000 BC.

(3) 130 years after Adam was born, an unnamed descendent of Adam was the
father of another unnamed descendent, whose distant descendent was Seth. To
give a millions of years timescale, this would be a span of around 1000
generations.

Option (3) is the only one that allows the timescale to be stretched out to
the distance you want it to be. But option (3) seems ludicrous. What is
the point of indicating that 130 years after Adam's birth an unnamed
descendent had an unnamed son that several hundred generations later was
Great-great- .... (several hundred times repeated) grandfather to Seth.
What on earth is the significance of quoting an exact figure of 130 years?
And what is the significance of the remaining 800 years of Adam's "life"?

None of this (it appears to me) makes any sense if you want Adam to be
millions of years back. The only option that makes any sense of the figures
and what we know of lifespans is (2). And that puts Adam back at 4000 BC.

Furthermore, the "gap" in genealogy theory can't apply to Noah (500 when
became father of Ham Shem and Japeth). They can't be distant descendents as
they interact with Noah after the Flood (Gen 9).

Please stop ignoring my points, accusing me unfairly of "preferring the
bible to be false" and explain how you can reconcile your theories with the
data given in the genealogies?

(For my part I'm inclined to think the numbers are symbolic (e.g. 777) and
don't correspond to actual timespans, but I'm guessing you're going to say
that means they're "false").

Iain

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Received on Sun Oct 29 17:07:57 2006