re: Impressive support for Intelligent Design

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He was addressing acts by man, thus relating to days for man, not God.

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Genesis is believed to be written by the same author, and there is no indication that there was a different time scale in mind between chapter 1 and the rest of the book.

In fact, Christians have understood the entire Pentateuch to have been written by Moses, including both Genesis and Exodus. The 10 commandments in Ex. 20 refer back to the creation account as a pattern for the Sabbath day in the 4th commandment. There, again, is no indication that there is a different time scale in mind.

Likewise for Jesus, when He points back to the first chapters of Genesis to say that marriage was created "from the beginning" (Mat. 19), which cannot refer to a time millions of years after the beginning.

Again, it seems you are interpreting the creation account selectively from the rest of the Bible, using verses that aren't referring to how God communicates time to us as proof that He communicated time differently to us in the first couple books of the Bible, but not elsewhere. A plain reading of the Bible will not get anyone to your interpretation without first assuming long ages.

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There is no "strangely" to it. Creation was set in terms of God's time, not man's.

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It's pretty strange that the only time the word "day" is in dispute is in the first chapter or two of the Bible, even though there is no indication that the time frame is any different from any other standard 24-hour day, given the other textual markers.

There is no "morning", "evening", or "first day" with God outside of time. There are those things within time, which is what God communicated to us in Genesis chapter 1. Nowhere else in the Bible are those markers used for any other definition of a "day" than a 24-hour span of time.

The onus is on you to prove that the Scriptures intended to mean something other than 24-hours given the textual evidence. I don't believe you can prove it without first assuming it means something else due to extra-biblical beliefs and assumptions.

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So we both have elements in which verses seem to contradict our belief.

In your case, your interpretation also contradicts natural law, with the basis being God's covenant was not a covenant.

In my case, there is no contradiction with natural law. There is no contradiction with God's covenant, and there are multiple Biblical explanations provided as to what time means for God vs man.

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There is no contradiction in my belief about the verse. I explained how that is the case, because God isn't talking about violating natural law through miraculous intervention. Your misunderstanding and misapplication of the verse is what makes you think there is a contradiction. If you compare it to the rest of Scripture, there is no issue, but it's quite obvious that God is talking about His sovereign power over the universe rather than getting particular about "laws" that the Israelites wouldn't have known about.

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No, as I've explained to you in multiple posts. My contention is when God chose to perform miracles there was always an explanation issued. Always! ... Except for the occasion when man was set to inhabit Earth <150hrs after Earth's formation, if one believes that, or the occasion of mystical instantaneous speciation, etc.

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God explained what He did and why. The rest of the Scriptures talk about how He created by the word of His power and for His glory. There was no need for God to provide any particular explanation for why the world was created as it was in Genesis. There also isn't a need for God to provide such an explanation in order to believe that the timing was the same from the human perspective. I've already touched on the markers that show that the time was not being described differently in the first few chapters.

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You are referring to your belief as if it is fact. It is not.

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I explained to you the interpretation of the text based on its context, and provided argumentation as to why your interpretation is wrong. While I believe my interpretation is correct for the already-mentioned reasons, I don't personally care if you call it a "fact" or not. I believe it's true, and you need to provide a more compelling reason for a different biblical interpretation than "it contradicts what we observe in nature". That is not the standard for interpretation of the Bible.

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To believe that, one has to assume the beauty and consistency of math, physics, chemistry, etc are not natural laws set forth by God, and are not referenced in the Bible. I do not believe that for a second.

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Not at all. Those "laws" are law-like precisely because they come from the constancy of God's upholding the universe. However, since God is the one who makes the laws to be laws, He also has the prerogative to temporarily and at times violate those laws for His own purposes.

For instance, if the Bible is correct about the new Heavens and the new Earth and the resurrection of the dead on judgement day, then there will necessarily be stoppage of the 2nd law of thermodynamics as there will no longer be the continual tendency toward increasing entropy or disorder. That isn't violating any covenant that God made with Himself.

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Explain the fossils on Everest.
... But a word of caution before you do.

Even if you assume the volume of the oceans was temporarily increased multi-fold to account for a 29,000ft increase in sea level, even if you somehow assume that would not ruin every pool of fresh water on the planet, the receding waters would not result in fish fossils on mountaintops. As the waters receded, fish would simply swim within the remaining water, just as they do with the ebb and flow of tides. They'd not be somehow stuck to the steep slopes of a mountain, and with different species stranded accordant to stratified layers descending the Himalayas.

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The typical YEC response is that Mt. Everest wasn't always so high, but that it was much lower during the flood and covered with sediment deposition where sea animals were buried and fossilized, with rapid growth afterwards due to tectonic activity.

You should be more careful to at least know who you're talking to before judging their spirit.

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You should be more careful to at least know who you're talking to before judging their spirit

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Forgive me, then. I've been responding to about a dozen posts, getting caught up.

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Your misunderstanding and misapplication of the verse

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Exactly the words used against Galileo. Perfectly done.

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Nowhere else in the Bible are those markers used for any other definition of a "day" than a 24-hour span of time.

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Except in MULTIPLE verses????

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There is no contradiction in my belief about the verse.

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Except your one horrible contradiction regarding the verse.

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The onus is on you to prove that the Scriptures intended to mean something other than 24-hours

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I've done that!

Now the onus is on you to 'prove' God's covenant was ever breached without explanation. i.e., God lied.

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Can you show me any other instances where those verses apply the way you claim they do in Genesis 1?

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They apply anytime the Biblical reference is to a timescape in which man could not exist, namely those involving heaven and the pre-Adamite period.

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So how about sticking with AUTHORSHIP rather than contributions of a scribe?
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Apparently I have to go over the basics of the Christian faith. OK.

God revealed truth to Moses and commanded Him to write down that truth so that it would be preserved for God’s people going forward. Moses wrote that revelation down as he was “carried along” by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21), using his own writing style

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Casting aside your "basics of the Christian Faith" aspersion regarding Moses (aka Musa), the point is Moses, the scribe, would have no understanding of differences in mortal vs immortal time construct. Nor would God have had a way to accurately convey Creation in actual time terms, organized into periods. E.g., There was no term known to Moses for a million, or a billion, or a vast subeternal timescale. As those details were unimportant in terms of messaging beyond the Creation allegory, they were neither provided, nor emphasized.

If you believe the Genesis account of Creation was intended to be literally and scientifically accurate though, it raises far more questions than just the timescape. For starters, there is the matter of a vaulted space separating the waters. The vaulted space is roofed with a firmament dome securing the space amongst the waters. Midway through Creation, the sun and moon got struck into the firmament. Space exploration would have been a dubious precept given the firmament holding back waters.

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You really do not understand what you are saying, do you?

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Yes, I do.

God created the universe and upholds it by the word of His power. This means He sustained and maintains the universe by His power through natural laws and constants. However, as creator, God has the ability to interact with His creation as He wants. An axe head floating on water is a miracle and it violates natural laws. The Red Sea parting is a miracle and it violates natural laws. Healing the blind, deaf, mute, and raising the dead through a spiritual power of healing are miraculous acts that violate our experience and observation in nature.

This violation of nature by God is not a moral violation, as if He broke some promise or moral law in doing so, so He is free to act as He pleases. That's exactly what it means for God to be sovereign over all His creation. Christianity doesn't have a deistic god that created everything and wound up the universe like a clock and let it tick by on its own.

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They apply anytime the Biblical reference is to a timescape in which man could not exist, namely those involving heaven and the pre-Adamite period.

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Can you provide another example other than Genesis 1 from the Scriptures? Can you also provide the source for that rule you are referencing?

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Casting aside your "basics of the Christian Faith" aspersion regarding Moses (aka Musa), the point is Moses, the scribe, would have no understanding of differences in mortal vs immortal time construct. Nor would God have had a way to accurately convey Creation in actual time terms, organized into periods. E.g., There was no term known to Moses for a million, or a billion, or a vast subeternal timescale. As those details were unimportant in terms of messaging beyond the Creation allegory, they were neither provided, nor emphasized.

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There is no concept of mortal vs immortal time construct in the Bible. There is only time (that we observe) and God being outside of time. Both concepts are clearly communicated in the Bible. You keep referring to a couple of verses that explain that God is outside of time, so it's not like there was a lack of conceptualization of what that could look like. David was only about 400-500 years removed from Moses, after all.

There were words that could have been used to describe longer periods of time, even if those longer periods weren't understood as millions or billions of years. "Days" (plural) could have been used to describe one "day" of creation. There are multiple Hebrew words that could also represent long periods of time, like Olam (eternity, age, or long duration), Dor (generation, meaning a long time), Zman (time, itself, which could be a long time), Shanah (a year, or long period of time), and Tekufah (an epoch, period, or an interval of time).

But going back to my argument: it wasn't just the use of the word yom (day), but how it was used, with a morning, evening, and a number associated with it. In addition, Moses understood that to be the pattern for the work week, including a sabbath rest, as God rested on the 7th day of creation.

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If you believe the Genesis account of Creation was intended to be literally and scientifically accurate though, it raises far more questions than just the timescape. For starters, there is the matter of a vaulted space separating the waters. The vaulted space is roofed with a firmament dome securing the space amongst the waters. Midway through Creation, the sun and moon got struck into the firmament. Space exploration would have been a dubious precept given the firmament holding back waters.

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I don't think there is a necessary interpretation of the sky as a hard dome, even if the word used can lead to such an interpretation, but I'd like to finish our discussion on the age of the earth before moving on to another topic. You still haven't engaged with my arguments.

Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, bolstering origin-of-life theories:

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All the essential ingredients to make the DNA and RNA underpinning life on Earth have been discovered in samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu, scientists said Monday.

The discovery comes after these building blocks of life were detected on another asteroid called Bennu, suggesting they are abundant throughout the solar system.

One longstanding theory is that life first began on Earth when asteroids carrying fundamental elements crashed into our planet long ago.

The asteroids that hurtle through our solar system give scientists a rare chance to study this possibility.

In 2014, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 blasted off on a 300-million-kilometer (185-million-mile) mission to land on Ryugu, a 900-meter-wide (2,950-feet-wide) asteroid.

It successfully managed to collect two samples of rocks weighing 5.4 grams (under a fifth of an ounce) each and bring them back to Earth in 2020.

Research in 2023 showed that these samples contained uracil, which is one of the four bases that make up RNA.

While DNA, the famed double helix, functions as a genetic blueprint, single-strand RNA is an all-important messenger, converting the instructions contained in DNA for implementation.

On Monday, a new study by a Japanese team of researchers in Nature Astronomy demonstrated that the samples contained all the "nucleobases" for both DNA and RNA.

These included uracil as well as adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.

This "does not mean that life existed on Ryugu," the study's lead author, Toshiki Koga, told AFP.

"Instead, their presence indicates that primitive asteroids could produce and preserve molecules that are important for the chemistry related to the origin of life," added the biochemist from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

The discovery also "demonstrates their widespread presence throughout the solar system and reinforces the hypothesis that carbonaceous asteroids contributed to the prebiotic chemical inventory of early Earth," according to the study.

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LINK


so there is your sensible explanation for our origin....slightly different from what's descibe in your fictional Bible, hate to tell ya

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asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

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All DNA and RNA building blocks? ..... bullshite!

Regardless, assuming asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, the OBVIOUS QUESTION is "HOW?"