Why don't we hear more about the assumption of uniformity as a way to understand dating issues?
It seems obvious that the laws of this earth have changed since Eden . Laws today revolve around death and the cycle from decay to life. In Eden there was no decay, no death. There was no rain until the flood. The Bible indicates that the earth is suffering under three curses, which I interpret as three times God changed fundamental laws. If that is the case there is no way that we can extrapolate back to origins with any certainty. Given today's laws millions of years are probably accurage. But if we grant that the fundamental laws have changed this would throw in question the results from today's research.
So why do we argue and try and resolve the difficulties that science brings to the debate? Let's just agree with them given their assumptions but at the same time say, "We come with a different set of assumptions therefore we will come to a different set of conclusions." It is on the level of assumptions that we should begin the debate. What do you think?
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Why does the debate even matter. Are we trying to prove that God exists or that our scientists are smarter than their scientists. Scientists are notorisely wrong, inconsistant and not even of one opinion when given the same set of facts. The debate is just a distraction. Those that accept the bibical account of creation do not need any further evidence that God is the Creator and those that do not believe the account will not come to an acceptance of God based on any overwhelming evidence either way in this regard. We will have all eternity to investigate this issue once Jesus has come. Until then we are talking about nothing more than assumptions, speculation, and fancy guesswork.
Even with that said it is still interesting to guess how God might have done it all.
" In Eden there was no decay, no death. There was no rain until the flood."
Indeed this is what it comes down to, assumptions. The Genesis story is talking about the death of human beings, it says nothing of there being no death of any variety, but what happens to those cells that were once a pea that a person were to have eaten in Eden. Did they not die, cease to exist as a pea to be digested for their nutrients. Should we also just assume there was not pea shell discarded and broken down by the micro-organisms?
The Genesis account has left us with stories and a whole lot of room for our assumptions such as the idea that there had been no rain until the flood. That whole assumptions is based upon a verse that writes of the pre-creation world. But the assumption carries so much weight that it is carried forward and even some have used that assumption doctrinally.
So what we are dealing with is assumptions, those based upon what our traditions reads into Genesis and those that science makes by assuming that natural laws are consistent through time. It seems to me whatever weak points science's assumptions do have they have a whole lot more reason for their assumptions.
Neither side may ever understand creation but then neither side has all the facts either as Genesis is not really a fact based kind of book.
This is kind of a fun topic that the pastor has introduced because of all the unknown or even unknowable information that we have not yet discovered. In that spirit I was wondering if there would be toilets in the new earth. Given what we know about human needs can we assume that they were the same in the time of Adam before sin. If so, where would God have kept the cesspools, would there have been bad germs or stinky places? Interesting to speculate on, intriguing guesswork because of all the possibilities, but we really do not know what has not been revealed to us. We do not know the extent of the physical changes, for instance, made to man’s body after sin.
I really appreciate the intellectual work of those seeking to find these answers to the story of creation. God has invited us to discover His secrets hidden in nature but I do not think that we need to engage in a debate with others about the fact of whether creation happened as a special act of God or just happened. The answer will not convert one soul. What will convert a soul is the witness of the life of the tes
I know that the God I have gotten to know over my life has a wicked sense of humor. I can just see Him looking down at humans trying to figure these things out and laughing! I'm sure he enjoys hearing the debates and the conclusions that we come up with. He smiles because He knows in the heaven He will be able to correct our misconceptions and personallty teach us how things really are!
I so look forward to that day!
Brie
I completely agree; the evolution debate does revolve around assumptions of uniformity. The assumptions that scientists make are based on current observations of geology, biology and astronomy. Just as eyeglasses make distant objects look clearer to a nearsighted person, the bible is our eyeglasses in which distant (time) objects look clearer.
Take for instance the geologist's theory on how the Grand Canyon was made versus the way Creationists believes. For the geologists, they see how a river takes many years to carve a gully out of a rock formation, so they rationalize that it must have taken the Colorado River millions of years to carve out the huge Grand Canyon. On the other hand, the Bible speaks of a huge flood, so Creationist says it must have been created in days by a great deluge of rescinding flood waters.
So from each side’s perspective, the other must seam naive. The scientist sees the Creationist to be deniers of observable truth, while the Creationist sees the scientist to be deniers of the observable power of God. The humorous thing is that scientific discovery is proving more and more evidence of the truth contained in the Bible; it is just that they don’t see it.
Going back to the “creation” of the Grand Canyon, can science substantiate the claim that it couldn’t have been created in days instead of millennia? If you travel up to Washington State and ask a geologist how many millennia it took to create the geologically unique and much larger Scablands, they would tell you that it didn’t take millennia but only a single day. It is their belief that a “catastrophic deluge tore through the Pacific Northwest when a Glacial Lake Missoula’s ice dam gave way” creating among other things, huge canyons.
I could go on with other instances of science unintentionally proving biblical base theories, but when it comes down to observable truth versus the observable power of God, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 1:14)
About the Scablands see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/megaflood/
About where the flood waters could have come from and where they went, see http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,255486,00.html
Great questions, Pastor Greg. I do not have all the answers. I have no issue with the universe being 16 billions years old. I have no issue with what astronomers find. It seems clear that some laws must have changed regarding our earth system. How far a field that affected other planets I cannot say. The Bible says that death is an enemy, an intruder, while evolution says that death is the natural way life progresses. The Bible says that in the New Earth there will be no more death, no more destruction, no more deadly weather patterns. It seems clear to me that laws must change for that to happen. This is why I interpret science through the Bible for without the Bible I would not know about the origin of sin, the destruction of God's attempt to create a perfect world, the need for a savior, and why the world is in the mess that it is in today.
Macro evolution is so contrary to what the bible teaches that I have to decide whether general revelation informs special revelation or whether special revelation informs general revelation.
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