Comment on An appeal to our leadership by Erik.
@Carl: You have said the following incompatible things:
My point is that a literal plain-text interpretation of Genesis 1-11 is not compatible with the physical evidence.
…
My understanding of Adventism is that our deepest value is a relentless search for truth. I will never accept that my search for truth should be limited by adherence to a creed. I stick around to encourage others who are also searching.
If your “search for truth” just took you away from the Source of truth, and further, caused you to infer that God may have been deceitful in His manner of creation…
If God created the earth in a way that makes it impossible to trust our senses and interpret the evidence, then he is a deceiver.
…then it is clear that your epistemology and axiology are in conflict, or that you are but a woolly wolf. If your epistemology and axiology do not align, it is because you have not yet made a proper faith choice.
Those of us who have faith in God, believe His Word to be true. It has never failed me yet. Genesis is fully in agreement with true science, notwithstanding your wishful thinking to the contrary. If you put your faith in wisdom of man (“scientific” theories), then you place yourself in another category. But you cannot properly hang on to both, for they are in conflict.
There are many scientific theories. However, there are many possibilities beyond those theories…things that scientists simply haven’t come up with yet. It is hard to vision what something was like if it no longer exists. Science cannot know about those portions of the past which are unobservable today. If science cannot offer a reasonable explanation of the historical record given in the Bible, perhaps they have not spent adequate time attempting to do so. To be sure, most scientists today are purposefully rejecting both God and the Bible, and wish to scoff at those who have faith in them. (A cursory view of some online forums yields ample evidence of this.)
While there are many possibilities for the means which God used to cause the flood, I have thought it quite probable that a very large meteor or an asteroid collided with the earth and tilted it on its axis. This would have simultaneously caused several things: 1) The layer of water in the upper atmosphere would have been disrupted and thrown out of its course, bringing it down; 2) the underground currents of water, with all of their natural momentum, would have burst up out of their channels, breaking through the earth’s crust; and 3) earthquakes would have added to the chaos and set up shockwaves that would weaken the inner framework of the earth and prepare it for a period of tectonic movement.
Consider that prior to the flood, the people never experienced rain. The earth had a sort of underground plumbing which watered the earth, and rocks were not seen above ground, but were supporting the earth from below its surface. These details have come from the pen of inspiration. It was a vastly different earth back then, and yet no modern “scientific” theory comes anywhere close to conceptualizing such a state. Given that “science” is well off this path, scientists cannot be expected to come up with anything close to the Bible record. They are not trying to do so. Why should they? If they proved God’s existence, they would have to face their own guilty consciences.
Erik
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Erik Also Commented
An appeal to our leadership
I see plenty of stars and planets at night, how about you? “The heavens declare the glory of God…” Were they all made 6000 years ago according to you? (You won’t find it in the Bible or Ellen White.)
Erik
An appeal to our leadership
Jonathan,
Have I ever said that our earth never went through a period of nothingness? No. You pointed out Heb. 11:3. I pointed out that it is speaking in the context of all worlds created by God, and did not specify a time. You said you were only talking about our world. Perhaps so, but then use a different text.
I agree with you, as I have pointed out before, that all of God’s creation has come from nothingness. However, I do not see any dates given in scripture for this. Heb. 11:3 is in the universal context. You wish to apply it to our global context. Can you, who are advocating “proper exegesis” to me, support this?
Erik
An appeal to our leadership
Bob, quite true. This website exists because of non-Biblical bases for scientific beliefs (a form of religion, actually, though most evolutionists do not recognize the degree to which they depend on “faith” to frame up their beliefs).
Regarding the “gap” you mentioned, and the water vs. land concepts, there is an interesting statement by Mrs. White where she indicates both forms were present when God started His work of Creation.
In the work of creation, when the dawn of the first day broke, and the heavens and the earth, by the call of infinite power, came out of darkness; responsive to the rising light, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” {ST, January 8, 1880 par. 1}
So not only the water was present in that darkness, but apparently there was also the substance of both heaven and earth. As it puts it in Genesis 1:2, however, these had not yet been formed (without form). They are not formed until God works upon them in Days 2 and 3.
Certainly, however, any truly Bible-based perspective would be accepted at LSU (apart from twisting it into error). But to cast out whole portions of Scripture and of Ellen White as being irrelevant, inaccurate, or simply a fiction with a nice moral is…traitorous.
Erik
Recent Comments by Erik
CCC Requests “Decisive and Conclusive Resolution” from LSU
Dear Adventist in High School,
The devil frequently mixes just a small amount of error in with a larger amount of truth. This is sufficient to accomplish his purposes. He does not need to undermine every truth, only some select truths. The Bible tells us how to know whether or not we can accept something as pure and true: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). If what they say, even a part of it, does not agree with scripture, even the rest of what they have said is of no value according to this.
We have a saying in English that goes something like this:
A barrel full of sewage with one tablespoon of wine is sewage.
A barrel full of wine with one tablespoon of sewage is sewage.
It does not matter how much “wine” there may be with that sewage, the sewage has perverted the entirety.
Consider how entirely the “sewage” has perverted truth at LSU, given that one of the professors’ statements relegated Mrs. White to “the lunatic fringe” for “the absolute necessity of believing that the only way a creator God could do things is by speaking them into existence a few thousand years ago.” Mrs. White clearly informed us that Creation week was six literal days about six thousand years ago, and further, she has told us that God was not dependent upon pre-existing matter and could but speak them into existence. Yet all of that flies in the face of those who wish to believe their own opinions to be superior to inspiration, doesn’t it? It makes perfect sense that if they believe we evolved from apes, they could not believe what Ellen White taught was true.
Nay, the evolutionist “sewage” has defiled the pure and true at LSU, and its effect permeates the remaining departments of the university. One cannot contain such a far-reaching apostasy as this within a single corner or department of the university. Indeed, we have been given clear evidences that the theologians at the university have also been affected. Whither goes the biology department, and then the theology department, thither goes the whole school.
Erik
Mrs. White: “Don’t send your children to…”
“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” (Romans 8:14)
“That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.” (Philippians 2:15)
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:1-2)
We are the sons of God if we receive Christ and follow Him. The line of Seth did this, and were, therefore, called the sons of God. Cain’s descendants did not follow God, and were not called His sons.
Erik
Mrs. White: “Don’t send your children to…”
The descendants of Seth were called the sons of God–the descendants of Cain, the sons of men. As the sons of God mingled with the sons of men, they became corrupt, and by intermarriage with them, lost, through the influence of their wives, their peculiar, holy character, and united with the sons of Cain in their idolatry. Many cast aside the fear of God, and trampled upon his commandments. But there were a few who did righteousness, who feared and honored their Creator. Noah and his family were among the righteous few. {3SG 60.2}
After the translation of Enoch to heaven, the sons of men that were set against the worship of God were drawing away the sons of God. There were two parties in the world then, and there always will be. The worshipers of God called themselves the sons of God. The descendants of Seth went up into the mountains and there made themselves homes separate from the sons of Cain. Here in their mountainous homes they thought to preserve themselves from the prevailing wickedness and idolatry of the descendants of Cain. But after the exhortations and the influence of Enoch were removed from them, they commenced to unite with the descendants of Cain. {CTr 39.2}
That should help clarify the identity of the “sons of God.”
Erik
Mrs. White: “Don’t send your children to…”
It does our position no service to claim too much or to base too much on such large leaps into very thin air… claiming that this or that animal within the fossil record was the clear result of human genetic manipulation before the flood and for that reason was not saved on the Ark….
Sean,
It seems like Ellen White said “Every species of animals which God had created was preserved in the ark” (1 SP 78.2). Therefore, any species which became extinct at the time of the flood must necessarily have come about via amalgamation. That seems fairly clear. So we know where T-Rex came from, right?
Erik
Mrs. White: “Don’t send your children to…”
David,
Your logic is sound regarding what amalgamation cannot be properly applied to. Such applications as forbid certain inter-human marriages are racist, as you have said, and as I have attempted to express. I almost fully agree with your reasoning on this. However, I will differ slightly on one point, and that is that since we do not know how the amalgamations occurred, we cannot rule out the possibility of men tinkering with plant, animal, and human genetics by means of cross-breeding (as opposed to a more “laboratory” approach). They were very intelligent. Perhaps they knew ways of intermixing species which we would never guess could be mixed with any survivable result, including humans with animals.
So, on the lighter side, if evolutionists like to think they have descended from apes…maybe we should give them a fair hearing (and a DNA test)!
Erik
