Does the "clear meaning" of the scriptures trump science?

This entire thread is completely irrelevant to modern day YECs.

Here is where you as a Bible revisionist and evolutionist will try and draw a parallel with Galileo and the Catholic church. And here you will fail because in Galileo’s day there was no real Bible text that heliocentrism was trying to alter or overturn. In short, the Catholic elites only had inferences, and the Catholic view was wrong.

So what point are you trying to make? Specifically, what text is YEC violating?

You would be wrong:

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How? Why?

If a “Bible revisionist” is someone who rejects various traditions which some people favor, how is that being a “revisionist”? Am I revising the Bible or revising a man-made tradition which often deviates from what the Bible states (or claims as “Biblical” that which the Bible doesn’t address even though the Bible is silent on the claim?)

And here you will fail because in our day there is no Bible text that evolutionary biology is trying to alter or overturn.

YEC ministries promote various “inferences” and those views are demonstrably wrong about the historical record God has provided in his creation.

I asked a question in launching this thread. I asked an additional question about whether denying heliocentrism is all that different from denying evolutionary processes, geology, physics, and astronomy. I’m interested in your answers so that I can understand that position. I’m not trying to score points for a “side.”

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And I answered this question, but you still fail to post my response. Why? These Scriptures are far too clear to be equivocal and somehow include your evolutionary paradigm

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,” Gen 1:26

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Gen 2:7

If you posted a response which was deleted, it was not deleted by me—and I never saw that response.

Are you sure? Their meaning has been debated within the church for centuries. Indeed, one of the frustrations I hear regularly from seminary students and even experienced pastors is that theologians have yet to provide a clear description of what the Imago Dei (Image of God) means.

The Bible says that humans and all other animals are made from dust (aka soil.) Indeed, the Bible and modern science agree on that. Every person who ever lived was made from dust.

It sounds like you have assumed what has been depicted (or implied) in various Hollywood movies: That formed from the dust describes hands molding clay into a shape—and then some sort of divine mouth-to-mouth resuscitation process. I think that is a actually beautiful imagery but is not the only way theologians have understood the passage. Does God have literal lungs and respiratory anatomy such that he literally breathed life into HAADAM? Or is that simply a literary means of describing the gift of life?

The Bible speaks of NEPHESH animals having “the breath of life”. Does that mean that God simply breathed into them also? Ecclesiastes says that animals were made from dust. So does that mean that they were formed similarly to HAADAM?

Once again you are assuming that your tradition-based interpretation is the only “clear” one.

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Flood Geology, Again

A post was merged into an existing topic: Flood Geology, Again

So God is basically shaped like a primate? God is a bipedal mammal. Right? If that’s not what that means(I of course expect you to disagree), tell me what you think it means and tell me how you know that is what it means.

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The literal interpretation of this is that God picked up dust from ground he was standing on, sqeezed it into the shape of a man, held the man-shaped clump of dust up to his mouth and literally blew the contents of his lungs into the nostrils of the lump of dust, and then this made the dust become alive.

How much of a literalist are you, and how sure are you your degree of literalism is correct? If you think I’m wrong about what that is supposed to mean, please describe how you envision it is to be correctly understood(and again, how you know that is the correct meaning).

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Flood Geology, Again

Good question. After all, if God literally breathed into HAADAM, that implies God has respiratory anatomy—and that stands in contradiction to scriptures which claim that God is a transcendent spirit and not a biological organism. (Indeed, does such a “literal” interpretation run the risk of blaspheming God by reducing him to something far less than he is? Yes, that is a question and not a claim.)

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Of course, one might speculate that when God created Adam, He literally took human form like He is thought to have done when He was Jesus. Then God’s creation of Adam in his own image implies that is why our species looks the way it does.

Now this interpretation is of course compatible with a literal interpretation of scripture. But you know, how much are we allowed to read into things the Bible doesn’t say?(It doesn’t say in what sense “in the image of” or “our likeness” is supposed to be understood, so either way you end up having to read something into it that it doesn’t literally say). It doesn’t say this isn’t how it happened. So why can’t I understand it this way? By what right is this perhaps blasphemous, and some other understanding is not?

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All you need is a website, a Youtube channel, and some snappy memes. (A web-store selling dismissive bumper stickers and T-shirts comes next.)

If you can start a daily radio spot or a Saturday talk show podcast, you are really set to go!

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Then you are not being very clear. What, then, is the deception and who is it coming from?

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Yep! If God created logic and reason, He did create me with a mind to figure out the ways in which science may be right and wrong. As @John_Harshman says, the Bible as inspired is not hard to understand…(except if you do not believe - that “fall into sin” part) :wink: I like John; he holds Christians to consistency.

How does that apodosis (the then-clause) logically follow from that protasis (the if-clause?) Seems like a giant leap to me. Not logical at all. (And I know that because God created logic and reason, and he created me with a mind to figure out the ways in which some claims on PS may be right and wrong.)

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This, I suppose, is what I meant:
Spiritual wisdom gives you the ability to discern human wisdom.

1 Corinthians 2

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.[d]

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Psalm 111

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!

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This is more an argument of why an atheist cannot reasonably argue scriptural truth, not why a Christian can argue for or against a scientific principal

This is clearly not the case, spiritual wisdom gives you the ability to discern spiritual truth…not human wisdom. I would argue that spiritual wisdom understands that there is no human wisdom, depending on what human wisdom means. I mean it in biblical terms that there is no wisdom of man that is greater than the wisdom of God.

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I’d agree with you. Thank you for stating it better than I did.

I don’t understand why science and faith are so mutually exclusive. I have not run across any scripture that refutes science. When I was first saved it struck me funny that many of the early “laws” were regarding proper safety and sanitation requirements for food (I was a chef in my former life). So, it seems to me that scripture doesn’t trump science, but rather supports it (specifically in regard to food safety science). There are many instances of the bible stating that something is “bad” in the eyes of God and it turns out science (once it does all the appropriate tests) agrees.

Likewise, I have not seen any science that refutes scripture reasonably. I’m sure you will all throw a bunch of scripture at me and say, “see, what about that.”…to which I will probably provide a reasonable alternate interpretation. My point is that the only reason we find anything contentious is because we don’t understand it fully yet. The truth is found in both science and faith. Neither can trump the other because they are both based on truth.

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