No, not at all. I was just pointing out that you had made a dubious assumption.
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@PDPrice, now keep in mind that all of Humphreys’ cosmology models as well as Hartnett’s model held that billions of years had passed in the heavens while only 4 orbital days had elapsed on earth. That idea did meet with YEC resistance, but most YEC’s had found a way to accept the long ages several years after both individuals had published. I guess my point is that long ages are very hard to get around in the cosmos.
I’m not sure I hold to their views. Hartnett himself no longer holds to that view, but has moved over to Lisle’s position.
Yes he has, but I must add that Lisle’s proposal is extremely controversial in YEC circles. Humphreys for instance believes that Lisle’s proposal is of an ancient universe. As for CMI,Sarfati made his doubts public and I have a personal email where Bates and Batten agree. It is a difficult subject, the idea of an old universe.
Why wouldn’t a truly holistic approach to the OT necessarily involve studying it in Hebrew? Translations are always interpretations, and I would suggest that translation from Hebrew to English is more like transliteration, given the huge differences in grammar, tense, etc.
If you are going for scholarly analysis, yes, that would be a good idea. But I don’t believe one needs to be a Hebrew expert to simply read the word of God and understand its intended meaning in fundamental areas; God’s word is intended for all people in all places, not just for scholars.
I would suggest that translation from Hebrew to English is more like transliteration, given the huge differences in grammar, tense, etc.
That’s not even what that word means. If you are suggesting Hebrew is un-translatable, I think you’ll find a whole host of scholars who would disagree.
For transparency’s sake, I want to reiterate that we YECs - I am including myself in that number out of respect for YEC’s - have not yet figured out 2 essential problems.
- Distant starlight and how to get galactic light here on an ongoing basis within a 6000 year timeframe.
- Humphreys admitted that his RATE research found 4.5 billion years’ worth of radio nuclear decay in planet material. YECs still have no working accelerated decay model.
[If these problems turn out to be intractable, then the YEC paradigm will have to be revised at some point in the future]
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Why do you seem to think God owes us answers to these questions, this side of heaven? Why would you think we would need to reinterpret Scripture to something other than the plain meaning (i.e. twist scripture) just because there are scientific questions we cannot answer?
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Can you please clarify here? Are you saying that an old cosmos it NOT outside of your spiritual comfort zone? In other words, you are okay with 14 byo (for instance) universe, but just not a 4.5 byo earth? Or is an old earth okay, but just the life on the earth must be 6-10 kyo?
Well, don’t we find many instances in scripture where the plain meaning is not the obvious meaning? Wouldn’t you agree that there are many instances in scripture where the literal words do not match the intended meaning?
There are places, like when Jesus says “I am the door.” But we can ascertain from context when this is the case. We allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. The rest of the Bible takes Genesis as true history, not as a theological metaphor.
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For the record, Don Batten agrees with you. I don’t know him personally, but I emailed two years ago about my concerns. I said, “I think we have missed something in Genesis, but there still may be a way to remain literal to a 6-day creation.” He was surprisingly talkative and polite. But he made it very clear that he disagreed with me.
Haha, well I’m glad. As a CEO, he outranks me by quite a bit. 
I don’t think God owes us answers, but he’s given us some pretty amazing tools (philosophy, theology, science) to investigate the answers. I think it’s worth giving it a go.
I would argue (I think) that there is more than one “plain meaning” to many OT passages especially. This is why I asked the original question. I think a plain reading may well be “God created all that we see and all that there was, human beings were created to have a relationship with God but while he is faithful to us, we are never faithful to him on our own.” Perhaps the rest is figuring out the details, but I have a hard time saying that anybody disagrees with my particular guess as to what exactly the details mean is just “twisting” Scripture. If that’s the case then I’m pretty sure everybody is guilty as I doubt we have it all right (as you said previously).
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Sure, but we don’t use these tools in a vacuum. We have Scripture to inform us before we engage in speculating about the past. The whole Bible takes Genesis as true history, not as a metaphor.
I like this kind of reasoning. It is pure and I like purity over science any old day. But I have warned us YEC’s that we must make up our mind >> do we want to do science or do we want to leave these questions for the Regeneration (that future date when all is made known)?
I’m pretty sure that’s logic and experience interpreting Scripture.
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Yeah, that, plus we have context clues because Jesus frequently speaks in metaphors and parables, and oftentimes he had to correct the disciples for failing to understand his figurative language. In that context, understanding this is figurative is no stretch.
I guess I’m not convinced enough of that to override other evidence from the Bible and from the world around us.
Scripture also reinterprets scripture, which I think is also interesting. What if Genesis was meant as history in some places and as metaphor in others? What if Genesis was meant as history by some authors and metaphor by others? What if it’s true but in creative ways? Josh has previously discussed the 6 days as a 6 day retelling of the creation story, which is a cool way to think about possibilities.
I just feel like there are a lot of possibilities, all taking Genesis very seriously, all taking Inspiration seriously, but not all of them come to a YEC conclusion. I think that’s why I don’t understand some of the “come hell or high water” attitude towards a particular interpretation.
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Can you interpret 2 Peter 3 in light of this? How do you read it?