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From: biologosfoundation
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  • Ard why could'nt God have created the earth which has the appeareance to humanity as an old earth, ( dating methods) but actuallly is a young earth. Consider Adam & Eve from the moment of there creation how old were they? Also the sttructure of hebrew text in Genesis is a historical narrative, certainly not poetry neither polemic. I personally think its dangerous to fit the Bible simply into ones worldview, it superceedes all worldviews whether past or present.

  • @cbcommunity No! The structure of the Hebrew text in Genesis 1 is most certainly poetical in form, employing the device of Chiasmus to create rhythms when sung or recited. Moreover, the entirety of the Creation accounts in Genesis are meant to be theologically reconfigured "mytho-histories" or the like. Ancient Near Eastern cultural stories which have been reinterpreted from a Hebrew point of view. Also, the Bible has its own ANE worldview.

  • To say the sun doesn't influence our lives is to be in a zone where the conceptualization of intelligence is overly blunt. In the same sense the world can be understood to have began only relatively recently in the sense that before there are ears there is no sound. So it is quite operativly cogent to assert that before there was the sense that corresponds to human ideas and experience the world had not yet been created or come into existence.

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  • Fourth Day and this is a four year. How can the moon be a lamp of light when the moon as no light of its own. Remember the wondrous woman from heaven as the moon under her feet. Rev 12.

  • 4 people are late for their bible reading.

  • @imaginenoreligion ancient goat herders could not read and write

  • @talmidscott Lol, good point. Don't understnad why being a goat herder would somehow invalidate everything they say. Me thinks someone has a tempocentric bias.

  • So genesis is true, but in a deeper way than actually being true? I applaud the biologos mission to bring acceptance of evolutionary theory into the christian faith, but ultimately christianity is an impossible view to defend. Maybe we need more christians to be scientific in their thinking first.. It's a start.

  • @imaginenoreligion

    au contraire.

    Some of the greatest modern minds who have read genesis have concluded that there may be far more to that book than the average person gets.

  • @ivlfounder, look it's a halfway step to rationalism. That's a good thing, but seriously, et's not pretend that genesis is anything but the scribblings of ancient goat herders.

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  • @imaginenoreligion

    There is more to it than that.

  • oh! So we can use speculation to determine which parts of the bible mean what? so I can just speculate (reasonably, given certain assumptions) that Jesus wasn't really magically powerful, but the miracle stories were just a more powerful way of expressing the truth of his compassion and social importance?

  • I would point out that the text doesn't necessarily need to mean that the sun and moon were "made" on day four. If taken as a narrative from the vantage point of the Earth's surface looking up, we can take it to, remarkably, fit modern cosmology so that the sun and moon were made before the Earth, but the thick stratosphere of the Earth cleared on day four so that these objects became visible in the sky ("made" in Hebrew means "made apparent" rather than "created").

  • Also, how can you not deny (or do you?) the ability of Christ to materialize bread, and fish, and wine in an instant, yet you do deny (or at least forgo accepting) God's ability to materialize the rest? It may be a greater feat by man's understanding (ie: transfer of energy over time, etc), but is it more difficult (or impossible, for that matter) for God?

    Do not make the mistake of limiting God's power in your own mind, for your own sake.

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  • @waluum I didn't see that Dr. Louis was denying that God could make the earth in an instant, just that the text does say that he did not. Following your logic, you must disagree that God took even six days to create the heavens and the earth; you limit him (by your logic) by denying he materialized it "in an instant"--rather the text says God took six days to create and not "in an instant". So "Do not make the mistake of limiting God's power" yourself.

  • @andy1985jones : God chose the number of days according to His perfect will, just as He chose when to put a man's spirit into his flesh and when to save him to Himself. He is even the only one who knows the hour and day of the end. What we might perceive as God's limits are only His choices.

  • @waluum Or, God chose billions of years to create his universe according to His perfect will. 

  • @andy1985jones : billions of years, a few years, or an instant - regardless of how long God is capable of creating the universe in we know which one He chose by what is written.

    Nevertheless, this is hardly a matter that professing Christians should be contending and dividing over. Whether it was 1 year or 1 billion, whether man evolved under God's guidance or was created in an instant in his present form, none of this affects our need for salvation and to conform ourselves to God's image.

  • @waluum No Christian should doubt that. The question is to help those who don't believe because they know evolution is true but hear Christians saying that the Bible says it could not possibly have happened by evolution.

  • @andy1985jones : Is that the direction we should be encouraging people to seek God in? What man who knows God loses faith in Him because he is not convinced of the literal account of creation? No man, and the man who claims it has not known Him - truly knowing Him is the core of the faith and transcends all questions they may have about creation...

  • @andy1985jones ...If anything, instruct them to search for an answer and not settle on one until God reveals it them, rather than presenting them with something that conforms to their insufficient evidence and secular outlook. But do not show such irreverence as to challenge the word written before you were alive and conceived before you were considered. "I don't know" is a more acceptable alternative answer for the time being.

  • This is half-way right. Again, as with all who doubt the literal interpretation, the part left out (and essentially denied) is done out of an inability to justify it in his own mind, as he leans on his own understanding more than the faith which God calls us to have in His word.

    It is true that God employed both super-natural (that is, still not known of and/or understood) means in the act of creation, as well as symbolism in the content and contextual order to express His will and way.

  • Great explanation!

    Please make more videos like this, Biologos!

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