thingsthatsqueak

I always thought that the Romans 5:12 verse referred to spiritual death and not physical death. When God told Adam that he would die in the same day that he ate of the fruit, he died spiritually but he didn't die physically until 900+ years later.

The science in creation science includes the proposed mechanisms by which God created. If you want some interesting reading, Dr. Kurt Wise (a YEC) proposed some interesting scenarios. For example, during the Flood, Dr. Wise proposes something called "rapid plate tectonics" that explain the different layers of sediment throughout the world. It's interesting reading.

Thank you for the welcome, everyone! It's nice to be here. Sammy - I actually do believe that the "yom" of Genesis should be interpreted as 24-hour days. I've studied the Hebrew enough to know that there's really no way to interpret that word as anything else. Also, there are other Hebrew words that could have been used if a longer time period was intended. I guess my main point with the telescoping of the genealogies in the Old Testament is to point out that a belief in a 6000-year old earth is not properly deduced. I have actually done the math behind the amount of telescoping of the genealogies and the time that traditional science says that modern humans were developing on earth. They are much, much closer this way than when a 6000-year old earth is considered. My apologies - I don't have my notes in front of me and I don't have time to dig them out now.

I'm new here but I'm very keenly interested in the subjects at hand and so I thought I'd introduce myself. My background is in engineering and I've always had an interest in astronomy as a hobby. My dad was a design engineer with the space program and so I was fortunate to have grown up in that environment. I was also raised in a strong Christian home and I became a Christian when I was in high school. I was asked by a group from my church to teach an adult class on the science behind Genesis. I had never really studied Genesis before and so I started off pretty low on the learning curve. When I initially began the study, I was (more-or-less) a YEC. I read through everything I could find by Dr. Kurt Wise and watched countless lectures of his on youtube. The things that he taught made a lot of sense to me at the beginning and I was happy that he had answers for some of the apparent discrepancies between YEC and traditional science. I even emailed him once and was thrilled when he answered my email. However, as I continued to read things that he had written, I started to question the validity of his interpretations. When I got to the Rapid Plate Tectonics theory for explaining how Noah's flood caused the geologic layers, there were so many things that didn't make sense and were contradictory that I knew it wasn't a valid theory. I'll spare you guys all the details, but I'm now an old earth creationist. The thing that finally pushed me over the line was when I realized that the only thing people base a 6000-year-old earth on is the genealogies in the Old Testament. In reading through them and trying to diagram the relationships (try it sometime - it's really interesting), I realized that they are contradictory in many places and the only way to smooth out the discrepancies is to assume that the genealogies are "telescoped" - that is, that generations have been left out. And then, if generations have been left out, the 6000-year age of the earth is not correct. If we assume enough telescoping, the length of time back to the first humans in Genesis starts to line up with that of traditional science. I think the specific example that finally made me say, "Hmmm" was comparing the four generations between Levi and Moses with the 11 generations between Joseph and Joshua. (Levi and Joseph were contemporaries, as were Moses and Joshua.) I'm still struggling with how to correlate the evidences of the things that we see in nature with a literal interpretation of Genesis. I've become fascinated by this whole subject and the people around me at church and my other friends and family don't have as much of an interest and have no desire to discuss any of this. I had one person say to me, "It's all just a matter of faith," and walk away. So thank you for letting me join your group. I look forward to learning many new things and reading about different views and interpretations. ...sorry that was so long...

Thanks for your reply, JoshuaJacob! That was the way we approached the Scripture in my Bible study also. We went back to the original Hebrew and studied it instead of looking at the English because the English is an interpretation by fallible men. When I was studying the original Hebrew, though, I couldn't get away from the imagery of a pre-scientific view of the world. You don't really see it as plainly in English. It's all over the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well. I started keeping a list of Scripture references as I would run across them and it was quite long by the time I finished. Since we know that the pre-scientific view of the world is not correct, it made me come to the conclusion/realization/assumption that God was describing the universe and His creative activities in the way that man was viewing the world at that time. -TTS PS - I agree with you that the days (yom) in Genesis 1 are correctly translated as 24-hour periods. I don't believe that the day-age creationists have a strong argument in trying to make each day a thousand years. Although the one interesting point that I've seen in this vein is that God told Adam that he would surely die in the day (yom) that he ate of the fruit. Since Adam didn't die physically that day, most people assume that God meant that Adam would die spiritually in the day that he ate of the fruit. The day-age creationists point out that if God meant that Adam would die physically in the day that he ate of the fruit and God's "yom" was 1000 years, it would explain why Adam lived to be 930 years.

I realize that this thread is three years old but I would be interested in hearing how GerryT has correlated theistic evolution with other doctrinal issues like the imputation of a sin nature. I'm new here. I've been reading through as many discussion topics as I've had time to and I haven't seen this addressed. Forgive me if I have missed it along the way. I taught a Bible study last year on the science behind the Genesis account of creation (and then on into Noah's flood). I have a background in chemical engineering and astronomy has always been a hobby of mine but I had never really studied Genesis as an adult. As I was carefully reading through Genesis 1 and 2 and trying to become familiar with the original Hebrew that is used, I realized that the picture that is given is of a pre-scientific view of the world - the solid dome (raqia) covering the earth that holds back the waters above; the stars, sun, and moon being placed in the raqia, etc. And the view is even carried to Revelation where we see that 1/3 of the stars fall to earth. If the stars are affixed to the solid dome covering the earth, they actually could fall to earth because it would mean that they are small and relatively close. When I would get to something like this in the course of our study, I lived in fear that one of the students would realize this and ask me how that corresponded to the rest of the doctrine in Genesis - especially the imputation of a sin nature. Any thoughts? - TTS