Col. Homestar wrote:Bobmarine wrote:But as Ken Ham says, "if you don't believe Genesis 1:1 is true, then how can you believe the rest of the Bible is true." I'm not saying that someone isn't saved because they believe in Evolution. But all I'm saying is that if the Bible is "God-breathed" (and I believe it is) why would the God-inspired author not tell the truth. What I'm really getting at and what Ken Ham is getting at is that there is alot if very strong evidence that supports Creation. And they are all scientifically accurate. The so-called "facts" that scientists come up with (literally) is not scientifically based, some defy the laws of the universe, others are just plain silly. But, despite all that, I can't prove that the world was created in 6 literal days by an all powerful being. Also evolutionists can't prove that the cosmos was created from a big bang. Sorry, SirPepsi, I feel really strongly about these things, I mean no ill will towards you or your beliefs
The 6 creative days is meant in a figurative sense.
Psalms 90:4 says
4 For a thousand years are in your eyes just as yesterday when it is past,
Just as a watch during the night.
So it's more likely that the creative days are creative periods. Much the way some people use expressions like "the old days" or the "back in the day". These are use to explain periods of time.
Belief in God as described in the bible does preclude any belief in evolution. The bible refers to God as the creator of all things many time over. Including a description of how man was created.
Also 1 Corinthians 15:22 says: “Just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.”
But if there really was no “one man” named Adam, then such a man never sinned. If he did not sin and pass an inheritance of sin on to his offspring, then there was no need for Christ to give his life on behalf of mankind. If Christ really did not give his life on our behalf, then there is no prospect for life beyond our present few years. That would mean that there actually is nothing left to Christianity.
Respectively though if you believe in a different God entirely (As Pepsi mentioned) then that's your beliefs as well.
A thousand years => a day => a thousand years. It is talking about how God is outside time.
The 6 days are most definitely meant in a literal sense, the text really can't do much more to indicate that. You have yom used with a cardinal number, which is almost never (if ever) used to describe an indefinite period of time. You have a context that a Hebraist did a statistical study on and which is emphatically meant as a historical narrative. It is actually not statistically defensible to view this as being figurative or poetic. Also, how do you have evening and morning of an indefinite period? What you say sounds good until you actually start working with the text. It does not allow you to bend the meaning to that extreme.
(see
http://creation.com/the-meaning-of-yom-in-genesis-1)
Also, if you accept evolution and the Bible, you have many issues:
1) The Biblical chronology and the evolutionary chronology conflict, you have dinosaurs after birds for example.
2) You have God calling His creation "very good." Evolution involves mass death and conflict, do you really think he meant to call all that death "very good." Oh, and He describes the new Creation in similar terms, do you think there will be evolution and death there? And why would He only allow people to eat meat after the Flood if their predecessors had been eating it already? What's special about it if all creatures were doing it already?
3) You also have the issue of efficiency. Why would God bother with a complicated process of evolution when He is omnipotent and can create by fiat, which, by the way, is how the text describes the creative process (bara is an unusual word in Hebrew meaning create, it's somewhat special and generally reserved for talking about the creation event IIRC).
4) As far as the fossil record goes, you have no need of evolution to explain this if you accept the theory that the Flood created the strata we see today.
What does it say about God when he views death as very good and yet utilizes it as a punishment? This is quite a blasphemous assertion.
Evolution (macroevolution of course) and the Bible are completely and totally incompatible, those who try to harmonize them must either twist one or the other out of all recognition to what it is supposed to be.
Now let me extrapolate from this. Why stop here? Why just reinterprete Genesis? Isn't the Bible supposed to be inspired from beginning to end? Why not reinterpret the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ? Scientists would deny those are possible as well, so why pick and chose what you are comfortable conceding? Why not just stand up for the whole thing and take God at his Word? To the Christians out there, be warned that this is exactly what is desired of you. The assault on Genesis 1 is an assault on the historicity and inspired nature of the entire Bible, and the opposition knows this well. They will not be satisfied until you are entirely ineffective so you might as well draw the the line right here. You either accept the entire Bible as being the inspired Word of God as it claims to be, or you reject the whole thing. You do not get to pick and chose what you will accept unless you want to deny that the Word is inspired.