Fred Harding and his views on Evolution

[Ramblinman]

Quite. If we avoid absolutist preconceptions that belong neither in the science of Biology nor in the science of Theology, we have a big pile of data that so far support few and puny conclusions.

The fossil record shows clear evidence of predation and natural disasters.
Some Creationists get very nervous about this as it conflicts with a closely held assumption:
Creation had no death prior to Adam's fall.
Consequently, they are forced by their theology to ascribe the entire fossil record to after the fall of man and mostly during or slightly after the Great Deluge some 2,000 years later according to Bishop Usher's calculations, which they have pretty much canonized.

Thinking outside the box a bit:

Either Satan fell at the dawn of time (possibly billions of years ago) and began tinkering with God's creation early on (causing death and cataclysm) or God somehow made billions of years of predation and cataclysm part of his perfect plan prior to the creation of Adam.

Was Eden a bastion of eternal life under God's special sanction in anotherwise bloody Earth pre-fall?
Some Creationists say that the entire planet was free of death and predation before Adam's fall, didn't even have any rain they say.

[ezduzit]

Me personally , it takes more faith to believe in evolution than creation. As Christians do we believe the Word of God or the words of men?
Ez

Hmmm...Sounds like a false either/or statement to me. It's entirely possible to believe that God created the world and also life's potential to change over time...

I go back to this...

The Bible says God created:
Heavens & Earth (Likely meaning the earth and what is above the earth)
Light and Darkness
Atmosphere & Oceans (Water above/below)
Vegetation
Sun and Moon (don't know how this differs from above but...)
Animals
Man (male, later female)

Everything I see here is what... We really don't see a "how long" -- the Hebrew isn't specific enough... I never see a how... We can speculate the how all we want but it doesn't get us any closer to an answer.

Could this have been done in 6-24 hour days? Sure, it doesn't say.
Could this have been done in thousands or millions of years? Absolutely, it doesn't say.

Could God have just "spoken' creation into existence? Sure.
Could God have used an evolutionary process? Some (if not many) will say yes.

I don't see believing that evolution occurs precludes anyone from believing that God controlled the process. I also don't see how you can say that believing in a literal 6 day creation would preclude evolution on a micro scale from happening.

As mentioned, dogs "evolve" quite quickly because of what one documentary I saw called a "sliding gene". I don't remember the breed but one breed that weighs in the under 10lbs. range used to be 30+lbs. 100 years ago.

Gen.1:3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Gen.1:8And the evening and the morning were the second day.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
31 And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Gen.2:1 ¶ Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

I don`t understand the logic in stating that a day could have been 1, 2 or more million years. To my knowledge "evening and morning " happens but once in a 24 hr period .
Why would the creator need "evolution" or millions of years to create anything? Isn`t that in effect "limiting " HIS power? He certainly did not need hours, days , months or years to feed the 5,000(Matthew 14:21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children. Matthew 16:9 Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?)

Strongs=3117 =1) day, time, year
1a) day (as opposed to night)
1b) day (24 hour period)
1b1) as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1
1b2) as a division of time
1b2a) a working day, a day’s journey

Ex.20:Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work… For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it

Not putting anyone down but as Christians I don`t believe we ought to question our Creator or HIS power and ability to do what the scriptures tells us HE did.

Many articles here = food for thought , BUT the Word of God ought to and should be our final authority .

Ez

[ezduzit]

Ooooops
Ez

http://www.icr.org/

[Ramblinman]

I don`t understand the logic in stating that a day could have been 1, 2 or more million years. To my knowledge "evening and morning " happens but once in a 24 hr period .

It does mean 24 hours unless God was using "days" as a metaphor for the ages of Creation.
Or the present creation was a miraculous 6-day recreation of a world contaminated, even destroyed after a manner of speaking by Satan and his fallen angels millions or billions of years ago.

Why would the creator need "evolution" or millions of years to create anything? Isn`t that in effect "limiting " HIS power? He certainly did not need hours, days , months or years to feed the 5,000(Matthew 14:21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children. Matthew 16:9 Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?)

God does not need to create the earth in six days or 6 billion years. He could have done it instantly.
Why did God choose to take any time at all?

[ezduzit]

I don`t understand the logic in stating that a day could have been 1, 2 or more million years. To my knowledge "evening and morning " happens but once in a 24 hr period .

It does mean 24 hours unless God was using "days" as a metaphor for the ages of Creation.
Or the present creation was a miraculous 6-day recreation of a world contaminated, even destroyed after a manner of speaking by Satan and his fallen angels millions or billions of years ago.

Why would the creator need "evolution" or millions of years to create anything? Isn`t that in effect "limiting " HIS power? He certainly did not need hours, days , months or years to feed the 5,000(Matthew 14:21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children. Matthew 16:9 Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?)

God does not need to create the earth in six days or 6 billion years. He could have done it instantly.
Why did God choose to take any time at all?

Perhaps there is more than meets the eye ............
Ez

http://www.biblestudy.org/bibleref/mean ... ble/7.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/number-7-seven.html

[natman]

It does mean 24 hours unless God was using "days" as a metaphor for the ages of Creation.

Which I think is what is being communicated. Please not that the sun and moon are not created until the fourth "day", so there was not "24-hour" reference for days one through four until the end of the fourth "day" (period) "yown", which CAN mean a "24-hour period", but is also used to refer to a general period of time, such as the days of Noah, or eons etc.

Or the present creation was a miraculous 6-day recreation of a world contaminated, even destroyed after a manner of speaking by Satan and his fallen angels millions or billions of years ago.

I do not think that Scripture describes multiple creations/recreations, but a single creation from nothingness to what we have today.

I believe that the old-Earth dating based on fossils is a matter of circular reasoning of the Dawinian-Evolutionists and paleontologists (the fossils are old because they are in old soil and the soil is old because it contains certain fossils) . Instead, I think that the fossil record indicates the sudden appearance of all forms of life and a mass extinction, probably caused by a global flood. The flood would not have to cover the entire Earth simultaneously, but could have resulted from a fissure releasing mass quantities of water into the atmosphere which came down as rain and producing a large enough tidal wave (tsunami), to sweep across the entire globe over a period of forty days or more, and settling down to close to current sea levels of today. Large oil deposits are not so much from decomposed animals as it is from decomposed plants that were trapped in the silt of a global flood. It takes very little time to produce oily sludge from plants that are placed in an anaerobic atmosphere. I have done it in a couple of weeks by leaving grass clippings in a sealed trash can out in the sun in the back yard.

[bn2bnude]

Gen.1:3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Gen.1:8And the evening and the morning were the second day.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
31 And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Gen.2:1 ¶ Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

I don`t understand the logic in stating that a day could have been 1, 2 or more million years. To my knowledge "evening and morning " happens but once in a 24 hr period .
Why would the creator need "evolution" or millions of years to create anything? Isn`t that in effect "limiting " HIS power? He certainly did not need hours, days , months or years to feed the 5,000(Matthew 14:21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children. Matthew 16:9 Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?)

Strongs=3117 =1) day, time, year
1a) day (as opposed to night)
1b) day (24 hour period)
1b1) as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1
1b2) as a division of time
1b2a) a working day, a day’s journey

Ex.20:Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work… For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it

Not putting anyone down but as Christians I don`t believe we ought to question our Creator or HIS power and ability to do what the scriptures tells us HE did.

Many articles here = food for thought , BUT the Word of God ought to and should be our final authority .

Ez

To draw meaning from Scripture that doesn't exist is called "eisegesis" -- meaning that we interpret scripture under a framework that supports our preconceptions. Not only do we do that with Scripture but scientists do the same thing with evolution.

Here is what I know that I can say from Scripture.
1) God created the earth. I don't know how or how long it took.
2) Man and women were created differently than the animals, in the image of God.

More than that I cannot say.

[jochanaan]

Two things need to be said here:

1. The word for "day" in Genesis 1 is the literal, ordinary word yom, used thousands of times in the Old Testament.

2. Yet the ancient Biblical writers were comfortable with multiple meanings for words, passages and scenes. Genesis 1:1 through 2:3 is a poetic, probably much-simplified retelling of an ancient oral tradition. So "day" could well mean an age or an eon...

[ezduzit]

It does mean 24 hours unless God was using "days" as a metaphor for the ages of Creation.

Which I think is what is being communicated. Please not that the sun and moon are not created until the fourth "day", so there was not "24-hour" reference for days one through four until the end of the fourth "day" (period) "yown", which CAN mean a "24-hour period", but is also used to refer to a general period of time, such as the days of Noah, or eons etc.

Or the present creation was a miraculous 6-day recreation of a world contaminated, even destroyed after a manner of speaking by Satan and his fallen angels millions or billions of years ago.

I do not think that Scripture describes multiple creations/recreations, but a single creation from nothingness to what we have today.

I believe that the old-Earth dating based on fossils is a matter of circular reasoning of the Dawinian-Evolutionists and paleontologists (the fossils are old because they are in old soil and the soil is old because it contains certain fossils) . Instead, I think that the fossil record indicates the sudden appearance of all forms of life and a mass extinction, probably caused by a global flood. The flood would not have to cover the entire Earth simultaneously, but could have resulted from a fissure releasing mass quantities of water into the atmosphere which came down as rain and producing a large enough tidal wave (tsunami), to sweep across the entire globe over a period of forty days or more, and settling down to close to current sea levels of today. Large oil deposits are not so much from decomposed animals as it is from decomposed plants that were trapped in the silt of a global flood. It takes very little time to produce oily sludge from plants that are placed in an anaerobic atmosphere. I have done it in a couple of weeks by leaving grass clippings in a sealed trash can out in the sun in the back yard.

Evening / Morning the first day

Gen.1:3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The "gap" theory is just that a theory , I`ve heard it taught it occurred between Gen1:1 and Gen1:2.......... I don`t believe it
Doctrine is not and should not be based on what is not there ie silence........

When asked "Where did Cain get his wife?" I reply "dial a date"
What happened to the Dinosaur s " Noah and his family ate them"

Ez

[bn2bnude]

Evening / Morning the first day

Gen.1:3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The "gap" theory is just that a theory , I`ve heard it taught it occurred between Gen1:1 and Gen1:2.......... I don`t believe it
Doctrine is not and should not be based on what is not there ie silence........

When asked "Where did Cain get his wife?" I reply "dial a date"
What happened to the Dinosaur s " Noah and his family ate them"

Ez

Both questions are real, however.

Additionally, if Cain went to the "Land of Nod" to live among the people there, where did they come from?

[Petros]

We need to recognize and deal with it - the scriptures may in once sense be "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" - but [shades of Dragnet] they are not "the facts, all the facts, and nuffin what vain't factual".

Some seem to find it hard to differentiate.

[natman]

Evening / Morning the first day

Gen.1:3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The "gap" theory is just that a theory , I`ve heard it taught it occurred between Gen1:1 and Gen1:2.......... I don`t believe it
Doctrine is not and should not be based on what is not there ie silence........

When asked "Where did Cain get his wife?" I reply "dial a date"
What happened to the Dinosaur s " Noah and his family ate them"

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Scripture does not tell us what the source of light and darkness are in 1-5, just there is distinction. The cycle of rotation between day and night along with the sun and the moon does not appear to occur until the end of the fourth day (period of time).

To answer the questions about Cain's wife and others, we need to remember that the first generations of humanity lived far longer than we do today and several generations could have passed and many people been born before the events occurred. Cain probably married one of his nieces one or two generations removed. Gen 5:4 indicates that Adam and Eve had many children after they had Cain, Abel and Seth.

[Ramblinman]

...To answer the questions about Cain's wife and others, we need to remember that the first generations of humanity lived far longer than we do today and several generations could have passed and many people been born before the events occurred. Cain probably married one of his nieces one or two generations removed. Gen 5:4 indicates that Adam and Eve had many children after they had Cain, Abel and Seth.

The other possible explanation would be that humanity already existed before Adam and Eve were created and Cain married one of their daughters. The Genesis passage, "the Sons of God married daughters of men..." has led some to theorize that this is exactly what happened.

[Petros]

Herself and I this evening began to watch a presentation of "evidence" for ancient extraterrestrial contacts. We quit it fairly early - Herself could only handle so much of that. Me, I cut my teeth in academia, and I was just getting into a rhythm of shouting mocking non-compliments at the self-satisfied hapless antididymist dolts of presenters - but it is no part of my philosophy to cause her pain.

Given the data vacuum, most discussions of the Sons of God and the Nephilim and the Gap and the identity of the Beast and the details of the Rapture and the timing of the millennium are best left to the NE fringe.

[Ramblinman]

...Given the data vacuum, most discussions of the Sons of God and the Nephilim and the Gap and the identity of the Beast and the details of the Rapture and the timing of the millennium are best left to the NE fringe.

Not quite a data vacuum: The word "Nephilim" is in the Bible and it is the duty of Bible students to understand its contents to the best of their ability, extra-biblical literature from the period, original languages, biblical archaeology, discussions with other bible scholars, and of course thorough knowledge of the Bible itself, cross references, etc...

There are larger lessons to learn from discussion on the Anti-Christ, Beast, 666 loyalty mark, etc..
I am not urging you to focus on the minutia, but if God saw fit to put these parables, illustrations, etc in the Bible, there is a timeless message to the Church:
The reward for being faithful in the midst of persecution...
That God will sustain us with his grace in time of persecution, to the day of our death if it comes to that.
And the ultimate victory over sin and death.
Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. I Peter 5:7