1) Mike O'Neil Gets it All Wrong, 2) What can Sumerian King List Teach Us?, 3) Two Things You Might Be Asking Now?, 4) The plain reading of Scripture clearly supports six day Creationism
I have already answered this point, but this one is stating it so ludicrously, I'll answer it again.
God’s perfection* and the truth of the Bible do not preclude statements that are not literally true. We must consider the facts of the time and place in which the Bible and its stories were being written.
Let us suppose that God communicated to his prophets and messengers “IN THE FIRST 29 BILLION, 369 MILLION, 859 THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND TWELVE YEARS, GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH”. Would this message have been understood?
We are talking about a time in history when the average person could not count far beyond the number of his fingers and toes. Counting into the hundreds or thousands would have been the province of intellectuals and scholars. The concept of Millions or Billions of years would have been incomprehensible. Could such a message have been comprehended, let alone accepted?
When my 5 year old asks how our television works, I do not attempt to explain radio waves, cathode ray tubes, transistors or satellites. I tell him that a machine at the TV station takes the pictures, sends them through the air and our TV catches them and turns them back into pictures.
Am I lying to my son? Am I misleading him? When he reaches college and learns the science behind semi-conductors, radio transmission and imaging technologies, should he accuse me of deceiving him. Should he dismiss everything that I’ve taught him as suspect? Of course not!
- 1) Have you ever tried teaching your five year old son about radio waves? I started learning about this perhaps at six, seven, eight. At least before nine, when I became a Christian.
- 2) "We are talking about a time in history when the average person could not count far beyond the number of his fingers and toes.
No. We are not. Perhaps you were told this by some old earther when you were five years old, but since then you have grown up, and it's about time you start learning history for real.
Moses who redacted Genesis, and on whose vision very probably the Six Days account is based (Adam was absent before day one and days one to beginning of day six, so it is not Adam's witness account), not only was himself a man with Egyptian élite education, well versed in geometry, but he had men who were able to count:
Numbers 1:[20] Of Ruben the eldest son of Israel, by their generations and families and houses and names of every head, all that were of the male sex, from twenty years old and upward, that were able to go forth to war, [21] Were forty-six thousand five hundred.
Some people of a purely "scientific" civilisation have this kind of preconception about "people in the past", but this is not due to their expertise in catodes and radio waves, it is due to their lack of expertise in history.
- For one, in a century from which there is ABUNDANT evidence surviving, like 20th, you can decade by decade with very good confidence say what the average person either knew or thought he knew, depending on the subject matter and on your viewpoint of it. History cannot say whether Big Bang happened, but it can decade for decade tell you how probable it was for a 20th C. man to think he knew BB happened. If I had agreed with O'Neil, I would have said "who knew" etc, but I don't.
We have very scarce evidence from the century of the Exodus.
- For another, this science only oriented subculture has a great propensity to patronise Christianity, Philosophy, Creation account of Genesis, Long Day account in Joshua and so on, and therefore to tell tall tales of how "ignorant" people were in the past.
- And, third, as I already mentioned, what we do know about this period and about humanity in general, very much suggests the opposite of what Mike O'Neil just stated.
- For one, in a century from which there is ABUNDANT evidence surviving, like 20th, you can decade by decade with very good confidence say what the average person either knew or thought he knew, depending on the subject matter and on your viewpoint of it. History cannot say whether Big Bang happened, but it can decade for decade tell you how probable it was for a 20th C. man to think he knew BB happened. If I had agreed with O'Neil, I would have said "who knew" etc, but I don't.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Odo of Tours
18-XI-2015
* Taken from : Old Earth Creation Science
Discussion of Creation and Science
by Mike O'Neil
© Old Earth Ministries
First Published 15 July 2004
http://oldearth.org/discussion.htm
