Monday, July 16, 2007

System Problems

I was using Word Press, but they kept having system problems so I am back to using Blogger, my tried and true.

My last post elicited a comment from my friend Kris, and brings up an interesting point that probably should be made- Any questions I have raised in my consideration of questions regarding theology are actually questions I have raised myself. It is kind of Kris to make it seem that I have created an answer as intelligent sounding as one that a professor would have created. I do not believe myself to be a great researcher, but I do think that enough evidence exists to question certain things, one of which being the non-biblical assertion that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. It is true that debate exists as to the validity of certain dating methods, but it is also true that the Bible does not date the earth.

The question I am raising in regard to the date of the earth is not in promoting a certain age, though I tend to believe that the earth could be older than young earth creationists believe. My purpose here is to question the dogma that is based on a Biblical inference.

Let me explain it this way- If an archeologist came forward with the bones of Christ I would instantly tell my children that he will eventually be shown to be a fraud. Why? The reason I wouldn't believe this evidence presented by my hypothetical archeologist is that Scripture clearly states that Jesus Christ was bodily resurrected and bodily ascended to Heaven. Great pains were taken by the Apostles to make this point clear. Now as to the age of the universe there is no statement by anyone authoritative in Scripture that the earth is a certain age. A bit of research will show that young earth theorists believe that the age of the earth is defined by genealogies given in Scripture. While this seems to be a good indicator of the age of our current world, it does not mean that the earth is older than the first day of creation. For a hint of where I am going consider the answer to this question- During which day of creation was water created?

While it seems far-fetched consider the fact that 4 billion years could have occurred between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. God does not say as much about His creation of the heavens and the earth as He does the creation of what He put in them. One only need to read the rest of the first chapter of Genesis and then the second chapter of Genesis to see that God does not seem to care all that much about the technical details about how it all came about. A super literal reading of these two chapters makes it appear that God forgot in what order He created man and animals. A more appropriate reading of these two chapters sees that God's point in reversing the order of these creations between the two chapters probably had more to do with man's relationship with animals as the superior than an attempt to confuse the super literal.

So we return to my main point- I do not think that we should reject extra-scriptural observations simply because they do not seem to agree with certain inferences made from Scripture by those who teach Scripture. I intend to explain my concern over this in more detail in future posts.

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