Science and God

Some addonb points:

> "6 days of creation" = 14 billion years (Einstein).

Is not. Genesis states directly what a day is: sun goes down, and u
again. Of such days the evolution on Earth took not 6, but over 1000
000 000 000. In fact. I dont know of any place where this time on Earth
would be pressed in 6 Earth Days of local time.


>, then shouldn't
> we see SOME examples of those changes in a population of 7 billion?


>I see plenty of examples of gene changes that
>deform humans, but I've never heard of an example of a genetic change that
>might produce a positive influence and lead to a new species.

It depends on how precise you search.
I have a friend, oth his parents are fat. He istn't, even though he
eats much. Hencefore he will have a longer life expectation. Is this a
positive mutation or not?


And of course, the chance for nsome deforming mutation is much higher
than for positiv one...

About DNA creation: this we don't know we konw that AFTER first
bacteria appeared, they went all the way to humans all by themselves -
WITHOUT ANY GUIDE NEEDEED. Genesis should hencefore sound :"In the
beginning, God created bacteia (which , incidentally, do't appear in
"Genesis") . In the next billion or so years, bacteria evolved to
fishes without God's help; they then evolved to amphibia without any
God's help ... " and so on.
 >> Stay informed about: Science and God 

On Sat, 21 Oct 2006 14:51:07 UTC, "rjbjr" <rjburnsjr.RemoveThis@comcast.net> wrote:

> Dear Dan,
> Thanks for taking so much time to explain. Not sure I understand everything
> yet.

I'll be glad to clear up what I can. But do remember that the _simple_
version of Darwin's work took hundreds of pages, and we've learned a great
deal since then. I'ts not something I could cover on a newsgroup (or for
that matter, in a ginat book, which I leave to other people to write.)

> "Dan Drake" <dd.RemoveThis@dandrake.com> wrote in message news:vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-
>...?
> >
> > Relevant fashionable phrase: "God of the Gaps", whose existence is proved
> > by the fact that there are things on which don't yet have all the answers.
> >
> My belief is not a "God of the Gaps". My belief is based on science
> converging to what I read in the Bible. "In the beginning...." = Big Bang
> for example. "6 days of creation" = 14 billion years (Einstein).

I don't see any relveance here. If 14 billion years is equivalent to 6
days, it's equivalent to any peirod whatever, so where is the room for
Genesis to agree or disagree with Big Bang?


> "He
> stretched the heavens...." = Hubble's expanding universe.

Again I don't see why this is impressive. If you look through enough text
and compare it to a large enoubh body of knowledge, you'll find some
things agreeing, just by -- here it comes -- random chance. It's sort of
like the Bible Code thing, where a computer plays a hidden-word game with
the Bible and finds all kinds of amazing prophecies. Or a computer plays
the same game with any other large texts and finds all kind of the same.
(Yes, this has been done.) Or like taking a zillion measurements of the
Pyramids and finding connections to things known only to modern science;
or looking at measurements of the Washinton Monument and finding an
incredible number of Fives: this proves that the Egyptians knew all kinds
of stuff, and that the creators of the monument had a Five fixation,
escept that we *know* about the Monument people in the 19th century, and
the Five thing is clearly coincidence.

Sorry, too long a digression. To make up, let me give you a *good* bit of
Genesis:

"Let there be light."

At a very early stage of the Big Bang, pretty much the whole substance of
the Universe was in the form of photons. Light. (Tthough at fantastic
energies) (Well, since this is a Creationism thread, I should use weasel
words like a board of education: "Many scientists think the whole...") I
think this is amusing and in some moods I think it's maybe spooky; but
mainly I think the Lux Fiat was a metaphor that referred to bigger issues
(philosophically), as one sees in John 1.

> The thing I'm not
> educated in is evolution. But, from what you are telling me here, it
> appears that evolutionary science has not progressed far enough yet to offer
> a reasonable explanation for the origin of life without God being involved.

No, I'm afraid you've missed the disctinction that I tried to make twice
in that post. Abiogenesis, the natural origin of the first things we'd
call "living" from non-living matter, is not well enough backed by
concrete theory and evidence that evolutionists are willing to get into a
big dispute about it. You are free to attribute the first living cells on
Earth to God or to an asteroid Though I see no need to do so, I can't
respond that your version contradicts the evidence.

Evolution, however, the way life developed once there was any to develop,
is a matter with good theory and abundant evidence. Attack abiogenesis all
you want, and you have done nothing at all to evolution (or, most
especially, to Darwinism if you insist on calling it that).

> You have faith science will refute the Biblical account. But, yours is
> faith, just as mine is faith that science will wind up supporting the Bible.
> From my perspective your view is "Atheism in the Gap".

BTW your assumption that my position is Atheism is not backed by evidence.
Not unless you're using it in a specific, narrow, unusual sense, as
"Atheism relative to the origin of life". But I'm not prepared to argue
the case that one can believe in God and evolution and even abiogenesis;
for a good discussion of that, you'd have to talk to someone who does
believe all three. It shouldn't be hard: there are millions and millions
of them, Christian, Jewish (smaller numbers but maybe higher percentage),
and Muslim (yes, Muslim) -- and Other. (As Apu said, "Hindu! There *are*
800 million of us.")


>...
> >
> But, as I understand it, adaptive radiation doesn't imply the creation of
> new species from genetic mutation. The ability to adapt already existed in
> the genome.

Adaptive radiation doesn't have anything to do with *how* evolution takes
place. It's a term for the phenomenon of very fast evolution in conditions
that are pretty much empty of competition. I raised it to explain that a
case of abnormally fast evolution isn't really extraordinary.

> To convince me adaptive radiation is part of the Darwinian
> explanation,

Again, not an explanation of how adaptation happens; just of why it can
happen rapidly.

don't you have to demonstrate there was a change in the genome
> that produced these new forms? If there is no genome change, just
> adaptation of creature to it's environment there is no refutation of the
> Genesis story.

As to change in the genome, I'm a little lost here. If you compare modern
genomes, you'll find that lots and lots of change has happened. And the
changes, since you mention it, follow the same patterns as the
evolutionary family trees that biologists worked out decades before there
was any idea of a genome at all. (Not 100% perfect agreement, of course.
In science or scholarship of any kind, just as in elections, 100%
agreement means somebody is probably cheating. Messy world, this; hard to
know; blame it on Original Sin and I won't obejct.)

>
> > "Darwin's" is of course a red herring, since no one takes his work as
> > literally true or even inerrant. It's true, though, that he expected a
> > more gradual process than many moderns think is the norm; it's a matter of
> > controversy, as you know.
> >
>...
>
> Yes. I think I'm pretty familiar with Genesis 1. Concerning life. First,
> the plants. Second, life in the seas and birds. Third, mammals. Does
> evolution theory differ in this sequence? What "plain evidence" is there
> that refutes this sequence?

If I have timne, I'll address this in another posting, since it also
raises a point that has to do with where this thread started.

>...
>
> Dan. I was using an aburd example.

Have to be careful about that on the Internet, because it's so often hard
to tell. This isn't a personal insult: I try to respond seriously to these
postings because they are not absurd as so much pseudo-debate about
evoution is, on and off the Internet. Still, it's easy to miss the
intention of things.

You haven't adequately answered the
> basic question. Let me try another way. If evolution happens from some
> process that changes the genome of an existing species (man), then shouldn't
> we see SOME examples of those changes in a population of 7 billion?
> I'm not concerned about the direction of the change. I'm concerned about a
> genetic change in any direction that would improve man's survival over other
> members of the species. I see plenty of examples of gene changes that
> deform humans, but I've never heard of an example of a genetic change that
> might produce a positive influence and lead to a new species. Why not?

Well, I did answer that, sort of. Once again: 6-7 million years to get
here from our common ancestor with the chimpanzee and bonobo. One million
years, more or less, from the Home erectus (Java or Peking Man). Long
time. Why should anyone expect visible changes in the lifetime of a human
being or a civilization? Also, it's not clear that one would recognize the
early stages of such a change if they were present.

There's a lot more to be said on the subject, but I'm running out of
space.


> >...
> I don't get it. Why not predict the pace of evolution?

Because the world is a very complicated place. If I sound a little annoyed
and patronizing here, it's an accurate impression. Nobody told me that the
entire history and future of life would be easy to understand; did they
tell you?

Physics undergradutes (and, if I may say so, engineers) have long liked to
scoff at biology because it's so inexact. No sense telling them the
subject is inherently complicated and difficult, because everyone knows
physics is difficult! Unlike biologists, who get a certain amount of
breadth from needing to study biology _and_ chemistry _and_ physics (and
maybe engineering, these days), these undergraduate stereotype physicists
don't have a clear idea of how many forms difficulty and complexity can
take.

"Evolution may explain vast amounts of evidence, and the theory may get
confirmed over and over by new things (like genome analysis) that Darwin
never imagined, but its filaure to answer this question of mine proves
that it's wrong" -- this is not a good argument.

> You have lots of
> fossils. I've seen pictures of single cell life forms changing into
> multicell creatures, then changing to fish, then the fish growing legs and
> crawling out of the oceans and devoping into mammals that change
> step-by-step into monkeys and eventually to man. There are times associated
> with each life form on those pictures.

Yes, that's part of the problem. THe pictures that come out of the popular
press aren't going to give a very accurate idea of what the actual
scientists do or think. One tiny example: Monkeys? Absolutely no one who's
really involved with evolution thinks people are descended from monkeys,
and that has been true for generations. Some day the press will evolve far
enough to get the story right.


> So, you have a historical record of
> change and should come up with some kind of time scale for changes.

And we have a scientific record of zillions of experiments, and we STILL
don't know whether string theory is right. Why accept what physicists say
about anything else if they can't even figure that out?

Also,
> at any point, you should be able to estimate how many mutations are
> observable in a population. Can't you count them in a large groups of
> bacteria? From that, seems like you should be able to predict the number of
> mutations we would expect in our 7 billion human population. Please direct
> me to the research.

Mutation rates? Gosh, there are so many references on that, that I don't
know where to begin. Between Google and WIkipedia you should be able to
get into some really good data, but remember (1) make sure your authority
really is a scientist qualified to report on the research; (2) you'll find
that the rates vary all oover the place, depending on the species, the
part of the genome, the conditions, and even other genes that increase or
decrease mutation rates. I think it would be valuable to try such an
investigation, in order to get some tiny idea af the research that has
been done.

The trouble, is, evolution is not a matter of counting mutations. Mutation
and selection, that's the subject. And selection is even more complicated,
since conditions vary all over the place and all over time.

Again, science will not give anwers to every question you can ask.


>... I thought that
> evolutionists believed that changes in a genome resulted at random and that
> the changes that were "good" survived and spread throughout the population
> through the process of natural selection. If I understand you, you are
> talking about some other process with which I am not familiar.

No, that is what happens, boiled down nicely to a few words. However,

g = G * m1 * m2 / r^2

Simple. So simple it took a genius to work it out. It took him and a lot
of other geniuses a long time to work out the details, when it got
combined with those 3 other little rules.

What I mean is, the elegant, simple summary is a long way from the
reality. And, worked out, the effect of natural selection on a population
in which random mutations take place is very different from anything you
can compute with a naive conception of "chance". It helps (or hurts, if
exactitude is what a person wants) that a living thing is vastly more
complex than an abstract Falling Body. Remember the old joke about the
theoretical physicist starting on a bilogical problem with "Consider a
spherical elephant"?

(By the way, "the Devil is in the details" is a perversion that dates from
the Reagan administration. The original, probably from the architect Mies
van der Rohe, is "God is in the details." I like that much better, as do
nearly all scientists, including the ungodly ones.)


>
> Please give me some more references. Until I understand, I guess the Bible
> will continue to provide the best explanation I have.

OK. I think. I'll have to look up the good sources.


--
Dan Drake
dd.RemoveThis@dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
 >> Stay informed about: Science and God 

On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:31:44 UTC, "Dan Drake" <dd RemoveThis @dandrake.com> wrote:

> I think I'm pretty familiar with Genesis 1. Concerning life. First,
> > the plants. Second, life in the seas and birds. Third, mammals. Does
> > evolution theory differ in this sequence? What "plain evidence" is there
> > that refutes this sequence?
>
> If I have timne, I'll address this in another posting, since it also
> raises a point that has to do with where this thread started.

And here's some version of that adidtional posting. It is nearly
impossible to keep such a thing short and coherent, so don't expect too
much success in either aspect.

I'm not especially comfortable among the Bible Debunkers, among whom there
is some silliness and a good deal of malice; and on either side of such
debates you can get enough smug superiority in a month to last all the
world's religions till the end of time. (After all, how much of that do
they _need_?)

Since what I write may show some of thase bad features, let me start with
my opinion of the first chapter of Genesis. It's a splendid hymn of praise
-- and it _is_ that, whether or not it is also, and primarily, the literal
word of the Creator instructing us about the world. It is a hymn of praise
to being; not incidentally, it's a rebuke to those of Manichean or Gnostic
ideas, to whom matter is bad, and the world and the flesh are the work of
the Devil. Shorter Genesis, in the words of C. S. Lewis: "God loves
matter; He invented it."

What I'm writing here is as if I attacked "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A
True Story". Knocking down the "true story" has nothing to do with
"Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", which is a play that keeps getting better the
longer I live. Clever guy, Shakespeare.

To begin, then, near the Beginning:

2And the earth was without form, and void;...

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

(Good old Authorized Version: For this poetry, though not for fine
scientific points any more than for the Epistles, I'll take its majesty
over superior modern scholarship whenever I can.)

I've already commented on verse 3. But "without form, and void" is good
too.

Suppose we take a liberal interpretation -- I certainly don't know the
Hebrew -- and read "Earth" as "world"; there's historically a lot of
overlap, and "world" has always had another meaning: the cosmos, or the
observable universe as we now call it. Apply this passage to the cosmos,
and look at the Big Bang. The early stages of the Big Bang were indeed
formless, and a lot of hard work is going into the sudy how it took its
modern form. (But BTW don't try constructing a Second Law of
Thermodynamics argument here. It won't work.) And "void" can be seen as a
brilliant way of expressing, in one word addressed to people thousands of
years ago, the singularity in which the entire universe was condensed
down, in effect, to nothng.

I don't see this as needing a supernatural explanation, but it certainly
provides no argument against one. Alas, it has nothing to do with biology
or geology or paleontolagy: in short, with the Earth and its history.

In verse 5 God separates the land from the waters. To a moden, this may be
less right or wrong than "Huh?" Not easy to see what it means. I've seen
explanations of the ancient idea of the cosmos as conventric spheres, but
I don't see that that helps much. One could stretch things to say that
there;'s an allusion to the Earth's colling to point where water is
possible; but this lacks a lot of the credibility it would have if there
were any slightest hint that the Earth was HOT. The ancient Hebrews, after
all, know about boiling; having pottery, they even knew about things
getting very hot indeed.

And that's before we get to the waters above the firmament. I've never
heard a reconciliation with science here; maybe it's time I did.

And God has already separated the light and darkness, and the evening and
the morning, which is a good trick before the Sun exists, but I'm getting
ahead here.

And now (11) we have the first appearance of life: plants on the land.
This is about 2 1/2 billion years after the first life, per science. Take
into account only visible living things, and you get improvement, but not
much. The sequence is simply, unmistakably off.

And fruit trees. Real trouble here. Seeds go back a couple of hundred
million years, which isn't enough to make this passage agree with science,
but fruits are more in the past 100 million. (I'm not taking time to look
up the details here, even though God dwells there; but they're well enough
esatblished.)


And NOW (14) we get the Sun. And the Moon. And, just to make it perfectly
clear, all the stars. The plants have survived without the Sun for one
day, where 6 days = 14 billion years. But we know there was light before
verse 14, and God can do all this with miracles. It doesn't make good
agreement with science, though. (BTW now that people have brought back
rocks from the Moon, the direct observational evidence shows us that the
Moon is vastly older than plants on Earth, as if we needed to be told
that.)

This is serious. There is NO science, and no fringe scientific theory,
that will allow you to have the Earth exist before the Sun.

Creating the Sun here also brings up another point that I may get to
later, having to do with the history of astronomy.

Now (20) God populates the oceans. Two Genesis days after the grasses and
the fruit trees on land. This is hopeless.

And what else? Birds! Not too late like the fishes, but way too early, as
we'll see on the next Day. Give it a liberal reading and let it include
pterodactyls, which came earlier; you're still way off the chronology.

And at last, on the sixth Day, we get the quadrupeds. Long after the
birds. Also, insects and snails and worms and every other creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth.

This has been a very brief rough outline of the problems. The science
cited here is solid stuff. It's mostly more than 100 years old, and some
as old as Galileo or older. Oddly, the part where I find the best
agreement with Genesis is the part of the science that's least firmly
established; but I don't think that's a significant pattern.

Opinions can always differ over whether something is a fatal flaw or just
a bunch of nitpicking against a grand design. I don't see how, if we look
for agreement with science, the second interpretation is possible.

If we read it as hymn, we need no more scientific accuracy than we need
empirical proof that beauty really is truth and vice versa. I'm not sure,
though, whether "that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
"


--
Dan Drake
dd RemoveThis @dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
 >> Stay informed about: Science and God 

On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 03:15:11 UTC, "SS13" <sagron.DeleteThis@freenet.de> wrote:

> It depends on how precise you search.
> I have a friend, oth his parents are fat. He istn't, even though he
> eats much. Hencefore he will have a longer life expectation. Is this a
> positive mutation or not?

No, it's probably not. Just gene recombination.

>...
> Genesis should hencefore sound :"In the
> beginning, God created bacteia (which , incidentally, do't appear in
> "Genesis") . In the next billion or so years, bacteria evolved to
> fishes without God's help; they then evolved to amphibia without any
> God's help ... " and so on.

Kind of high standards to apply to science popularization in a pre-tech
society, no? Disappointing, though, that the Infinite Intelligence didn't
put Its mind to the problem of giving a less misleading account without
messing up the poetry.

After all, Milton tried to be accurate, and God must be smarter than that
if he was able to create malt, which does more than Milton can to justify
God's ways to man.

Sounds as if God ought to have emulated Feyman's attempt to condense the
most important known piece of science into one sentence. There would be a
powerful text.

Seriously, a good teacher (speaking of Feynman) will let you know when
he's lying a little in order not to get too deep into a complex
side-issue. Our finite understanding keeps us from knowing why God decided
not to do this, but instead to put masses of misleading stuff into his
Word, and to seem to insist that we had to believe it all as given.

Or maybe there's another explanation of the whole thing.


--
Dan Drake
dd.DeleteThis@dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
 >> Stay informed about: Science and God 

Reading short posts by known names.


On 23 Oct 2006 21:22:34 GMT, Dan Drake wrote:
/snip/

> Disappointing, though, that the Infinite Intelligence didn't
> put Its mind to the problem of giving a less misleading account without
> messing up the poetry.
>
> After all, Milton tried to be accurate, and God must be smarter than that
> if he was able to create malt, which does more than Milton can to justify
> God's ways to man.
>
> Sounds as if God ought to have emulated Feyman's attempt to condense the
> most important known piece of science into one sentence. There would be a
> powerful text.
>
> Seriously, a good teacher (speaking of Feynman) will let you know when
> he's lying a little in order not to get too deep into a complex
> side-issue. Our finite understanding keeps us from knowing why God decided
> not to do this, but instead to put masses of misleading stuff into his
> Word, and to seem to insist that we had to believe it all as given.
>
> Or maybe there's another explanation of the whole thing.



)))))))


Bree
 >> Stay informed about: Science and God 

Dear Dan,

Thanks for your response.

You seem to be an honorable and intelligent man, and are willing to discuss
without being disgusting.

Can you tell me something? What happens to my posts? They have disappeared
from my alt.Bible newsgroup listings.

Oh, well, I'll just start over from your posting here.

I'm using Word, text format, and will then paste into Outlook. I hope this
works.

On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:31:44 UTC, "Dan Drake" <dd.DeleteThis@dandrake.com> wrote:

> I think I'm pretty familiar with Genesis 1. Concerning life. First,
> > the plants. Second, life in the seas and birds. Third, mammals. Does
> > evolution theory differ in this sequence? What "plain evidence" is there
> > that refutes this sequence?
>
[snip]


I'm not especially comfortable among the Bible Debunkers, among whom there
is some silliness and a good deal of malice; and on either side of such
debates you can get enough smug superiority in a month to last all the
world's religions till the end of time. (After all, how much of that do
they _need_?)


[snip]


Since what I write may show some of thase bad features, let me start with
my opinion of the first chapter of Genesis. It's a splendid hymn of praise
-- and it _is_ that, whether or not it is also, and primarily, the literal
word of the Creator instructing us about the world.

To begin, then, near the Beginning:


DAN. YOU LEFT OUT THE START "IN THE BEGINNING." THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF
MY ARGUMENT. MY BASIC ARGUMENT IS THAT SCIENCE CAN SUPPORT THE BIBLICAL
ACCOUNT. AS I STATED EARLIER, THE BIBLE STOOD ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS
WITH THE ASSERTION THAT THERE WAS A BEGINNING. IT WASN'T UNTIL THE 20TH
CENTURY THAT SCIENCE FINALLY AGREED. AS FAR AS I KNOW, MOST SCIENTISTS AGREE
THE UNIVERSE HAD A BEGINNING - ABOUT 15 BILLION YEARS AGO.


2And the earth was without form, and void;...

SCIENCE AGREES. THE UNIVERSE STARTS WITH ENERGY ONLY, VOID OF ANYTHING WE
WOULD THINK OF AS MATTER. ISN'T THAT A VOID, WITHOUT FORM?

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God has already separated the light and darkness, and the evening and
the morning, which is a good trick before the Sun exists, but I'm getting
ahead here.


SCIENCE AGREES WITH THIS ALSO. ALTHOUGH I THINK MOST SCIENTISTS THOUGHT THAT
MATTER HAD TO FORM FIRST, THEN THE MATTER WOULD MAKE SUNS THAT THEN EMITTED
LIGHT. SO, SCIENTISTS DEBUNKED THIS PART OF THE GENESIS ACCOUNT AS WELL. YOU
APPEAR TO BE BOTHERED BY THIS ACCOUNT TOO.

IT'S INTERESTING THAT JUST SINCE WE STARTED COMMUNICATING THAT I SAW A
REPORT THAT SCIENTISTS NOW BELIEVE THAT LIGHT CAME BEFORE THE FORMATION OF
STARS AND BEFORE ANY MATTER AS WELL?

FOR MY THESIS, THIS IS A PERFECT, REAL CURRENT EXAMPLE OF SCIENCE CATCHING
UP WITH THE GENESIS ACCOUNT. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT I POSIT THAT IS VERY
SIGNIFICATNT. I THINK I READ SOMEONE IN THIS THREAD TALKING ABOUT THE BIBLE
PREDICTING SOME FACT? WELL, ISN'T IT INTERESTING THAT HERE IT IS! THE BIBLE
PREDICTED THAT LIGHT CAME FIRST, THEN MATTER THEN THE SUN! NOW, SCIENCE HAS
COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION.

I've already commented on verse 3. But "without form, and void" is good

In verse 5 God separates the land from the waters. To a moden, this may be
less right or wrong than "Huh?" Not easy to see what it means. I've seen
explanations of the ancient idea of the cosmos as conventric spheres, but
I don't see that that helps much. One could stretch things to say that
there;'s an allusion to the Earth's colling to point where water is
possible; but this lacks a lot of the credibility it would have if there
were any slightest hint that the Earth was HOT. The ancient Hebrews, after
all, know about boiling; having pottery, they even knew about things
getting very hot indeed.


YOU SKIPPED DAY 2 OF CREATION. IN MY KING JAMES VERSION DAY 2 IS DISCUSSED
IN VERSES 6-8.

IF WE CONVERT DAY 2 OF GENESIS INTO TIME FROM OUR FRAME OF REFERENCE USING
RELATIVITY, THIS TIME PERIOD OCCURS FROM 7.8 BILLION - 3.8 BILLION YEARS
AGO. GENESIS TALKS ABOUT THIS TIME PERIOD AS BEING WHEN THE HEAVENLY
FIRMAMENT IS FORMED. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HEBREW IS FOR HEAVEN AND
FIRMAMENT. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE ARE IN ENGLISH. BUT, AS I UNDERSTAND
IT, THIS IS THE TIME PERIOD WHEN OUR MILKY WAY GALAXY WAS FORMING. TO ME,
WHEN I LOOK "TO THE HEAVENS" THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I SEE.

HERE, AGAIN GENESIS SEEMS CLOSE TO WHAT CURRENT SCIENCE INDICATES HAPPENED.
I GUESS I'M NAÏVE TO BELIEVE THATIT'S AMAZING THAT SOME BEDOUIN COULD HAVE
KNOWN THAT ALL BY HIMSELF? SO FAR, THERE SEEM TO BE TOO MANY COINCIDENCES.
IS IT JUST CHANCE THAT THE AUTHOR OF GENESIS GOT IT THIS CLOSE TO WHAT OUR
CURRENT SCIENCE SAYS THIS FAR?

I DON'T SEE HOW PEOPLE COULD NOT BE IMPRESSED, IF NOT CONVINCED YET.

And now (11) we have the first appearance of life: plants on the land.
This is about 2 1/2 billion years after the first life, per science. Take
into account only visible living things, and you get improvement, but not
much. The sequence is simply, unmistakably off.



IN MY BIBLE, KJV, VERSES 9-13 DESCRIBES DAY 3. THE TIME PERIOD IN OUR TIME
CONVERTS WITH RELATIVITY THEORY TO 3.8 BILLION YEARS TO 1.8 BILLION YEARS
AGO.

THE FORMATION OF DRY LAND, SEPARATED FROM THE WATER ACCORDING TO BOTH
GENESIS AND SCIENCE. THE TIME LINE AGREES. NOW, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN YOUR CONTENTION AND MY SOURCES ON WHEN PLANT LIFE BEGAN. MY
UNDERSTANDING IS THAT SIMPLE PLANT LIFE (ALGAE) BEGAN IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE
FORMATION OF LIQUID WATER.


And fruit trees. Real trouble here. Seeds go back a couple of hundred
million years, which isn't enough to make this passage agree with science,
but fruits are more in the past 100 million. (I'm not taking time to look
up the details here, even though God dwells there; but they're well enough
esatblished.)


I AGREE WITH YOU HERE. THIS APPEARS TO BE A PROBLEM WITH MY THESIS. MY
UNDERSTANDING IS THAT THE FOSSIL RECORD SHOWS LAND PLANTS STARTING ONLY 400
MILLION YEARS AGO. I HAVE READ AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS, ALTHOUGH I AM NOT
TOTALLY CONVINCED. THE EXPLANATION IS THAT THE CREATION OF PLANT LIFE STARTS
ON DAY 3 AND IS A CONTINUING PROCESS COVERING THE REMAINING DAYS - EVEN UNTO
TODAY. GENENIS CONDENSES THE WHOLE PROCESS INTO DAY 3, RATHER THAN CONFUSING
THE ISSUES OF THE MAIN SUBJECTS DISCUSSED DURING THE REMAINING DAYS. THERE
ARE OTHER EXAMPLES IN THE BIBLE OF THIS SAME TECHNIQUE BEING USED.

And NOW (14) we get the Sun. And the Moon. And, just to make it perfectly
clear, all the stars. The plants have survived without the Sun for one
day, where 6 days = 14 billion years. But we know there was light before
verse 14, and God can do all this with miracles. It doesn't make good
agreement with science, though. (BTW now that people have brought back
rocks from the Moon, the direct observational evidence shows us that the
Moon is vastly older than plants on Earth, as if we needed to be told
that.)

This is serious. There is NO science, and no fringe scientific theory,
that will allow you to have the Earth exist before the Sun.


NOW, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT DAY 4 WHICH EQUATES TO 1.8 BILLION YEARS AGO TO
800 MILLION YEARS AGO. IT IS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT EARLY EARTH WAS COVERED
WITH TRANSLUCENT GASSES. YOU COULDN'T SEE THE SUN AND THE MOON. IT WAS
DURING THIS TIME PERIOD THAT THE PLANTS STARTED ON DAY 3 CREATED ENOUGH
OXYGEN TO FORM AN ATMOSPHERE, WHICH, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WAS SIMILAR TO THE
ONE WE HAVE TODAY - TRANSPARENT. FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE SUN AND THE MOON
BECAME CLEARLY VISIBLE. FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE EARTH HAD DAY AND NIGHT AND
SEASONS. NOW, I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HEBREW. THE KJV SAYS "GOD SAID 'LET
THERE BE LIGHTS..' AND LATER IN VERSE 16 IT SAYS "GOD MADE TWO GREAT
LIGHTS.". WHY GENESIS USES TWO VERB TYPES I DON'T KNOW. I'M HOPING THE
ORIGINAL SHOWS IT FOLLOWS THE IDEA THAT THE LIGHTS BECAME VISIBLE AS THE
ATMOSPHERE CLEARED WITH OXYGEN CREATION.

Now (20) God populates the oceans. Two Genesis days after the grasses and
the fruit trees on land. This is hopeless.

And what else? Birds! Not too late like the fishes, but way too early, as
we'll see on the next Day. Give it a liberal reading and let it include
pterodactyls, which came earlier; you're still way off the chronology.

I'VE ALREADY TALKED ABOUT DAY 3. THERE IS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION. ON DAY 5
(RELATIVITY CONVERTED TO 800 MILLION TO 300 MILLION YEARS AGO).

HERE THE BIBLE TALKS ABOUT THE CREATION OF CREATURES IN THE OCEANS AND FOWL
IN THE AIR. YOU WILL HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE CREATION OF LIFE IN THE SEAS.
THESE DATES COINCIDE WITH THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD WHEN ALL BASIC LIFE FORMS WERE
CREATED. I'LL NOTE THAT THE KJV USES THE PHRASE "LET THE WATERS BRING FORTH
THE MOVING CREATURE THAT HATH LIFE..." IN ANOTHER PART IS SAYS "GOD
CREATED.." TO ME, THIS MEANS THAT TWO THINGS ARE GOING ON. THERE IS SOME
CREATION THAT OCCURS SPONTANEOUSLY AND OTHER CREATION THAT GOD PARTICIPATES
IN. COULD IT BE THAT THE BIBLE IS SAYING CREATION AND SOME EVOLUTIONARY
PROCESSES ARE GOING ON AT THE SAME TIME? I THINK THAT MAY BE THE CASE. WISH
I UNDERSTOOD ANCIENT HEBREW.

YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE DATES FOR BIRDS. THE EARLIEST BIRD FOSSIL I CAN
FIND IS ARCHAEOPTERYX DATED AT 145 MILLION YEARS AGO. THAT'S 100 MILLION
AFTER THE DATES FOR DAY 5. SO, I AGREE WITH YOU. SCIENCE DOES NOT HAVE
EVIDENCE FOR BIRDS BEFORE 200 MILLION YEARS AGO. BUT, THERE IS EVIDENCE FOR
FLYING INSECTS DURING THE TIME PERIOD OF DAY 5. COULD IT BE THAT ACCORDING
TO EVOLUTION, THAT THE PRECURSORS TO ARCHAEOPTERYX EXISTED BETWEEN THE
FLYING INSECTS OF DAY 5 AND THE FOSSILS WE HAVE FOUND? THAT WAS A LONG TIME
AGO AND PERHAPS SOME DAY, SOMEONE WILL FIND A FLYING FOSSIL THAT COINCIDES
WITH THE DAY 4 PERIOD. IS THAT OUTSIDE THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY?

And at last, on the sixth Day, we get the quadrupeds. Long after the
birds. Also, insects and snails and worms and every other creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth.


DAY 6 OF GENESIS GOES FROM 250 MILLION YEARS TO 10,000 YEARS AGO. IT APPEARS
YOU HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THESE DATES FOR THE CREATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. WASN'T
250 MILLION YEARS AGO THE TIME OF THE MASS EXTINCTION OF MOST LIFE FORMS
WHICH GAVE RISE TO MAMMALS? HOW DID GENESIS GET THAT RIGHT? ANOTHER
COINCIDENCE?

SORRY TO TAKE SO LONG TO RESPOND. BUT, YOU TOOK A LOT OF TIME WRITING YOUR
POST AND DESERVED A DETAILED ANSWER.

IN LOOKING OVER YOUR ANALYSIS AND MY ANALYSIS I WILL AGREE I HAVE A
POTENTIAL PROBLEM WITH PLANTS AND BIRDS. THE REST FITS THE SCIENCE WELL.
THERE IS EVEN A REASONABLE EXPLANATION FOR THE SUN AND MOON PROBLEM YOU
IDENTIFIED AS A "SERIOUS PROBLEM".

THE PLANT PROBLEM CAN BE DEALT WITH IN MY MIND. BUT, THEN I'M A BELIEVER IN
THE BIBLE. I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY OTHERS WOULDN'T BE BECAUSE OF THE DAY 3
"PROBLEM. AS FOR THE BIRDS, I MAY NEVER KNOW THE ANSWER. AS I UNDERSTAND IT,
IT'S POSSIBLE BIRDS MAY HAVE EXISTED ON DAY 4, BUT THE STRUCTURES MIGHT BE
TOO FRAGILE TO HAVE SURVIVED.

SO, BOTTOM LINE, I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY YOU DON'T BELIEVE THE GENESIS ACCOUNT.
TO ME, I AM SUBBORNLY NOT CONVINCED THERE IS ANYTHING IN SCIENCE OR YOUR
ANALYSIS THAT HAS REFUTED MY BELIEFS.

THE RELATIVITY-ADJUSTED DATES MATCH WHAT WE KNOW VERY WELL. COSMOLOGY IS
CONFIRMING THE SEQUENCE OF GENESIS MORE CLOSELY EVERY DAY. THE FOSSIL RECORD
IS INCOMPLETE BUT EVEN THERE, THERE IS STILL A VERY CLOSE MATCH TO WHAT SOME
DESERT DWELLER WROTE THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO. JUST TOO MANY COINCIDENCES FOR
ME TO REJECT THE MAIN HYPOTHESIS.

THANKS FOR YOUR EFFORTS.


> --
> Dan Drake
> dd.DeleteThis@dandrake.com
> http://www.dandrake.com/
> porlockjr.blogspot.com
 >> Stay informed about: Science and God 

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 15:53:51 UTC, "rjbjr" <rjburnsjr.TakeThisOut@comcast.net> wrote:

> Dear Dan,
>
> Thanks for your response.
>
> You seem to be an honorable and intelligent man, and are willing to discuss
> without being disgusting.

Thank you, and the same to you. I can do snark and insults with the best,
or second-best of them, but I try to be serious with people who are
serious.

>
> Can you tell me something? What happens to my posts? They have disappeared
> from my alt.Bible newsgroup listings.

Wish I could. Possibly your ISP (or whatever mail server) just has a short
retention time for that newsgroup? You might chek the (too long) list of
other newsgroups that this thread is going to, and try subscribing to one
of them.

>...
> I'm using Word, text format, and will then paste into Outlook. I hope this
> works.

Well, it arrived here.

>
> On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:31:44 UTC, "Dan Drake" <dd.TakeThisOut@dandrake.com> wrote:
>
> >... [snipped my own stuff here]
>
> To begin, then, near the Beginning:
>
>
> DAN. YOU LEFT OUT THE START "IN THE BEGINNING." THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF
> MY ARGUMENT. MY BASIC ARGUMENT IS THAT SCIENCE CAN SUPPORT THE BIBLICAL
> ACCOUNT. AS I STATED EARLIER, THE BIBLE STOOD ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS
> WITH THE ASSERTION THAT THERE WAS A BEGINNING. IT WASN'T UNTIL THE 20TH
> CENTURY THAT SCIENCE FINALLY AGREED. AS FAR AS I KNOW, MOST SCIENTISTS AGREE
> THE UNIVERSE HAD A BEGINNING - ABOUT 15 BILLION YEARS AGO.

[Oops. I hope whatver software you're using can turn off its caps-lock! It
is truly difficult to read this, and the mind rebels against reading it
closely and fairly.]

Ah, right. An oversight here. It does appear (I rely on C. S. Lewis, whom
I respect as an authority on such things) that the "creation" stories of
just about everybody assumed a pre-existing world; Hindus, of course, have
the clearest version of the opposite to Genesis.

In defense of Science, I'd say that Western scientists generally accepted
the Bible till pretty recently on issues that were open; but as geology
became incompatible with a simple reading of Genesis, they drifted away.
Lyell, in fact, in the early 19th century, had a cyclical view of the
history of life, but it's not clear to me whather he had an opinion on the
age of the whole Universe.

Regardless, the Bible's basic answer, stripped of details, is the one now
accepted by scientists. If, however, this is taken as something that
increases its credibility in other manners, I must do debunking that shows
all the things that would _decrease_ its credibility in doubtful cases.

> 2And the earth was without form, and void;...
>
> SCIENCE AGREES. THE UNIVERSE STARTS WITH ENERGY ONLY, VOID OF ANYTHING WE
> WOULD THINK OF AS MATTER. ISN'T THAT A VOID, WITHOUT FORM?

Yes, as I said.

>
> 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
>
> And God has already separated the light and darkness, and the evening and
> the morning, which is a good trick before the Sun exists, but I'm getting
> ahead here.
>
>
> SCIENCE AGREES WITH THIS ALSO. ALTHOUGH I THINK MOST SCIENTISTS THOUGHT THAT
> MATTER HAD TO FORM FIRST, THEN THE MATTER WOULD MAKE SUNS THAT THEN EMITTED
> LIGHT. SO, SCIENTISTS DEBUNKED THIS PART OF THE GENESIS ACCOUNT AS WELL. YOU
> APPEAR TO BE BOTHERED BY THIS ACCOUNT TOO.

No, what gets me is the separation of night and day *before* there is a
Sun. Note also that at this point the stars have not yet been created!
[NB: Isee that there's a response to this later on. See below, then]

> IT'S INTERESTING THAT JUST SINCE WE STARTED COMMUNICATING THAT I SAW A
> REPORT THAT SCIENTISTS NOW BELIEVE THAT LIGHT CAME BEFORE THE FORMATION OF
> STARS AND BEFORE ANY MATTER AS WELL?

I guess your server is losing lots of messages. I mentioned this point in
the posting before the one you're replying to. But it's not new news; you
can look up the 1990s understanding of the Big Bang in Wienberg's book
_The First Three Minutes_.

>
> FOR MY THESIS, THIS IS A PERFECT, REAL CURRENT EXAMPLE OF SCIENCE CATCHING
> UP WITH THE GENESIS ACCOUNT. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT I POSIT THAT IS VERY
> SIGNIFICATNT. I THINK I READ SOMEONE IN THIS THREAD TALKING ABOUT THE BIBLE
> PREDICTING SOME FACT? WELL, ISN'T IT INTERESTING THAT HERE IT IS! THE BIBLE
> PREDICTED THAT LIGHT CAME FIRST, THEN MATTER THEN THE SUN! NOW, SCIENCE HAS
> COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION.

Yes, here we have is a judgment call. I'm not greatly impressed, because I
think of the philosophers who were against Atomism and the ones who were
for it, all of them without any particular evidence; and I saw at an early
age that if there are enough people making guesses (and the atomism debate
was evidence-free till, say, around 1800) some of them will have the right
answer.

Clearly the "guesses" thing is unfair if somebody is consistently right.
The need for consistent correctness is why I am not greatly impressed with
the places where Genesis may turn out to be right.

>...
> In verse 5 God separates the land from the waters. To a moden, this may be
> less right or wrong than "Huh?" Not easy to see what it means. I've seen
> explanations of the ancient idea of the cosmos as conventric[SIC] spheres, but
> I don't see that that helps much. One could stretch things to say that
> there;'s an allusion to the Earth's colling[SIC] to point where water is
> possible; but this lacks a lot of the credibility it would have if there
> were any slightest hint that the Earth was HOT. The ancient Hebrews, after
> all, know about boiling; having pottery, they even knew about things
> getting very hot indeed.
>
>
> YOU SKIPPED DAY 2 OF CREATION. IN MY KING JAMES VERSION DAY 2 IS DISCUSSED
> IN VERSES 6-8.

I did mention it in passing, in terms of the "waters above the firmament".
I don't know what science that connects with. You inturn have skipped the
weird waters above the firmament, and the "separation" of the waters
without any mention that things might have been how.
>
> IF WE CONVERT DAY 2 OF GENESIS INTO TIME FROM OUR FRAME OF REFERENCE USING
> RELATIVITY, THIS TIME PERIOD OCCURS FROM 7.8 BILLION - 3.8 BILLION YEARS
> AGO. GENESIS TALKS ABOUT THIS TIME PERIOD AS BEING WHEN THE HEAVENLY
> FIRMAMENT IS FORMED. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HEBREW IS FOR HEAVEN AND
> FIRMAMENT. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE ARE IN ENGLISH. BUT, AS I UNDERSTAND
> IT, THIS IS THE TIME PERIOD WHEN OUR MILKY WAY GALAXY WAS FORMING. TO ME,
> WHEN I LOOK "TO THE HEAVENS" THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I SEE.

FIRST of all (can't resist using caps for this) I have to take exception
to all this Relativity stuff. Neither the Special Theory of Relativity
(which I understand reasonably well) nor its General successor (which I
admit I have not studied) allows you to just say "this interval = that
interval because I want it to." There are quite specific considerations of
physics and quite specific equations (rather simple ones, in the Special
theory) that govern simultaneity and time dilation. Incidentally, if the
time dimension changes in a new frame of reference, the shape and size of
everything change also; how interesting it would be to work that into the
amended chronology.

Hecne I'll just pass over all further mentions of Relativity as simple
noise. It adds nothing to the ideas of the Liberal Christians in the 20th
century who suggested that you could get around the Six Days by
considering that each "day" represented an age. This is what's going on
here, and Einstein adds nothing to it.

To the main point,

Sorry, there were no stars yet. Not good prediction of science.
Apart from that, is 6-8 some kind of impressive prediction? If you strip
out the "waters" all it says is that God separated the sky from the Earth.
I see no actual content here.

>
> HERE, AGAIN GENESIS SEEMS CLOSE TO WHAT CURRENT SCIENCE INDICATES HAPPENED.
> I GUESS I'M NAÏVE TO BELIEVE THATIT'S AMAZING THAT SOME BEDOUIN COULD HAVE
> KNOWN THAT ALL BY HIMSELF? SO FAR, THERE SEEM TO BE TOO MANY COINCIDENCES.
> IS IT JUST CHANCE THAT THE AUTHOR OF GENESIS GOT IT THIS CLOSE TO WHAT OUR
> CURRENT SCIENCE SAYS THIS FAR?
>
> I DON'T SEE HOW PEOPLE COULD NOT BE IMPRESSED, IF NOT CONVINCED YET.

Difference of opinion. If I'm looking for amazing predictions, I need
something amazing about them; and every important omission or odd
contradiction (like the Firmament without stars) weakens the sense of
wonder. For instance, suppose instead of separating the land from the
waters, Genesis had said that everything was as hot as a potter's kiln (or
whatever the Hebrews used then) and there was water when the Earth cooled
off enough. I think that that would start to make me uncomfortable.

At this point someone will break in to denounce my trying to tell God how
to write the Bible. No; but _if_ God had wanted to impress people raised
in the science of the 20-21 century, there are things He might have done;
just as _if_ God wants to add 2 and 2 according to the now-standard axioms
and definitions, I can tell Him what answer He'll have to get, without
thinking that He really needs my advice. But really, I'm just explaining
what's unimpressive in the relation of Genesis to science.

>
> And now (11) we have the first appearance of life: plants on the land.
> This is about 2 1/2 billion years after the first life, per science. Take
> into account only visible living things, and you get improvement, but not
> much. The sequence is simply, unmistakably off.
>
> IN MY BIBLE, KJV, VERSES 9-13 DESCRIBES DAY 3. THE TIME PERIOD IN OUR TIME
> CONVERTS WITH RELATIVITY THEORY TO 3.8 BILLION YEARS TO 1.8 BILLION YEARS
> AGO.
>
> THE FORMATION OF DRY LAND, SEPARATED FROM THE WATER ACCORDING TO BOTH
> GENESIS AND SCIENCE. THE TIME LINE AGREES. NOW, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE
> BETWEEN YOUR CONTENTION AND MY SOURCES ON WHEN PLANT LIFE BEGAN. MY
> UNDERSTANDING IS THAT SIMPLE PLANT LIFE (ALGAE) BEGAN IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE
> FORMATION OF LIQUID WATER.

Simple life, though not techincally plants, yes. Sorry, as I said, no
grass, no fruits, nothing like that till about 1.7 billion years later
than your time period, unless you allow ferns and cycads and things, which
make only about 1 1/2 billion years.

> And fruit trees. Real trouble here....
>
> I AGREE WITH YOU HERE. THIS APPEARS TO BE A PROBLEM WITH MY THESIS. MY
> UNDERSTANDING IS THAT THE FOSSIL RECORD SHOWS LAND PLANTS STARTING ONLY 400
> MILLION YEARS AGO. I HAVE READ AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS, ALTHOUGH I AM NOT
> TOTALLY CONVINCED. THE EXPLANATION IS THAT THE CREATION OF PLANT LIFE STARTS
> ON DAY 3 AND IS A CONTINUING PROCESS COVERING THE REMAINING DAYS - EVEN UNTO
> TODAY. GENENIS CONDENSES THE WHOLE PROCESS INTO DAY 3, RATHER THAN CONFUSING
> THE ISSUES OF THE MAIN SUBJECTS DISCUSSED DURING THE REMAINING DAYS. THERE
> ARE OTHER EXAMPLES IN THE BIBLE OF THIS SAME TECHNIQUE BEING USED.

You see what's happening to the amazing prophetic accuracy of the account.
We have to rewrite the text a little to make things fit. I have a note on
this at the end of the posting.

>
> And NOW (14) we get the Sun. And the Moon. And, just to make it perfectly
> clear, all the stars. The plants have survived without the Sun for one
> day, where 6 days = 14 billion years. But we know there was light before
> verse 14, and God can do all this with miracles. It doesn't make good
> agreement with science, though. (BTW now that people have brought back
> rocks from the Moon, the direct observational evidence shows us that the
> Moon is vastly older than plants on Earth, as if we needed to be told
> that.)
>
> This is serious. There is NO science, and no fringe scientific theory,
> that will allow you to have the Earth exist before the Sun.
>
>
> NOW, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT DAY 4 WHICH EQUATES TO 1.8 BILLION YEARS AGO TO
> 800 MILLION YEARS AGO. IT IS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT EARLY EARTH WAS COVERED
> WITH TRANSLUCENT GASSES. YOU COULDN'T SEE THE SUN AND THE MOON. IT WAS
> DURING THIS TIME PERIOD THAT THE PLANTS STARTED ON DAY 3 CREATED ENOUGH
> OXYGEN TO FORM AN ATMOSPHERE, WHICH, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WAS SIMILAR TO THE
> ONE WE HAVE TODAY - TRANSPARENT. FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE SUN AND THE MOON
> BECAME CLEARLY VISIBLE. FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE EARTH HAD DAY AND NIGHT AND
> SEASONS. NOW, I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HEBREW. THE KJV SAYS "GOD SAID 'LET
> THERE BE LIGHTS..' AND LATER IN VERSE 16 IT SAYS "GOD MADE TWO GREAT
> LIGHTS.". WHY GENESIS USES TWO VERB TYPES I DON'T KNOW. I'M HOPING THE
> ORIGINAL SHOWS IT FOLLOWS THE IDEA THAT THE LIGHTS BECAME VISIBLE AS THE
> ATMOSPHERE CLEARED WITH OXYGEN CREATION.

Interesting idea. I have never seen the science behind this. The oxygen
atmosphere is well wnough known, but not obviously relevant to the sky
becoming visible. I'd appreciate a good (conventional, mainstream, based
on peer-reviewed work) reference.

>
> Now (20) God populates the oceans. Two Genesis days after the grasses and
> the fruit trees on land. This is hopeless.
>
> And what else? Birds! Not too late like the fishes, but way too early, as
> we'll see on the next Day. Give it a liberal reading and let it include
> pterodactyls, which came earlier; you're still way off the chronology.
>
> I'VE ALREADY TALKED ABOUT DAY 3. THERE IS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION. ON DAY 5
> (RELATIVITY CONVERTED TO 800 MILLION TO 300 MILLION YEARS AGO).
>
> HERE THE BIBLE TALKS ABOUT THE CREATION OF CREATURES IN THE OCEANS AND FOWL
> IN THE AIR. YOU WILL HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE CREATION OF LIFE IN THE SEAS.

Only with its being created so very long after life on the land. And fruit
trees.

> THESE DATES COINCIDE WITH THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD WHEN ALL BASIC LIFE FORMS WERE
> CREATED. I'LL NOTE THAT THE KJV USES THE PHRASE "LET THE WATERS BRING FORTH
> THE MOVING CREATURE THAT HATH LIFE..." IN ANOTHER PART IS SAYS "GOD
> CREATED.." TO ME, THIS MEANS THAT TWO THINGS ARE GOING ON. THERE IS SOME
> CREATION THAT OCCURS SPONTANEOUSLY AND OTHER CREATION THAT GOD PARTICIPATES
> IN.

If you like, but it has no connection to science. Occam, he who said that
entities should not be proliferated without good reason, would not approve
of sticking this extra complexity into the history of life. But he was an
unpleasant old guy anyway, with monstrous ideas (we would agree on this,
I'm sure) about the basis of right and wrong.

COULD IT BE THAT THE BIBLE IS SAYING CREATION AND SOME EVOLUTIONARY
> PROCESSES ARE GOING ON AT THE SAME TIME? I THINK THAT MAY BE THE CASE. WISH
> I UNDERSTOOD ANCIENT HEBREW.

A pretty good substitute: Go to biblegateway.com, and read several
translations in parallel. A lot of scholars, with a lot of different
opinions, have known Hebrew better than those 17th-century gentlemen did.
(For instance, they know that the Unicorn in Job was actually the fierce
wild bull that had been extinct in Western Europe for so long that it had
been forgotten.) I don't know whether the results will help or hurt your
thesis; but after all, that's not what matters in a scholarly
investigation. One problem: cherry picking. "Here's one guy's version of
this that supports my thesis, and here's another guy's version of a
different passage, and..." Dangerous path to take. So there's much to be
said for a study of Hebrew on one's own, but life is short.

>
> YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE DATES FOR BIRDS. THE EARLIEST BIRD FOSSIL I CAN
> FIND IS ARCHAEOPTERYX DATED AT 145 MILLION YEARS AGO. THAT'S 100 MILLION
> AFTER THE DATES FOR DAY 5. SO, I AGREE WITH YOU. SCIENCE DOES NOT HAVE
> EVIDENCE FOR BIRDS BEFORE 200 MILLION YEARS AGO. BUT, THERE IS EVIDENCE FOR
> FLYING INSECTS DURING THE TIME PERIOD OF DAY 5. COULD IT BE THAT ACCORDING
> TO EVOLUTION, THAT THE PRECURSORS TO ARCHAEOPTERYX EXISTED BETWEEN THE
> FLYING INSECTS OF DAY 5 AND THE FOSSILS WE HAVE FOUND? THAT WAS A LONG TIME
> AGO AND PERHAPS SOME DAY, SOMEONE WILL FIND A FLYING FOSSIL THAT COINCIDES
> WITH THE DAY 4 PERIOD. IS THAT OUTSIDE THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY?

It's extremely inconsistent with the record. And the record is coherent,
and I'd remind you that there exists a consistent theoretical framework
that encompasses all the data (i.e., just the sort of thing that
scientists do base predictions on) and makes a strong prediction on
whether or not we'll find flying creatures long before land animals. The
framework is Evolution, and the prediction is No. If you _do_ find these
things, then we'll have to reexamine the arguments that led to the
prediction. Good luck (and I don't really mean it.)

BTW I thought of mentioning flying insects, which go back before 200
million years, but left them out in the interest of brevity. They still
don't go back before 300, which you want. Also, they do not predate
insects on land, which we haven't got to even yet in the Genesis account.

>
> And at last, on the sixth Day, we get the quadrupeds. Long after the
> birds. Also, insects and snails and worms and every other creeping thing
> that creepeth upon the earth.
>
> DAY 6 OF GENESIS GOES FROM 250 MILLION YEARS TO 10,000 YEARS AGO. IT APPEARS
> YOU HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THESE DATES FOR THE CREATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. WASN'T
> 250 MILLION YEARS AGO THE TIME OF THE MASS EXTINCTION OF MOST LIFE FORMS
> WHICH GAVE RISE TO MAMMALS? HOW DID GENESIS GET THAT RIGHT? ANOTHER
> COINCIDENCE?

I have extreme problems with such dates for the arrival (or "creation") of
*life*. It's lots older than that. And no, the mass extinction was later
than that. You can't draw a line anywhere that separates the sequence of
life forms according to the sequence in Genesis.

> SORRY TO TAKE SO LONG TO RESPOND. BUT, YOU TOOK A LOT OF TIME WRITING YOUR
> POST AND DESERVED A DETAILED ANSWER.
>
> IN LOOKING OVER YOUR ANALYSIS AND MY ANALYSIS I WILL AGREE I HAVE A
> POTENTIAL PROBLEM WITH PLANTS AND BIRDS. THE REST FITS THE SCIENCE WELL.
> THERE IS EVEN A REASONABLE EXPLANATION FOR THE SUN AND MOON PROBLEM YOU
> IDENTIFIED AS A "SERIOUS PROBLEM".
>
> THE PLANT PROBLEM CAN BE DEALT WITH IN MY MIND. BUT, THEN I'M A BELIEVER IN
> THE BIBLE. I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY OTHERS WOULDN'T BE BECAUSE OF THE DAY 3
> "PROBLEM. AS FOR THE BIRDS, I MAY NEVER KNOW THE ANSWER. AS I UNDERSTAND IT,
> IT'S POSSIBLE BIRDS MAY HAVE EXISTED ON DAY 4, BUT THE STRUCTURES MIGHT BE
> TOO FRAGILE TO HAVE SURVIVED.

You see why this is of no use in arguing against the conventional
evolutionary account of things. You're asking for some radical new
discovery, like birds at a time that's clearly impossible under
established ideas about the history of life. OK, that would cause real
trouble for biologists. All one can say is Yes, if you find something that
falsifies our ideas, we'll have to rework them or even abandon them. (By
the way, you've just refuted all the silly people who say "Karl Popper
proved that evolution is unscientific because it's not falsifiable."
Thank you.)

Or, perhaps such evidence can't be found because it's too fragile. This
is, at best, not an agreement with the findings of science. And the idea
that there were such things is completely inconsistent with findings of
science, like the fossil history and the new science of DNA -- a science,
undreamed-of by Darwin and his contemporaries, which agrees very well with
classical paleontology. *That* is the kind of agreemnt that impresses me.
>
> SO, BOTTOM LINE, I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY YOU DON'T BELIEVE THE GENESIS ACCOUNT.
> TO ME, I AM SUBBORNLY NOT CONVINCED THERE IS ANYTHING IN SCIENCE OR YOUR
> ANALYSIS THAT HAS REFUTED MY BELIEFS.

Incidentally, the other thing I left out for brevity: It is entirely clear
from the Genesis account that the Earth has always sat still in the middle
of things, with the Universe constructed around it and rotating around it.
Numerous other Biblical passages agreee with it. This is not some Bible
Debunkers' slander, but the interpretation accepted by *all* Biblical
interpreters up to the 17th century.

It hasn't worked out very well. Even the careful deliberations of the
Vatican gave up on that quite a while ago. The biblical liberals have made
a free interpretation of many bits of the Bible to get around this awkward
matter of the Earth moving -- and I assume you agree with them. In this
you are taking Galileo's advice -- which is safe enough to do now, and has
even been adopted by Roman Catholic Church (or at least by a Pope, though
I can't say that he was speaking _ex cathedra_).

But do consider the overwhelming weight of scholarly interpretation that
stood against that re-interpretation. There's a good summary by Cardinal
Bellarmine in a letter he wrote letter to Galileo, whichis worth looking
at, even if you're not interested in the theological opinions of
Cardinals. Given the massive re-understanding of a lot of plain Biblical
passages that Christians have undergone to get the Bible in line with the
realities of the Firmament, it's not clear why the same can't be done with
Genesis.
>
> THE RELATIVITY-ADJUSTED DATES MATCH WHAT WE KNOW VERY WELL. COSMOLOGY IS
> CONFIRMING THE SEQUENCE OF GENESIS MORE CLOSELY EVERY DAY. THE FOSSIL RECORD
> IS INCOMPLETE BUT EVEN THERE, THERE IS STILL A VERY CLOSE MATCH TO WHAT SOME
> DESERT DWELLER WROTE THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO. JUST TOO MANY COINCIDENCES FOR
> ME TO REJECT THE MAIN HYPOTHESIS.

Speaking of the abuse of Relativity -- you can, as some have, claim that
Einstein proved that everything is relative, so the Inquisition was right,
and the Earth really does stand still. It's true, though wildly
irrelevant, that General Relativity would allow you to construct a frame
of reerence in which the Earth is stationary and everything goes around
it. Sounds impossible, as it would seem to have nearly the whole Universe
moving faster than light; but actually it could be done. So I tell you
what: Work out the matrix equations that will have the Earth stationary
through all the time since it condensed, and see if that transforms time
so much that the 14 billion years look like 6 days. *And* take into
account that the shape and motion of everything else in the Universe would
be weirdly different from what we perceive, in a way that's consistent
with Genesis. THEN I'll be impressed.


--
Dan Drake
dd.TakeThisOut@dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
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