Genesis 1:2-12 and the Hydrologic Cycle

[abelcainsbrother]

I know that alot of you don't like the KJV bible but from reading the KJV bible we can know that it was known the earth is old and the KJV was translated over 400 years ago long before modern science and even evolution. The KJV bible teaches and reveals the earth is old. I might get into it sometime and show how,but it does.

[Philip]

I still contend that if a wine expert could examine that wine, there'd be no evidence that the wine was old. Only that it was wine.

I say it would be indistinguishable - else the miracle wouldn't be quite the miracle one might think. Could not God make it indistinguishable? But again, we're told it was a miracle - an interruption in how things typically work. The question is did God interrupt the natural flow of processes during the creation? The immense examples in Scripture show God quite happy to let things take their natural course, with the very occasional miraculous intervention - almost always as an example to people in a particular moment and to illustrate a key spiritual understanding.

God seems to enjoy interacting in real time, patiently. He's spent many thousands of years of human history interacting, ever so patiently with man. He's never shown Himself to be in a hurry. As He obviously enjoyed what He originally created, with such care to ever minute, molecular detail - was He in a hurry to complete His Creation? OR is time not irrelevant to God?

[Jac3510]

You can't dismiss it so easily, Phil. To say that there's no evidence wine is old is nutty. Wine experts can tell the age of a bottle of wine by tasting it. Now, there's a lot of myths around the whole old-win-is-better motif. By and large, it just isn't true (in fact, only about 1% of all wine actually benefits from serious aging; for most literally 99% (not a rhetorical way of saying "a lot"), aging makes the wine taste worse). But what is true is that wine changes as it ages, and that can be tasted. The simple fact is that old wine tastes differently than new wine does, and experts can very, very easily tell the difference. I'm far from a wine expert, and I can tell the difference!

Anyway, but we're making a couple of mistakes with this discussion. The first is talking about modern wine anyway and the second is talking about the quality of the wine. By and large, modern wines aren't meant to be aged. That $4 bottle (and even the $100 bottle for that matter) you buy off the shelf is meant to be consumed inside of five years. But all of that is totally beside the point. Getting back to the text, what we do know is that in the culture Jesus is dealing with, "old" wine was considered better. They had a particular type of wine they liked and it tasted better with age (it was also stronger). And by "age," I'm talking a couple of decades, nothing crazy like a hundred year old bottle of scotch or anything. And second, regardless of the age, the fact is that ALL wine comes from grapes--it's fermented grape juice (granted, there are other types of wine--apple wine, peach wine, etc., but you get my point). The point is that when Jesus turned the water from the wine, if you were to have scientifically tested it, you would have found that it was fermented (which is to say, aged) grape juice. That means it had been bottled (with yeast) for a MINIMUM of four weeks, and given this type of wine, probably a few years. The difference in taste was enough that people can tell the difference and were shocked by it.

Now, to bring this back to the OEC comparison, anyone--scientist or wine expert--would have believed this was old wine by testing it. They would have concluded that grapes were harvested several months to years ago and fermented with yeast, perhaps with a bit of sugar added to sweeten it as necessary. That's the history of wine, and scientifically, that's exactly what you would see under a microscope. It's no different than when a scientist sees x-ray bursts and concludes that there must have been a supernova at this particular spot a few billion light years away. The supernova produces the x-ray bursts, which we see today. Just so, the grapes produce the sugar when combined with yeast which over a certain amount of time produces a certain chemical structure (i.e., wine). When OECs object to YECs appearance of age argument by saying that God created a false history (the x-rays came from a supernova that never existed), EXACTLY the same point would be leveled at the wine. The fact that Jesus produces wine necessarily would suggest a false history; and, in fact, that false history is actually an important part of the story. It is highlighted that Jesus produced old wine. And I think there's another parallel to the YEC debate here. Just like the false history is THE point of the story, not just some interesting accident, I, along with a lot of commentators, have seen an intentional connection between Jesus creating wine out of water and the creation story itself. John seems to be intentionally showing that Jesus is the Creator (not surprising, then, that this is the first miracle he records). Now, since Jesus created a fully functional wine, complete with a "false history" (as all fully functional ideas necessarily include), then if God created a fully functional universe, would we not also expect the "false history" Rich raves against? The OEC argument that the history we see proves the universe is old just begs the question. The OEC argument is that we see these processes, and therefore they must have happened in time. But such would be indistinguishable from God creating a fully functional universe later in its maturity date (just like the wine). You could test such a universe (or wine) all you like, and you'll necessarily come to incorrect conclusions about the age of the universe (or wine) because you are assuming that the universe (wine) got here naturally, by using all the natural processes. But God Himself is telling us that He did NOT use the natural processes. He made it fully functional.

So, sorry, but I don't think your dismissal via indistinguishability helps you--in fact, it further goes to prove the YEC point.

[B. W.]

Jac how does God timelessness be timeless?

Quoted in full from this website

http://www.gotquestions.org/God-time.html

Question: "What is God's relationship to time?"

Answer: We live in a physical world with its four known space-time dimensions of length, width, height (or depth) and time. However, God dwells in a different dimension—the spirit realm—beyond the perception of our physical senses. It’s not that God isn’t real; it’s a matter of His not being limited by the physical laws and dimensions that govern our world (Isaiah 57:15). Knowing that “God is spirit” (John 4:24), what is His relationship to time?

In Psalm 90:4, Moses used a simple yet profound analogy in describing the timelessness of God: “For a thousand years in Your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” The eternity of God is contrasted with the temporality of man. Our lives are but short and frail, but God does not weaken or fail with the passage of time.

In a sense, the marking of time is irrelevant to God because He transcends it. Peter, in 2 Peter 3:8, cautioned his readers not to let this one critical fact escape their notice—that God’s perspective on time is far different from mankind’s (Psalm 102:12, 24-27). The Lord does not count time as we do. He is above and outside of the sphere of time. God sees all of eternity’s past and eternity’s future. The time that passes on earth is of no consequence from God’s timeless perspective. A second is no different from an eon; a billion years pass like seconds to the eternal God.

Though we cannot possibly comprehend this idea of eternity or the timelessness of God, we in our finite minds try to confine an infinite God to our time schedule. Those who foolishly demand that God operate according to their time frame ignore the fact that He is the “High and Lofty One . . . who lives forever” (Isaiah 57:15). This description of God is far removed from man’s condition: “The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10).

Again, because of our finite minds, we can only grasp the concept of God’s timeless existence in part. And in so doing, we describe Him as a God without a beginning or end, eternal, infinite, everlasting, etc. Psalm 90:2 declares, “From everlasting to everlasting You are God” (see also Psalm 93:2). He always was and always will be.

So, what is time? To put it simply, time is duration. Our clocks mark change or, more precisely, our timepieces are benchmarks of change that indicate the passage of time. We could say, then, that time is a necessary precondition for change and change is a sufficient condition to establish the passage of time. In other words, whenever there’s change of any kind we know that time has passed. We see this as we go through life, as we age. And we cannot recover the minutes that have passed by.

Additionally, the science of physics tells us that time is a property resulting from the existence of matter. As such, time exists when matter exists. But God is not matter; God, in fact, created matter. The bottom line is this: time began when God created the universe. Before that, God was simply existing. Since there was no matter, and because God does not change, time had no existence and therefore no meaning, no relation to Him.

And this brings us to the meaning of the word eternity. Eternity is a term used to express the concept of something that has no end and/or no beginning. God has no beginning or end. He is outside the realm of time. Eternity is not something that can be absolutely related to God. God is even beyond eternity.

Scripture reveals that God lives outside the bounds of time as we know it. Our destiny was planned “before the beginning of time” (2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2) and “before the creation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:20). “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3). In other words, the physical universe we see, hear, feel and experience was created not from existing matter, but from a source independent of the physical dimensions we can perceive.

“God is spirit” (John 4:24), and, correspondingly, God is timeless rather than being eternally in time or being beyond time. Time was simply created by God as a limited part of His creation for accommodating the workings of His purpose in His disposable universe (see 2 Peter 3:10-12).

Upon the completion of His creation activity, including the creation of time, what did God conclude? “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen 1:31). Indeed, God is spirit in the realm of timelessness, rather than flesh in the sphere of time.

As believers, we have a deep sense of comfort knowing that God, though timeless and eternal, is in time with us right now; He is not unreachably transcendent, but right here in this moment with us. And because He’s in this moment, He can respond to our needs and prayers.

Recommended Resource: Knowing God by J.I. Packer

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[Jac3510]

I don't understand the question.

[RickD]

jac wrote:
You could test such a universe (or wine) all you like, and you'll necessarily come to incorrect conclusions about the age of the universe (or wine) because you are assuming that the universe (wine) got here naturally, by using all the natural processes. But God Himself is telling us that He did NOT use the natural processes. He made it fully functional.

Jac,

What about the scientists who test the universe to find out the age of it, who don't believe the universe got here naturally? Many scientists believe the universe was created by God, supernaturally.

And second,

I'm confused on where you get the idea that "God Himself is telling us that He did NOT use the natural processes. He made it fully functional."

Are you interpreting something in scripture to mean that God created the universe, ex nihilo perhaps, but it was created pretty much as we see it today?

I'm just not following your reasoning on this.

[Jac3510]

What about the scientists who test the universe to find out the age of it, who don't believe the universe got here naturally? Many scientists believe the universe was created by God, supernaturally.

They don't believe that God created the universe supernaturally--not in the sense I mean it. OECs might believe that God created the singularity supernaturally in such a way that it would unfold naturally about fourteen billion years later such that he could either allow life to evolve or else He could directly and supernaturally create life at that point. So the only thing supernatural about such a view (setting aside the creative work of life in some views) is the supernatural creation of the "blueprint" that was to unfold following the supernaturally created natural processes.

But it should be obvious that isn't what I'm talking about, and doubly so when considering the wine example. Wine can be created following natural processes. But Jesus obviously didn't use those natural processes. He didn't supernaturally create the grape and allow that process to naturally unfold to get wine. He supernaturally created the wine complete and in itself, and if you were to look at it and measure it and assume the natural processes had always applied you would come to incorrect conclusions about its age and history--which is exactly what happened in the story, by the way. Just so with the universe. If God created a fully functional universe then you could not, in principle, extrapolate back via the natural processes to discover its age (say, fourteen billion years).

And second,

I'm confused on where you get the idea that "God Himself is telling us that He did NOT use the natural processes. He made it fully functional."

Are you interpreting something in scripture to mean that God created the universe, ex nihilo perhaps, but it was created pretty much as we see it today?

I'm saying that Scripture teaches YEC. You know I say that and have always said that. I say that Scripture does not teach OEC, that there is no warrant for OEC in Scripture, that people who believe OEC are reading science back into the Bible and not letting it speak for itself. I'm saying what I have always said, nothing more or less. You disagree, and that's fine. I think you are just plainly and obviously mistaken, so plainly and so obviously that no one ever thought to make your mistake until they were given a scientific reason to do so.

This, by the way, also shows the idiocy, slander, and heresy of Rich's claims that the God of YEC is not the God of Scripture and that YEC (as connected to the appearance of age argument) ought not to be tolerated in the church (I mean, talk about one side being divisive! Rich wants to ban me from church). It isn't deceptive if God tells us what He did. And He did tell us. In Scripture. It's right there in black and white. You can't accuse God of being deceptive when He plainly told you the way He did things.

And I'll get to your longer response later. I've been meaning to the last couple of days, but this ordination stuff I'm doing is ridiculous. The amount of writing is absolutely absurd, and worse, it's all just busy work. Nothing of substance.

[Philip]

OK, for sake of argument: Adam had no wrinkles, no belly button, but he was an adult - that absent age indicators of physical decay, wounds, etc., he would otherwise have appeared as a man with a infancy and childhood that led to his appearance of his first day. The wine in Cana - same deal, it no doubt looked and tasted as aged fine wine would have. But these are SPECIAL interruptions of natural processes that produced the miraculous - for both stated and particular reasons. But that's not how God typically works. But the problem with apply that to the science data that indicates great age is that exactly what would be expected is that there IS evidence left behind that indicates that normal processes produced what we are studying. Sediment layers, precisely as one would expect, geologic aspects of rocks, the infrared shift of where the stars were and where they are. So why would God replicate the precise look of so many process evidences if they were not needed in producing what exists? Why is the evidence of the PROCESSES there - and not just the items being studied? Why the red shift, sediment layers, all of that? Because THAT suggests that it is meant to LOOK old to us, while it is not. So it is not ONLY what we've ended up with, but the fact that we can see and measure all these many details of things and their typically observed processes, exactly as they always have functioned.

If God would hover above a wet sandy beach and show a crowd a miracle, in which a man is made to disappear and then to instantly reappear, moments later, five miles up the same coastline - would God also leave footprints precisely matching the man's feet, as if he had walked the entire way to where he "supposedly" reappeared?

Again, it is not ONLY that God can do the miraculous - He obviously could have done it in any way He so desired. But the question is, why did He leave such enormous evidences of processes behind, AS IF, those many normally occurring, exceptionally slow processes (that science overwhelming asserts, across a wide variety of disciplines, takes immense periods of time) occurred precisely as would be expected, IF there were no in-between great lengths of time and processes involved? Yes, He could do that, HOWEVER, clearly it would be unnecessary to leave evidences behind that were not necessary to what was produced. If true, that would lead me to believe He doesn't want us to conclude key things per science. And God obviously knew that man would struggle to come to an understanding that Scripture is true, ANYWAY. And that this would confuse us if we take ALL of what Scripture says as literal. But we know that we are not SUPPOSED to take it ALL as literal. Again, God gave us the curiosity, the scientific tools and methodologies, AND He's shown mankind that there CAN be great confidence its often consistent results, precisely made possible because God created and universe of remarkable consistency and order. I do not believe He meant for us to ignore an overwhelming consensus of those truly and intensively studying His OTHER testimony, the Creation.

The evidence of the PROCESSES - processes YECs would have us believe didn't take place - is a huge redflag for me on the time issue. True miracles don't need process evidences, because a sudden miracle, the very definition of one, is it is an interruption of natural processes, as it did not REQUIRE them for the miracle to have been produced.

[Jac3510]

But that's not how God typically works.

Stop right there. Nothing afterwards matters. Creation itself is not how God typically works. That's the question you keep begging. You keep assuming that creation is in accordance with how God "typically works" (whatever that means). But that's the whole point. There's nothing typical about creation. The creation of a fully function universe is absolutely supernatural. It is the miracle par excellence. There is absolutely no greater or atypical miracle. It's not an "interruption" of natural processes. Once again, you're begging the question. It was the establishment of the world order without any natural processes whatsover, out of which all natural processes come. And when you look back through the lens of natural processes "beyond" the creation point, you come up with false ideas about the history of the universe; just as if you looked back through the lens of natural processes "beyond" the moment when Jesus turned the water into wine, you would come up with false ideas about the history of the wine. So how do we know the true history of the wine? We read Scripture. God tells us what He did: He turned water into wine. You get a false history from looking at nature (the wine), because it leads you to draw conclusions regarding grapes and fermentation and months or years that never existed. Just so, if you want to know the true history of the universe, you look at Scripture. God tells us He made the universe out of nothing over about six days a relatively short period of time ago. You get a false history from looking at nature (the entire universe), because it leads you to draw conclusions regarding astronomical events and geologic ages and billions of years that never existed. Just like the Old Wine Creationist is wrong precisely because he prefers nature (i.e., science) to revelation, the Old Earth Creationist is wrong precisely because he prefers nature (i.e., science) to revelation.

[Philip]

Philip wrote:
But that's not how God typically works.

Jac: Stop right there. Nothing afterwards matters.

I agree there is NO "typical" with God, except that we can see over the history of Scripture how He has mostly worked in time and through natural processes. I also agree that does not mean that we can assume this is how He has always worked. However, that doesn't change the issue over seeing massive evidences left behind for processes that are ongoing and observable! We don't see overwhelming evidences of startling or completely random things that known processes would not be expected to make, but we see MOUNTAINS of evidences of processes that would both be expected to have produced AND things precisely in the way we find them, as these very same processes are continuing. What are the odds of THAT - across so many disciplines? If God didn't use natural processes in the (yep, wait for it) His Creation process, then why does what we see precisely and abundantly match the evidences of such? Because we're not just considering END results and saying, "Gee, maybe this or that process produced it." No, we're seeing tremendous evidences of the processes THEMSELVES, which YECs are saying weren't used, or that they worked far differently in the past. Not to mention the massive overlap of mountains of data that correlate with the very same conclusions. I could see tremendous disagreement and massive inconclusive studies with the data, and merely wild speculations, but the data holds together AND as we would expect.

So, why do we see the evidences of processes (like red shifts, sediment layers, supernovas, etc.) if they did not actually occur? Can it be a massive coincidence (from man's point of view) that the data, our relentless studies, and our endless observations and calculations just HAPPEN to match the way things look (in the ways that God SUPPOSEDLY made them)? That can be no accident.

[Jac3510]

And there would be massive evidences that the wine was made of a particular type of grape and that it had been fermented a couple of months and aged a few years. In fact, ALL the evidence would point in that direction, and yet, if you went with "natural processes," you would have gotten it wrong. The only way to get it right would have been to take Jesus at His word.

Same with the history of the earth. You can look at all the natural evidence you want. You are begging the question that way. That's a substantive charge that you are simply ignoring. It's all over your previous response. You talk about God using natural processes in time. Guess what, Phil? Creation wasn't in time! That's true whether creation happened fourteen billion or one hundred thousand or six thousand years ago or even six seconds ago. In all of this, you are assuming exactly what the people at the wedding party in Cana assumed--the evidence pointed to good, old wine, and so the wine must have been old (rather than just created that way), and in the same way, that all the evidence points to a fourteen billion year old universe and so the universe must really be fourteen billion years old (rather than just created that way). You ask about the evidence, and so did they. It just so HAPPENED that the wine in question had the taste and chemical structure of that made from certain grapes fermented with yeast for a certain amount of time. That doesn't just happen, you both say. Well what you and those at the party failed to take into account was the testimony and work of God. If they had asked Jesus where the wine came from and not assumed, they would have been told the truth. And if you ask God, He'll tell you the truth. And He has told you, but you don't believe Him. You talk about how He really just used natural processes, beg the question, and dismiss the plain meaning of Scripture.

Sorry, doesn't work for me. Keep reading prioritizing science over Scripture. Keep subjecting the Word of God to interpretations of modern science. Ese es su problema, no el mío, mi amigo.

edit:

To be clear, my objection here is to OEC as stated on the homepage. There are alternatives that are not so blatantly unscriptural. K's Six-One idea still needs developing and is promising. A straight-up theistic evolution at least openly admits that it rejects the common view of inerrancy/inspiration and so can't be accused of eisogesis. John Walton's Temple Dedication view offers another interesting hypothesis (although I think it ultimately fails, but perhaps it just needs more development). I'm not endorsing any of of those alternative views. I'm just saying that the arguments I'm making in this thread would not apply to any of those positions. Anyone who holds to those views could affirm everything I'm saying here and still reject YEC and admit the full weight of the scientific worldview.

[RickD]

How is sn 1986 explained if the universe is 6-10 thousand years old?

The supernova was observed in 1986. The supernova was in the galaxy Centaurus A, which is about 15 million light years away. Which means that the supernova actually happened about 15 million years ago.

[Jac3510]

How is sn 1986 explained if the universe is 6-10 thousand years old?

The supernova was observed in 1986. The supernova was in the galaxy Centaurus A, which is about 15 million light years away. Which means that the supernova actually happened about 15 million years ago.

If there is not a scientific explanation whereby the light from the supernova got here in a shorter period of time (and I don't know that there is or is not--you know my standard position on this, so if you want to have that discussion, take it up with someone who has a proper understanding of the science both of the proposed solution as well as who can do the math and show you how the current model comes to the conclusions it does), then I take it that it would be the same explanation of that the wine Jesus made had. Wine necessarily comes from some type of grape, just like the radiation from SN 1986 comes from the supernova in question. Just like the grapes never existed in real history (wine is just the result of grapes), it may be that the supernova didn't happen in real history (the radiation is just the result of supernovas).

Could be that's just a part of a fully functional universe, Rick.

Or, perhaps the Bible is just wrong. Inerrancy, then, is a false doctrine that Christians ought not hold to.

edit:

Without making ANY endorsement of this answer, here's what Answers in Genesis has to say on the matter. Again, I don't quote them because I agree with them on this particular issue or on anything else. I just quote them because they are the leading YEC organization out there (for better or for worse):

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/ ... -problems/

A related article from Lisle (who "graduated summa cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University where he double-majored in physics and astronomy, and minored in mathematics. He did graduate work at the University of Colorado where he earned a Master’s degree and a PhD in Astrophysics") on the starlight problem more generally:

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/ ... se-is-old/

I've no interest in challenging his expertise or, for that matter, those who have the expertise to criticize him. Perhaps you feel you're in possession of sufficient facts to show why he's wrong. I truly and honestly think that I do not. Again, I just offer that as a type of argument that scientifically educated YECs make.

[Philip]

Jac: Or, perhaps the Bible is just wrong. Inerrancy, then, is a false doctrine that Christians ought not hold to.

Or, RATHER, inerrancy as JAC defines it - or at least how he SEES it! And then I must believe in a false doctrine???!!! I believe in inerrancy. I just don't believe THAT means I'll have a correct understanding of everything in Scripture. And I can guarantee you that Jac doesn't have a perfect understanding of it either - as NO one does! I notice nowhere in Scripture does it make a big deal over the correct understanding of how long a Creation Day is.

[Jac3510]

Feel free to downplay the problem, Phil. Seems like a typical response from you and a couple of others. If it lets you continue comfortably in your cognitive dissonance, that's your issue. I've no interest in such cold comforts. I'm more interested in facing the truth as squarely as I'm capable of doing. Honesty is a little more important to me.