Scientifically Impossible

[YEC]

SCIENTIFICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

Often we read where Christians deny the possibility of the events pertaining to the six day creation or the world wide flood of Noah. The major reason for this denial is due to claims that modern science has disproved the accounts presented within Genesis. Genesis is no longer scientifically feasible.
Despite the many scientific evidences pointing to a recent creation and a world wide flood as told in the accounts of Genesis there is still this nagging need to deny the accounts of Genesis yet believe the other scientifically impossible portions of the bible.
For those who choose not to believe in the accounts of Genesis an allegory must be drawn up to explain the verses.

Below are 9 scientifically impossible events that the bible presents as truth. Why is it that some of the events get dismissed and allegorized by “Theistic Evolutionist” while some of the other events are held on to and presented as the literal truth by these same “Theistic Evolutionist” despite their obvious scientific impossibilities?
If the answer is “miracles” then why can’t all the scientific impossibilities be miracles?
Why is it that the events such as a recent creation and the flood which actually have scientific data to support them become allegories while the others with no scientific support are still up held as fact?

• The creation of the world in six days did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: Genesis 1-2

• The creation of Adam from the dust then Eve from his side did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: Genesis 2:7 , 2:22

• The world wide flood of Noah did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: Genesis 6-8

• Men living to long ages did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: Genesis 9:29

• Moses staff turning into snakes did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: Exodus 4:3

• The sun standing still for Joshua did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: Joshua 10:13

• Peter walking on the water with Jesus did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: Matthew 14:29

• Jesus turning water into wine did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: John 2: 1-11

• Jesus Christ rising from the dead did not happen because it disagrees with popular scientific beliefs.
  They claim it has been shown to be scientifically impossible.
  REF: John 20,21

Perhaps it’s best to allegorize the resurrection of Jesus Christ along with the six day creation....after all, both are scientifically impossible. Dead dead people can’t rise from the grave on day 3.
That would be the natural “scientific” interpretational tendencies. Allegorize.

The above questions make me think of the following question:
Why is it the Theistic Evolutionist can believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is scientifically impossible, yet deny the six day creation performed by Jesus Christ as written in the accounts of Genesis...which is also considered as scientifically impossible?

I believe the bottom line of biblical translation for the Theistic Evolutionist is as follows:
If it relates to the flood or creation, it's an allegory.
Of course there is a danger in presenting this kind of a watered down scientifically impossible pick and choose your miracle bible .....salvation may be easly lost.

[harvey1]

The term YOM may be able to be translated as literal day, or as some claim, an age. But when you look at the word in context and how it is used in the sentance a 24 hour long time frame is clearly implied. For example it is surrounded with terms that relate to a 24 hour long day....evening, and there was morning--the first day

There are many issues to this. But, since you want to argue 24 hour days are required since 'evening' and 'morning' are mentioned, let's start off with this scripture:

"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matt. 12:40)

Now, tell me YEC, how could Jesus be in the grave for 72 hours from Friday night to Sunday runrise? Hmm... If your 24-hour interpretation holds up, you should be able to explain this case too without reducing the 24-hour days to less time.

Secondly I once again refer you to the ten commandments:
EXO 20:11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

Let's look at another scripture referring to a different 6 days:

"Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them." (Mark 9:2)

" And it came to pass, after these words, as it were eight days, that having taken Peter, and John, and James, he went up to the mountain to pray and it came to pass, in his praying, the appearance of his face became altered, and his garment white -- sparkling." (Luke 9:28-29)

Now, here is another place in the Bible where it talks about 6 days, but Luke says it was 8 days. In the case of the Resurrection, Matthew 12 says it was 72 hours, but Christians believe he was buried at sunset on Friday (around 6 PM) and rose 30 hours later (around 6 AM) on Sunday.

But, let's turn to another scripture in Genesis which tells us how long it took God to create the world:

"These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth" (Gen.2:4)

SO, here we see that God created the heavens and earth in a day. So, it's obvious that the scriptures are not to be construed too literally when reconciling the historical past. However, with that said, there really is no reason to not take Genesis 1 as 6 literal days. That's right. You heard me. I have no objection. There are other ways to interpret Genesis besides making 'Yom' equivalent to 'ages' (which Gen.2:4 supports, by the way...):

1. Nowhere does it say that those are 6 contiguous days. Day 1 could have been the state of earth 4.5 billion years ago. Day 2 could have been the state of the earth 4.2 billion years ago. Day 3 could have been the state of the earth 4.0 billion years ago. Day 4 could have been the state of the earth 3.9 billion years ago, etc, etc. Each 'day' is God giving a command. It maybe took God, oh I don't know, maybe a few attoseconds to make a proclamation, and as long as something happened THAT day, there are enough incidences in the scriptures to support this conclusion.

For example:

"but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Gen. 2:17)

The human manifestation of adamah (i.e., "Adam") died many years later after this command was given to him by God. Surely he ate the fruit on a specific day, but the effects took time. The first effect was the shame of their nakedness. So, likewise, you can be consistent with Genesis 1 (and six '24-hour' days) by saying, for example, on Day 3 God uttered that life would occur, and life occurred that day. Afterall, there has to be a first day of life on this planet, why not the day that God uttered it to be so?

2. The 'days' could be 24-hour days from God's perspective. I don't favor this interpretation, but the physicist Gerald Schroeder has written extensively about how his interpretation matches up with relativity theory. No one knows what God is thinking, so it could very well be right.

3. Each command of God might have taken a l-o-n-g t-i-m-e to utter, and this is followed by the end of a real 24-hour day. It says in Gen. 1 "So the evening and the morning were the [1st, 2nd, etc] day". If God starting uttering something in 1700 AD and if he finished the utterance of his command today, and evening and morning followed, the utterance was completed yesterday. It is the day of completion that sometimes marks a day. For example:

"And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month (which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem." II Kings 25:8

"Now in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month (which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, who served the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem." Jer. 52:12

There is a dispute in the two accounts of the exact days in the 5th month that Nebuzaradan came to Jerusalem. Most fundamentalist scholars say that the Kings version is when he came to Jerusalem, and the Jeremiah version is a completion of those activities. Hence, Genesis 1 could be talking about the day the utterance of God was completely stated. That is, there is no reason to assume that our concept of time limits God. God could take millions of years to 'utter' a creation command, which is based on how things go during the process of creation. The day the command is finished could be the 'day of' the creation. This is like (1), except (1) would say that the command happened instantly about what was to happen over the next period, whereas this says that the command itself took a period, but ended on a particular day. There is no reason why God's commands cannot overlap.

One other thing to consider....if a day equals many millions of years...then is God still resting on day 7?

Well, there is no doubt that John and the people who were part of his ministry believed *something to this effect*. For example, John 1 talks about the Word bringing light into the world, an obvious parallel with Gen.1 about God creating light. The end of Revelation ends with the people eating the fruit from the tree of life (another throwback to Genesis 2/3). But, here is a key scripture:

"There remains therefore a rest for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9)

So, it would indicate that the author of Hebrews saw the Genesis account as a prophecy applying to the future.

In addition, to reply to your exact argument, the rest was to create the Sabbath, and the Sabbath, as mentioned by Hebrews 4, has future fulfillment (according to the New Testament conception of the future). Paul talked about this:

"So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come"

So, yes, God created a Sabbath by resting, and he is still creating that rest for the people of God.

[harvey1]

The fact of the matter is that creationists have hijacked the Bible into a fundamentalism that was never really a part of Christianity. Jesus departed from the teachings from "Thus saith the Lord", so did Paul, and, in fact, Christians took Old Testament scriptures out of context and allegorized them, something which your faith would never have started had they not done so.

I would love to hear how creationist have hijcked the bible. After all it is the bible that says Adam was formed from the dust THEN Eve was made from Adams rib....your claim is that this is not so, but it is what the bible says. The OT as well as NT authors tell us man was made from the dust and not from animals..once again this is not evolutionism. It is crystal clear that making a woman from a mans rib is not evolutionism.

It is not crystal clear that it is a rib. The Hebrew word for rib is "Tsela`" and it can mean a number of different things, but the word is most often used for 'cell', that is, basic building component used in a building. Stick with the most used meaning.

The bible also mentions that the six day creation time frame meant six literal days. This is confirmed in the 10 commandments where it says six days.

I responded to this issue earlier in this thread.

So, please do tell us how the creationist hijacked the bible.

Plain and simply, they do so by being hypocritical to the text. There are literally a hundred or more scriptures that apparently contradict a rational interpretation. Mind you, I'm not criticizing fundamentalists in looking for a creative means to resolve the supposed scriptural discrepancy to their satisfaction. However, it is hypocritical to try and resolve scriptural integrity in one area of rational inquiry, and not use the same effort to resolve scriptural integrity in Genesis which also requires a resolution with rational inquiry. Rather than try and use those techniques to resolve scripture with rational inquiry, creationists have hijacked the Bible by trying to restrict interpretation in a very narrow-minded framework and haven't even bothered to use the same techniques they used to resolve other discrepancies. For example, all of the methods I've used to show that the scriptures are consistent with evolution (and actually require evolution as we see in Gen. 1:11, Gen. 1:24, and Gen.2:4; not to mention Jesus' use of natural selection in the parable of the sower), and therefore there should be no problem with believing in evolution.

BUT, creationists won't accept the same techniques applied to Genesis as they do to resolve other apparent discrepancies. So, the question is why. The answer I come up with is not a pretty one.

[Jose]

Thank you, harvey1. Your knowledge of the bible is far superior to mine, being a mere science geek as I am. (I did read some bits of it at a summer camp, once, though.) You have addressed my concerns very nicely.

In short, it looks like there is plenty of room for interpretation, which fits with the fact that different flavors of Christianity have different interpretations. What puzzles me is why some groups seem to have a fight-to-the-death attitude about their particular interpretation, especially if other plausible interpretations are consistent with scientific findings. Oh well, this isn't the thread for such musings.

[YEC]

harvey1:
There are many issues to this. But, since you want to argue 24 hour days are required since 'evening' and 'morning' are mentioned, let's start off with this scripture:

"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matt. 12:40)

Now, tell me YEC, how could Jesus be in the grave for 72 hours from Friday night to Sunday runrise? Hmm... If your 24-hour interpretation holds up, you should be able to explain this case too without reducing the 24-hour days to less time.

I'll tell you...any part of the day was considered as a day.
When you rent a video from blockbusters and they tell you it's a 3 day rental....is it really 3 days? especially if you rented it in the evening.

But still you are taking the natural interpretation of morning and evening and assigning a long duration to it....as well as also changing the meaning of day to a long time frame. That's two changed from the norm you are making just to have the passage suggest a long time frame.

[YEC]

harvey1

Let's look at another scripture referring to a different 6 days:

"Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them." (Mark 9:2)

" And it came to pass, after these words, as it were eight days, that having taken Peter, and John, and James, he went up to the mountain to pray and it came to pass, in his praying, the appearance of his face became altered, and his garment white -- sparkling." (Luke 9:28-29)

Now, here is another place in the Bible where it talks about 6 days, but Luke says it was 8 days. In the case of the Resurrection, Matthew 12 says it was 72 hours, but Christians believe he was buried at sunset on Friday (around 6 PM) and rose 30 hours later (around 6 AM) on Sunday.

The scripture says...."LUKE 9:28 About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray."

About....which included the beginning and ending days as well as the six days in between....that gives you 8 days

Both are correct..Mark and Luke just counted the days differently...one counted part of a day as the whole while the didn't.

[harvey1]

Let's look at another scripture referring to a different 6 days:

"Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them." (Mark 9:2) " And it came to pass, after these words, as it were eight days, that having taken Peter, and John, and James, he went up to the mountain to pray and it came to pass, in his praying, the appearance of his face became altered, and his garment white -- sparkling." (Luke 9:28-29)

Now, here is another place in the Bible where it talks about 6 days, but Luke says it was 8 days. In the case of the Resurrection, Matthew 12 says it was 72 hours, but Christians believe he was buried at sunset on Friday (around 6 PM) and rose 30 hours later (around 6 AM) on Sunday.

The scripture says...."LUKE 9:28 About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray." About....which included the beginning and ending days as well as the six days in between....that gives you 8 days
Both are correct..Mark and Luke just counted the days differently...one counted part of a day as the whole while the didn't.

You see, you are being creative in looking for a solution. That's the spirit!

[YEC]

harvey1
"These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth" (Gen.2:4)



Lets contine with the usage of the word day..yom.

GEN 31:40 This was my situation: The heat consumed me in the daytime and the cold at night, and sleep fled from my eyes.

Once again the same word YOM is used, but added to "time" which suggest a time period of when the sun was shining...not some long age when the sun was shinning.

Yom in Genesis 1 was added to morning and night in a similar fashion which also strongly suggest a defined amount of time and not a lont age.

Just for the record, the word day you presented in Gen 2:4 is better understood to mean "at the time"

[YEC]

harvey1:
"but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Gen. 2:17)

The human manifestation of adamah (i.e., "Adam") died many years later after this command was given to him by God. Surely he ate the fruit on a specific day, but the effects took time. The first effect was the shame of their nakedness. So, likewise, you can be consistent with Genesis 1 (and six '24-hour' days) by saying, for example, on Day 3 God uttered that life would occur, and life occurred that day. Afterall, there has to be a first day of life on this planet, why not the day that God uttered it to be so?

In this instance Adam did die that day. It was a spiritual death and the process of physical death began that day.

[Jose]

Just for the record, the word day you presented in Gen 2:4 is better understood to mean "at the time"

Excellent. You argue in one post for "day" referring absolutely to a 24-hour period, yet come back here to say no, no, no--it is just a vague reference to "at the time."

It seems to me that we are getting into quibbles of biblical interpretation. I'm wondering if this strays somewhat from the initial topic of the thread. Or was your original intent for us to get into this kind of interpretation, to see whether there is any validity to claiming that some things described in the bible are scientifically impossible? It looks like we've established that there are internal inconsistencies in the text, and that multiple interpretations are not only possible, but required. That is, every view must see some of the bible as allegorical, so there's no problem. Either God can cause miracles, or the described miracles are allegorical, or both. There's no way to test this scientifically; all we can do is throw interpretations at each other.

I guess that's why I went into science. There are hard data. If two groups get conflicting data, everyone works to get more data, which eventually resolve the issue--sometimes by proving one group wrong, sometimes by proving both groups right, and the interpretation wrong. Either way, there's no quibbling over what the author really meant when she wrote "yom."

[YEC]

The fact of the matter is that creationists have hijacked the Bible into a fundamentalism that was never really a part of Christianity. Jesus departed from the teachings from "Thus saith the Lord", so did Paul, and, in fact, Christians took Old Testament scriptures out of context and allegorized them, something which your faith would never have started had they not done so.

I would love to hear how creationist have hijcked the bible. After all it is the bible that says Adam was formed from the dust THEN Eve was made from Adams rib....your claim is that this is not so, but it is what the bible says. The OT as well as NT authors tell us man was made from the dust and not from animals..once again this is not evolutionism. It is crystal clear that making a woman from a mans rib is not evolutionism.

It is not crystal clear that it is a rib. The Hebrew word for rib is "Tsela`" and it can mean a number of different things, but the word is most often used for 'cell', that is, basic building component used in a building. Stick with the most used meaning.

I don't really thin the word "Tsela`" (Strongs 6763) means cell.http://www.jcsm.org/StudyCenter/kjvstrongs/STRHEB67.htm

You will need to present a reference that shows cell was the correct intention.