God, math and science

Eli, what is it we see as contrasting to what you're being told?

Example, whenever a new dinosaur is discovered, the first thing you read is, "A new dino has been discovered and believed to be 65 million years old." Then some poor dumb-down bottle-head picks up the article and said, "Ah, see God didn't mean 6 days."

Now compare that to this headline. "Some 5000 years ago there was a great world-wide flood accompanied with a tremendous upheaval of the earth, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides etc. burying millions upon millions of animals, birds, fish and humans in mud 100 feet deep, and water as high as the highest mountains, the water pressure crushing everything below its surface.
Last week, scientists have uncovered the remains of a dino that is presumed to be about 5000 years old.

Now I ask you Eli, doesn't that sound more reasonable if you're a man of faith and believe what has been written in 'This book of life" we call the Bible?

I don't know. When you try to analyze things they become very confusing beyond what we comprehend to we just have to trust at that point.
What we see now is that things have been around for a very long time and to say that the age of the universe is 6000 years old because you count people's generations in the Bible is a bit absurd to me because again, what we see, seems to be very very old.

As far as the details of how Adam was created, all i know and believe about that, is that God has created us from dust which implies that we are part of this Creation and He put us in charge of this Creation.
Was he created and sculpted from clay/mud? Maybe. Was he created via a long process? Maybe. I don't know.
All i know in my heart is that God created us.

Hebrews 11:3 says by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. God is often known to understate the descriptions of His incredible works. Genesis 1:16 says He made also the stars. Two and a half billion stars in our universe alone and God beggars His declaration of this. So there is plenty of room for speculation concerning creation.
I am curious though what it is you see or understand that suggests an old earth. Can you share?

26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

So, this doesn't reconcile in any way logically with counting generations from the Bible. That's something that a few believers came up with and that's fine with me, but i don't believe that.

Cameron, first i'd like to respond with what Magenta said a few posts back, with a Bible passage. This passage is important because it says that after a material and logical approach to Creation, we ultimately have to drop all logic and reason and stand in awe of God. So again, Science glorifies God.



And to answer your question, what we see is literally what we see and measure. I don't mean "see" in a spritual way here, i mean literal.
We see the redshift of the light (which i mentioned on page 1) to be billions of years old. 14 billion is the latest measurement.
We see rocks in planet earth to be over 3 billion years old. This is what we see. Literally.
So, this doesn't reconcile in any way logically with counting generations from the Bible. That's something that a few believers came up with and that's fine with me, but i don't believe that.

Cameron, first i'd like to respond with what Magenta said a few posts back, with a Bible passage.
This passage is important because it says that after a material and logical approach to Creation,
we ultimately have to drop all logic and reason and stand in awe of God. So again, Science glorifies God.

I got you. And my question was about literal evidence. I employed faith as an affirmation of your overall conclusion: I know God created me. But I was interested in what you viewed as concrete, measurable evidence and whether there were possible alternate explanations to your observations. And that's why I asked was Adam created with age. We know He was created with functioning language. He was able to speak with and name things. This means he was also created with advanced reason. And there an innumerable things that Adam possessed in greater degree than newborns possess. Did God act similarly with other aspects and entities in all of creation?

I don't think think we "ultimately have to drop all logic and reason and stand in awe of God."
No, rather, truly, logic and reason attest to there being an Intelligent Designer, known as God.

A lot of these questions are a bit unknown because they require a timeline which we don't know and can't figure out.
But a lot of Genesis questions can be understood in the way people reason on how was Genesis written.
Have you thought about how Genesis was written? I can tell you first if you'd like but i wanted to ask you.

Go ahead. Your tease piqued my interest.

I am going to start with the resurrected body of Christ which is a fairly recent even in human history. Almost like yesterday.
There have been a few discussions in this forum alone on how to properly describe the properties of His body and I also had a discussion with Bob Carabio who used the word “death”. I said that you can’t say that Christ’s body died because He was resurrected with the same body which included the wounds while having supernatural abilities to go through walls while eating food.
So, I told him that you shouldn’t use the word Death because it implies No Continuity while His body had complete continuity.
However even today in year 2024 where we have very rich vocabularies with new concepts, we are still left with a lack-of-words to describe this process. So language is not even able to describe God properly. We can’t find the words to describe things accurately.

So, language is sort of a barrier or it’s not enough to describe anything technical about God or miracles of God.
Let’s keep this in mind while we discuss Genesis.

Assuming Moses wrote the Genesis, he is given a vision like John at Patmos island (in regards to Revelations).
Moses sees in what could have been a fast-forward of Creation and using limited language of his time he interprets things as sunset or sunrise and the concept of one day.
So Moses does a pretty good job using very limited vocabulary of his time and very simple concepts in trying to convey a miracle which even today we have difficulty describing in technical details.

Interesting take. And it certainly is true that finite beings using finite language cannot capture in their depictions an infinite being. But through finite beings and finite language and revelation God Himself can convey all that is necessary to understand in this life. The words of God are eternal, but they were recorded for mankind. And God could have been more forthcoming with details that could be easily understood if that were His intention. I find a larger clue in the writing of Genesis in what is said and what is not said than I do in the simplicity of the language of Moses.

Exactly, and this is the part where i have to drop all logic and reason and simply trust in regards to Creation.
I have no doubt that we are here because of God who did an even more amazing thing to send His Son here.
But a lot of details are a bit unknown in terms of specificity and i think they are that way so we can make a choice whether we want to believe or not believe. And to believe is such a blessing onto itself because it gives a person newfound joy, purpose and peace.

I see the Creation to be very old and that gives me no doubts but more appreciation and humility. No wise man will be ever able to grasp the details.