Piqued

Episode 5/8 in my defense of the Bible series is now online.

This one continues where the last left off, with a verse-by-verse breakdown of Genesis 1 and whether it is compatible with an old-earth understanding of creation.  I also discuss the flood and dinosaurs in light of this perspective.

As with the last episode, the conclusion that the Biblical creation and flood accounts were long and local, respectively, is not the traditional view that has long been held by Jews and Christians.  However, as I argue in this video, I do not believe that means the traditional view is necessarily accurate.  It’s not really wrong – after all, the critical points are unchanged (God created everything, and the flood restarted the human race).  But I think Christians do themselves a disservice (especially if they’re trying to minister to scientifically-minded non-Christians) by stubbornly holding to this tradition without considering whether the Bible is compatible with scientific discoveries.  This is my goal in this video: to explain an interpretation of Genesis that does not ignore the observable facts of science.  And remarkably, this interpretation of Genesis 1 in particular corroborates scientific theories quite well.

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I’ve just finished the fourth episode in my series on arguments and evidence for Christianity.  This is the first of two which may be somewhat controversial to Christians because I take an old-earth stance on creation.

I didn’t always hold this view.  When I began preparing this study, I did not believe life to be millions of years old and the most difficult part of my research was realizing that such a belief really was unscientific.  That’s not to say that I don’t think it’s possible that life and/or the universe is only 6-10,000 years old…God could have created it with the appearance of age.  But I no longer think that you can make such an argument based on science or observing the evidence in creation.  Thus, since I believe that Christianity is and should be consistent with history and observable facts, I now find myself in the “old-earth” camp.

So if you are skeptical about whether the Bible is consistent with a view of creation that essentially accepts the fossil record as accurate (along with conventional dating of millions+ of years), so was I.  I now believe that it is consistent, and this episode and the next will explain why.  I hope you find it interesting and that, if nothing else, it encourages you to more deeply explore these topics yourself.

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