Re: [asa] Advice for conversing with YECs (Cheek turning)

Re: [asa] Advice for conversing with YECs (Cheek turning)James said:

"
Whether or not man was created:

a. Directly from the dust of the earth by special creative (supernatural) works of God, 20K - 100K years ago

b. From special creative (supernatural) works of God on some poor unsuspecting hominid (who was once dust), 20K - 100K years ago,

c. From (natural/providential) evolutionary processes working on the genome of hominids, who evolved from X, who evolved from Y, back to when God first (supernaturally) created life on this planet 3.9 BYA,

man was still created by God. As far as I can tell, it gets down to a philosophical difference. TE's believe that God should not have to "intervene" in what he set in motion to "fix" evolution - this gives the impression that it was broken, and therefore God is not perfect. OEC's believe that it's not "fixing" something broken, it is that God is actively involved in our world (and our lives) pretty much all the time. And yet both camps believe in both providence and the supernatural power of God, it's just a question of how much of which! I think the distinction is artificial at some level. When I was in the TE camp, I always used the phrase "stirring the pot". I think it fits. "

 The problem with (a) is the appearance of age problem. Why would a new specially created creature be made with copies of "mistakes", that is non functioning genes like the vitamin C gene, unless it was to make the genome appear old?

I also think your philosophical distinction is false. TE does not require a single point of creation with God letting the universe run along the previously created rules without God's intervention, except for the case of miracles. In TE God could very well be continuously active in creation. There is nothing about TE that requires us to believe that creation is broken and is in need of God to fix it from time to time.

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Received on Tue Oct 28 06:54:57 2008