> First, it is not only an interpretation of the bible. The bible speaks for
> itself.
Sometimes not very clearly. That's why there are hundreds of different
Christian denominations all claiming Scriptural reasons for their differing
beliefs (Sprinkle or immersion? Tongues or no tongues? Premillenial or
postmillenial? ad infinitum...)
> Second : What do you see which is incompatible with this 'interpretation'
> of the bible ?
Glenn's written reams and reams of material on the problems with young-earth
creationism. As a geologist myself (and an Evangelical Christian), let me
add also that the idea of a young earth or a recent global flood is totally
unsupported by what we see when we go out and study real rocks in the field.
> It seems to me you don't make any difference between what the bible is
> saying and the theories which YECs have built on it. One should always
> distinguish between the facts taught by the bible and the scientific
> theories by which we want to describe the facts of nature according to the
> bible. The direct creation of everything is an example of the former, the
> water canopy around the earth before the flood of the latter.
What if the "facts" taught by the Bible disagree with the "facts" of
nature that we observer? As a student of physics, do you ascribe to the
rather clearly taught Biblical cosmology which teaches that the sky is
solid, the earth is on pillars, etc.?
Once again, I disagree strongly with the commonly cited statement by
young-earth creationists that there's a "clear meaning" of Scripture.
There's no such thing and even in the young-earth creationist camp there
are disagreements about various interpretations of passages (Young-earth
creationism as it exists today has drawn largely from the work of Seventh-
Day Adventist George McCready Price -- do Adventists and Evangelicals agree
on the "clear meaning" of Scripture?).
We ALL agree that God is the Creator. If that were the only issue then
there would be nothing more to discuss, but you are well aware that this
is NOT the issue here.
- Steve.
-- Steven H. Schimmrich KB9LCG s-schim@uiuc.edu Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 245 Natural History Building, Urbana, IL 61801 (217) 244-1246 http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/s-schim Fides quaerens intellectum