At one point in time I thought that because God is all powerful that the reason he couldn't lie is because even if he tried to, whatever he spoke or thought would simply come into being anyway. I never thought of God as restrained by time or ability.
But when I started looking for positive proof of God's supernatural interaction with our world, I was forced to ask myself: Can God lie?
Repeatedly in the Bible it is reiterated that God is perfect by nature and cannot lie. As I learned more and more about how the universe works, the reality points to a conclusion which is quite contradictory to the biblical account of creation.
In the Bible God makes everything in six literal days starting at evening. (There are believers who trust the day-age theory, but this is not consistent with the original verbiage.) The seventh 'yom' could be debated though.
We now know that new elements are made inside suns and from their death and, with enough time, that's how we get the elements we need for life as we know it.
We know the geological layers took longer than 6000 years to form because radiometric dating confirms volcanic lava flows much older than this. We know that evolution happens, and not just natural selection of existing traits, but the development of novel ones as well. We know that starlight has traveled more than 6,000 light years to reach earth.
As a believer my initial answer to this was that God made it this way. It's such a simple answer for someone of faith, but it raises a glaring contradiction.
If God made it the universe 6,000 years ago, or even 10,000 or a million years ago, he created it in a way which is deceptive and unnecessary. It would have taken an active decision on God's part to make everything with the kind of age we find. It would mean that if Genesis 1 is truth, then God lies.
This was my biggest problem as a believer. If God lies, what does that say about his nature? If Genesis is not absolute truth, how can we trust that all scripture is the word of God, especially considering Jesus is quoted referencing Genesis?
In order to combat this whole idea, young earth creationists have suggested that radioactive decay rates have not always been the same (no evidence for this when it comes to isotopes used for dating,) that evolution only happens on a "micro" level (without the realization that small changes over time become big changes,) and that starlight travels at, or has traveled faster than light speed or completely deny relativity.
This is how I know the Bible is not truth, because either the biblical story is one of a lying God because Genesis is false, or our universe is a deception created by God and both nullify the entire biblical story.
But when I started looking for positive proof of God's supernatural interaction with our world, I was forced to ask myself: Can God lie?
Repeatedly in the Bible it is reiterated that God is perfect by nature and cannot lie. As I learned more and more about how the universe works, the reality points to a conclusion which is quite contradictory to the biblical account of creation.
In the Bible God makes everything in six literal days starting at evening. (There are believers who trust the day-age theory, but this is not consistent with the original verbiage.) The seventh 'yom' could be debated though.
We now know that new elements are made inside suns and from their death and, with enough time, that's how we get the elements we need for life as we know it.
We know the geological layers took longer than 6000 years to form because radiometric dating confirms volcanic lava flows much older than this. We know that evolution happens, and not just natural selection of existing traits, but the development of novel ones as well. We know that starlight has traveled more than 6,000 light years to reach earth.
As a believer my initial answer to this was that God made it this way. It's such a simple answer for someone of faith, but it raises a glaring contradiction.
If God made it the universe 6,000 years ago, or even 10,000 or a million years ago, he created it in a way which is deceptive and unnecessary. It would have taken an active decision on God's part to make everything with the kind of age we find. It would mean that if Genesis 1 is truth, then God lies.
This was my biggest problem as a believer. If God lies, what does that say about his nature? If Genesis is not absolute truth, how can we trust that all scripture is the word of God, especially considering Jesus is quoted referencing Genesis?
In order to combat this whole idea, young earth creationists have suggested that radioactive decay rates have not always been the same (no evidence for this when it comes to isotopes used for dating,) that evolution only happens on a "micro" level (without the realization that small changes over time become big changes,) and that starlight travels at, or has traveled faster than light speed or completely deny relativity.
This is how I know the Bible is not truth, because either the biblical story is one of a lying God because Genesis is false, or our universe is a deception created by God and both nullify the entire biblical story.
God doesn't lie. I've refuted that here http://godorabsurdity.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/alex-botten-vs-surfer-brendan-me.html
ReplyDeleteRadiometric dating - refuted here https://answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/radioactive-dating-failure/
Speed of light issue - problem solved here https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/starlight/astronomical-distance-determination-methods-and-the-light-travel-time-problem/
The only deception going on here is from you because you refuse to believe God's word due to preferring your sin (Romans 1).
Just an excerpt from your link about starlight:
Delete"All of this reasoning is based upon well-understood and tested physics. Some could argue that the physics that works here might not work elsewhere. If this were true, then we could raise doubts about the physical principles involved. This approach undermines a basic assumption that makes science possible. We assume that there is universality about natural law. That is, how the universe operates here and now is how it has operated everywhere since creation (miracles excepted).13 Indeed some have argued that science is a western concept that could only have arisen under Christianity where it is understood that there is an underlying order imposed upon the universe by the Creator. Thus to argue against the universality of physical laws amounts to a very subtle attack upon what it is creationists are trying to argue in the first place."
And:
"To scale back the size of the universe to avoid the light travel time problem would require that we radically alter our understanding of various astronomical observations and astrophysical principles."
Bottom line, that was a waste of my time to read. It proposes no solutions whatsoever and concludes saying there are other creationist proposals, but more are welcome. From what i have pulled from that article it's quite obvious that changing the speed of light works against your core argument ;-)
http://www.oldearth.org/bookreview/tnb/thousands_not_billions_8.htm
DeleteAnother christian site which explains why the radiometric test went wrong and other examples where ICR doesn't outright lie, but absolutely intend to decieve.