h terms of precision and terms
easily understood. Fruit trees to us are apple, pear, banana, etc. In
Hebrew a Pine tree meets the definition because nuts are the fruit of a
nut bearing tree.
>>Apple trees, for example, do not date to the Upper Silurian, but the
>> "fruit" of any plant is its yield. Conifers were among the first
>>land-based vegetation, and calling them "fruit trees" is consistent with
>Conifers were not among the first land-based vegetation. The psilopsoda
>appears in the fossil record in the Silurian circa 420 million years ago.
>Conifers do not appear until 360 million years ago. If sixty million
>years is "among the first" then we live in the age of the dinosaurs!(see
>McAlester, The history of life, p. 86)
Point well taken (even if picky, picky, picky).
>>Some Bible scholars have put a strain on these passages, maintaining
>>that the sun, moon, and stars were created on the fourth day. This is
>>unwarranted. The emphasis in this verse is on the purpose for the
>>heavenly bodies not their coming into existence.
>Those pesky Bible scholars! They are probably straining other passages,
>maintaining that land plants were created on the third day or that mankind
>was created on the sixth day. They should be ashamed of themselves for
>such straining. It is clear that these verses are emphasising the
>purpose of the landplants and the purpose of mankind not their coming into
>existence. STOP THAT YOU PESKY BIBLE SCHOLARS!!!!
And be sure you include the flat earth, the geocentric universe, the
24-hour days of creation, no death in the animal kingdom before Original
Sin, the vapor canopy, the global flood, the commencing of all languages
at Babel. Actually, pesky Bible scholars have made such a hash of it,
it's a wonder to me how Christianity has survived it. Perhaps errant
interpretation leaves the ignorant unaffected.
>>A possible reason Genesis lists land plants before the luminaries began
>>to govern is either because there were no eyes to see light, or
>>something such as liquid water or dense clouds prevented the heavenly
>>lights from being seen. Dense vapor clouds surrounding the primitive
>>warm earth might not have cleared enough to enable the sun, moon, and
>>stars to shine through, and so they could not be used for telling time.
>>Is it possible that cloud cover could have lasted four billion years,
>>until after land plants appeared? Maybe not, but clouds are only a
>>water vapor barrier which inhibit terrestrial creatures from making
>>celestial observations. No land animals existed until the fifth day of
>>Sea creatures also cannot make celestial observations due to a water
>> barrier in liquid form. So for whichever reason, the presence of an
>>obscuring barrier, or the lack of observers, the sun, moon, and stars
>>beginning to function as timekeepers on the fourth day of creation in no
>>way contradicts the flow of events projected by naturalists.
>Are you saying that there was someone around 400 myr (or 195 million if
>you use the seed bearing plants) ago who could tell time? This is
Let's use the Bible's rationale: for "signs," "seasons," "days," and
"years," all of which we measure in time (except for signs).
>... I view Genesis 1 as a set of
>proclamations made prior to the foundation of the universe. This is when
>God set in motion the laws of the universe and the events which led to us.
>Thus the order God proclaimed things does not have to match the order
>they were fulfilled. Thus I within my view I don't have to worry about
>the order of events in Genesis 1. You do, but I don't.
Very convenient. Makes it much simpler that way. Had my book come out
a year ago, I would have stated the age of the universe at approximately
15 billion years. After new data from the Hubble Space Telescope, I used
a figure of approximately 12 billion years. Isn't it amazing that the
entire universe got 3 billion years younger in just one year? Science,
the fossil record, and dating is an ongoing process.
Dates and sequence of appearances of various life forms as it stands today
is not etched in stone. No, bi