What I meant was that we—or at least I—can interpret Adam’s death at 930 years in accord with (Heb 9:27), “And as it is appointed unto men once to die,” that would be the death of the body but not the death of the soul (Mat 10:28), and when it says (Heb 9:27), “but after this the judgment”—this we can interpret as “the day of judgment” which is yet future for all men even Adam (Mat 10:15; 12:36, 41; etc.). When I said, “Adam went the way of all flesh that first millennial day (an interpretation that goes back at least to Jubilees 4:30),” I did not mean to say that Adam died what Revelation calls “the second death” at that time. My fault—shouldn’t have complicated things with the reference to Jubilees (http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical.....ubilee.htm): “And he [Adam] lacked seventy years of one thousand years; for one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens and therefore was it written concerning the tree of knowledge: ‘On the day that ye eat thereof ye shall die.’” This is interesting because it puts this “day” interpretation of Genesis 2:17 (common among the church fathers) back into the 2nd century BCE, but it has nothing to do with what I was trying to say, so sorry.

You say, “I submit that God’s treatment of them upon finding them hiding in the Garden suggests He intended to provide for their redemption …” Absolutely!

Again I say Genesis is not easy! More has been written on Genesis 1 than any other portion of the Bible, so it would seem that those of us who are interested ought to be educating ourselves on the subject. There are the very good more recent commentaries of Clifford John Collins, Victor P. Hamilton, and John H. Sailhammer, and for exhaustive bibliography up to the Nineties there is Claus Westermann, and everyone ought to have a look at David Snoke’s (2006) “A Biblical Case for an Old Earth.” Baker Books. And for a history of the classic doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo I recommend Gerhard May’s (1994) “Creatio ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought.” T & T Clark. ArtScroll is making available some of the rabbinical material, for example the Ramban’s commentary (http://www.artscroll.com/Books/rbn1.html). There is a multitudinous library of Judeo-Christian commentary, and of course one can simply trace the Genesis imagery via concordance through Scripture—you’d be surprised what you’ll find.

No, I don’t say we should simply abandon the interpretations of our respective religious traditions. But as ID advances in unlocking the Book of Nature one would hope the other Book continues to be debated in a rational manner without insisting we have reached the final interpretation.

Salvador,

Is there really evidence that snakes had legs at one time?

There may be some evidence to that effect. Shermer showed supposed fossils of snakes that once had legs. I’m not averse to the idea, nor am I averse to whales having legs at one time. But as always, we’re dealing with decayed bones. What we need is to go to antartica and dig up some frozen fossils with preserved soft tissue!

Bacon in Novum Organum LXV

Yet in this vanity some of the moderns have with extreme levity indulged so far as to attempt to found a system of natural philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis, on the book of Job, and other parts of the sacred writings, seeking for the dead among the living; which also makes the inhibition and repression of it the more important, because from this unwholesome mixture of things human and divine there arises not only a fantastic philosophy but also a heretical religion. Very meet it is therefore that we be sober-minded, and give to faith that only which is faith’s.

And Bacon had a very low opinion of Atheism.

Really, the skepticism of such interpretations didn’t start late in Christianity’s game. Origen, Augustine, and others considered it unwise to be a thorough literalist, with Genesis in particular – back when a young earth seemed like a rather conservative bet based on observation.

You argue that non-literalist readings makes the bible potentially unfalsifiable – but why should that matter? The specific acts of the NT can for the most part not be thoroughly falsified. Even the OT records have that problem. Evidence can be provided, of course, but it just doesn’t reach the necessary stage.

I’ve noticed Dawkins favors a strictly literalist reading of the bible as well – and in his case, frankly, I think it’s because he realizes that if Genesis isn’t taken literally in that respect, his favored argument against Christianity never gets off the ground. It’s easy to respect the proponent of an argument you can defeat to most people’s satisfaction. It’s those darn people with the difficult argument that gain a lot of ire. (See: ID.)

The sun appears to orbit the earth. Your two eyes tell you it does. It’s obvious. If you were to announce out of the blue circa 1400 that the sun was the center of the solar system you would be considered a fool. Not a threat, just a simple object of mirth.

And the smartest, most educated people of the land would join the laughing.

It wasn’t until the insights of a brilliant Catholic cleric, a lot of study and the invention of the telescope, that we came to understand the Sun is the center.

It might very well turn out that neither the speed of light nor radioactive decay are constants. Now there is no evidence that they aren’t but just maybe the “telescope” to show such hasn’t been invented.

As an agnostic who has a soft spot in his heart for the Christian religion, I have always believed that YEC’s-global flood folks have the most common sense interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. OEC’s-local floodists have the ability to transform the scripture into about anything they want so that it will fit into the schema of current science. It almost makes the Bible unfalsifiable. If the real God is the God of the Bible, then it seems to me that he would have the ability to communicate with his creatures in a simple and understandable way. You wouldn’t need a science or theology degree to understand the intricate message of scripture. You would just need to be able to read or hear a reading which was simple and easy to grasp. The most natural and easy to understand meanings of early Genesis speak of a 7 day creation and global flood. I don’t believe either one, but I do commend YEC-global floodists for hanging in there with the rather easy to understand natural meanings of the text.

For instance the sketchy, suspect claims that cows evolved into whales and that snakes had legs at one time.