I'm gonna repeat my last question with a couple new ones.
1) What do you (or other YEC's) think of other alternative concepts of earth, like the
Hollow Earth and the
Flat Earth models? Do you think they are equally valid scientifically and based on scripture?
I would imagine that the vast majority of Creationists find these ideas quite ridiculous. Scripture and science both support a roughly spherical Earth model much better.
2) How long after creation was Genesis written, by whom and in what language?
Those who believe in a literal 6 days of creation (I tend to think that viewing them as arbitrary time periods makes more sense, at least for the first few days. I am familiar with and open to several different versions of Creationism, but not fully convinced of any.) usually believe that Genesis was written in Hebrew, by an elderly Moses. Moses is thought to have been born in the year 2368 of the Hebrew Calendar (which is said to start about a year
before creation) and to have lived about 120 years.
Moses is said to have personally written all 5 books of the Torah, even though Deuteronomy goes on for about a chapter after it mentions his death. Some see this as a clear contradiction, but others note that it was quite common in ancient times for a scribe to put the finishing touches on book himself if the real author died before he could publicly release it. A small minority would say that Moses actually prophesied his death and wrote of it before it happened, but the vast majority think that it makes more sense for the final chapter to have simply been appended later.
3) What was the earth's population before the flood?
There is no way to know, but certainly large enough for there to have been several city states. At least thousands, possibly several millions, but almost certainly nothing close to a billion.
4) Do you believe in continental drift and the proposed landmass "Pangea?" If not, how did all the animals that left the ark after it landed, make their way across the oceans to other continents?
Typically, I think Creationists believe in a faster form of continental drift triggered by the cataclysm of the Great Flood, before which there would have been only a single plate and a single landmass, which would cover much more of the earth than Pangaea is thought to have. Exact mechanisms proposed vary greatly. I don't think any consider Pangaea to have been one in a series of super continents like mainstream geologists do.
5) How many children do you think Adam and Eve had before they kicked the bucket?
No way to know, but probably a lot. I'd guess menopause would not have come for several hundred years, so the first few generations of man would have had an enormous rate of population growth.
6) Did Cain have any children, and if he did was his curse/mark passed to them?
Yes, Cain definitely had children. The bible lists 7 generations of Cain's descendants, ending with the children of Lamech (the first recorded bigamist and second recorded murder) who were said to have invented musical instruments and metallurgy.
No, I don't think his mark or curse would have been passed on to them. However, his children were mostly very wicked compared to those of Seth. This is not genetic, but just reflects on how they were raised. I think that the part about the "Sons of God taking the Daughters of Men as wives and having producing giants of offspring" refers not to angels (who I consider asexual, non-corporeal beings physically incapable of mating--just as Man will be in the resurrection) mating with mortals but to the lines of Seth and Cain merging and loosing the superior ethics of Seth's line. Although the lineage given for Noah traces his heritage though Seth, I would tend to think that he, his wife, or at least one of his son's wives was descended from Cain, and that probably everyone alive now is too.
7) Why did god create angels? And when did the fall of Lucifer occur? on which day?
Technically, Angel means messenger, so those that are actually Angels were created to send messages to us. The exact purpose of each "angelic" may vary, but isn't really known to us. The church answer would be of course "to glorify God."
Technically, the reference to the fall of Lucifer (lightbearer, the morning star, a term which I believe was also used in reference to Christ as least once) was not referring to Satan but to a Babylonian king, probably Nebuchadnezzar the Great, and was largely metaphorical. I believe this happened in the sixth century B.C.
As for the fall of Satan, it is unclear. I don't like to form or teach an opinion when there is not really enough to build upon. It may have happened before Earth was created, sometime between creation and the Fall of Man, sometime after he tested Job but before now, or quite possibly he won't fall until the last days. The last two of course would refer to being actually forced out of heaven, not to falling in the metaphorical sense like Man fell. In the metaphorical sense, the fall would have been before the fall of Man.
8) Do you think heaven and hell are material places in the universe, that we could reach in a spaceship given enough time?
Absolutely not. They would have to be different universes, governed by laws of Physics quite different from our own. Matter as we know it probably could not exist under those laws, even if a bridge between universes could be formed.
(Actually, there are references to multiple heavens, which could be many different universes. Sometimes I get the impression that the term "heaven" could be better rendered "the fabric of space" or "time space continuum" in today's terminology, sometimes referring to ours and sometimes to others. If it were, then Psalms would clearly state that God is causing our universe to expand.)
9) What is your concept of "perfect?" Can a being be perfect? Can perfect beings be capable of imperfect actions? Were Adam and Eve made perfect? Are angels perfect? Is god perfect?
"Perfect" simply means "Complete" (or, "having been completed"), and "Imperfect" just means "Incomplete." It can be used in different ways, and is kind of subjective/relative. Acting maturely is sometimes described as being perfect. It can be used in positive and negative ways, to refer to that which is completely good, completely evil, or simply something that happened in the past and is over now. The answers to your questions vary greatly based on how perfect is being. Any being which is no longer could be called perfect. In some interpretations, souls that pass into the Lake of Fire/Outer Darkness are perfect, in that they have been destroyed. If a being is perfect in this sense it is not capable of
any actions. Adam and Eve would have been perfect in the since that they were created as adults instead of children, but in their innocence they could be seen as less mature than us. Having their eyes opened could have made them more mature, but bereft of their innocence they could have lost perfection in another sense. In yet another since their deaths would have made them perfect, at least if you discount resurrection. Angels are generally thought to lack free agency, which could be considered an imperfection. God would certainly be the most complete and unchanging being of all, but some usages of the term perfection would rule out classifying him as such because there was not a time when he was not so.
10) Why was the garden of eden, restricted to one place, why didn't god create the entire world as a perfect garden?
To quote Nietzsche (in a rare instance where I think he was accidentally right, although not really in the way he meant) "Fellow Creators the Creator seeks"
It was Man's job to work to make the whole world a perfect garden. The garden was not just a place of restful bliss, but an example of how we were change the whole world. It was always a goal to work towards and to give us a sense of purpose and accomplishment, and to let us grow closer to God by sharing in the act of creation. While the job is now much harder and goal obscured, turning our whole world into a paradise is still our responsibility.
As far as I know, the bible doesn't explicitly say that the earth is flat. However it does use the phrase "the for corners of the earth", which infers another shape than the actual shape if taken literally.
You infer it. The phrase
implies it--and that is only if you take
the English translation literally, which is a rather stupid thing to do. I admit I don't know how it was in the original language, but in the Vulgate it says the
four wings of the Earth. Are we to assume this means the Earth is shaped like a bird or a bug? Of course not--especially since "wing" (both in Latin and English) also means "direction" or "area," like a wing of a Hospital or the West Wing of the White House. "Corner" is nowhere to be found in a rather long list of definitions of "wing." I tend to think that "four corners of the Earth" was an English figure of speech that found its way into translations of the bible much later. Assuming that the Vulgate is as literal a translation as it usually is, I think we can safely say that the original in no way implied a flat earth.
There are more verses that imply a round Earth than a flat one, and those ones are probably better translated.
God was mad when they started multiplying, hehe. Kicked em out, wouldn't let em near the tree of life. We didn't fall, we never ascended...
