(March 29, 2021 at 1:13 am)Bucky Ball Wrote:
Re that bibliography :
"The Gish gallop is a term for an eristic technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott; it is named after the creationist Duane Gish, who used the technique frequently against proponents of evolution. It is similar to a method used in formal debate called spreading."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
The works may actually be interesting, by themselves, but are of no help in determining TODAY, what can be determined about the literal intent or meaning of ancient Hebrew texts.
Most are irrelevant to the question at hand, and what was being criticized.
He was just copy pasting all the references from
https://historyforatheists.com/2021/03/t...iteralism/
He hasn't read all of them.
So in summary, there seems to be OEC and also Belacqua, who think that this idea that the Universe/Earth combo is million or billions of years old was common before the 19 century.
Their defense is that there is evidence that some church fathers/people did not have a literal interpretation of the 6 day creation story.
That some church fathers/people considered it as allegory.
The problem is that they aren't telling us everything.
I haven't seen a direct quote where a believer says "I believe that the Universe/Earth combo is million or billions of years"
While it is true that some of them were debating whether the 6 day creation story should be taken literally, they were actually arguing whether there was passage of time.
In other words, some of them believed it was an instantaneous creation.
^^^^^This is something that doesn't help the OEC.
Fine, just take off 7 days from the 6000 y! LOL. It still doesn't make the church fathers OEC.
It reminds me of when I was a kid. Someone would ask, "What time is it?"
My friend would say "9:47".
I would say "Wrong. It is 9:47 and 5 second. Now it is 7 seconds. Now it is 12 seconds....."
