Do all Christians believe the world started as described in Genesis?
I guess this is the hit sequel to "Question 2".
No.
A lot of mainline churches do not see it as literal.
If I remember correctly, these include: Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheranism, Methodist and others.
Do all Christians believe the world started as described in Genesis?
Do all Christians believe the world started as described in Genesis?
Do all Christians believe the world started as described in Genesis?
As wonderfully open minded as Dr. Jastrow was, it appears he may have been somewhat wrong on both counts.
I think of causality as description rather than a quantity. The idea that every effect has a cause is already in the word 'effect'. Plenty of things happen that don't have causes and therefore are not effects.
The argument for the existence of God as the first cause requires believing that every event has a cause. Take snow as an example as there is so much of it around. It starts with moist air which is a random mess and after cooling there form billions of five and six pointed snowflakes each with a detailed structure.
Did each part of each snowflake have a creator, a cause, or does that sort of thing just plain happen in nature?
Under some conditions very complex forms arise by themselves, that is visibly true.
Not each of the features on a snowflake has a cause. Is there maybe one cause though to account for the whole cloud? Somebody must have made it???? Well, if the snowflakes within the cloud are a result of the way nature works then there is no reason why all the snow clouds can not also be the result of the way nature works.
It is a mistake to believe that every event has a cause, many systems result in complex structures and complex structures of structures and nothing within them requires specific causes or any causes at all, they simply form that way.
Do all Christians believe the world started as described in Genesis?
What absolute rubbish. Is Paul a liberal theologian? After all, he allegorises Genesis in Galatians 4. What is it about literalism that turns sensible people into such non-thinkers? To interpret something in its literal sense in spite of its literary sense is to interpret it incorrectly.No. Liberal theologians allegorise Genesis.
Big-bang cosmology can be retro-fitted into Genesis 1 and that's about it.However, agnostic scientists such as Robert Jastrow believe in the Genesis account:
"Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy."
What absolute rubbish. Is Paul a liberal theologian? After all, he allegorises Genesis in Galatians 4. What is it about literalism that turns sensible people into such non-thinkers? To interpret something in its literal sense in spite of its literary sense is to interpret it incorrectly.
So? Paul allegorises so surely that makes him a liberal, surely that means he doesn't really believe the Bible!Polite and gracious as usual....
We're obviously talking about the creation account here on this thread, not the old and new covenants..
The literary sense of the Genesis creation account IS literal (NOT poetic as some people claim). Therefore to not interpret it literally is literally incorrect as I shall now explain:
Adam and Eve are presented as actual people, the narrative outlines important events in their lives, they gave birth to literal children, the phrase "this is the account of.." is used frequently to record history in Genesis, OT chronology puts Adam at the top of the list, NT chronology puts Adam at the beginning of Jesus' literal ancestors, Jesus referred to Adam and Eve as the first actual "male and female" (Matt 19:4-5), Paul describes a literal death bought in to the world by a literal Adam (Rom 5:12-14), Adam is called the "first Adam" and Jesus the "last Adam" in 1 Cor 15:45 showing that Adam was seen as a literal historical figure, Paul in 1 Tim 2:13-14 mentions when "Adam was first formed, then Eve" showing that he was referring to literal people, the temptation of Eve is mentioned in 1 Tim 2:14 and 2 Cor 11:3 and in both cases described as literal events..
It is not written in a poetic/ allegorical style as some claim. The style of Genesis is NOT consistent with Psalms or Proverbs which are both examples of Hebrew poetry, Genesis 2 is part of the creation record and not poetic, the creation element of Genesis has a straightforward historical narrative similar to any other OT historical narrative i.e. using "this is the account of....", NT writers refer to creation events as historical.
I am currently reading Genesis, but it is not something I can take literally I'm afraid.
I mean just as I said