Let's Discuss The Bible: Genesis 1 and 2

[Kenny'sID]

I'm just trying to figure out how literal you take everything.

You didn't ask an unfair question....it's me, not you.

 

[St_Worm2]

Can't say as I agree. I find Genesis to offer two conflicting chronologies written in very different styles by at least two authors from different time periods.

I know, you already told us that. I was simply disagreeing because I don't see the same things that you do. The difference I see is a matter of emphasis or focus within the narrative (Genesis, as I mentioned before is written as a story is written, not as a scientific textbook ).

Understanding evolution requires advanced scientific knowledge and study, hence it was beyond the capabilities of the ancient Israelites, who were a prescientific people.

You can take a 4 yr old to the zoo and say something like, "see those apes, we used to be just like them, but we're less hairy now". And they'll think about it for a moment and say, "wow, really"? I'm bett'n an adult in either the Bronze Age or the Iron Age would have been able to understand that, and quite a bit more, actually!!

I do agree however that Bronze Age Israel (or even Iron Age Israel .. when Jesus was here) would have been lost trying to understand all that is involved with modern evolutionary theory. But, "as the apes are now, you once were" (and other such sentiments), would not have been beyond them. So why make up a story like the Biblical account of Creation since it wasn't necessary to do so This would also mean that Jesus taught us many truths about life (truths that were somehow tied to the Creation Story and/or our progenitors) that He knew were all based upon a lie.

Why would He do that?

Yours and His,
David

 

[LoAmmi]

You can take a 4 yr old to the zoo and say something like, "see those apes, we used to be just like them, but we're less hairy now". And they'll think about it for a moment and say, "wow, really"? I'm bett'n an adult in either the Bronze Age or the Iron Age would have been able to understand that, and quite a bit more, actually!!

It doesn't help that that would be an incorrect statement. We were not just like apes at the zoo. Those apes and humans share a common descendant that would be another species. I've never been able to successfully explain that concept to a 4 year old child and I have extreme doubts I could get a Bronze Age or Iron Age human to believe it.

 

[Tree of Life]

Figured I'd throw both chapters together. The creation story!

What do you think of what the Bible tells us about creation? Do you believe it to be literally true? Metaphorically true? Is there a lesson to be learned from it?

Do you believe it just a myth by ancient people attempting to explain what they didn't know?

I've recently arrived anew at the regular day view of Genesis 1. I think that the texts should be taken literally. Of course there are many lessons to be learned from it, but that does not mean it isn't also historical.

 

[St_Worm2]

It doesn't help that that would be an incorrect statement. We were not just like apes at the zoo. Those apes and humans share a common descendant that would be another species. I've never been able to successfully explain that concept to a 4 year old child and I have extreme doubts I could get a Bronze Age or Iron Age human to believe it.

Hi LoAmmi, I'm not saying that God needed to explain the science of evolution to Israel or that they needed to understand that, but He certainly could have chosen to put us on the right course with a simple explanation in story form like I mentioned above (rather than making up an outrageous story that has absolutely nothing to do with the truth whatsoever .. if Darwin is correct, that is ). God chose to explain that He is without beginning or end to Moses (from "everlasting to everlasting".. Psalms 90:2), and we still can't wrap our finite minds around that. And considering how important it is for us to know, why not do the same for us with the Creation story

--David

 

[LoAmmi]

Hi LoAmmi, I'm not saying that God needed to explain the science of evolution to Israel or that they needed to understand that, but He certainly could have chosen to put us on the right course with a simple explanation in story form like I mentioned above (rather than making up an outrageous story about creating the very first man out of mud which had absolutely no relation to the truth whatsoever, if Darwin is correct, that is ). God chose to explain that He is without beginning or end to Moses (from "everlasting to everlasting".. Psalms 90:2), and we still can't wrap our finite minds around that. And considering how important it is for us to know, why not do the same for us with the Creation story

--David

Ok, let's say you are correct. Who is it that put all the evidence around we find that contradicts the idea put forth in Genesis if we take it literally? Why don't we find evidence that shows the ideas put forth in Genesis literally happened. Who did that?

 

[Kenny'sID]

I'm going to make a double post here just to give idea of why I fee the way I do about things...if that's not allowed, guess I'll find out soon enough.

From the Is God A Liar thread:

The question may be, does the overwhelming evidence, if it is really is that, make God a liar at all?

God has chosen to tell us that in the beginning, he did this that and the other thing, what beginning? our beginning only? maybe. Just the fact there are no doubt dinosaurs, tells me something was up, but God chose not to go into any of that and I'm just not going to get carried away with speculation there. He did say what he did from the time he said it, and I believe he did it, he did it the way he said he did, and nothing he may have done prior to that changes a thing.

Once we have faith in ourselves and not so much his word, we read things wrong and think we see problems with the whole thing, some tend to run with that, and some to the point where they have disproved God partially or even completely. So for me, I can imagine what may have been, but I draw no conclusions because God simply didn't go there so I don't know, I can't know. I'm not going to create a past from speculation...I'll just wait for the answers to any question I might have, and believe the part I was made privy to.

 

[St_Worm2]

Hi LoAmmi, I understand why we believe what we do about the earth's and man's history, but in the end, it's all a matter of conjecture on our part. We weren't there There is, in fact, only one Being among us who actually observed it first hand, and His is an impossibly different story than the one evolutionary theory tells us is true.

So the questions remain unanswered (for me at least). Is what God said about the beginning true, or is what we can observe about the beginning (and thereby believe), billions of years after the fact, the truth instead? I'm not sure. I'm far from done looking at the science, but even when I am, I don't think I'll ever be ready to dismiss the story God told us about our origins as a lie (and I simply don't accept that God chose to lie, or to utterly deceive mankind about our true origins when there appears to be no good reason for Him to have done so).

We can talk about the specifics if you'd like to, you know, the evidence for evolution vs the evidence (if there is any) for Creation. Just let me know (or post an example and we'll get going). This is a great topic and I'm sure it will be a long and interesting thread as long as it remains a respectful discussion (rather than a nasty debate with people disrespecting and yelling at each other ).

Yours and His,
David

 

[Kenny'sID]

(and I simply don't accept that God chose to lie, or to utterly deceive mankind about our true origins when there appears to be no good reason for Him to have done so)

Agree, it would make no sense at all for God to do that. And it makes no sense that anyone who really believes he's a liar would even take God seriously enough to bother with the question. We all know God teaches truth and to think he's a liar in spite of what he teaches would make me walk away and not even bother with him anymore.

Why would God cut off his nose to spite his face?

 

[LoAmmi]

Hi LoAmmi, I understand why we believe what we do about the earth's and man's history, but in the end, it's all a matter of conjecture on our part. We weren't there

If the police find someone murdered and every bit evidence points to a specific person, should they just close the case as unsolved because they weren't there?

Of course not. I don't need to have seen a car crash into a tree to know how it happened if the physical evidence is there. I'm more than willing to discuss the evidence but would you at least agree that we can determine things based upon evidence even if we weren't there? Otherwise we would have no court system.

 

[St_Worm2]

Agree, it would make no sense at all for God to do that. And it makes no sense that anyone who really believes he's a liar would even take God seriously enough to bother with the question. We all know God teaches truth and to think he's a liar in spite of what he teaches would make me walk away and not even bother with him anymore.

Why would God cut off his nose to spite his face?

Hi Kenny, while I agree, we must also admit that God could have done that, IOW, made up a complete fable that has nothing to do with the actual Creation of space/time, our world, and/or us. And if that is what He did, then there must have been a reason why.

I am interested to see where this thread takes us, so I'm definitely going to keep an open mind. I just hope it doesn't "evolve" into a cat fight rather than continue on as a discussion.

--David

 

[Jeshu]

I believe the word of God was written in such a way that it would always be true for the purpose it was written and not only that - in the truth of God's word we find eternal life - nowhere else. So if we really want to be around forever then we have to find life in the abiding word of God.

I also believe that the word of God is spiritually true first of all - and therefore 'toys' with the literal translation many at time because from a spiritual perspective the word of God speaks 100 percent true, but from a literal perspective it doesn't fit because our realm in sin is not the same as God's realm.

So for example when I'm spiritually present in the truth of God then a snake bite can't harm me nor can poison kill me, however when I'm not spiritually in the truth of God then what is written in the word of God wont help me one iota because a lethal snake bite will kill me and so will lethal poison. It is very important that we understand that The Word of God is Spirit talking to spirit and should not just be understood literally.

This counts for Genesis 1 and 2 as well. It could well be true that two different authors wrote this, however the truth remains the truth and that is what really matters. To say that science knows it better than God's word is absurd because God's word was never been written to confirm human understanding of truth but to convey God's truth to a spiritually lost people steeped in lies.

I know for absolutely certain that human knowledge will always prove incomplete but God's truth carries all creation and all past, present and future. It is impossible that the truth of God can be denied all those who do so will one day be proven wrong.

So why chose between evolution or the bible? They have nothing to do with each other. The evolution theory, like all theories based on guess work and speculation will be untrue in part and be true in part but the word of God abides forever - be in it!

1 Peter 1:23
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

 

[St_Worm2]

If the police find someone murdered and every bit evidence points to a specific person, should they just close the case as unsolved because they weren't there?

Of course not. I don't need to have seen a car crash into a tree to know how it happened if the physical evidence is there. I'm more than willing to discuss the evidence but would you at least agree that we can determine things based upon evidence even if we weren't there? Otherwise we would have no court system.

Sure, I will completely agree to that

However, two things to always keep in the back of your mind about the value of pysical evidence are these, 1) many an innocent man has been executed because of it and 2) OJ Simpson wasn't convicted

So if that's good enough for you, let's get back to the discussion at hand and see what else everyone has to say

--David

 

[Kenny'sID]

Hi Kenny, while I agree, we must also admit that God could have done that, IOW, made up a complete fable that has nothing to do with the actual Creation of space/time, our world, and/or us. And if that is what He did, then there must have been a reason why.

Yes, I do have my own thoughts as I said earlier on what could have been/possibilities, I just draw no definite conclusions. I refuse to turn speculation into reality and will just wait for if and when God chooses to reveal things we weren't told.

 

[Hoghead1]

Hi LoAmmi, I'm not saying that God needed to explain the science of evolution to Israel or that they needed to understand that, but He certainly could have chosen to put us on the right course with a simple explanation in story form like I mentioned above (rather than making up an outrageous story that has absolutely nothing to do with the truth whatsoever .. if Darwin is correct, that is ). God chose to explain that He is without beginning or end to Moses (from "everlasting to everlasting".. Psalms 90:2), and we still can't wrap our finite minds around that. And considering how important it is for us to know, why not do the same for us with the Creation story

--David

Oh. c'mon. That's like arguing God could have out the Israeli on the right course by telling them how to make nuclear weapons, or could have put David on the right course by showing him how to make a .357, so that he could be sure the job would be done. Also, you're assuming the dictation theory, the notion that God dictates Scripture word for word to purely passive scribes. given the many biblical contradictions and various literary styles, that hardly seems a safe assumption.

 

[Fish and Bread]

Hi Kenny, while I agree, we must also admit that God could have done that, IOW, made up a complete fable that has nothing to do with the actual Creation of space/time, our world, and/or us. And if that is what He did, then there must have been a reason why.

1. Most of the thread assumes that God directed every single line of the bible letter by letter or word by word. What if scripture were more the thoughts of holy people who felt a good connection with God through prayer and in other ways, and who had a good feel for the pulse of the religious community and what it thought, and kind of channeled all that into writing beautiful words that reflected the ancient faith that people had, and was later received and accepted by the larger faith community, rather than being God actually writing a letter to the world?

If so, then that document would perhaps convey the moral and ethical understandings of the faith community the person was in, the moral and ethical understandings of the faith community that later received those words as scripture, and maybe even the moral and ethical understands of God herself, but might still be subject to the level of understanding about basic facts and whatnot that it's authors and the societies they lived in had.

2. If that's too radical, what about this? The beginning of Genesis is poetry with a message. Clearly you don't write one story of creation, followed immediately by a second contradictory story of creation (or mesh two accounts together like that) and expect them to be taken literally (Like, which one would you even choose and how would you choose it?). Even if we were to assume this was somehow word for word directed by God to it's authors (Moses if you really want to say it's Moses who wrote the first five books of the bible, but that's not what scholars believe, and *spoiler alert* the author writes about Moses' death as if it's already happened at the end of book of book five ).

If you see two accounts one by one that contradict each other from the same person in the same book right after each other, what do you think? Is this person trying to tell you a literal story or trying to tell you how she felt and bring some beauty into your life? It's a parable. They don't have to say it's a parable, because the context tells you that- two stories of creation back to back told different ways.

3. We live in a very different world than we used to, a word that looks at the written word in a different way and has different expectations for it. Ancient peoples wrote scriptures and such with the understanding that they would be understood as something that was true, but didn't necessarily happen. That's how people took it in the old days, because that's how literature was.

If that sounds confusing, it's because it does take some time for the modern western mind to sort it out. But it was different culture separated by thousands of years. It was written with their expectations in mind and not yours.

They didn't think in very literal terms. They wanted to hear truths about God and how she related to humankind and how men related to women and how they all related to plants and animals, and why do snakes strike at us and why do have to toil so much? Why is life so hard?

So, here's a story that explains it. They didn't read that and then go see if they could find Eden and launch a military assault against the angels and then start eating some delicious fruit and not have to ever work or wear clothing again. They kind of knew that Eden was a place that was not something you could just find, or even find the ruins of. It's not true in a literal sense, it's true in the sense of understanding the human story, and the story of how this God relates to creation. It's true in a sense that is not perceptible. It may have never literally happened, but because this faith community believed it so hard for so long as a deeply held religious truth, it's sort of true in a figurative sense for them. You see what I mean?

The ancients wrote literature the way other ancients read it, and the other ancients didn't read it literally, at least not the educated ones.

4. Science is the discovery of the world God made. If what we discover is true about the world around us contradicts what we think God is, then it's our view of God that needs to change, because our world isn't going to. Evolution is a fact on the ground. It happened. So now Christianity needs to incorporate what we learned about the world in the 19th century into it's theology. And, for churches that honor the Saints or just read the books Christians wrote through the ages, we can look back at least as far as a holy man named St. Augustine of Hippo, who is the basis for much of western theology (Not just Roman Catholic, he was also a big influence on John Calvin, from which Calvinism and Presbyterianism sprung, and Martin Luther, he of Lutheranism fame, and others). And what St. Augustine said in the 5th century or so was that he didn't think Genesis was literal history- he didn't know about evolution and all that, it was the 5th century, but even at the time he said, you know, a day could be a thousand years, and that sort of thing. He knew.

St. Augustine also said something along the lines of if Christians keep insisting to people who know the stars that their faith teaches them things that the people who know the stars know isn't true, the people who know the stars will assume all of Christianity isn't true, and that Christians are misinformed or uneducated. He asked people not to make the faith look bad by claiming expertise about things they really didn't know, because he himself knew that the bible didn't really tell you about the stars or science, it told you about God.

5. This is a forum for Liberal Catholics. I'm not a moderator or anything, but if you're not liberal or Catholic, and thus just here for fellowship, you may want to tread lightly on hardcore biblical fundamentalism and arguing that people who agree with science don't love or believe in God. It's hard to define what is and isn't liberal, but I'm pretty sure 7-day creationism is not liberal. Remember, non-liberals, fellowship posts.

 

[St_Worm2]

Yes, I do have my own thoughts as I said earlier on what could have been/possibilities, I just draw no definite conclusions. I refuse to turn speculation into reality and will just wait for if and when God chooses to reveal things we weren't told.

His Kenny, as Christians (or Jews) I think that is always the best advice Since God has already revealed all that we need to know, love and obey Him (Deuteronomy 29:29), there's certainly no problem investigating things of this nature, but we can find ourselves in trouble if we start to believe something with absolute certainty about God (or about how He did something) if the understanding of what or how God did something is still somewhat shrouded in mystery (and especially when it differs greatly from His own account of things).

Again though, I love looking into this, especially the theory of evolution (since it has so much physical evidence behind .. it as LoAmmi has already mentioned).

--David

 

[St_Worm2]

Oh. c'mon. That's like arguing God could have out the Israeli on the right course by telling them how to make nuclear weapons, or could have put David on the right course by showing him how to make a .357, so that he could be sure the job would be done. Also, you're assuming the dictation theory, the notion that God dictates Scripture word for word to purely passive scribes. given the many biblical contradictions and various literary styles, that hardly seems a safe assumption.

The jury is out for me Hoghead. Until then, I'll keep the more literal understanding of God's word as what I believe, at least until something comes along that causes me not to (and so far, I'm not convinced by the things I've learned ).

Also (for whatever it's worth), I don't believe in a "passive reception" of the word of God. Rather, I believe that God worked through the human authors and their personalities, perspectives, etc. (which He is responsible for creating) when the Bible was written, and I believe that He did so in such a way that every verse and passage says exactly what He meant them to say.

Otherwise, the Bible is simply a collection of the sayings of men and not the word of God. So that explains the literary style differences. As for true contradictions, I've read the entire Bible at least once or twice and have yet to find any (or at least any of grave significance). Please post a couple so I/we can see what you mean. Thanks!

And if it's true that God is not omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, or for that matter, if there is a single "maverick molecule" that is outside of His purview and ordination, then at least two other things are true as well, 1) He's a very powerful being, but He's not "God" and 2) there isn't a single thing He's said to or promised us that I would be able to depend on coming true.

How does the saying go, "He's either God of all, or He's not God at all" .. or something like that.

God ordaining whatsoever comes to pass can simply mean that He has "approved" of it happening (IOW, that He's "allowing" it to happen), it doesn't have to mean that He is the "cause" behind it This is especially true, for instance, when He ok's something that is sinful.

We're getting pretty far away from Genesis 1-2, yes?

--David

 

[RedPonyDriver]

I do not believe that Genesis 1-3 is factual. Genesis 1 & 2 are contradictory, but both stories are attempts to show how man arrived at where they were at the time and explain how sin entered the world. They are more rightly called "creation myths" and are no different than the creation myths of other ancient cultures. Now, as you move into the end of Genesis and into Exodus, a different literary form takes over and the narrative becomes more of a historical account of ancient Israel. I don't need to believe in a literal, seven day creation to believe that God set everything into motion and that he had his hand in starting this wonderful universe we live in.

Remember, just 500 years ago, man believed that the sun and stars revolved around the earth, and scientific advances showed this to be false (the geocentric vs. heliocentric theory of our solar system). Later, man discovered the other planets in our solar system and even later discovered other stars and exoplanets. Those things don't take away from God, they ADD to God's incredible design of the universe. Understanding evolution does not take away God's greatness one bit.

 

[St_Worm2]

I do not believe that Genesis 1-3 is factual.

None of it? Let's start with Genesis 1:1? Do you believe that there was a beginning and that God created our realm, or do you believe that God is just a powerful being who rules over what was already here when He arrived (like our LDS friends do), and that everything (not just God) is from everlasting to everlasting .. in one form or another?

Thanks!

--David
p.s. - that was a long sentence