Should Genesis be taken literally?

[KWCrazy]

I still want to know the answer to this; by what criteria do you decide which parts of the Bible to believe and which to reject?

 

[Archivist]

Ah, yes it does. It has us as having "common ancestors".

The Theory does not claim that man descended from monkeys as was earlier stated. You are correct that we have common ancestors. Those are two different things.

So, is this the way God created man "in His own image" by having common ancestors as monkeys, chimps and gorillas?

My belief is that we are spiritually created in God's own image. we we given an eternal soul, something that other creatures do not have.

You may look at Genesis as allegory, but why? Why, if God had the capability to do it as indicated, why would He do it differently and then tell us He did it as Genesis states?

Because that is my view. I am entitled to my interpretation of scripture just as you are entitled to your interpretation of scripture. I have made no disparaging remarks about others in this thread, you I have been called a false teacher and told that I "outright lie or misdirect" simply because I view the creation stories in Genesis as allegories. Is that how Christians are to treat each other?

 

[joshua 1 9]

Clay tablets are for city dwellers. Abraham was a nomad.

Abraham was born, raised and educated in the city of Ur. He had the best education you could get in his day and the people of UR were very advanced at that time in science. Just like Moses as the adopted son of a pharaoh had the best education you could get in Egypt at the time and he had full access to the library there at the time. Also Moses studied religion under his father in law Jethro a priest of Midian. We know that Abraham had contact with melchizedek. Jesus is considered a priest in the order of Melchizedek.

 

[Not_By_Chance]

I suppose this all comes down to whether one regards the Bible as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Is it, or is it full of stories masquerading as the truth (such as the Genesis account of creation, the worldwide flood, the parting of the Red Sea, Jesus's miraculous birth and subsequent resurrection from the dead)? Would you present it to a child as being the truth or would you tell the child that it was just a collection of interesting but outdated stories with no basis in reality? Why would you doubt it as being the truth - because of man's claim that he has it all figured out and therefore the Bible must be wrong? I can't think of any other reason, so it all boils down to whom you trust, God as revealed in the Bible or man? If you are unsure, I would advise you to not just take the word of secular scientists (which is all you will ever hear in the media) but check out what creation scientists have to say. If you do that, you will no doubt be mocked, laughed at, told not to believe creation pseudo scientists, etc. But at least you will have heard arguments from the other camp and will then be in a position to make a better choice as to whether Genesis could actually be true history or not.

 

[joshua 1 9]

I suppose this all comes down to whether one regards the Bible as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

There is no reason not to believe the Bible is true. Clearly we are told that the Holy Spirit of God is our Teacher to guide us into the truth. We are not to trust in man. Paul tells us that we see dimly as a reflection in a mirror. We still have not entered into perfect understanding yet. That does not mean we can not be perfect. We can be whole, complete and mature. People like John Wesley taught that we can be Holy, Pure and Sanctified before God. Not all are mature, this is a process we are all going through. God is doing a work to perfect His church. Jesus paid the price so we can be reconciled with the Father and also so we can be reconciled with each other.

 

[joshua 1 9]

whether Genesis could actually be true history or not.

I have studied ancient history for over 50 years now and I am sure that Genesis is 100% historically accurate. Bishop Usshers book is historically accurate. All of science and all of history can verify this. For example the experts at the universities in Jerusalem that have studied the evolution of the plants and the animals in the Middle east. All of our current Science can verify that the Bible is 100% accurate and true.

 

[expos4ever]

Part One of a Review of an HBO documentary:

Intellectual freedom is one of humanity’s greatest gifts—and biggest burdens. Our ability to ask questions, to test ideas, to doubt is what separates us from our fellow animals. But doubt can be as terrifying as it is liberating. And it’s the terror of doubt that fosters the toxic, life-negating cult of creationism.

That fear is on full display throughout HBO’s new documentary Questioning Darwin, which features a series of intimate interviews with biblical fundamentalists. Creationism, the documentary reveals, isn’t a harmless, compartmentalized fantasy. It’s a suffocating, oppressive worldview through which believers must interpret reality—and its primary target is children. For creationists, intellectual inquiry is a sin, and anyone who dares to doubt the wisdom of their doctrine invites eternal damnation. That’s the perverse brilliance of creationism, the key to its self-perpetuation: First it locks kids in the dungeon of ignorance and dogmatic fundamentalism. Then it throws away the key.

More later (I won't be responding to any posts).

 

[expos4ever]

Part Two of a Review of an HBO documentary:

And that dungeon is much darker than most Americans realize. The creationists interviewed in Questioning Darwin including their abominable doyen, Ken Ham, a wily businessman who is already fundraising off his ill-conceived recent debate with Bill Nye—returned again and again to the same depressing subjects. Death, suffering, pain, sorrow, disease: These, creationists inform us, are what await any skeptic, anyone who questions the word of God. Pastor Joe Coffey neatly sums up their objections to natural selection:

'If all we are is a product of this random mutation process, then where does morality come from? Where does hope come from? Where does love come from? Where does anything that makes us a human being really come from?'

The answer, to creationists, is simple: There is no love, no humanity, in a world with evolution. Humans must have been designed by God; if we weren’t, then we’re mere animals, lacking in morality and dignity, consigned to a pitiful and pointless life of struggle and dolor. Evolution, one true believer informs us, is “incompatible with biblical Christianity” because it recognizes the permanence of death and leaves no room for a second coming. Creationists are consumed by repressing the existential panic that often attends acceptance of reality. Instead of confronting that terror, they’ve retreated into an elaborate fantasy.

 

[expos4ever]

Part Three of a Review of an HBO documentary:

So deep is their delusion, in fact, that many creationists are perfectly willing to acknowledge their abandonment of reality—on camera. “Truth is not an assimilation of information,” insists one fundamentalist in Questioning Darwin, explaining why no amount of evidence could change his mind about human evolution. “There’s one truth, and that’s found in the Bible.” A creationist pastor takes this illogic to its harrowing extreme, freely conceding that he would perform endless mental gymnastics to justify the seemingly unjustifiable conclusions of biblical text.

'If somewhere in the Bible I were to find a passage that says two plus two equals five,” the pastor states plainly, “I wouldn’t question what I’m reading in the Bible. I would believe it—accept it as true and then do my best to work it out and to understand it.'

This ideology might seem fairly benign. And it’s true that, by itself, creationism damages only those who choose to believe it. But here lies the true peril of the dogma: No creationist is content to keep her beliefs to herself. Creationists don’t merely proselytize; they brainwash their own children and push their creed into public schools across the country. Creationists teach their children not only that evolution is evil, but that studying evolution, even thinking about it, is a sin that leads the soul to eternal damnation.

 

[expos4ever]

Part Four of a Review of an HBO documentary:

“What [Darwin] has done is worse than murder,” proclaims one creationist in the documentary. “All the death and suffering we see here isn’t the result of a creator God,” says another. “It’s sin”—such as the acceptance of evolution. (He doesn’t explain how so much death occurred before the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859.) Creationists spend countless hours telling their children that scientists and biology teachers are spouting the devil’s lies. Creationism is a mental prison with no hope of release, for the only escape hatch—intellectual inquiry—has been sealed off by years of suppression.

The conflict between creationism and evolution is, to many believers, an all-out war between God’s word and humans’ sins. That’s why parents are so determined to prepare their children for battle. One mother in Questioning Darwin home-schools her children to prepare them to defend their creationist beliefs against secular “attacks.” We see pastors casting an ominous eye over their congregations, warning them of the horrors of the Darwinian worldview and the hellfire that awaits those who are lured into its trap. Creationists discuss evolution with a combination of abject fear and muffled rage, ranting that natural selection sounds “crazy” while calmly asserting that Adam and Eve shared Eden with vegetarian dinosaurs. They blame Darwin for Hitler (a time-honored smear) as well as for drug use, murder, and an endless parade of horribles. Question the Bible, creationists tell their children, and you will soon be drowning in barbarity.

 

[-57]

Read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions on that.

Genesis 3:22-24
…22Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever "-- 23therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.…

As we know where Eden is located according to earlier passages, we surely could find it and if we could avoid that cherubim and h its sword and eat of the fruit of the tree of life would we live forever and God be unable to do anything about it? Seems by the passage above that God was somewhat concerned that this might happen. What of we came at it from the west where the cherubim with the flaming sword was not stationed?

The garden of Eden and its location would have been lost during the flood of Noah.

 

[-57]

I have NEVER reported anything to a moderator.

And I am fully aware how the "heresy" accusation is often used here: when things are not working out to one's satisfaction in a debate, one can always escape a difficult position by crying "heresy!".

Very convenient, I must say.

Heresey....think about it, you're the one who says the're a christian then claims the fall in the garden never happened.

On the other hand, if you're right and God used evolutionism...then I'm presenting false bible and I'm the heretic.

 

[-57]

Genesis isn't literal or myth. It's just Genesis.



Evolution doesn't attempt to explain man's fall or "sin nature." It's not wonder you make arguments against it when you don't even understand it.

Genisis "is". Genesis is presented as historical history in the bible.

Secondly, evolutionism explains mans sin nature as pretty much a natural cause...something like a sin mutation...which is 180 degrees away from what the bible teaches.

 

[expos4ever]

Part 5:

This view isn’t benign or wacky: It’s poisonous and medieval. Creationists reject not just evolution but most of the Enlightenment and pretty much all intellectual development since. Rather than celebrate the brilliance of the human mind, they disparage free thought as dangerous and sinful. Instead of extolling the virtues of creativity and imagination, they malign all unorthodox ideas as immoral and wicked. For all creationists’ insistence that evolution denigrates humanity, creationism is fundamentally anti-human, commanding us to spurn our own logic and cognition in favor of absurd sophism derived from a 3,000-year-old text. It turns our greatest ability—to reason—into our greatest enemy. Using our brains, according to creationism, will lead us to sin; only mindless piety can keep us on the track to salvation.

It’s easy to scoff at all this, to giggle at the vivid weirdness of young Earth creationism and then shrug it off as an isolated cult. But the 40 percent of Americans who reject evolution, as well as the tens of thousands of children or more who are being brainwashed with it in publicly funded classrooms, aren’t laughing. Creationism is built to metastasize; those who believe it won’t rest until everyone else believes it, too. True believers yearn for the rest of us to be locked up in the same mental prison where they have consigned themselves and their children. They insist that evolution has robbed us of our humanity. But in reality, it’s their twisted gospel that aims to strip us of the very thing that makes us human.

 

[-57]

In your opinion.

As I said previously, I don't want to debate creation v evolution...it's been done here and in other venues ad nauseam, and it's a fruitless endeavor. I respect your position, I just don't agree with it. If you must know, though, it's my belief that God did create the heavens, the earth, and all living things...how He did it, I don't know. But, I do believe science shows us that part of the answer lies in evolution. None of us will deny God his sovereignty...His ways are not ours, and so much about Him and how He works we will never understand.

When I look out my kitchen window, each morning, as I'm sitting at my kitchen table, reading the Bible, I have a beautiful view of the mountains in the distance. When sitting at that same table each morning, a beautiful furry four legged creature that I have nicknamed, Counterproductive Kitty, jumps between me and the Bible for my attention. In the evening I spend time with my beautiful wife and equally beautiful children...I can go on...but the point is that I can't look at any of these people or things and think that it happened by chance...that there was no Divine inspiration...obviously God created the universe. On this, you and I agree...we disagree on how He did it. I believe that when the words of Genesis were written, thousands of years ago, it was the best way to explain creation at the time...and even today, it paints a beautiful picture...but I believe today, because of science, we have a deeper understanding of how He did it. You will never hear me say He did not do this, that it was left up to chance...I know in my spirit that is false.

I simply read Genesis...I don't have a mountain to look at, or a cat....but Genesis tells me there was a man named Adam who was formed from the dust. That answer doesn't lie in evolutionism. Genesis tells us man Adam fell because of disobedience, once again that answer doesn't lie in evolutionism.
What lies in evolutionism? The answer is, a lie.

 

[2Timothy2:15]

Well, let's just say that I adopt a general angle on the Philosophy of History (applicable to any kind of history written) that allows me to make more sense of the Bible as a whole. But, if you want to believe its all literal from beginning to end, be my guest. I won't count it against you, by brother in the Lord.

As far as a talking donkey is concerned--- yes, I can dig that any animal can say a few words where the Angel of God is directly stated to be present in the instance in which it is happening.

You should check out this movie. It is well done and done from a scientific view.

Speak Up

 

[JacksBratt]

The Theory does not claim that man descended from monkeys as was earlier stated. You are correct that we have common ancestors. Those are two different things.

Those are two similar origins. They are also not biblical origins.

My belief is that we are spiritually created in God's own image. we we given an eternal soul, something that other creatures do not have.

So, why do you think He told us that He formed man with His hands and created the first female human from this man's rib?

Why tell your children how you dug the hole, pored the foundation, laid the block wall, and built the rest of your house if you purchased it, turn key, from a contractor or developer?

Seems a bit deceptive. Is that what you think of God?

Because that is my view. I am entitled to my interpretation of scripture just as you are entitled to your interpretation of scripture. I have made no disparaging remarks about others in this thread, you I have been called a false teacher and told that I "outright lie or misdirect" simply because I view the creation stories in Genesis as allegories. Is that how Christians are to treat each other?

But, how do you see that Genesis indicates, in any way, that we should not take it as it is written?

 

[Speedwell]

Like your other claims, the claim that the early church reject Genesis as mythology is false.

I never made such a claim as you well know and you are lying about it just to be nasty.

Your claim that belief in a young earth is relatively new is false.

I never mad such a claim. In fact I stated just the opposite as you well know and you are lying about it just to be nasty. What I stated was that literal inerrancy, perspicuity, self-interpretability and plenary verbal inspiration are recent Protestant novelties, which is a fact.

None of the early leaders believed in an ancient earth.

I never made such a claim as you well know and you are lying about it just to be nasty. In fact, I stated just the opposite.

None of them rejected creation or the flood.

I never made such a claim as you well know. You are lying about it just to be nasty, just like a typical YEC.

 

[Speedwell]

Not saying that people like Clement, Polycarp, Ignatious were not Christians. Their works do have value. Just not equal to or greater than God's Word.

Besides, since you mention them as part of your Apostolic tradition, what were their views on Genesis?

That it was generally historical. However, they also tolerated the figurative interpretations of others and were not vicious and nasty about it like modern YECs. and, of course, the Protestant doctrines of Sola Scriptura, literal inerrancy, self-intepretability, perspicuity and plenary verbal inspiration which the YECs use to justify their nastiness were still 1500 years or more in the future.

 

[Speedwell]

But, how do you see that Genesis indicates, in any way, that we should not take it as it is written?

Ah, yes. but how is it written? You look at it and see a narrative written to modern standards of historiography. I suppose that is natural because you have been taught that the Bible is basically a personal message from God to you, rather than a narrative written to people of an earlier time and thus to their standards of historiography. Then too, you are convinced that the "inspired" of II Tim 3;16 can only mean plenary verbal inspiration and will not consider any other theory of biblical inspiration. So yes, I can see how you take the position you do, even though I disagree with it, and even though I despise it for the vicious nastyness it seems to bring out in some of your colleagues.