POLL: Which of these elements of the creation story do you believe?

JacksBratt said:

So, you are saying that someone who doesn't even believe that God exists, cares about the Bible?

I understand that some know more about the Bible than many Christians, but that would be like a YEC studying the TOE so they were knowledgeable about the views of their opposition.

To read the Bible and become atheist due to this reading would lead me to believe they are being influenced by some other person or literature. In the most simple case, this would be due to large misunderstandings of the scriptures.I don't think

I really doubt that any atheist cares about the Bible.

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I don't think that's the case at all, with all due respect—given that the Bible has instances where God Himself commands instances of genocide and slavery and the like, I can actually understand on some level why atheists would lose faith regarding that, and given the questionable nature of some passages I would hardly call it "misunderstandings of the scriptures". It's thus likely that at the very least, atheists who were once Christians care (or cared) about the Bible, if they wanted to read it to genuinely understand God though endinging up coming to a conclusion that God doesn't exist and/or is not worth worshipping.

The evening and morning were the first day... With some diligent research, you should know a new day started at sundown, not the morning or midnight.

There are numerous spaces [gaps] of time in scripture, the 69th - 70th week of Daniel being just one example. Much debate by respected scholars have ensued and many books, sermons and teachings on a new earth vs. an old earth. Many respected biblical scholars propose a gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Researching and translating every Hebrew word on your own in Genesis 1:2 and translating it into English... You can make a good case that the earth already existed, and the earth was reworked [re-created].

Admittedly, I don't know for sure but at this point I lean toward the gap theory.

As far as dinosaurs, the Bible records leviathan's and behemoth's with tails the size of Ceder trees. What animal would fit that description today, certainly not an elephant?

We can make some assumptions and guesses from scripture. To my knowledge, only one man [Nimrod] is mentioned in the Bible as being a 'mighty hunter'. I don't think you would be a mighty hunter hunting lions and elephants etc. Sampson wasn't a mighty hunter killing lions and Philistine's with his bare hands. So, what was Nimrod hunting exactly?

Nimrod was 'becoming' a mighty man and I won't go into my thought's of Nephilim [giants] hunting them puppies...

Dennis1209 said:

The evening and morning were the first day... With some diligent research, you should know a new day started at sundown, not the morning or midnight.

There are numerous spaces [gaps] of time in scripture, the 69th - 70th week of Daniel being just one example. Much debate by respected scholars have ensued and many books, sermons and teachings on a new earth vs. an old earth. Many respected biblical scholars propose a gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Researching and translating every Hebrew word on your own in Genesis 1:2 and translating it into English... You can make a good case that the earth already existed, and the earth was reworked [re-created].

Admittedly, I don't know for sure but at this point I lean toward the gap theory.

As far as dinosaurs, the Bible records leviathan's and behemoth's with tails the size of Ceder trees. What animal would fit that description today, certainly not an elephant?

We can make some assumptions and guesses from scripture. To my knowledge, only one man [Nimrod] is mentioned in the Bible as being a 'mighty hunter'. I don't think you would be a mighty hunter hunting lions and elephants etc. Sampson wasn't a mighty hunter killing lions and Philistine's with his bare hands. So, what was Nimrod hunting exactly?

Nimrod was 'becoming' a mighty man and I won't go into my thought's of Nephilim [giants] hunting them puppies...

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Behemoth was one of three fabulous monsters of Jewish folklore, along with Leviathan, a sea creature and Ziz, a flying beast something like a gryphon.

Speedwell said:

Behemoth was one of three fabulous monsters of Jewish folklore, along with Leviathan, a sea creature and Ziz, a flying beast something like a gryphon.

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Far from that. There are no mythical animals in the bible, which
is why Ziz isn't there, and neither is Lillith, another fable.

Psalms 104:26

Philip_B said:

Psalms 104:26

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Leviathan and Behemoth are real animals, and so is the unicorn;
just not the medieval horse-based myth. (Rhinoceros Unicornis)

How much of the Gospel are you willing to delete in blind-faith service to evolutionism?

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the Word of God places the creation fact - as the basis for true worship.

John is informed by Genesis 1, and accepts the Bible rather than rejecting it...

John knows his readers are informed by it... assumes they accept it.

Notice that John 1 is not blind faith evolutionism - just as Genesis 1 is not.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

No evolutionist text on origins will have that text as its affirmative or summary. And we all know it.

Ex 20
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

No evolutionist text on origins will have that text as its affirmative or summary. And we all know it.

Genes 2
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,

No evolutionist text on origins will have that text as its affirmative or summary. And we all know it.

And "yes" John knew of Ex 20:11 so also did his readers

Rev 14:6-7
6 Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people— 7 saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”

Revelation 4:
9 Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:
11 “You are worthy, O Lord,
To receive glory and honor and power;
For You created all things,
And by Your will they exist and were created.”



John 1
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

No evolutionist text on origins will have that text as its affirmative or summary. And we all know it.

Ex 20
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

No evolutionist text on origins will have that text as its affirmative or summary. And we all know it.

Genes 2
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,

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T.E's have found a "tiny island" for themselves and Bible believing Christians are not going there with them - neither are the atheists and agnostics apparently. (I don't see many Hindus or Buddhists arguing that the Bible is true - except it is bent to preach darwinism)
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And apparently had no answer for this post than to ignore every detail listed as if blind or could not see for some other reason.

Which is about what we would have expected since these are Bible texts.

Hi Bob,

Great post by the way. It would have been remarkable if the writer of 4G had mused about evolution, some 1800 years before the idea was even remotely considered by the Scientific Community and indeed probably 1600 hundred years before the concept of concept existed.

I am sure that it is very popular among our enemies to pose the question as an either/or, I don't feel the need to do that, and in general regard it as a straw man debating technique. I see no need to delete any part of the Bible, and I have to say certainly not my 18 favorite verses from John's Gospel.

I just don't see evolution as destroying anything. It is a theory, a scientific theory and based on evidence. It may transpire to be true or not true.

Genesis tells me that the breath of God brooding over the face of the water is my ultimate origin and my ultimate end. A theory of evolution does not take that away.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves if we believe that God is a retired creator, or an active creator who continues in his creative pursuits?

Philip_B said:

Perhaps we should ask ourselves if we believe that God is a retired creator, or an active creator who continues in his creative pursuits?

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I take it that when he saw creation, and that it was good (perfect),
that there was no need for more, which is why he stopped creating
on day six. If not for our sin, it would still be perfect.

pat34lee said:

I take it that when he saw creation, and that it was good (perfect),
that there was no need for more, which is why he stopped creating
on day six. If not for our sin, it would still be perfect.

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That is one point of view, yet CS Lewis, Wolfgang Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann, amongst others seem to take a different or moderately different point of view.

I will leave with Karl Barths letter on the subject to his niece.

Another somewhat different approach.

I think the earth is reasonably close to being central in relation to creation, red shift blue shift is a strong indication

It's safe to accept the earth is not flat and we are not to take every word in the bible as literal. Imagine the amount of Christians missing eyes and limbs

Less than 10,000 years old, good chance. Can't see it being older with the moon where it is, there are other indicators

The firmament, maybe, who knows for sure, possibly but I don't think it is a matter of life and death

Finaly it all comes down to Christians producing the fruit of the spirit

For an interesting theory check out Russ Humphreys work concerning starlight and time.

English leaves us with a poor explanation of the creation account found in Genesis. Case in point, Words translated Day and Night are found before the creation of the sun. How is this possible? Does that then, prove that the bible is flawed???

No, the problem is the English. Case in point, in the Hebrew its not In the beginning. Its just simply In Beginning. The words translated Day and Night are really more properly translated order and chaos. If you read any of the views on this from the sages like Maimonides (~1190) or Nahmanides who lived 700 years before Darwin you would be flabbergasted by what they teach the Torah has to say about the Creation.

Nahmanides circa (1194-1270) At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was so thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin non-corporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from this ethereally thin pseudo-substance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed.

It only took science ~700 years to catch up to what the sages saw revealed in the Torah

CrystalDragon said:

I don't think that's the case at all, with all due respect—given that the Bible has instances where God Himself commands instances of genocide and slavery and the like, I can actually understand on some level why atheists would lose faith regarding that, and given the questionable nature of some passages I would hardly call it "misunderstandings of the scriptures". It's thus likely that at the very least, atheists who were once Christians care (or cared) about the Bible, if they wanted to read it to genuinely understand God though endinging up coming to a conclusion that God doesn't exist and/or is not worth worshipping.

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Here is food for thought. Since the beginning the enemy (HaSatan) has been at war with G-d. If he could prevent Messiah's coming he would have won. So how was he going to attempt to accomplish this? By Corruption of man's DNA. That is what lead to the flood where all living flesh that had the breath of life it it, was destroyed save Noah, his wife, their 3 sons and the 3 son's wives.

So how is it that the nephilim re appear AFTER the flood? The obvious answer is that the 3 wives of Noah's sons had corrupted DNA. As a result, shortly after the flood we see man once again attempting to recreate the pre-flood world at the tower of Babel.

So why did G-d command that some cities everything was to be destroyed including the livestock? While others were not? Some G-d allowed the young men to take women as wives from cities that were sacked..... whats going on here is G-d of the OT really a sadistic monster OR is something else going on?

I would submit that it is G-d removing corrupted DNA that was part of Satan's plan to prevent the Messiah from coming to institute the restoration and redemption of mankind.
Slavery was a universal reality in the world up until about 300 years ago. Moreover, G-d allowed Isreal to do things in his mercy that were contrary to His desires. Yeshua points this out concerning the allowance of divorce through Moses where he points out that it is not what G-d desires for mankind.

BukiRob said:

Here is food for thought. Since the beginning the enemy (HaSatan) has been at war with G-d. If he could prevent Messiah's coming he would have won. So how was he going to attempt to accomplish this? By Corruption of man's DNA. That is what lead to the flood where all living flesh that had the breath of life it it, was destroyed save Noah, his wife, their 3 sons and the 3 son's wives.

So how is it that the nephilim re appear AFTER the flood? The obvious answer is that the 3 wives of Noah's sons had corrupted DNA. As a result, shortly after the flood we see man once again attempting to recreate the pre-flood world at the tower of Babel.

So why did G-d command that some cities everything was to be destroyed including the livestock? While others were not? Some G-d allowed the young men to take women as wives from cities that were sacked..... whats going on here is G-d of the OT really a sadistic monster OR is something else going on?

I would submit that it is G-d removing corrupted DNA that was part of Satan's plan to prevent the Messiah from coming to institute the restoration and redemption of mankind.
Slavery was a universal reality in the world up until about 300 years ago. Moreover, G-d allowed Isreal to do things in his mercy that were contrary to His desires. Yeshua points this out concerning the allowance of divorce through Moses where he points out that it is not what G-d desires for mankind.

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Here's the thing—it never said in the Old Testament that Satan was in a "war against God". Genesis never said the snake in the Garden was anything other than a crafty snake (hence all snakes not having legs and the narrative saying the serpent was the craftiest of the beasts of the field God had made), Lucifer isn't even Satan at all but a mention of a Babylonian king (and in any case it's just a translation of "Morning Star", and Jesus called himself the Morning Star" in a different context), and in Job the only time he makes a physical appearance, he only does what God tells him to do.

The most that it mentions Satan, if I recall correctly, was the devil tempting Jesus in the garden, and the times that Satan is mentioned as an opposer to God is in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, not only did Satan obey God's orders in the "bet" in Job, but God was credited for sending "lying spirits" and deception. If you say "Oh, that had to have been Satan, not God", how can you really tell?

CrystalDragon said:

Here's the thing—it never said in the Old Testament that Satan was in a "war against God". Genesis never said the snake in the Garden was anything other than a crafty snake (hence all snakes not having legs and the narrative saying the serpent was the craftiest of the beasts of the field God had made), Lucifer isn't even Satan at all but a mention of a Babylonian king (and in any case it's just a translation of "Morning Star", and Jesus called himself the Morning Star" in a different context), and in Job the only time he makes a physical appearance, he only does what God tells him to do.

The most that it mentions Satan, if I recall correctly, was the devil tempting Jesus in the garden, and the times that Satan is mentioned as an opposer to God is in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, not only did Satan obey God's orders in the "bet" in Job, but God was credited for sending "lying spirits" and deception. If you say "Oh, that had to have been Satan, not God", how can you really tell?

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I never said that Genesis said that.

BukiRob said:

I never said that Genesis said that.

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Oh, sorry, I misunderstood there. I thought when you said "since the beginning" you were talking since the beginning of Genesis and the Garden of Eden—my mistake for that assumption.

BukiRob said:

So how is it that the nephilim re appear AFTER the flood? The obvious answer is that the 3 wives of Noah's sons had corrupted DNA. As a result, shortly after the flood we see man once again attempting to recreate the pre-flood world at the tower of Babel.

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If any on the ark were corrupt, then chances are all humans
would have been after a few generations. That leaves two
possibilities. Either all the nephilim didn't die, or the angels
returned and tried again.

rakovsky said:

1. A firm layer divided the waters so that a massive body of liquid water was above the stars.

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Enormous water reservoir found in space is bigger than 140 trillion earth oceans.

pat34lee said:

If any on the ark were corrupt, then chances are all humans
would have been after a few generations. That leaves two
possibilities. Either all the nephilim didn't die, or the angels
returned and tried again.

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I believe that Noah, his wife and three sons were pure Human bloodline, while the three wives that Noah chose for his sons were not. This could still produce pure human offspring and nephilim bloodline as well. It would seem that Canaan, Ham's son, was cursed. Not Ham. Canaans offspring were the Hivites, Jebusites, Arvadites, Girgashites, Amorites, Arkites, Sinites, Hittites, Sidonians, Perizzites, Zemarites)
Nimrod, who was a giant, was Ham's grandson.

In the book of Enoch, it states that the punishment given to the angels, who created these hybrid offspring, was so great, that Michael the archangel, who read the decree, was shaking as he read it.

It is my belief, as it is with many of the authors that have written about this, that this punishment was enough to deter any of the fallen angels from doing this again.

Possibly, with revelation stating that "as it was in the days of Noah", that, there is the possibility of it happening again, now, as Satan's time is short. Or that demons and fallen angels will work with humans to do DNA experiments to hybrids with animals and humans.

I read somewhere that they found Nimrod's body and were using his DNA to create super soldiers. Who knows?