Thanks for your input.
However, I'd like you to take note that the OP specifies that we are taking it literally, so I will ask you to respect that.
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God is not the author of confusion. That is also something to reconcile if one concludes that the Creation accounts were issued by Him.
That would mean that the context must be taken into account thoroughly, even if it doesn't mean to take it literally.
Thanks for your input.
However, I'd like you to take note that the OP specifies that we are taking it literally, so I will ask you to respect that.
I take it 'literally', but literalism is a negative way of putting it. I don't think any smart creationist actually takes the entire context literally. If they did, then the universe would be a big ball of water. See what I mean?
Some creationists take the waters as being central to Earth, and others think of it at a much grander scale.
The point I was making is that since God is not the author of confusion, they must be taken into account. And let's be honest., there is nothing in the contexts that really show common descent to be plausible literally or metaphorically. I have even tried it myself just to see what the TE hype is all about and came up with nothing.
On another thing, I don't see how a day or a 1000 years really makes a difference when taking into account all of existence. It takes 100,000 years just for light to stretch across our backwater universe alone.
But literalists need not worry about that because God created the universe before day one, which can help explain the general age of everything.
I don't agree or disagree, because it is after all friendly for creationists, old or young. The Big Bang has serious issues though, one can bet that.
I don't really understand what you are trying to say. Sorry.
The bible was written by men under the guidance of the Spirit consequently anthropomorphisms are common and it needed to be understood by all generations since then. The account is merely told so that all could understand it from their human perspective.
Being called a literalist is more derogatory then meaningful.
Excuse me? I don't understand this comment, either. Please explain yourself.
Why not call a creationist a creationist? Why something as negative as literalist? It's negative because it gives an impression that creationists do not know how to interpret the Bible. Creationists do not take the Bible literally, they just take it how it's been taken since it's canonization. Before it's canonization, actually.
You said the thread was about taking Genesis literally, even though I have demonstrated through this thread that I am a creationist. So I gave some insight on 'literalists'.
To be honest, I do not understand why you are being condescending. If you do not understand something, please elaborate.
Actually no. I am using the semantic range of the definition of yom.
That is not my argument at all. Most words have a range of semantic meaning which is usually determined by the context in which is used.
But... we don't understand it from our human perspective. Isn't that the point of all this? The descriptions in the text are difficult to reconcile with our perspective at this point.
Now, I accept that the descriptions were understood by the author and his timely audience. However, today we have a much better understanding of astronomy then they did, and that understanding is difficult to reconcile with the content of the text.
Therefore, I'll agree that the original audience understood it from their perspective, but that says very little about our understanding it from our perspective today.
For example, the very fact that light on earth precedes the astronomical bodies by four days is completely misunderstood to a generation that accepts that light is produced by those astronomical bodies and reaches us in a measurable amount of time determined by the speed of light. Quite frankly, this description isn't really understandable at all to our generation, unless we disregard concepts very important to our generation, which just seems counter-intuitive...
Do you ever use the word "mother" to refer to a virgin in ordinary speech? No, right?
Let me translate this into your jargon-speak: the range of semantic meaning of "mother", as determined by all the contexts in which it has ever been used in any normal human culture, has always referred to a woman who has had sex before.
So why is it valid to call Virgin Mary a mother?
Let's resolve this confusion before we move on.
<snip> you are being condescending.
<snip>you are being very pretentious
<snip>We're bumping heads for no reason.
Personally I don't believe that there is an issue understanding Genesis with our present understanding of cosmology. There are a plethora of scientific hypothesis and theories attempting to explain origins but all have serious issues that need to be explained. Secondly, there are quite a few of these theories that point to a "designer" but are only viewed under the naturalistic priori.
The grammar of Gen. 1 and 2 does not support days longer than an evening-morning cycle unless one uses the words semantic range definitions outside of their context and ignore modifiers (or lack of them).
Here is what we have grammatically:
1. God created the heavens and the Earth. Verse 1.
2. The Earth was void, dark, and water covered the globe. Verse 2.
3. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters (plural). The waters covered the globe therefore the Spirit hovering covered the globe. Verse 2.
4. God created light prior to the "grater light (generally understood as the sun) and the "lesser" light (normally understood as the moon). Verse 3.
5. God called the light good and separated the light from the darkness. Verse 4.
6. God named the light day and the darkness night. He defined one day as an evening-morning cycle. Verse 5.
Verse 1 describes the action while verse 2 describes the condition after the action. Verse 3 and 4 describe the actions and verse 5 defines the actions. There is no textual evidence of any "time" in between actions nor is there any textual evidence that God's definition of one day differs from what we consider one day today. None of today's scientific theories have refuted a literal reading of Genesis nor is the text hard to understand given our present state of knowledge.
Now, delving into today's scientific theories are beyond the scope of your OP but we can certainly discuss them if you wish, however, I stopped debating in this forum a long time ago because of the "fanaticism" of the naturalistic priori so I can't guarantee that I will continue if it heads that direction.
Thanks for spelling it out. Very helpful to see it that way.
There is the line about where God separates the light from the darkness.
Considering a cosmological view of this whole thing, what does that idea mean to you?
Just as the text says. He created the light and then separated the light from the darkness. The hiphil of וַיַּבְדֵּ֣ל (separate) means to disjoin what was previously mixed and it simply refers to the separation of the luminous particles from the opaque mass so it is no longer commingled. When taken in context with verse 5 it simply refers to the alternation or succession of one to the other, hence, what we know as an evening-morning cycle, one day.
I have no confusion but you seem to want to bring a totally unrelated word from a totally unrelated event to argue the meaning of a totally unrelated word from a totally unrelated event. The semantic range of definitions for mother does NOT include virgin. However, the semantic range of definitions of day does include a normal, evening-morning cycle day. I fail to see the relevance of your argument here.
Okay, so I'm looking to better understand the content of this post, because it sounds really interesting. These questions aren't presented as arguments, but genuine questions:
What are luminous particles and opaque mass in terms of cosmology? That doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard of before.
I would think that in order to experience the evening-day cycle one would have to be on Earth. The rotation of the Earth creates the cycle. If the light depicted in verse 2 is a fixed light in space (similar to the sun) then the rotation of the Earth would generate the evening-morning cycle which is what the text implies since the text of each creation day explicitly includes the cycle. Again, the text is historical (descriptive).Furthermore, in a cosmological sense (sitting in space way from the globe of Earth) there is no experience of evenings and mornings. So, am I missing a link, or how does the separation of light and darkness have anything to do with the rotating, half-lit planet creating the phenomenon we refer to as evening and morning?
So once again, if "the semantic range of definitions for mother does NOT include virgin" (your phrase), why on earth do you think Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin?
(The reason this is relevant is because it is directly parallel to your argument about days. Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin because she was no ordinary mother, as evidenced by the text; similarly, the days of Genesis 1 need not be exactly 24 hours long as they are no ordinary days, again as evidenced by the text.)
I would think that in order to experience the evening-day cycle one would have to be on Earth. The rotation of the Earth creates the cycle. If the light depicted in verse 2 is a fixed light in space (similar to the sun) then the rotation of the Earth would generate the evening-morning cycle which is what the text implies since the text of each creation day explicitly includes the cycle. Again, the text is historical (descriptive).
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