http://www.brucegore.com/VideoPlay4.aspx
I found this lecture interesting. It is a middle-road view of Genesis 1. I have been schooled in the fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis 1 over the years, but recently I have realised that that approach doesn’t work; the account of creation isn’t scientific.
I have recently looked again at the creation account, and have seen it as being originally an ocean, the primordial ocean of chaos, out of which dry land emerges, so I have an understanding now of how the writers of Genesis 1 visualised the world as an ocean, with a disc of land in the middle, and above a dome, a solid dome, and above that another body of water (a multi levelled flat-earth ‘cosmology’
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The light is created before the placing of the sun, moon and stars within the dome; all very ancient world understanding of how things are, and obviously totally wrong. What the lecture is about, is that the essential elements of Genesis 1 are taken from the Enuma Elish, a Sumerian creation myth, and yet the account is different, in that God is in authority throughout, and if God had described what really happened in creation we wouldn’t understand it.
I don’t go along with that, not much. There are two camps; those who say that the Hebrews just lifted the main ideas out of the Enuma Elish, and that’s the end of it, and those who think that Genesis 1 is scientifically accurate, the fundamentalists. I tend to side with the first camp; that God could have done a better job, even if those people wouldn’t understand any of it, back 5000 years ago, at least it would be the truth.
But when you listen to the whole lecture you can see that his thesis has some merit. What the lecture concludes with, is that scientific knowledge keeps changing, and in another 500 years there might be some new ideas again. But I think that having Genesis 1 as an ancient world cosmology, which is totally wrong, makes it difficult for people to believe that the bible has any merit to it at all, if it starts out as being good for the ancient Hebrews, but not to people who find out that the world is a sphere, hanging in space, and everything else. All that does, (the discovery that the bible is out of date) is make people doubt the existence of God, but that's just my opinion, as I think that God is responsible, or should be responsible, for the salvation of people, which starts with a belief in God, and an understanding that the bible is reliable and true.
I was watching a program last night on RevelationTV (a Christian satellite TV station here in the UK) and they were saying that you must accept this very narrow literal interpretation of Genesis 1, and it struck me that these people are a bit like the thumpers of the Spanish inquisiton, very intolerant of other opinions, and the whole TV station is totally YEC, all the time, with Grady Mc Murtry on all the time, with no alternative opinions, such as Old Earth, or my view; that the bible is basically unsatisfactory. (Must try harder!)
I found this lecture interesting. It is a middle-road view of Genesis 1. I have been schooled in the fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis 1 over the years, but recently I have realised that that approach doesn’t work; the account of creation isn’t scientific.
I have recently looked again at the creation account, and have seen it as being originally an ocean, the primordial ocean of chaos, out of which dry land emerges, so I have an understanding now of how the writers of Genesis 1 visualised the world as an ocean, with a disc of land in the middle, and above a dome, a solid dome, and above that another body of water (a multi levelled flat-earth ‘cosmology’
.The light is created before the placing of the sun, moon and stars within the dome; all very ancient world understanding of how things are, and obviously totally wrong. What the lecture is about, is that the essential elements of Genesis 1 are taken from the Enuma Elish, a Sumerian creation myth, and yet the account is different, in that God is in authority throughout, and if God had described what really happened in creation we wouldn’t understand it.
I don’t go along with that, not much. There are two camps; those who say that the Hebrews just lifted the main ideas out of the Enuma Elish, and that’s the end of it, and those who think that Genesis 1 is scientifically accurate, the fundamentalists. I tend to side with the first camp; that God could have done a better job, even if those people wouldn’t understand any of it, back 5000 years ago, at least it would be the truth.
But when you listen to the whole lecture you can see that his thesis has some merit. What the lecture concludes with, is that scientific knowledge keeps changing, and in another 500 years there might be some new ideas again. But I think that having Genesis 1 as an ancient world cosmology, which is totally wrong, makes it difficult for people to believe that the bible has any merit to it at all, if it starts out as being good for the ancient Hebrews, but not to people who find out that the world is a sphere, hanging in space, and everything else. All that does, (the discovery that the bible is out of date) is make people doubt the existence of God, but that's just my opinion, as I think that God is responsible, or should be responsible, for the salvation of people, which starts with a belief in God, and an understanding that the bible is reliable and true.
I was watching a program last night on RevelationTV (a Christian satellite TV station here in the UK) and they were saying that you must accept this very narrow literal interpretation of Genesis 1, and it struck me that these people are a bit like the thumpers of the Spanish inquisiton, very intolerant of other opinions, and the whole TV station is totally YEC, all the time, with Grady Mc Murtry on all the time, with no alternative opinions, such as Old Earth, or my view; that the bible is basically unsatisfactory. (Must try harder!)
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