God Says Genesis Is Fact

[chaoschristian]

This One's for the TEs



God Says Genesis Is Fact: An Exercise In Examing Our Beliefs

I am creating this thread as a means to allow all of us to explore our beliefs within the context of a strictly factual account of Creation in Genesis. Think of it as an exercise in the suspention of belief (as opposed to SOD)

The premise is that God, through whatever means would personally satisfy you, has revealed that the Genesis account of Creation is in fact a literal, factual account, and that He had absolutely no intent of it ever being taken metaphorically. You accept this revelation as Truth.

Based on that premise, answer the following questions:
1. How does this revelation effect your faith?
2. How does this revelation effect your view of the Bible? How does it effect the way you read the Bible?
3. How does this revelation effect the way that you view the natural world?
4. I'm open to responses to other questions. These are the three I've got on my mind at this moment.

Conditions: same as the God Says Genesis Is Metaphor thread.

Have fun!

 

[FreezBee]

The premise is that God, through whatever means would personally satisfy you, has revealed that the Genesis account of Creation is in fact a literal, factual account, and that He had absolutely no intent of it ever being taken metaphorically. You accept this revelation as Truth.

Based on that premise, answer the following questions:
1. How does this revelation effect your faith?
2. How does this revelation effect your view of the Bible? How does it effect the way you read the Bible?
3. How does this revelation effect the way that you view the natural world?
4. I'm open to responses to other questions. These are the three I've got on my mind at this moment.

1. It would not effect (affect?) my faith - because it would be my faith that made it possible for me to believe the revelation in the first round.

2. It would of course effect my view of the Bible, because I consider it be meant to be read metaphorically (at least for the Creation account in Genesis) - I would then with as much humility as I can master ask God for an explanation of the Creation story in Job 38.

3. In the first round, not at all - the natural world around me is as it is independent of how it originated. We live in the present, not in the past. I might be a bit careful, when eating fruit, though

4. Well, it's a bit difficult to answer unasked questions, but "42" seems to be a good answer to many questions.

Have fun!

Oh, thanks for the fun - and may you have fun as well


- FreezBee

 

[gluadys]

[The premise is that God, through whatever means would personally satisfy you, has revealed that the Genesis account of Creation is in fact a literal, factual account, and that He had absolutely no intent of it ever being taken metaphorically. You accept this revelation as Truth.

Based on that premise, answer the following questions:
1. How does this revelation effect your faith?

It doesn't.

2. How does this revelation effect your view of the Bible? How does it effect the way you read the Bible?

Not as much as one might think. There are not that many passages of scripture where one's view of the creation accounts affects how one reads scripture. Whether the creation account is literal or not, the Ten Commandments are still the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount is still the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' parables are still cogent teachings, and Jesus' Passion and Resurrection are still the means of atonement for sin and entry into eternal life.

3. How does this revelation effect the way that you view the natural world?

It would mean that instead of believing that God chose to create a knowable world, I would have to believe God created a virtual world. Science would describe the virtual world, but not the world as God actually created it. We would not know the world as God actually created it until we left this virtual world and saw creation as God sees it. (Something along this line is the belief of more than half of humanity already and has been for thousands of years.)

 

[notto]

I'd still think the ACLU is a good organization. I would probably want my tuition back for all those years in college science classes.

As for my faith, not shaken, not compromise, not changed. As for how I read the Bible, I'd probably have to reread Genesis and take some notes of more of the detail.

I would certainly be curious for an explanation of ERV's though and it would be fun to watch ID proponents like Dembski say that he accepted it all along and was just kidding when he said he wasn't a creationist.

 

[shernren]

To be entirely frank, if God has done such a thing, I hope He only reveals it in Heaven because I don't know how I'd cope with it on Earth. How God creates reflects who God is. For me as a wannabe Christian scientist I believe that the world is real because God is real, that the world is orderly because God is orderly, that the world supports us well because God wanted it to be so. That's why I love science: personally because I know God has given me a brain for it, and theologically because science affirms, to the Christian, that God is a good God.

This sounds irreverent, but God being God, He'd better have a good explanation for all this. Because a universe in which God leaves evidence exactly opposite to what He has actually done ... sounds more like a Hindu universe than a Christian universe.

Referring specifically to your questions, I wouldn't have a problem with 2 (after all I've read the Bible from a YEC viewpoint before, it would be just a matter of rolling back to the last known good configuration ) but I would have a problem with 1 (because faith is basically knowing God) and 3. I would also wonder how I and other Christian scientists have been so unreceptive to the Holy Spirit's prompting - surely God would have desired to correct us on the matter, and it must have been some deep spiritual defect in us that prevented this.