If the beginnings of Genesis aren't literally true, then what way are they true?
- Thread starter Neogaia777
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Subduction Zone
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Very funny. Do you want links that support my claim? I can provide them. I thought the facts that I stated were well known and did not need citation.
Here is a helpful hint, when someone makes a claim that you doubt and there is no evidence given all you need to do is to say "citation please".
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Subduction Zone
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It is clear that you have little understanding of what is and what is not evidence, much less the theory of evolution. There are many examples of life evolving in the last 5,000 years. Of course you misstate how evolution occurs. Animals do not "evolve into something else". We are still apes. If you look at our biologic classification you will see that we are in the same group as all of the other great apes. So perhaps you first need to know what the theory of evolution actually says.
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Subduction Zone
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Sorry, he does not. There is no scientific evidence that supports creationism. It appears that you do not know what scientific evidence is. Scientific evidence is evidence that supports or opposes a scientific theory or hypothesis. I have yet to see a creationist come up with a scientific hypothesis, and that means testable hypothesis, of creationism. If there is not some test that you can think of that would shown your hypothesis to be wrong, and it needs to be a reasonable test, then you do not have a scientific hypothesis.
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I understand Einstein's theory of relativity. I know how the first 24hrs of a Big Bang expansion could be measured as 8 billion years of our time at our speed. I don't think, however, that it is relevant to the text as narrative. I think the Author is addressing something else with the seven days. I agree with you that we have to keep the sovereignty of the Creator in its proper place.
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Wrong,
Isaiah 40:22 says "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who ustretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a vtent to dwell in.
Job 26:10 He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, At the boundary of light and darkness.
Even a non scientific audience could grasp the difference between circular and round.
Also read this. About the Sun revolving around the Earth.
Which is wrong. That would of been day one.
The bibles version of god misses out millions of species that came before the Garden of Eden, which was in Africa. Like dinosaurs, mega fauna, Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, and millions more different plants and animals that came long before. It also forgets to mention the 500,000 years we were Hunter Gatherers, with Cain and Abel going straight into farming.
We are made to question and define. If we are created by god, we have to question and define. If man is full of sin, we have to question whether the writers of the bible were without sin and question why they don't want us to question and define and book that's so wrong.
By not questioning you're ignoring the one thing that makes us superior to the rest of the natural world. Which had to be the creators intentions.
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Neo, I think the beginnings of Genesis are literally true but in a vague nonscientific way. Moses describes what happened leaving out the technical details for his audience at the time and who were not scientists. If Moses understood from God what happened scientifically he would have written Genesis in about 4,000 pages. Who at the time would have understood it? People at the time didn't even know why water boiled. Mostly true are the lessons the Bible teaches. Genesis sets it all up. In the beginning....
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You need to go back and read Genesis. My Bible says day four is when the Sun and stars were created. The creation of light does not mean the creation of the sun. The Bible does not speak of a spherical body. Circular yes. A curved horizon does not mean a spherical earth to the people of that time. Don't be so sure the people of the time would grasp a spherical earth from that passage. Arguing here for no reason.
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Chriliman
Everything I need to be joyful is right here
In order to "literally" interpret anything in the Bible and expect truth to be revealed you must have the Holy Spirit. God himself determines who has the Holy Spirit. A sure way to receive the Holy Spirit is to believe in Jesus with all your heart, soul and mind. Many people understand the concept of Jesus with their minds, but not their heart or soul. You cannot expect to interpret the Bible in any meaningful way using only your mind.
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In order for something to be true, you shouldn't have to first believe it is true. You should be able to show that something is true independent of what anyone believes.
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Chriliman
Everything I need to be joyful is right here
After accepting Jesus with all my heart, soul and mind and reading/thinking about the story of genesis, I believe the purpose of Genesis is to show us that "time" as we know it really does not matter to God. God created "time" for us humans so He could interact with us and allow us to have free will. Unfortunately, we all know what happened. I believe its Gods will to do away with "time" all together, but He uses it to communicate His truth to us. The 7 day creation is a symbol of both how God did create everything but also that we humans will have 7 day weeks to live by and do our work/rest. God did not literally need 7 days to create the universe, I believe He literally created everything using 0 time, but at the same "time" using eternity. Gods existence is beyond space and time but He can also live within us. Basically God is amazing and our words can't describe Him.
I also believe He could have used 7 literal days to create everything, but my point is that it really doesn't matter because it's all already done. And only God can give understanding regarding anything written in the Bible, so if no one fully understands it yet then that is Gods purpose to fulfill his perfect will. Continue to trust in Him and you will find the understanding you seek.
Also, this way of thinking of God as not being restricted to time and space can explain the weirdness of quantum level behavior that science cannot explain. Just another reason of many pointing to a creator.
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The appearance of plants, animals, then man is exactly how evolutionists present life on earth. The simplist to the more complex as any evolutionist explains. At the time of the writing of the Bible, 4,000 BC, people would not have figured that out.
The big bang, or God's voice resulted in the formation, heating of the earth and then the cooling causing moisture to fall from the skies. It all falls in line with what would have happened when the earth was formed. The only question is time which people take too literally from the Bible. Our understanding of time today is nothing like what the Bible means. Time was meaningless for God. A day as in Genesis means more like a chapter or a phase and not a unit of time. The Unit of time was defined by man. The sun was not created until the fourth day so the mechanics of the 24 hour day were not in place until the fourth day.
The use of a rib to create Eve sounds bazaar but scientifically makes sense. The blood and stem cells produced in the rib bones could have been used to clone a female. Symbolically correct maybe but nothing the people of the day would have ever understood. The brevity of the Bible required for such details to be left out. The ability of its intended readers to understand would have been taken into consideration when the choice of Moses was made to be the author. In "David's Gifts" the point is made that not one of us was there when all this occurred and we are all left to interpret what the bible says happened and reconcile that with what we know today. No one knows for sure and we all have our own argument for what happened. In your search for truth about Genesis you will encounter only opinion. Mine is no more definitive than any other's. Read as many different views as possible before you settle on a belief.
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So who lied, god or Moses?
You might like to watch the truth, with evidence.
Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story: Your Inner Fish it's on BBC4 tonight.
Moses wouldn't of had a clue what that was about. Or about all the dozens of attempts god had at getting humans right. Study the Hominid Tree of life to see how many times he got it wrong.
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Merlin
Paradigm Buster
Actually, there is an article "the" or the equivalent in Hebrew.
It is a prefix attached to a word rather than a stand alone word.
It is pronounced as "ha" would be pronounced in English.
However, during the translation whether the article is translated will depend on English grammar.
Many times the translation make no sense grammatically so helper words are added.
Sometimes that is not even enough.
Sometimes an entire sentence would be needed to describe one word.
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Chriliman
Everything I need to be joyful is right here
Is it true that you were born? Did you experience your birth? If you didn't experience your birth how do you know it's true? You believe based on evidence and your mom telling you about it. So in fact belief in evidence must come first in order for YOU to believe it's true. It is absolutely true that you were born, but this requires belief in absolutes.
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Followed the link but can't find it and I can't get the BBC but would like to see "your inner fish..."
I don't think that Moses or God lied. Why would you think that? Check out "David's Gifts" on Amazon. There is a good explanation of God's attempts to make a perfect being. We oversimplify what God has done on this earth. We second guess His process of creation. Mostly because He left a lot of blanks in the story. Our nature is to fill in those blanks. We all have ideas of how it was done and why it was done and no one's depiction is better than any other's.
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Not at all...those stories only transmitted orally and not written down and preserved (like Noah and Gilgamesh) would over time be embellished and colored to be palatable to the hearer by story teller historians (filling in details not there, making things like the mountain or mountains a local one, usage of common symbols of that culture, and so on)
I think the most comprehensive work on this subject was that of Anthropologist, Dr. Arthur Custance (Canadian Anthropologist and fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute) who collected and analyzed over 200 versions of the flood stories from every corner of the globe. One thing noted by this great scholar is that in most myth/legends (unlike like fairy tales and folklore) there is at least some grain of truth. He reports....
“All 200 some odd Anthropologically recognized flood accounts around the world agree on four points.”
a) In all but the Egyptian, the cause is moral, it is alleged to be a judgment on mankind,
b) Only one man is warned, and saves his family, and/or his closest friends,
c) The world was depopulated, except for a handful of people who alone re-populated the entire world,
d) and animals always play a role!
Dr. Custance says, “In extra-biblical accounts, the survivors always land on a local mountain. In the Hebrew account, the Ark lands far away from Palestine in a distant country of which the Hebrew people of the time had no firsthand knowledge. This is an unusual circumstance…“.
The entire work can be read at
http://custance.org/Library/Volume9/Part_II/chapter1.html
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I remember being in a warm tight protected world and then going towards a very bright light, my body being twisted and pushed, my head being squeezed with great pain. I am being thrust into a bright cold frightening place and then my arms and legs are beginning to move freely, my lungs expanding as God breathed life into me. Soon I could hear sounds and later would find this normal. Different but normal. Even exciting. Although I long for the warmth and comfort of my beginning the new world will be a better existence.
No, I don't remember it at all.
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Yet science has not yet been able to show how life began on its own. There are no valid explanations as to how the DNA was formed on its own containing within its structure the information for all life. There is no valid scientific hypothesis or scientific evidence. The conditions that science says would have been required to form life never existed on this planet. By default I have to believe in a creator. It is impossible for me to accept that the DNA and all its information happened on its own.
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