The Deception of Genesis

[Jig]

As Meatloaf says... You took the words right out of my mouth...

Deceiving everyone that the world is older than it really is would be a big freakin' lie. Why would you trust such a God with your salvation if He can't even tell the truth to us through His creation?

God's not decieving anyone...man is decieving himself. There is proof that everything could be less then 10000 years old and that the Great Global Flood that Noah endured could have caused alot of what you call age.

 

[ebia]

and the 7 days? that's just pure fabrication, right?

Not fabrication. A story that tells us important stuff. The 7 days of Genesis lays down the pattern for the working week, for example.

That's the crux of the argument... you look at genesis and believe that God created the world. you look at Genesis and do NOT believe the way in which it is described. How do you pick and choose? If you're honest, is it external evidences only?

Not really. The purpose of Genesis isn't to tell us how the world was made. The pupose of Genesis is to tell us why the world was made, by whom, for what purpose, what our place in it is, and so on.

And I would think that the first 5 books of the bible do matter historically, seeing as it is the foundation of the jewish faith, which was the nation that the Saviour came from...

But they don't need to be literally/historically accurate to do that.

basically put, the story line in the bible leads from that (Abraham, Isacc, et al.) up to the Christ himself. Am I also to believe that he always referenced "myth" when speaking of the Genesis account?

Yes. All the references in the bible back to Genesis are perfectly consistent with it being myth.

 

[ebia]

seems like a LOT of song and dance to justify a TE position.

LOL.

What a way to throw any credibility you might have had away.

 

[ebia]

God's not decieving anyone...man is decieving himself. There is proof that everything could be less then 10000 years old and that the Great Global Flood that Noah endured could have caused alot of what you call age.

'Unfortunately', whatever AiG might like to believe, that simply isn't true. A global flood causes far more problems that it explains.

 

[Outrider]

A few comments on past posts:

Don't think myth, think, "not modern science." The thesis statement of the book is found in 1:1, in the beginning ELOHIM created the heavens and the earth. That is, not Marduk, not Atum or Geb or Baal -- it was the Hebrew God. It was a re-working of myth to show the superiority and sole sovereignty of the Hebrew God over all the others.

Strange way to reveal the superiority of God over the non-gods, by using the very means by which the non-gods are revealed, even if you want to call it “re-working”. It still comes out “myth” which is another word for “fantasy”.

The way it is written allows everyone to undersatnd the important facts (ie. God created verything by his will and it was indeed very good) without confusing them with what are ultimately scientific curiousities.

Once again, clearing up confusing by presenting the Creator in the form of “myth” is defeating its own purpose. Edith Hamilton is classic evidence of how confused modernists are with regard to myth.

Yes very good Jig, I've read that exact same post from you before, and my question still remains, why would God build age into the earth when all it could possibly serve to do was deceive and confuse.

Yeah. Why not look at it that after six days of creation the end product was a brand new earth that looked and smelled brand new. Now, 6,000 years have gone by and guess what we see when we look out the window... a 6,000 year old earth. What everyone sees everyday is exactly what a 6,000 year old earth should look like without all the nonsense of the old appearing to be millions of years old.

Try not to think of it so much as a cleatly defined point where we everything after the point is to be taken as a literal, historical account.

“Try not to think” is the operative word here. Isn’t it interesting that the most obvious way to handle creation has to be trained out of our thinking in order to accept the fantasy of evolutionary thought?

Genesis is not a deception. It is an accommodation. Like when a young (say 5-year-old) child asks me, "What is the sun made of?" the first thing I would answer is that it is a great ball of fire hung in the sky. Am I lying? Not really. Although the sun isn't actually fueled by combustion, but by hydrogen fusion, it is true that the sun is a sphere, and composed of plasma, and in outer space tracing an orbital path (relative to the earth). For the young child the closest equivalent in his/her experience respectively are balls, fire and the concept of "in the sky" - hence "a great ball of fire hung in the sky". Indeed, conceptually I believe this is how most infants, and the first humans as well, perceived the sun.

This sounds fine, but when you start telling your child that the sun is match or a lightbulb because that is what your child understands, you haven’t taught your child a thing. You’ve lied. God may baby-talk us, but his baby-talk has to be true or we will have learned nothing except that he cannot be trusted. Just think, from the language of Genesis, untold numbers of people believed in a literal interpretation for centuries on end, until the wimp theologians who caved into Huxley’s brow beating “enlightened” the world to the truth, like finally telling your kids there is no Santa Claus. Makes God look pretty silly in the long run. No wonder the West is throwing their Bibles in the trash bin.

Because that's how ancient peoples transmitted their important truths - by imbedding them in stories. Stories are a great way of teaching people - a teaching method we have sadly forgotten in our literalist age, but the primary tool of teaching in most oral societies.

Strange that Moses didn’t see the need to continue this devise to the poor savages he led out of Egypt throughout the rest of the Pentateuch. In fact, he writes in very straight forward language that even we civilized, intelligent products of the Enlightenment can understand on a pretty high level of reasoning.

Often true, but that isn't the point of myth. Myths are written to tell truths and values that are important to the societies that wrote them.

As an historian, I’ve been studying myth for a long time now and I can’t recall one of them that teaches “truths”. Myths teach an introspective fantasy of the cosmos which is a product of creation ex nihilo of the human imagination as an alternative to objective reality. The end result is a great mass of stupidity. I don’t even have to defend that view, just refer the reader to any book of myths and see how much truth you get from it. If the Bible contained myth it would be very boring myth and it would make the entire book about as useful as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

I think you Theistic Evolutionists haven’t got the foggiest idea what mythology is all about. You need to read some Robert Graves.

 

[Critias]

LOL.

What a way to throw any credibility you might have had away.

From my experience, all credibility is lost with TEs when a person says they don't accept the theory of evolution.

 

[Outrider]

'Unfortunately', whatever AiG might like to believe, that simply isn't true. A global flood causes far more problems that it explains.

You have to choose what "problems" you want. Local Flood calls God a fat liar, causing incredible problems with such theological areas as epistemology and soteriology... not to mention the doctrine of God. If God promised he would never again flood the earth when the flood he was referring to was local, he sure has been messing up lately, just check with the residence of New Orleans on that.

 

[Critias]

What ought to be answered is, if God created everything in six days, how would He go about telling us this, in the Scriptures?

 

[Outrider]

What ought to be answered is, if God created everything in six days, how would He go about telling us this, in the Scriptures?

He'd probably say, "And the evening and the morning were the [first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth] day (yom with a consecutive adjective). That should make it clear enough for a child to understand and ambiguous enough for modernist critics with a penchant for Darwinism to choke on. As for mythology in Scripture: 2 Tim. 4:4 (ESV)
and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Strange that the revelation teaches that myth is antithetical to truth. It would be pure confusion for God to "reveal" truth in mythological form. The Bible is a Rock. Myth is a wandering into dreamland which is a place where God can be controlled.

 

[justified]

As an historian, I’ve been studying myth for a long time now and I can’t recall one of them that teaches “truths”. Myths teach an introspective fantasy of the cosmos which is a product of creation ex nihilo of the human imagination as an alternative to objective reality. The end result is a great mass of stupidity. I don’t even have to defend that view, just refer the reader to any book of myths and see how much truth you get from it. If the Bible contained myth it would be very boring myth and it would make the entire book about as useful as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Um, yeah. Let's talk about your view of Myth. You say you've been studying it for a long time; you mention specifically das totenbuch, so let's talk Egyptology.

When you think myth, think phenotype and genotype. If you don't know what those words mean, than you haven't been studying it very long, so I'll assume you know them and press onwards. A myths formulation in its phenotype often varies, but the fact that it varies means it is adaptable; they are meant for different circumstances, rituals, etc; however, their structural relationships, being the same, along with those significant differences when evaluated within the context of the myth's commitment to writing, are what gives the historian the tools he needs for analysis.

In Egyptian myth, you have the theme of the arguing brothers. Specifically, let's talk about the Contention of Horus and Seth, or, similarly, the Shabaka Stone's so-called "Memphite Theology." In both of these, Horus and his uncle Seth are vying for the throne of Horus' father, Osiris. We know that Seth represents lower Egypt and Horus Upper Egypt because of their local cult standards. So, when we read that Horus wins out, and that he and Isis bury Osiris (whom Seth killed) where they got him out of the river at Memphis, we are reading an "historical" account of the unification of Egypt and an aetiology of Memphis' prominence. In fact, King Narmer was indeed an upper Egyptian king and brought the Horus Religion into Lower Egypt and the Delta Areas: it happened just like in the myth. We find similar themes in several other egyptian myths where the genotype appears the same -- the structures are constant -- but the phenotype varies considerably.

BTW, the Book of the Dead has a lot of important historical information.

And I really just wanted to mention your ex nihilo comment. How can you say they are introspective fantasies that come from nowhere? That's ludicrous. I mean, even before Derrida and the post-structuralists I wouldn't be able to say such a ridiculous things: myths can't come from nowhere anymore than you can be randomly inspired to know something that you don't know. Myths, if anything, are developed, not introspectively fantasized.

 

[Outrider]

Justified,

Very interesting. I think I'm going to enjoy this conversation. I'll post tomorrow. Be looking for it.

 

[Outrider]

BTW, You may be interested that I peruse history in exactly the manner you described. I'll give a broad view of my ex nihilo doctrine manyana.

 

[Brownsy]

Once again, clearing up confusing by presenting the Creator in the form of “myth” is defeating its own purpose. Edith Hamilton is classic evidence of how confused modernists are with regard to myth.

I have never presented the creator as a myth. Show me where I made any such suggestion

Yeah. Why not look at it that after six days of creation the end product was a brand new earth that looked and smelled brand new. Now, 6,000 years have gone by and guess what we see when we look out the window... a 6,000 year old earth. What everyone sees everyday is exactly what a 6,000 year old earth should look like without all the nonsense of the old appearing to be millions of years old.

But thats just the point isnt it. What we see doesnt look like a 6000 year old earth. Creation screams at us that it is indeed millions of years old. Its just YEC's that spend their time trying to find reasons to ignore this evidence.

“Try not to think” is the operative word here. Isn’t it interesting that the most obvious way to handle creation has to be trained out of our thinking in order to accept the fantasy of evolutionary thought?

It was a figure of speech, stop being pedenatic. I cant think of one time since I have had the ability to reason on the subject that I have objectively thought that a literal 7 day creation was true. Nothing has been "trained" out of my thinking. I daresay there are plenty of other people here who will echo my sentiment on this one.

I know I didnt reply to all of your points, I was just responding to your comments on my posts specifically.

Blessings to you all

 

[shernren]

This sounds fine, but when you start telling your child that the sun is match or a lightbulb because that is what your child understands, you haven’t taught your child a thing. You’ve lied. God may baby-talk us, but his baby-talk has to be true or we will have learned nothing except that he cannot be trusted. Just think, from the language of Genesis, untold numbers of people believed in a literal interpretation for centuries on end, until the wimp theologians who caved into Huxley’s brow beating “enlightened” the world to the truth, like finally telling your kids there is no Santa Claus. Makes God look pretty silly in the long run. No wonder the West is throwing their Bibles in the trash bin.

The West wouldn't need to throw their Bibles in the trash bin if AiG and its ilk didn't miseducate them about its purposes. The Bible is a tremendously insightful and useful book when it comes to spiritual matters and human nature - because neither God nor man has changed much in the passing of those 6000 years since Adam. But when I want to know, say, when the dinosaurs went extinct, I don't see much purpose reaching for Genesis 1. To take something given to us for a certain purpose, and then claim and use it for another, is misappropriation and quite wrong to do. When I say that a judge has been making military decisions I do not add to his authority - in fact I take away his authority, because those decisions were decisions he shouldn't be making in the first place.

Spiritual matters do not mature. Man has known he was sinful (and denied it) since the very first bite. On the other hand, science matures and progresses as our level of observation of the universe progresses. At the beginning man had only his naked eye and his other four senses unaugmented. Over time, man began to collate and collect observations, effectively expanding the scope of his observations though not their accuracy. Then with Newton there was quantitative study: the study not only of characteristics but of the numbers that quantified those characteristics - drops: how fast? becomes hot: how hot? sunlight is bright: how bright? - and along with that the development of microscopy and astronomy that augmented our visual sense. Finally the modern era, the invention of computers to ease computation and cameras to record visual scenes, plus the bursting of modern mathematics onto the scene of modern physics.

Note that I did not say a match or a lightbulb: I said a ball of fire. And the child has learnt something. He has learnt that the sun is hot, that it gives off heat, that it is spherical, and that it is far away. Why, he can even begin visualizing it in his head if he's creative enough, and I daresay it'll be a pretty accurate visualization, scale aside. I do realize that there is a fine line between accommodating primitive science and lying, but I believe the line is there and God did not cross it. Furthermore, if it was only God's intention to transmit spiritual truths, then if those spiritual truths were transmitted properly then there was no lie. If God did not intend to transmit scientific truths, and as a result the creation story was unscientific - well, who can fault God for what He chooses to say or not to say?

Over time, children "outgrow" Santa, but they retain what they learnt - that Christmas is a time of giving and getting and blessing and being blessed. In the same way, man may have scientifically "outgrown" the ancients' understanding of the universe, but they will still take away what God intended to convey - that He is the creator, that all else are idols, and that He wanted this earth to be very good.

As for the seven days pattern, well that was firstly to justify and uphold the Sabbath, secondly because both seven and three (two "threes" of creating, and the final holy day of rest) are Biblically significant numbers, and thirdly because this created a poetically complete pattern that eased memorization I would think.

 

[ebia]

A few comments on past posts:


Strange way to reveal the superiority of God over the non-gods, by using the very means by which the non-gods are revealed, even if you want to call it “re-working”. It still comes out “myth” which is another word for “fantasy”.

You clearly do not understand the idea of myth, if you think it is synomous with fantasy.

Yeah. Why not look at it that after six days of creation the end product was a brand new earth that looked and smelled brand new. Now, 6,000 years have gone by and guess what we see when we look out the window... a 6,000 year old earth. What everyone sees everyday is exactly what a 6,000 year old earth should look like without all the nonsense of the old appearing to be millions of years old.

The world does not look like it is 6000 years old. It looks much, much older than that.

“Try not to think” is the operative word here. Isn’t it interesting that the most obvious way to handle creation has to be trained out of our thinking in order to accept the fantasy of evolutionary thought?

A pathetic attempt at quote mining.

This sounds fine, but when you start telling your child that the sun is match or a lightbulb because that is what your child understands, you haven’t taught your child a thing. You’ve lied. God may baby-talk us, but his baby-talk has to be true or we will have learned nothing except that he cannot be trusted. Just think, from the language of Genesis, untold numbers of people believed in a literal interpretation for centuries on end, until the wimp theologians who caved into Huxley’s brow beating “enlightened” the world to the truth, like finally telling your kids there is no Santa Claus. Makes God look pretty silly in the long run. No wonder the West is throwing their Bibles in the trash bin.

You make the mistake of assuming that people in the past thought about history the way you do.

As an historian, I’ve been studying myth for a long time now

And you still don't know what they are?

 

[Jig]

What ought to be answered is, if God created everything in six days, how would He go about telling us this, in the Scriptures?

Good point.....
---------------------------------------------


To the TE's:
Your argument is...science and this literal translation dont fit. I think science proves a young earth that had a global flood though. You beg to differ. It's all how you read the cards I guess...

Answer me these two questions:

Could God have created the whoe universe in 6 days? Yes on No.
Is science always 100 percent correct. Yes or No.

 

[ebia]

Good point.....

If there is no theological reason, then he wouldn't need to tell us in Genesis. He would tell us through Creation itself.

If there is a theological reason why we need to know that the world was created in 6 days, then he would tell us the theology as well as the fact in Genesis. And then not contradict himself in creation.

To the TE's:
Your argument is...science and this literal translation dont fit. I think science proves a young earth that had a global flood though.

You can think what you like, but it isn't true.

Answer me these two questions:

Could God have created the whoe universe in 6 days? Yes on No.

Yes if he wanted. But he didn't.

Is science always 100 percent correct. Yes or No.

No, but on some things the chance of it being wrong is vanishingly small. We all bet our lives on science on a regular basis - everytime we get onboard an aircraft for instance. The probablity that science is wrong when it says "The earth is a lot more than 6000 years old" is far, far less than the probablility that YEC adherents are reading Genesis incorrectly.

 

[Critias]

If there is no theological reason, then he wouldn't need to tell us in Genesis. He would tell us through Creation itself.

You are gonna have to prove that one. Why would there not be a theological reason for a six day creation? And, could there be a theological reason for a six day creation?

If there is a theological reason why we need to know that the world was created in 6 days, then he would tell us the theology as well as the fact in Genesis. And then not contradict himself in creation.

Does the possibilty exists that man has deceived himself either intentionally or unintentionally by interpreting the evidence knowing full well that one cannot speak of a Creator, thus looks elsewhere for a creative force?

 

[Outrider]

In the first place, I find that the essential or phenotypical approach to mythology is useful for the broad generalities of tracking migrations and the overlapping of peoples onto one another such as the invasion of the Dorians can be seen displacing the Titan(ess) culture of Ionian Greece and replacing it with the Olympian system. The problem with using this in speculative historiography is that the mythological systems are so malleable that, with multiple overlapping and the resulting synthesis of the systems, history can only be reconstructed on the most general levels. This is useful and should not be shunned by purist historians who depend exclusively on inscripturation or archeology.

That’s a long way from imposing the system onto the Bible though. Its true that a lot of historical information is stored in mythology, but that information is encrypted, synthesized, arises from circumstantial variable and is mostly general in nature. Not only that but one has to consider that mythological hermeneutics in ancient times was built upon a class structure. There was myth that was monarch specific, priest specific and vulgar specific and each class strata approached myth in accordance with its peculiar levels of intelligence and social standing.

So, when I hear people saying that biblical myth speaks to the thought processes of that time, I hear a generality so broad that its useless. I also think I’m hearing a reflection of philosophical determinism based on Darwinian ideas, that man starts out animal and works his way up through various stages of intellectual development to modern thinking with all of its skeptical methodology. The evidence suggests, rather, that man starts out (in the earliest written records) highly intelligent and then dumbs down over generations. So-called “primitivism” is not the last traces of the hominid, but a slide backward from a more advanced state due to displacement, environmental stresses, separation from the main bodies of knowledge, etc. Savagery can develop very rapidly.

Also, for the Bible to employ myth for the purpose of teaching would be counter-productive. Myth muddies the waters, it does not clear them up. God is too wise to employ a method that comes from the self-deceptive and self-aggrandising mechanism of human thought in autonomy. If, indeed, Genesis is a myth, how has it done in the teaching of the lessons as a myth. If we learn that God is the Creator, not Marduk... why did we ever need myth to teach that? Was man so abysmally stupid that he could not understand such a thing (especially when we are assured by Paul that that very knowledge is already in his in radice make-up) if it were laid out to him in objective terminoloogies?

And I really just wanted to mention your ex nihilo comment. How can you say they are introspective fantasies that come from nowhere? That's ludicrous. I mean, even before Derrida and the post-structuralists I wouldn't be able to say such a ridiculous things: myths can't come from nowhere anymore than you can be randomly inspired to know something that you don't know. Myths, if anything, are developed, not introspectively fantasized.

When I say myth is creation es nihilo, I do not mean that the myths were created from nothing. You totally missed my point which is probably my thought for invading this thread with a sweeping generality. I mean that myth is the human mechanism for creating the world from nothing (the vanity of human imagination). Made in the image of God, man has a built in drive to create, but unpinned from divine revelation, man, in his incessant quest for collective self-deification, has sought a way to create the cosmos out of nothingness (vanity) and so achieve the first great steps toward anthropocentric divinity. Since, in reality, man is incapable of calling nothingness into material reality, he creates his infantile cosmos in his mind. This isn’t perfectly consistent (how can it be, we are not God and we are polluted in mind) as he will borrow substance from historical circumstances, fears, dreams, drugs, ancestors and their exploits, even his own internal mechanism (if we would follow Campbell’s vein). Man does not want God’s reality (Romans 1) because he was not party to the inner counsels of the Godhead. So he goes to his cave (his cranium) and makes worlds on its walls.

You can dress it up any way you like. In the end, mythology is fantasy, collective imagination, like a game played out by children. It is not an intellectual advance, but a digression of thought. And it is not a fit matrix for revelation. Paul makes that very clear. Living while mythology was in full swing, Paul referred to it as the wanderings of the mind away from, not toward Truth. I think he understood myth better than modern speculators.

One more thing. God warned the Israelites that they were not to study the ways of the Canaanites and wonder by what means they lived. (This is not a suggestion that we not study mythology, mind). The purpose for this mandate was that they not adopt the mindset of ancient days. Why, then, would God bend to the system to teach them Creation, then turn about and instruct them to avoid such things?

 

[Outrider]

The West wouldn't need to throw their Bibles in the trash bin if AiG and its ilk didn't miseducate them about its purposes. The Bible is a tremendously insightful and useful book when it comes to spiritual matters and human nature - because neither God nor man has changed much in the passing of those 6000 years since Adam. But when I want to know, say, when the dinosaurs went extinct, I don't see much purpose reaching for Genesis 1. To take something given to us for a certain purpose, and then claim and use it for another, is misappropriation and quite wrong to do. When I say that a judge has been making military decisions I do not add to his authority - in fact I take away his authority, because those decisions were decisions he shouldn't be making in the first place.

Assuming that the purpose you have ascribed is his purpose. If you say its wrong to interpret dinosaurs (I use your example, since its handy-I'm not into evidentialism, I approach the theistic evolutionary debate conceptually) from Genesis 1 because it is a misappropriation of the intended purpose, the onus is upon you to prove that the purpose you ascribe is indeed God's purpose... otherwise, you may be the misappropriator. A Six-Day creationist (or a person who believes Genesis was written to be used as toilet paper for that matter) has just as much right to levy that judgment as a TE.