The sun doesn't come into existence on day 4, it reaches completion on day 4
Which amounts to life (like photosynthesizing plants) existing before the sun, still.
What is written in English as "Let there be" is "become" in Hebrew. The sun didn't begin as we see it now, it was 70% of it's current brightness, neither was the moon at it's current position. It was closer to the earth and days were shorter, as it drifted away it eventually reached a resonance with the earth and gave us a 24hr day.
And an actually livable planet. Some 3 billion years ago, this planet was not really a nice environment for complex organisms like us.
"Adam" is not a personal name until after the Garden of Eden. The name she is given isn't "Eve" either. As I said, you need to understand Hebrew/culture/tradition to legitimately criticize it.
Maybe you should tell your evangelical YEC friends that....
So, what is YOUR understanding of this story then?
Do humans descend from a single breeding couple, that itself had no real biological ancestry, or not?
If not, what DO we descend from?
I have heard all the other examples. There are lists of them on "Atheist Answers" websites that get propagated throughout the community.
Sure. And they are actual responses to actual YEC beliefs. You might not subscribe to such beliefs, but surely you can acknowledge their existance?
That's what those responses are about...
I wouldn't use such an argument in a debate with the pope for example, because I know that the pope is not a YEC and actually happily accepts evolution theory.
Their motivations unfortunately do not extend into properly understanding Hebrew/Culture/Tradition etc
They extend to respond to those people who actually have these beliefs.
If you do not hold to such literalist / fundamentalist beliefs, then those arguments are not against your beliefs. In fact, if you do not hold such beliefs, then you can actually use these arguments yourself to argue against those who DO hold such YEC beliefs.
Hopefully from these two points you can get a sense for the importance of understanding the language, culture, and tradition when looking at these ancient texts.
I have no problem putting things in perspective.
But hopefully you will understand how you interpret these texts is clearly different from how other people interpret these texts... And that "objections" to
interpretations are only relevant to the
interpretations that they actually target.
Creating Ex Nihilo is not the same as Ex Nihilo, nihilo fit. The later has a grammar structure referring to nothing as the source. Creation has a causal agent. There are models that claim our universe came from nothing.
Not a "causal nothing" either. These models very much assume that there is a "trigger" or explanation for that event.
Also, the models you refer to are, first of all, not presented as "Truth" like religions do.... But rather as hypothesis that may or may not be accurate.
Secondly, the only model I know of that "claims" this, is the same model that actually says that the universe itself is "nothing", in the sense that the total net energy of the universe is actually 0, in context of it having "positive" energy as well as "negative energy" that cancel eachother out.
Put extremely simplisticly...
Start with "nothing", which would be 0.
Then *something* happens, which splits this "0" into a +1 and a -1.
Now, you have two things where you had none before.
Add the two together, and it makes up for "nothing".
At least that's how I understood it.
But all that is advanced theoretical physics at the frontier of our scientific knowledge. It may be accurate, it may not be. Considering the history of scientific discovery, I'll put my money on it not being accurate. But the importan thing is that it doesn't matter, because it's not being presented as some kind of dogmatic truth that one HAS to believe.
However they redefine nothing to do so.
Lose the "re-". They just
define their nothing. That's a sensible thing to do when talking about something so vague / alien.
The concept of "nothing" has been changed throughout time, btw. As we learned more about the world, the concept of "nothing" has been shrinking with every discovery.
A long time ago, when you had an empty box, you could say "there is nothing in this box".
But in reality, the box is filled with air (=many many molecules), bacteria, etc.
Then we discovered the vacuum and then that became "nothing". But again in reality, that "empty space" actually weighs something. There is still energy there. There are quantum fluctuations, virtual particles, there is "space" and "time" there, etc.
So today "nothing" means "no space, no time, no molecules, no particles".
But what is that? Is that "nothingness"? Who knows...
And like Lawrence Krauss once said to a panel of "philosophers" quibling about his definition of "nothing"...
He said that a theologian tends to define "nothing" as "
that from which only god can create something". By which he meant that it doesn't matter how he defines "nothing", because theists will never be satisfied with it anyway, as long as it doesn't include that part in its definition.
