Mr. Morgan, Please forgive me for the assume insult. It's not a good way to start a constructive conversation.
Now thewn, about the day/night thing. When God said "Let there be light" the sun was born. Hence day and night. The solar system was created prior to this, (In the beginning God created...).
About Cain, the assumption by most readers of the bible is that he's one of three people on the earth. However, that position assumes that Adam and Eve had no children prior to the fall. But, they could have been in the garden for hundreds, even thousands of years prior to the eating of the fruit.Which would certainly give them time to pro-create before Cain. My personal opinion is God created man in cahpter one. Spontaneously and possible by the thousands. Then later created Adam and put him in a unique place caled a garden. It's referred to as the Dual Creation Theory.
About this God living somewhere before He created the universe thing. What do you believe was here before the universe existed? Nothing? Where was matter? Was there no space?
The serpent speaking. Do you believe in evolution? You believe that animals changed from one life form to another? What if the catalyst for that was the eating of a "fruit" that contained a substance that changed the genetic structure on animals? Is that more ridiculous than animals changing life-forms on their own?
Giants. Now there's a good one. The world means "Men of reknown" and is translated as such elswhere in the bible. Take the children of Adam and Eve that were born in the thousand years before the fall and call them the sons of God. They interbred with the children of Adam and Eve born after the fall. They had unique offspring. Interestingly, (and to be fair you have to admit you assumed Adam had no other children, But, they could have had dozens and dozens of children that weren't named. Just like the women were rarely mentioned in the new testament. Cain could have been born three hundred years after the eating of the forbidden fruit, with hundres of older brothers and sisters.
Fossils? Please explain the presence of marine fossils on the peaks of Mt. Everest. Either Mt. Everest was part of the ocean floor and rose up later, or the earth was covered with water higher than the peaks of the mountains. I personally believe both are true. The world changed dramatically via a combination of geologic upheaval and atmospheric change. And speaking of the fossil record, is there even one fossil that shows a transitional life form? One? Anywhere? Nope!
You see my friend, we both live by faith. You believe we evolved. The universe evolved. And life just is. I believe in an outside, intelligent influence. A creator. Both positions take an equal amout of faith.

Thanks for your time,

Jeff Milum
Cleveland Ohio

You're right that it wasn't a good way to start a constructive conversation. Were it not for the fact that you continue making invalid assumptions about what I allegedly believe, your apology might be meaningful.

For starters, you continue to use "contradictions" in the subject line when I have talked about absurdities and inconsistencies, not contradictions. For another, you assume--incorrectly--what I believe about evolution and our origins. For another, you make many assumptions about how it might have been where the Bible is concerned, and you do so after telling me to assume nothing.

One of the basic principles of Bible exegesis is that we are not to read into the text what isn't there nor take away from the text what is there. Another principle of Bible exegesis is that you are to take the words at their clear meaning whenever possible.

GE 1.3-5 states unequivocally that God created light to separate night from day on the first day. GE 14.14-19 states unequivocally that God created the Sun and the Moon on the fourth day. If you want to believe otherwise, so be it, but that doesn't change the fact that this represents an absurdity to me and to many others.

It's a nice theory, all right, but theories don't get the Bible off the hook. You need to demonstrate why it is that this theory is preferable to what we actually have in the Bible.

It is impossible to answer your questions inasmuch as one cannot have a belief about what was allegedly there before a god who is a figment of the imagination allegedly created what he couldn't have created.

I am agnostic with regard to evolution and our origins. I neither believe nor disbelieve. Evolution is not one of my areas of expertise, and unlike those who believe the Bible and/or Christian dogma on faith, I prefer to believe nothing rather than to believe on the basis of faith. Still, I tend to go with science rather than with the belief system of a so-called revealed religion.

Which is more ridiculous is a matter of opinion. But as I said above, I tend to trust what scientists tell me more than I do what religionists tell me. One of the advantages of science over religion is that science is self-correcting whereas religion tends to perpetrate and perpetuate its errors until it is absolutely forced to change, and then it does so only very reluctantly.

According to Strong's Hebrew Dictionary, the word translated "giants" in GE 6.4 means "feller, bully, tyrant, giant." According to Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Definitions, the word means "giants, the Nephilim."

"Men of renown" is used later in the verse, true, but it is a completely different word and "men of renown" is not a translation of the Hebrew word which is earlier translated "giants." In any case, none of this in any way changes the fact that there were Nephilim before the alleged Flood and Nephilim after the alleged Flood. Given that it is only Noah and his clan which allegedly survived the Flood, that seems absurd to me. If not to you, so be it.

All you have done here is present a how-it-might-have-been scenario. You need to demonstrate why your fabricated scenario should be preferred over what the Bible does and does not say if you want anyone to be convinced that you have it right. In the meantime, this inconsistency stands.

You apparently have no difficulty reading into the biblical text what isn't there. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that you have a vested interest in preserving what you consider to be the integrity of the Bible in spite of anything to the contrary. Keep in mind that anyone can come up with the ad hoc, how-it-might-have-been "explanations" that you come up with in order to reconcile inconsistencies in any such book whether it be the Book of Mormon, the Koran, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures--or any other. Most likely, you put very little stock in any of these books other than the Bible. The difference between us is that I put very little stock in any of them.

How presumptuous of you considering what you previously said, "Advice: Never assume anything."

You need to practice what you preach. You also need to adjust your reality to the facts given that I am agnostic when it comes to our origins.

It takes far less faith to remain agnostic about that which we cannot be certain than it does to believe on the basis of faith. There are no bounds whatsoever with regard to what can be believed on the basis of faith. Your faith-based belief system is no more tenable--perhaps even less tenable--than some other faith-based belief systems.

Look at a world map showing the population of adherents to a given religious belief-system and you will find that prevailing religion correlates well with geography. The chances are that you believe what you believe largely because of what you were taught and/or the where you grew up. Had you grown up in Iran, for example, you would likely feel the same way about the Koran as you do now about the Bible.

You're welcome. I'm not interested, however, in continuing to discuss your attempts to support one belief with nothing more than another belief. You have produced neither evidence nor argument that should convince me to believe that the Bible does not contain a number of absurdities, inconsistencies, and other such problems.

In fact, I wonder if you even read the disclaimer at the top of both the absurdities and the inconsistencies pages. If so, did you understand it? It says:



In any case, a perfect and omnipotent God could have, should have, and would have done a better job of it were he to have anything to do with the writing of a book such as the Bible.

Don

[Note: This topic is being copied from the Feedback forum to the Biblical Criticism & Archaeology forum. If you care to continue the discussion, you can do so there with whomever might be interested.]


[This message has been edited by Donald Morgan (edited April 22, 2001).]

Nephilim
Doesn't this mean the fallen? from the root word neph? I allways thought this was the fallen angels from Enoch's book, or the children of such. Maybe they were Neandethals (giants?)

You're right. The Nephilim are the fallen angels. The interbreeding continued until the time of David and shortly after I think.

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quote:
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Originally posted by marduck:
Nephilim
Doesn't this mean the fallen? from the root word neph? I allways thought this was the fallen angels from Enoch's book, or the children of such. Maybe they were Neandethals (giants?)
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Truethinker: You're right. The Nephilim are the fallen angels. The interbreeding continued until the time of David and shortly after I think.

How do you know the "interbreeding" has stopped?

rodahi

How do you know the "interbreeding" has stopped?

They walk amoung us!!

Fight the Future!

I'm assuming you're taking the bible literally; if so, here's something for you: And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: (Genesis 5:3)

In Genesis 4, is says that Seth was born after Cain killed Abel, so I would imagine that they couldn't have been in the garden more than 110-120 years. Assuming of course, that any of that's real.

I can only speak for myself, but I can't agree with that assertion. I used to believe whole-heartedly that everything I saw could be explained away by saying "God just did it that way." Believing in creationism was just that: believing. No need to learn much of anything, no thought required.

Some people may believe in evolution in a similar way, just taking it on someone else's word with no effort on their own part. Please don't lump all of us in with those people.

Edited because of my inability to distinguish between forward and backward slashes.

[This message has been edited by DamagedGoods (edited April 23, 2001).]