Brother Jeff

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The very first verse in the very first chapter of the Bible is WRONG! This verse is wrong in its assertion that there is a God, and that the heavens and the earth were created at the same time. Aside from the fact that there isn't a God, we now know that the heavens came into being via the Big Bang approximately 14 billion years ago, and that the Earth came into being via entirely natural processes approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Why does the Bible not mention this 10-billion year or so gap? Because it is WRONG, that's why! The first verse of the supposed "word of God" is WRONG, so why should we believe the rest of it? Glory!

http://www.religionisbullshit.org/20...beginning.html

Chris Weimer

Um, isn't there a logical fallacy placed in there somewhere? For one, because merely it's wrong on one part (assuming, of course, that your interpretation is the best one) how does that negate every single word of the rest of what it says? Not to mention that it's not even really an "it" - the "Bible" is a collection of books, not a single book in itself. Thus really it's two logical fallacies lumped into one. I'm sure I could go on.

spin

You are assuming things you need to demonstrate in order to support your claim that the first verse of Genesis is wrong. How do you demonstrate that there is no god?

What does it mean that the verse is wrong? It is making a statement of faith. Does make much sense to read the text as a scientific treatise when our notion of science simply didn't exist at the time? I know that there are some sad Billies who can't understand the distinction I make here and force themselves to support the text as something it was never intended for.

This material certainly is not meat for this particular forum. You might like to try it on the creation and evolution forum.

We deal with criticism of the text of the bible and its relationship to history, Brother Jeff.

We might establish that the text deals literally with six days in which this god person created the world. We might point to its formal and artificial nature in its efforts to sustain a number of different conclusions such as this god doesn't need to get his hands dirty to create the world, that the creation was seen as a movement from chaos to order, that the seventh day is special to the writer, etc.

This is not a criticism, just a clarification of the nature of this forum as I understand it.


spin

spin

Oh, be nice.


spin

Brother Jeff

No, not that I am aware of.

Though it is a pretty large error right off the bat, I suppose it doesn't. If it is truly the "word of God" though, then it should contain NO errors. One error is one too many.

No kidding? Like I haven't known that for, oh, at least 20 years now!

Yes, I'm sure you could have, but thank the Magical Being that you didn't.

Brother Jeff

It's not up to me to do that. It's up to believers to demonstrate that there is a god. The burden of proof is on them, not me.

No, IMHO it is making a statement of fact and getting it wrong.

I think so, given the fact that if the Bible truly is the "word of God" every statement that it makes should be factually accurate, scientific ones included, even though science as we know it didn't exist back when the Bible was written.

I guess maybe I qualify as one of those sad Billies...

Sorry, but this looked like the most appropriate forum for this post to me, at the time.

Toto

Hi Brother Jeff, welcome to BCH. As you can see, we are something of a contentious lot.

I take it you are arguing against inerrancy (and advertising your blog). That's too easy, it's no fun anymore.

Check out other forums, or stick around here and get a taste of this forum.

spin

You are confusing two issues. For anyone to claim that there is a god, they need to establish the claim. To say that there is no god requires the demonstration of the claim. It's wiser to place the burden on those who should carry it. You are in no position to say meaningfully that there is no god.

I guess then that you'll have to establish this claimed fact of yours.

Did god give it to you? If not, then there is probably an issue regarding transmission that you are not considering.

If one cannot demonstrate that the bible is attempting to be scientific, then there is no point trying to treat it as a scientific treatise. The notion of science did not exist at the time of writing the texts in the bible, so one cannot seriously force it to be scientific. Those believers who are literalists were the billies I was referring to and thought you were trying to distinguish yourself from that lot.

It's not a problem. As Toto said: Check out other forums, or stick around here and get a taste of this forum.


spin

Alf

Althought I can see your points they will most likely appear as a strawman to most theists. The reason is that there are many of them who no longer believe that the bible make statements of facts even though it on the surface appear to do that. Of course, the reason why they think so is because the statements are factually wrong and so to allow the bible to none-the-less be "true" in some sense they "explain" it by saying that the bible isn't making a statement of fact but a statement of faith - whatever that is supposed to mean in this context.

So, as they do not think it is a statement of fact your attack on it as such will appear to them as a strawman.

Of course, for the christians who DO consider it to be statements of facts it also doesn't work because they think the statement is true - the bible says so and the bible doesn't lie! Therefore you are wrong when you say it is wrong! Any class in theistic logic can explain that to you

Alf

James Brown

Calm down. If a woman said, "When I was younger I gave birth to three beautiful children, Michael, Sarah, and Rachel," no one would leap to the assumption that she had triplets.

I'd say the reason the authors of Genesis didn't specify the gap is because they didn't know about it.