Naked Ape

I have just a couple of questions about Genesis 1 and 2. I have taken the liberty of coloring the events of each day a different color.

Question 1: What did god do on day six?

Question 2: On day one, where was the light comming from?
At first there was nothing, then "let there be light!", and there was still nothing but now you could see it?

Question 3: Since modern plants rely on sunlight, what changes were required to allow them to live off the godlight until god got around to creating the sun? Asked another way: Is there a qualitative difference between godlight and sunlight?

Question 4: How do you get day & night, and evening & morning on the first two days without the moon, sun and stars which were not created till the third day?

What are the standard responses to these questions?

Cheers,

Naked Ape

Magus55

Is this a trick question? The above quote states what God did on day six.

God created light out of nothing to show morning and night, and later created the Sun to be the permanent source for the light.

1) Who said it isn't sunlight? As stated above, God can create photons of light without an actual sun. And 2) the plants would have only been without light for 1 day. They wouldn't shrivel up and die that fast.

When light is shining on half of the Earth, that half is illuminated - we call this day or morning. On the other half of the Earth, where there is no light, its dark and we call this night or evening. God is the source of light until He creates the sun. All you need to have a day and night is light shining on different hemispheres of the Earth at different times.

Paul5204

Naked Ape:

(1) Day 6. Let the earth bring forth living creatures. And then humans make their appearance. Or, God made the land creatures and created/made us. Of course, day 6 was rather long. As to just how long day 6 was, compare that other verse about before there was any shrub and before there was any herb, because God had not caused it to rain upon the earth [so no shrubbery] and there was not man to till the ground [so no herb], and a "mist" coming up from the ground to water the face of the earth [the initial condition]. So you can run it from when steam was escaping the "interior" to when the grasses appeared. A rather long day. As I said above, we were both created [bara'] and made ['asah]. Our bodies were "merely" made as there were preexisting biological life forms, so all that was needed was some modification. Although animals have spirits, our spirits are apparently qualitatively different, hence the bara' [create]. Note that the land creatures were "merely" made. No surprise since the water creatures and the flying creatures had already been created [both body and spirit], so all that was apparently needed was some modifying.

(2)-(3) Depends on how you look at it. You can be Mr. Weinberg and then morph on over and think that the text is describing the early universe, wherein light was indeed predominant. Or you can think that we are down there with that Ruach of God hovering over the face of the waters and recall that the only other time the verb I am translating as "hovering" is used in the Torah concerns momma bird feeding baby bird, so just what was the Ruach of God doing while hovering over the face of the waters> So maybe our atmosphere just went from opaque to translucent, since someone needs to be feed with that sunlight. The story otherwise reports nothing about "godlight."

(4) Day four, not day three. And always remember that the Hebrew does not have English verb tenses. The Hebrew verb is expressed as: (1) completed action, (2) action not yet complete, and (3) the imperative. So don't assume that when the text says God made something that it occurred at or very near the time it was reported. But going back to (2) - (3) above, try translucent to transparent. So now the sun, moon and stars, and not just their light [originating or reflecting], can be seen, hence those words about times and seasons, etc. But note that in line with the expression of the Hebrew verb, that the text reports that one of the reasons for having the sun is to give light upon the earth. When does the text report that as having occurred? So the sun was not made on day 4?

Sorry if those are not the standard responses, as they should be.

P.S. The bonus round. You didn't ask why or how it could be that my omnipotent God could be tired and need to rest, but since he has no body or form, we know that we are not talking about physical exertion, so there must be something else. Of course, that One is called by some The Eternal. And, yes, it is mighty tiring to be The Eternal and having to create and make decay and death. So when that was finished it became time to rest from all that hard work. And this resting day, a day seven, which still continues [no evening was and morning was reported here], is [as stated] a sabbath holy to the Lord, and hence that overriding admonition to be holy [or perfect]. By the way, if you're looking for perfect design, you won't find it. The goal is for us to be perfect, and we wouldn't need to be perfect if we were already perfect [as we could then just be ourselves].

Dust

Question 1: What did god do on day six?

Could you be more specific as to what you are looking for?

Question 2: On day one, where was the light comming from?

Creation of electromagnetic radiation/energy as space stretched out and energy became matter. A big bang would create a very big light for a long time, such as when a star explodes, but only on a larger scale.

Question 3: Since modern plants rely on sunlight, what changes were required to allow them to live off the godlight until god got around to creating the sun? Asked another way: Is there a qualitative difference between godlight and sunlight?

Perhaps from the early stages of our star as it was a protostar at the time. It has great heat, but does not shine like when it becomes a Main sequence star (the sun) releasing its energy and contraction comes to stop, or slows.

Question 4: How do you get day & night, and evening & morning on the first two days without the moon, sun and stars which were not created till the third day?

This was to represent the flow from disorder to order (chaos to cosmos) each of the six days. This is known as Thermodynamics.

Madkins007

Naked- if you are going to try to trip up fundies, you really ought to use scriptures other than some of the most studied, discussed, and preached on in the entire New Testament.

Most of the rest of your questions can be answered in many ways, including...

Q1 is answered in the text you copied.

Q2 could easily be answered "we do not know based on the text, but it seems to have worked anyway."

Q3- see Q2.

Q4- It is only our human frailty that requires a solar orb to define day and night- God certainly can make it work in other ways if He so chooses.

A question for you- what do you mean by 'standard response'? You think the various denominations compare notes and hash out coherent platforms on such things? Even within a given tradition there will be several ways of answering this sort of thing.

For crying out loud- there is not even a standard atheist response to 'who was Jesus' and WE are supposed to coordinate answers amongst all of the various groups in Christianity?

Naked Ape

No trick Magus, I was confused by the "And the evening and the morning were the Xth day" a bit. Since I was under the impression that the sabbath started at sundown I read the evening and morning bits as the beginning of whatever day it was. By your reading, what verses apply to which days? Specifically, verse eight, is this the end of the first or second day?



Cheers,

Naked Ape

Naked Ape

Not really trying to try to trip up fundies, just curious how these things are thought about by folks who actually believe this is a true story.
What do I mean by 'standard response'? Your standard response of course, or the standard response of anyone who believes this. As you pointed out it is among the most studied, discussed, and preached on in the entire New Testament. Everyone who believes this must have a standard response to these most simple of questions.

I was looking for feedback, not targets.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

Sven

Looks like you are trying to reconcile science and Genesis here. Nice try - but one big problem: Science also says that trees came some billion years later than the sun.

dado

well he got you: since when is Genesis part of the new testament?

Dust

Yeah there are still a few pieces to the puzzle missing.

Scientific analysis concludes that water formed on the Earth just under approx. 4 billion years ago, just shortly after the earth is estimated to have formed (approx. 4.5 billion years). This is about the same time our sun had just become a Protostar, which is estimated at 5 billion years old.

For a long time scientists felt that because of this data (when water formed), it must have taken billions of years for life to evolve, in which random changes in rocks and water resulted in living organisms (various theories).

Then in the 1970’s, micro-fossils of algae were found in chert rocks, which is a form of silicon dioxide, dating even now at 3.6 billion years old.

Life did NOT take billions of years. It exploded onto the scene following water. This still baffles scientists even to this day.

Science is still catching up, but we’ll get it.