Wayne Delia

That's bull. I've seen - and touched - the original copy of the Hamurabi Code in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It's engraved on a pillar of basalt. It predates the Bible by a couple of hundred years, and it's been preserved 100% accurately.

WMD

Wayne Delia

You are correct - they would not. The verse in Genesis 2 indicates that man was created on a day when plants were not yet created. That's all. To presume that plants were created on a day when plants were not created is an unjustified leap of literary license.

Quote:

And an answer to you light/sun problems: Okay, on day one, God made light, and on day four God made the Sun and the Moon and the stars... ...okay, so how did the light work?

No. "How the light worked" is irrelevant. It's assumed the light worked. The question is why a sun and a moon were necessary if light already existed.

Quote:

I think God made the light and then assigned the light (greater=sun and lesser=moon) to the two "bodies", that is the sun and the moon and now we have them the way they work now. Plausible conjecture?

Of course not. If light already exists (created in Day 1), then there's no need to create what we see as primary light-emitting objects (created in Day 4, even thought the moon is incorrectly identified as a source of light, rather than a reflection of light from another source). The light created in Day 1 was described as sufficient to produce a "day" and a "night", so creation of the sun and the moon in Day 4 was redundant. However, I'll give you credit for an imaginative approach.

WMD

Wayne Delia

That's priceless. It reminds me of the joke about the standard politician's response: "That's a very good question. Are there any more questions?"

WMD

Wayne Delia

Again, an imaginative approach (that's good) but it ignores the contradiction (that's bad).

None of the verses mention anything about the actual attitude of the person, although the first reference (Matthew 7:21) could certainly be based on that particular attitude to justify why certain people who call on the name of the Lord won't be saved. But the other two references in Acts and Romans are unconditional - anyone who calls on the name of the Lord is saved, period. There are no conditions attached, such as what a proper attitude should be. So, the last two references contradict the first. In your response here, you only verified the existence of the contradiction, rather than resolving it.

WMD

Wayne Delia

Good one!

Ding! We have a winner!

WMD

Wayne Delia

Not necessarily. You could be taking, for example, the message "STOP" out of context with the rest of the traffic laws.



WMD

Amlodhi

[Aside to Kosh; I think it may have been attributed to a volcano (Toba?) in Sumatra, as opposed to the Yellowstone caldera, in Wyoming.]

Also, while I don't spend a great deal of time following this, it appears as though Magus55 may be conflating two distinct events. As Amaleq13 points out, the population bottleneck ascribed to c. 70,000 B.C. did not, IIRC, "surround one woman".

The theory of a "mitochondrial Eve", based on current studies of mDNA, postulates a woman who may have been our most recent common ancestor and who probably lived c. 100,000 - 140,000 years ago.

Here again, the term most recent common ancestor is often misunderstood. It does not mean that "mitochondrial Eve" was the "first woman" or that no other people were in existence at this time.

Thus, Magus55, these studies provide support for neither the garden of Eden tale, nor for Mrs. Noah. Conversely, they do provide support that Adam, Abraham etc., (to the extent that they are considered actual persons), were descended from population groups that had never even been conceived of by the biblical authors.

Namaste'

Amlodhi

Wayne Delia

But, of course, it was translated into plain English. Would you be so kind as to point out the places in the English translations of the Bible which are improperly translated? Thanks.

WMD

Wayne Delia

That's strange. The contradictory references in Acts and Romans don't mention anything about people having to be judged by their fruits, to determine if they are "true Christians" - just whether or not they called on the name of the Lord.

WMD

Mageth

Here's how Genesis describes the serpent (from the KJV):

3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.

And then in 3:14-15:

And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou [art] cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

No mention of the serpent being Satan; indeed, the text seems clear that the serpent was merely some kind of "subtil" beast (presumably with legs), that God apparently turned into a snake. And I find it rather odd that God, having created the world as "good", should overlook the "evil" serpent (which, ironically, was apparently created by God as well) that was free to roam about in the Garden and tempt God's favorite creations into such deep trouble. God, what were you thinking?

Now, the apologist may argue that the serpent is somehow a metaphor for Satan (but note the Satan described in the OT is not portrayed as the fallen angel, the sworn enemy of God, that Xians believe in). But then, does not the whole creation account become subject to the same metaphorical interpretation? Which, indeed, it should be; the Genesis creation accounts are myths after all, and should not be read as literal history.