Freethought & Rationalism Archive

spin · 02-28-2005, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Bible Thumper

God could have had Moses write Genesis to read like this:

The Book of Moses called, GENESIS

Gen. 1:1: In the Beginning, God created the heavens.
Gen. 1:2: At 10-43 Plank time, symmetry breaks. Gravity becomes a distinct force. God creates the Quantum limit of classical general relativity, and saw that it was good.
Gen. 1:3: At 10-38 Planck time, God created the Limit of perturbative interaction; thermalization of universe and saw that it was good.
Gen. 1:4: At 1x10-35 Planck time, God created Grand unification and spontaneous symmetry breaking. The universe enters a state called a "false vacuum", and God saw that it was good.
Gen. 1:5: At 1x10-34 Planck time, God creted the start of inflation. He saw that it was good.
Gen. 1:6: 1x10-32 Planck time, God created the start of reheating and end of inflation, and saw that it was good.
Gen 1:7: 1x10-32 Planck Time, God began the Electroweak era.
Gen. 1:8: 1x10-11 Planck Time, God ended the Electroweak era. The electro-weak force breaks down into two distinct components, the weak nuclear force and the electro-magnetic force, and God saw that it was good.
Gen. 1:9: 300,000 years after Plank Time, God created the transparent universe - atoms form - matter predominant. He saw that it was Good.
Gen. 1:10: 1 billion years after Planck Time, God formed the galaxies. He notes that they are good.
Gen. 1:11: ~2 billion years after Planck Time, God creates most known elements. Yes, these too are good, God said.
Gen, 1:12: 7 billion years after Planck Time, God creates the first solar system. It's of good design, God said.
Gen. 1:13: 8.5 billion years after Planck Time, God creates life on Earth.
Gen. 1:14: 12 billion years after Planck Time, God creates man in His image. All of them he created. After their own kind, He created them and saw that it was good!
-SELAH!

But, seeing as how His people didn't comprehend concepts such as 1x10-43 or 12 billion (let alone General Relativity, atoms and solar systems), He had Moses write Genesis in a more 'easier-to-read' format that basically says the same thing. It reads like this:

The Book of Moses called, GENESIS

1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was barren, with no form of life; it was under a roaring ocean covered with kness. But the Spirit of God was moving over the water.
The First Day
3 God said, "I command light to shine!" And light started shining. 4God looked at the light and saw that it was good. He separated light from arkness 5and named the light "Day" and the darkness "Night." Evening came and then morning--that was the first day.
The Second Day
6 God said, "I command a dome to separate the water above it from the water below it." 7And that's what happened. God made the dome 8and named it "Sky." Evening came and then morning--that was the second day.

The Third Day
9 God said, "I command the water under the sky to come together in one place, so there will be dry ground." And that's what happened. 10God named the dry ground "Land," and he named the water "Ocean." God looked at what he had done and saw that it was good.
11God said, "I command the earth to produce all kinds of plants, including fruit trees and grain." And that's what happened. 12The earth produced all kinds of vegetation. God looked at what he had done, and it was good. 13Evening came and then morning--that was the third day.

The Fourth Day
14 God said, "I command lights to appear in the sky and to separate day from night and to show the time for seasons, special days, and years. 15I command them to shine on the earth." And that's what happened. 16God made two powerful lights, the brighter one to rule the day and the other [e] to rule the night. He also made the stars. 17Then God put these lights in the sky to shine on the earth, 18to rule day and night, and to separate light from darkness. God looked at what he had done, and it was good. 19Evening came and then morning--that was the fourth day.
The Fifth Day
20 God said, "I command the ocean to be full of living creatures, and I command birds to fly above the earth." 21So God made the giant sea monsters and all the living creatures that swim in the ocean. He also made every kind of bird. God looked at what he had done, and it was good. 22Then he gave the living creatures his blessing--he told the ocean creatures to live everywhere in the ocean and the birds to live everywhere on earth. 23Evening came and then morning--that was the fifth day.

The Sixth Day
24 God said, "I command the earth to give life to all kinds of tame animals, wild animals, and reptiles." And that's what happened. 25God made every one of them. Then he looked at what he had done, and it was good.
26God said, "Now we will make humans, and they will be like us. We will let them rule the fish, the birds, and all other living creatures."

27So God created humans to be like himself; he made men and women. 28God gave them his blessing and said: Have a lot of children! Fill the earth with people and bring it under your control. Rule over the fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky, and every animal on the earth. 29I have provided all kinds of fruit and grain for you to eat. 30And I have given the green plants as food for everything else that breathes. These will be food for animals, both wild and tame, and for birds. 31God looked at what he had done. All of it was very good! Evening came and then morning--that 1was the sixth day.
-SELAH!

Not bad for a document written 4,000 years ago!

You're using a bad translation.

The text reads,

When God began to created heaven and earth -- the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and the wind from God sweeping over the water -- God said, "Let there be light!"... -- JPS

There is no absolute beginning in the story, Bereshit, "in the beginning of". The story just starts with God saying "Let there be light!", the first act of creation.

Modern deluded scientific retrojections are downright pathetic and are insulting to the artist who wrote the text.

Why don't you start reading what the writer says rather than what you want him to say?

Quote:

Not bad for a document written 4,000 years ago!

How the hell would you know? You don't notice what the writer said.

The notion that light existed before light sources and that light could be separated from darkness at that stage causes your science no wonder.

There's no scientific insight to the notion that God made the firmament, a nice physical entity, to hold the waters above up. The word firmament, Heb RQY(, raqia, comes from a verb which implies metalwork, "to beat out", so that raqia is that which is beaten out, implying a thin metal layer.

Days in the text are days. Don't kid yourself that you can worm out of that with sophistry. These days have mornings and evenings. They are marked out like regular days. In fact, if you can't understand that fact, you'll miss the logic of the sabbath. If God rested on the seventh day, then so should we -- but that wasn't a day of a billion years. It by necessity was an ordinary day or you render the sabbath teaching meaningless.

Next you need to read the precursor literature instead of believing you can understand a complex ancient text, while being ignorant of the genre. What was the wind doing in 1:2 or the deep (tehom)? You wouldn't know if you knew nothing about the Enuma Elish, which contains the battle between Marduk and Tiamat (=tehom in Hebrew). Tiamat is the deep, the primeval waters, against whom the great god sent the wind to hold her mouth open, so that he could kill her. Once dead the god slit her in two, raising half her watery body to the sky and created existence out of the other half. Once you have read that material, you are better ready to appreciate what our writer did with it.

Genesis 1 is not a scientific treatise, so stop with your modern need to justify it as one.

spin

spin · 02-28-2005, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

In the beginning there was nothing.

No way, Ho-say!

This is definitely not creatio ex nihilo. The world was formed out of something. There was already something. There was the deep, the wind, the dark. The world was without form and empty, but there was something there. The creation is all about giving form and populating.

spin

spin · 02-28-2005, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RGD

I believe that Job, generally considered the oldest book in the bible is tentatively dates to c. 1500 BC, and that most of the Penteauch (sp?) is c. 1450 BC.

Did you pick those numbers out of a hat or did someone feed you with them??

None of the biblical books were written anywhere near that period. The Hebrew language didn't even exist at that stage. Phoenician was the earliest local language to emerge and Hebrew is closer to the other Canaanite languages than Phoenician, ie Phoenician split earlier than Hebrew. Yes, Hebrew is just another Canaanite language.

Don't consider such outlandish dates. Genesis talks of the Philistines in Palestine, yet the Philistines didn't arrive on the coast before 1170 BCE. The table of Nations in Gen 10 talks of nations which didn't exist until after the destruction of the Hittites circa 1170 BCE. Then of course also in the table of nations is the name of a Nubian king who lived post 800 BCE.

spin

spin · 02-28-2005, 10:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jack the Bodiless

Yes, no amount of "dumbing-down" can explain how God gets so many things in the wrong order.

Who says they are in the wrong order?? Don't be hung up on science. The writer got it right... for his purposes.

spin

TySixtus · 02-28-2005, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Who says they are in the wrong order?? Don't be hung up on science. The writer got it right... for his purposes.

I can't tell if you're serious here, or not.

"Don't be hung up on science" is a silly thing to say on an Evolution Vs Creationism sub-forum.

That's like going in for surgery and telling the doctor "Don't get hung up on medicine, doc. As long you suit your purposes, that is."

Ty

spin · 02-28-2005, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TySixtus

I can't tell if you're serious here, or not.

Serious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TySixtus

"Don't be hung up on science" is a silly thing to say on an Evolution Vs Creationism sub-forum.

This is biblical criticism and history.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TySixtus

That's like going in for surgery and telling the doctor "Don't get hung up on medicine, doc. As long you suit your purposes, that is."

No, it's like reading a book while ignoring what the person is saying because of your predelictions.

If we were on an EvC forum I might agree with you, but we are not.

spin

RGD · 02-28-2005, 11:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Did you pick those numbers out of a hat or did someone feed you with them??

Found them on various Bible web-sites. The numbers range all over the place. Wikipedia has c. 600 for Job.

In any event, TBT is making up things off the top of his head.

And TySixtus is right: you're ignoring the order for no good reason; presumably the order is given for a reason.

TySixtus · 02-28-2005, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Serious.

Okay.

Quote:

This is biblical criticism and history.

Whoops! My bad! You're right. Though the sad thing is, I couldn't tell.

Quote:

No, it's like reading a book while ignoring what the person is saying because of your predelictions.

The title of the OP is "Genesis and Holy Bible: The only book on cosmology you will ever need to read..." inferring that the book of Genesis can be used as the entire and single source one needs to 'figure out' cosmology. In other words, TBT is telling us to eschew all forms of scientific evidence and simply trust his misguided judgement that the bible, and Genesis in particular, is the only true source for information concerning cosmology.

I'm throwing the yellow flag and calling 'bullshit'. My plants- before- sunlight example is an easy and surefire way to debunk his claims of intellectual superiority with regards to his book, as it very obviously got basic tenets of science dead fucking wrong.

So while we are not in an EvC forum, TBT was the one that brought science into the mix. And you're damn right that this barely knowledegable and barely even amateurish science-minded individual named TySixtus is going to call him on his biblical bullshit when it contradicts known facts. Because if his holy book is getting those wrong, what the hell else is it messing up?

Ty

spin · 02-28-2005, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RGD

And TySixtus is right: you're ignoring the order for no good reason; presumably the order is given for a reason.

Crap. I'm dealing with a piece of literature not a scientific treatise. The order of the text is exactly what the writer wanted. All these modern literalists who don't want to read the text, for whatever reason, postulate things hardly related to the text: religionists want to bolster their pathetic beliefs and anti-religionists want to attack religionists and neither deal with the text.

spin

RGD · 02-28-2005, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Crap. I'm dealing with a piece of literature not a scientific treatise. The order of the text is exactly what the writer wanted. All these modern literalists who don't want to read the text, for whatever reason, postulate things hardly related to the text: religionists want to bolster their pathetic beliefs and anti-religionists want to attack religionists and neither deal with the text.

spin

Ty is reading the text; he's pointing out that it doesn't match the world as we understand it. What's the problem with that?

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