lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Lots of responses already! I have not yet begun to post…

Well, what I meant was the mention of a source of energy such as the sun, driving much of the changes that would follow. I believe the sun was what was giving light on the first day, actually, “Let there be lights” on day four being reminiscent of “let there be light.”

I meant this part here:

Genesis 1:6-7 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it.

Not in the days of the late heavy bombardment, when the earth was a sea of molten lava.

Well, you see, it’s obvious to us, but these Hebrews did not have books on modern science. Various creation stories start with giants and cows and so on, I think it is unintuitive to write a creation story starting with the simplest organisms, and scaling up from there, I mean, the gods are not generally viewed by such authors as having to work their way up to the complex beings.

It would seem more sensible to start at the top, and then oh yes, make some beetles and froggies, to put man first.

Before large land animals such as mammals, is what I meant, and what “the livestock” in Gen. 1:25 refers to, and the general term “wild animals” means “ox; goat; bird; dog; animals in general” (BDB Lexicon), where the focus is on larger animals here, I would expect, birds and other animals having already been mentioned:

Genesis 1:25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.

Actually, it fits rather well, with Neandertals not seeming to have interbred with humans, for instance.

Being a day-age person (where I hold “days” mean “ages”), evening would be the end of an era, morning would be the beginning of the next one:

Isaiah 13:13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken from its place at the fury of the Lord of hosts in the day of His burning anger.

Well, “olam”, though a noun, is generally used like an adjective! You don’t say “one olam” in Hebrew.

As above, I believe the sun was created on the first day, and was “set in place” on the fourth, that is, started its function of separating day and night on earth, as did the moon.

It seems those are functional, however, so this becomes the same question as to why we share any genes with any creature.

“Noncoding DNA regions (including pseudogenes, LINEs, SINEs, and endogenous retroviruses) aren’t really junk at all. These elements possess function” (“Who Was Adam?”, Rana and Ross, pp. 235-243).

Well, no, my point was different, I was saying that even if God was guessing (which I don’t think he was) and got three 1% chances right, that’s indicative of some real insight, and not just a lucky guess. Three 1% chances right is 1 in a million.

I do think the main point here is to describe what happened in creation, though.

Isaiah 40:26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these?

Well now, a framework proponent! Come over to TheologyWeb and discuss that with me there if you wish, but I would like to stay focused on old-earth creationism here.

Regards,
Lee

Joan of Bark

Even old-testament apologists like Robert L. Friedman (in Commentary on the Torah) admit that Genesis doesn't jibe with the scientific view. Smart monotheists dump the Bible as a source of any kind of scientific truth. Reconciliation is impossible.

Apikorus

Is this Robert L. Friedman related in any way to Richard E. Friedman?

Godless Dave

I saw neither judgement nor attack in Earl's post.

EarlOfLade

So, it's "quite" something. so what?

The content can be as flowery and poetic you want it to be, but that fact doesn't make the contents more reliable now does it?

The bible is a book clearly written by men who transfer their own ideas, fears and lack of knowledge into the book and when read today, this little tidbit should put the brakes on for anyone who think the book contains the ultimate truth. Esp when so much has been shown to be incorrect.

So, what IS your problem?

Jedi Mind Trick

I'm not concerned about whether or not human endogenous retroviruses are functional. My concern is that they are there in the same places in both apes and humans. Do you understand how these retrovirus insertions got there? They amount to genetic scars and both apes and humans share the same scar, in the same place. How do you explain that?

The rest of your correspondences are just you molding Genesis to fit with an old earth. I think this is because you are an intelligent person and can see that the earth is not a mere 6K years old and not because the text would naturaly lead you to that conclusion.

spin

Floweriness is not an issue. Neither is more reliable. If you wanted reliability get a phone book.

Yup.

Yeah, aim at the people who take the book out of context and apply it as the panacea to their own state of existence.

Incorrectness is not an issue regarding the book, per se. Your problem is with people who bestow infallibility on it, even though it was written before science, even though it was written for purposes other than description.

You're acting like those people who have to tear "The Da Vinci Code" apart because it offends their flower-like delicate sensibilities. It's a book, forchrissake. Treat it as one. A book has text and subtext; it has meaning and style. The rest is what people bring to it. It's this rest that you have trouble with.


spin

lee_merrill

I'll get back to you on that one...

Well, I need to hear more specifically how my points are incorrect!

Also you did not address the probability point I made, that even granted some wrong statements in Genesis, and retroviruses, and so on, three 1% probable correspondences do need some explaining.

Regards,
Lee

Jedi Mind Trick

But it doesn't say that. It says that the sun, moon and stars were created on the fourth day.


Yes, this says that there should be a dome of water over our heads somewhere up there.

There is a difference between molten lava and a sea of H2O.

You don't give them enough credit to twig-out something do you? The Greeks were able to twig-out that the earth is round and that the earth revolves around the sun so the Hebrews twigged-out that it is more reasonable for simple life to come first... this is not to say that there was some sort of revelation.

The land animals, the good book says, came on day six with man being the last of them. Birds, we know from the fossil record, did not come before land animals.

What about those Neandertals? How do they figure in your OEC scheme? We know they were relatively intelligent, they may have had speech, they made tools and there are some indications that they made music… why, they almost sound human… could it be that they are very close to us genetically? Did they have a common ancestor with us? If not, why not?

But that is imposition upon the text, a plain read gives no warrant to that interpretation.

Well, I’m no Hebrew scholar so I’ll defer…

But that’s not what it says…

God should do better than three 1% chances on something s/he did?


Let me ask you this:
Honestly now, from just a plain read of Genesis, would you naturally come to OEC interpretation?

lpetrich

lee_merrill's arguments are preposterous stretching of the Bible; I'm surprised that he is not trying to demonstrate evolution from the Bible.

And if one uses such imaginative interpretation, one can show that many other creation stories describe what modern science describes.

Like the multigeneration story in Hesiod's Theogony, and how it corresponds to the multigeneration history of the Universe and various subsets of it.