Hawkingfan

Originally posted by Vinnie: This is scientifically correct. Earth started covered in oceas (water below) above it we have the atmosphere which would have contained more water vapor then (waters above). The account is given from the perspective of an earthbound observer (see verse 2) between the waters. THis perspective shift is important.

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I don't know if anyone brought this up yet, but you are dead wrong here. The earth did not start covered in oceans and the early atmospheres would not have contained water vapor. The earth started completely without water. The earth acquired its first atmosphere from the gases from the rocks and would have been highly poisonous/toxic to man, containing gases like methane, etc.

Theoretical Bull

GakuseiDon,

You're not hearing me.

The questions I wrote to my friend are not about scientific principles being broken. An all-powerful God can obviously break his own scientific principles.

I've found that when arguing Bible validity with a Literalist, it's most useful to do one of two things:

(1) Point out discrepancies between one piece of scripture and another piece of scripture.

(Example: "Confusions 23:16 says that X is true, but Headaches 12:33 says X is not true.")

-or-

(2) Point out discrepancies between a claim made by scripture and what we know of reality.

(Example: "Indoctrinations 16:11 says that the moon is made of cheese. However, we know from science that the moon is not made of cheese.")

Maybe I'm using the word "science" too broadly here. But I would consider something like the moon-made-of-cheese example to be a "scientific problem", and it's things like that to which I'm referring in this situation. I'm not running around saying "God broke the first law of thermodynamics!"

That said, I want to address some of your specific replies to my statements.

I asked Vinnie:

Before God began the creation, was He the only existing being in the universe? Were there angels and heaven as well, or were they created with/after everything else?

You commented:

The Bible doesn't really say, so we can't know for sure. It probably isn't important in regards to our salvation anyway. What scientific principle is being broken IYO?

No scientific principle is being broken. It's a question. I don't care how important it is in regards to salvation.

I asked Vinnie:

Since the question is scientific in nature, could you explain exactly how starlight can be created "in transit"? This isn't so much a challenge as it is raw curiosity.

You commented:

I can't see how this is a problem. Instead of God creating light emanating from the surface of a sun 100 light-years away, He created the sun with the light already 100 light-years from the surface of that sun. Are you saying that this is beyond God's ability?

Did you even read the last line of my question to Vinnie? "This isn't so much a challenge as it is raw curiosity." I'm not saying anything would be beyond "God's ability". I'm simply asking how light can be created "in transit".

I said to Vinnie:

The water vapor to which you are referring would be in the sky, not above it. I'm sure we're all aware of how condensation works, but that's not what this question is about. Genesis 1:6-8 refers to water above the sky. You didn't address the question. If the verse had referenced water below and above ground, then I wouldn't be asking in the first place.

You commented:

Please show me the verse that says that it couldn't have been water vapor above the ground. Obviously "firmament" was how the authors understood the concept. They used the explanation that they best understood at the time. It wasn't important for their salvation, so God didn't need to explain that the water was being held as vapor.

Are you even reading my comments? I'm saying there is water vapor above ground. But the Bible says something else. Genesis makes reference to water "above the sky". (Not in the sky, above the sky.)Follow along with me here. What's above the sky? Space. Is there water in space? Not likely. Why? Because it's too cold. There may be pieces of ice here and there, but that's not water, that's ice. Hence my question.

You asked me:

Where does the Bible say that the moon gives out its own light?

Actually, Isaiah 13:10 says "...the moon will not give it's light." It's fairly obvious that primitive Biblical writers believed that the moon generated light of it's own.

I asked Vinnie:

You ask what my objection is. I don't have one (Heck, it's your belief, not mine). I just notice a discrepancy between what the Bible claims, and what we know from science. It's very simple: Genesis says stars were created for Purpose X. Well, less than a billionth of those stars actually serve purpose X. My question is, "Whut up with that?"

You commented:

I don't know. What scientific principle is being broken here?

Did I say a scientific principle was being broken? Not that I recall. So why are you asking me this?

Your last two comments are also inquiries as to what scientific principles I think are being broken. You must understand, my objections are not about breaking scientific principles. Mostly, they are about internal and external inconsistencies. I hope I've made this clear.

-Scotty

PS. Can someone explain to me how quotes work here? How do you quote someone else's post more than once? Can you quote two different posts in one? I need help!

spin

This is some of that post, based on an outdated erroneous translation.

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

Actually if you looked at the RSV, NRSV or JPS translation, all of which are relatively literal here, you'll find:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth . . .

what follows in verse 2 continues the thought. There is no big PERIOD. In fact the creation hasn't started yet. It starts in verse 3 when God says, "let there be light." You'll note each day starts with God making a statement. And day one starts as I have just said.

As there is no period, it is not important. It just means that you haven't got a clue about the text and you are about to waffle.

As God hasn't started creating anything despite your conjecture, let's get back to the text:

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

So "when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and empty, and" in this situation, "darkness was on the face of the deep and the wind of God was hovering over the face of the waters."

A bit of comparative literature will explain this a bit.

The deep is the water called tehom in Hebrew, the equivalent of Tiamat in the Babilonian creation accounnt, Enuma Elish. The great god (Marduk) defeats Tiamat, the watery chaos dragon, by using a wind to keep her mouth open so that he could thrust his sword in and kill her. (You'll find traces of the battle between Yahweh and the watery dragon in the Hebrew bible. She is sometimes called Leviathan, sometimes Rahab, sometimes just the dragon. Isa 51:9, Ps 89:10, Ps 74:14, Isa 27:1 -- this last directly from Ugaritic.)

When the great god kills Tiamat, the watery chaos dragon, he separates her in two, lifting half of her up to the heavens and from this point creation has begun. The battle is hidden in Gen 1, but the elements are all there for the pre-creation battle, the god, the dragon and the wind. And of course Yahweh, after separating the pre-existent water (the body of tehom, the deep), he raises half up to the heavens.

So, as in the earlier example with Marduk, creation hasn't begun until the waters are dealt with. The language of the Hebrew is quite specific:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and empty, darkness was on the face of the deep and the wind of God was hovering over the waters. God said, "let there be light."

And creation began. It is important to understand that the creation was done in six days allowing God to rest on the seventh, and in so doing establishing the Sabbath for the Jews. If anything had happened before the first day, it would ruin the logic of the six day creation.

We are talking about tohu wa bohu. And yes, "without order", is an ok translation of tohu, but my Hebrew dictionary doesn't agree with you about bohu for it claims that it comes from a root meaning empty, which is coherent with the fewuses of the word in the Hebrew bible.


Yes, just like the Enuma Elish.

Oh, hell, no, not the catastrophe gap theory!!?? This is the absurd conclusion coming from bad translation and an active imagination. It is totally unjustified as it bears no relation to the text.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

God turns on the light. Without it we have no days, so obviously the first act is to allow days!

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Here God is starting to give form to the world, to dispel the chaos or lack of order.

If we aren't talking about an ordinary day, then the institution of the Sabbath makes no sense. Of course it is a 24-hour day.

And the light is, well, um... you know, light. We are not dealing with a scientific treatise. We are dealing with a world view without any science whatsoever. Light is part of the form of the world, just as darkness is. They are both so fundamental in the worldview we are looking at they are dealt with first in the creation.

The miserable attempts that you and Theoretical Bull are making in trying to understand the text can get nowhere fast. TB is simply reacting to those unfortunates who cannot understand what they are reading and must repackage the bible into modern form, because sadly they believe in the religion that doesn't understand its own texts.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

This is a good one. The firmament is another thing whgich is almost always misunderstood. I said in an earlier post that it is a physical barrier. The word comes from a verb meaning "to beat or work metal". The firmament physically held the waters above up.

Wrong. It would help though, if you got a copyof a good scholarly commentary to the text to help you understand it. After all, this literature is over 2000 years old in a strange foreign language and just have a look at the problems we have understanding the language and world view of Geoffrey Chaucer the great English poet of the 1300s. You need help. You cannot read it ignorantly and expect to understand it when you don't understand the culture which wrote it.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

No, it doesn't. The land wasn't created. It was there, mixed in with the water. This is where the idea of without form comes in. God gives form to the world. He separates light from dark, water from land.

The Hebrews had never seen ice. You are crapping on a bit, aren't you?

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And it is here that God had finished giving form to the world. He will now begin to fill it up, so that it is no longer empty either.

Oh, my. Not the greenhouse effect? Dim light that you can't understand? What's the problem? You don't like the fact that the writers didn't have the benefit of science to help them get the picture right, so you have to make excuses.

Anyway, remember that God has given form to light and darkness on day one, the sea and sky on day two, and the land on day three.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Ahh, light and darkness have now been populated with the sun and moon. The logic of the writers is stunning. And you people are so busy in your ununderstanding manner to explain away the elegance of these writers' solution to creation.

See the apoplexy you have to resort to?

Now we get the sea and sky populated:

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Of course, it has nothing to do with evolution or dinosaurs or cataclysms. This is just you trying to reconcile your belief in an ancient religion and your faith in modern science. It doesn't work. They are irreconcilable. Have no qualms, the bible sees the world as flat, with corners, the sky as solid with doors and windows, heaven with storerooms to hold wind and snow. Why not accept that without these last few thousand years we would probably accept this at face value. We simply have the hindsight of science to confuse the beauty of the text we are looking at.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And we have the land creatures given life to fill the land created on day three. This is the creation account:


Day : 1 light & dark : 4 sun and moon
Day : 2 sea and sky : 5 fish and birds
Day : 3 land : 6 animals (and humans)


Hopefully, this will help you see the logic, though ancient it is, of the actual creation.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

This is the tail end of the creation of land life.

At this point, I have no desire to go on to you musings which are beyond the scope of this forum (BC&H).


spin

GakuseiDon

Sorry, my mistake then. I thought you were more concerned with the science part.

If you are going to criticise the inconsistencies, how much do you know about the culture of the times, the history of the Bible, and what inerrantists believe constitutes inerrancy? For example, inerrantists may assume that the "waters above the firmament" was the authors' description of water vapor. They didn't know any better. Now, you may regard that as an inconsistancy, but an inerrantist wouldn't. What do you do in that case?

Just click on the "Quote" button at the bottom of the post you wish to reply to. Then copy the [ quote][ /quote] tags if you need to break up the person's post.

Theoretical Bull

(Look I'm learning about Quotes! Thank you.)

Water vapor is within the atmosphere, or "sky". Not above it. If "waters above the firmament" is really a reference to water vapor, then it would have been called "waters under/in the firmament" Or even just "waters above ground" (as opposed to below sea level).

I am aware that the cultures of Biblical writers vary quite a bit from cultures today. What varies even more is scientific knowledge, or to put it more simply (so as not to get an "Oh-so-you-are-taking-a-scientific-approach" response from you), an understanding of how the world works. For example, they may have been convinced that "God makes rainbows", but they had no idea what actually creates the optical illusion that a rainbow is. Which in my opinion is why all these inconsistencies I'm trying to point out make such sense. I feel like the obvious difference in culture and scientific knowledge doesn't hurt my case, but helps it.

As for what inerrantists constitute as errancy, I don't need to know. I wrote those questions originally for my creationist friend. So really, in this context, all that matters is what she specifically would constitute as errancy. Which she described to me before I ever wrote any of the questions.

Hope I'm representing myself well enough. Sorry if I'm not.

-Scotty

Paul5204

TB:

Item 1: The Torah does not answer that question. The implication is that the answer is not important for human purposes.

Item 2: The Torah does NOT say that "daylight" was created before the sun. It always helps to remember that Hebrew does not use English verb tenses. There are three verb forms: (1) completed action, (2) action not yet complete, and (3) the imperative. The 'asah [made] in question is in the form of completed action. As to when that occurred, look at the reasons given for the sun, and then see when that first occurred.

Item 3: The Torah does NOT say that God (a) created trees and vegetation and (b) that trees and vegetation preceded the sun. Going back to item 2, again, you should find that the sun was made before we have trees and vegetation. Also, in relation to the trees and vegetation, there is no report that God 'asah [made] or bara' [created] anything. Apparently, the earth already had the power [as it were] to bring forth plant life [one instance wherein evolutionary biology and the Torah rather plainly agree].

Item 5: Two lights. You are making a distinction that the Torah does not make. The moon is a source of light, reflective though it may be. Ever try reading your map out there on that lonely highway under the light of a full moon? Works just fine, doesn't it?

Item 9: You are missing the point. The command was not a test, but a warning. We give such warnings all the time. Ever tell a three year old not to touch the stove? Without having previously been burnt, the three year old has no way of knowing that obeying you is the right decision, yes? Same principle in operation here. 9a: Because we send our kids to juve hall, but the adults go to San Quentin. Same principle here, i.e., God can extend mercy with respect to wrongdoing because they don't know the nature of their act[s].

Item 11: Naked is code for sin. So when they were naked and unaware of that reality, it is saying that they were sinners and not aware that they were sinners. Which explains why it is only after they become morally aware that they now realize that their are sinners. Which explains why God says: Who told you that you were naked [a sinner]? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you, Not shall you eat of it lest you die?

Item 13: Have you ever asked someone a question that you knew the answer to? Parents do it all the time with their children, as it's a good test of honesty, among other items. Same principle here. There's more, but I'll save that for another day.

Item 14: God didn't want them to eat from that tree anymore than you want your kids to shine off the homework and watch t.v. instead. But as you give your kids the choice, so too God. Re the tree of life, the nearly unforgivable sin here was in eating from that tree. Instead, it was not in saying, my bad, when that man was confronted by God. He actually blames God. He says: The woman you gave to me, she gave me and I ate. Blaming God. If he were only blaming the woman, he need only say: The woman gave me and I ate. But, no, he says [in effect]: God, it's your fault, that woman you gave to me, well, she gave me of the fruit and I ate, so again, if you wouldn't have given her to me, she wouldn't have given to me, and I wouldn't have ate. By the way, his mental state is otherwise made plain by the text. natan, the Hebrew for "give." Again: the woman you GAVE to me, she GAVE me of the fruit...So, the woman and the fruit have an equal status as things to be possessed and when the mood strikes us, to be given away. Oooops. Confirmation comes with his naming her. Read any commentary...why does God call to the light, day? Because in doing so he claims his authority over it. Now, note that with respect to the animals, there is a statement of purpose: and God brought them to the man TO SEE WHAT HE WOULD CALL TO THEM. Now note that with respect to the woman it says ONLY: and God brought her to the man.....and not word one about any naming, as that would imply his ownership of her, and she is his equal. Don't believe me? Read Genesis 1. That man AND WOMAN are given joint dominion over the animal kingdom, which not only explains the equality part, but also why God brought them to the man TO SEE WHAT HE WOULD CALL TO THEM [and by calling to them he exercised dominion over them].

All that I have time for today.

spin

The text doesn't need to say "daylight". The fact that the sun is to rule the light makes it clear, just as the moon and stars are to rule the darkness.

Divine fiat, ie the saying followed by its actuation is a more sophisticated understanding of God's creation. There was no light before God spoke it into existence. And there was no sun.

The sun was created by divine fiat on the fourth day.

WY'MR 'LHYM YHY M'RT BRQY` H$MYM . . . WYHY KN

Again by divine fiat, yes, he did.

Your point 2 doesn't accord with the text or its structure.

There is no need. Creation by divine fiat doesn't usually need physical intervention.

At the instruction of God's word.


spin

Dean Anderson

Given this very close correlation between the early books of Genesis and the Babylonian myths, would you say that the Genesis texts were post-exilic and drawing from the Balylonian myths directly or do you think it is more likely that both the Babylonians and the Proto-Hebrews took the earlier myths of the Sumerians and evolved them in slightly different (but parallel) directions?

GakuseiDon

OK, I see I've got you wrong twice! Blame it on too many battles with inerrantists and "errantists", who are both opposite sides of the same coin, IMHO. I put you into the same group, but what you are doing is different. Sorry about that!

Anyway, consider it a baptism of fire! You'll always get someone who misses the point (probably me more than most). Welcome aboard, TB!

Asha'man

The moon is not a light. It is a rock sitting in the sunlight. Are you suggesting that the ancient desert dwellers were unable to convey such a complex thought? Which word were they missing, rock or sunlight?