bacht

Ah, more fundie-baiting, the game never gets old does it?

The ancient world had little understanding of science as we know it today, and the Hebrews showed no interest in the subject. The Old Testament is more poetic than prosaic in its descriptions of the cosmos.

Frankly I wonder if literalists have any understanding of poetry at all, they want to force words into straitjackets of simplistic definition, stripped of any colour or nuance.

Amaleq13

This doesn't make sense. In the same explanation, you claim that the word both does and does not describe a specific period of time.

Of course it does. If it didn't, there would be no basis for the explicit connection to and explanation of the Sabbath. Your interpretation is contrary to the obvious intent of the author(s).

ETA: Please read this earlier thread and focus specifically on the linguistic arguments presented by spin.

Fundie Genesis Challenge

In fact, there is nothing relevant to any scientific estimation of the age of the universe to be found in the entire Bible. Likewise, there is nothing relevant to any scientific estimation of the age of the universe in any collection of ancient religious texts.

Silly place to look for it, actually. :Cheeky:

rizdek

Genesis 1:1-3
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Ok so god created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. That statement may or may not be separate from the rest of the chapter where myth describes what was made on the various "days" of creation. Maybe that is some sort of overall summary statement that says what god did, with the rest of the chapter describing what was supposedly created on each day.

But, what does heaven mean in this case? What was in the heavens? Stars? But no, it couldn't have been light generating bodies because it says darkness was over the surface of the deep...what ever that means. Does that mean like caves or holes in the ground...oh wait, no ground because it is formless and you can't have holes in formlessness. So what was the surface of the deep?

So, the earth was formless...what does that mean, was it actually a physical earth? So how could it be formless? It was empty...empty? Formless and empty...completely useless terms. But no, it wasn't empty, there was apparently water over which the spirit of god hovered. Hovered? What does that mean? What business does this god have hovering?

Then we have this god creating light...I guess just the concept, the laws that will govern light once there are light producing bodies, which apparently there were none of, because darkness was over the surface of the deep. But wait, god saw the light. So there was just light without light generating bodies. Or, maybe there were light generating bodies, bodies far off from the earth in deep space...or should I say deep heavens? But the light hadn't reached the earth. God could see it and judge it "good" but it hadn't reached the earth to illuminate the surface of the deep. But why did the god that created all this have to judge it good? What else would a god create, but good light?

Then this god had to separate light from darkness? Like, without that forward thinking and clever separation, we'd never be able to distinguish light from darkness?

So then some more mundane activity of calling the light day and the darkness night. Then we come to the "And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." True, it doesn't say god did all that stuff in a day, but once days started happening...all apparently without a sun, from then on, it seems to start up describing what he did while ticking off days as in, "And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day." Now, if it wasn't implying god was doing these things in days denoted by evening and mornings, why bother ticking off the days, and separating the various creation events into those time frames. It looks like the writer thought he was describing typical days. But apparently some pretend that while god inspired such wording, it was like a hidden code that we could later interpret ANY WAY WE WANTED TO.

Does the Genesis account actually describe the creation acts in the sequence in which they occurred? Or might someone say that indeed they were just kind of randomly listed without an consideration that before one can have evening and morning, you'd need, from a practical standpoint, lights of the sky like the sun and moon"?

But technically, it doesn't mention the sun and moon, so who knows what "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night." means. It might mean the sun and moon, it sure sounds like it. But wait, if these aren't 24 hr days, how is the vegetation was created in an earlier "non-descript but potentially long" time frame and living without the sun. Is this a case of intelligent lighting? Where god just makes light available to the vegetation? OR, as I asked earlier, are the creation acts not listed in the sequence in which they happened.

I could go on, but is the question whether the creation story in Genesis contradicts science? Well, it certainly precludes understanding and is so general and vague with terms like formless, surface of the deep, empty but with water, heavens with no stars, etc. that trying to relate it to science would be futile.

But my favorite parts are in the second account of creation starting in Genesis 2. I especially like how it suggests Adam was offerred all the beasts of the field, but no helpmate could be found among them.

Genesis 2:

18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam [g] no suitable helper was found.

Thank goodness. I'm glad he didn't pick elephants or manatee for his helper.