Mageth

Joshua telling the Sun to stop moving was like we might describe the Sun, if the Earth stopped orbiting the Sun for a time, as having "stopped" moving across the sky.

Actually, the earth would have to quit rotating on its axis. Which would result in Joshua and his buddies being launched at @1000 mph off the surface. And after their rather harsh re-entry and landing, when the earth started up again, they'd all be flung against the nearest tree or the ground. Why did ole' Josh leave out the part about god using his magical powers to hold them on the surface? Oh, he didn't understand the physics, right?

hezekiah jones

I'll take "Other Flying, Creeping Things Which Have Four Feet" for $100, Alex.

lpetrich

Where did Moses himself say so?

One may want to ask if the Bible is equally fallible.

Also, science has worked in a cumulative fashion, with old theories often being shown to be subsets of new theories. A good example is how Newtonian mechanics was shown to be a subset of both relativity and quantum mechanics, and how both were shown to be subsets of relativistic quantum field theory.

So I would not lose sleep over the possibility of the Earth being someday shown to be 6000 years old. Of course, it could have been created with that age, but with the appearance of having an age of 4.6 billion years, which seems like the only feasible option.

In fact, the young-earth creationist Philip Gosse had advocated exactly such a view in his 1857 big book Omphalos; its title, the Greek word for "navel", was inspired by the conundrum of whether or not Adam and Eve had had navels, since they had not been born in the usual way.

One can think of very similar ways to explain away Genesis 1 and 2, I'm sure. Consider in the Gospels where some of the Apostles (?) asked Jesus Christ why he had always been talking in parables. Could Genesis 1 and 2 also be parables?

They contradict each other on some important details, and Genesis 2 has the fairy-tale element of a talking snake, which suggest that they may not be literally true.

foursquareman

all valid points. In the end, I can't offer you concrete proof for my belief. I have grappled with these points myself, coming to my own conclusion. Obviously, so have you. At least you have thought about it.

lpetrich

Show your "evidence".

And please, NO lower limits on the age of the Earth, like how fast coal can form.

DJB, why do you come to that conclusion? I don't find it any sillier.

Although Genesis 1 is almost half-reasonable, it nevertheless contains some curious flubs, such as light getting separated from darkness, the Sun and the Moon and the stars being created after the light, and birds being created before land animals.

Genesis 2 is worse. Creating the first man from some dirt, creating the first woman from the first man, and that talking snake seem too much like fairy-tale elements. Also, God seems as if he had only intended to create Adam, who was male. So how was Adam supposed to reproduce. The most logical first creation is Eve, made parthenogenetic (virgin-birth reproduction).

And even worse, the two stories contradict each other on key features, meaning that they are best viewed as two different stories.

G1: God commands something, and it is
G2: God has a much more physical approach toward creating

G1: God creates step-by step
G2: God has to fix his creation as he goes

G1: God is very happy about what he had done
G2: God does not seem very happy

G1: God creates land animals, then both sexes of humanity
G2: God creates the first man, then the animals, then the first woman

I wonder if the contributors to that book have ever submitted papers to mainstream journals that advocate their views. I mean the likes of Science and Nature.

No comment.

Except that nuclear bombs don't turn people into pillars of salt.

Jesus Christ must have been able to see all these kingdoms if the Devil had been successful in showing them to him as he was standing on top of that mountain.

Hmmm... that argument suggests that the accounts of Jesus Christ's resurrection could be accounts of dreams about him rising from the dead.

It uses "fowl", which is an old word for "bird". I checked on the Vulgate translation, and it says "bird" in Latin.

Vorkosigan

Doug,

in all the major translations of the Bible, the word used, owph, is translated "bird." This is despite the fact that english has numerous phrases, such as "winged creatures," which could stand in. Clearly this explanation of yours is an ad hoc attempt to explain away an obvious but trivial error in the Bible.

Vorkosigan

Jack the Bodiless

Douglas:
Yes, we have. Genesis is flatly contradicted by the sequence of the fossil record (among many other things). Therefore Genesis is false.

I think you're getting a little carried away by the notion that scientists can't "prove" that a theory (such as evolution) is true. Scientists are reluctant to state that a theory is "proved", regardless of how well it fits the evidence, because of the possibility that a future theory might also fit the evidence. Science progresses by developing and refining theories to model the oberved Universe ever more closely.

But, conversely, scientists need have no compunction about labelling theories which do NOT fit the evidence as "false". Genesis belongs in the dustbin of history, and will never re-emerge. Evolution, however, currently has no contradictory evidence to oppose it.

Douglas J. Bender

scigirl,

No, I don't have time for a detailed debate - I was just asking a question about the human/chimp chromosome thingy. (That was in this thread, wasn't it? I'm getting a couple of my threads here mixed up.)


In Christ,

Douglas

Douglas J. Bender

Regarding the "pillar of salt" issue - I might have been mistaken. It might be that such an occurrence is the result of being quickly covered by hot ash or something, like the people and animals in Pompeii. Or, it still might be one of the effects, depending on the distance from "ground zero", of people near a nuclear explosion. In any case, Lot's wife "turning to look" might not have merely involved her turning her head or body, but turning and moving in the opposite direction (for some period of time), heading back towards Sodom and Gomorroh, perhaps to try to get a better view of what would happen. That would be consistent with the Biblical account, and there might have been a fair distance between her and Lot when she was "turned into a pillar of salt". If so, probably she and Lot had a bit of an argument, and then she followed through on her decision to go back for a better look. Possible.

Regarding the Hebrew word translated in English as "bird" - like I said before, the KING JAMES VERSION apparently does not translate that word, in at least Leviticus 11 (or whatever chapter it was), as "bird" or "birds". So, it obviously is invalid to claim that the Hebrews (or God) were (or was) mistaken in categorizing bats as "birds", since this is not something GOD apparently did, but only SOME English translators.

In Christ,

Douglas

[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

The KJV uses "fowl": which, of course, means "bird".

Bizarrely, it then talks of "other flying, creeping things which have four feet": which do not exist.

The authors of the Bible were as hazy about biology as they were about science in general.