Ted Hoffman

Genesis, according to me, was "screwed" from the word go, and I have used it successfully to take the wind out of the sails of any xstian who claims to understand the bible. In my experience here at secweb, they all flee in the end and leave me waiting in vain for their responses.
So this question is not addresses to xstians per se, but to those who know that God does not exist, but are nevertheless willing to consider the context of his existence.
Lets consider the meaning of "Good" under the following bible verses:

Gen 1:3 :And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Gen 1:4 :And God saw the light, that it was good:

My question is, how did God Know it was good?

the definition of Good is "Being positive or desirable in nature; not bad or poor; well-behaved;of moral excellence; pleasant;enjoyable;attractive;handsome etc.

From the definition, there must be a worse alternative for something to be good. People sometimes say that happiness is lack of desire/ need (consider that there is total happiness and happiness - it does not have to be total for it to be considered happiness)

Can there be Good without bad? Can there be darkness without light?

On what basis did God decide that the light was Good?

Does it mean that "it" was bad before God created the light? If it was bad, does it mean that God was uncomfortable in the dark? What was God doing in the darkness if the light was Good? Why did he not have the light earlier? Did he have to create light to know that it was Good?

Now, please folks, lets not go into all that stuff about hebrew "bara" means a and all that bullshit.

Is it logical for God to know what is bad when he is alone? Bad for who? Good for who?

If God "needed" light and was thus satisfying a need, why didnt he meet his need earlier?

Does "it" mean that God also created the darkness?

How did he know that the light was Good if he was part of the light? (he is omnipresent right?). Does it mean that he was saying that He himself saw himself and saw that he was Good?

Good for who?

In essense, I am going to assert that God did not know it was Good. The authors just wanted to bring out the idea that God creates good things and that he loves what he creates (of course the account of the biblical flood shows even God sometimes hates what he creates - and resorts to destruction).
There could not have been something Good about the light unless there was something bad about the darkness.
What was bad about the darkness? Considering God was alone, there were no plants etc.

[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>

excreationist

I'm an atheist, but anyway.....

Well in the Bible, righteousness seems to involve doing God's will, and evil and sin involves going against God's will.
So anyway, if God does something, it is by definition "good".
BTW, in verse 31 it says that all of creation is "very good" - this is easy for creationists to justify since they believe in a literal paradise, but for Christians who believe in evolution, that means that the millions of years of disease, starvation and death is a "very good" part of God's creation - that came before Adam even sinned.

Well before there was just a formless planet earth and the heavens, and I guess before that, there was nothing - except God. So it makes sense to say that light is better than nothing.

That's what darkness is - an absence of light.

I guess light is more interesting than darkness. It allows things like vision and colour to be possible.

Well God paces himself - he could have created it all in a flash, but he decided to take 6 days.
Thinking something is good doesn't mean that what you had before was bad.... compared to a million dollars, a billion dollars is a lot better, but that doesn't mean that a million dollars is horrible.

He's omniscient, remember.

Glorifying his name or something.

Well he wouldn't have anything to do then if he went straight to his final goal.

Yes, later he separated the light from the darkness (absence of light).

I think omnipresence basically means that he can see and sense everything... it doesn't mean that he is contained in everything. (Well it depends on who you ask though)

Ted Hoffman

existentialist, nice 2 meet u.
Please, we are at the beginning. There is no evil, there is no sin. There is just the spirit of god hovering over the surface of the deep.
Makes sense for who to say? God? The authors? who should the judgement come from and on what basis?
Why should light be better than nothing? are U saying that the xstian God could not detect colours in the dark? and that he could not see because of the dark?
Remember, there is only the "deep". There are no clouds, no planets, just the spirit of God and the Deep. Now what colour would there be to see? The colour of the deep? God cant see the colour of the deep without light?
a billion dollars is a lot better because it can "buy" more. It is comparatively better, but lets not go into semantics

who created the "bad" thing then? Didnt he know it was bad then? Or did someone else put "it" there?

Does anyone need to separate light from darkness? I thought the presence of light automatically means the absence of darkness? Are we supposed to imagine that the darkness was mixed with the light?

Anyway U dont need to answer these unless u are a theist. Maybe these are among the Qns that made U an atheist.

If he can see and sense, where is he? doesnt he then need to be everywhere? Is it that his "senses" are the ones that are everywhere? Aren't his senses part of him?
Or does he use "tools" to sense?

Ted Hoffman

I mean, assuming Good is used in a comparative sense (ie light was better than darkness or darkness plus light was better than total darkness) doesnt in negate the idea that God "led" a perfect existence? Since he is obviously moving from Good to better ie total darkness to darkness plus light?
Did the light meet a need he had that darkness could not meet?
Its like a man who has been sleeping in the open, being rained on and all, then one day he sleeps in a cave and he sees that the cave is Good.
And then he sticks to the cave.
His former life cant be considered perfect now can it?

[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>

Tercel

Probably because you try and interpret it as an accurate infalliable record rather than an allegorical myth.

If you are prepared to accept my proposed definition that something is morally good if it is in accordence with the complete will of God - then you will find that since God wills the light to exist then its existence is good.

It rather depends... what exactly is this light? Some interpretations associate this "light" with the energy/light of the Big Bang. Since this event constitutes the beginning of time it wouldn't be meaningful to ask why God didn't do it "earlier", unless you assume some sort of ultimate metaphysical time.
On the other hand it might have been the correct time in terms of the universe for light to be introduced to it.

However this is nitpicking on a myth. The passage is so immensely similar to the Babylonian creation stories that there is no reason to take it as anything else.

Agreed.

Tercel

cloud

perhaps since He knew he was going to create humans he made it so that human would find it good so he called it good

besidez......God knows whats good and not

GPLindsey

God created the Heavens and the Earth and Adam and Eve and bugs and everything else in order to give HIS existence meaning and purpose. Before the Creation, he was an intelligent being floating in an empty void for God knows how long (!). He was desperately lonely and the Creation gave him something to do and to kill time with.

God doesn't exist, by the way...