The Big Bang (Genesis 1:2-3)

a reply to: Krazysh0t

The account of Genesis is a history of the earth specifically, why would it include information about other worlds? Nowhere does the bible say we are the only sentient life out there. I, for example, believe in ET's, I just haven't seen good enough evidence for them yet and find most accounts to be hoaxes (no offense so some in this thread, I am not impugning anything concerning your personal stories), I just know there are enough habitable planets out there that I see no reason why a creator didn't "Let there be" other beings on those planets. According to the bible this is one of the planets that seems to have rebelled against the principles of the creator.

Any extrapolation that we are alone in the universe would be a misunderstanding, as there is no definitive answer one way or the other on that in scripture.

With that said, you are being nitpicky about the time difference between the ages. Again, it was thought for thousands of years that each age was it's own indeterminate amount of time, and it wasn't until the 8th century AD when the old testament had been readily available to priests in Latin for some time that they began to form a literal reading of the creation and it gained traction. Mainly because followers of the church had no access to the written word or knew how to read it in the original language.

So age 1 was more than the rest of the ages combined...and?

originally posted by: raymundoko
a reply to: Krazysh0t

The account of Genesis is a history of the earth specifically, why would it include information about other worlds? Nowhere does the bible say we are the only sentient life out there. I, for example, believe in ET's, I just haven't seen good enough evidence for them yet and find most accounts to be hoaxes (no offense so some in this thread, I am not impugning anything concerning your personal stories), I just know there are enough habitable planets out there that I see no reason why a creator didn't "Let there be" other beings on those planets. According to the bible this is one of the planets that seems to have rebelled against the principles of the creator.

So why did he spend so much time developing this planet but no others?

Any extrapolation that we are alone in the universe would be a misunderstanding, as there is no definitive answer one way or the other on that in scripture.

With that said, you are being nitpicky about the time difference between the ages. Again, it was thought for thousands of years that each age was it's own indeterminate amount of time, and it wasn't until the 8th century AD when the old testament had been readily available to priests in Latin for some time that they began to form a literal reading of the creation and it gained traction. Mainly because followers of the church had no access to the written word or knew how to read it in the original language.

So age 1 was more than the rest of the ages combined...and?

I am being nitpicky because as a person that values definitive answers and definitions I don't like vagueness. Vagueness fails at explaining things. Vagueness invites someone to interpret it incorrectly. If you allow that the word "day" is undefined or just some arbitrary length of time that can randomly vary from one day to the next, then you aren't describing anything.

The universe is CLEARLY quantifiable since science quantifies it all the time. Therefore it reasons that an era/age/day/whathaveyou for god would also be quantifiable since god used quantifiable measures for the rest of his creation. Light has a constant speed in a vacuum. Gravity has a universal constant. The laws of motion define how things move with in the universe. If god spent all this time setting up these rules and laws to govern how the universe is developed, it makes little sense that he would use a vague and undefined concept like an age to divide up the time it took him to create the universe to today.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I agree it is vague, but as I said earlier, the bible is not a scientific book. It isn't intended to provide definitive scientific answers. I have a book and documentary called "The Day of the Dinosaurs" and "The Last Day of the Dinosaurs". Should I throw them out because they don't give me a definitive description of day in the title?

a reply to: raymundoko

In both examples the word "day" is in the title. I can forgive a title for being unscientific in its explanations. If it were to be so unscientific and vauge in its explanation though, then I'd start doubting its claims or looking for additional sources for further clarification. After all bible translates to "book" in English. That isn't very descriptive either.

originally posted by: raymundoko

originally posted by: Barcs
Ray, any response to the points in any of my posts yet? You understand what reading comprehension is right?

That's adorable...You don't even realize how horrible your "points" are. I already addressed them, you just don't like my explanation.

No, you dismissed and ignored my points, and now you have done it again by calling them horrible without even explaining why or addressing the counterpoints themselves. Even in the responses to me, you only repeated your original argument. You haven't explained why God saying something on day one creates, while on day 4 it does not. You haven't explained why it clearly says "God made" on day 4, but we're to believe he didn't. Certain aspects you are taking literally, and certain you are creating your own story to support it.

Look, I firmly believe that big bang, evolution, etc can coexist with a creator or creation. I'm not trying to say your viewpoint or beliefs are wrong, I'm just saying you can't rectify it with science because it requires extreme cherry picking of certain evidence while ignoring a large amount of it. That doesn't work in science. Science either supports the story as a whole or it doesn't. Your logic in attempting to support an ancient story with modern science is faulty for this reason.

I agree it is vague, but as I said earlier, the bible is not a scientific book. It isn't intended to provide definitive scientific answers.

I think you just made my point for me.

a reply to: Barcs

I haven't used the bible to try and prove scientific processes. I have tried to prove it doesn't disagree with any known sciences.

And I directly responded to you and sourced/quoted a well accepted scholarly work co-written by many well known theologians concerning this point:

You haven't explained why God saying something on day one creates, while on day 4 it does not. You haven't explained why it clearly says "God made" on day 4, but we're to believe he didn't.

To say I didn't, just continues to prove your lack of reading comprehension.

Concerning this:

I think you just made my point for me.

More supportive evidence that you either lack reading comprehension, or you aren't even reading posts, as I made this point early in the thread.

For this point:

I'm just saying you can't rectify it with science because it requires extreme cherry picking of certain evidence while ignoring a large amount of it.

You are the one extremely cherry picking. You are attempting to use words out of context with the bible as a whole, and preferring the definition of the English words as the only possible definition, when the original language was a bit more broad in what a word may mean.

Concerning this post:

a reply to: Barcs

You don't even understand how that post actually supports that posters point of view...his point of view is wrong in my opinion, and I have no problems with many other inhabited worlds. I just believe the genesis account was apparently given to man specifically concerning this world we live on.

Edit: Format

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: raymundoko

Good question. All we know is that god rested on the seventh day. Yet we also know that in the OT god supposedly meddled in the affairs of humans is that still resting though? So at that point I'd say that is any length between immediate after day 6 ended all the way up to today.

You seem to be implying that God never returned to work after resting and it seems many have built whole philosophies on that assumption.

Well it never specifically says that he did.

It says "He rested on the 7th day", not "He stopped doing anything ever". It is obvious that He was active afterwards from the texts and also it would therefore follow that He is active today.

So how long is the seventh day and what does it mean to rest? Does his meddling on earth count as part of his rest period or not?

He didn't wind the key and walk away.

Looking at the processes that science describes and how they all build on previous designs to increase complexity (or recursion), if there was an intelligent creator, it is likely that this statement would be false. He did wind the key and walk away.

When I rest and when you rest, it does not mean you never do anything again ever. The meaning of 'rest' at Dictionary.com should provide the answer to your question.

And honestly, don't you think the fact that what you see as "meddling" (well, He created it, it's His to mess with) is an obvious indicator that 'rest day' is well and truly over & it's back to work as usual?

Also, looking at the "processes that science describes" does not adequately explain away God. At the quantum level, science can describe the statistical probabilities that 'stuff happens' with, but as to an explanation of prime cause and mechanism, nope! Science is built on an entirely ephemeral foundation at its most fundamental level. It is incapable of removing the hand of God from creation. It just does not have the tools.

As for "the processes that science describes" which "build on previous designs", I think you need to revise your word usage. Design is something that a designer does. It is contradictory to use that particular paradigm to prove no need for a Creator.

originally posted by: chr0naut

When I rest and when you rest, does it mean you never do anything again ever?

No, but it would help to define when this period of rest ended and he started working again.

And honestly, don't you think the fact that what you see as "meddling" (well, He created it, it's His to mess with) is an obvious indicator that 'rest day' is well and truly over & it's back to work as usual?

So how long was the rest day? When did it start and end?

Also, looking at the "processes that science describes" does not adequately explain away God. At the quantum level, science can describe the statistical probabilities that 'stuff happens' with, but as to an explanation of prime cause and mechanism, nope! Science is built on an entirely ephemeral foundation at its most fundamental level. It is incapable of removing the hand of God from creation. It just does not have the tools.

That is why I use words like "likely" to describe this. I never speak in absolutes especially about the existence/non-existence of god.

As for "the processes that science describes" which "build on previous designs", I think you need to revise your word usage. Design is something that a designer does. It is contradictory to use that particular paradigm to prove no need for a Creator.

Perhaps you are right, but that was the best word I thought of at the time. Clearly you understood where I was coming from though, so no confusion or anything.

Ray, you just did it again. Your responses are mostly condescending filler, no real substance. They did not address a single question I asked. You made insulting statements about reading comprehension but didn't post a single answer or reason. You claimed my post agreed with another poster and acted like I'm too stupid to understand but you didn't even explain how or why. When somebody doesn't understand something, I always try to break it down for them. You just hurl around meaningless insults.

originally posted by: raymundoko
I haven't used the bible to try and prove scientific processes. I have tried to prove it doesn't disagree with any known sciences.

The biblical account disagrees with evolution, genetics, geology and biology.

More specifically the following aspects:

The age of the earth

The order in which life arose on earth

The order in which matter and energy spread throughout the universe

The lack of evidence for a great flood

The evolution of all life on earth from a common ancestor

The evolution of humans through groups of populations rather than a single male and female ancestor

The genetic relation of humans and other great apes

The diversity of life on the planet, which would have had to bottle neck to the extreme degree to support genesis

The entire field of genetics, showing common DNA based on mapped genomes

The earth's rotation is responsible for Day/Night

The moon doesn't guide the night, it is often there during the day

The moon isn't a great light. It reflects light from the sun.

The stars were not lights in a vault set up as guiding marks. They are other suns.

Man was not made out of dirt, and woman was not made from a rib of man

Snakes cannot talk

The timeline is wrong and/or uneven in time periods and does not match the geological column of fossils. The earth and unverse was not created in 6 literal days, and it is not possible to break them up into any other even time periods without conflicting science

There is no objective evidence whatsoever to suggest god ever interfered with earth.

The atmosphere was not extremely cloudy at the time land plants arose

It doesn't account for the age of dinosaurs, yet mentions birds that evolved from them as being created by god before other land animals.

It's like I said, you can't just cherry pick whatever examples you want to force it to fit. It can't be rectified with science. It just can't. There is too much that conflicts. If you want to call the whole story a metaphor I'm fine with that, but trying to say it doesn't conflict with science is completely wrong.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: chr0naut

When I rest and when you rest, does it mean you never do anything again ever?

No, but it would help to define when this period of rest ended and he started working again.

And honestly, don't you think the fact that what you see as "meddling" (well, He created it, it's His to mess with) is an obvious indicator that 'rest day' is well and truly over & it's back to work as usual?

So how long was the rest day? When did it start and end?

Also, looking at the "processes that science describes" does not adequately explain away God. At the quantum level, science can describe the statistical probabilities that 'stuff happens' with, but as to an explanation of prime cause and mechanism, nope! Science is built on an entirely ephemeral foundation at its most fundamental level. It is incapable of removing the hand of God from creation. It just does not have the tools.

That is why I use words like "likely" to describe this. I never speak in absolutes especially about the existence/non-existence of god.

As for "the processes that science describes" which "build on previous designs", I think you need to revise your word usage. Design is something that a designer does. It is contradictory to use that particular paradigm to prove no need for a Creator.

Perhaps you are right, but that was the best word I thought of at the time. Clearly you understood where I was coming from though, so no confusion or anything.

As humans were present during the 7th day of creation, I would suspect that the length of that time period was framed in their terms, i.e: one rotation of the Earth. However, since the wording describes previous periods as "evening and morning" which is clearly one night, I suspect that it could have been describing something closer to 12 hours but again, these previous days were not from a human viewpoint as no humans existed at the time to experience these periods.

a reply to: chr0naut

This seems like WAY too many hoops to jump through to make this story work. Barcs listed above your post there a comprehensive list of many of the things that don't align with scientific knowledge in the Genesis account (there may be more). At the end of the day, you are left with a muddled mess that basically says that god created the universe and everything in it. End of story. But if that is all the ancients were trying to say, then why didn't they? Why all the other flowery language and metaphors to say something so simple?

originally posted by: Barcs
Ray, you just did it again. Your responses are mostly condescending filler, no real substance. They did not address a single question I asked. You made insulting statements about reading comprehension but didn't post a single answer or reason. You claimed my post agreed with another poster and acted like I'm too stupid to understand but you didn't even explain how or why. When somebody doesn't understand something, I always try to break it down for them. You just hurl around meaningless insults.

originally posted by: raymundoko
I haven't used the bible to try and prove scientific processes. I have tried to prove it doesn't disagree with any known sciences.

The biblical account disagrees with evolution, genetics, geology and biology.

More specifically the following aspects:

The age of the earth

The order in which life arose on earth

The order in which matter and energy spread throughout the universe

The lack of evidence for a great flood

The evolution of all life on earth from a common ancestor

The evolution of humans through groups of populations rather than a single male and female ancestor

The genetic relation of humans and other great apes

The diversity of life on the planet, which would have had to bottle neck to the extreme degree to support genesis

The entire field of genetics, showing common DNA based on mapped genomes

The earth's rotation is responsible for Day/Night

The moon doesn't guide the night, it is often there during the day

The moon isn't a great light. It reflects light from the sun.

The stars were not lights in a vault set up as guiding marks. They are other suns.

Man was not made out of dirt, and woman was not made from a rib of man

Snakes cannot talk

The timeline is wrong and/or uneven in time periods and does not match the geological column of fossils. The earth and unverse was not created in 6 literal days, and it is not possible to break them up into any other even time periods without conflicting science

There is no objective evidence whatsoever to suggest god ever interfered with earth.

The atmosphere was not extremely cloudy at the time land plants arose

It doesn't account for the age of dinosaurs, yet mentions birds that evolved from them as being created by god before other land animals.

It's like I said, you can't just cherry pick whatever examples you want to force it to fit. It can't be rectified with science. It just can't. There is too much that conflicts. If you want to call the whole story a metaphor I'm fine with that, but trying to say it doesn't conflict with science is completely wrong.

I disagree that the Bible disagrees with evolution, genetics, geology and biology. What I believe does disagree is your narrow interpretation of what the Bible says and what these sciences suggest.

Let me give you just one example from your list: The "talking snake" bit.

The actual Hebrew word used in Genesis for the tempter is "nechash" which means 'the shining one'. There is no mention of a snake, it is an obvious allusion to a supernatural entity, both from the actual wording and contextually.

The whole 'snake' issue was a translational one. In other places in the Bible, it calls Satan "that serpent" or "dragon" which may well be a metaphorical description because it also describes Satan with human attributes.

The translators of the King James Bible used the word snake because it seemed apt to them. They probably also intended 'a supernatural being' to be the inference of their translation, too. They would, most likely, have little actual exposure to any live snake and so were most likely to understand a snake as something legendary and less biological.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: chr0naut

This seems like WAY too many hoops to jump through to make this story work. Barcs listed above your post there a comprehensive list of many of the things that don't align with scientific knowledge in the Genesis account (there may be more). At the end of the day, you are left with a muddled mess that basically says that god created the universe and everything in it. End of story. But if that is all the ancients were trying to say, then why didn't they? Why all the other flowery language and metaphors to say something so simple?

Because they were explaining something of moral importance. The Bible isn't a technical manual.

Science can tell us how things occurred, but as an expositor of the reason why they occurred, it is useless. Only theology and philosophy can address such questions.

a reply to: chr0naut

I disagree that the Bible disagrees with evolution, genetics, geology and biology. What I believe does disagree is your narrow interpretation of what the Bible says.

I don't see it as a narrow interpretation. It's a logical inference if they are to be taken literally.

Some other's to add to Barc's list of things disagreeable to science:

Noah's Ark. A much smaller ship than the Titanic transporting 2 of every animal with a years worth of food for every animal.

The lifespan of early humans was just about 1000 years according to the Bible. Obviously intended literally.

Jonah living inside a whale for 3 days. There is a verse of Jesus referencing the event, further showing its intent as literal.

How long does this list need to be before you realize it's not all chalked up to "narrow interpretation"?

They would, most likely, have little actual exposure to any live snake

Also here is the English Standard Version [I checked, they match the Latin Vulgate] using 'serpent' and clearly referring to actual snakes. Granted NT and not OT.

Mark 16:18 ESV
They will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Luke 10:19 ESV
19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Hence the snake-handling Christians

Gah! ATS or my laptop posted it twice.

a reply to: chr0naut

So god is telling us why he made the universe. Gotcha. Then why DID he make the universe? Because I still don't know after reading Genesis. Please tell me in your own words.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

That is the million dollar question, and where philosophy comes into play. You exhibit Philosophical Skepticism, and you are justified to do so. With that one single question you can shake an unstable foundation.

One could try and say "to create humans", but nowhere in scripture are humans described as the ultimate finale and purpose of creation. In fact, the greatest of creation according to scripture were also the firstborn of creation, held to be the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. Scripture even states that humans are below "normal" angels. Ultimately, we have no idea why it was done (from a religious perspective), we just know that the supposed creator holds a great deal of affection for this world (as no doubt he would for any other world with life)

I follow the line of thought I picked up through studies of Gnosticism: That this Creator has an intrinsic desire to create life and care for it. He did after all supposedly create us in his image, and our first command as a species was to care for the earth/animals and to multiply...

This also feeds into my other philosophical views that a Creator would have "let there be" life on other worlds.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: chr0naut

So god is telling us why he made the universe. Gotcha. Then why DID he make the universe? Because I still don't know after reading Genesis. Please tell me in your own words.

Perhaps you should consider more of the plan than the book of Genesis to answer that.

Genesis is a start, but by no means is it the entire Bible. A good next reference is to look at the concluding book, 'The Revelation of Jesus Christ' which thematically draws the Bible to a close.

From Rev 12:1 to Rev 22:21 the whole story is explained.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Let me translate that for you Krazyshot.

He's saying god's plan for the Universe is the culmination of Biblical events that results in the 'End of Times' on Earth. Great Tribulations and an Armageddon. The suffering and destruction of our World and most people. However, by the Grace of God and his Only Begotten, the Lord's people shall be saved from the Wrath of God and instead live in heavenly bliss with the Father.

a reply to: raymundoko

My view is in no way in direct contradiction.

Yes it is, and your attempts to justify this bizarre interpretation of Genesis are positively heartbreaking to watch. If you think I'm going to argue with you, you are sadly mistaken.