Posted on 03/18/2012 6:38:49 PM PDT by EnglishCon
Thanks for writing this. You have put into words, far better than could I, thoughts I’d had for a number of years. The Genesis story mirrors current levels of understanding to a degree I find implausible to be accidental. God is wonderful, His creation vast; our understanding shallow at best.
Thanks for your writing!
God gave us a clue. He did it. From a strictly scientific viewpoint, tell us how hot of a temperature was created at "The Big Bang". If that did not sterilize the universe, I don't know what would. Even with all of the nutrients and organics available, life was only able to exist because God created it.
The Lord doesn’t speak to me often, thankfully. Yet someone said “Write this.”
I don’t really write to educate - I write to get paid normally. Sort of a whore with a keyboard, if you like (the image makes me giggle at least!). But sometimes, you know, you write for a better reason.
Just because.
Well said. That is our only clue. The monobloc (ok, it is a degraded theory but easier to visuallize) exploded when it did for a reason. The reason was the Word.
Thank you!! My brother and I have had several discussions about this very topic and the limits on our education in the sciences holds us back a bit. (He was an art major who somehow became a cop, I have an MBA and am a banker by trade.) I took the liberty of emailing a copy of your post to him and look forward to his response.
The Lord be with you!
My thanks -
I include the art made of stone. The cathedrals, made by illiterates that are a joy to God. The farmers, who know the cycle set on day one by the Lord will lead to crops in the fullness of time. Parents, who know that they will be blessed in time.
All of them art. All of them expressions of joy.
In Genesis, God takes credit for creation and explains it in a manner suitable for a primitive people to understand. Exactly how he did it, he doesn't say. If he did say, there wouldn't be enough space on earth for all the hard disks needed to contain a precise description of creation.
It was actually one of the things that pulled me back to belief.
You know the saying about co-incidence. I found I could simply not reject this as co-incidence. There is stuff that happens, and there is stuff written a few thousand years ago that explains what we know.
Never understand why people reject God for lack of evidence when it is all around us. We live in the evidence.
A couple of things that would make your story more powerful.
First, mention the level of science that existed at time of the writing of the Bible. Since non-believers insist the Bible is made up, what scientific knowledge existed then that would have possibly caused the “writers” to think that the entire story began with a flash, that the earth was covered with water and the waters receded to form land, and that life began small, and got larger and larger until man appear. An awfully lot of lucky guesses for such an unscientific society.
And second, following the non believers idea that it was all made up, how come no other religions offers anything that remotely resembles what science today says happened? Hindus are a good example. Why does no other religions story of creation even come close the the current accepted scientific version?
The ‘writers’ of the Bible, with absolutely no science to guide them, made an incredible number of lucky guesses - or they had Somebody give them the answers.
As to your remaining conundrum concerning the time involved for Creation: Time is relative according to Einstein. The amount of time it took for these events to transpire depends greatly upon the perspective of the individual relating the events. Keep in mind what God says about his relationship with time so primitive (relative to us) people could understand: A thousand years is like a day and a day is like a thousand years. It sounds a bit to me like He is not governed by linear time as we are.
Actually, want to add something about that gloriously infuriating book.
First time I read the Bible, I was bored. It was like porn without the visuals. “X begat Y, Y begat Z.”
Then I read it again. The second time round, I got a lot of negative commands. “Thou shalt not ....” I mean, seriously, it was worse than my mother!
Then I read it again. And again. And again. No one said I was smart.
And I noticed. It ain’t a book. It is a users manual for how to be human and live with God. I don’t know if I got some freakish magical copy that changes the text on the page, or if I got the intent - finally.
Now I read it for pleasure.
I read a very intriguing opinion the other day, in which a woman imagines that God revealed the entire evolution of the universe from the time of the Big Bang on, until the formation of the solar system and evolution of life. But the primitive people to whom God revealed the scientific history had no clue what was revealed to them. Their interpretation of what they didn’t understand became the creation story of Genesis.
Look at Genesis I:11-12 "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, ... , And the earth brought forth grass, ..."
It seems quite simple.
If you look at the timeline, it is a pretty smooth curve.
I simply cannot imagine the mind of a being to which a million years is still “Now.” Sure, could fake it, but truth rules on these threads.
>>By their works shall you know them. <<
Prepare for stoning. Rational discourse is a nono when the endgame is “am I a monkey’s uncle?”
Many of the most scientifically educated the Freepers learned this the hard way. They have joined the choir in the vestile. This FReeper is no more... (etc.)
I will utter the URL of The Site that Dare not be Spoken: http://www.darwincentral.org/
Scientific facts from scientists, many of whom are Christians, most of whom are Conservative (to their core).
Tread lightly...
A guy's talking to God. He says, “what's a million years to you?” God says, “a second.” The guy says, “what's a million bucks to you?” God says, “a penny.” The guy then says, “can I have a million bucks.” God answers, “sure, in a second.”
How could we possibly know, or even conceive, what time means to God? The ‘day’ business is just something included so that our feeble little minds would have a measurement to grasp.
I have faith in the good faith and belief of my fellow FReepers.
OK, most of them. Know what you mean - bumped noses with a few before. That I can cope with.
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