Posted on 03/18/2012 6:38:49 PM PDT by EnglishCon
for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
This is after the 7th day of rest that the earth was 'watered' without rain. So all that water of Genesis 1:2 had to go someplace.
When “literally” interpreting scripture, one does nothing but pick and choose among ones own preconeptions, looking for something that isn’t there.
The whole idea of an Intelligent Designer is a modern preconception, piously meant, I’m sure, but entirely absent from a plain reading of Genesis.
The formula, “Let the earth bring forth” is repeated wrt the animals, but in that case it is added, “And God made the beast of the earth ...” where this is not said of the grass and other plants. Isn’t this an indication of the lesser status of plants? Doesn’t this distinction fall afoul of our modern conception of the unity of DNA based life forms?
Stars don't come from nothing. Nor do planets. We can see the slow, steady aggregation of gases into stars. We have pictures, again testifying to the glory of God. Stars form from clouds of hydrogen gas. The heavier elements get spun out and away from the protostar. Eventually, the star's gravitational field gets strong enough to light the star. It is another flare of light, with the sudden solar wind forcing the light gases well out and starting random aggregations of heavier elements spinning and collecting. Getting bigger while orbiting the star. Outer planets catch a lot of the gas blasted away when the star ignites. Inner planets are looking at the heavier stuff that doesn't shift much under light pressure.
You're complicating things. The "firmament" and "water above the firmament" part are basically the ancient people's way of explaining rain. They saw water falling from the sky (firmament) which appears like a blue ceiling and concluded water exists beyond it, which is what rain is, as it "fell through".
Liberal verbal gymnastics can make any creation mythology appear to parallel reality, if you ignore the simple details.
In Genesis 1:7 God divides the waters and creates the firmament, which should not be confused with the common notion of "firm ground". The firmament, ( See Webster's ) means "The vault or arch of the sky," and it created a protective enclosure within the waters of chaos.
Gerald L Schroeder, The Science Of God: The Convergence Of Scientific And Biblical Wisdom
Yes, I agree. And I expect that when all the refining gets completed this earth will be returned to its Genesis 1:1 condition.
We’ve got to remmber the timeline too. How long was a day to God? 72 hours? 30 earthly days?
Do we know?
I compare Genesis with other creation accounts, such as the mesopotamian one, and find this far more spare and elegant, as a description of the reality we know.
Peter was the one elected to tell us how God calculates time. IIPeter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing,
that one day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So those days of creation are to us a thousand years per day. And by the end of the 7th day of rest Genesis 2:4 These are THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND OF THE EARTH (my King James has it all in caps as I typed) when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
Notice the usage of the word 'made' here instead of the word created in Genesis 1:1.
Or could the time be instantaneous. God said — and it happened? Immediately.
There is no doubt in my mind God can do anything or everything. However, since He took the specific steps to have Moses call and number these days of creation, and 'days' later have Peter instruct His method of time keeping I will accept what He had Written.
I’ll take them in order, and without prejudice.
1. Does God live in this Universe or outside of it?
My understanding is that no creator can live inside of his creation, or at least not for long. This is based on an, admittedly, faulty analogy. I find myself personifying the One when I think about this. Something I need to think more on, as I refuse to reduce Him to my level. Forgive me for a fuzzy answer on this.
2. What role does perspective play in understanding Genesis?
I teach my grandkids about the universe. The youngest is 4 and wouldn’t know an electron from a plum. He has no more idea of the elegance of the Aufbau principle than he does of the golden mean. I do think perspective and modern thought has much to give to bible study. We have a real drive to understand the glory of creation.
3. You have noted God’s signature in everything from the laws of physics to the microwave buzzes of the universe. How powerful is God?
God is all. One of the things that makes me laugh sometimes is talking to atheiests who demand I provide proof of God. (Not that I am saying you are - but it is the sort of question I get!) He shows his work absolutely everywhere. For a mysterious God, he is singularly bad at hiding his handiwork!
4. What does Hebrews 11:1 mean?
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
It is one of the most beautiful yet terrifying phrases in the bible. To borrow a phrase from a heretic - “Yet still, it moves.”
The deeper you dig into the works of the Lord - creation itself, whether on a macro scale or just confined to this one fairly insignificant planet - the more you see the perfection of God.
Yet, you neither want nor deserve generalities. I can only give you my personal take on that line:
God gave me a brain and an intense curiosity about the universe. I was blessed to be born into a time when many questions about how the universe works have been answered, and more are being answered all the time.
Not definitively, of course. Science does not do that. It is a human construct - possibly the only one we have ever done that can and will (reluctantly) admit it was wrong.
My faith is that God exists. He created all. He sent his only Son to die for our sins. The cynic in me says he did that because Heaven was empty and Hell was opening an annex. He also provided the Word, which is not merely inerrant, but totally accurate, if we are willing to examine it.
I may not worship him as you do (I am Catholic. Most people I discuss things with are not, so I am calling the percentages here). But make no mistake. The Lord God is our creator, our refuge and our destiny. And should you ever need a reminder of His glory, go outside at night and just look up.
Blessings to you and yours.
It actually plots as a nice curve if you use a logarythmic (sp? a word I always have problems with) scale.
My understanding - somewhat at variance with our priest - is that the term day corresponds to an action. Not 24 hours. Sort of like working for 2 hours one day and 20 hours the next.
Yet, our Lord exists outside time. Which I suppose means that everything is simply “now” to Him.
True.
The whole idea of an Intelligent Designer is a modern preconception,
Agreed. The growing body of scientific knowledge forced a rethinking of preconceptions by which Genesis had previously been interpreted.
piously meant, I’m sure, but entirely absent from a plain reading of Genesis.
I would disagree because inherent in the account is something every creative person understands and that is that you do not begin with the next phase of a project until design criteria for the present phase have been met.
In the Genesis account, God did not begin the next phase of creation until after he recognized the phase he was working on was complete and to his satisfaction... "And God saw that it was good". He knew what the desired objective was but needed some time to get there and only after recognizing that "it was good" did he begin the next phase.
The formula, “Let the earth bring forth” is repeated wrt the animals, but in that case it is added, “And God made the beast of the earth ...” where this is not said of the grass and other plants. Isn’t this an indication of the lesser status of plants?
Yes. I would agree.
Doesn’t this distinction fall afoul of our modern conception of the unity of DNA based life forms?
I don't see how it does but I don't claim anything beyond a layman's understanding of DNA.
Basically, plant life is a lesser (in complexity) life form and would have evolved first.
Moses sure seemed to think they were regular 24 hour days. Ex 20:8
Let's get something straight. Science is perfectly competent to discover and comment on the world before it--the world that exists today. It is not competent to comment on a world and/or situations totally unlike the world we have today. This includes not only cosmogony, but the world as it operated originally before the sin of Adam.
The first eleven chapters of Genesis are theology and history--not biology, not physics, not chemistry. Science is not competent to comment on cosmogony (the process and events that brought our present world into being). The "laws of nature" cannot be invoked here because the laws of nature did not exist. Anyone who believes in a single miracle--be it the talking donkey, the floating ax, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the liquifaction of the blood of St. Januarius, or the "miracle of the sun" in 1917--has forfeited the right to invoke the "uniformity of nature" as an excuse to retroject current conditions into the actual events of creation. Those who persist in doing so are guilty of both hypocrisy and internal inconsistency.
There is one and only one reason for treating the literal truth of the first eleven chapters of Genesis differently from everything else: a sociological prejudice against "trailer trash," with whom this particular section of the Bible is commonly associated. That is it. That is all.
People who reject the very concept of the supernatural--total atheists, materialists, and naturalists--are perfectly logical to reject the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Anyone who accepts a single miracle elsewhere does not.
I note that EnglishCon apparently doesn't believe in his religion's dogma of the "fall of man," since according to his uniformitarian cosmogony there was never a paradise to fall from . . . and certainly no original immortality for a fictitious Adam and Eve!
Once again, here is an article by Hugh Owen illustrating the absurd internal contradictions of cosmogonic uniformitarianism by people who otherwise set "nature" aside for numerous miracles. I doubt it will be read this time either.
Finally, let me state something that almost all chr*stians seem to be totally ignorant of. While there is certainly much mystery and many esoteric secrets with regard to the Creation which are hidden from the vast majority of us, there are and always have been those who have an authentic knowledge of these great mysteries. There is an unbroken line of great sages who have received this knowledge in an unbroken line. Those privileged few who have received this knowledge are not going to broadcast it (since it is forbidden to expound it before more than two people). All the hot air and all the ink spilled by everyone else on this subject is mere speculation--legitimate in the case of naturalists, hypocritical and inconsistent in the case of everyone else. In the meantime we may rest assured that, whatever these great mysteries might be, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are inerrant history written by G-d Himself and dictated to Moses letter-for-letter, just like the rest of the Torah.
Do we know?
Et tu, salvation?
And the mask comes off.
I imagine it went something like ‘And I formed man, and all other living things, from minute particles (atoms) too small for the eye to see, and absent the life that I gave to it - it will return to those minute particles.’
“Yeah, I’m gonna put down that you created us all from “dust” and to “dust” we will return.”
Thank you so much for posting that link! I find it VERY useful, and have saved it in my personal archives. bttt
I note that EnglishCon apparently doesn’t believe in his religion’s dogma of the “fall of man,” since according to his uniformitarian cosmogony there was never a paradise to fall from . . . and certainly no original immortality for a fictitious Adam and Eve!
Science has the duty to examine everything. While “without faith we do not find God,” learning of his glory first hand is a joy. There is a reason that some 70% of scientists (talking the hard sciences here, not the fuzzy ones) have a firm belief in God. They see his works all around them. For engineers it is 7%.
I stopped at the end of Genesis 1, as given by the linked version of the KJV, or this would be a record breakingly long vanity, and I ain’t THAT vain! Commenting on all the first 11 chapters of Genesis in one post would be painful to read and even more difficult to discuss!
Working on Genesis 2 now. Much more difficult, as some of the theories involved are contentious. And yes, I firmly believe in the doctrine of the fall, and the evidence, biological, social and indeed physical is there.
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