Posted on 09/24/2023 1:33:14 AM PDT by spirited irish
Ever had someone tell you, ‘You’re missing the whole point! The purpose of Genesis is to teach that God is our Creator. We should not be divisive over the small details. Genesis teaches the theological truth of “Who?” and “Why?” not about the “How?” and “When?”’ Or else they say that the Bible is a book for faith and morality, not history.
An obvious answer is, why should we trust Genesis when it says God created if we can’t trust it on the details? After all, Jesus told Nicodemus, ‘I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’ (John 3:12). So if Genesis can’t be trusted on an earthly thing, such as Earth’s age, the sequence of creative acts upon it, or the Flood that covered it, then why trust it on a heavenly thing such as who the Creator was? Also, if Genesis 1 were merely meant to tell us that God is creator, then why simply not stop at verse 1, all that’s necessary to state this?
However, the critic has overlooked something even more important—Genesis is written as real history. This is why the rest of the Bible treats the events, people, and time sequences as real history—not parables, poetry, or allegory.
(Excerpt) Read more at patriotandliberty.com ...
Oh I do agree that Methuselah lived 969 years
The multiplication of sin has shortened our lives
I agree that God is not trapped inside time and space
but there is also
1 Timothy 6:20
up until the 1800s and Darwin, Christians believed in six days creation
good thing is that our salvation is not dependent upon our interpretation
News Flash. In Genesis, when God called the end of the first creation period ‘The First Day’... The Earth wasn’t even revolving around the Sun yet... so God OBVIOUSLY was NOT using a 24hr revolution of the earth of ‘Day’ It was obviously a period of creation.
Also, if Baptism us described as a rebirth, in symbolism... then Why can’t the seven creation periods be symbolized by days of the week?
God used symbols to teach primitive mankind. It wasn’t that Mankind wasn’t smart enough ... its simply that mankind hadnt assembled the building blocks of knowledge for a more precise detailed description from God.
... also, I think that we need to accept that the Bible is NOT free from human error in the reciept of wisdom from God. the understanding of that wisdom, the transmission and the translation of that wisdom.
Nothing that mankind has ever touched is perfect. God is perfect ... mankind and all that he does is imperfect.
perhaps undermines is the wrong word
I should have wrote dilutes
I do believe that God is amazing enough that He could have created the earth and everything in it in six days
God is not dependent upon evolution
[While I was writing, Tepee made the point I was about to make about “day”.]
I don’t see how persons who pay close attention to what Genesis says can take it to be literal history. It says that the sun wasn’t created until the fourth “day”. That’s not using the word “day” in the ordinary historical sense.
Also in Genesis 1 the order of creation of living beings is animals then man and woman. (Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good...27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” So according to Genesis 1, animals were created before both men and women.
Then, starting at Genesis 2:4 there’s a second creation story — “4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens...7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground...18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them...20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”
The order of the Genesis 2 story is man then animals then woman. So which is supposed to be the historical order — Genesis 1 (animals then man and woman) or Genesis 2 (man then animals then woman)?
Sorry, I meant “Teppe”, not “Tepee”.
The Bible teaches that we all descendants of Adam and Eve, and not so many generations ago. No time for any meaningful evolution. Thank God our Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, before Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species, 1959. Thus, we say that we believe “that all men are created equal,” and not the heresy that white people are the most advanced evolution of humans.
Nowadays, the best science indicates that the Biblical account is essentially if not 100 percent correct about us. Yes, mutation and natural selection has resulted in what differences we have in skin color and certain other matters. So, I wouldn’t say the Darwinian model is 100 percent wrong. It’s something like 2 percent right and 98 percent wrong.
Naturalistic models of the origin of life and of the origin of species including our species are impossible. Reflecting this impossibility, the current science says that life was brought here on an asteroid. No, life was brought here by a miracle.
Interestingly, the Genesis account doesn’t use the word for create with respect to bacteria and other very simple life. The Genesis account uses the word create three times: God created the universe (meaning out of nothing); God made and created advanced animal life (the created part indicates God added something new to advanced animal life); and, God made and created us. We are made out of the dust of the earth, and imbued with the image of God.
The Arab Muslin Ibn Khaldun thought it was interesting that God didn’t make us out of nothing, as he certainly could have. But, instead he made us out of the dust of the earth AND imbued with the image of God. Ibn Khaldun thought this allowed for what we would today call evolution, in addition to the miracle of our human soul.
The current science no longer says that species of advanced life emerge from a series of mutations, as that would be impossibly long, but from an unexplained proliferation of species at certain times in the past. This is the punctuated equilibrium model, as opposed to the Darwinian model. No, species emerge from miracles.
Through the early part of the sixth day, God brought forth one after another generation of animals, from the animals of the Cambrian Explosion, to the animals of each subsequent re-population of the planet following a mass extinction event. These re-populations included the proliferation of dinosaurs prior to the age of mammals, and it includes the proliferation of mammals following the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Our God truly is an awesome God! He is bigger than we could have imagined in the past, and he is bigger still than we can now imagine with our current understanding of science.
Very true. But given that we exist on a space-time continuum and he does not, he could have created everything in a split second if he had wanted to.
It is quite possible that he explained creation using six days because he thought that was a way we could understand it.
Keep in mind that it is beyond impossible for finite beings to even begin to comprehend an infinite being.
God explaining creation to humans is infinitely more complicated than an aeronautical engineer trying to explain how a jet airplane flies to a child.
Whatever God has told us about creation has only microscopically (to say the least) scratched the surface of what happened.
He is beyond our comprehension...infinitely beyond it.
He may have done it in six days, six years, or six milliseconds (from a human POV).
In reality, God doesn't operate according to a clock. He is beyond time.
Flat earthers lose me with the firmament.
The Church Fathers did not believe days of Genesis were 24 hour days. They were actually all over the place on this matter.
The 24 hour day theory was developed by certain Protestants in response to Darwin. For a time, it looked as though the Bible and science were at odds. So, the six 24 hour periods theory became a litmus test to differentiate believers from non-believers. Nowadays, it no longer looks as though the Bible and science contradict each other. Rather, the Bible looks amazingly prescient as to science.
There is only one word in Biblical Hebrew for a 24 hour period (a “day” in English), the time that the Sun is up during a 24 hour period (”day time” in English), AND a long, but definite period of time (e.g. “epoch” in English). We have a language of 800,000 words, with numerous words for practically everything (synonyms). Biblical Hebrew was a language of only a few thousand words.
A hint of the equivalence of a 24 hour period and a long period of time is found in Psalms: “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (Ps. 90:4) For a Jew, back then, the verse embedded a word play, and so would be humorous as well as wise.
I will close by saying there is no science test to be a Christian. For the believer, there is a love test. Are you a mere hearer of the word, or a doer? Yes, we have the ten commandments, but in one’s walk with the Lord, the temptation to sin should fade, and increasingly one should be guided by the perfect law of liberty. We are freed from sin, and freed to do good.
Take a look at the detailed and compelling work of Dr. Gerald Schroeder, MIT astrophysicist professor (although they have tried renouncing him due to his belief in intelligent life and creation).
For example, the first day actually would be the equivalent of billions of years, yet it truly was only the first day.
In a nutshell….it is both six actual days with NO gaps. At the dawn of creation, time would have occurred at a much different pace than currently. Think of CS Lewis’ Natnia. One actual earth day is equal to hundreds of years on Narnia.
I suggest his in depth book “Genesis One: A Physicist Looks At Creation.” There are also several videos of his explanations on YouTube and Rumble.
1. Genesis and the entire Bible was written by men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
2. God cannot lie.
Either believe God’s word or believe that God is a liar.
To me the point is, God is the creator. This FACT is exactly what makes God, GOD.
The details are not important to salvation, and I am more than willing to wait to get to heaven and have my questions on these matters answered then.
This would be like arguing with your mom about how long she carried you before birth. With her saying 9 months, and you finding out that you were delivered 3 weeks premature. The whole argument is stupid, the exact time frame doesn’t take away from the fact that your mom created you, and carried you in her tummy and delivered you, giving you the life you have today.
Hence all those begats. When I was very young I thought to myself why is God being so mundane here lol.
Earlier this year, I watched a video where two mathemeticians, one from Yale and the other from Cal Tech, discussed the statistical improbabilty of bioneogenesis. They also mentioned the thousands of conditions that needed to be met for earth to be in its “Goldilocks” position in the universe to allow life to survive. Their conclusion was the chances were 1 in 10 to the trillions upon trillions that we exist at all.
What!!!?
I was so curious that this semester I am retaking a course in General Chemistry with plans to study molecular biology. Since retiring from my profession I have studied art for ten years and won many awards in my state....but...I am now so curious that I am returning to the sciences. Fascinating! A lot has changed in chemistry from 50 years ago. I am loving it.... And.... Being the sole little old lady in the class has proven to be very interesting.
Snakes don't talk and are not actually Satan for example. The Garden of Eden narrative was not the same kind of Literature as the historical events in much of the rest of the Torah, such as Genesis 14.
We expect that the places and events in Genesis 14 happened in a non-metaphorical very real way. That the cities and peoples mentioned were real. That it was history of the kind that archeologists might be able to confirm.
But who really expects archeologists to spot the Tree of Life on satellite images but alas be prevented from examining it by cherubim waving flaming swords? Whatever the narrative of Genesis 3 is conveying it is no doubt important and related to our standing with God and Heaven. What it clearly is not is a detailed explanation of anything scientific. We do not expect snakes to talk because we read about one talking in Genesis 3.
Now there are two kinds of errors that drive me crazy about people interpreting the Bible:
1) People that take it all to be metaphorical or just platitudes including the parts where it is clearly meant to be taken literally.
2) People that overreact to the first group book by lumping in parts that are not meant to be taken literally as literal.
“Also, if Genesis 1 were merely meant to tell us that God is creator, then why simply not stop at verse 1, all that’s necessary to state this?”
What a simplistic moron
“Hey guys I don’t understand ancient Jewish writings which sometimes used metaphorical imagery to convey eternal truths because my stupid redneck brain can only understand microwave instructions or the plot of the newest marvel movie”
I take study math every day at Khan Academy to keep my skills and mind sharp.
So many people misinterpret this verse, like that cannot even read English.
This is a simile. It is NOT an equivalence.
Genesis, which was written in an ancient language containing approx 4,000 words is a concise record of a long period.
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