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Genesis

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 8:32 pm
by WannaLearn
http://www.huecotanks.com/debunk/genesis.html

and how could god make the plants before he made the sun. Maybe because gods face and glory is light that's how he did it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/scien ... pe=article

Re: Genesis

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 9:53 pm
by neo-x
Don't you know God can do anything, including plants before the sun? ;)

Seriously though...the camels could be edited in by later scribes, its perfectly possible and its not a big deal. Scribes could do that. The same happens in the Book of Job too, which mentions iron being mined from the earth, not to mention that mining of iron wasn't discovered till 1200 or 1100 B.C in that region, and given Job's date of writing which is perhaps the oldest in the O.T, likely 1300-1400 B.C, the iron reference must be from a later scribe.

From the POV of the scribe, he is to tell the story, small details like camels or horses usually don't matter much, what matters is the point of the story the scribe is telling, atleast as far as he himself is concerned that is.

Re: Genesis

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:09 pm
by neo-x
From the huecotanks article you posted, lets look at this, this is from that article,\
This verse implies that the "heavens and the earth" were created more or less at the same time. Scientifically, we know that the "heavens", that is, space, appeared billions of years before the earth ever appeared. The sun is at least a "third generation" star, which formed from condensed gas clouds made up of remnants of at least two supernovae from previous stars.
The "heavens" is not space in the bible, literally. We understand it space given our present knowledge, and in its day the people who wrote it understood it in their own context. The ANE people thought the universe or reality was comprised of three realms. There was the underworld below us, where the dead lived, then there was the realm of the living which is us and then there was the heavenly realm which was above. So the three realms were all in an order, God on top, us living in the middle, the dead at the bottom. In the biblical story the context is anything but modern science. Do you think a scribe living 3000 years ago had an idea that the sun was a star? No. So God is up there, and we are down here, this is the reason why the KJV uses the word "firmament" when Genesis say that God divided the waters above from the waters below, that he placed something "firm" in between. They are not talking about clouds, its the heavenly realm which is the waters above, from what we have on earth namely oceans. And the same concept ties in the flood of Noah when "the windows of heaven" were opened and water flooded down. Where does that water come from? from the heavenly realm, the realm above. It was from God, a punishment.

EDIT: BTW, this is the same reason, ANE tried to build the tower of Babel, because they actually thought there was something solid, firm up there, a heavenly realm, someplace they could reach. If they used the word heavens as space, like we do today then they would know better that that's not something solid, nor something they could reach. But the fact is, they did believe that and therefore the word heavens didn't carry the same meaning to them as we do today.

So understand this, you can't judge Genesis entirely through modern science, genesis has it own context and themes and purpose.

Re: Genesis

Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:43 am
by RickD
WannaLearn wrote:http://www.huecotanks.com/debunk/genesis.html

and how could god make the plants before he made the sun. Maybe because gods face and glory is light that's how he did it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/scien ... pe=article
Wannalearn,

You can certainly believe that God made the plants before the sun if you want. But first, take a look at this:
http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth ... ation.html
From the article:
3) Let There be Light

Young-earth creationists interpret (“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’”) to mean God created light that instant. This is because English has a punctiliar aspect, which means the reader views the action as taking place at a single point in time.40 However, the Hebrew verb for “be” (hayah) means “to be” or “to exist.” As Collins notes, the verbs in (Let there be... and there was) do not imply the creation of light, or a sense of coming into existence.41 This supports the view that the illumination came from pre-existing light–the sun. There is no exegetical justification for the young-earth creationists’ hypothesis that the light came from a non-solar source God created.
In other words, the already existing sun "appeared". Not that "Let there be light" means the sun was created at that time.

Re: Genesis

Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:54 am
by WannaLearn
oh ok that makes a little more sense