A non-creationist interpretation of Genesis

yeah, my good old "stock answer" was in response to a good old "stock question".
so you're opposed to freewill?

 

If scripture said, "in 2500 BC", there was a great flood, then you'd have a case. I could be wrong, but from what I've seen most timelines are interpretations by man.

 

Honestly, at this point, if scripture said "in 2500 BC", I think people would start arguing about whether or not god's timeline meshes with ours.

 

He is clearly opposed to punishing people for something that God gave them.

 

true, you have a point.

- - - Updated - - -

yeah, heaven forbid we control ourselves, huh?

 

I guess my main issue with apologetics is that if I had to make so many excuses and rationalizations and interpretations into a book I consider true and important to my life, I would feel... well, (*)(*)(*)(*)ing ridiculous. If a scientist tried to do that with an old science text to make it fit the current information, he'd be soundly laughed out of academia, because it's a really dumb way of looking at reality.

 

As opposed to what?

To believe in 'God's will' you have to believe 'he' created man. I'm not opposed to freewill - only in your interpretation of 'freewill'.

 

By "control" ourselves, you mean "believe in God or else"?

 

Interesting the word "control" would come in here.

Self indulgence is about doing what you feel like doing instead of what you think about. Acting on emotion not rationality.

The feeling may be fear; fear of disobeying an illegal order overpowers knowing its wrong.
It may be lust; child molesters and drug addicts know this one.

It may be a religionist who feels that there must be a god and feels
he picked the right one and feels that the bible is inerrant and feels fear of hell and feels all ecstatic thinking of heaven or whatever the feel.

Show them something they feel is true is ridiculous (see flood) and they just dont feel they can accept it.

They like feeling important to "god", feeling they know Truth, feeling
all them good things xtians feel.

Self control is the opposite to self indulgence.

Christianity isnt indulgence in every vice, of course, far from it.
Not that anyone does indulge in every vice.

Christians, like others who are not so good at self control just do the ones they feel like indulging in.

 

Timelines are important because the humans in Genesis, in order to build a ship as big as the ark, must have been around long enough to develop engineering skills and tools and metalworking(among many many other things). Evidence of tools and engineering have been found, definitely, but more than close enough to our current time that evidence of a world wide flood would still be readily available.

 

The problem with apologetics is the very same problem elijah has with his investigations of all things theological. He is open to all information, PROVIDED it supports scripture. He starts with a requirement that information has to conform to something that he has already accepted, and apologetics works exactly the same way. That is why he is so enamored with it.

 

The implied conclusion of my post, yes.

 

Your interpretation of the days is a joke, and I was making fun of your "lost day" or "pre-day" argument. You are telling that the first day is when the firmament was established, so, what day was when heavens and earth were created? hello?

About the order of events. I can't bet here but I did it somewhere esle, and I still winning with atheists who are more obstinate than you. Lol

I can tell (and bet whatever) that the biblical events are in straight order anf that are in completye agreement with a scientific approach, this is to say, that is sound if the events are viewed as a theory. It is not my fault if you and others have reading comprehension problems, but the bible narration is correct. I will tell you one more time, the bible doesn't say that the Sun was created after the apparition of grass on earth, and because you can't get for causes like reading comprehension problems, such won't prove the bible as incorrect.

 

You are making calculations in base of today's earth, with the illusion in your mind that today's earth has been the same for millions of years. The planet earth before the flood had a sole continent, something accepted by science, the only difference is that some scientists assume this sole continent as be in existence millions and millions of years ago, the bible gives it a few thousands of years only... but the same sole continent is accepted.

No one knows how big or tall the mountains were before the flood, so, if the water covered them, those ancient mountains weren't that high after all.

Note that in the days of Peleg (biblical account) the earth was divided, this is to say, the continents started their separation. The phenomena implies the birth of chains of mountains when plate tectonics move in certain direction. These are "new mountains" and several of them are very high... but these mountains appeared after the flood.

I know that if you believe in the millions of years for this and that, you won't accept that such separation of continents is a recent event, but I answered your question from the biblical narration point of view... after all, you are asking about the flood, which is part of the biblical narration.

 

Comprehension issues. Always funny to see to very devout christians who can't interpret the same verse the same tell each other they don't know how to comprehend or interpret.
And wonder why those who don't do theological study for a living have problems with the bible. Those who study it as a life time activity can't even agree.
I guess it still comes down to each individual and each own's understanding. Good to have a clear book to follow for eternal salvation, isn't it.

 

please come back when one other person in the world agrees with your own interpretation of your own beliefs/understandings/interpretations of the bible. LOL.

 

Tell me how this:


9: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10: And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12: And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13: And the evening and the morning were the third day.

is supposed to happen before this:

14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17: And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18: And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19: And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

If you have any scientific knowledge at all, you would see that this cannot possibly happen in this order. If you believe it can, please explain how.

 

This is the writings of Ancient Man who did not understand yet Geology, Celestial Mechanics and Evolution.

It is absolutely SILLY for anyone to take the Old Testament Literally as it is obvious it was written by men who were just a few centuries past from living in caves!

I really can't understand why ANYONE would believe the Old Testament is FACT...as it is not.

AboveAlpha

 

hmm, you've cut down every single person here about their reading/comprehension of genesis. Without ever, that I've seen, given you concocted interpretation of said book. You have your own unique interpretation?
Please enlighten everyone.

 

While I have no proof, I can be 100% certain, you are not 100% correct.
From what I've seen of your posts you have a point of view of 1. And there are few others here who have the same number of persons who agree with you or with them. So you don't know anymore than the next person, except in your own mind.

 

And that is what christians can't comprehend. God didn't create a weak creature, he gave man the choice to be weak and man chose that choice, God hated that choice he knew they'd make so he drowned them all. Then he still didn't like how they turned out, even tho he knew, so he said all must go to eternal torment with fire and brimstone. But man did it, not God, who knew they were going to do that.

 

??? How did you get the idea that evolution must mean that God is a “single cell entity”? Following that ‘logic’ through you might as well say that Genesis suggests that God is a bit of dust and that would be equally nonsense.
From a Christian perspective God is not a being of the flesh, not even a being of the material world. Him creating the cells of our bodies, doesn’t mean He is a cell. And Genesis saying that He created us in the image of Him does not mean God has two arms, two legs and is a bearded old man sitting on a cloud somewhere. Surely not even creationists believe that! According to Christian belief God is supreme being, pure mind, the “logos”. We are made in the image of Him in that we are conscious beings having minds capable of (if imperfectly on our side) appreciating and partaking in His Goodness and His love, His reason, creativity and beauty.

Again you are reading Genesis literally. Or more to the point: you read parts of Genesis literally while you neglect others. In Genesis 1 God created animals before humans, in Genesis 2 after. In Genesis 1 he gives humans dominion/tells them to rule and subdue, in Genesis 2 he tells humans to work the garden and take care of it …

What separates us from the creatures that God let us evolve from and from all other animals is that God gave us a much bigger brain. A brain carrying a mind capable of partaking in above mentioned qualities . This brain not only enabled us to have “dominion” over other creatures, it hopefully also will give us the sense to become the good stewards of creation that Genesis 2 tells us God wants us to be.

Sorry, you must have misunderstood me. I did not mean to insinuate you know nothing about evolution, I was just surprised you seemed to want to hear more about evolution from the paper I linked to.

Actually the idea of evolution, an immensely complicated process involving natural selection and (just seemingly) random chance, suggests a much more powerful God to me than the idea that God just did some good pottery. That God planned and mapped out such an intricate on-going process as the one that modern science now tells us brought us and our world into existence makes His supremely intelligent mind seem far more intelligent and amazing than the ancient Israelites could ever have imagined. As for the “why” God did it that way: I can’t read God’s mind, but I suppose it’s because He prefers motion pictures to stand-still ones, and because He wants us to further develop and learn rather than to stay unchanged.

Only if you believe Richard Dawkins and, frankly, he's talking out of his arse when he proclaims that evolution promotes atheism.

I may have missed out on something, but as far as I’m aware of most atheists don't assume the universe always existed, but subscribe to the big bang theory, that says that the universes age is 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years (13.798 ± 0.037 × 109 years or 4.354 ± 0.012 × 1017 seconds) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe). And forgive me for pointing it out to you, but you are not God, so maybe you should not assume that God works in the ways you would work. Progressive revelation allowed people in Biblical times to progressively learn more about God and we are still learning. I suggest you keep your mind open!

 

So all in all an experiment gone wrong.

 

Even Answers in Genesis thinks you're wrong (although they seem to think it's an argument in their favor).

Not according to the evidence we have today. Not in the slightest.

Nobody is claiming that. Not a single person here has made the claim that the earth has remained static for millions of years, or that the rate of continental drift has remained static. What we have addressed is that the bulk of the evidence which allows us to take very educated stabs at how the continents moved over time, and the idea that the earth was largely flat before the flood, or that there was a mega-continent in the past 100,000 years, is completely discounted by all the evidence we have regarding plate tectonics. You do know that when educators create graphics like this, they aren't just pulling the dates and locations out of their asses, right?

The bolded is dead wrong. They don't "assume" anything. That is what the evidence points to.

(Assuming here that you're referring to a typical biblical timeline flood, i.e. within the last 10,000 years.) Except that given what we know about plate tectonics and the movement of continents over time, and what we know about how the earth looked in the past, we can tell quite effectively how tall the mountains were before the flood - pretty much about as tall as they are now, because plate tectonics doesn't move that fast. Even the youngest mountain range, the Himalayas, is millions of years old. Again, what you are proposing is a tectonic shift on an absolutely unprecedented scale which goes against all the evidence we have.

Please provide some evidence for this claim.

I don't think most of us give a (*)(*)(*)(*) about the "biblical narration point of view", but rather about the evidence point of view. That is, "what does the evidence say, what can we take away from that?" I don't know why anyone would think anything else matters, to be perfectly honest. This idea of incredibly fast tectonic drift is not backed by any evidence - hell, it's not even mentioned in the bible, it's just a stupid, post-hoc rationalization to try to make something which has been proven explicitly wrong work. The evidence we do have indicates that within the last 10,000 years, nothing so dramatic has happened, and that the continents have been drifting together and apart on the scale of millions of years - not hundreds.