Thanks again. You bring up very important points.I have had simllar observations regarding the creation steps but Genesis 1 is still pretty close considering the writers of Genesis even though inspired had no concept of how creation came about from a science standpoint.
I think of light before the sun in Genesis 2 as not the sun but taken on face value God created light and of course without light there is darkness. Sort of a universal light not yet specific to earth. Just a thought.
Regarding the water and everthing else think about this. Read Ephesians 1: 4-10. What you see there is that before the creation of the world (universe) God had predermined that man (You and I ) would be found holy and blameless in his sight through Jesus Christ our Lord.
That is before time God had predetermined that he would accomplish the above. But there was no creation, no man to be found holy and blameless, no sin to be found holy and blameless from and Jesus was yet to come. This is Godâs plan of salvation before the creation of the world.
Now think about that. If it all had to be created and God knew the outcome everything in creation including H2O came about as a result of creation. Water was esential for life and I believe part of the design.
Atheist like to quote Carl Sagan who said âThe Cosmos is all there is.â Well no, Godâs plan of salvation was before the Cosmos. The Cosmos was just part of the plan.
You are right. Without faith all of the above means nothing.
Any thoughts on life in our Galaxy or others?
Thanks for the discourse.
I appreciate the conversation as well. I think we just both come at this subject very differently. To different for there to really be to much common ground and implications.
As for life on other planets I just have no idea. I believe there is probably bacteria or even something similar to animals out there somewhere or some form of life thatâs so different from ours like a AI driven prion or something. I think there may even be intelligent life out there somewhere and I believe that God would have also accommodated their cultures and perhaps the Holy Spirit manifested as flesh there too. But there is no proof. Maybe Cixin Liu ( horror and science fiction writer ) is right and there is a micro universe out there lol.
I have found several congregations where I feel welcome, where the emphasis of the leadership, and attitude of the community is quite like what Knor talks about, three different ones where I was a member, in Massachusetts, Colorado, and Virginia. There are some of these in the USA!
Yes Iâm sure youâre right and in Berkeley, California Iâm sure most churches would be more progressive. But for me, worship isnât anything I look for even though I do appreciate communicating with others with a high regard for the sacred which Iâve been able to do here with quite a few. If only there wasnât the constant yapping of those few who take it upon themselves to tell me what God thinks of me as if they had any clue at all. Any who donât take to heart Jesusâ message in John 13 and Paulâs in Cor. 11:1 obviously arenât talking about the same sacred as I have in mind. If only they would love themselves just a little less vigorously and find more humility perhaps they would be more forebearing.
Are you talking about creationism? If not, then what? Certainly, the church is going to lose many young people if it tells them false things, like claiming the earth is young, or that they can change their sexual orientation.
In general I would say it depends on the person. Are you the sort of person who believes what you are told or do you question and think through things yourself. On the other hand, when it comes to the type of church that would say education is a threat, they are not going to do so well in the first place at holding onto the people who think and question. How can a church teach its people to simply believe what they are told and yet expect them not to believe when they are told something different?
The church needs to teach both sides of any issue or at least reference what the students learn in science class versus the church position. But the church needs to do its own research on its traditional interpretations and on things taught in school. It would fund that much can be acepted under the umbrella that it is the way God did it. To the Bible says what God did. Science tells us how He did it and it is very remarkable and getting more so.
A glaring example is creation. It takes nothing away from the faith to show that evidence supports that creation was over billions of years or that people lived on the earth before Adam and Eve were created. In fact I believe it strengthens the faith when scripture aligns with evidence.
You raise some good thoughts. Let me respond with what I believe. Letâs take the water example as a result od intelligent design. Water molecules are made in space and it is believed that water got to earth by way of water laden asteroids about the same time that the earth was formed, 4.6 Billions of years ago. Accident? Maybe, but on anything about creation one has to consder not only Genesis 1:1 but Ephesisns 1: 4-10, i.e., our salvation was planned before the creation of the world. Awsome stuff!! But back to water H2O. Consider that the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atoms are held together by the nuclear forces of the atom known as electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. These forces have to be very precise or we would not have water and in turn no life. Is it by accident that these forces are so precise?
I think your statement âwhat are the chances that hydrogen and oxygen both just happen to develop and then be in the same spot at the same time to make water and so onâ is a great description of an intelligent involvement in the making of water.
Re free will, God allows it. He could overide but letâs us choose.
Re the alighnment of Genesis , I am talking about an alignment in general. The writers of Genesis had no idea of the biological order of things.
Re the light. I am sure there was light in a created universe and a corresponding darkness. The sun, earth and moon came later. Just my thoughts, cannot prove. I arrive at this thought because science believes the earth was formed after the sun and the moon after the earth. So perhaps Genesis 1:2 speaks to the period before the moonâs creation as a result of a massive body colliding with earth. When the moon is created is what Genesis 1: 14-16 is describing.
Admittedly, I am trying to fit science with scripture here in the form of an explanation. Thanks for the communication.
For someone like me, coming from the scientific world view and thus a scientist before being a Christian, that makes that aspect of scripture simply meaningless. For example in Genesis chapter 1 the order of creation makes that aspect of the text meaningless and thus the only meaning I find is simply the point that sun, moon, stars, plants, and animals are creations of God rather than gods themselves.
But for Genesis 2⌠I see no reason to make it all into just some vague metaphor. Nothing in science precludes two particular people from existing over 6,000 years ago. But created like necromancy golems from dust and bone in a place with magical fruit and talking animals? That is too divorced from reality to take literally, and the Bible doesnât take it completely literally either. But I found it could fit with reality and science and still be historical with a little symbolism.
We can have God creating man of the stuff of the earth and bringing the human mind to life with divine inspiration. The Bible suggests the snake is an angel who became our adversary. The tree of life representing a relationship with God since that is the source of eternal life in evangelical Christianity. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is more troublesome and theories vary a great deal. For me it makes the most sense if this represents the authority to say what is good and evil since that is something fraught with danger and great potential for derailing human life. In that context the story makes a great deal of sense to me and the âcurseâ fits the consequences you can expect in real life.
And Noahâs flood? Do I think human civilization can get so bad that âthe imagination of every thought is only evil continually?â I do. I think recent history with Nazism, communism, child soldiers, and other abominations demonstrate this quite clearly. Also important to me is the anguish I see in a God who goes from thinking His creation is âvery goodâ to regretting that He created man at all. Whether such a thing actually happened looks to me like a critically important thing to understand. And thus to dismiss this as nothing but a parable loses to much. But a global flood? nonsensical. But in a text where the earth is never described as a planet or a globe but at best only a small portion of a planet, there is little reason to take the Bible to mean any such thing.
In this way I avoid both extremes of excessive literalism and excessive metaphor to seek the most meaning from the text.
The one dealing with the expansion of the universe, the cosmological constant, the one Einstein missed as I understand it. Precise to the powere 10 to the 120th.