I never claimed the earth was 6000 years old nor created 6000 years ago. Sure it could have been created just as easily at the time Noah stepped out of the Ark as last Tuesday.
So at what point is God deceiveing us if the universe can be created at any point in time?
Incorrect. The Bible does not speak about science at all. So the truth is that the Bible is used here as is tradition in Christianity to show the use of the Bible against science is wrong, and when you look carefully you find that they have made alterations of the Bible itself to do this just as the Bible as been twisted and altered in the past to justify slavery, genocide, and the abuse of women.
Nobody is doing that here. Yes atheists will certainly ally themselves to people pushing inconsistent literal interpretations to promote this deception, for they relish equating Christianity and the Bible with the all the ways it has been abused in the past and now.
No. The main reason why any metaphorical literature should not be taken literally is because it trivializes such literature and makes it less meaningful to the point of silliness.
That is irrelevant. Literature including the Bible very rarely point out when it is using a metaphor. Most of the time the Bible does not state when Jesus is telling a parable. The point is, as Jesus explained in Matthew 13, we have to want to know the truth – we have to open our ears, eyes, and mind to figure things out. If we expect things to simply be handed to us like the slothful servant and other parables, then even what we have will be taken away.
We can always suppose that the world was created this morning with all our memories and evidence as it is. This is a useless proposition because it would be pointless to then live inconsistent with the memories and evidence and it remains more meaningful live as if the world was not created this morning but existed just as our memories and evidence dictates. The point is that we live in the present and some imaginary past with no connection to the present is irrelevant to us, the only past that really matters is the one that lives in the present according to our memories and the evidence.
It is much like those who deny that Jesus ever existed. Unless they can find actual evidence of this then it is no more meaningful than the supposition that world was created this morning. Instead they simply hope that the mere suggestion will throw us into confusion. But the truth is that the past which lives in the present via our churches and the literature written in the last 2000 years is the only past that really matters – and anything else is just a fantasy.
Hi TS,
Thanks for the interaction. Your comments take us a little far afield of the topic, so I won’t dig in too deeply.
These are not mainstream molecular biologists. Unless of course by “it” you mean ID, in which case you’d be 100% correct.
Others have already responded to this. But if Google (and Beaglelady’s links) can’t help you here, there’s also a search function here on the Forum that can help you find some good transitional forms.
The transitional forms predicted by evolutionary theory not only exist but also appear in the correct order, showing the predictive and explanatory power of the evolutionary narrative.
Could you point us to a prediction of non-evolutionary “science” that has been borne out like this by the evidence? 
You’re contradicting yourself, for the record.
Thank you for the suggestion and for sharing your opinion. I don’t care to take you up on your suggestion; I’ve already spent enough of my life reading up to such matters and am convinced that the evidence is overwhelming and beyond reasonable doubt. If you’re curious why, I recommend Falk’s Coming to Peace with Science. But I am under no delusion that you will read this. If you do, do let me know what you think!
Peace,
Andrew
I have just one question. Would it not be logical that the first and most important chapter in the whole Bible in regards to creation be given to us in a way that does not involve us guessing whether or not is is just a metaphor or allegory?
You seem to indicate Genesis 1 could be both literal and figurative.
Genesis 2 is not a second creation of humans. It is not even really telling us the specifics of Genesis 1. Not because Genesis 1 is only figurative, but because Genesis 1 is short on details. It is only an account of one human who happened to be created at the same time as all the humans male and female, who were created on the 6th day of creation. It then relates the state of affairs since creation giving no detail to a time frame. Verse 4 claims “this is the history”. If we rule out that it is a history, how can we use the details given as a contradiction. Dismissing it’s historicity is a means of dismissal of contradiction. On the other hand the phrase indicates a passage of an undisclosed period of time. Details are still not contradictory because anything could have happened in the passage of time. A time totally seperate from the actual act of creation.
The only specific day mentioned was day 1 in comparison to the fact that there was still no means of rain on the earth. This point was repeated until the point the rain came in Noah’s day.
Genesis 3 is not about creation. Neither is 4, 5, 6 or the rest of the book. Genesis 1 is the only chapter in the book of Genesis given to us as a creation account.
I deny that you have any authority to dictate what is the most important account of creation and what is metaphor in that account either. I will certainly not take seriously any use of Genesis 1 as an excuse to ignore the objective evidence we have from scientific inquiry. Nor do take seriously trivializing the Bible with excessive literalism to help the atheists dismiss the Bible as nonsense.
I said the whole Bible uses metaphor frequently (as it uses symbolism) but this does not mean that everything is a metaphor. As for Genesis 1:1-27, I would not force this into such categories but see this as merely setting the stage for the story which follows – painting a picture and certainly should not be taken as a substitute for a science text, or as some kind of “Creation for Dummies” book to tell us how God created the universe.
Indeed, it is a second account of the same creation told from a different angle. And the same cautions apply that this is but setting the stage for the story which follows. It is significant to notice in fact that there is no mention of creating man on a sixth day but rather sounds very much like God creating man first before everything else, which just shows the foolishness of getting wrapped up in such details for they are not the point of the story at all.
Since this is demonstrably untrue, we can only take this to mean that this is the one you choose to pay attention to as you choose to ignore the others.
I am pretty sure that beginnings is more indicative of creation than merely talking about the actions of “gods” billions of years after the “big bang”. One is free to lump scientists into the body of those “who create”. Most of what ANE accounts characterize would be normal day fair in our technological advanced society. Else we would not have all the fuss over organic and genetically modified foods. So yes, I view Genesis 1 as different from your standard, ordinary, every day manipulation of life. While we do not “move” around planets yet, we imagine a future where that is a possibility. So unless you are going to actually demonstrate your definition of creation, I will continue to point out the difference between history and the act of creation.
Not to keep sounding like a broken record, but planting a Garden is not the same thing as creating the first instances of the genetic plants and trees throughout the whole landmass known at the time as Earth, even before there was light coming from the stars. One does not have to edit the text, and correct the chronological order to give a better understanding. Unless there is some great conspiracy afoot, the text does not need some elaborate explanation. The reason why some just read it as literal words, is because any one can come along and make their figurative explanation anything they want to.
Of course each verse builds on the next to get the reader into a frame of reference for a better take on what is going to happen. Else we get people telling us that Adam had sex with the animals. The passage gives us a specific name, and a specific location. God took a representative of humankind, named him Adam, gave him the task of naming the animals, and then sought to fix the situation of a “spouse”.
God did not create a female, out of dust. He cloned a female from the genetic material of Adam. We are free to come up with millions of reasons of how, why, moral, impossible, or wrong. I am curious why our knowledge of science would not give us a better insight of what happened. Nor does our current understanding limit God from actually doing the operation via a process we have not even discovered yet. The point is, it was not a retelling or even a specific accounting of Genesis 1. It did not even happen in the same historical context. It only used references from chapter 1, because that is the only chapter the story of the Garden would have had any contextual relationship with.
Adam, if created de nova, would have to have genetic material that normally would come from his mother. God would also have to give Eve an extra x chromosome. At least this is what science tells us had to happen in this case. How God did it is of course a mystery.
“Creation” in the Bible refers to the act and result of God bringing the physical universe into being to serve a purpose which like most acts of creation can be read from the nature of what is created. In this case we see mathematical space-time structure defining a system of existence founded on rules of relationship allowing complex interactions capable of self-organization which can both make choices in the phenomenon of bifurcation to varying degrees and sometimes capable of the progressive development of more abilities in both responding to the environment and in maintaining an organization apart from the environment. This is the phenomenon of life. This with the non-closure of physical causality point to purpose of the creator to have a relationship with living beings who have an existence apart from His control.
That sounds a little like the “proclamation day” non-concordist interpretation. My problem with applying this to Genesis 1 that it is still to immersed in a designer view of creation and I don’t think that is consistent with the nature of life. Genesis 1 seems to draw on analogies with human ways of doing things like the monarch getting things done by giving commands or an artist adding thing to a painting. I think this has more to do with communicating with people in a way they can relate to than anything to do with how God actually created the universe.
There is no concept of cloning in the Bible. Taken literally the story sounds like a necromancer making golems of dust and bone. Reading the story with science as ones interpretive filter as I do, I see something quite different. I see God creating man from the substance and rules of the physical universe and then speaking to Adam as His adopted child to provide the inspiration which brings the human mind to a life of its own. Woman is not a separate creation but an extension of the same process which created man, and so Eve was chosen in much the same way as Adam so the inheritance of the mind which God gave to Adam could be shared.
No but it weird to believe God used some wild magical means when you see a perfectly natural process doing the same thing all the time.
Except that it speaks of God planting the garden later in the account and thus this does fit. It specifically says… “In the day that God created the earth and the heavens…” So no, I am not buying your alteration of the text to make either description Genesis 1 or Genesis 2 into some kind of detailed account of creation to rival the findings of science.
While a literal interpretation that tries to expand the words written to relate to modern science might say that, I do not think that is what the text says or means. After all, as I mentioned once before a long time ago, Eve would be a wee little woman if all she came from was a rib. I believe the text is referring to Adam as being incomplete without Eve, and that together they make up the whole. The writer and original audience had no concept of DNA and would think such a reading bizarre. I think the interpretation I presented is most compatable with Jesus’ comments : Matt 19:4-6
4He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’5and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?6So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
I am not sure what magic has to do with anything I have posted.
The only “twisting” I have done is an attempt to separate chapter two from one, and show that chapter 2 is not a creation event. It is a historical event that only references the point that Adam was created from dust along with multiple males and females. The part about husband and wife and marriage is always a figurative part of any account.
It is perfectly possible to take literal events in human life and give an interpretative meaning.
And the fact that the story mentions a rib, there is nothing that I have found that would indicate humans at any time practiced magic and created another human from a rib. (Now i have mentioned magic) There really is no need to even mention in detail what happened for the sake of any ANE comprehension. I will give you that part of the account as not being literal. But as I tried to point out. The closest understanding for current humanity, would be some form of what we would interpret as a “cloning” event.
The issue as you said is not a creation event. You say it just can be used as a figurative writing technic. You are free to interpret it any way you please. I interpret it as God giving Adam a spouse. I have no clue what “science” God used, but God did not need magic.
This topic was automatically closed 3 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.