@Mike_Gantt , the problem with your approach is you seem oblivious to the fact no global flood, or even a succession of FLOODS, could create the geological evidence we find.
What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?
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First time I’ve seen you be wrong here George. Clearly a global flood predicts billions of dead things in the ground and that’s exactly what we see!
(Never mind that we never seen any anachronistic fossils or that fossil layers with the same age always have the same creatures buried in them and the oldest rock layers always have the oldest creatures and vice versa)
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Where did you buy your “Sarcasm Font”? It’s gorgeous! I know … you got it at the Noah’s Ark exhibit …
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I already wrote an entire separate post specifically on this subject, but I haven’t seen you reply to it. There is no obstacle.
If you had read my post you would have understood the Biblical evidence demonstrating that they were not written by Moses.
Yes there is another way to look at it, the way several people have told you several times; both involve creation being the result of supernatural processes. As James has said:
As Bill has said:
And that’s what others have said. If you have missed this then you are not reading the posts in this thread and other threads. But you’ve solved the issue here anyway:
That is all that needs to be said. We don’t need to fuss about with questions like “Which are the supernatural processes?”, and agonize over trying to find them in the physical record of he universe.
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Please send me a link to the post to which you’re referring. I don’t recall it.
Here. Since the post is long, here is a summary.
This suggests that this explanation for the Sabbath was added by an inspired writer during the exile; as with the authorship of Genesis 1-11, Daniel is the most likely author. This does not mean the Sabbath is irrelevant to the creation, nor does it mean that the days in Genesis 1 are not intended to be understood as natural days. But it does mean that nothing in the Bible tells us the Sabbath was instituted by God in order to commemorate God’s day of rest, or to teach people that He created the universe and everything else in only six literal days.
We know that while Exodus contains the words of Moses, the book itself was not written by Moses, since it speaks of Moses in the past tense and in the third person. So it contains words Moses spoke and wrote, but it places them in the context of the past, from the perspective of someone who was not Moses. That later inspired writer has added explanatory commentary for a later audience.
As I have argued consistently, the days in Genesis 1 are literal 24 days, but the are days on which God gave a vision of creation; He was seen to create, in a vision. From that perspective God “created the heavens and the earth” in six days. But this does not mean He literally took only six days to create the entire universe.
No wonder I didn’t recall it: it was not directed to me and it was posted to a thread in which I have not participated. I do well to recall things I have read; I really struggle to remember things to which I have never been exposed.
The view which you describe would indeed solve the problems outlined in the original post of this thread. However, in doing so, it would create even greater problems. It would be like solving the problem of an unwanted guest by burning down your house.
First, you violate your own views in that your infographic states Moses to be the author of Ex 20 and Ex 31, but you say that he did not write the portions of those chapters which say that the Lord created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. Second, you say that these portions were inserted by an unknown “inspired writer” (“Daniel is the most likely author”), but if an inspired author, why would these portions carry any less weight than if they’d been written by Moses himself?
Even if, however, we were to ignore these internal inconsistencies in your thesis and grant less weight to the “six days then rest” portions of Ex 20 and Ex 31, we’ve left ourselves in the situation that we cannot continue reading our Bibles without checking regularly with you about which portions to accept and which to disregard.
I take you to mean well, but your cure is worse than the disease.
I linked to it in another discussion, so I thought you would have seen it.
I have already explained this. There is no violation. The book of Exodus itself was not written by Moses at all; it contains his words and writings, but the sections speaking about him in the third person were not written by him. The infographic provides a general overview, without providing specific information about every single exception. I have already described the exceptions in this case, in detail.
They do not carry any less weight than if they had been written by Moses. This is nothing about them carrying less weight. They carry exactly the same weight as if Moses had written them. You have not addressed my argument at all.
As I have already pointed out, this is nothing to do with them carrying less weight. Additionally, this is nothing to do with people needing to check with me about which portions to accept and which to disregard. That statement sends up very large red flags, not least because it’s attributing to me something I never said, and not only because it’s attributing to me the complete opposite of what I took great care to say, but also because it’s a transparently manufactured attempt to avoid addressing the argument (which you didn’t actually reply to at all).
The Bible itself provides clear guidance that we need to identify when a passage was written for an earlier audience, and when it was written for a later audience. Evidence of such editorial commentary is legion, and as I have already pointed out it was noted repeatedly by medieval Jewish commentators. This is how the Bible itself teaches us to read it.
This response of yours was not written in good faith, and is unfortunately part of an increasingly clear pattern of responses you give to others; there’s now a list of people who have had to explain several times, with great patience, that you have attributed to them statements and arguments they never made. That’s a warning sign.
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Fair point.
Fair point.
Unfair point.
If they do not carry less weight, please explain how the problems outlined in the OP are solved. That is, if you are maintaining that the “six days plus rest” portions of Ex 20 and Ex 31 are just as much the word of God having been written by an unknown inspired writer at a later date as they would be if written by Moses in the age of the Exodus, then how have you removed the two obstacles I identified in the original post?
(You may accuse me of being obtuse, but if you accuse me again of bad faith you are poisoning the well. Recall that I ended my last post to you with “I take you to mean well.” If you cannot reciprocate, there’s not much point in our continuing to dialogue.)
What’s unfair about it? Please be specific.
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I’ve been away for a couple weeks, and now find this thread length daunting, but I had a thought I wanted to share regardless.
I think our interpretation of the Bible can suffer if we attempt to focus too much on individual quotes and not enough on the big picture, the overall storyarc of what it’s telling us. In this case I would ask about the overall chronology.
What might we expect if the Bible consisted simply of God telling us the 6,000 year history of the world? Would the first sixth of the Bible tell us about the first thousand years, and the second and so on? Why and how is the actual Bible different from this? Why is there more detail as we go forward in time?
Obviously there are variations as more and less interesting things happen through the history, but I think the general trend of having more information about things that happened more recently is still pretty undeniable. And that’s not unnatural: it’s very normal for us to know more about what happened yesterday than five years ago, and more about what happened fifty years ago than two hundred.
But what is normal or natural for God? If God were to sit down and set out to record the entire history of the world, should we not expect Him to spend as much time on the beginning as at any other point in the narrative? And what does it say that that is not what we see?
To me, it says that the Bible was written by humans. Humans under the guidance and inspiration of God, it well may be, but the stories in Genesis were passed down for many years before Moses. And the timeline telescopes as you go back further in time. Six “days!” What does that mean? The history of the Bible starts with the history of the people who wrote it, because the Bible is about, to, and for people.
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Why?
I explained it previously. Here it is again.
As I have argued consistently, the days in Genesis 1 are literal 24 days, but the are days on which God gave a vision of creation; He was seen to create, in a vision. From that perspective God “created the heavens and the earth” in six days. But this does not mean He literally took only six days to create the entire universe.
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My powers of comprehension fail me.
Mike, you really need to be specific about your responses. If something isn’t clear, you need to say why and ask for clarification.
Take a read of this essay:
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Is it just me, or does anyone else think this thread is going round in circles now?
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Notwithstanding his professions of patience, it seems my requests of @Jonathan_Burke for clarification tend to frustrate him. Moreover, the quality of my exchanges with him, as with you, have seemed to deteriorate of late. Thus I was trying to let him gently know that while I didn’t understand him, I didn’t think it made much sense for the two of us to continue. (I am doing the same now with you.)
I read it…and marveled that you didn’t seem to recognize some of your own behavior in it.
No, it’s not just you.
Again, can you be specific please? Which arguments have I made that fall short of level DH6, exactly which level do they reach, and why?
I do not have time to digress into what is likely to be a protracted disagreement about communication style. Just chalk it up to my shortcomings and let’s call it a day.
Moderator note:
I suggest we all refrain from arguing about tone and communication style. It does not improve the quality of the conversation. If you think there is an issue with somebody else’s way of posting, please flag their posts for the moderators. To do this, first click on the three dots (to the left of the reply button), then click on the flag icon in the list that pops up (third icon in the list).
What is it about this which you’re finding hard to understand? I’ll reword it if necessary.
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In the first sentence, I do not understand what you mean by “vision of creation.” This interpretation of Gen 1-2 is new to me, or, if it’s not, I don’t recognize it as a published view I have seen (Gap Theory? Literary Framework? Some variation thereof?). Since I don’t recognize the view you are presenting, I don’t know how to research it to understand it better. (I don’t know whether the infographics you’ve used are from another source of if you prepared them yourself.)
In any case, if Gen 1-2 is a vision, to whom did God give it? And why is it not labeled as such? And how did you arrive at the conclusion that it was describing a vision and not reality?
Since I don’t know exactly what you mean by “a vision of creation; He was seen to create, in a vision,” I don’t how to correlate your second and third sentences with the first. Nor do I know how to correlate the second and third sentences with each other.
Moreover, since Ex 20:8-11 and Ex 31:12-17 make no mention of a vision but rather speak of God creating in six days and resting on the seventh in straightforward, seemingly factual, terms, I don’t know why we’re back to talking about Gen 1-2. As I’ve suggested, these two Exodus passages are problematic for a progressive creation even if the book of Genesis weren’t in the Bible.
Let me emphasize: These are questions of curiosity, not polemics.