In the Beginning...

[Lexicus]

Like I said before it clearly describes God creating the universe and everything in it from nothing.

This site offers the obvious interpretation:

Answer: The creation account is found in Genesis 1–2. The language of the Genesis account makes it clear that all of creation was formed from nothing in six literal 24-hour periods with no time periods occurring between the days. This is evident because the context requires a literal 24-hour period. The description specifically describes the event in a manner that a normal, common-sense reading understands as a literal day: “And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day” (Genesis 1:5). Further, each sentence in the original language begins with the word “and.” This is good Hebrew grammar and indicates each sentence is built upon the preceding statement, clearly indicating that the days were consecutive and not separated by any period of time. The Genesis account reveals that the Word of God is authoritative and powerful. Most of God’s creative work is done by speaking, another indication of the power and authority of His Word. Let us look at each day of God’s creative work:

 

[onejayhawk]

It does not say created from nothing. It says without form and empty, v. 2. A literal day is a recent concept.

It's not entirely useless. Note that there is a repeated naming in the account. This works well with the concept of creation through a word.

J

 

[Lexicus]

Who says useless? I never said useless. I'm saying it's not science. If you think that diminishes Genesis in some way perhaps it's your own biases you should look to.

 

[Berzerker]

Like I said before it clearly describes God creating the universe and everything in it from nothing.

Where does the universe appear in Genesis? Heaven is the firmament God placed between the waters on the 2nd day and Earth is the dry land revealed by the receding waters on the 3rd

 

[warpus]

So I ask, in which situations do we need verification to prove truth and in which do we not?

If you're just walking around and a guy says "Prove to me that you bought that bagel", then screw that guy, it's just a bagel, who the hell cares. Unless it's a cop or some sort of other relevant authority figure, you're not going to go back home to the file to try to find the receipt.

In that situation the truth doesn't matter, just eat the bagel and enjoy. You can even pretend that you stole the bagel, who the hell cares about the truth when the bagel tastes so damn good, in your mind you stole it from a guarded golden bagel factory and killed ninjas on the way out and that's that.

If you're building a death start or some other type of space station, then you probably want to make sure that your space station plans are based on the truth and not just old wives tales. Because I bet an old wives tale is: "Always make sure to have an easily accessible exhaust of some sort that leads to the more sensitive parts of your space station" and who knows what else.

That is where I draw the line.

Most of us, including you Warpus, accept anecdotal evidence as being true in many many situations.

Yeah, sometimes, if my friend says that he went to Wendy's and ate a chicken burger, why would I have a reason to doubt him? It doesn't impact my plans for my space station, so I go with it.

 

[Agent327]

That's a statement, not evidence. I'm not sure what 'anecdotal evidence' is, but it is evidence.

 

[timtofly]

God didn't create them, they were appointed or made to rule Earth's sky on the 4th day.

Why would you infer that? The other creation myths say that the creator was involved in the evolutionary process, but doing these things in an evening and a day, is not evolutionary.

The sun was already shining but it wasn't in its current position in our sky, the Earth was further away from it....

We have been arguing over the light shining in the sky, both day and night. If the sun had already been shining would not the moon be seen first, and then the sun? The day starts in the evening and darkness and goes until the next evening.

The world may have been rotating prior to God's creation but "let there be light" and the separation of darkness and light into night and day refers to a rotating world near a star.

No it does not. There was already 3 days before the sun appeared. The light and darkness was the light of the universe that we can still see today as the remains of the energy from the "Big Bang".

Yes, the Earth without form and void appearing before the 1st day took form - dry land - on the 3rd day. And God didn't create it, he revealed it.

The atmosphere appeared on the second day. This is what you keep calling the heavens and earth. The dry land and plant life was on the 3rd day. The sun and moon was on the 4th day.

One of those purposes was to illuminate the night sky. And it was the 4th day, night precedes day in Hebrew custom.

There was darkness for 3 and a half days. The sky was defined on the 2nd day, but there was no light. Trying to say that the earth moved into a closer position to the sun and crashed into a planet forming the moon, may be a twisted interpretation, but that is not what is written in the text of Genesis. It does not say that God moved the earth into position. It just says that the sunlight finally appeared in the sky.

Well I can hardly speak for the writers of Genesis or claim I know their motivation for what they included in it. Maybe, it wasa simply that once they began to collect and write things down in one place, they decided to include everything they had.

Couldn't chapter 1 of Genesis be evidence of that knowledge? While your UEC example is perhaps similar and certainly interesting, from it can we say that no YEC believers understand evolution? Do we have to also consider that they are opposed to evolution while ancient Hebrew scholars may not have been opposed to astronomy.

If the writers of Genesis had that knowledge it is sufficient. No we don't know for sure either way. Someone more scholarly than me might know such things.

Is there any evidence that the Hebrews didn't partake of Babylonian knowledge? How would such partaking manifest itself?

The vigorous anti evolutionary positions and writings of the YEC shows that they oppose such thinking so the future will know that they knew of evolutionary theory. lack of evidence can be an indicator of acceptance.

From all accounts, unless someone can provide evidence, the Pentateuch had been handed down from generation to generation by the priest. From a religious aspect, what was practiced by their "religious" tradition would not go through that many changes in the time frames given. If by all indications of history in all nations on earth the rest of society did not mess with what went on with the priestly sect. Even though at times the King turned against the religious body, there was always a few who kept the religion and it's traditions pure. The whole reason for going into the 70 year captivity was because they had forgotten the Sabbath as a people group. But even in captivity there were those who did remember who did understand the responsibility of keeping the truth alive, even when it seems that it was lost. 70 years is not that long of time period, that even the scrolls would not be totally lost, but found again by the priestly sect who were in charge of their preservation.

Even though the Babylonians and later the Persians took away all the possessions, they did not wipe out the religious items, but even seemed to incorporate them into their own religious experiences. The Persian ruler even let Ezra take back items that went into the rituals of the temple to once again be used there.

I would still like to see proof other than speculation that the Hebrews in a 70 year time span had to re-create their whole history.

That's kind of proving a negative.

But to turn around, what astronomical knowledge did the Babylonians have that we can see the Hebrew incorporated into their most important myths? That's a much simpler question. During the Babylonian era, the Hebrews thought Venus and meteorites were comparable, and that the Earth was flat.

Proving a negative would seem like trying to prove that the Hebrews lost all touch with their history. We have examples of people groups in china who never lost the religious aspects of the pre-captivity time period.

Its relevant if the science shows a dark, water world preceded land and life. Its relevant if neither Heaven nor Earth is the universe. But Gen 1:1 doesn't say God created the world, it says God created the dry land and named it Earth. The water was here before God and the creation of Heaven and Earth.

It is also relevant that this so-called earth was still in the shape that God created it in when the universe began with the words, "let there be light", until he separated the waters from the waters. It seemed from all indications it was a swirling mass of matter and water. It had to have matter, unless God pulled the dry land out of H2O. It had no form and was void, which is another word for empty space between the H2O and matter.

It does not say created from nothing. It says without form and empty, v. 2. A literal day is a recent concept.

It's not entirely useless. Note that there is a repeated naming in the account. This works well with the concept of creation through a word.

J

Last time I checked my day starts in the evening, and I hope to get a few hours of sleep before the morning comes. The rest of the time is mine to do whatever I like with. Calling an evening and morning as a day, has not seemed to change in the thousands of years that humans have experienced one.

Where does the universe appear in Genesis? Heaven is the firmament God placed between the waters on the 2nd day and Earth is the dry land revealed by the receding waters on the 3rd

The sky is the firmament that God placed between the waters. Unless you think that the universe is surrounded by water, then the heavens where the sun and moon reside has always been considered the rest of the universe. We know that the earth is in the local solar system, along with a few other planets. Not sure how there could even be enough water to surround even the solar system. Most Bible scholars agree that it all came back to the earth in the Flood, so it is pretty useless to try to find it besides on earth. There seems to be either a distinction between the two heavens, or ability to fit the sun and planets into the space that is called the heaven, so it must be defined as two heavens. One is the atmosphere, and the other is the universe.

The Egyptians and perhaps the Greeks thought the world was flat. I find no evidence that the Hebrews thought that. In fact the argument is that the Hebrews were not as advanced as the rest of the world, and probably thought the earth was round. They thought God created the earth in six days, and keeps on adding things to the universe Who knew they were right about something. Perhaps about a lot of things?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The Egyptians and perhaps the Greeks thought the world was flat. I find no evidence that the Hebrews thought that. In fact the argument is that the Hebrews were not as advanced as the rest of the world, and probably thought the earth was round. They thought God created the earth in six days, and keeps on adding things to the universe Who knew they were right about something. Perhaps about a lot of things?

Have a Google of Eratosthenes. The Greeks not only knew the Earth was round, but had a pretty good idea of how big it was too.

 

[Arakhor]

Its relevant if the science shows a dark, water world preceded land and life. Its relevant if neither Heaven nor Earth is the universe. But Gen 1:1 doesn't say God created the world, it says God created the dry land and named it Earth. The water was here before God and the creation of Heaven and Earth.

No, it's a coincidence. You cannot possibly claim with a straight face that "all world mythologies" involving a watery void has any relevance at all to the early state of the Earth. (Rather, you probably can but you have shown absolutely no reason for anyone to accept it with a straight face.)

 

[onejayhawk]

Have a Google of Eratosthenes. The Greeks not only knew the Earth was round, but had a pretty good idea of how big it was too.

This.

There was a bet between a flat-Earther and a scientist. I don't remember the details of who and when, but the experiment made an impression. On a canal with the lock closed, the scientist set up a line of flags at a set height above the water. An observation window was set at the same height but slightly off line. The observer could see all the flags. Had the Earth been flat, they would have appeared side by side. Of course, the appeared to descend slightly with distance. With careful measurement, he could have calculated the size of the planet.

I always wondered about the flat Earth concept. Go up to a high place and you can see the curve. Yet we get denial. The same thing applies to perception of God. Everyone can do it.

J

 

[Lexicus]

I always wondered about the flat Earth concept. Go up to a high place and you can see the curve. Yet we get denial. The same thing applies to perception of God. Everyone can do it.

How do you perceive God?

 

[Arakhor]

Further, if God was so easy to pin down in unarguable terms, the entire history of the world would be very different.

 

[Sommerswerd]

He said it is bright

No he didn't, He said the moon is not bright, even with my prodding him to say it was... in fact, he specifically said it only looks bright to people because of the contrast, even though its not actually bright. He was emphatic that it is not bright. But thanks for proving my suspicion correct that regardless of your prediction being flat out wrong, you would continue to insist that you were right anyway. Very predictable... which is why I was reluctant to indulge you in the first place . I won't make that mistake again. When I am flat out wrong I admit it, reassess, and move on.

As an aside later that day, we were on a plane, looking out the window at the sky and talking about contrast and he reiterated that the moon was not bright. To paraphrase: The moon reflects the light from the sun whether it is day or night. When it is daytime for you, it is night for the people on the other side of the Earth, and the moon is reflecting the same sunlight for you as it is reflecting for them. But to you, assuming you can even see the moon, say in the early morning hours... the moon appears a dull, barely visible gray. To them it appears a stark white. But its the same moon, reflecting the same sunlight. The moon is not any "brighter", for them than it is for you, its the exact same. The difference is the contrast. Its an illusion created by a light colored object against a darker background versus the same object against a lighter colored background.

And the moon isn't illuminating anything. The sun is doing the illuminating, day or night.

You introduced your kids into this thread

Indeed I did... which is why I didn't say "How dare you mention my kids!!" or something similar. I said, and I reiterate... I appreciate why you are trying to get me to ask my kids things... However, I decline your invitation to tell them the things you are suggesting. I gave you one shot (two in fact), which was more than your idea deserved in the first place, because it was disingenuous. Your idea was soundly rejected by my 6 year old, as it should have been, and you have proven conclusively to my satisfaction that you are ignoring that fact and insisting that you were correct anyway... So there is absolutely no point in introducing anymore of your questions/statements to my son, as you will not reassess your erroneous position, regardless of the result, as you have just demonstrated. So just stick with your position dude... obviously, what my kids say or don't say is of little consequence to it if they don't agree with you (which they don't).

And let's not lose sight of the bottom line here. Genesis doesn't say squat about the moon being bright. So this whole discussion is academic. If you're arguing tooth and nail about the moon being bright (as opposed to it being a light), my point that Genesis is wrong has already been proven/conceded. Genesis says the moon is a light, not that it's bright. The red (infrared?) bulb in a photographer's darkroom isn't bright, but its still a light. The blacklite (ultraviolet?) bulb your dorm isn't bright, but its still a light, whereas your teeth, or that white T-shirt that it illuminates are not lights, no matter how "bright" they seem when the blacklite is on. Whether the moon is "bright" is irrelevant. Its not a light, so Genesis is wrong.

 

[warpus]

That's a statement, not evidence. I'm not sure what 'anecdotal evidence' is, but it is evidence.

Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes. Where only one or a few anecdotes are presented, there is a larger chance that they may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases.

It is a form of potential evidence, but its reliability is unknown.

 

[El_Machinae]

Anecdotal absolutely is a type of evidence. It just deserves a weighting. We throw a gazillion factors into that weighting. But all eye-witness testimony is anecdotal. It's not like it's just swallowed as fact. But neither should the reading on your ruler be swallowed as absolute truth.

 

[Berzerker]

Why would you infer that? The other creation myths say that the creator was involved in the evolutionary process, but doing these things in an evening and a day, is not evolutionary.

Not sure why you jumped from the sun and moon to evolution but a sequence is evolutionary. I infer it because Genesis says God "made" them to serve roles in our sky, for signs, seasons, and illumination upon Earth. It doesn't say God created them, it says God appointed or designated them to be in our sky.

We have been arguing over the light shining in the sky, both day and night. If the sun had already been shining would not the moon be seen first, and then the sun? The day starts in the evening and darkness and goes until the next evening.

Earth didn't appear until the 3rd day, thats why the objects in Earth's sky dont appear until the 4th day. Whatever was shining before that was not illuminating Earth, it was illuminating water. Thats why Genesis says night and day were the 1st day while the Earth was still under water until the 3rd day.

No it does not. There was already 3 days before the sun appeared. The light and darkness was the light of the universe that we can still see today as the remains of the energy from the "Big Bang".

How did water precede the big bang? How did a formless Earth precede the universe? Look at Gen 1:2, that was the situation before God arrived to interact with the dark, water covered world before "creation". Where did you find the word universe in Genesis?

God separated darkness from light and called them night and day... Our night and day happen because this world spins near a star. If there was no star nearby there'd be no night and day, just darkness.

Gen 1:1 is a title, nothing more... The actual story begins with Gen 1:2. If you read Gen 1:1 as the beginning of the story you end up with Heaven and Earth being created twice. They'd be created before the 1st day of creation which makes no sense if Heaven and Earth were created in 6 days.

In the beginning doesn't refer to the beginning of the universe, it doesn't even refer to creation - Heaven and Earth appear in the story on the 2nd and 3rd days.

The atmosphere appeared on the second day. This is what you keep calling the heavens and earth. The dry land and plant life was on the 3rd day. The sun and moon was on the 4th day.

The dry land was called Earth and Heaven is not the atmosphere, the primordial world covered by water in Gen 1:2 already had an atmosphere - it needed one if it was covered by water. Now if the water was covered by ice maybe an atmosphere wouldn't be needed but Heaven is described as something firm, even metallic - a hammered out bracelet. How does Earth have an atmosphere before Earth appears in the story?

There was darkness for 3 and a half days. The sky was defined on the 2nd day, but there was no light. Trying to say that the earth moved into a closer position to the sun and crashed into a planet forming the moon, may be a twisted interpretation, but that is not what is written in the text of Genesis. It does not say that God moved the earth into position. It just says that the sunlight finally appeared in the sky.

The Moon forming event occurred much earlier and is not the subject of Genesis. The Earth (the planet) was moved into a closer orbit when darkness was turned into night and day (light). That was the 1st day, but the Earth didn't appear until the 3rd day - thats why Earth's sky is described on the 4rd day, not the 2nd...

It is also relevant that this so-called earth was still in the shape that God created it in when the universe began with the words, "let there be light", until he separated the waters from the waters.

If the universe began with the light, why does God call the light "day"? What was happening before the light? A formless Earth (dry land) was under the deep (tehom) and in darkness followed by the arrival of God's spirit hovering over the waters.

It seemed from all indications it was a swirling mass of matter and water. It had to have matter, unless God pulled the dry land out of H2O. It had no form and was void, which is another word for empty space between the H2O and matter.

The dry land was formless and void because it wasn't dry yet, it was submerged. God "pull"ed the dry land out from under the water on the 3rd day and called it "Earth".

The sky is the firmament that God placed between the waters. Unless you think that the universe is surrounded by water, then the heavens where the sun and moon reside has always been considered the rest of the universe. We know that the earth is in the local solar system, along with a few other planets. Not sure how there could even be enough water to surround even the solar system.

The water and the primordial world it covered (Earth without form) preceded the firmament, they even preceded God - Gen 1:2 describes the situation before God shows up to create. Earth's sky didn't exist before the Earth, the objects that would appear in Earth's sky on the 4th day were already in existence. But there positions changed from our perspective because Earth's sky was different from the sky of that primordial world in Gen 1:2.

Most Bible scholars agree that it all came back to the earth in the Flood, so it is pretty useless to try to find it besides on earth. There seems to be either a distinction between the two heavens, or ability to fit the sun and planets into the space that is called the heaven, so it must be defined as two heavens. One is the atmosphere, and the other is the universe.

4+ bya the solar wind had depleted the inner solar system of water vapor, whatever didn't get picked up by Mercury, Venus and Mars was pushed out to the asteroid belt where it condensed. Thats where our water came from. Researchers are trying to explain how without considering the possibility this planet came from there too.

So this snow line divided the solar system's planets into 2 groups, the inner rocky worlds and the gas giants beyond. This is described in the Enuma Elish, Tiamat was in the middle between Mars and Jupiter. There is a bunch of water out there at and beyond the asteroid belt, researchers have even found the belt itself is divided into a relatively dry inner belt and water laden outer belt.

Now they probably think the belt never formed as a planet because it lacks the material now, but moving the Earth there solves that problem. And they're apparently convinced Jupiter got really big before a planet could form 1/2 its distance from the sun - at the snow line no less - but the asteroid belt may not reflect the snow line 4.5 bya, but 4 bya when Heaven and Earth were separated.

Its possible Jupiter wasn't as big before 4 bya, the collision at the asteroid belt released plenty of material to be swooped up by the outer planets and Jupiter was first in line.

Anyway , if the water above the firmament "came back" to Earth? Were they once together? Does that mean the world before Noah had much lower sea levels? Well I guess so... Seas rose ~400 ft as the ice age ended, but sea levels must have been far lower if the Flood dumped water on us from space.

The Egyptians and perhaps the Greeks thought the world was flat. I find no evidence that the Hebrews thought that. In fact the argument is that the Hebrews were not as advanced as the rest of the world, and probably thought the earth was round. They thought God created the earth in six days, and keeps on adding things to the universe Who knew they were right about something. Perhaps about a lot of things?

Ancient peoples knew the world was round, but describing it as flat for observing the sky is practical. Changing latitudes reveals a curved surface and eclipses show a circular world like the moon...and the moon's phases reveal a round world.

 

[El_Machinae]

I find it neat that there's a cohort that feel the need to reject the idea that the Hebrews were relatively primitive. It's a Bell Curve. At any point in time, some cultures are going to be relatively primitive.

 

[Lexicus]

I find it neat that there's a cohort that feel the need to reject the idea that the Hebrews were relatively primitive. It's a Bell Curve. At any point in time, some cultures are going to be relatively primitive.

I know. It is not difficult to understand that the Hebrews basically had a cosmology of flat earth, dome sky hanging over it.

The ancient Israelites envisaged a universe made up of a flat disc-shaped earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below.[6]

 

[warpus]

Anecdotal absolutely is a type of evidence. It just deserves a weighting. We throw a gazillion factors into that weighting. But all eye-witness testimony is anecdotal. It's not like it's just swallowed as fact. But neither should the reading on your ruler be swallowed as absolute truth.

It's just that when some people say "evidence" they mean "verified evidence" i.e. "stuff that's definitely true"

Technically you're right, and that's the best kind of right, but the way language is used in everyday speech matters too, which is why I drew a distinction.

 

[Berzerker]

No, it's a coincidence. You cannot possibly claim with a straight face that "all world mythologies" involving a watery void has any relevance at all to the early state of the Earth. (Rather, you probably can but you have shown absolutely no reason for anyone to accept it with a straight face.)

Wouldn't that be two coincidences? The world's mythologies claiming a primordial world covered by water preceded land and life is one and the science claiming a primordial world covered by water preceded land and life is the second.

Or may have...

The evidence is compelling

No he didn't

Yes he did

he specifically said it only looks bright

See? And that was its purpose according to Genesis, it looked bright. The authors weren't trying to cram an astronomy lesson into a few paragraphs. Why make a distinction for the Moon when there are other objects out there reflecting starlight? They're all lights because they're bright enough to serve for signs, seasons, and illumination. There are trillions of stars out there that dont serve these purposes, those lights are not relevant to the story.

And the moon isn't illuminating anything.

its called moonlight... and if you use the term then you dont even use your definition of light.

Indeed I did... which is why I didn't say "How dare you mention my kids!!" or something similar. I said, and I reiterate... I appreciate why you are trying to get me to ask my kids things... However, I decline your invitation to tell them the things you are suggesting. I gave you one shot (two in fact), which was more than your idea deserved in the first place, because it was disingenuous. Your idea was soundly rejected by my 6 year old, as it should have been, and you have proven conclusively to my satisfaction that you are ignoring that fact and insisting that you were correct anyway... So there is absolutely no point in introducing anymore of your questions/statements to my son, as you will not reassess your erroneous position, regardless of the result, as you have just demonstrated. So just stick with your position dude... obviously, what my kids say or don't say is of little consequence to it if they don't agree with you (which they don't).

Telling him the word light in the bible may refer to something bright is my 3rd chance? All I did was ask if he thought the moon was bright and he did. Its the brightest thing in the night sky... But you dont think its bright and therefore based on your definition of brightness, the ancient authors of these religious texts are infantile for calling it a light.

Genesis doesn't say squat about the moon being bright.

If it wasn't bright the Bible wouldn't be calling it a great light to rule the night. You think they didn't know the moon reflected sunlight and I think they did, I think it becomes obvious to anyone watching it go thru its phases. Hell, you wouldn't need a month to figure it out. Just look at a new moon, what happened to the light? Or when the sun and moon are both up in the sky, the lit up side of the moon is pointing at the sun.

If you're arguing tooth and nail about the moon being bright (as opposed to it being a light), my point that Genesis is wrong has already been proven/conceded. Genesis says the moon is a light, not that it's bright. The red (infrared?) bulb in a photographer's darkroom isn't bright, but its still a light. The blacklite (ultraviolet?) bulb your dorm isn't bright, but its still a light, whereas your teeth, or that white T-shirt that it illuminates are not lights, no matter how "bright" they seem when the blacklite is on. Whether the moon is "bright" is irrelevant. Its not a light, so Genesis is wrong.

Whats that bright light in the sky?

Oh, thats Venus - the morning/evening star...

ITS NOT A LIGHT!!!
ITS NOT BRIGHT!!!
ITS NOT A STAR!!!!!!

Your definition of light was not used by the authors of Genesis