In the Beginning...

[onejayhawk]

How do you perceive God?

Go looking. There is a manual.

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

No one said inarguably. I could say that if someone was raised from the dead, that would be inarguable. It's been done. Look where we are.

All you get is what's enough for you, personally. That way you can add your story to the stack of anecdotal evidence.

J

 

[Lexicus]

Go looking. There is a manual.

Assuming you're talking about the Bible, that's no manual, it's a book of primitive myths. And as far as I'm concerned we're quite fortunate not to have to deal with the petty, vengeful psychopath depicted therein.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Assuming you're talking about the Bible, that's no manual, it's a book of primitive myths. And as far as I'm concerned we're quite fortunate not to have to deal with the petty, vengeful psychopath depicted therein.

Not having a great knowledge of the Bible I still like to point out it has two main parts and the second one tell you a bit different story.

 

[timtofly]

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

That is what the Egyptians thought. I am not sure how that got transcribed to the Hebrews. The Egyptians were the dominant force for awhile even before the Babylonians of 7th century BC. Worship of Ra the sun God started around 2500 BC, and lasted into the CE. The Genesis account does not mention a flat disk shaped earth. The waters were below the surface of the earth, not the earth itself. Eratosthenes proved the round earth "fact" around 250 BC. That was after Alexander claimed Egypt as a part of the Greek empire in 332 BC.

Proverbs 8 talks about wisdom being there at the beginning, and all it says is the circle of the horizon. Some translations say a circle on the waters. That does not mention a disk. if one looks around them with an unobstructed view, it looks like a circle, because the earth is round. Job 26 just calls the earth a circle in water and suspended in the air. The early maps show a land mass that is totally surrounded by water. Still does not define a disk. The land mass was not a perfect circle. The earth was in and out of the water, meaning that they thought the water encapsulated the land like a circle or sphere. They had no knowledge of the land on the other side of the water (ocean). No one had traveled around the planet yet. There is no mention of falling off but going through the water. The third place, Isaiah 40, says that God sits on the circle of the earth. If you are sitting on a circle, you are sitting on a ball not a disk. You would have to turn the disk on it's side to sit on the top of a circle. Yes, disk are round, but never does it mention a disk. It mentions a circle, which is also round, but not necessarily a disk. A sphere is round also. It is a circle in every view. Yes the sky looked like a dome, but that does not mean the rest of the sphere was not there. The Hebrews refer to the water as being very deep. and that there was even water surrounding the dome. That is not the view of a disk, that is the view of a sphere.

It was later rabbis, who thought the Hebrews viewed the earth as a disk, because the rabbis thought that the Hebrews were influenced by the Egyptian and Babylonian powers of the day. There were Hellenistic Jews around the first century BC, and there was no mention of a conflict with the latest scientific finding that the earth was round. As pointed out there was an extensive translation from Hebrew into Greek of the Old Testament Books, which means that these Jews had accepted the completion of a canon, and they were translating it into Greek so the Greek speaking world could have a copy of the Bible.

There is really not a conflict with modern science either other than extremist views on both sides. One side trying to make the Bible look wrong, while the defending side goes way out of their way to prove it is right.

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.

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.

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 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?

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...

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

The Jewish encyclopedia states that the term "earth" by itself can mean soil or an element. When combined with the term "heaven" it means universe.

The earth had no form and was a swirling mass surrounded by water. Genesis said the water was divided, then the continents came out of the water. We call everything about the planet even the atmosphere as all being part of the planet earth.

The moon was also a swirling mass, and it was made to act as a moon on the 4th day. The sun was a dark mass of energy that after God allowed it to process light, the light only took 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach earth. The first sunrise. The Solar system was already in place it just needed to be put in motion. That is the connotation that one gets when it says that God separated the light from the darkness. The light was every where. I was taught that it was the sun light, but rotation determines night and day, not the sun. In fact at night, and without the moon there is no light at all. The earth did not separate the light from the darkness. God did. The earth was still just a swirling mass surrounded by water, and had no form and was void (empty).

The light of creation was every where across the whole universe, not just the sun. Then God made it dark. There was no light at all. The next mention of light is on the 4th day when the sun started to shine. 4 days is not a long time for any evolutionary process to work. That would take billions of years and at the beginning there was no light from a star. According to current cosmology it took a great while for the stars to produce anything and there was darkness while they were still coalescing, creating their own planetary systems.

I just don't see Genesis as God coming along after the fact and just creating life on earth. The Hebrews in their writings keep insisting that there was nothing before God. Why would Genesis be interpreted any other way than God created the universe out of nothing, but his thought and word?

Not having a great knowledge of the Bible I still like to point out it has two main parts and the second one tell you a bit different story.

Justice is a jerk to those who fall under it's punishment. But Justice was also supposed to protect those who followed the Law. There is really no way of avoiding the law, because no human is alone and separate from the rest of humanity. God did not do away with the Law, neither does he expect any one to still adhere to it, because humans cannot adhere to every aspect of the Law. Jesus known as the Christ was the only human who kept the whole law, and then died of his own volition after being falsely accused of breaking the law. Some say that changed the course of history, but humans being humans, keep messing things up when left to their own devices.

 

[Arakhor]

The evidence is compelling...

Well, keep on saying that, I guess. Maybe some day someone will take you at your word, since that's all you're offering.

 

[El_Machinae]

Not having a great knowledge of the Bible I still like to point out it has two main parts and the second one tell you a bit different story.

It does, certainly. Jesus makes a moral error in not condemning the god depicted in the OT, and probably spun his own theology justifying the libel contained therein instead.

But the flavour shifts, for sure. If Jesus were alive today, and had access to our knowledge, I'm sure he'd reject the god of Abraham and Moses. The moral fault in worshipping them is much more obvious

 

[Lexicus]

Not having a great knowledge of the Bible I still like to point out it has two main parts and the second one tell you a bit different story.

The NT is still a book of primitive myths, but it's true that the God of the NT is basically the opposite of the one in the OT.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think a bigger issue is whether there ever actually was a beginning.

I (mostly intuitively, and we cannot know anyway) doubt there was.

Of course, a different issue is whether there was a beginning regardless of any human way of examining this.

But i am heavily against the view that we should examine this as a receding limit to a nearest point in a 'first' moment. I don't agree with this theory at all re cosmic beginning. Limits are a notion in math (and its containing set, human thought). Cosmic objects are not tied to human notions, math being one of those. (of course this is a debate in philosophy since ancient times, namely if the external objects at least bring some info to us which survives albeit in altered state from an over-reality not tied to human sense; i think they do not).

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It does, certainly. Jesus makes a moral error in not condemning the god depicted in the OT, and probably spun his own theology justifying the libel contained therein instead.

But the flavour shifts, for sure. If Jesus were alive today, and had access to our knowledge, I'm sure he'd reject the god of Abraham and Moses. The moral fault in worshipping them is much more obvious

Erm, which Jesus? I can't imagine the one who was that self same God would reject himself so readily.

 

[Arakhor]

Erm, which Jesus? I can't imagine the one who was that self same God would reject himself so readily.

Well, that rather relies on you accepting the Nicene Creed, doesn't it?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Does that not essentially mean "being a Christian"?

 

[El_Machinae]

Erm, which Jesus? I can't imagine the one who was that self same God would reject himself so readily.

I've been unclear.

First off, yeah, I was talking about Jesus the man. But if we're talking about Jesus the god, then the thesis is the same.

Did God actually do the things the OT claims He did? No. A lot of that is libel, obviously so.

Christians currently worship a god that ordered the stoning of homosexuals; and they've created a theology that makes this acceptable. But this theology was built on the same (faulty) foundation as believing that God also did things like torture Egyptian peasants and help Joshua genocide a nation and take their stuff. i.e., based on myths, not history.

Jesus of the past built on the theology that the God of Noah was real. He didn't know better! But would Jesus still build on that theology, of course not! Even IF he's God! Why would he have a theology based on libel?

Now, there's a rumour out there that over 200 people saw me rip the head off of a rabid tiger with my bare hands. Plausible, but it's not actually true. Would I ever use that piece of mythology in a debate about an important topic? Of course not. It's something that never happened.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I didn't say, "you have to have faith". I said you do have faith. When you stated the list of things which would be sufficient for you to accept whatever you were supposed to accept, you expressed faith in a number of things. The question is not one of faith, but of demanding a sign. You decreed a sign sufficient for your sensibilities. Implicit was a challenge.

Kindly refrain from claiming that I have what I know I don't have. I stated one of the things that would have to happen before I'd even begin to take this stuff seriously. That is by no means the entire list of what it would take to convince me.

Enough of that. People have been raised from the dead, but it is not sufficient.

Oh, who was that? I mean, really raised from the dead by some means beyond medical intervention, but witnessed by accredited medical doctors who can verify that the allegedly "raised" person was in fact dead and suddenly came back to life.

The proto-Earth got reconstructive surgery around 4 bya... Thats why so many of our myths - like the Enuma Elish - describe the carving up of a primordial world to create Heaven and Earth. Other myths add in the notion of a sky father impregnating the waters, or a lotus upon the waters (Egyptian).

Nonsense. The people who created those myths had no idea at all how Earth and the rest of the solar system were formed.

I think everybody suffers from a bias to a degree.
I dont think its fair to strictly apply intellectual mind-set to a religious mind of thousands of years ago becouse in its sense even sun is not a light becouse whatever light it has its only becouse of God. Its like taking some poetry and tearing it to pieces with logic pointing out it flaws and proclaiming the supremacy of an intellect - well you just missed the whole poetic significance.

Whatever light the Sun has is due to physics and chemistry. Supernatural beings invented by humans are not required.

As for poetry, I spent three years in high school, with an English teacher who taught us how to dissect poems, analyze them, and then interpret them. That doesn't mean I lost my appreciation for the poems I liked.

BTW, this is an avatar I entered in a contest on another forum. It won.

I see poetry in that image. But that doesn't mean I subscribe to the notion that something supernatural was required to make anything in that image exist.

It was Jesus who humanised Europe from the cross becouse it was his ideals which much later the humanist had turned to and claimed it for all not just Christianity.

Yeah, all those hangings, burnings, drownings, drawing & quarterings, rackings, and other tortures invented by the Inquisition and inflicted on people who didn't worship Jesus with exactly the "right" gestures and prayers were sure a sign of a "humanised" Europe.

The Egyptians and perhaps the Greeks thought the world was flat.

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.

Carl Sagan talked about this in Cosmos.

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.

I checked the bible on my bookshelf. The title of it is "Holy Bible." The front cover and spine don't have the first chapter and verse of Genesis on it.

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".

Land that is underwater isn't "formless and void." It's very much there, with definite contours that have been mapped in great detail.

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.

I couldn't find any articles whatsoever that state that Earth was formed in the asteroid belt.

It's utter nonsense to say that the ancient Babylonians had any clue at all about how the solar system was formed.

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.

Along with the goalposts.

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.

Rain comes from the atmosphere, not from space.

...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.

Yes, we can definitely say that no YEC believers understand evolution. If they understood evolution, they wouldn't be YECs.

Are you talking about astronomy or astrology?

No one said inarguably. I could say that if someone was raised from the dead, that would be inarguable. It's been done. Look where we are.

Why wasn't this news reported by every media source on the planet?

 

[onejayhawk]

I've been unclear.

First off, yeah, I was talking about Jesus the man. But if we're talking about Jesus the god, then the thesis is the same.

Did God actually do the things the OT claims He did? No. A lot of that is libel, obviously so.

Christians currently worship a god that ordered the stoning of homosexuals; and they've created a theology that makes this acceptable. But this theology was built on the same (faulty) foundation as believing that God also did things like torture Egyptian peasants and help Joshua genocide a nation and take their stuff. i.e., based on myths, not history.

Jesus of the past built on the theology that the God of Noah was real. He didn't know better! But would Jesus still build on that theology, of course not! Even IF he's God! Why would he have a theology based on libel?

Now, there's a rumour out there that over 200 people saw me rip the head off of a rabid tiger with my bare hands. Plausible, but it's not actually true. Would I ever use that piece of mythology in a debate about an important topic? Of course not. It's something that never happened.

You were clear enough. Times change but people do not. The God of the OT is no more, and no less, troublesome to sensibilities than the God of today. Part of it is that you value things God finds frivolous. You depend on things that have no permanence. That was true when Adam first met Eve.

Kindly refrain from claiming that I have what I know I don't have. I stated one of the things that would have to happen before I'd even begin to take this stuff seriously. That is by no means the entire list of what it would take to convince me.

Do not say you do not have faith. You do. It is necessary to function. I will step out on a limb and say you have faith that the world will turn at a 24 hours per day rate. Even Mathematics begins with undefined terms and Axioms. It is a question of what you have faith in, not whether you have faith. That much is given.

People have been raised from the dead, but it is not sufficient.

Oh, who was that? I mean, really raised from the dead by some means beyond medical intervention, but witnessed by accredited medical doctors who can verify that the allegedly "raised" person was in fact dead and suddenly came back to life.

Why wasn't this news reported by every media source on the planet?

It was. It was also immediately challenged as a hoax. There was an official investigation by the Governor and another by the religious authorities. Both failed to reach a definitive answer. Numerous people claimed to have met the man, but the investigators could not find him to bring before the authorities. Other persons, who were also said to be raised from the dead were brought forth. Their stories were challenged as well. There are several accounts of this ranging from openly supportive to openly hostile.

J

 

[Sommerswerd]

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.

Anyone who has been to a wake and heard someone say "Oh he looks like he is sleeping" understands the difference between acknowledging that people might think something "looks like" its a certain way, versus claiming that it actually is that way. My son acknowledged that someone like you might think the moon looks bright, but he was adamant that it is in fact not.

But again, the whole argument about whether the moon is bright is a clever attempt by you to change the subject. The brightness of the moon is irrelevant. The moon is not a light, regardless of how "bright" you think it is. You were proven wrong on the issue of the moon being a light so now you are trying to argue that according to your interpretation its bright and according to your interpretation bright = light.

But the fact that you are now trying to argue your interpretation just reinforces the fact that the text is wrong. this is the textbook Biblical apologist rhetoric that I have been hearing since I was a wee lad. Whenever the bible is clearly wrong, the apologists start backtracking into an argument based on interpretation.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You were clear enough. Times change but people do not. The God of the OT is no more, and no less, troublesome to sensibilities than the God of today. Part of it is that you value things God finds frivolous. You depend on things that have no permanence. That was true when Adam first met Eve.

J

Oh, goody. Yet another creationist who thinks he knows more about my life than I do.

Nice to know that your god finds things like honesty and honor to be frivolous.

 

[Lexicus]

Kindly refrain from claiming that I have what I know I don't have.

You certainly do have faith. We all do. It's inescapable. Trick is to only have faith in things worth having faith in, like human goodness and that things will get better.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I've been unclear.

First off, yeah, I was talking about Jesus the man. But if we're talking about Jesus the god, then the thesis is the same.

Did God actually do the things the OT claims He did? No. A lot of that is libel, obviously so.

Christians currently worship a god that ordered the stoning of homosexuals; and they've created a theology that makes this acceptable. But this theology was built on the same (faulty) foundation as believing that God also did things like torture Egyptian peasants and help Joshua genocide a nation and take their stuff. i.e., based on myths, not history.

Jesus of the past built on the theology that the God of Noah was real. He didn't know better! But would Jesus still build on that theology, of course not! Even IF he's God! Why would he have a theology based on libel?

Now, there's a rumour out there that over 200 people saw me rip the head off of a rabid tiger with my bare hands. Plausible, but it's not actually true. Would I ever use that piece of mythology in a debate about an important topic? Of course not. It's something that never happened.

There's obviously a whole complicate back story to your opinion here. You're saying that, even if there is a God and if Jesus is/was that God, that the whole Old Testament is necessarily a load of lies? Do many people subscribe to this idea? I know that Christians hold the New Testament to be more important than the Old, but... you know... they still kind of believe in the Old too right? I mean I thought they did...

 

[Lexicus]

I know that Christians hold the New Testament to be more important than the Old,

Some do. But come to the US sometime, you'd be surprised how many people who call themselves Christians are actually way more into the Old Testament than the New.

 

[Arakhor]

Does that not essentially mean "being a Christian"?

Well, there are Christian denominations that don't believe that Jesus and God are the same person, but I think that's rather beside the point. You certainly wouldn't be Catholic, Orthodox or Anglican, no.