In the Beginning...

[Lexicus]

You can actually see Uranus too.

As has already been said, so never mind. Stll, any post that adds facts to the thread can't be a bad thing, even if they're repetitious.

Yeah, technically. But Uranus is too faint for its motion against the stars to be detected by the naked eye. So the Sumerians wouldn't recognize it as a planet, and there is no evidence at all that they did so.

 

[warpus]

There were 9 planets in the Enuma Elish, the Incan "Genesis", the Toltec 9 Lords of the Night, and 9 awaiting the hunter stalking the horned deity in the Fremont cosmology. In Norse myth 9 worlds are supported by Yggdrasil and 9 levels in Dante's Inferno which is based on earlier Roman and Greek cosmology. The list goes on and on...

You can find patterns everywhere, if you are selective about the source data you look at and only pick out the numbers that support your pre-determined conclusion and ignore everything else.

 

[timtofly]

The word 'made' doesn't mean create, and the word 'create' means to fashion by cutting, shape or form.

If a carpenter makes a table he creates something that wasn't there before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System

We don't actually know 'what the Hebrews have believed'. Secondly, it's not 'my interpretation: it's literally what it says in Gen. 1: 1-4.

In verse one, God created the tree. In verse 14, God saw the tree as a table. In verse 15, God cut the wood in pieces, and in verse 17, God put the table together.

God created matter without form. You have to understand the Eastern mindset, because this is before observable science can place any meaning or definition to the process. God enabled this form which produced light. It was immediate, and complete, and then it was dark. God separated the light from the darkness, but that did not make it light again. The stars were not in completed form yet. They were in process.

God defined a day, and I agree we have no Idea what that day was, because all we have now is a day that is slightly longer than 24 hours.

Gen. 1: 3-5 clearly says how the light was created "and God saw it was good". The first day.

The light was not created. God put the whole universe in motion, and that is what caused the light to immediately go throughout the whole universe and it was completed. That was the state of everything being in nebulae form. There were no active stars. Because it immediately became dark again. I don't think that every single star in the universe was the exact same sun as we have. Every galaxy, and solar system is different.

I am not going to say that day was 1 year, 1000 years, 1m years, or anything else, because it is about earth and the human experience, and at or near the equator, a day has an equal amount of light and darkness. So evening and morning would be about the same length of time each. We really do not know how time effects humans any where else in the universe, because we have not experienced it yet. Are the days longer or shorter, or do we just keep the same 24 hours regardless?

If you insist that we do know, then why claim the sun HAS to shine for there to be a day, when it was still forming, and still a proto-star?

This is repeated (or elaborated upon) in Gen. 1:14-18. However you might read it, it still follows Earth was created before the sun. Which is quite incorrect.

The bolded part is your incorrect interpretation.

The words are used again, but in a different context. The wood was a tree in verse 1-4. It was still a tree in verse 14. There is a difference in being a tree and being a table.

 

[Arakhor]

You can find patterns everywhere, if you are selective about the source data you look at and only pick out the numbers that support your pre-determined conclusion and ignore everything else.

It's what's called apophenia.

 

[El_Machinae]

Er, if the Earth was on this side of the 'snow line', the Sun wouldn't be visually small ...

 

[Berzerker]

You can find patterns everywhere, if you are selective about the source data you look at and only pick out the numbers that support your pre-determined conclusion and ignore everything else.

Why doesn't that apply to the people claiming ancient peoples only knew about 5 visible planets? They have their conclusion and they ignore everything else... So where are these cosmologies that identify only 5 planets? I'm not being selective, those cosmologies dont exist. All we have are cosmologies identifying more than 5 planets.

 

[tetley]

Is there someone's read of Genesis that says the earth had to be created before the sun--and had life on it, the Garden of Eden, all that--before the sun? Genesis 1:2 is quite clear that the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered it.

 

[Berzerker]

God is an ET.

This thread would have been much shorter if that had been established at the start.

It was established at the start, God created Heaven and Earth, therefore God was not born of the Earth

 

[Berzerker]

Berzerker is an ancient alien enthusiast. It's as crucial to reading these threads as knowing who is or isn't a creationist in such threads.

I thought that was obvious but Senethro keeps acting like I've been hiding it from him

 

[Berzerker]

Is there someone's read of Genesis that says the earth had to be created before the sun--and had life on it, the Garden of Eden, all that--before the sun? Genesis 1:2 is quite clear that the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered it.

Earth is the name God gave the dry land when it appeared from under the water on the 3rd day. Thats why Earth is described as without form in Gen 1:2, it was under the water.

But that world of darkness and water became a world with day and night as a result of God's first act of creation (let there be light, and God called the light 'day') - it was now spinning closer to the sun. So why does the sun only appear on the 4th day? Because the Earth didn't appear until the 3rd day. On the 4th day the dry land's (Earth) "sky" was described.

God didn't create that primordial world of darkness and water, so he didn't create it's sky much less the lights appearing in it. The authors of Genesis were careful not to credit God with that primordial world, nowhere does Genesis claim God created the water, only the "Seas" formed on the 3rd day.

 

[Arakhor]

Is there someone's read of Genesis that says the earth had to be created before the sun--and had life on it, the Garden of Eden, all that--before the sun? Genesis 1:2 is quite clear that the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered it.

I don't know about the Garden of Eden, but given that the plain reading is that the Sun and the Moon were created on Day Four, Answers in Genesis has this to say:

Spoiler AiG screed :

Objection 2

According to Genesis 1, the sun was not created until Day 4. How could there be day and night (ordinary days) without the sun for the first three days?

Answer

Again, it is important for us to let the language of God’s Word speak to us. If we come to Genesis 1 without any outside influences, as has been shown, each of the six days of creation appears with the Hebrew word yom qualified by a number and the phrase “evening and morning.” The first three days are written the same way as the next three. So if we let the language speak to us, all six days were ordinary earth days.
The sun is not needed for day and night. What is needed is light and a rotating earth. On the first day of creation, God made light (Genesis 1:3). The phrase “evening and morning” certainly implies a rotating earth. Thus, if we have light from one direction, and a spinning earth, there can be day and night.

Where did the light come from? We are not told, but Genesis 1:3 certainly indicates it was a created light to provide day and night until God made the sun on Day 4 to rule the day. Revelation 21:23 tells us that one day the sun will not be needed because the glory of God will light the heavenly city.

Perhaps one reason God did it this way was to illustrate that the sun did not have the priority in the creation that people have tended to give it. The sun did not give birth to the earth as evolutionary theories postulate; the sun was God’s created tool to rule the day that God had made (Genesis 1:16).

Down through the ages, people such as the Egyptians have worshiped the sun. God warned the Israelites, in Deuteronomy 4:19, not to worship the sun as the pagan cultures around them did. They were commanded to worship the God who made the sun—not the sun that was made by God.

Evolutionary theories (the “big bang” hypothesis for instance) state that the sun came before the earth and that the sun’s energy on the earth eventually gave rise to life. Just as in pagan beliefs, the sun is, in a sense, given credit for the wonder of creation.

It is interesting to contrast the speculations of modern cosmology with the writings of the early church father Theophilus:

On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on Earth came from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.

 

[Arakhor]

Something I've just found whilst I was looking around are the illustrations from the Nuremberg Chronicle, first printed in 1493, which show Genesis 1 in pictures:
Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five, Day Six and Day Seven.

The Sun, Moon and stars first appear in the Day Four image and the entire known cosmology of the Middle Ages is displayed in Day Seven, along with the Four Winds and God enthroned amongst all his angels. Along the left side the nine angelic choirs are listed, with each of the spheres of creation named in the middle of the image.

For those of you who haven't spent a while studying the image, the order of the spheres starts in the centre with earth, water, fire and air, according to the Aristotelian view, followed by the known 'planets' in the order described by Dante in his Divine Comedy (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), followed by the fixed stars (the realm of the Zodiac and the observable heavens), then what is presumably the Crystalline Heaven, the Primum Mobile (that which sets the spheres in their movements) and the Empyrean itself, the incorporeal Divine realm.

What's also interesting to note is that the Crystalline Heaven doesn't appear in Paradiso, as Dante ties the other nine celestial spheres into the Seven Virtues and the nine angelic choirs, leaving the Empyrean as the tenth transcendental sphere, not the eleventh as depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle. Not depicted, of course, are Uranus, Neptune or any trans-Neptunian object, such as Pluto or Eris.

 

[Lexicus]

The sun did not give birth to the earth as evolutionary theories postulate;

Would love to hear what "evolutionary theories" postulate this.

 

[Agent327]

Thanks, Arakhor.

For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.

Indeed. A basic principle of logic.

Now on with our list:

Earth is the name God gave the dry land when it appeared from under the water on the 3rd day. Thats why Earth is described as without form in Gen 1:2, it was under the water.

No. As already mentioned, a water planet is not 'without form'.

It was established at the start, God created Heaven and Earth, therefore God was not born of the Earth

Which would be already obvious from God creating Earth, I imagine. This is not what's generally considered 'an extraterrestrial' though.

Why doesn't that apply to the people claiming ancient peoples only knew about 5 visible planets? They have their conclusion and they ignore everything else... So where are these cosmologies that identify only 5 planets? I'm not being selective, those cosmologies dont exist. All we have are cosmologies identifying more than 5 planets.

Since this has been debunked already repeatedly, I'm not even going to bother again. The question is just: Why are you repeating this intellectual dishonesty ad infinitum?

But Genesis doesn't say God created the 2 great lights and the wood was already there

It quite clearly does say so: "Let there be light" - after which God sets "the two lights" in the skies. (Interestingly, this would imply God creates some abstract form of light, which he then molds into "two lights".) If that's not creation, I don't know what would be. In both cases the light (also created by God) and the wood are already there. And yet, we call this creation. Just as when a writer writes a book (that wasn't there before - even though the paper was).

In verse one, God created the tree. In verse 14, God saw the tree as a table. In verse 15, God cut the wood in pieces, and in verse 17, God put the table together.

What?

God created matter without form.

There is no such thing. Seriously.

You have to understand the Eastern mindset, because this is before observable science can place any meaning or definition to the process. God enabled this form which produced light.

What?

It was immediate, and complete, and then it was dark. God separated the light from the darkness, but that did not make it light again.

What?

The stars were not in completed form yet. They were in process.

In process of what?

God defined a day, and I agree we have no Idea what that day was, because all we have now is a day that is slightly longer than 24 hours.

What?

The light was not created. God put the whole universe in motion, and that is what caused the light to immediately go throughout the whole universe and it was completed.

What?

That was the state of everything being in nebulae form. There were no active stars. Because it immediately became dark again. I don't think that every single star in the universe was the exact same sun as we have. Every galaxy, and solar system is different.

What?

If you insist that we do know, then why claim the sun HAS to shine for there to be a day, when it was still forming, and still a proto-star?

What? Earth rotating with a sun in place is exactly what a day is. Since I already explained this, I can only repeat it.

I'm just going What? as it's an utter puzzle to me where you get such nonsensical... information. I can't decide if you just made this up in its entirety or if you actually have a source for it. None of your above statements are logical.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't know about the Garden of Eden, but given that the plain reading is that the Sun and the Moon were created on Day Four, Answers in Genesis has this to say:

Spoiler AiG screed :

Objection 2

According to Genesis 1, the sun was not created until Day 4. How could there be day and night (ordinary days) without the sun for the first three days?

Answer

Again, it is important for us to let the language of God’s Word speak to us. If we come to Genesis 1 without any outside influences, as has been shown, each of the six days of creation appears with the Hebrew word yom qualified by a number and the phrase “evening and morning.” The first three days are written the same way as the next three. So if we let the language speak to us, all six days were ordinary earth days.
The sun is not needed for day and night. What is needed is light and a rotating earth. On the first day of creation, God made light (Genesis 1:3). The phrase “evening and morning” certainly implies a rotating earth. Thus, if we have light from one direction, and a spinning earth, there can be day and night.

Where did the light come from? We are not told, but Genesis 1:3 certainly indicates it was a created light to provide day and night until God made the sun on Day 4 to rule the day. Revelation 21:23 tells us that one day the sun will not be needed because the glory of God will light the heavenly city.

Perhaps one reason God did it this way was to illustrate that the sun did not have the priority in the creation that people have tended to give it. The sun did not give birth to the earth as evolutionary theories postulate; the sun was God’s created tool to rule the day that God had made (Genesis 1:16).

Down through the ages, people such as the Egyptians have worshiped the sun. God warned the Israelites, in Deuteronomy 4:19, not to worship the sun as the pagan cultures around them did. They were commanded to worship the God who made the sun—not the sun that was made by God.

Evolutionary theories (the “big bang” hypothesis for instance) state that the sun came before the earth and that the sun’s energy on the earth eventually gave rise to life. Just as in pagan beliefs, the sun is, in a sense, given credit for the wonder of creation.

It is interesting to contrast the speculations of modern cosmology with the writings of the early church father Theophilus:

On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on Earth came from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.

I heavily doubt that the old testament features any kind of scientific knowledge. Even if (a big if, of course) Mesopotamian texts could. At least in Babylon there was an actual culture, instead of a people who had the narrative of being freed slaves favoured by a vengeful god (which in some respects beats even the dreadful Aztec theology)... Furthermore, the idea the earth is spinning on its axis wasn't prominently around until the second half of the hellenistic era.
Plants being around before sunlight is a nice thing to claim in the same paragraph with attacking those 'foolish philosophers'. Bleak and evil plants photosynthesising on the blood of fallen humans

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yeah, technically. But Uranus is too faint for its motion against the stars to be detected by the naked eye. So the Sumerians wouldn't recognize it as a planet, and there is no evidence at all that they did so.

Well... not really. If you can see it at all then all the rest is possible. There's no evidence anyone actually did of course, but it's feasible.

 

[Leoreth]

Would love to hear what "evolutionary theories" postulate this.

Clearly some suns evolved to become planets through the process of natural selection. But it's a deliberate misinterpretation of evolution to say that suns "gave birth to" planets. There are several intermediary steps between suns and planets on the fossil record.

 

[Lexicus]

Well... not really. If you can see it at all then all the rest is possible. There's no evidence anyone actually did of course, but it's feasible.

*shrug* It wasn't discovered until telescopes because it's too dim and doesn't move enough relative to the background of the stars. Sorry if you don't think that's the case but it is.

 

[timtofly]

There is no such thing. Seriously.

What? Earth rotating with a sun in place is exactly what a day is. Since I already explained this, I can only repeat it.

I'm just going What? as it's an utter puzzle to me where you get such nonsensical... information. I can't decide if you just made this up in its entirety or if you actually have a source for it. None of your above statements are logical.

You are the one who states a table can be created out of nothing.

A day is 24 hours. It does not matter if there is light or darkness at all.

Of course matter without form does not exist. It has form now, but it did exist without form, before it had form.

 

[Lexicus]

A day is 24 hours. It does not matter if there is light or darkness at all.

The unchanging 24-hour day is a modern invention. Before clocks were common days were measured from the time of sunrise to sunset.