The christian Bible...

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/kjv/gen001.htm

Genesis chapter 1 KJV-The link takes you to a good verse by verse, in case you want to quibble about specifics. Copy/paste from there to here if you want to beat on one verse in isolation, more if you're feeling daring. If you would rather, just reference book-chapter-verse-to-verse.

I'm doing this because there is a lot of confusion on how people understand the bible. Some would say it's literal and perfect, others would say it's got as much truth as the moon being put into the sky by a crab. I lean towards the latter, myself.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Hard to argue with that. Whether he did it yesterday, set off the big bang billions of years ago, or did it 6032 years ago next tuesday. If you can accept God as a first cause, it gets easier after this.

 

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Accepting God as the first cause is what takes the leap of faith. There is nothing to suggest that's how it started.

 

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Yes. Atheism starts at Genesis 1:1. You need proof, beyond what somebody a long time ago wrote down. I can dig that. I'm very interested in what others think, Fundamentalist christians, or anti-theist atheists... Later We'll go to chapter 2

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but what is god?

 

Lori-Are you going from the idea that God is a something, vs a nothing? I'd suggest that God is everywhere and everything at once, but the subtraction of any consciousness from God does not move said consciousness out of God, but puts it closer to God that he might do with it as he chooses. But that's a whole different thread, you goose.

 

well, it just seems like so many times people talk about god as if he's some human, or an old dude wheeling planets and lightning bolts around in the sky, and like what he does is magic, and i don't think that he's anything remotely like that and i don't believe in magic.

religious people are the worst culprits of this, atheists buy right in because it supports a logical rejection of the notion, and i think it's particularly relevant to the creation debate in a science vs magic kind of way when theists reject science and scientists reject god.

 

OK, well, since you offered...

The notion of dividing the light from the dark goes to show how little ancient man (or at least these ancient men) understood about astronomy. There was no "dividing" light from dark.

Another display of people who just don't get how the world works. "Waters above"? Where? The sky? Ah yes, because back then, it would probably be a safe assumption that there was some sort of body of water in the sky. Otherwise, how else would it rain?

And one more just for fun. Two lights, is what the verse says, but two lights are what they are not. As we all know, the moon does not create its own light, but rather it reflects it. And to make the stars an afterthought such as the author did implies that the author had absolutely no idea that the stars were in fact the same thing as our sun. And quite a bit larger, in most cases.

 

at the moment, i'm inclined to believe that god is law...at least. creation according to it.

 

Lori-precisely. God doesn't fit into theists or atheists boxes. Omnipresesnt... Everywhere, all the time.

JDawg-Good points. Why I view the creation story citd here as a story to make kids quit asking why. God's not going to go into particle physics for ancient man, there's no need too. The bible could have started just as well with,"God has always been. Then people showed up." I mean, if you want to deny the existence of God based on man's ignorance, you are more than welcome to, it just seems silly to me.

 

It's not that the author doesn't get into particle physics, it's that he's just flat-out wrong about it. You don't have to be a particle physicist to understand the basic concepts. And how hard would it have been to just say "Oh, the moon? Yeah, it actually just reflects the light from the sun." Would that be so hard? No, of course not. Just like water reflects light. Simple.

So it's not the simplicity of it that bothers me, it's the errors.

 

Then again, maybe God didn't tell him a thing, maybe God said,"That's not important" so man got creative. It's like Hansel and Gretel, is the existence of the cannibal the problem, or is it the candy house? It puts them to sleep at bedtime, so I can roll with it.

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Stressing out about something as minor as creation, when man was busy working out things like fire, speech, how to properly undress a bear, eh. I think God had bigger fish to fry. "Hi, I'm God, I'll be the Deity on this journey." and he saw it was good, said it was good, and it was good, just isn't as captivating, you know?

 

A first cause doesn't have to be anything particularly meaningful. I don't know how my car works, but something must bring it to life, and I will call that thing the Key. Well, everyone knows the key is just incidental to how an internal combustion engine works.

 

But that does beg the question of what God in fact is..

 

Of course God didn't tell him a thing. But what then in the Bible is there left to believe ?

 

i perceive the bible to be a teaching tool, not necessarily something to arbitrarily believe.

 

But to teach what ?

 

whatever you need to know...for the greater good i suppose...to accomplish his purpose.

 

Well that is kind of vague.. can you get into a bit more detail ?

 

Bible's pretty big. Maybe you missed the Hansel and Gretel thing. The bible teaches much through allegory and parable. Or perhaps you'd rather stick to literalism out of simplicity of argument for you?

 

If you admit that some of the bible is just purely made up then how do you know whether or not the rest is actually true ?
Perhaps they also made up God and Jesus..
I am not saying they did, but you yourself said that they may have made up the things about creation.