Did God create the universe?

Concordicus said:
Genesis 1 and science part 1

Q issued this invitation:



I’m glad you asked.

Let’s back up a bit and try to figure out what you mean that by your count there are about a dozen chapters and 31 verses in Genesis 1. I do not relate to your dozen chapters in Genesis 1 which is, in Bible nomenclature a chapter in itself. There are, indeed, 31 verses in current Bibles, although the original text would not have had such divisions. Nor would the original have even had chapter numbers. It was just one long writing without word breaks, paragraph breaks or chapter breaks.
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I was mistaken, I meant to say paragraphs, not chapters.
Concordicus said:
Q complains that Genesis does not mention a Universe. That was not a concept within the knowledge of the people of those days.
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That would seem like quite the failure of God to not provide any knowledge to people so they could understand what he was explaining. Why wouldn't Genesis explain that the lights they see in the sky at night are galaxies, solar systems, planets, moons, and of course, stars, and that there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars contained in each one and that our planet is but a speck near one star on the arm of our galaxy. The Bible fails in so many areas of knowledge when it comes to His bronze age explanations of the world around us.
Concordicus said:
But humanity has observed and described many things long before it was explained and named. Static electricity was something people knew about long before we knew what it was and gave it the name electricity; gravity is something else that we observed and struggled to understand long before we gave it a name. The history of science is rife with things which we observed but did not understand and name until much later.
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Another failure of the Bible to provide humanity with real knowledge of the world around them, instead it offers talking snakes.
Concordicus said:
Before one can adequately explain what Genesis 1 says, one must have some understanding that the paleo-Hebrew, in which the text was written, is different from English which is the only version most of us English speaking people are familiar with. Their ways of expressing ideas do not always come through in a direct word-for-word translation. And this is true of almost any translation from any one language to another. Every language has cultural nuances which are virtually impossible to adequately express in a different language.
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Sorry, I don't buy that, there are plenty of words to describe something in any language.
Concordicus said:
Paleo-Hebrew did not have a word for Universe. In fact, it did not even have a word for all of everything. Their word translated everything was a limiting word in paleo-Hebrew in that it was used to show groups or classes such as everything that is green or everything that has wings. Meanwhile the phrase heavens and Earth used in the first verse of Genesis 1 is a phrase they dud use to express the idea of everything. It is used several times throughout the Bible and it each instance whether in paleo-Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, the context clearly indicates that the phrase could just as easily be translated as everything – or Universe. And that is also our concept of the Universe – everything. We just have a different name for it. Also, verse one says there was a beginning which is the same thing the Big Bang theory claims. So again, the same thing.
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Nonsense, that is yet another failure of the Bible, and by extension, failure of God to not provide any knowledge of the universe to humanity.
Concordicus said:
On to verses 2-5. The story leaps ahead to an early stage of Earth formation, probably shortly after the collision with Theia ?which resulted in one planet and a satellite. This is not described here, but the results are.
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What results exactly are described? There's no mention of Theia or collision.
Concordicus said:
So this is at least about 9.3 billion years after verse 1 and which is called Day 1.
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So, one day equals 9.3 billion years? I thought one day was an evening and a day (24 hours) in the Bible.
Concordicus said:
(Is this what you meant by chapters?) This section describes an Earth that was devoid of light and completely covered by water. The point of reference throughout this section is from the surface of the Earth.

The story depicts the Earth shortly after the collision with Theia when the atmosphere of Earth would have been made up of considerable particulate from the collision plus gasses such carbon dioxide and other gases through which light could not penetrate. But as the particulate began to fall to the surface, the atmosphere would have eventually become translucent enough that more and more light would have been able to penetrate to the surface.
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None of that is anywhere in the Bible.
Concordicus said:
Just as an aside here, if you could currently stand on the surface of Venus at high noon, you would not be able to distinguish the sun through the Venusian atmosphere. You would, of course, be able to distinguish between day and night. Even though Venus receives 1.9 times the light that reaches Earth, the light reaching the surface of Venus is less than that which reaches the surface of the Earth. The atmosphere there now is similar to the conditions that existed on Earth as the Sun’s light began to strike the surface and the mention of night and day also shows us that the Earth was rotating.

All of these details agree with what we actually know or reasonable believe occurred in the period circa 4.5 billion years ago and following.
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None of that is in the Bible. You're tying up into a major pretzel logic.
Concordicus said:
The next section (called day two) in Genesis 1:6-8 is complicated by not fully understanding the paleo-Hebrew terms firmament and heaven. Firmament is the most complicated because it has seems to carry a dual meaning as is true of many paleo-Hebrew words. The section appears to describe a point when the Sun’s heat became warm enough to cause the water on the surface of the earth to begin to evaporate and rise into what we call sky and make clouds. In this instance firmament is used to describe the very surface of the Earth – that is, the small area just above the sea abutting the surface. But then it says that God called the firmament Heaven. In this instance, firmament and Heaven are used to denote all things above the surface of the Earth -- ad astra pro terra in a legal term

As for us, we know there is water both below the surface of the earth and in the sky above the surface of the earth. And we know that the surface of the Earth is different from the atmosphere. So this section merely describes first steps of making it possible for rain to form.
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None of that is in the Bible. Pretzel logic.
Concordicus said:
The next section (day three) Genesis 1:9-13 describes the emergence of land and the appearance of plant life. It says the surface water was gathered into one place and that dry land appeared. If the water was in one place, then the dry land was in another place, that is it was in one piece. This is a picture of Pangea, when Earth had one single land mass. Once land was present, it was possible for land plants to grow and reproduce. There was now enough light, carbon dioxide and liquid (from precipitation) for plants to photosynthesize them into Oxygen and carbohydrates.
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Why then did the continents drift apart and why is that not in the Bible?
Concordicus said:
This needed to occur as plants store carbon and release oxygen into the atmosphere. Science shows that plants appeared on earth long before any oxygen breathing land animals. But more than that, the increase in atmospheric oxygen and decrease in carbon dioxide were an essential step to continue to make the atmosphere more clear so that what was above the atmosphere could become visible, setting the stage for the next section.
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Pretzel logic. None of it in the Bible.
 
Well, Q, you do not seem to dispute the sequential step-by-step process that took the Earth from the totally dark days following the collision with Theia until the emergence of Homo sapiens. To wit: Water surface and covered in total darkness due to opaqueness of the atmosphere; a clearing of the atmosphere until enough light reach the surface to cause evaporation of water; the appearance of a land mass; the emergence of plants which converted carbon dioxide to oxygen while storing carbon followed by the appearance of land animals first reptiles and birds followed by mammals and ultimately human beings.

This was written by a human being, allegedly sometime between 1500 to 1300 BCE. You could object to that timing but in any event, much of Genesis was found in the Dead Sea scrolls which have been carbon dated to 200 BCE, so it would have been written at least before that which is 2,600 years ago. You seem mostly to object to the idea that the God you do not believe exits was unable to communicate to the writer in 21st Century language with words and concepts that were not even known to civilization at the time.

There is a deep conflict here. If there is no God, then the writer made all this up on his own and ascribed it to a God. So how could he have known 21st Century science terms and concepts? The only alternatives here are that some God told him the story or he made it up on his own.

Your other main objection is that you do not agree with my explanation of the symbolisms in Genesis 1.

So I have a challenge for you. Let's see if you can explain the process by which the Earth formed starting from the Big Bang and extending to the emergence of Homo sapiens in 757 words using only words and concepts that could be understood by a human being who lived just 2600 years ago. No need to go all the way back to 1300 BCE, 3900 years ago.

Well, Q, youi do not seem to dispute the step-by-srep process that took the Earth from the totally dark days following the collision with
Theia until the emergence of Homo sapiens. To wit: Water covered in total darkness on the sureface due to opaqueness of the atmosphere; a clearing of the atmosphere until enough light reach the surface to cause evaporation of water; the appearance of a land mass; the emergence of plants which converted converted carbon dioxide to oxygen while storing carbon followed by the appearance of land animals first reptiles and birds followed by mammals and ultimately human beings.

This was written by a human being, allegedly circa 1500 to 1300 BCE. You could object to that timing but in any event, much of Genesis was found in the Dead Sea scrolls which have been carbon dated to 200 BCE, so it would have been written before that which is 2,600 years ago. You seem mostly to object to the idea that the God you do not believe exits was unable to communicate to the writer in 21st Century language with words and concepts that were not even known to civilization at the time.
There is a deep conflict here. If there is no God, then the writer made all this up on his own and ascribed it to a God. So how could he have known 21st Century science?

So I have a challenge for you. Let's see if ypu can explain the process by which the Earth formed starting from the Big Bang and extending to the emergence of Homo sapiens in 757 words uisng only language and concepts that couild be understood by a human
 
Concordicus said:
Well, Q, you do not seem to dispute the sequential step-by-step process that took the Earth from the totally dark days following the collision with Theia until the emergence of Homo sapiens. To wit: Water surface and covered in total darkness due to opaqueness of the atmosphere; a clearing of the atmosphere until enough light reach the surface to cause evaporation of water; the appearance of a land mass; the emergence of plants which converted carbon dioxide to oxygen while storing carbon followed by the appearance of land animals first reptiles and birds followed by mammals and ultimately human beings.
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I dispute that any of that is in the Bible.
Concordicus said:
This was written by a human being, allegedly sometime between 1500 to 1300 BCE. You could object to that timing but in any event, much of Genesis was found in the Dead Sea scrolls which have been carbon dated to 200 BCE, so it would have been written at least before that which is 2,600 years ago. You seem mostly to object to the idea that the God you do not believe exits was unable to communicate to the writer in 21st Century language with words and concepts that were not even known to civilization at the time.
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What is known today could easily have been known to civilizations at the time, if indeed there was a God communicating the origins of the universe to mankind. God could have just made it so. He didn't. What is known in science does not in any way correlate with the Bible's origin stories, not even close.
Concordicus said:
There is a deep conflict here. If there is no God, then the writer made all this up on his own and ascribed it to a God.
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Exactly.
Concordicus said:
So how could he have known 21st Century science terms and concepts?
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They didn't know 21st century science, that's the problem. In fact, God could have easily explained gravity, electromagnetism, diseases, earthquakes, etc. but there is nothing of the sort. Why not?
Concordicus said:
The only alternatives here are that some God told him the story or he made it up on his own.
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Someone made it up.
Concordicus said:
Your other main objection is that you do not agree with my explanation of the symbolisms in Genesis 1.
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Of course not, you are just making up stuff that isn't in the Bible at all. You are doing exactly as I predicted, tying yourself into pretzels trying to logically explain it.
Concordicus said:
So I have a challenge for you. Let's see if you can explain the process by which the Earth formed starting from the Big Bang and extending to the emergence of Homo sapiens in 757 words using only words and concepts that could be understood by a human being who lived just 2600 years ago. No need to go all the way back to 1300 BCE, 3900 years ago.
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If I was God, I would simply implant the information and knowledge into humans brains and they would know instantaneously. Voila!
 
If we carefully pick and choose from old texts we can get a coherent history, but the hard parts have to be lied away lest the creator (of the purported timeline) fail in their mission of propaganda ad absurdum.
 
One thing is apparent, God created child abusers, lots of them, who often are hiding behind Him.

"An ABC News yearlong investigation into the 2x2 Church, a Christian sect so secretive most people have never heard of it, has uncovered allegations of widespread child sexual abuse and subsequent coverups.

During the investigation, ABC News spoke with dozens of alleged victims of child sexual abuse across more than 30 states."

abcnews.go.com

Member of secretive Christian sect sentenced to 120 years in prison

Raymond Zwiefelhofer was convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material.
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com
 
The origins of that book, and many others could be found in men sitting around a camel dung fire and telling tall tales. I doubt it's more complicated than that. No gods needed.
 
Create? No, I don't think so. I think the gods are something of a suspension system for reality. The phenomenal cosmos, or generative cosmos, are a passive outflowing or emanation from the monadic source and the gods, all the way down to the encosmic sphere or physical universe as we know it. The active process is more about putting things together, organizing reality. Not creation ex nihilo, but arranging reality from eternally pre-existing models (i.e. the Forms).
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
God is just another word for Alien or 'From somewhere else'.
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This looks as if you may be falling into the Dawkins Trap of failing to understand what religion is for. Its function is not to provide an explanation of the physical world, though it may attempt that en passant. The fundamental purpose of religion is to provide a guide to help one live one’s life. Most religions provide stories and rationales that help people come terms with the human condition, with its ups and downs, accidents of fate etc. Gods are generally presented as actors that help rationalise these experiences, in one way or another.
 
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exchemist said:
This looks as if you may be falling into the Dawkins Trap of failing to understand what religion is for. Its function is not to provide an explanation of the physical world, though it may attempt that en passant. The fundamental purpose of religion is to provide a guide to help one live one’s life. Most religions provide stories and rationales that help people come terms with the human condition, with its ups and downs, accidents of fate etc. Gods are generally presented as actors that help rationalise these experiences, in one way or another.
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Religion exists to soothe one's fear of death.
 
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