Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
I think bots write those Rapture movies.
Did God create the universe?
- Thread starter Concordicus
- Start date
Multiverse are still all offshoots of the universe we know, just with different outcomes.
The Bible does not talk about solar systems, galaxies and the universe as we know it today, so its not relevant to point out creation stories that are many centuries old when men knew nothing of the world around them. Of course, 'entities/beings/gods' have been used to explain anything and everything those men did not understand. Those men had no idea other continents on earth even existed. Their ignorance was massive.
The fact that we don't have all the answers yet is because science is still in its infancy and we just haven't garnered enough information to know everything about the universe, especially it's origins.
By invoking 'entities/beings/gods' into your explanations only serves to demonstrate, support and propagate the ignorance of the those early men.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
But if there is a multiverse would it be possible for there to be a god or gods in one?
Zero Point Native
Registered Senior Member
Well, “god” has become a relative word, so yes.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Waffling.
What does that even mean?
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
It means some folks are getting tired of being asked for evidence.
Zero Point Native
Registered Senior Member
relative
[ rel-uh-tiv ]
Phonetic (Standard)IPA
adjective
- considered in relation to something else; comparative:
the relative merits of democracy and monarchy. - existing or having its specific nature only by relation to something else; not absolute or independent:
Happiness is relative. - having relation or connection.
- having reference or regard; relevant; pertinent (usually followed by to ):
to determine the facts relative to an accident. - correspondent; proportionate:
Value is relative to demand. - (of a term, name, etc.) depending for significance upon something else:
“Better” is a relative term. - Grammar.
- noting or pertaining to a word that introduces a subordinate clause of which it is, or is a part of, the subject or predicate and that refers to an expressed or implied element of the principal clause (the antecedent), as the relative pronoun who in He's the man who saw you or the relative adverb where in This is the house where she was born.
- noting or pertaining to a relative clause.
Instead of being a twit, you could have explained what you meant, but clearly, your statement had no meaning whatsoever.
Zero Point Native
Registered Senior Member
Ok, let's try this. It means that many different people and religions have their own version, their own meaning, and their own definition of what "god" is. Like I've said in another post, the word "god" is an extremely loaded word with an extraordinary amount of baggage attached to it.
You're welcome...
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
People aren't very good at making up shit. Even after all the practice they get.
If that were the case, which is probably correct, those people would have their own versions and would believe in them vehemently and considering other religions blasphemous. That would make those religions absolute as opposed to relative. Even within the Abrahamic religions, Islamic and Christian versions of God are opposed to one another, yet each side is convinced their God is the one and only correct version. Hardly, any comparative, pertinent or significance between them.
Perhaps, the one relative thing about them is the cognitive dissonance, ignorance and delusion they both possess.
Sure, if you're a religionist who embraces faith and worship, that which turns the mind to mush, one would surely be carrying immense baggage, anxiety and confusion, a tortured mind wanting to embrace the reality all around them but are instead fueled by fear and loathing of themselves and others, instructed by their holy leaders.
For most others, the word carries little weight, if any.
Concordicus
Registered Member
There are too many replies here to deal with all of them.
One thing that interests me is how, with a lexicon nearing 800,000 words, English still provides ample opportunities to misunderstand. We still have many words in common usage which, within themselves, have different meanings, nuances and shades of emphasis. The speaker may use a word thinking one aspect of that word, while the hearer receives a different aspect of that word.
Thanks to whatever moderator split this off into a separate topic. As is wont in these kinds of discussion forums, things weave around and there was someplace in the five pages of postings, that it seemed this topic was brought up, but not developed.
The first couple of comments that struck me were from the first responses by the intriguing Pinball1970. I wondered if that is a reference to the rock opera Tommy which was released in 1969. I might not get past those. Anyway, Pinball did not bounce around in suggesting I needed some citations for my comment on the Big Bang being a scientific theory which has come under scrutiny because of its similarity to the Biblical account of creation.
I assume that most people who participate here are familiar with Big Bang, and subsequent comments seem to bear that out. I do not know of anything or anyone that I could quote or cite that would bear out that the those who object to Big Bang do so only because the alleged similarity. And, that is hardly likely the major reason anyone would object to Big Bang. Yet, it is there – the similarity between a scientific principle and a religious concept.
JamesR later gives a very good explanation of Big Bang although he refers to it both as a hypothesis and a theory. I would consider it well enough developed to have passed from hypothesis to theory status, although there do remain objections and detractors.
Pinball commented that “the Bible and it's stories are derived from earlier ancient mesopotamian myths.”
The first thing here is the use of the word myth in what seems to be the modern day pejorative connotation aimed at ancient accounts. Cambridge dictionary first defines myth as: “an ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining the early history of a group of people or about natural events and facts.” Later definitions suggest that such things are false because they include spiritual relationships.
Myths are not 100 percent false. They often depict actual happenings within the culture and the events which they observed. Their explanations may not fully meet muster in the face of modern understanding, but they do represent something that occurred prior to or simultaneously with the writing.
Agree that the ancients who lived in the Fertile Crescent all had similar legends and stories. In fact, one will find similar stories and events also in Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythology. One can also find similar stories and events among the cultures of the Americas. It is a very unsettled area of study as to whether all these myths arose from one single source in their own oral antiquity. Or did they arise separately within each of the cultures but still recounting similar events and, sometimes, even similar explanations.
So, I would not agree that the Biblical accounts are necessarily later, but would suggest they were simultaneously developed from earlier word-of-mouth accounts passed down even before humanity developed writing. When they address the same topic, it is kind of like at a family reunion where someone says, “Remember when Uncle Ralph (blah, blah, blah,)” And someone else says, “That ain’t the way I heard it” and proceeds to tell the same story with different details.
There are three main Mesopotamian origin stories – those from Babylonion lore , the Samarian version and the Atrahasis account, Atrahasis being a survivor of a deluge. None of these stories, however, has any of the detalis found in Genesis 1 – i.e. the creation of a Universe and the details of the steps the Earth took from its beginnings until shortly after Homo sapiens appeared. There are no other ancient writings which come close to the Genesis account. The only thing that resembles the Genesis account, is the account our scientists have constructed.
Myths do not form in a vacuum. Early humans observed things they could not explain and created their explanations which, as knowledge expanded, were often shown to have factual flaws. But we can usually assume they had some basis. This would account for the fact that there are many similarities in their stories. Among the main ones are a watery early Earth and a later catastrophic flood which likely happened long before any of the stories were recorded in writing.
The multitude of those cultural myths seem to weave in and out of each other in ways that seems to make it difficult to dismiss the similarities as purely coincidental. Evangelicals operate under the contention that the Bible is a uniquely inspired melding of all these myths into a compilation including only the truthful and eliminating the erroneous details.
There were other comments that I would like to address, but in a later posting.
One thing that interests me is how, with a lexicon nearing 800,000 words, English still provides ample opportunities to misunderstand. We still have many words in common usage which, within themselves, have different meanings, nuances and shades of emphasis. The speaker may use a word thinking one aspect of that word, while the hearer receives a different aspect of that word.
Thanks to whatever moderator split this off into a separate topic. As is wont in these kinds of discussion forums, things weave around and there was someplace in the five pages of postings, that it seemed this topic was brought up, but not developed.
The first couple of comments that struck me were from the first responses by the intriguing Pinball1970. I wondered if that is a reference to the rock opera Tommy which was released in 1969. I might not get past those. Anyway, Pinball did not bounce around in suggesting I needed some citations for my comment on the Big Bang being a scientific theory which has come under scrutiny because of its similarity to the Biblical account of creation.
I assume that most people who participate here are familiar with Big Bang, and subsequent comments seem to bear that out. I do not know of anything or anyone that I could quote or cite that would bear out that the those who object to Big Bang do so only because the alleged similarity. And, that is hardly likely the major reason anyone would object to Big Bang. Yet, it is there – the similarity between a scientific principle and a religious concept.
JamesR later gives a very good explanation of Big Bang although he refers to it both as a hypothesis and a theory. I would consider it well enough developed to have passed from hypothesis to theory status, although there do remain objections and detractors.
Pinball commented that “the Bible and it's stories are derived from earlier ancient mesopotamian myths.”
The first thing here is the use of the word myth in what seems to be the modern day pejorative connotation aimed at ancient accounts. Cambridge dictionary first defines myth as: “an ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining the early history of a group of people or about natural events and facts.” Later definitions suggest that such things are false because they include spiritual relationships.
Myths are not 100 percent false. They often depict actual happenings within the culture and the events which they observed. Their explanations may not fully meet muster in the face of modern understanding, but they do represent something that occurred prior to or simultaneously with the writing.
Agree that the ancients who lived in the Fertile Crescent all had similar legends and stories. In fact, one will find similar stories and events also in Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythology. One can also find similar stories and events among the cultures of the Americas. It is a very unsettled area of study as to whether all these myths arose from one single source in their own oral antiquity. Or did they arise separately within each of the cultures but still recounting similar events and, sometimes, even similar explanations.
So, I would not agree that the Biblical accounts are necessarily later, but would suggest they were simultaneously developed from earlier word-of-mouth accounts passed down even before humanity developed writing. When they address the same topic, it is kind of like at a family reunion where someone says, “Remember when Uncle Ralph (blah, blah, blah,)” And someone else says, “That ain’t the way I heard it” and proceeds to tell the same story with different details.
There are three main Mesopotamian origin stories – those from Babylonion lore , the Samarian version and the Atrahasis account, Atrahasis being a survivor of a deluge. None of these stories, however, has any of the detalis found in Genesis 1 – i.e. the creation of a Universe and the details of the steps the Earth took from its beginnings until shortly after Homo sapiens appeared. There are no other ancient writings which come close to the Genesis account. The only thing that resembles the Genesis account, is the account our scientists have constructed.
Myths do not form in a vacuum. Early humans observed things they could not explain and created their explanations which, as knowledge expanded, were often shown to have factual flaws. But we can usually assume they had some basis. This would account for the fact that there are many similarities in their stories. Among the main ones are a watery early Earth and a later catastrophic flood which likely happened long before any of the stories were recorded in writing.
The multitude of those cultural myths seem to weave in and out of each other in ways that seems to make it difficult to dismiss the similarities as purely coincidental. Evangelicals operate under the contention that the Bible is a uniquely inspired melding of all these myths into a compilation including only the truthful and eliminating the erroneous details.
There were other comments that I would like to address, but in a later posting.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
" The only thing that resembles the Genesis account, is the account our scientists have constructed."
LOL
LOL
By my count there are about a dozen chapters, 31 verses on a single page in Genesis I, and I saw no mention of a universe there, either. I hardly call that detail. It's so vague, convoluted and confusing that all kinds of meanings and explanations can be gleaned from it, all of them demanding their authors tie themselves up in logical pretzels in laughable attempts to explain away the contradictions, myths and superstitions.
Meanwhile. scientists have indeed constructed volumes upon volumes of material analyzing, testing and describing the evidence and observations of our universe and how it formed. It would appear no such entities or gods were required, in that the universe came about all on its own.
Feel free to explain how they resemble one another.
Concordicus
Registered Member
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.
Q complains that Genesis does not mention a Universe. That was not a concept within the knowledge of the people of those days. 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.
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.
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.
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. So this is at least about 9.3 billion years after verse 1 and which is called Day 1. (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(continued in part 2)
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.
Q complains that Genesis does not mention a Universe. That was not a concept within the knowledge of the people of those days. 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.
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.
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.
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. So this is at least about 9.3 billion years after verse 1 and which is called Day 1. (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(continued in part 2)
Concordicus
Registered Member
Genesis 1 and Science partr 2
In the next section (day 4) Genesis 1:14-19 describes when the atmosphere was clear enough for the Sun and the Moon and the stars finally became visible from the surface of the Earth. The passage first explains that from the positions of the Sun and Moon and stars in the sky, humans (when they eventually appeared on Earth) would be able to accurately forecast seasons and measure the passage of time, information exceedingly important to agriculture. It then says that God “made” the two great lights and also the stars. Here, again, we have an English word with several potential meanings being used to translate a paleo-Hebrew word also with several meanings.
Sometimes when we are driving down the street toward a green light, we think or even say, “I hope I make that light.” We do not mean make in the sense of constructing or fabricating the light; we mean we hope we reach the light before it changes to red. Here the word translated make also is not used in the sense of constructing or fabricating the Sun and Moon and stars; rather, it denotes their coming into view (made to be seen) from the surface of the Earth.
Taken together, these sections explain why the Earth had light on Day 1 but people, had they existed, could not have seen the Sun or the Moon until Day 4. The thing here is that science, and even common sense, tell us that what we now see in the skies were also there 4.5 billion years ago. So this part of the story cannot mean light existed on Earth before the Sun and the Moon began to shine. Young Earth Creationists try to explain these events in terms of that literal reading, fabricating silly ideas of a different light sources or a change in the speed of light. Skeptics also erroneously try to force an absolute literal meaning to the English words used.
Correctly read, the story does not say the Sun and Moon and stars did not exist on day one. We know theyh did. It merely says that from the surface of the Earth, they would not have been visible until the atmosphere was clear enough for their light to shine through.
By the beginning of Day five, Genesis 1:20-23, plant life had introduced enough oxygen into the atmosphere for oxygen breathing land animals to be able to survive. It starts with a general reference to land life coming from sea life and specially notes flying creatures, perhaps because the writer was fascinated by flight as were humans all down through the ages. And this was lucky for the plants as without animals to use the oxygen and turn it back into carbon dioxide, a super oxygenated atmosphere would have resulted, ultimately killing them.
But then we come to the verse that is translated “and God created great whales.” This just seems misplaced because this section seems to be telling about animals coming out of water life to live on land. There are at least two possible explanation of the apparent discrepancy.
First, it may be a reference to whales being land animals that returned to the sea and that appears to be an irrelevant factual reality. But this section is about reptiles and birds and whales are mammals which do not appear until the next section.
It could also be a mistranslation of the words translated great whales. The words so translated would more literally mean ferocious or huge monster. This could be a reference to dinosaurs. There were certainly dinosaurs that were huge and ferocious monsters. Dinosaurs were not even known to have existed when the first English translation of the Bible was made, so they could not have employed that concept and the biggest monsters they did know about were whales.
If the verse is translated huge and/or ferocious dinosaurs, it fits with science which concludes that the first land animals were reptiles from which flying creatures evolved. And that is what this section seems to be about.
Although there is nothing that seems to directly resemble amphibians and marsupials or insects, the next section, Day 6 in Genesis 1: 24-31 is about the emergence of mammals culminating with the emergence of mankind and the relationships among plants, animals and humans. One might consider the use of the phrase “every creeping thing” could include amphibians, marsupials and insects.
Most assuredly, 31 sentences cannot recount the entirety of the cosmogony of the Universe and Earth. Many details, major and minor, are not covered. But what is there does follow the pattern of development of the Earth that science also portrays.
Genesis says 1. that at some point the early Earth was completely dark and completely covered by water 2. that as the atmosphere began to clear, light made its way to the surface and eventually produced enough warmth to cause evaporation; 3. that land appeared as one land mass. 4. that after land was available, plants appeared and began the process of photosynthesis, taking carbon out of the air and putting oxygen into it. 5. Oxygen helped finish the process of making the atmosphere clear enough to observe the celestial skies; 6. that with oxygen in the atmosphere, animals that were able to survive out of water arose in the form of reptiles and birds; 7. that mammals became the most advanced form of life.
We had to have light, rain and land before we could have plants; we had to have plants to produce oxygen before we could have a clear sky and land animals. That is the story Genesis 1 tells.
My question at this point would be, where does this skeletal account of the way Earth went from a water covered rock to a planet teeming with many life forms differ from the account science has formed? Science has filled in many of the details. But the progression is the same and it is the only way it could have happened, with or without a God to supervise.
I cannot prove that any of this came as the result of the efforts of some entity claiming to be God. But I would still wonder how some primitive human being closer to the beginning of civilization than today could some 5,000 years ago know all of this and write it down.
In the next section (day 4) Genesis 1:14-19 describes when the atmosphere was clear enough for the Sun and the Moon and the stars finally became visible from the surface of the Earth. The passage first explains that from the positions of the Sun and Moon and stars in the sky, humans (when they eventually appeared on Earth) would be able to accurately forecast seasons and measure the passage of time, information exceedingly important to agriculture. It then says that God “made” the two great lights and also the stars. Here, again, we have an English word with several potential meanings being used to translate a paleo-Hebrew word also with several meanings.
Sometimes when we are driving down the street toward a green light, we think or even say, “I hope I make that light.” We do not mean make in the sense of constructing or fabricating the light; we mean we hope we reach the light before it changes to red. Here the word translated make also is not used in the sense of constructing or fabricating the Sun and Moon and stars; rather, it denotes their coming into view (made to be seen) from the surface of the Earth.
Taken together, these sections explain why the Earth had light on Day 1 but people, had they existed, could not have seen the Sun or the Moon until Day 4. The thing here is that science, and even common sense, tell us that what we now see in the skies were also there 4.5 billion years ago. So this part of the story cannot mean light existed on Earth before the Sun and the Moon began to shine. Young Earth Creationists try to explain these events in terms of that literal reading, fabricating silly ideas of a different light sources or a change in the speed of light. Skeptics also erroneously try to force an absolute literal meaning to the English words used.
Correctly read, the story does not say the Sun and Moon and stars did not exist on day one. We know theyh did. It merely says that from the surface of the Earth, they would not have been visible until the atmosphere was clear enough for their light to shine through.
By the beginning of Day five, Genesis 1:20-23, plant life had introduced enough oxygen into the atmosphere for oxygen breathing land animals to be able to survive. It starts with a general reference to land life coming from sea life and specially notes flying creatures, perhaps because the writer was fascinated by flight as were humans all down through the ages. And this was lucky for the plants as without animals to use the oxygen and turn it back into carbon dioxide, a super oxygenated atmosphere would have resulted, ultimately killing them.
But then we come to the verse that is translated “and God created great whales.” This just seems misplaced because this section seems to be telling about animals coming out of water life to live on land. There are at least two possible explanation of the apparent discrepancy.
First, it may be a reference to whales being land animals that returned to the sea and that appears to be an irrelevant factual reality. But this section is about reptiles and birds and whales are mammals which do not appear until the next section.
It could also be a mistranslation of the words translated great whales. The words so translated would more literally mean ferocious or huge monster. This could be a reference to dinosaurs. There were certainly dinosaurs that were huge and ferocious monsters. Dinosaurs were not even known to have existed when the first English translation of the Bible was made, so they could not have employed that concept and the biggest monsters they did know about were whales.
If the verse is translated huge and/or ferocious dinosaurs, it fits with science which concludes that the first land animals were reptiles from which flying creatures evolved. And that is what this section seems to be about.
Although there is nothing that seems to directly resemble amphibians and marsupials or insects, the next section, Day 6 in Genesis 1: 24-31 is about the emergence of mammals culminating with the emergence of mankind and the relationships among plants, animals and humans. One might consider the use of the phrase “every creeping thing” could include amphibians, marsupials and insects.
Most assuredly, 31 sentences cannot recount the entirety of the cosmogony of the Universe and Earth. Many details, major and minor, are not covered. But what is there does follow the pattern of development of the Earth that science also portrays.
Genesis says 1. that at some point the early Earth was completely dark and completely covered by water 2. that as the atmosphere began to clear, light made its way to the surface and eventually produced enough warmth to cause evaporation; 3. that land appeared as one land mass. 4. that after land was available, plants appeared and began the process of photosynthesis, taking carbon out of the air and putting oxygen into it. 5. Oxygen helped finish the process of making the atmosphere clear enough to observe the celestial skies; 6. that with oxygen in the atmosphere, animals that were able to survive out of water arose in the form of reptiles and birds; 7. that mammals became the most advanced form of life.
We had to have light, rain and land before we could have plants; we had to have plants to produce oxygen before we could have a clear sky and land animals. That is the story Genesis 1 tells.
My question at this point would be, where does this skeletal account of the way Earth went from a water covered rock to a planet teeming with many life forms differ from the account science has formed? Science has filled in many of the details. But the progression is the same and it is the only way it could have happened, with or without a God to supervise.
I cannot prove that any of this came as the result of the efforts of some entity claiming to be God. But I would still wonder how some primitive human being closer to the beginning of civilization than today could some 5,000 years ago know all of this and write it down.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
A god who hides from us is just a tricky bastard at best. The hilarious reasons I've seen for that hiding says more about the proponent than the "god".