July 21, 2013

  • Genesis 1

    Let’s look at what Genesis 1 says today, shall we? Anyone with a decent background in science who looks at this critically will recognize that the creation account here is at best an allegory for the creation of the universe, and at worst a total fabrication.



    Early in the creation, God separated the waters into two distinct bodies so that the land could appear between them. He called the water below “seas” and the water above “sky”, which he held aloft using a “firmament”, which is a solid body. This is verified by the Hebrew word for it, raki’a, which means a solid body, despite the NIV’s translation of it into “expansion”.

    Why is the KJV translation more in line with the author’s intent? First, it’s the primary use of the word. Second, it reinforces the aforementioned idea of the sky ocean, which would need a solid protective layer to suspend the water if there truly were an ocean in the sky as the Bible suggests. Third, it compliments the known widespread primitive beliefs. Take the mindset of an ancient Hebrew for a moment by ignoring any contemporary understanding of the world that you may have. You glance at the sky above and observe it’s blue, like the color of water, while periodically water falls down from the sky. With no further evidence, it’s perfectly logical to conclude that there is a mass of water in the sky. If this is true, then a solid object would be required to hold that water up. Perhaps windows even open in the firmament to allow rainfall (Genesis 8:2).

    God created the sun and moon on the fourth day of the creation, but this causes a plethora of troubles since God’s first creation was light, to divide the day in light and the night in darkness. How can there be night and day without the sun, the major source of light on Earth? Again, we must take the probable mindset of the author to understand his position. Look into the sky away from the sun. It’s unreasonable to assume that the earth is bright at it’s distal boundaries because the sun is shining. On the contrary, the light shining from the giant ball of fire appears to stop at its edges. There’s no reason to assume that the sun is the source of the light. In fact, the Bible explicitly states that the sun and moon are merely symbols “to divide the day from the night”. In addition to the sun gaffe, the author also makes the mistake of counting the moon as a source of light. If we were to be rigidly technical about the Bible’s claims, this is yet another scientific error. But we’ll let it slide on it being a colloquialism.

    Another problem with the sun not appearing on the fourth day is that the plants appeared on the third. While it’s extremely likely that plants could survive a day without sunlight, it causes problems for people who like to argue that a day in Genesis is a vast expanse of time, usually in the order of millions of years. Another problem with this interpretation is that a morning and evening are described for these days, making a million year day seem quite dubious.

    God created the stars on the fourth day, but what were they and what were their purpose? Biblical authors believed that stars were small sources of light contained within the imaginary firmament covering the earth. In other words, they got no divine inspiration telling them that they were actually many many unfathomably enormous gaseous spheres just very far off. In short, the author’s celestial hypothesis was wrong on location, number and size. Verification of the location of stars can be demonstrated quite easily. After God made the sun, moon and stars, he “set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth” (17).

    So a reading of Genesis 1 makes much more sense if we see it as a primitive people trying to explain the creation of the world as they saw it, not as how it actually occurred and was then dictated by God to Moses. At this point, we can safely say that anyone trying to safely harmonize science with the book of Genesis is veraciously wasting his or her time


Comments (12)

  • Didn’t anyone wear a watch in those days? Then there are creationist Christians who believe the world is only 6,000 years old. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann counts herself among them. That theory flies in the face of one day in the creation lasting a million years. . 

  • It’s a book, written for the people of the time, and what a great way to show it.

  • Do you think there is a good textual argument for a metaphorical reading of Gen. 1? Based on stark-contrasts, parallelisms, use of vivid imagery, tight repetition of the verses, etc.

  • On the firmament, we don’t know what’s on the edge of the universe. . . but God does. Also, if it is talking about something closer, there are other ways to keep a mass suspended above the earth (see ISS). On light, check out Revelation 21:23 “The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.” Genesis 1:2 says that “the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” There is no need for sun or moon when God’s glory is present.Why would we doubt an account of creation given in the creator’s own book?

  • @FringeChristian@revelife - Apophenia /æpɵˈfiːniə/: the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.“Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.” - John AdamsWe would doubt it because the Christians’ creator didn’t write the thing. Christians [/Jews/Gentiles] wrote it. While a hell of a lot of science wasn’t available when John (the apostle, not the President) wrote Revelations, one thing we do know was available was metaphor as a literary device. I can’t help but wonder what the guys who wrote the Bible would think if they knew there were some crazies out there who took everything they wrote as literal truth. It’s like if 10,000 years from now someone discovered a copy of Lord of the Rings and assumed it was a book of natural history.

  • @ErosMuse - Thanks for the vocab lesson. Remember, the Bible isn’t a single book written by a single author during one time in history. It has over 40 different authors over a period of 2000 years. Seems later authors had no problem picking up on what the earlier authors had to say.

  • @FringeChristian@revelife - Oh, gotcha. I thought I’d covered the fact that there were multiple authors when I said, We would doubt it because the Christians’ creator didn’t write the thing. Christians [/Jews/Gentiles] wrote it” and I can’t help but wonder what the guys who wrote the Bible would think if they knew there were some crazies out there who took everything they wrote as literal truth.“ Silly me. I’ll adjust my metaphor: it’s like if 10,000 years from now someone discovered copies of the entire Choose Your Own Adventure series and assumed they were natural history books. So which Biblical authors were speaking metaphorically and which ones were speaking literally? And do please cite your source when determining which is which, I’d love to be able to duplicate your work.

  • @ErosMuse - It is not too hard, just use common sense as you would with any genre. Poetry is usually more florid and metaphorical. Examples of poetic writings in the Bible are Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Narratives are usually meant to be taken literal. In this kind of writing there are occasional metaphors, but they are explained, or at least flagged as such, like, for example, Jesus’ parables.  

  • @ErosMuse - This would probably help:- Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy- Historical narrative/epic: Genesis and the first half of Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Jonah, and possibly Acts- The Law: the last half of Exodus; also Leviticus, Deuteronomy- Wisdom: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes- Psalms: Psalms, Song of Solomon, Lamentations- Prophecy: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi- Apocalyptic: Daniel, Revelation- Gospel: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and possibly Acts- Epistle (letter): Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, JudeIt comes from this Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_genreI would say, don’t get hung up on what is literal or not literal; the focus is the message. That is, Jesus died to take our punishment for us just as predicted and then rose again, just as predicted.

  • Awww… I was hoping this would be a discussion on various makes & revisions of the SEGA Genesis 1.

  • “at best an allegory for the creation of the universe”… so it it is an allegory, how do you use science to disprove that. Like If you have read Plato’s “The Cave” how would you prove the shadow is a shadow and is not the real thing, when you haven’t even seen the real thing but only its shadow. What I am trying to get at is this: If the creations story is an allegory, then perhaps it is merely a shadow of creation, and image so we can understand in finite terms that God created the world. Of course, here I am using Plato’s The Cave because it is itself an allegory. If we apply the same to scripture, we wouldn’t be wrong, we would be as right as we can be with the understanding that we have. Now, one could argue that science is the way out of the dark cave… but what if science isn’t the way, what if it is death is the only way to know, to move past our mortal self, and the truth of real things is revealed in the afterlife? Just some thoughts.

  • The original post makes its point well enough, though I do not necessarily agree with its logic flow or conclusions.  Nonetheless, if the blogger is even a little correct then the Creation narrative would probably not properly be an allegory but an extended metaphor, as befitting the poetry genre which houses it.  As a possible extended metaphor it would describe the literal Creation event using figurative language and symbols that operate as similes.  Consequently what it describes happened, though not necessarily in quite the concrete cookbook fashion that a literalistic reading of the narrative would require.  Finally, things like light coming to exist prior to the sun is scientifically necessary as the Big Bang or the collapse of stars into galaxy-organizing black holes requre the expense of energy that generates visible radiation; and that would have happened long before our sun was formed (assuming an old-universe creation perspective). 

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