Man Teaches God

3. In the Bible, God sets out to create mankind, and, one would assume based on the above, that He knew exactly what he was doing, what the result would be, and all the outcomes of his creation. The God that Dershowitz presents would be bored under such a view, sort of like reading books where you knew the last chapters in advance.



4. And, since God infused his human creations with both intelligence, and with free will….anything could have occurred.

Easy enough to document those attributes assigned to human beings: No knowledge before the fateful apple-eating?? Wrong. After all, God addressed the folks in the Garden of Eden, and how could He do so if they didn’t have the wherewithal to comprehend His instructions?





5. God basically put up a no-trespassing sign, Genesis 2:17 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Herein is proof that Adam had the ability to understand, and the free will to behave….or to trespass. If He hadn’t given free will, why suggest they might do something having been told not to.





6. Law Professor Dershowitz looked at the penalty announced, death, and the actual sentence the folks got from God…..which was not death!

“My favorite interpretation of God’s failure to carry out His first threat is that God himself was still learning about justice and injustice. The text of Genesis supports the view of an imperfect, learning God.”
Dershowitz, “The Genesis Of Justice,” p. 40.



More of Dershowitz’s astute argument ….next.
True, we get a sense that in Genesis, law and government were not yet hard and fast. Throughout the Old Testament, the Israelites seemed to be developing a sense of tradition and order, maybe not so much because God lacked surefootedness but because the people did.

All the drama of a people groping their way forward without God (severed from Him in the Garden) - the violence, the drunkenness, the idolatry and sorcery, and all the rest - was a behavior that continuously frustrated God.

I take issue with Dershowitz’s idea of death in the Garden, though. Death in the Bible was condemnation. It was to worship idols, or to borrow from the more powerful verbiage of the prophet, to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is a knowledge of everything, even things apart from God, rather than to eat of the tree of life, which is from God.

Of course to the Hebrew writers, death was a biological phenomenon, but it was also spiritual. In fact, life in the Spirit seemed more meaningful to the ancients than life in the flesh did. Fellowship with God was their raison d'être, their purpose for life in the flesh. “It is the Spirit who gives life,” Jesus said. “The flesh is no help at all.” (Jn 6:63).

Death was condemnation, or separation from God. The Hebrews considered idolatry their great sin. It separated them from the living God. Idolatry was death, as the Scriptures allude to frequently. While death in the minds of the Israelites was condemnation, belief led to life. “The soul who sins shall die.” (Ez 18:20) This is precisely what Paul says to the Roman Christians, that “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” (5:18) Christ’s obedience restored life to humankind.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (Jn 20:31)​

The people whom John is addressing are already alive physically; dead people don’t read manuscripts. They’re just not alive spiritually. It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.



wegie.....that may be the longest post of yours I've seen!

Excellent....well thought out and articulated.

Keep on!




I particularly liked this:
"...developing a sense of tradition and order,..."

Dennis Prager often conjectures on that very point.


"The biblical view is that God made order out of chaos. Order is defined by distinctions. One such example is male and female – the only inherent human distinction that matters to God. There are no racial or ethnic distinctions in God’s order, only the human sex distinction. The left loathes this concept of a divine order. That is the primary driver of its current attempt to obliterate the male-female distinction."
https://www.dennisprager.com/why-the-left-mocks-the-bible/
 
How about those other humans that existed when Adam and Eve with their children were supposed to be the only humans on the planet..These people are the ones that Cain was exiled to be with after killing his brother.

Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.


"Genesis is not science."

Actually, in the larger picture.....it is.


While much of the Bible is allegory and metaphor, the parallel with the modern view of evolution is truly astounding.



1. God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.” Nor is this the only introduction of light in the Genesis creation account, but it is the first, it represents the beginning of the formation of our solar system. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain! Big Bang…explosion….energy….light. But no atoms to form the sun for some time. Light…but no sun? So says science. And so says Genesis. Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter two.

a. For reference, Genesis 1, verses 1-4: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.



2. Modern science has largely revealed the earth’s history with respect to the land and the seas. Coincidently, the first chapter of the Bible relates a formation, a creation narrative, strangely similar to scientific understanding.


a. Genesis 1: 6-10…”And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dryland appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


b. “The formation of the sea as well as the land is chosen as the second stage in the creation on the Bible’s first page. Modern science reveals that land and sea certainly were in place before the next stage in the scientific account of the history of the universe.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p.54. What a coincidence….or confluence.


Curious, the author of Genesis lived in a landlocked region; and Moses wandered in the desert, not along the coast. Yet…sea and land appear in this prominent position in Genesis. Must be a coincidence….



3. The opening page of Genesis asserts that plant life appeared after the seas were formed, and names specifically, grass, herbs and fruit trees. According to the author of Genesis, this is the stage where life actually begins: this is the first mention life of any kind. Plant life. Yet, the simple forms of life that are considered plant life were not discovered until a couple of millennia after Genesis was completed. So…how come Genesis mentions grass, herbs, and fruit trees at precisely this moment on the creation narrative? Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter four.


a. Genesis 1: 11-12 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


b. “ From about 400 million years back to 600 million years, all kinds of complex multicellular life would have been confined to the waters of the earth….Our world's ecosystems depend upon photosynthesis to construct the fuel that all life runs on; in an ancient world with conditions similar to today's, you would need plants (as organisms that can make complex "fuel" molecules using simple building blocks and energy available from the environment, plants are known as one type of autotrophs, or "self-feeders") to evolve first, or there would be no bottom link to the food chain.” Biology of Animals & Plants - Origins & History of Life on Earth



4. Track the events in the creation account of Genesis and it’s amazing how closely the events conform to the current view of modern science. An explosion- the universe – oceans/land - plants- …And next, in verse 20, we find: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.


Kind of unusual…since the author of Genesis, and, if we are to believe that the first one to speak those words, Moses, didn’t really live in a habitat that one might call ‘sea side.’


Would have been understandable if this space in the Bible had, instead, have focused on the numbers of land mammals, birds, or insects found in ancient Israel, wouldn’t it? But, instead, marine organisms are specifically named: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,…’


Wouldn’t it be interesting if science find lots and lots of marine organisms extant at this point? Imagine if Genesis actually parallels the history of life on earth as expounded by science. Be a heck of a coincidence.

a. A truly important development took place some 521 million years ago, in the geological period known as the Cambrian. “The most abundant and diverse animals of Cambrian time were the trilobites. Trilobites had long antennae, compound eyes, many jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton like many of their modern arthropod relatives, such as lobsters, crabs, and insects. The Cambrian is sometimes called the "Age of Trilobites"…” Paleobiology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


b. No earlier fossils were found during Darwin’s lifetime: “If the theory [evolution] be true it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited ... the world swarmed with living creatures. [Yet] to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these earliest periods. . . I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable.” http://www.paleosoc.org/Oldest_Fossil.pdf

....life at this stage, about 500 million years ago, was entirely marine.

How could the Genesis writer have gotten this right?

That writer…he’s landlocked, knows little of diversity….what are the odds that ‘chance’ is the answer?


What are the odds?



5. The sequence of events from the creation of the universe, to the present, begin with great explosion that produces the universe, including the earth. The earth cools enough for oceans to form. The first life is plant life, able to photosynthesize, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. All sorts of simple non-plants fill the seas, most wormlike, with soft bodies. Along come the trilobites, hugely advanced, with hard bodies…and most amazingly, with true eyes! This makes them the primary predators….but, imposes enormous evolutionary pressure on the other organisms. The result is the Cambrian explosion, lots of small organisms with defensive armor and hard exoskeletons, some 521 million years ago. So says modern science.


a. “…Genesis shows remarkable accuracy when compared to the scientific story of life’s evolutionary journey. Here, the Genesis writer envisioned great creatures evolving from those tiny Cambrian forms, eventually making their way out of the sea….Genesis seems to have picked out all the events of the highest order of importance, and put them in the right order….I don’t know the odds against such a parallel- against making a successful guess at the scientific orthodoxy of three thousand year into the future from a knowledge base of nothing- but they must be extraordinarily long.” Parker, Op. Cit., p.163-164.


b. An interesting sidelight is the ‘evolution of the Bible’ itself. Christians have incorporated a great deal of science’s process. Early in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. This was a new version of the King James Bible with which added a note to Genesis, suggesting what is called the “gap theory.’ It allows that millions of years could have passed between God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, thereby freeing Genesis from the literal six-day process. “What it left was a series- the same series- of timeless events; and it is these that match the scientific account of life’s history.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p. 160.


6. Unavoidable is the recognition that, once the restrictions due to the ‘six-day’ view are removed, the order of events established by modern science conform to the sequence in the first chapter of Genesis, written millennia earlier: light from an explosion (the Big Bang), universe/earth formed, the seas from the cooling earth, plants as the first life forms; abundant sea life (the Cambrian explosion), the (evolution) of the flora and fauna we see today. Neat, eh?

Lucky guess by the author of the creation account of Genesis?


7. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.


The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.


Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!


The alternative explanation is divine intervention.


  1. “ a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.” What do scientists think about religion?
 
How about those other humans that existed when Adam and Eve with their children were supposed to be the only humans on the planet..These people are the ones that Cain was exiled to be with after killing his brother.

Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.




I found this book fascinating.


51J5EyOo8vL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg




Parker is a scientist.
 
Now let us reveiw the incestous relations of the siblings of Adam and Eve..

The rule against incest wasn't given for 2,500 years later.

I think it kind of is obvious that incest wasn't a problem at the start.
We can see it wasn't but old habits are hard to change.Essentially all humans are related since they all came from the two base pair...We are all committing incest...Oh my...
 
Now let us reveiw the incestous relations of the siblings of Adam and Eve..

The rule against incest wasn't given for 2,500 years later.

I think it kind of is obvious that incest wasn't a problem at the start.
We can see it wasn't but old habits are hard to change.Essentially all humans are related since they all came from the two base pair...We are all committing incest...Oh my...

Not exactly. The law against incest is only with close relatives. Leviticus 18 goes through that. It's not a ban on any distant relationship, which of course is why the marriage of Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus, was legal. They were both in the linage of David, and were related, but they were distant relations, not close.
 
How about those other humans that existed when Adam and Eve with their children were supposed to be the only humans on the planet..These people are the ones that Cain was exiled to be with after killing his brother.

Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
Yet that is not how the Bible describes them. Nor does the Bible state they are descendants of Adam nor do they recognize the age that Adam was when he had Cain..To much left unanswered..

The Bible is not an Ivy League university text book. It does record every single event and action. It records only what we need to know.

G-d does not need to tell us every detail. He told us what we needed to know.
 
How about those other humans that existed when Adam and Eve with their children were supposed to be the only humans on the planet..These people are the ones that Cain was exiled to be with after killing his brother.

Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
Yet that is not how the Bible describes them. Nor does the Bible state they are descendants of Adam nor do they recognize the age that Adam was when he had Cain..To much left unanswered..

The Bible is not an Ivy League university text book. It does record every single event and action. It records only what we need to know.

G-d does not need to tell us every detail. He told us what we needed to know.
I see he doesn't have time to tell the whole story.
 
Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
Yet that is not how the Bible describes them. Nor does the Bible state they are descendants of Adam nor do they recognize the age that Adam was when he had Cain..To much left unanswered..

The Bible is not an Ivy League university text book. It does record every single event and action. It records only what we need to know.

G-d does not need to tell us every detail. He told us what we needed to know.
I see he doesn't have time to tell the whole story.

Sure he has time. But he doesn't need to.

Not knowing some unimportant details, doesn't hinder us from making a decision on whether the Bible is true or not.

This is like reading some of the stories from 9/11. Do they give every single detail of what happened on that day leading up to the crash? No. They don't. Does that mean I should say "9/11 didn't happen, because the witnesses couldn't tell us what brand of coffee they had going into the building"?

Of course not. Those details are not important to the primary story.

You are free to believe or disbelieve as you wish. But saying they didn't give enough detail, when more than enough is given, is an excuse.
 
How about those other humans that existed when Adam and Eve with their children were supposed to be the only humans on the planet..These people are the ones that Cain was exiled to be with after killing his brother.

Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.

Regardless, I would argue that those are exactly the people Cain was afraid of.

First we don't know how long it was between when Cain Killed Abel, and when G-d drove him away.

Second, the statement "The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.", could be read as implying that he had other sons and daughters AFTER he had Seth. Or it could just as easily mean, Adam lived another 800 years after having Seth, AND he had other sons and daughters.

We don't know.

Third, Cain could have been approaching 130 years old, when he killed Abel. There is nothing to suggest that both were not already married to women, and had son's and daughter's, who also had kids.

Cain could just as well be worried about future relatives, such as the son's of Seth who had not been born yet, finding and killing him, as existing relatives of Abel. We don't know. Abel may have had children already, and Cain was worried about revenge.

So there is nothing in the text suggesting that there were other people besides the people spawned from Adam and Eve.

The bronze age and iron age, are not science. Go look it up. It was based on really bad opinion, that turned into 'science mythology'. It's made up.
"We don't know." "Could have been." "Could just as well."

Your post is full of conjecture.

Read the passages carefully - Genesis 4:25-26 and 5:3-5. At 130 years of age, Adam begot Seth. By then, the story of Cain and Abel is over. In 130 years since the creation of "man" i.e., Adam, Cain grew up to be a farmer and then was exiled to a hostile civilization. When Seth is born, Eve laments that her two former offspring were gone, especially Abel. Her two other previous offspring (4:25).

This is not conjecture. But then, I'm not a futurist who reads the Bible literally. You are, and so you say, "We don't know." Theorize all you wish; that's your prerogative.
 
How about those other humans that existed when Adam and Eve with their children were supposed to be the only humans on the planet..These people are the ones that Cain was exiled to be with after killing his brother.

Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.


"Genesis is not science."

Actually, in the larger picture.....it is.


While much of the Bible is allegory and metaphor, the parallel with the modern view of evolution is truly astounding.



1. God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.” Nor is this the only introduction of light in the Genesis creation account, but it is the first, it represents the beginning of the formation of our solar system. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain! Big Bang…explosion….energy….light. But no atoms to form the sun for some time. Light…but no sun? So says science. And so says Genesis. Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter two.

a. For reference, Genesis 1, verses 1-4: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.



2. Modern science has largely revealed the earth’s history with respect to the land and the seas. Coincidently, the first chapter of the Bible relates a formation, a creation narrative, strangely similar to scientific understanding.


a. Genesis 1: 6-10…”And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dryland appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


b. “The formation of the sea as well as the land is chosen as the second stage in the creation on the Bible’s first page. Modern science reveals that land and sea certainly were in place before the next stage in the scientific account of the history of the universe.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p.54. What a coincidence….or confluence.


Curious, the author of Genesis lived in a landlocked region; and Moses wandered in the desert, not along the coast. Yet…sea and land appear in this prominent position in Genesis. Must be a coincidence….



3. The opening page of Genesis asserts that plant life appeared after the seas were formed, and names specifically, grass, herbs and fruit trees. According to the author of Genesis, this is the stage where life actually begins: this is the first mention life of any kind. Plant life. Yet, the simple forms of life that are considered plant life were not discovered until a couple of millennia after Genesis was completed. So…how come Genesis mentions grass, herbs, and fruit trees at precisely this moment on the creation narrative? Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter four.


a. Genesis 1: 11-12 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


b. “ From about 400 million years back to 600 million years, all kinds of complex multicellular life would have been confined to the waters of the earth….Our world's ecosystems depend upon photosynthesis to construct the fuel that all life runs on; in an ancient world with conditions similar to today's, you would need plants (as organisms that can make complex "fuel" molecules using simple building blocks and energy available from the environment, plants are known as one type of autotrophs, or "self-feeders") to evolve first, or there would be no bottom link to the food chain.” Biology of Animals & Plants - Origins & History of Life on Earth



4. Track the events in the creation account of Genesis and it’s amazing how closely the events conform to the current view of modern science. An explosion- the universe – oceans/land - plants- …And next, in verse 20, we find: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.


Kind of unusual…since the author of Genesis, and, if we are to believe that the first one to speak those words, Moses, didn’t really live in a habitat that one might call ‘sea side.’


Would have been understandable if this space in the Bible had, instead, have focused on the numbers of land mammals, birds, or insects found in ancient Israel, wouldn’t it? But, instead, marine organisms are specifically named: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,…’


Wouldn’t it be interesting if science find lots and lots of marine organisms extant at this point? Imagine if Genesis actually parallels the history of life on earth as expounded by science. Be a heck of a coincidence.

a. A truly important development took place some 521 million years ago, in the geological period known as the Cambrian. “The most abundant and diverse animals of Cambrian time were the trilobites. Trilobites had long antennae, compound eyes, many jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton like many of their modern arthropod relatives, such as lobsters, crabs, and insects. The Cambrian is sometimes called the "Age of Trilobites"…” Paleobiology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


b. No earlier fossils were found during Darwin’s lifetime: “If the theory [evolution] be true it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited ... the world swarmed with living creatures. [Yet] to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these earliest periods. . . I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable.” http://www.paleosoc.org/Oldest_Fossil.pdf

....life at this stage, about 500 million years ago, was entirely marine.

How could the Genesis writer have gotten this right?

That writer…he’s landlocked, knows little of diversity….what are the odds that ‘chance’ is the answer?


What are the odds?



5. The sequence of events from the creation of the universe, to the present, begin with great explosion that produces the universe, including the earth. The earth cools enough for oceans to form. The first life is plant life, able to photosynthesize, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. All sorts of simple non-plants fill the seas, most wormlike, with soft bodies. Along come the trilobites, hugely advanced, with hard bodies…and most amazingly, with true eyes! This makes them the primary predators….but, imposes enormous evolutionary pressure on the other organisms. The result is the Cambrian explosion, lots of small organisms with defensive armor and hard exoskeletons, some 521 million years ago. So says modern science.


a. “…Genesis shows remarkable accuracy when compared to the scientific story of life’s evolutionary journey. Here, the Genesis writer envisioned great creatures evolving from those tiny Cambrian forms, eventually making their way out of the sea….Genesis seems to have picked out all the events of the highest order of importance, and put them in the right order….I don’t know the odds against such a parallel- against making a successful guess at the scientific orthodoxy of three thousand year into the future from a knowledge base of nothing- but they must be extraordinarily long.” Parker, Op. Cit., p.163-164.


b. An interesting sidelight is the ‘evolution of the Bible’ itself. Christians have incorporated a great deal of science’s process. Early in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. This was a new version of the King James Bible with which added a note to Genesis, suggesting what is called the “gap theory.’ It allows that millions of years could have passed between God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, thereby freeing Genesis from the literal six-day process. “What it left was a series- the same series- of timeless events; and it is these that match the scientific account of life’s history.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p. 160.


6. Unavoidable is the recognition that, once the restrictions due to the ‘six-day’ view are removed, the order of events established by modern science conform to the sequence in the first chapter of Genesis, written millennia earlier: light from an explosion (the Big Bang), universe/earth formed, the seas from the cooling earth, plants as the first life forms; abundant sea life (the Cambrian explosion), the (evolution) of the flora and fauna we see today. Neat, eh?

Lucky guess by the author of the creation account of Genesis?


7. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.


The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.


Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!


The alternative explanation is divine intervention.


  1. “ a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.” What do scientists think about religion?
For once we must agree to disagree, PC. Genesis may parallel some of the knowledge we have in these modern times, which the ancients did not have, unless the belief that the earth was created before the sun was is knowledge. It would be a fantastic knowledge, no doubt.

Earth is a term whose biblical meaning has donned a more literal cloak in the last 150 years or so, and consequently lends to a more dispensationalist, or futurist, eschatology. When Hebrew writers wrote of the earth, did they really mean the planet earth? When the earth is empty and made desolate and its inhabitants scattered, as Isaiah says in 24:1, where do the inhabitants scatter to if the earth is the entire planet? Wherever they go, they’re still on this empty and desolate earth.

In his book The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell clears up some confusion with a brief etymological overview of the verbiage:

Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words xxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, and xx. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or ӕon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time – which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that xxxx is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. Its equivalent in Latin is xxxxx, which is really the Greek xxxx in a Latin dress. The proper word for the earth, or world, is xxxxxx, which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. xxxxxxxxx is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. Xx, though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.*​

Earth is regional. The cosmology of the ancients did not extend to the Americas or Australia or the Falkland Islands. They indicate not one whit that they knew of any of these places.

God may well have created the biosphere, but that is not the story of Genesis. In Genesis, God creates covenant man called Adam, a people distinct from those who worship idols, who wander in the land of Nod.


* Greek words deleted due to USMB restrictions.
 
Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.

Regardless, I would argue that those are exactly the people Cain was afraid of.

First we don't know how long it was between when Cain Killed Abel, and when G-d drove him away.

Second, the statement "The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.", could be read as implying that he had other sons and daughters AFTER he had Seth. Or it could just as easily mean, Adam lived another 800 years after having Seth, AND he had other sons and daughters.

We don't know.

Third, Cain could have been approaching 130 years old, when he killed Abel. There is nothing to suggest that both were not already married to women, and had son's and daughter's, who also had kids.

Cain could just as well be worried about future relatives, such as the son's of Seth who had not been born yet, finding and killing him, as existing relatives of Abel. We don't know. Abel may have had children already, and Cain was worried about revenge.

So there is nothing in the text suggesting that there were other people besides the people spawned from Adam and Eve.

The bronze age and iron age, are not science. Go look it up. It was based on really bad opinion, that turned into 'science mythology'. It's made up.
"We don't know." "Could have been." "Could just as well."

Your post is full of conjecture.

Read the passages carefully - Genesis 4:25-26 and 5:3-5. At 130 years of age, Adam begot Seth. By then, the story of Cain and Abel is over. In 130 years since the creation of "man" i.e., Adam, Cain grew up to be a farmer and then was exiled to a hostile civilization. When Seth is born, Eve laments that her two former offspring were gone, especially Abel. Her two other previous offspring (4:25).

This is not conjecture. But then, I'm not a futurist who reads the Bible literally. You are, and so you say, "We don't know." Theorize all you wish; that's your prerogative.

Yeah, it is conjecture. In fact, that was the point of my post.

In order to say that I know how old Cain was, or Abel was at the time of the murder, would require me to read into the text, information that is simply not there. That position is conjecture.

In order to say there were no other relatives or offspring, would require conjecture.

In order to say conclusively that there were no other people at the time of the murder, would require information that simply isn't provided. Or assumptions about additional meaning to statements, that does not exist. That is conjecture.

This entire arc of discussion in this thread, is conjecture. The people who say it is a contradiction, is conjecture. The people who say it is not, is conjecture. All of it is conjecture.

When Seth is born, Eve laments that her two former offspring were gone, especially Abel. Her two other previous offspring (4:25).

I'm not sure why you think that makes a point. If I said something that implied, or contradicted that verse, it was unintentional. My main points that I made, do not contradict that verse.
 
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.

Regardless, I would argue that those are exactly the people Cain was afraid of.

First we don't know how long it was between when Cain Killed Abel, and when G-d drove him away.

Second, the statement "The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.", could be read as implying that he had other sons and daughters AFTER he had Seth. Or it could just as easily mean, Adam lived another 800 years after having Seth, AND he had other sons and daughters.

We don't know.

Third, Cain could have been approaching 130 years old, when he killed Abel. There is nothing to suggest that both were not already married to women, and had son's and daughter's, who also had kids.

Cain could just as well be worried about future relatives, such as the son's of Seth who had not been born yet, finding and killing him, as existing relatives of Abel. We don't know. Abel may have had children already, and Cain was worried about revenge.

So there is nothing in the text suggesting that there were other people besides the people spawned from Adam and Eve.

The bronze age and iron age, are not science. Go look it up. It was based on really bad opinion, that turned into 'science mythology'. It's made up.
"We don't know." "Could have been." "Could just as well."

Your post is full of conjecture.

Read the passages carefully - Genesis 4:25-26 and 5:3-5. At 130 years of age, Adam begot Seth. By then, the story of Cain and Abel is over. In 130 years since the creation of "man" i.e., Adam, Cain grew up to be a farmer and then was exiled to a hostile civilization. When Seth is born, Eve laments that her two former offspring were gone, especially Abel. Her two other previous offspring (4:25).

This is not conjecture. But then, I'm not a futurist who reads the Bible literally. You are, and so you say, "We don't know." Theorize all you wish; that's your prerogative.

Yeah, it is conjecture. In fact, that was the point of my post.
Enough said. You don't know if Moonglow is wrong.
 
Last edited:
Genesis 5
"After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."

You know Moonbat..... I have no problem with people who just simply don't believe the Bible. I can respect that Moonbat.....

But... if you are actually going to try and confront the Bible with supposed errors..... you need to actually read it first. Genesis 5, is only 4 pages into the Bible. Not even difficult pages, either.

So you want to try and critique the Bible, without even reading 4 pages in?

Just say you don't believe. That's fine with me. But don't make up crap, because you haven't even read the book, and have no idea what it says.
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.


"Genesis is not science."

Actually, in the larger picture.....it is.


While much of the Bible is allegory and metaphor, the parallel with the modern view of evolution is truly astounding.



1. God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.” Nor is this the only introduction of light in the Genesis creation account, but it is the first, it represents the beginning of the formation of our solar system. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain! Big Bang…explosion….energy….light. But no atoms to form the sun for some time. Light…but no sun? So says science. And so says Genesis. Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter two.

a. For reference, Genesis 1, verses 1-4: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.



2. Modern science has largely revealed the earth’s history with respect to the land and the seas. Coincidently, the first chapter of the Bible relates a formation, a creation narrative, strangely similar to scientific understanding.


a. Genesis 1: 6-10…”And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dryland appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


b. “The formation of the sea as well as the land is chosen as the second stage in the creation on the Bible’s first page. Modern science reveals that land and sea certainly were in place before the next stage in the scientific account of the history of the universe.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p.54. What a coincidence….or confluence.


Curious, the author of Genesis lived in a landlocked region; and Moses wandered in the desert, not along the coast. Yet…sea and land appear in this prominent position in Genesis. Must be a coincidence….



3. The opening page of Genesis asserts that plant life appeared after the seas were formed, and names specifically, grass, herbs and fruit trees. According to the author of Genesis, this is the stage where life actually begins: this is the first mention life of any kind. Plant life. Yet, the simple forms of life that are considered plant life were not discovered until a couple of millennia after Genesis was completed. So…how come Genesis mentions grass, herbs, and fruit trees at precisely this moment on the creation narrative? Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter four.


a. Genesis 1: 11-12 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


b. “ From about 400 million years back to 600 million years, all kinds of complex multicellular life would have been confined to the waters of the earth….Our world's ecosystems depend upon photosynthesis to construct the fuel that all life runs on; in an ancient world with conditions similar to today's, you would need plants (as organisms that can make complex "fuel" molecules using simple building blocks and energy available from the environment, plants are known as one type of autotrophs, or "self-feeders") to evolve first, or there would be no bottom link to the food chain.” Biology of Animals & Plants - Origins & History of Life on Earth



4. Track the events in the creation account of Genesis and it’s amazing how closely the events conform to the current view of modern science. An explosion- the universe – oceans/land - plants- …And next, in verse 20, we find: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.


Kind of unusual…since the author of Genesis, and, if we are to believe that the first one to speak those words, Moses, didn’t really live in a habitat that one might call ‘sea side.’


Would have been understandable if this space in the Bible had, instead, have focused on the numbers of land mammals, birds, or insects found in ancient Israel, wouldn’t it? But, instead, marine organisms are specifically named: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,…’


Wouldn’t it be interesting if science find lots and lots of marine organisms extant at this point? Imagine if Genesis actually parallels the history of life on earth as expounded by science. Be a heck of a coincidence.

a. A truly important development took place some 521 million years ago, in the geological period known as the Cambrian. “The most abundant and diverse animals of Cambrian time were the trilobites. Trilobites had long antennae, compound eyes, many jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton like many of their modern arthropod relatives, such as lobsters, crabs, and insects. The Cambrian is sometimes called the "Age of Trilobites"…” Paleobiology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


b. No earlier fossils were found during Darwin’s lifetime: “If the theory [evolution] be true it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited ... the world swarmed with living creatures. [Yet] to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these earliest periods. . . I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable.” http://www.paleosoc.org/Oldest_Fossil.pdf

....life at this stage, about 500 million years ago, was entirely marine.

How could the Genesis writer have gotten this right?

That writer…he’s landlocked, knows little of diversity….what are the odds that ‘chance’ is the answer?


What are the odds?



5. The sequence of events from the creation of the universe, to the present, begin with great explosion that produces the universe, including the earth. The earth cools enough for oceans to form. The first life is plant life, able to photosynthesize, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. All sorts of simple non-plants fill the seas, most wormlike, with soft bodies. Along come the trilobites, hugely advanced, with hard bodies…and most amazingly, with true eyes! This makes them the primary predators….but, imposes enormous evolutionary pressure on the other organisms. The result is the Cambrian explosion, lots of small organisms with defensive armor and hard exoskeletons, some 521 million years ago. So says modern science.


a. “…Genesis shows remarkable accuracy when compared to the scientific story of life’s evolutionary journey. Here, the Genesis writer envisioned great creatures evolving from those tiny Cambrian forms, eventually making their way out of the sea….Genesis seems to have picked out all the events of the highest order of importance, and put them in the right order….I don’t know the odds against such a parallel- against making a successful guess at the scientific orthodoxy of three thousand year into the future from a knowledge base of nothing- but they must be extraordinarily long.” Parker, Op. Cit., p.163-164.


b. An interesting sidelight is the ‘evolution of the Bible’ itself. Christians have incorporated a great deal of science’s process. Early in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. This was a new version of the King James Bible with which added a note to Genesis, suggesting what is called the “gap theory.’ It allows that millions of years could have passed between God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, thereby freeing Genesis from the literal six-day process. “What it left was a series- the same series- of timeless events; and it is these that match the scientific account of life’s history.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p. 160.


6. Unavoidable is the recognition that, once the restrictions due to the ‘six-day’ view are removed, the order of events established by modern science conform to the sequence in the first chapter of Genesis, written millennia earlier: light from an explosion (the Big Bang), universe/earth formed, the seas from the cooling earth, plants as the first life forms; abundant sea life (the Cambrian explosion), the (evolution) of the flora and fauna we see today. Neat, eh?

Lucky guess by the author of the creation account of Genesis?


7. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.


The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.


Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!


The alternative explanation is divine intervention.


  1. “ a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.” What do scientists think about religion?
For once we must agree to disagree, PC. Genesis may parallel some of the knowledge we have in these modern times, which the ancients did not have, unless the belief that the earth was created before the sun was is knowledge. It would be a fantastic knowledge, no doubt.

Earth is a term whose biblical meaning has donned a more literal cloak in the last 150 years or so, and consequently lends to a more dispensationalist, or futurist, eschatology. When Hebrew writers wrote of the earth, did they really mean the planet earth? When the earth is empty and made desolate and its inhabitants scattered, as Isaiah says in 24:1, where do the inhabitants scatter to if the earth is the entire planet? Wherever they go, they’re still on this empty and desolate earth.

In his book The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell clears up some confusion with a brief etymological overview of the verbiage:

Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words xxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, and xx. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or ӕon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time – which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that xxxx is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. Its equivalent in Latin is xxxxx, which is really the Greek xxxx in a Latin dress. The proper word for the earth, or world, is xxxxxx, which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. xxxxxxxxx is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. Xx, though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.*​

Earth is regional. The cosmology of the ancients did not extend to the Americas or Australia or the Falkland Islands. They indicate not one whit that they knew of any of these places.

God may well have created the biosphere, but that is not the story of Genesis. In Genesis, God creates covenant man called Adam, a people distinct from those who worship idols, who wander in the land of Nod.


* Greek words deleted due to USMB restrictions.



My post showed that Genesis parallels the steps that modern evolutionary theory espouses.


  1. The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.
  2. The images in that writer’s mind of how our planet and life came to be must have seemed curious for the knowledge and experience of the time! Yet….he presented it as though it had been dictated to him, as though he had been spoken to by God.
  3. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.
    1. Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!
  4. The alternative explanation is divine intervention.



What is our disagreement?
 
You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.

Regardless, I would argue that those are exactly the people Cain was afraid of.

First we don't know how long it was between when Cain Killed Abel, and when G-d drove him away.

Second, the statement "The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.", could be read as implying that he had other sons and daughters AFTER he had Seth. Or it could just as easily mean, Adam lived another 800 years after having Seth, AND he had other sons and daughters.

We don't know.

Third, Cain could have been approaching 130 years old, when he killed Abel. There is nothing to suggest that both were not already married to women, and had son's and daughter's, who also had kids.

Cain could just as well be worried about future relatives, such as the son's of Seth who had not been born yet, finding and killing him, as existing relatives of Abel. We don't know. Abel may have had children already, and Cain was worried about revenge.

So there is nothing in the text suggesting that there were other people besides the people spawned from Adam and Eve.

The bronze age and iron age, are not science. Go look it up. It was based on really bad opinion, that turned into 'science mythology'. It's made up.
"We don't know." "Could have been." "Could just as well."

Your post is full of conjecture.

Read the passages carefully - Genesis 4:25-26 and 5:3-5. At 130 years of age, Adam begot Seth. By then, the story of Cain and Abel is over. In 130 years since the creation of "man" i.e., Adam, Cain grew up to be a farmer and then was exiled to a hostile civilization. When Seth is born, Eve laments that her two former offspring were gone, especially Abel. Her two other previous offspring (4:25).

This is not conjecture. But then, I'm not a futurist who reads the Bible literally. You are, and so you say, "We don't know." Theorize all you wish; that's your prerogative.

Yeah, it is conjecture. In fact, that was the point of my post.
Enough said. You don't know if Moonglow is wrong.

Yeah, that was my whole point. Moonglow himself, doesn't know if moonglow is wrong.

See, I don't need to prove my case, and I'm not trying.

I'm not trying to prove the accuracy of the Bible to you, or anyone else. That's for you to decide, and I said that to Moonglow several times. I'm fine with you saying you don't believe it.

But don't come on here and say you can prove the Bible is wrong. You can't. You didn't. You made up stuff that isn't in the text, and claimed based on your conjecture, that the Bible is wrong.

No, you fail. You did not prove anything.

That's all I'm saying.
 
That is not even the part were was discussing..Carry on..

You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.


"Genesis is not science."

Actually, in the larger picture.....it is.


While much of the Bible is allegory and metaphor, the parallel with the modern view of evolution is truly astounding.



1. God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.” Nor is this the only introduction of light in the Genesis creation account, but it is the first, it represents the beginning of the formation of our solar system. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain! Big Bang…explosion….energy….light. But no atoms to form the sun for some time. Light…but no sun? So says science. And so says Genesis. Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter two.

a. For reference, Genesis 1, verses 1-4: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.



2. Modern science has largely revealed the earth’s history with respect to the land and the seas. Coincidently, the first chapter of the Bible relates a formation, a creation narrative, strangely similar to scientific understanding.


a. Genesis 1: 6-10…”And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dryland appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


b. “The formation of the sea as well as the land is chosen as the second stage in the creation on the Bible’s first page. Modern science reveals that land and sea certainly were in place before the next stage in the scientific account of the history of the universe.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p.54. What a coincidence….or confluence.


Curious, the author of Genesis lived in a landlocked region; and Moses wandered in the desert, not along the coast. Yet…sea and land appear in this prominent position in Genesis. Must be a coincidence….



3. The opening page of Genesis asserts that plant life appeared after the seas were formed, and names specifically, grass, herbs and fruit trees. According to the author of Genesis, this is the stage where life actually begins: this is the first mention life of any kind. Plant life. Yet, the simple forms of life that are considered plant life were not discovered until a couple of millennia after Genesis was completed. So…how come Genesis mentions grass, herbs, and fruit trees at precisely this moment on the creation narrative? Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter four.


a. Genesis 1: 11-12 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


b. “ From about 400 million years back to 600 million years, all kinds of complex multicellular life would have been confined to the waters of the earth….Our world's ecosystems depend upon photosynthesis to construct the fuel that all life runs on; in an ancient world with conditions similar to today's, you would need plants (as organisms that can make complex "fuel" molecules using simple building blocks and energy available from the environment, plants are known as one type of autotrophs, or "self-feeders") to evolve first, or there would be no bottom link to the food chain.” Biology of Animals & Plants - Origins & History of Life on Earth



4. Track the events in the creation account of Genesis and it’s amazing how closely the events conform to the current view of modern science. An explosion- the universe – oceans/land - plants- …And next, in verse 20, we find: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.


Kind of unusual…since the author of Genesis, and, if we are to believe that the first one to speak those words, Moses, didn’t really live in a habitat that one might call ‘sea side.’


Would have been understandable if this space in the Bible had, instead, have focused on the numbers of land mammals, birds, or insects found in ancient Israel, wouldn’t it? But, instead, marine organisms are specifically named: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,…’


Wouldn’t it be interesting if science find lots and lots of marine organisms extant at this point? Imagine if Genesis actually parallels the history of life on earth as expounded by science. Be a heck of a coincidence.

a. A truly important development took place some 521 million years ago, in the geological period known as the Cambrian. “The most abundant and diverse animals of Cambrian time were the trilobites. Trilobites had long antennae, compound eyes, many jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton like many of their modern arthropod relatives, such as lobsters, crabs, and insects. The Cambrian is sometimes called the "Age of Trilobites"…” Paleobiology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


b. No earlier fossils were found during Darwin’s lifetime: “If the theory [evolution] be true it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited ... the world swarmed with living creatures. [Yet] to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these earliest periods. . . I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable.” http://www.paleosoc.org/Oldest_Fossil.pdf

....life at this stage, about 500 million years ago, was entirely marine.

How could the Genesis writer have gotten this right?

That writer…he’s landlocked, knows little of diversity….what are the odds that ‘chance’ is the answer?


What are the odds?



5. The sequence of events from the creation of the universe, to the present, begin with great explosion that produces the universe, including the earth. The earth cools enough for oceans to form. The first life is plant life, able to photosynthesize, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. All sorts of simple non-plants fill the seas, most wormlike, with soft bodies. Along come the trilobites, hugely advanced, with hard bodies…and most amazingly, with true eyes! This makes them the primary predators….but, imposes enormous evolutionary pressure on the other organisms. The result is the Cambrian explosion, lots of small organisms with defensive armor and hard exoskeletons, some 521 million years ago. So says modern science.


a. “…Genesis shows remarkable accuracy when compared to the scientific story of life’s evolutionary journey. Here, the Genesis writer envisioned great creatures evolving from those tiny Cambrian forms, eventually making their way out of the sea….Genesis seems to have picked out all the events of the highest order of importance, and put them in the right order….I don’t know the odds against such a parallel- against making a successful guess at the scientific orthodoxy of three thousand year into the future from a knowledge base of nothing- but they must be extraordinarily long.” Parker, Op. Cit., p.163-164.


b. An interesting sidelight is the ‘evolution of the Bible’ itself. Christians have incorporated a great deal of science’s process. Early in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. This was a new version of the King James Bible with which added a note to Genesis, suggesting what is called the “gap theory.’ It allows that millions of years could have passed between God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, thereby freeing Genesis from the literal six-day process. “What it left was a series- the same series- of timeless events; and it is these that match the scientific account of life’s history.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p. 160.


6. Unavoidable is the recognition that, once the restrictions due to the ‘six-day’ view are removed, the order of events established by modern science conform to the sequence in the first chapter of Genesis, written millennia earlier: light from an explosion (the Big Bang), universe/earth formed, the seas from the cooling earth, plants as the first life forms; abundant sea life (the Cambrian explosion), the (evolution) of the flora and fauna we see today. Neat, eh?

Lucky guess by the author of the creation account of Genesis?


7. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.


The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.


Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!


The alternative explanation is divine intervention.


  1. “ a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.” What do scientists think about religion?
For once we must agree to disagree, PC. Genesis may parallel some of the knowledge we have in these modern times, which the ancients did not have, unless the belief that the earth was created before the sun was is knowledge. It would be a fantastic knowledge, no doubt.

Earth is a term whose biblical meaning has donned a more literal cloak in the last 150 years or so, and consequently lends to a more dispensationalist, or futurist, eschatology. When Hebrew writers wrote of the earth, did they really mean the planet earth? When the earth is empty and made desolate and its inhabitants scattered, as Isaiah says in 24:1, where do the inhabitants scatter to if the earth is the entire planet? Wherever they go, they’re still on this empty and desolate earth.

In his book The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell clears up some confusion with a brief etymological overview of the verbiage:

Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words xxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, and xx. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or ӕon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time – which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that xxxx is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. Its equivalent in Latin is xxxxx, which is really the Greek xxxx in a Latin dress. The proper word for the earth, or world, is xxxxxx, which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. xxxxxxxxx is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. Xx, though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.*​

Earth is regional. The cosmology of the ancients did not extend to the Americas or Australia or the Falkland Islands. They indicate not one whit that they knew of any of these places.

God may well have created the biosphere, but that is not the story of Genesis. In Genesis, God creates covenant man called Adam, a people distinct from those who worship idols, who wander in the land of Nod.


* Greek words deleted due to USMB restrictions.



My post showed that Genesis parallels the steps that modern evolutionary theory espouses.


  1. The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.
  2. The images in that writer’s mind of how our planet and life came to be must have seemed curious for the knowledge and experience of the time! Yet….he presented it as though it had been dictated to him, as though he had been spoken to by God.
  3. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.
    1. Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!
  4. The alternative explanation is divine intervention.



What is our disagreement?
On the fourth day, God created the sun (1:14-19). Science tells us that the earth formed after the sun.

Did the ancients even have a word for cloud? Not a cloud in which God accompanies His people, but a puff of condensation in the troposphere. In Genesis, we read of clouds not as clouds per se but rather as “waters that were above the expanse.”

It's as if naming conventions and taxonomy were not even a concern.

Fundamentally, we agree on creation and the Creator. I just don't see that the ancients were at all concerned with science.
 
You brought up that Cain, and how there were other people, and said how can that be when there was only Adam and Eve to start with.

...... Adam and Eve lived 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

That's where the other people came from.

What part of this is confusing to you?
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.


"Genesis is not science."

Actually, in the larger picture.....it is.


While much of the Bible is allegory and metaphor, the parallel with the modern view of evolution is truly astounding.



1. God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.” Nor is this the only introduction of light in the Genesis creation account, but it is the first, it represents the beginning of the formation of our solar system. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain! Big Bang…explosion….energy….light. But no atoms to form the sun for some time. Light…but no sun? So says science. And so says Genesis. Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter two.

a. For reference, Genesis 1, verses 1-4: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.



2. Modern science has largely revealed the earth’s history with respect to the land and the seas. Coincidently, the first chapter of the Bible relates a formation, a creation narrative, strangely similar to scientific understanding.


a. Genesis 1: 6-10…”And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dryland appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


b. “The formation of the sea as well as the land is chosen as the second stage in the creation on the Bible’s first page. Modern science reveals that land and sea certainly were in place before the next stage in the scientific account of the history of the universe.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p.54. What a coincidence….or confluence.


Curious, the author of Genesis lived in a landlocked region; and Moses wandered in the desert, not along the coast. Yet…sea and land appear in this prominent position in Genesis. Must be a coincidence….



3. The opening page of Genesis asserts that plant life appeared after the seas were formed, and names specifically, grass, herbs and fruit trees. According to the author of Genesis, this is the stage where life actually begins: this is the first mention life of any kind. Plant life. Yet, the simple forms of life that are considered plant life were not discovered until a couple of millennia after Genesis was completed. So…how come Genesis mentions grass, herbs, and fruit trees at precisely this moment on the creation narrative? Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter four.


a. Genesis 1: 11-12 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


b. “ From about 400 million years back to 600 million years, all kinds of complex multicellular life would have been confined to the waters of the earth….Our world's ecosystems depend upon photosynthesis to construct the fuel that all life runs on; in an ancient world with conditions similar to today's, you would need plants (as organisms that can make complex "fuel" molecules using simple building blocks and energy available from the environment, plants are known as one type of autotrophs, or "self-feeders") to evolve first, or there would be no bottom link to the food chain.” Biology of Animals & Plants - Origins & History of Life on Earth



4. Track the events in the creation account of Genesis and it’s amazing how closely the events conform to the current view of modern science. An explosion- the universe – oceans/land - plants- …And next, in verse 20, we find: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.


Kind of unusual…since the author of Genesis, and, if we are to believe that the first one to speak those words, Moses, didn’t really live in a habitat that one might call ‘sea side.’


Would have been understandable if this space in the Bible had, instead, have focused on the numbers of land mammals, birds, or insects found in ancient Israel, wouldn’t it? But, instead, marine organisms are specifically named: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,…’


Wouldn’t it be interesting if science find lots and lots of marine organisms extant at this point? Imagine if Genesis actually parallels the history of life on earth as expounded by science. Be a heck of a coincidence.

a. A truly important development took place some 521 million years ago, in the geological period known as the Cambrian. “The most abundant and diverse animals of Cambrian time were the trilobites. Trilobites had long antennae, compound eyes, many jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton like many of their modern arthropod relatives, such as lobsters, crabs, and insects. The Cambrian is sometimes called the "Age of Trilobites"…” Paleobiology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


b. No earlier fossils were found during Darwin’s lifetime: “If the theory [evolution] be true it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited ... the world swarmed with living creatures. [Yet] to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these earliest periods. . . I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable.” http://www.paleosoc.org/Oldest_Fossil.pdf

....life at this stage, about 500 million years ago, was entirely marine.

How could the Genesis writer have gotten this right?

That writer…he’s landlocked, knows little of diversity….what are the odds that ‘chance’ is the answer?


What are the odds?



5. The sequence of events from the creation of the universe, to the present, begin with great explosion that produces the universe, including the earth. The earth cools enough for oceans to form. The first life is plant life, able to photosynthesize, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. All sorts of simple non-plants fill the seas, most wormlike, with soft bodies. Along come the trilobites, hugely advanced, with hard bodies…and most amazingly, with true eyes! This makes them the primary predators….but, imposes enormous evolutionary pressure on the other organisms. The result is the Cambrian explosion, lots of small organisms with defensive armor and hard exoskeletons, some 521 million years ago. So says modern science.


a. “…Genesis shows remarkable accuracy when compared to the scientific story of life’s evolutionary journey. Here, the Genesis writer envisioned great creatures evolving from those tiny Cambrian forms, eventually making their way out of the sea….Genesis seems to have picked out all the events of the highest order of importance, and put them in the right order….I don’t know the odds against such a parallel- against making a successful guess at the scientific orthodoxy of three thousand year into the future from a knowledge base of nothing- but they must be extraordinarily long.” Parker, Op. Cit., p.163-164.


b. An interesting sidelight is the ‘evolution of the Bible’ itself. Christians have incorporated a great deal of science’s process. Early in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. This was a new version of the King James Bible with which added a note to Genesis, suggesting what is called the “gap theory.’ It allows that millions of years could have passed between God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, thereby freeing Genesis from the literal six-day process. “What it left was a series- the same series- of timeless events; and it is these that match the scientific account of life’s history.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p. 160.


6. Unavoidable is the recognition that, once the restrictions due to the ‘six-day’ view are removed, the order of events established by modern science conform to the sequence in the first chapter of Genesis, written millennia earlier: light from an explosion (the Big Bang), universe/earth formed, the seas from the cooling earth, plants as the first life forms; abundant sea life (the Cambrian explosion), the (evolution) of the flora and fauna we see today. Neat, eh?

Lucky guess by the author of the creation account of Genesis?


7. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.


The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.


Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!


The alternative explanation is divine intervention.


  1. “ a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.” What do scientists think about religion?
For once we must agree to disagree, PC. Genesis may parallel some of the knowledge we have in these modern times, which the ancients did not have, unless the belief that the earth was created before the sun was is knowledge. It would be a fantastic knowledge, no doubt.

Earth is a term whose biblical meaning has donned a more literal cloak in the last 150 years or so, and consequently lends to a more dispensationalist, or futurist, eschatology. When Hebrew writers wrote of the earth, did they really mean the planet earth? When the earth is empty and made desolate and its inhabitants scattered, as Isaiah says in 24:1, where do the inhabitants scatter to if the earth is the entire planet? Wherever they go, they’re still on this empty and desolate earth.

In his book The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell clears up some confusion with a brief etymological overview of the verbiage:

Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words xxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, and xx. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or ӕon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time – which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that xxxx is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. Its equivalent in Latin is xxxxx, which is really the Greek xxxx in a Latin dress. The proper word for the earth, or world, is xxxxxx, which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. xxxxxxxxx is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. Xx, though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.*​

Earth is regional. The cosmology of the ancients did not extend to the Americas or Australia or the Falkland Islands. They indicate not one whit that they knew of any of these places.

God may well have created the biosphere, but that is not the story of Genesis. In Genesis, God creates covenant man called Adam, a people distinct from those who worship idols, who wander in the land of Nod.


* Greek words deleted due to USMB restrictions.



My post showed that Genesis parallels the steps that modern evolutionary theory espouses.


  1. The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.
  2. The images in that writer’s mind of how our planet and life came to be must have seemed curious for the knowledge and experience of the time! Yet….he presented it as though it had been dictated to him, as though he had been spoken to by God.
  3. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.
    1. Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!
  4. The alternative explanation is divine intervention.



What is our disagreement?
On the fourth day, God created the sun (1:14-19). Science tells us that the earth formed after the sun.

Did the ancients even have a word for cloud? Not a cloud in which God accompanies His people, but a puff of condensation in the troposphere. In Genesis, we read of clouds not as clouds per se but rather as “waters that were above the expanse.”

It's as if naming conventions and taxonomy were not even a concern.

Fundamentally, we agree on creation and the Creator. I just don't see that the ancients were at all concerned with science.



"God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.”
 
That's not where the people came from whom Cain feared might kill him. Adam lived another 800 years after Seth, who came after Cain. It was before this additional 800 years - before Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters - that Cain encountered other people. These people of Nod were wanderers; they never knew God.

Note also that one of Cain's more immediate descendants - Tubal-cain - fashioned implements of bronze and iron (Gn 4:17-22). People were populating the earth long before the Bronzed Age or the Iron Age.

Genesis is not science.


"Genesis is not science."

Actually, in the larger picture.....it is.


While much of the Bible is allegory and metaphor, the parallel with the modern view of evolution is truly astounding.



1. God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.” Nor is this the only introduction of light in the Genesis creation account, but it is the first, it represents the beginning of the formation of our solar system. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain! Big Bang…explosion….energy….light. But no atoms to form the sun for some time. Light…but no sun? So says science. And so says Genesis. Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter two.

a. For reference, Genesis 1, verses 1-4: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.



2. Modern science has largely revealed the earth’s history with respect to the land and the seas. Coincidently, the first chapter of the Bible relates a formation, a creation narrative, strangely similar to scientific understanding.


a. Genesis 1: 6-10…”And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dryland appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


b. “The formation of the sea as well as the land is chosen as the second stage in the creation on the Bible’s first page. Modern science reveals that land and sea certainly were in place before the next stage in the scientific account of the history of the universe.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p.54. What a coincidence….or confluence.


Curious, the author of Genesis lived in a landlocked region; and Moses wandered in the desert, not along the coast. Yet…sea and land appear in this prominent position in Genesis. Must be a coincidence….



3. The opening page of Genesis asserts that plant life appeared after the seas were formed, and names specifically, grass, herbs and fruit trees. According to the author of Genesis, this is the stage where life actually begins: this is the first mention life of any kind. Plant life. Yet, the simple forms of life that are considered plant life were not discovered until a couple of millennia after Genesis was completed. So…how come Genesis mentions grass, herbs, and fruit trees at precisely this moment on the creation narrative? Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter four.


a. Genesis 1: 11-12 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


b. “ From about 400 million years back to 600 million years, all kinds of complex multicellular life would have been confined to the waters of the earth….Our world's ecosystems depend upon photosynthesis to construct the fuel that all life runs on; in an ancient world with conditions similar to today's, you would need plants (as organisms that can make complex "fuel" molecules using simple building blocks and energy available from the environment, plants are known as one type of autotrophs, or "self-feeders") to evolve first, or there would be no bottom link to the food chain.” Biology of Animals & Plants - Origins & History of Life on Earth



4. Track the events in the creation account of Genesis and it’s amazing how closely the events conform to the current view of modern science. An explosion- the universe – oceans/land - plants- …And next, in verse 20, we find: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.


Kind of unusual…since the author of Genesis, and, if we are to believe that the first one to speak those words, Moses, didn’t really live in a habitat that one might call ‘sea side.’


Would have been understandable if this space in the Bible had, instead, have focused on the numbers of land mammals, birds, or insects found in ancient Israel, wouldn’t it? But, instead, marine organisms are specifically named: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,…’


Wouldn’t it be interesting if science find lots and lots of marine organisms extant at this point? Imagine if Genesis actually parallels the history of life on earth as expounded by science. Be a heck of a coincidence.

a. A truly important development took place some 521 million years ago, in the geological period known as the Cambrian. “The most abundant and diverse animals of Cambrian time were the trilobites. Trilobites had long antennae, compound eyes, many jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton like many of their modern arthropod relatives, such as lobsters, crabs, and insects. The Cambrian is sometimes called the "Age of Trilobites"…” Paleobiology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


b. No earlier fossils were found during Darwin’s lifetime: “If the theory [evolution] be true it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited ... the world swarmed with living creatures. [Yet] to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these earliest periods. . . I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable.” http://www.paleosoc.org/Oldest_Fossil.pdf

....life at this stage, about 500 million years ago, was entirely marine.

How could the Genesis writer have gotten this right?

That writer…he’s landlocked, knows little of diversity….what are the odds that ‘chance’ is the answer?


What are the odds?



5. The sequence of events from the creation of the universe, to the present, begin with great explosion that produces the universe, including the earth. The earth cools enough for oceans to form. The first life is plant life, able to photosynthesize, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. All sorts of simple non-plants fill the seas, most wormlike, with soft bodies. Along come the trilobites, hugely advanced, with hard bodies…and most amazingly, with true eyes! This makes them the primary predators….but, imposes enormous evolutionary pressure on the other organisms. The result is the Cambrian explosion, lots of small organisms with defensive armor and hard exoskeletons, some 521 million years ago. So says modern science.


a. “…Genesis shows remarkable accuracy when compared to the scientific story of life’s evolutionary journey. Here, the Genesis writer envisioned great creatures evolving from those tiny Cambrian forms, eventually making their way out of the sea….Genesis seems to have picked out all the events of the highest order of importance, and put them in the right order….I don’t know the odds against such a parallel- against making a successful guess at the scientific orthodoxy of three thousand year into the future from a knowledge base of nothing- but they must be extraordinarily long.” Parker, Op. Cit., p.163-164.


b. An interesting sidelight is the ‘evolution of the Bible’ itself. Christians have incorporated a great deal of science’s process. Early in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. This was a new version of the King James Bible with which added a note to Genesis, suggesting what is called the “gap theory.’ It allows that millions of years could have passed between God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, thereby freeing Genesis from the literal six-day process. “What it left was a series- the same series- of timeless events; and it is these that match the scientific account of life’s history.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p. 160.


6. Unavoidable is the recognition that, once the restrictions due to the ‘six-day’ view are removed, the order of events established by modern science conform to the sequence in the first chapter of Genesis, written millennia earlier: light from an explosion (the Big Bang), universe/earth formed, the seas from the cooling earth, plants as the first life forms; abundant sea life (the Cambrian explosion), the (evolution) of the flora and fauna we see today. Neat, eh?

Lucky guess by the author of the creation account of Genesis?


7. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.


The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.


Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!


The alternative explanation is divine intervention.


  1. “ a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.” What do scientists think about religion?
For once we must agree to disagree, PC. Genesis may parallel some of the knowledge we have in these modern times, which the ancients did not have, unless the belief that the earth was created before the sun was is knowledge. It would be a fantastic knowledge, no doubt.

Earth is a term whose biblical meaning has donned a more literal cloak in the last 150 years or so, and consequently lends to a more dispensationalist, or futurist, eschatology. When Hebrew writers wrote of the earth, did they really mean the planet earth? When the earth is empty and made desolate and its inhabitants scattered, as Isaiah says in 24:1, where do the inhabitants scatter to if the earth is the entire planet? Wherever they go, they’re still on this empty and desolate earth.

In his book The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell clears up some confusion with a brief etymological overview of the verbiage:

Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words xxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, and xx. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or ӕon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time – which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that xxxx is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. Its equivalent in Latin is xxxxx, which is really the Greek xxxx in a Latin dress. The proper word for the earth, or world, is xxxxxx, which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. xxxxxxxxx is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. Xx, though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.*​

Earth is regional. The cosmology of the ancients did not extend to the Americas or Australia or the Falkland Islands. They indicate not one whit that they knew of any of these places.

God may well have created the biosphere, but that is not the story of Genesis. In Genesis, God creates covenant man called Adam, a people distinct from those who worship idols, who wander in the land of Nod.


* Greek words deleted due to USMB restrictions.



My post showed that Genesis parallels the steps that modern evolutionary theory espouses.


  1. The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.
  2. The images in that writer’s mind of how our planet and life came to be must have seemed curious for the knowledge and experience of the time! Yet….he presented it as though it had been dictated to him, as though he had been spoken to by God.
  3. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.
    1. Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!
  4. The alternative explanation is divine intervention.



What is our disagreement?
On the fourth day, God created the sun (1:14-19). Science tells us that the earth formed after the sun.

Did the ancients even have a word for cloud? Not a cloud in which God accompanies His people, but a puff of condensation in the troposphere. In Genesis, we read of clouds not as clouds per se but rather as “waters that were above the expanse.”

It's as if naming conventions and taxonomy were not even a concern.

Fundamentally, we agree on creation and the Creator. I just don't see that the ancients were at all concerned with science.



"God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.”
Regardless, He created the sun on the fourth day.
 
"Genesis is not science."

Actually, in the larger picture.....it is.


While much of the Bible is allegory and metaphor, the parallel with the modern view of evolution is truly astounding.



1. God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.” Nor is this the only introduction of light in the Genesis creation account, but it is the first, it represents the beginning of the formation of our solar system. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain! Big Bang…explosion….energy….light. But no atoms to form the sun for some time. Light…but no sun? So says science. And so says Genesis. Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter two.

a. For reference, Genesis 1, verses 1-4: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.



2. Modern science has largely revealed the earth’s history with respect to the land and the seas. Coincidently, the first chapter of the Bible relates a formation, a creation narrative, strangely similar to scientific understanding.


a. Genesis 1: 6-10…”And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dryland appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


b. “The formation of the sea as well as the land is chosen as the second stage in the creation on the Bible’s first page. Modern science reveals that land and sea certainly were in place before the next stage in the scientific account of the history of the universe.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p.54. What a coincidence….or confluence.


Curious, the author of Genesis lived in a landlocked region; and Moses wandered in the desert, not along the coast. Yet…sea and land appear in this prominent position in Genesis. Must be a coincidence….



3. The opening page of Genesis asserts that plant life appeared after the seas were formed, and names specifically, grass, herbs and fruit trees. According to the author of Genesis, this is the stage where life actually begins: this is the first mention life of any kind. Plant life. Yet, the simple forms of life that are considered plant life were not discovered until a couple of millennia after Genesis was completed. So…how come Genesis mentions grass, herbs, and fruit trees at precisely this moment on the creation narrative? Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” chapter four.


a. Genesis 1: 11-12 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


b. “ From about 400 million years back to 600 million years, all kinds of complex multicellular life would have been confined to the waters of the earth….Our world's ecosystems depend upon photosynthesis to construct the fuel that all life runs on; in an ancient world with conditions similar to today's, you would need plants (as organisms that can make complex "fuel" molecules using simple building blocks and energy available from the environment, plants are known as one type of autotrophs, or "self-feeders") to evolve first, or there would be no bottom link to the food chain.” Biology of Animals & Plants - Origins & History of Life on Earth



4. Track the events in the creation account of Genesis and it’s amazing how closely the events conform to the current view of modern science. An explosion- the universe – oceans/land - plants- …And next, in verse 20, we find: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.


Kind of unusual…since the author of Genesis, and, if we are to believe that the first one to speak those words, Moses, didn’t really live in a habitat that one might call ‘sea side.’


Would have been understandable if this space in the Bible had, instead, have focused on the numbers of land mammals, birds, or insects found in ancient Israel, wouldn’t it? But, instead, marine organisms are specifically named: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,…’


Wouldn’t it be interesting if science find lots and lots of marine organisms extant at this point? Imagine if Genesis actually parallels the history of life on earth as expounded by science. Be a heck of a coincidence.

a. A truly important development took place some 521 million years ago, in the geological period known as the Cambrian. “The most abundant and diverse animals of Cambrian time were the trilobites. Trilobites had long antennae, compound eyes, many jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton like many of their modern arthropod relatives, such as lobsters, crabs, and insects. The Cambrian is sometimes called the "Age of Trilobites"…” Paleobiology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History


b. No earlier fossils were found during Darwin’s lifetime: “If the theory [evolution] be true it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited ... the world swarmed with living creatures. [Yet] to the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these earliest periods. . . I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable.” http://www.paleosoc.org/Oldest_Fossil.pdf

....life at this stage, about 500 million years ago, was entirely marine.

How could the Genesis writer have gotten this right?

That writer…he’s landlocked, knows little of diversity….what are the odds that ‘chance’ is the answer?


What are the odds?



5. The sequence of events from the creation of the universe, to the present, begin with great explosion that produces the universe, including the earth. The earth cools enough for oceans to form. The first life is plant life, able to photosynthesize, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. All sorts of simple non-plants fill the seas, most wormlike, with soft bodies. Along come the trilobites, hugely advanced, with hard bodies…and most amazingly, with true eyes! This makes them the primary predators….but, imposes enormous evolutionary pressure on the other organisms. The result is the Cambrian explosion, lots of small organisms with defensive armor and hard exoskeletons, some 521 million years ago. So says modern science.


a. “…Genesis shows remarkable accuracy when compared to the scientific story of life’s evolutionary journey. Here, the Genesis writer envisioned great creatures evolving from those tiny Cambrian forms, eventually making their way out of the sea….Genesis seems to have picked out all the events of the highest order of importance, and put them in the right order….I don’t know the odds against such a parallel- against making a successful guess at the scientific orthodoxy of three thousand year into the future from a knowledge base of nothing- but they must be extraordinarily long.” Parker, Op. Cit., p.163-164.


b. An interesting sidelight is the ‘evolution of the Bible’ itself. Christians have incorporated a great deal of science’s process. Early in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. This was a new version of the King James Bible with which added a note to Genesis, suggesting what is called the “gap theory.’ It allows that millions of years could have passed between God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, thereby freeing Genesis from the literal six-day process. “What it left was a series- the same series- of timeless events; and it is these that match the scientific account of life’s history.” Parker, “The Genesis Enigma,” p. 160.


6. Unavoidable is the recognition that, once the restrictions due to the ‘six-day’ view are removed, the order of events established by modern science conform to the sequence in the first chapter of Genesis, written millennia earlier: light from an explosion (the Big Bang), universe/earth formed, the seas from the cooling earth, plants as the first life forms; abundant sea life (the Cambrian explosion), the (evolution) of the flora and fauna we see today. Neat, eh?

Lucky guess by the author of the creation account of Genesis?


7. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.


The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.


Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!


The alternative explanation is divine intervention.


  1. “ a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.” What do scientists think about religion?
For once we must agree to disagree, PC. Genesis may parallel some of the knowledge we have in these modern times, which the ancients did not have, unless the belief that the earth was created before the sun was is knowledge. It would be a fantastic knowledge, no doubt.

Earth is a term whose biblical meaning has donned a more literal cloak in the last 150 years or so, and consequently lends to a more dispensationalist, or futurist, eschatology. When Hebrew writers wrote of the earth, did they really mean the planet earth? When the earth is empty and made desolate and its inhabitants scattered, as Isaiah says in 24:1, where do the inhabitants scatter to if the earth is the entire planet? Wherever they go, they’re still on this empty and desolate earth.

In his book The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell clears up some confusion with a brief etymological overview of the verbiage:

Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words xxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, and xx. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or ӕon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time – which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that xxxx is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. Its equivalent in Latin is xxxxx, which is really the Greek xxxx in a Latin dress. The proper word for the earth, or world, is xxxxxx, which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. xxxxxxxxx is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. Xx, though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.*​

Earth is regional. The cosmology of the ancients did not extend to the Americas or Australia or the Falkland Islands. They indicate not one whit that they knew of any of these places.

God may well have created the biosphere, but that is not the story of Genesis. In Genesis, God creates covenant man called Adam, a people distinct from those who worship idols, who wander in the land of Nod.


* Greek words deleted due to USMB restrictions.



My post showed that Genesis parallels the steps that modern evolutionary theory espouses.


  1. The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.
  2. The images in that writer’s mind of how our planet and life came to be must have seemed curious for the knowledge and experience of the time! Yet….he presented it as though it had been dictated to him, as though he had been spoken to by God.
  3. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.
    1. Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!
  4. The alternative explanation is divine intervention.



What is our disagreement?
On the fourth day, God created the sun (1:14-19). Science tells us that the earth formed after the sun.

Did the ancients even have a word for cloud? Not a cloud in which God accompanies His people, but a puff of condensation in the troposphere. In Genesis, we read of clouds not as clouds per se but rather as “waters that were above the expanse.”

It's as if naming conventions and taxonomy were not even a concern.

Fundamentally, we agree on creation and the Creator. I just don't see that the ancients were at all concerned with science.



"God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.”
Regardless, He created the sun on the fourth day.


“Omnipotence means all-powerful. Monotheistic theologians regard God as having supreme power. This means God can do what he wants. It means he is not subject to physical limitations like man is. Being omnipotent, God has power over wind, water, gravity, physics, etc. God's power is infinite, or limitless."
 
For once we must agree to disagree, PC. Genesis may parallel some of the knowledge we have in these modern times, which the ancients did not have, unless the belief that the earth was created before the sun was is knowledge. It would be a fantastic knowledge, no doubt.

Earth is a term whose biblical meaning has donned a more literal cloak in the last 150 years or so, and consequently lends to a more dispensationalist, or futurist, eschatology. When Hebrew writers wrote of the earth, did they really mean the planet earth? When the earth is empty and made desolate and its inhabitants scattered, as Isaiah says in 24:1, where do the inhabitants scatter to if the earth is the entire planet? Wherever they go, they’re still on this empty and desolate earth.

In his book The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell clears up some confusion with a brief etymological overview of the verbiage:

Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words xxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, and xx. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or ӕon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time – which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that xxxx is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. Its equivalent in Latin is xxxxx, which is really the Greek xxxx in a Latin dress. The proper word for the earth, or world, is xxxxxx, which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. xxxxxxxxx is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. Xx, though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.*​

Earth is regional. The cosmology of the ancients did not extend to the Americas or Australia or the Falkland Islands. They indicate not one whit that they knew of any of these places.

God may well have created the biosphere, but that is not the story of Genesis. In Genesis, God creates covenant man called Adam, a people distinct from those who worship idols, who wander in the land of Nod.


* Greek words deleted due to USMB restrictions.



My post showed that Genesis parallels the steps that modern evolutionary theory espouses.


  1. The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.
  2. The images in that writer’s mind of how our planet and life came to be must have seemed curious for the knowledge and experience of the time! Yet….he presented it as though it had been dictated to him, as though he had been spoken to by God.
  3. If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.
    1. Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!
  4. The alternative explanation is divine intervention.



What is our disagreement?
On the fourth day, God created the sun (1:14-19). Science tells us that the earth formed after the sun.

Did the ancients even have a word for cloud? Not a cloud in which God accompanies His people, but a puff of condensation in the troposphere. In Genesis, we read of clouds not as clouds per se but rather as “waters that were above the expanse.”

It's as if naming conventions and taxonomy were not even a concern.

Fundamentally, we agree on creation and the Creator. I just don't see that the ancients were at all concerned with science.



"God’s first command in Genesis is “Let there be light.”
Regardless, He created the sun on the fourth day.


“Omnipotence means all-powerful. Monotheistic theologians regard God as having supreme power. This means God can do what he wants. It means he is not subject to physical limitations like man is. Being omnipotent, God has power over wind, water, gravity, physics, etc. God's power is infinite, or limitless."
I understand your point, and I agree.

But, like I say, as to specifics of science and of scripture, we can't agree on everything.
 

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