Story of creation: Genesis.

[JimL]

God is the author of both the Bible and of the creation.

Don't you find it strange how his accounting of his creation is wrong then!

[JimL]

The problem disappears if you remove infallibility from the adherents of "Orthodox (sic) Christianity for most of it's history." I do not see the faulty interpretation of Genesis by early Christian (or anyone else) as demonstrating a flaw in the Bible. The flaw is in the interpretation. I believe the Genesis account is literally true, but I also accept the data found by modern science. No problem.

How does the problem disappear, if as you say, God is the author of the Bible? Is God fallible? The flaw has nothing to do with interpretation. It can't be both literally true and proven not to be true by modern science. That is a problem.

[Jedidiah]

Yes. I wasn't denying that. However, the author of Genesis didn't ( I think) intend his account to be read as a 'scientific' one, so his focus is not so much on the details, in precise order, of the process, but on the who (God).

Since I see God as the author it does not compute that the author made any mistakes. He was writing for the ages, not just the contemporaries of the scribe. What we can see now was what he saw then.

[Jedidiah]

Because that is the only inference that makes sense. They were writing a creation account, and that account was based upon what they thought they knew, and that which they thought they knew was wrong. Even the desciption of that they got chronologically wrong. For instance they had the earth being created before the sun. We know better now. We also know that a life giving planet like our own can't exist without previously existing suns which is where the life giving elements of the earth come from. But in their universe our galaxy was all they could see with the naked eye, and what they could see is what they believed to be all that there was.That galaxy was represented as the universe itself, having a dome surrounding it with nothing but water above the dome, not billions of other galaxies and billions of other solar systems that existed long before our own galaxy. BTW Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the church for suggesting the latter. The point being that the Genesis account is not true, so in what sense is it God inspired?

This is based upon your assumption that the authors were simply men writing the best they could. I can appreciate that perspective from an atheist. You are however projecting your assumptions on the text. You do not get that from the text. You make it up whole cloth.

[Jedidiah]

Removing infallibility in Orthodox Christian history for ALL of it's history is a problem since through ALL of it's history the Bible is considered infallible by virtually ALL Christians in the past and most Christians in recent history. The literal interpretation as believed and understood in most history is terribly flawed. and it is a grand delusion that the evidence and science has no possible reasonable comparison. Accepting the data does not mean it is even reasonable.

Not only wrong but wrong headed. No matter what orthodox (I am not concerned with the Orthodox Church in this matter) church understood does not in any way limit what the divine author wrote. The early church got what they needed - God created everything. I read the Genesis account as literally true. That does not mean that I must accept what men understood thousands of years ago. In other words "The literal interpretation as believed and understood in most history" can be flawed without any flaw being present in the text itself. You are inserting your own beliefs into the text, not reading what it says.

You do not need my leave to believe what you believe, nor am I bound to see the Bible as the flawed work if ignorant men trying to make sense of what was not sensible to them as you seem to.

[Jedidiah]

I can count the scientists that agree with Hugh Ross in the past 50 years using my fingers without taking off my shoes. By the peer review of the consensus of the scientific community Hugh Ross is grossly incompetent. This consensus is 99+% scientists that accept evolution, and contemporary cosmology, and this does not include Hugh Ross.

Wrong, those scientists do not agree with him but they only disagree with his views. Your comment is distorted and childish. Many of those scientists have expressed respect for his intelligence and overall competence while disagreeing with what he believes. But, I do not defend Hugh Ross, you are sidestepping my point that it is possible to take a scientific view of the Genesis account. I certainly do not insist that you accept that view.

[Jedidiah]

Don't you find it strange how his accounting of his creation is wrong then!

I find nothing wrong with His account. I find everything wrong with your interpretation of what He wrote.

How does the problem disappear, if as you say, God is the author of the Bible? Is God fallible? The flaw has nothing to do with interpretation. It can't be both literally true and proven not to be true by modern science. That is a problem.

Do you have problems understanding what I wrote? You have not addressed anything I wrote.

[Doug Shaver]

Since I see God as the author it does not compute that the author made any mistakes.

Since I see mistakes, it does not compute that God was the author.

[37818]

Thats true, but the sun is the first object to form from out of that debree, . . .

Agreed. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

. . . the planets forming afterward. . . .

The earth being given form, and man being placed on it. Genesis 1:4-31.

. . . Besides that we all know that the life giving elements of the earth are only there in the first place because it was formed of the elements that were created within pre-existing suns.

So we might presume.

[37818]

Since I see mistakes, it does not compute that God was the author.

The mistakes you see are what for example? Typically such supposed mistakes are matters of interpretation and disagreements on interpretations.

[Tassman]

That's not what I said.

If the Genesis accounts were not intended to be a scientific (i.e. a literal) description of the Creation then the only alternative is that they are allegory which, to my mind, is a reasonable understanding of them.

Creation myths that other peoples of the time had.

[MaxVel]

Since I see God as the author it does not compute that the author made any mistakes. He was writing for the ages, not just the contemporaries of the scribe. What we can see now was what he saw then.

I have nowhere said that the author made any mistakes. Simply pointing out that (possibly) the writer felt freer than a modern-day writer would to alter the chronology of events and emphasise or de-emphasise parts of the account to fit his authorial purposes.

It seems you perhaps have a more literalist* view of inspiration than me.



* for want of a better word. Not meant as an insult or to demean your position.

[MaxVel]

If the Genesis accounts were not intended to be a scientific (i.e. a literal) description of the Creation then the only alternative is that they are allegory

False dichotomy.

which, to my mind, is a reasonable understanding of them.



Maybe, considering that the sources behind the Genesis creation narratives borrowed themes from Mesopotamian mythology and adapted them to their monotheistic viewpoint.

Source for the bolded part?

[Doug Shaver]

Source for the bolded part?

Here's one:
"Comparing two creation stories: from Genesis and Babylonian pagan sources," http://www.religioustolerance.org/com_geba.htmThe American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures

[JimL]

Agreed. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

Go read your Bible. The earth existed prior to God saying let there be light. The heavens were also portayed as a space distinct from and above the earth not as a space inwhich the earth itself was imersed in.

The earth being given form, and man being placed on it. Genesis 1:4-31.

The earth is portrayed as all of the waters beneath the dome/sky, which were gathered into a single basin letting the dry land thereof appear. There was nothing else beneath the earth and nothing but waters above the dome/sky. Ergo the creation story was a story written by men who knew nothing about the universe other than what they could see, and all that they could see was that they were on a flat earth with a sky above them filled with lights of some sort. So if you want to call that God inspired, or if you want to go as far as Jed and assert that God is the author of these scriptures then thats fine, you can do that, but what is the point in doing so since in either case those scriptures are wrong.

So we might presume.

No, that is not a presumption, it is a scientific proven fact. The life giving elements did not exist prior to the existence of the stars or suns which created them.