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Author Topic:   Book "The Evolution of Genesis"
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


(3)
Message 2 of 27 (723843)
04-09-2014 10:22 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Charles Munroe
04-09-2014 5:32 PM


The book "The Evolution of Genesis" is available on Amazon and Kindle and uses the text of the Bible to refute creationist claims.
using the bible to refute creationism and fundamentalism is kind of a pastime of mine. that said, just based on your description, this doesn't look promising.
Genesis chapters 7 & 8 offer evidence that the Flood of Noah was not worldwide.
it definitely was, as the intention of the text is that yahweh is unmaking all of creation. it's just that... biblical creation isn't exactly what we expect. it's a pretty strong implication of opening the windows in heaven, and unplugging the fountains of the deep, that yahweh is undoing the second creative act, the separation of the waters by heaven. he is returning the cosmos to its primal state: a limitless deep of chaotic waters.
no local flood would have been the solution for yahweh regretting that he made man. and no local flood would require saving the animals. the only thing is, the entire universe is much more local in the bible than we have come to find out with modern science.
The first four verses of Genesis, if properly translated, describe the conditions at the moment of the Big Bang that are in agreement with science.
in fact, they do not. as i mentioned above, the jewish cosmos is pretty similar to most other ancient near eastern cosmologies in that it starts with water. properly translated, the first verse of genesis should be a dependent clause, and the verb should be an infinitive (it has the wrong vowel points, though). i would be happy to run down the argument for you, but i have done it a few times here before.
this means that the water exists before anything else. it gets worse from there. genesis goes on to describe a flat earth, stars and celestial bodies affixed to a solid dome, and water above our atmosphere.
The fifth verse describes how the author measures time and it is not in 24 hour days but eons.
in fact, genesis 1 is the etiology of the observance of shabbat, and the etiology for the jewish calendar. it necessarily is literal observance of time, because that's what it was written to explain.
Chapters 1 & 2 of Genesis describe evolution in the only terms the author has at his disposal. Adam's rib is still missing in the human male
this is easy to check. human males have the same number of ribs as human females, and both genders are bilaterally symmetric.
and the "flaming sword of Genesis 3:24 still exists, if one knows where to look.
but this one intrigues me.
in any case, this sounds like another fluff book, trying to justify some strained reading of the bible as truthful. it makes the same conceit as creationists, it just doesn't have the guts to follow through. far from using the bible to refute creationist claims, it's a work of creationism refuting the bible. i've seen these before; this is almost certainly derivative of another gerald schroeder's books.
Edited by arachnophilia, : i accidentally a word

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Charles Munroe, posted 04-09-2014 5:32 PM Charles Munroe has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by Charles Munroe, posted 04-10-2014 3:34 PM arachnophilia has replied
 Message 11 by Charles Munroe, posted 04-11-2014 1:10 PM arachnophilia has replied

  
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 7 of 27 (723923)
04-10-2014 9:42 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Charles Munroe
04-10-2014 3:34 PM


Charles Munroe writes:
Suggest you read a book before you assume you know what it and it's author are about. I am definitely not a creationist.
and yet, this sounds like creationism. just... old earth creationism. no matter how you slice it, this is still apologetics.
The rib that I mention is not found in the human rib cage but in association with the 'flaming sword'; they are both found in the human genome. Genesis chapter 2 can be regarded as a crude description of a genetic event that took place some 2 1/2 billion years ago.
this is taking the text to be so metaphorical as to deprive it of all meaning.
and even so, it's still not even particularly scientifically accurate. there was no magic genetic event 2.5 million years ago. i'm going to guess you meant "million" above, because humans (and, indeed, complex life) did not exist 2.5 billion years ago. in any case, humans are just derived hominids, and there's nothing really all that different about other hominids.
By the way I use the Torah in English and Hebrew and the Anchor Bible Genesis as source material not the King James Bible that is loaded with mistranslations.
fantastic.
Ask you library to get a copy of the book, read it and then make your comment based on reality and not your fantasy.
well, again, i'm just going off what you have said about the book.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


(1)
Message 8 of 27 (723928)
04-10-2014 10:04 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Charles Munroe
04-10-2014 5:45 PM


Charles Munson writes:
The problem seems to be that all of you are using the King James Bible as a reference.
i promise you, i'm not. it's sometimes the easiest find and quote because i'm lazy and it's popular, but it's not exactly the definitive version of the text. my copy reads like this:
quote:
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
The correct translation is :
1- When God set about to create the heaven and the earth.
2- The world then being a formless waste, with darkness over the seas and only an awesome wind sweeping over the water.
i don't know where you're getting this. i'd be happy to walk you through a correct translation, if you'd like:
quote:
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
when god began to create heaven and earth...
notable here is that בְּרֵאשִׁית is the construct form, meaning it has to be in construct with the next word, which has to be a noun. meaning that בָּרָא should be pointed בְּרֹא (as in genesis 5:1, same structure). a literal rendering might be "in the beginning of god creating", but the sense of the hebrew noun/verb infinitive construct doesn't render well in english. it works better in this instance to make it an english infinitive (see the new JPS tanakh). the whole phrase becomes a dependent clause (see rashi) indicating what was there when god began creating.
there's not "set about". i have no idea where that came from. it's a deviation from the text.
i don't feel that the definite articles necessarily need representing on "heaven and earth", though we could translate this "the skies and the land" if you'd like. same conceptions.
2- The world then being a formless waste, with darkness over the seas and only an awesome wind sweeping over the water.
quote:
וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם
the earth was shapeless and empty, and darkness on the face of deep. then a wind from god swept across the face of the water
notable here is the "deep". this is not the sea (god creates that later), but the chaotic and unsorted waters that exist before creation. note that this is necessarily what is present when god begins creating, as per verse 1. as in, the deep was not created. it existed before god acted. the wind from god (or, if you'd like, the spirit of god) sweeping across the water is his first act, and light the second. but nowhere does god create water. this is more consistent with ancient near eastern mythology than it is with science.
admittedly, your translation (whichever you're using) gets some things right that most translations do not. but... "awesome"? "set about"? even then, it's how you're interpreting it that is most of the problem.
The water is the authors way of describing the swirling gases that form as the universe cools and atoms can finally form.
nope. it's water. god makes the seas by separating and localizing it.
Then God caused the light to be separated from darkness at 380,000 years after the Big Bang during the epoch of recombination.
i could check, but i'm pretty sure that not only is this argument made by gerald schroeder, but this is the figure he gives as well.
Keep in mind that the ancient author is handicapped by a lack of understanding of what is occurring and not having the proper words to describe the events in terms that would be readily understood today.
we might be able to make this argument if the author was even talking about the same thing at all, instead of describing something else that doesn't even metaphorically match up. keep in mind that the cosmology of genesis is completely wrong, as is the creative sequence. it doesn't matter what you're saying things represent, or what time periods you say something really means, if the order is wrong, and the descriptions are completely off.
further, we know the author of genesis 1 was working from source texts, one of them being genesis 2-4, and the missing portion before genesis 2 where yahweh fights the dragon.

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This message is a reply to:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


(1)
Message 9 of 27 (723929)
04-10-2014 10:05 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by AZPaul3
04-10-2014 5:55 PM


Re: The scales fall!
AZPaul3 writes:
That interpretive shoehorn really is an eye opener!
i mean, i know that's sarcasm, but... that interpretive shoehorn isn't even original. schroeder should sue.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by AZPaul3, posted 04-10-2014 5:55 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by AZPaul3, posted 04-11-2014 12:16 AM arachnophilia has not replied

  
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


(2)
Message 26 of 27 (724219)
04-14-2014 7:35 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Charles Munroe
04-11-2014 1:10 PM


Charles Munroe writes:
The purpose of the book "The Evolution of Genesis" is to take the Biblical stories out of the realm of mythology that a literal reading would suggest.
well, that's just it. that's the problem. these biblical stories are mythology. and it's not just the literal reading that suggests this. it's history, archaeology, comparative religious studies, and literary criticism that suggest it. starting with the idea that the bible must be true and the trying to work out some way for your assumption to be correct is only going to lead to bad exegesis.
catholic scientist and taq rather perfectly sum up my feelings on this. the bible is an historically important selection of works, and one which i find to be very compelling and beautiful in places. to try to twist and reinterpret the text to fit it with some kind of anachronistic message is a great disservice to the text. the things the authors wrote about, and their motivations and beliefs, are far stranger and far more powerful statements about the human condition than this anachronistic revision suggests.
I use E.A. Speicer's translation of the Book of Genesis. Speicer received his PhD. from Dropsie College, what is now know as the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. If you have a disagreement with his translation I suggest you obtain a copy of Genesis from the Anchor Bible Series now published by the Yale University Press.
you mean speiser? again, as i mentioned, the translation is mostly okay. but look at the footnote under the bit "awesome" wind, which i questioned. note two things: a) he gives no justification for choosing one option over the other, when you'd think the context of this verse is pretty clear, and b) the same footnote cites harry orlinsky. orlinsky's translation reads a bit more like mine.
I suggest you obtain a copy of Genesis from the Anchor Bible Series now published by the Yale University Press.
why? the masoretic hebrew is freely available.
It is intended to facilitate creationists acceptance of evolution. Evolution can be interpreted as merely the recipe that the "Intelligent Designer" followed in bringing all into existence. ... As for my religious views - they definitely have absolutely nothing what so ever to do with creationism in any of its forms. I consider creationism to be an insult to both religions, science and commonsense. Enough said??
or in other words, creationism. evolution isn't a recipe; it's a natural process that only requires the direction provided by natural selection. the problem with this is precisely that it is an insult to both religion and science. it misrepresents both to make it look like they fit together.

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Charles Munroe, posted 04-11-2014 1:10 PM Charles Munroe has not replied

  
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