The Unacknowledged Accuracy of Genesis 1

deleted repeated postEdited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.

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with one exception

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Two, actually. Genesis also claims that land plants were created before sea creatures.-

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They are created by Atmosphere.

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So you are saying the atmosphere was created after plants? That is still a problem.-

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Although the sun shines on the moon there is no daylight because there is no atmosphere.

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This is false. When the sun shines on the moon there is plenty of daylight.-

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Similarly, if you stand on the moon and gaze at the stars you will not be able to discern the stars of the Zodiac because the moon does not have the atmosphere to filter out the weaker starlight leaving us with the familiar patterns of the Zodiac.

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This, too, is false. The amount of weak star light that is filtered out by the earth's atmosphere is not enough to obscure the zodiac. Look at the signs of the zodiac that light in the Milky Way -- the signs are very clear there, even though there are more stars than other parts of the zodiac.-

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Are these similarities a product of my deranged imaginings

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I don't want to be unkind, but I just wonder why it is so important to reconcile the Genesis creation myth with science that was discovered 2000 years or more after it was written.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

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Hairsplitting,pedantism and sidetracking seem tobe the orderof the day but I will try to deal with your "points" but first may I ask a favour of you.

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Any attempt to reconcile Biblical passages with actual history before and after the passages were written involves hairsplitting. This is the game you already started. You must think that "pedantism" means pointing out the inconsistencies in your attempt. And I didn't sidetrack -- everything I wrote was directly relevant to your OP.-

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I would ask you to treat this passage as a set of data, and evaluate the interpretation I have put on it and present arguments for and against (in your case 'against' - it is strange to come across so many insecure scientists )

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OK. Genesis was written by a Bronze Age people over 2500 years ago. It was written long, long before the relevant discoveries that led to our current understanding of the origin of the earth and the universe. Furthermore, in all probability the main purpose for writing Genesis was to provide a metaphorical explanation for the world in which the Hebrew people lived. Therefore, the first chapter in Genesis has very little to do the actual history of the real universe. So your interpretation is both unnecessary and forced. There is my evaluation of your interpretation.-

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"Two, actually. Genesis also claims that land plants were created beforesea creatures" - pedantism

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Not by your terms. You pointed out an example where the order of creation was wrong compared to our current scientific understanding, and then tried to reconcile it. I pointed out that there is another example -- if one needs reconciliation, so does the other. If you are going to play this game, then you can't just choose which problems you are going to deal with.-

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"So you are saying the atmosphere was created after plants? That is still a problem" - the blue skiesof Daylight indicate not just any old atmosphere but a breathable one

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By which time the plants, which were created the previous day, would be dead. That is a problem that you are trying to dodge here. What is more, our current understanding is that the atmosphere was formed before plants existed. So, by your own standards, there is a problem with your scenario.-

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"This is false. When the sun shineson the moon there is plenty of daylight." - there is a famous photograph of an astronaut stood on the moon. It is obvious from the shadows on the ground that the sun is directly oiverhead yet the backgound sky is jet black

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So? What is the significance of this? To most people "daylight" means "daylight". It means light during the day caused by the sun by which people can see. If you look at those same photographs, you will notice that the austronauts are not using flashlights. That is because they were in daylight and could see. Maybe in ancient Hebrew "daylight" means "blue sky", but I doubt it; you are going to have to do a lot more than just claim this if you want to convince anyone of anything.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

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A naive viewer might think that the day sky was itself a light source.

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Very interesting -- something that probably would never have occurred to me. But it makes sense. Even when I am in the shadow of a large building or in a valley, I can see perfectly fine. Which is not true for bright light sources that are local. Daylight, come to think of it, really is different that light from an identifiable source.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

I'm surprised that none of our literalist cousins have yet misquoted some poetic Biblical passage allegedly showing that the Bible already knew that people see by reflected light.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

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Isa 40:22 It is he that sitteth3427 upon5921 the circle2329 of the earth,776 and the inhabitants3427 thereof are as grasshoppers;2284 that stretcheth out5186 the heavens8064 as a curtain,1852 and spreadeth them out4969 as a tent168 to dwell in:3427

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Yes, so the earth is a disk; over this disk God erected a material sky. So we have a version of the standard Bronze Age Middle Eastern cosmology where the sky is a physical tent over a flat earth. I'm not sure whether this helps your point, though.Edited by Chiroptera, : typo

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

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the hebrew word for circle here is "khoog" and it means "circle"!!!

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why are you turning it into a disc???

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I dunno. Why are you turning it into a sphere?

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

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If you prove to me that the Bible is full of errors, I will concede to that fact. But that will not change the power of God.

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Probably one of the more sensible things anyone has said on this topic.-

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Proof of His existance and ability through a divine revelation or miracle. Have you prayed for such?

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Yes. I used to be a Christian -- born again, in fact. When I began to doubt the inerrancy of the Bible and the existance of God, I prayed that he would guide me. He guided me to atheism. But this is off-topic here.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

How about actual scholarly works by people who are experts in the field?

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Q: If science doesn't know where this comes from, then couldn't it be God's doing?A: The only difference between that kind of thinking and the stereotype of the savage who thinks the Great White Hunter is a God because he doesn't know how the hunter's cigarette lighter works is that the savage has an excuse for his ignorance. -- jhuger

First, science has shown otherwise; literal Genesis creationism has been pretty much disproven and isn't even an alternative anymore.- I doubt that. The literal Genesis creation account and the literal account of the Flood has been disproven by geology; the account of the Exodus has been disproven by archeaology. The other accounts concerning famous patriarchs, judges, and kings may or may not have occurred, but they certainly have not been proven, either.- Actually, it's the stubborness of the creationists and literalists that are proving to be tough cookies. But that is up to them -- people will believe what they will believe -- nothing I can do about it. All I can do is point out their errors -- if they don't want to listen, then there's nothing much else I can do.- Heh. Of course, the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Aztecs, Incas, and so forth had laws long before they ever heard of Moses (and, in some of these cases, long before even Abraham was even born, assuming there even was an Abraham).

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Q: If science doesn't know where this comes from, then couldn't it be God's doing?A: The only difference between that kind of thinking and the stereotype of the savage who thinks the Great White Hunter is a God because he doesn't know how the hunter's cigarette lighter works is that the savage has an excuse for his ignorance. -- jhuger