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Author Topic:   Hypocritical Leviticus
rpiccola808
Junior Member (Idle past 5869 days)
Posts: 4
Joined: 03-02-2008


Message 1 of 36 (458893)
03-02-2008 4:16 PM


Here's a conundrum I think is worth posing to you Christian Creationists. In Leviticus 18:6:
(6. None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover [their] nakedness: I [am] the Lord.)
God goes on about how all forms on incest are sinful and worthy of spiritual exile (Leviticus 18:29):
(29. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit [them] shall be cut off from among their people.)
Keeping this is in mind, and taking into account that the Bible is theoretically the inerrant word of God, how do you explain the fact that the information in the Bible leaves no avenue for belief outside the notion that Adam and his descendants would have had to reproduce with each other in order to keep populating the world? Even if Adam/Cain/Seth were by some chance, able to find other families(keeping in mind that the Bible gives no evidence for the existence of others outside Adam's family), wouldn't they "run into each other" somewhere down the line.
Furthermore, since the Bible states that Christ is distantly related to Adam, doesn't this make even him the product of incestuous ancestry?
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Normally I don't do such things, but I fixed a few spelling errors.
Edited by rpiccola808, : Specified Bible Passages

Replies to this message:
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 Message 11 by Blue Jay, posted 03-07-2008 9:33 PM rpiccola808 has not replied
 Message 22 by IamJoseph, posted 03-22-2008 6:18 AM rpiccola808 has not replied

  
Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 2 of 36 (458907)
03-02-2008 5:44 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by rpiccola808
03-02-2008 4:16 PM


How about a quoting of Leviticus 18:6-18 and Leviticus 18:29? I would be nice to have the text of said right in message 1.
Please use the "edit" button at the bottom of message 1. You may also wish to consult dBCodes On (help). That will give you useful coding information, including how to do quote boxes. And/or use
at the bottom of this message to see some quote box coding forms.
quote:
One kind of quote box
Another type of quote box
Adminnemooseus writes:
A quote box with a name attribute
After edits are done, please also post a reply, using the
button at the bottom of this message. That way the admins will know changes have been made.
Adminnemooseus

This message is a reply to:
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rpiccola808
Junior Member (Idle past 5869 days)
Posts: 4
Joined: 03-02-2008


Message 3 of 36 (458928)
03-02-2008 6:53 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Adminnemooseus
03-02-2008 5:44 PM


Changes
I specified the Bible passages.

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Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 4 of 36 (458976)
03-03-2008 4:05 AM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 36 (458991)
03-03-2008 7:40 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by rpiccola808
03-02-2008 4:16 PM


Well, one possibility is that the prohibitions against incest, like most of what is in Leviticus, are not necessarily about sins per se but more of a matter of ritual cleanliness that separate God's chosen people, the Hebrews, from the rest of humanity. Sort of like God didn't prohibit everyone to abstain from pork or to become circumcised, just the Hebrews.
So, since Cain wasn't Jewish (which wouldn't come about until Moses brought the Hebrews out of Egypt and gave them Leviticus), these prohibitions wouldn't apply to him.
Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.

...Onward to Victory is the last great illusion the Republican Party has left to sell in this country, even to its own followers. They can't sell fiscal responsibility, they can't sell "values," they can't sell competence, they can't sell small government, they can't even sell the economy. -- Matt Taibbi

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jaywill
Member (Idle past 1940 days)
Posts: 4519
From: VA USA
Joined: 12-05-2005


Message 6 of 36 (459430)
03-07-2008 9:25 AM


A parent takes her child to the doctor for a sore throat. The doctor turns the lights on, sets the child on the bed and examines the child's throat.
Then the doctor takes little wooden stick and puts it in the child's mouth reaching back to the rear of the tongue. "Say Ahhh." The doctor uses his skill to explore the inside of the child's thoat and arrives at some analysis or treatment.
The child comes home. In a few days that child is "playing doctor" with a younger sibling. The child puts a stick in the mouth of the younger sibling. The mother is alarmed - "Don't do that! Don't EVER put anything in your brother's/ sister's mouth like that."
What hypocrisy!! How come she let the doctor do it? How come the toddler can't do the same thing and shove a stick in the younger sibling's mouth?
Hopefully a useful analogy. God permited the first created humans to marry close of kin. There were no other people to marry to get the human race off to multiplying. He oversaw and supervized this.
Much latter He forbade the Jews to do so. Different circumstances. Different situation. What was permissible before was now not permissible.
It shouldn't be too hard to comprehend that.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
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Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
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teen4christ
Member (Idle past 5798 days)
Posts: 238
Joined: 01-15-2008


Message 7 of 36 (459439)
03-07-2008 12:22 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by jaywill
03-07-2008 9:25 AM


jaywill wrote
quote:
Hopefully a useful analogy.
I think that's a pretty lousy analogy. Personally,
I would have used a slightly different analogy, like how toddlers are allowed to drink milk from their mothers' breasts but adults are not.
quote:
There were no other people to marry to get the human race off to multiplying. He oversaw and supervized this.
There were other people around. People who were living in the land of Nod, for example, where Cain's wife came from.

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 Message 6 by jaywill, posted 03-07-2008 9:25 AM jaywill has replied

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 36 (459457)
03-07-2008 5:19 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by jaywill
03-07-2008 9:25 AM


As teen says, this is a pretty lousy analogy. The analogy doesn't fit at all with what you actually ended up saying.
-
God permited the first created humans to marry close of kin. There were no other people to marry to get the human race off to multiplying. He oversaw and supervized this.
Much latter He forbade the Jews to do so. Different circumstances. Different situation. What was permissible before was now not permissible.
Then marrying siblings isn't a sin. A sin is a sin, and God presumably wouldn't have created people and put them in a situation where they would sin. Presumably, if marrying siblings was a sin, then God could have prevented this by, say, creating several couples at once so that there would always be non-siblings available for marrying.
But since the sinless God, who would never put humans in a position where they would be forced to sin, created the situation that forced the second generation of humans to marry their siblings, we can conclude that marrying siblings is not a sin.
As was mentioned, the prohibition against marrying siblings didn't come about until God told the Hebrews not to do it - presumably marrying siblings isn't so much a sin as one of the ritual taboos that separate the Hebrews from the other tribes, like circumcision or abstaining from eating shellfish. (Although there are hints earlier in Genesis that incest was wrong.)

...Onward to Victory is the last great illusion the Republican Party has left to sell in this country, even to its own followers. They can't sell fiscal responsibility, they can't sell "values," they can't sell competence, they can't sell small government, they can't even sell the economy. -- Matt Taibbi

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jaywill
Member (Idle past 1940 days)
Posts: 4519
From: VA USA
Joined: 12-05-2005


Message 9 of 36 (459462)
03-07-2008 5:53 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by teen4christ
03-07-2008 12:22 PM


There were other people around. People who were living in the land of Nod, for example, where Cain's wife came from.
It is perculiar to me how some people seem prone to make errors in their comprehension of the Scripture.
The story of Cain and Abel highlights a particular event of importance (the first murder) that happened to two of the children of Adam and Eve.
It does not mean that they are the only two children that they had. If they were the parents of us all, any people in the land of Nod had to have come about from Adam and Eve.
You should not read the account and think that this was the only thing that happened. You should not assume that other children were not born and had their own migrations here and there.
Cain, a child of Adam and Eve, married in another female child descendent of Adam and Eve. What is the big deal?
"And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years and begot [a son] in his likeness according to his image, and he called his name Seth.
And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years and he begot more sons and daughters." (Genesis 5:2,3)
He begat more sons and daughters. And they in turn were marrying and begetting sons and daughters.
Cain's wife in the land of Nod is no cause to scratch our heads in bewilderment.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by Blue Jay, posted 03-07-2008 9:08 PM jaywill has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 10 of 36 (459474)
03-07-2008 9:08 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by jaywill
03-07-2008 5:53 PM


jaywill writes:
Cain, a child of Adam and Eve, married in another female child descendent of Adam and Eve. What is the big deal?
The big deal is, in fact, incest, as the OP stated.
jaywill writes:
He begat more sons and daughters. And they in turn were marrying and begetting sons and daughters.
Cain's wife in the land of Nod is no cause to scratch our heads in bewilderment.
You do realize that this doesn't actually constitute proof of anything, right? The Bible doesn't actually state anywhere that Adam and Eve were the only ones created, nor does it actually state that Cain's wife was Adam and Eve's daughter. Under this logic, your interpretation of the Bible story is just as subjective and unfounded as Chiroptera's.
I agree with you when you say this:
jaywill writes:
It is perculiar to me how some people seem prone to make errors in their comprehension of the Scripture.
I don't agree with your spelling of "peculiar," though.
I would actually render it thus:
Bluejay writes:
It is peculiar to me how most people seem prone to make errors in their comprehension of the Scripture.
And most of them live their entire lives not realizing that their interpretation is completely wrong.

There was a point to this [post], but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind. -modified from Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams

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Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 11 of 36 (459476)
03-07-2008 9:33 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by rpiccola808
03-02-2008 4:16 PM


Biblical Genetics
rpiccola808 writes:
Keeping this is in mind, and taking into account that the Bible is theoretically the inerrant word of God, how do you explain the fact that the information in the Bible leaves no avenue for belief outside the notion that Adam and his descendants would have had to reproduce with each other in order to keep populating the world?
I think there's a genetics basis that can account for this, at least as long as you don't mind Ken Ham's slander on answersingenesis.org. Here is an article about the "Creationist" viewpoint on biodiversity, of which I find this quote to be particularly telling:
quote:
In contrast, creationists, starting from the Bible, believe that God created different kinds of organisms, which reproduced ”after their kinds’. Each of these kinds was created with a vast amount of information. There was enough variety in the information in the original creatures so their descendants could adapt to a wide variety of environments.
Read the rest of the article for a bunch of other stuff: it gets richer. Basically, Ken (and at least one sect of creation-"scientists") believes that God created the earth and everything in it in perfect form, and we have deteriorated through time because of Original Sin. He believes this correlates to a decrease in genetic variation. Whereas we now have ~20,000 genes in our DNA, Adam and Eve had dozens, perhaps hundreds or more times as much, and it has been dispersed throughout the human race now by depravity and intermarriage.
It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that incest wouldn't be considered a sin if it didn't cause inbreeding depression and contribute to the deterioration of the "perfect" human gene pool. Now that our gene pool is thinned out, however, incest is bad for the human race as a whole, so God has forbidden it.

There was a point to this [post], but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind. -modified from Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams

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jaywill
Member (Idle past 1940 days)
Posts: 4519
From: VA USA
Joined: 12-05-2005


Message 12 of 36 (459502)
03-08-2008 7:48 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Blue Jay
03-07-2008 9:08 PM


The big deal is, in fact, incest, as the OP stated.
I don't see it that way. There is no prohibition stated in Genesis against them marrying close family kin. There is the mentioning of one man having two wives which seems to suggest this was not too good. And there are instances where murder is highlighted as if we are to take note of this negative.
The writer could have therefore pointed out the sin of Cain or Seth or the other early humans marrying cousins or sisters and it did not. So it must have been Okay with God at that point.
Beside this, these early humans had very healthy lives. A life span of 900 years was normal. The point here is that the defects which incest latter manifested probably were not a problem for this pre-flood group of extremly fit early humans.
No doubt, latter generations after the longevity of people began to be shortened, the mental and physical problems associated with close to kin marriage became much more of a cause for God to forbid it.
The Bible states that Adam called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living.
"And the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." (Genesis 3:20)
So the first woman - Adam's wife, was the first human mother of all human beings. Beside Adam the husband of Eve, there are no human beings who do not trace back to Eve the mother of all living.
It might be interesting to try to figure out:
1.) How many years it was before Cain killed Abel,
2.) If and how many other children she had after the incident.
3.) How long Cain was in Nod before he married.
4.) Whether he married before he entered Nod or after.
5.) How many children not specifically mentioned in the geneology ALSO had children and how many.
6.) How many people moved east of Eden to Nod while Cain was there.
7.) How old was Cain's wife when he married her compared to his age.
We are just not given too many details. We know that after the murder of Abel, Cain migrated to Nod. At sometime he married a wife.
At any rate -
"Cain went forth from the presence of the Jehovah and dwelt in the lnd of Nod, east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch." (Gen. 4:17)
I think the writer is saying that this was the genesis or the origin of the culture (a city) raised by the man who departed from the presence of God. This is the origin of the godless world culture - the city of Enoch.
nor does it actually state that Cain's wife was Adam and Eve's daughter.
Cain's wife had to have had Eve as an ancestor because Eve "was the mother of all living" (Genesis 3:20).
Under this logic, your interpretation of the Bible story is just as subjective and unfounded as Chiroptera's.
You've failed to demonstrate that I think.
And most of them live their entire lives not realizing that their interpretation is completely wrong.
I don't mind being corrected on my facts. To read the Bible well you have to master all of the facts of what you read.
What you apparently have overlooked is the fact that Eve was the mother of all living. So Cain and his wife had to have been at last somewhat closely related.
And Adam is called "the first man, Adam" (1 Cor. 15:45). So Adam, the first man, and Eve, the mother of all living, were the first human parents of all humans. That would include those specifically mentioned and those not mentioned.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
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Edited by jaywill, : Typos and typos!
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Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Otto Tellick, posted 03-09-2008 4:55 AM jaywill has replied
 Message 16 by Jaderis, posted 03-11-2008 8:30 AM jaywill has replied

  
Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2330 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 13 of 36 (459635)
03-09-2008 4:55 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by jaywill
03-08-2008 7:48 AM


jaywill writes:
I don't mind being corrected on my facts.
What are you referring to, in particular, as "your facts", and in what sense are they "factual"? For example, when you say:
A life span of 900 years was normal... the defects which incest latter manifested probably were not a problem for this pre-flood group of extremly fit early humans.
are you asserting these as "facts" in the sense that they have some sort of truth value in describing the actual physical history of the human race? Or are you instead making a purely linguistic assertion: that in a correct ("factual") English translation of the Bible, these stories in Genesis must be interpreted as saying that people lived 900 years, because to do otherwise entails an inconsistent translation (but the stories themselves are not intended as an accurate historical record of the human race).
The same question applies to the initial topic of this thread: are you submitting as "historical fact" something like this?
Behavior currently (i.e. since Leviticus) held to be incestuous and bad (i.e. sexual relations among siblings), was initially not incestuous and was good, because there simply was no other way for the human race to propagate during the initial few generations.
Or are you putting actual physical history aside and simply asserting something like this?
A correct translation/interpretation of the text in Genesis involves accepting this logical necessity regarding the first-generation children of Eve (i.e. that they must have had sex with each other), and the details that have been left out of the text cannot include people coming from sources other than Eve, in view of what the text says explicitly about her.
Let's be clear: people who would assert a physical history based on one or another "literal" interpretation of Genesis, with the span of human existence numbering less that 8000 years, typically do mind "being corrected on their facts", in the sense that they simply refuse to accept or acknowledge the physical evidence that repeatedly and consistently shows a much longer span for homo sapiens (not to mention the spans of earlier hominid species from which homo sapiens evolved). To be "corrected on the facts" is to abandon any sort of "literal" belief in Genesis as an historical record of the human race in general.
I put "literal" in quotes because, as you are well aware from other threads where I've replied to you, the issues of translation and interpretation applied to biblical text have been found (repeatedly and consistently) to be problematic, and to defy any sort of rational consensus among those who try to do it. The notion of a "literal" interpretation of any biblical text is virtually impossible to pin down, so that the meaning of "literal" is no less ambiguous, incomplete and inconsistent than the biblical text itself.
BTW, as others in this forum can explain much better than I, the view of "incest" in the theory of evolution is consistent with what people can observe directly with regard to pets and livestock: some amount is tolerable and can even lead to certain "desirable" traits (favored by natural selection in the given context) being strengthened in the offspring, but too much inbreeding can create a serious threat to survival. (In the case of pets and livestock, of course, the selection tends to be deliberate -- directed by humans -- rather than natural, but the two kinds of selection are equivalent in relation to "incest".)
While the actual biological risks posed by incest may be insufficient to explain the pervasive sense of disfavor or disgust toward it that we see in most cultures (with possible exceptions among some monarchist dynasties), in any event I think we can observe that damnation or other forms of supernatural punishment do not play a role in the process.
(One last note, just for grins... we all make typographic mistakes in our posts -- I try to correct mine when I find them, and I notice that you revisit your posts often as well -- but this case of a missing comma in one of your sentences really had me going for a while:
jaywill writes:
You've failed to demonstrate that I think.
I know you didn't mean that the way it "sounded" (when read aloud with no comma, hence no pause, between "that" and "I"), but the first time I read it, I had to laugh. Nothing personal, believe me. Someday you'll catch me the same way, I don't doubt.)
Edited by Otto Tellick, : added "incomplete" to the description of "literal"

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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jaywill
Member (Idle past 1940 days)
Posts: 4519
From: VA USA
Joined: 12-05-2005


Message 14 of 36 (459916)
03-10-2008 11:28 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Otto Tellick
03-09-2008 4:55 AM


What are you referring to, in particular, as "your facts", and in what sense are they "factual"? For example, when you say:
As I read Genesis I see no place where I sense that the clock stops and we suddenly ascend into an existential level of abstraction. The flow of history is quite seamless.
My trust in a book like Genesis came late. What happened was the I had had an experience with Jesus Christ. And as I read the New Testament I gradually noticed that Jesus took Genesis seriously. Though I was strongly influenced by most of the typical modernist thought of my generation, I decided that if Jesus took Genesis as history then it must be Okay for me to do so.
What I am honestly telling you is that I developed a belief that the integrity of Jesus is beyond question. So if Jesus took the Hebrew Scripture seriously, I decided that I have to also. That is because the veracity and intigrity of the wisdom of Jesus is beyond reproach.
I started my reading of the Bible with the New Testament first. Then I went back and read the whole Bible from the beginning - a number of times.
are you asserting these as "facts" in the sense that they have some sort of truth value in describing the actual physical history of the human race?
Yes. I believe so. Doesn't it stand to reason though? If you have a man created by God and God says that His creation is "very good" if something did go wrong it might take a long time for that defect to cause this man to extinguish.
It may also be significant that the condition of the earth changed drastically after the flood in Noah's time. At least the life spans drop off dramatically to more of what we're accustomed to today.
Or are you instead making a purely linguistic assertion: that in a correct ("factual") English translation of the Bible, these stories in Genesis must be interpreted as saying that people lived 900 years, because to do otherwise entails an inconsistent translation (but the stories themselves are not intended as an accurate historical record of the human race).
As I said above, I first was persuaded that the wisdom of Jesus Christ was beyond disputing. Based upon this, what I noticed that He took seriously, I believed that I also should take seriously.
I think there is a strong case to be made that Jesus of Nazareth regarded Genesis as including also historical facts.
Recognizing that there is divine and even mystical wisdom embodied in many stories does not for me to form a dichotomy. That dichotomy being since there is spiritual wisdom in the stories therefore they most not be taken as history.
You may notice that millennia latter the Gospel writer Luke traces the geneology of Jesus right back to Adam. There is no point where the clock stops, the chain is broken, and we ascend into an abstract and mythical prose. The chain is seamless and historical. One of the books of Chronicles also treats the ancestors of Adam in the same way.
The same question applies to the initial topic of this thread: are you submitting as "historical fact" something like this?
I think by now you shuold get the idea how I think about Genesis.
Incidently, the longest living person recorded is Methusaleh. It is interesting that his name means something life "When he dies it will come." The it to come refers to the flood of judgement which wiped out the wicked society.
God prolonged His mercy a long time because when Methusaleh was to die He apparently promised to judge the people. So in His mercy this man lived the longest time 969 years. Then God could forebear no longer. And when he died the flood came.
Another interesting thing is the Enoch walked with God after he bore "When he dies it will come" - Methuselah.
I think that Enoch walked with God because he saw the divine judgment was coming. Little indications like this encourage me that I am on the right track to take Genesis seriously.
Behavior currently (i.e. since Leviticus) held to be incestuous and bad (i.e. sexual relations among siblings), was initially not incestuous and was good, because there simply was no other way for the human race to propagate during the initial few generations.
Or are you putting actual physical history aside and simply asserting something like this?
I think there is no reason to grill me on this point. I gave you my opinion. What God permitted previously he now forbade.
Before the flood He also intended that man only eat vegatables. After the flood He allowed man to eat meat. So we see God making adjustments as He deemed right by His authority.
Before the flood man was not to kill man. After the flood God made an adjustment and capital punishment was instituted. So the fact the God adjusted some of His intructions to mankind is evident.
In the matter of marriage, why then is it difficult to understand that He could have made an adjustment as He did in other things?
Let's be clear: people who would assert a physical history based on one or another "literal" interpretation of Genesis, with the span of human existence numbering less that 8000 years, typically do mind "being corrected on their facts",
You mean perhaps that they are skeptical about some theories. For instance I might be skeptical about ape-men. I am.
The actual age of man on the earth, I am not that dogmatic about. I'm not sure we can deduce the age of the existence of humans by counting geneologies. Sometimes there were skips of people, to highlight people signifcant to God's plan.
I know that there are theories of ape-men. I hope the scientists continue to study. I like science just as much as the next guy.
However, I believe that science is man's invention while the Bible is God's revelation. If there is a real discrepency between the two, I feel that the error must be on the part of man's invention - science. That is because God knows all the facts.
Today they have some theories. Let's see what they sat tomorrow. These theories of science often change, as well they should.
I believe that there was a first MAN and a first WOMAN. I don't think there is any fact that you know which contradicts this. There may be some theories which contradict it - blurring the line between "pri-mates" and humans.
And imaginative artists keep these ideas alive by drawing what some scientists want to imagine. And also special effects people in the motion picture industry keep such popularized thoughts alive with programs like NOVA.
So I think you are talking about the contrary ideas of some theories.
in the sense that they simply refuse to accept or acknowledge the physical evidence that repeatedly and consistently shows a much longer span for homo sapiens (not to mention the spans of earlier hominid species from which homo sapiens evolved). To be "corrected on the facts" is to abandon any sort of "literal" belief in Genesis as an historical record of the human race in general.
What you could be looking at is the remains of degenerated humans rather than pre-humans.
You could be looking over humans infected with bone deseases as some sort of degeneration set it after the creation of Adam. People migrated far and wide and died. Perhaps rather than ape-men which Darwin predicts, you are seeing humans under some form of de-evolution of sorts rather than evolution.
I put "literal" in quotes because, as you are well aware from other threads where I've replied to you, the issues of translation and interpretation applied to biblical text have been found (repeatedly and consistently) to be problematic, and to defy any sort of rational consensus among those who try to do it. The notion of a "literal" interpretation of any biblical text is virtually impossible to pin down, so that the meaning of "literal" is no less ambiguous, incomplete and inconsistent than the biblical text itself.
Most of the people I talk to who argue for the hopelessness of ever knowing what the Bible says, have no idea about the meaning of life. Not one who argues that the message the Bible is lost in translation can tell me anything about why they are here or what is the meaning of thier human life.
They usually retort something like "Why does there have to be a meaning anyway?"
For me, I am reluctant to throw up my hands in dispair saying that it is no use to try to know what the Bible says. The simplier matters are so deeply meaningful that they give me a sense of knowing why I am here.
We all eventually have to put our trust in someone or someones. You may choose to put your ultimate trust in Charles Darwin or RIchard Dawkins. These fellows are very interesting and have some interesting things to say. But for the real important matters of life I have decided to trust Christ.
So His attitude towards the rest of the Bible has become a governing vision to me.
While the actual biological risks posed by incest may be insufficient to explain the pervasive sense of disfavor or disgust toward it that we see in most cultures (with possible exceptions among some monarchist dynasties), in any event I think we can observe that damnation or other forms of supernatural punishment do not play a role in the process.
This sounds a little like a refutation in search of a debate.
However, I think unbridled greedy lust is the sin which God is restricting in the matter of incest after a certain point in early human history.
In securing a partner in marriage and the intimacy of romantic love, people are to have a measure of self control. Unrestricted and unbridled lust was to be controlled. You cannot just off and marry anyone or anything.
I don't mean to imply that mental and physical defects were the only reasons for the restriction.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Otto Tellick, posted 03-09-2008 4:55 AM Otto Tellick has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by Otto Tellick, posted 03-11-2008 4:34 AM jaywill has not replied

  
Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2330 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 15 of 36 (459931)
03-11-2008 4:34 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by jaywill
03-10-2008 11:28 PM


Thank you for your thoughtful replies, both here and on other threads. I think I understand your position much better now, and I appreciate your patience in explaining it to me, as well as your careful consideration of my position.
I sense that your view of empirical research is somewhat dismissive, at least with regard to how it describes the mechanisms and history of life on our planet. When it's a matter of personal belief, I really don't have a problem with that. When dozens (hundreds, thousands ...) of distinct, independent and verifiable observations make it clear that stable, well-understood physical laws are incompatible with "the flood" as described in Genesis, you can decide that you don't care about that, and you don't need to care about it. (I suppose the flood is off-topic in this thread -- sorry -- but you brought it up )
Likewise, when you say something like:
You could be looking over humans infected with bone deseases as some sort of degeneration set it after the creation of Adam.
You are saying that you are willing to dismiss the consistent behavior of several particular elements (carbon-14, etc) whose presence/absence in fossils has been shown, with high reliability, to correlate with age, so that you can assume I'm looking at stuff that is actually younger than known human fossils, when the evidence of these elements indicates the stuff is far older. That's fine -- my observations are probably irrelevant to you, and your dismissal is not a problem form me.
Still, I hope you'll understand where it does become a problem for me, and why it becomes a problem. When someone says that public schools (which are attended and paid for by everyone, not just Christians) should present the flood story as an "alternative explanation" for the history and current state of earth's geology, flora and fauna, on a par with all those verifiable (and rigorously verified) observations, I must object.
Because of the impossibility of supporting (let alone verifying) biblical accounts in the same way as empirical observations, because of the rampant disagreements and schisms about biblical interpretation, and because of the indeterminacy and incompleteness of the text itself, presenting these accounts in a science class would, in my view, be a disservice to education. And let's face it: when basic research is not filtered or bound by biblical compliance, it just works better. I'm sorry to seem so strident, but it matters as much to me as your faith does to you, and I want to be clear about it.
jaywill writes:
What I am honestly telling you is that I developed a belief that the integrity of Jesus is beyond question. So if Jesus took the Hebrew Scripture seriously, I decided that I have to also... I think there is a strong case to be made that Jesus of Nazareth regarded Genesis as including also historical facts.
Jesus used parables. I'm wondering what the strong case is that you speak of, and whether, on closer inspection, you might consider that His regard of Genesis as "including historical facts" might have been limited to certain parts, while other parts were taken seriously as valuable lessons conveyed by parables. How do you decide which is which? That's something that I can dismiss, because it doesn't matter to me.
Please don't view this as ridicule -- consider: What if (next month, next year, tomorrow night) you were to have another experience with Jesus, and this time, He would actually take you on a tour to show you how the miracles of creation were wrought: you travel at incredible speed as He tells you, "These are the hundreds of millions of years that it actually took, these are the millions of forms of life that slowly built up and assembled all the pieces that ultimately became Adam, and Me, and you -- and the work is not done, there is more to do, and more to come! And the reason Moses described this the way he did was because..."
What if, instead, someone else had that sort of vision of Jesus coming to them and explaining how it all really happened (by evolution), and why Genesis was written the way it was? You can't say that it will never happen, and if it does happen, what would it take for such a vision to gain common acceptance among Christians? (update -- fresh thought: what if they could be persuaded to look at and accept the physical evidence?)
As for a sense of the meaning of life, I'm not just content but in awe that structure and beauty, awareness and understanding, control and compassion, can arise as the inexorable result of natural, self-organizing processes in physical nature -- no "guiding hand" is involved, it's all "bootstrapping" and "stuff working itself out as it goes along". And I am grateful that mankind, as one of the products of these processes, has attained the ability to study and comprehend them. (Grateful to whom? No one in particular -- nature in general. By "grateful", maybe I just mean "happy".)
I have faith that there is more to come, that despite the apparent frailty and tenuousness of life, we can hope that the meaning we create on our own will endure and can bear fruits whose true wonders are far beyond what we can now imagine -- I'm not talking about technology, I'm talking about stuff beyond our current conception. If we fail, life will arise and try again somewhere else -- for me, based on my personal experience, that's just what physical nature will do, and that is reassuring.
One last nit-pick. I expect you were aware of the following contrast in your statements:
You may notice that millennia latter the Gospel writer Luke traces the geneology of Jesus right back to Adam. There is no point where the clock stops, the chain is broken, and we ascend into an abstract and mythical prose. The chain is seamless and historical. One of the books of Chronicles also treats the ancestors of Adam in the same way...
... I'm not sure we can deduce the age of the existence of humans by counting geneologies. Sometimes there were skips of people, to highlight people signifcant to God's plan.
That is illuminating.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (added "fresh thought" as indicated by "update")

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by jaywill, posted 03-10-2008 11:28 PM jaywill has not replied

  
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