The Literal Genesis Account of Creation

You've not provided any evidence that what Gen1:1 says actually happened, so that's an unsupported assertion. Thats silly, you can't read something in a book and just declare it as fact. Facts are observations. If you want to claim that any of the quotes are facts you have to be able to show observations from the real world backing that statement up. I'm aware that this forum doesn't have the strict rules that the science forums have regarding this, but surely if you make claims about religion being more accurate than science you have to have something more than just words in a book to back it up? Er no, what they proved was that the flies and mould that appear in a few days on food don't spontaneously appear. If you consider that to be a disproof of the possibility of abiogensis then i'm afraid you have a long way to go. Even if abiogenesis IS impossible, that experiment doesn't have any bearing on it. It was however very useful in showing how to keep food fresh and healthy.

It certainly wasn't 'Earth', that's for sure. From simply reading the text that you posted, it seems to me that the writers considered Water to have filled the heavens. God then gathered it all together in one place (forming what we consider the Earth), and then parted it so the land could appear. It doesn't mention that anything was created ex-nihlo, so it sounds to me like this is a sort of recipe. God gathered together all the ingredients, and then assembled them into the earth. I find this line very interesting. They specifically call the dry land 'Earth', using the proper noun. Is the word Earth here the same as the word Earth in Gen1:1? If so, it appears that the writers considered the seas to be part of the heavens (which makes sense if they thought that water was the basic element of the universe). Obviously reading the English translation it could have lost its original intent, but that's how I see it from the text.

Either there was a beginning or there wasn't, it isn't a huge stretch that they may have got that right (even though "beginning" doesn't really fit the concept of the Big Bang from my understanding of it, but I'll leave Cavediver or one of the other proffesionals to argue that point with you). Even if I give you "In the beginning", that in no way validates the second half of the sentence! You can't pick half a sentence from a book with thousands of sentences, and then claim the whole thing is accurate just because that one part vaguely fits.The bible is a heck of a lot more specific about what happened than just "there was a beginning". It specifies that "there is a god, this god created everything, he did it in this order, it was good" (not a direct quote by the way ;-)). What reason is there to think that the whole of genesis is in agreement with/better than science?

Hi, I think you misunderstood me. When I said that there was no evidence that the words in Genesis were an accurate account of any real event you responded by quoting less than half of one sentence from a whole book of the bible. My point was, you can't take less than half of one sentence of a whole book and claim that that is in any way evidence that the rest of the book is accurate. I'm well aware that you're only talking about part of Genesis here, but my point still stands. "In the beginning..." is not an accurate reflection of what is described in Genesis, and it's not an accurate description of the Big Bang beyond anything but laymans terms.

Sorry, I missed this before because I was in a rush. Thanks for the welcome.

Sure, but you can't use it as the answer to why it is to be believed as the actual explanations of the universe. It doesn't justify believing any of it, which you implied it did. Not unless it is claimed that 'In the beginning' is a reference to the big bang or that the bible is accurate from a scientific point of view.

The only way for a person to live hundreds of years but it still be the same day is if the planet is tidaly locked with the sun (in the way that the moon is with the earth). That would be in total disagreement with science.

Without form does not in any way mean desolate. Desolate means a wasteland, or a place removed of inhabitants or where inhabitants can't live. Desolate would be a better synonym for void, which means emptiness.Formless means without shape or structure. Basically if the earth is without form it is saying that it doesn't exist, at least not 'as the earth'. For example if I'm making a cake and I have all the ingredients in a bowl mixed together I could say that the cake was without form. At this point the cake does not exist, and further work is required to make the cake.Of course water is formless (it takes on whatever form its container has, but itself has no definite shape), so it could be that they thought the dry land was formed 'from' the water, as in the water was given a definite form that was solid. Not exactly. The dry land is not called 'earth' (soil), it is called 'Earth' (proper noun, the name we give to our planet). This shows that the seas are not on the Earth, but the Earth is 'in' the seas. They aren't describing the planet, there is no concept here of a spherical ball of rock with water on its surface. Instead we have a (possibly endless) expanse of water (and only water, or it wouldn't be formless) which is void and formless. From this we have dry land (void but no longer formless) appearing.

Hi pbee. I'm not altogether certain whether your post was a criticism of my post, or if you were just using my post as a way to make a separate point about the phrase "formless and void". Your post doesn't seem to contradict anything I said though, so I'll assume the latter.Desolate and uninhabited is certainly a possible meaning of the word void (as I mentioned before), however formless implies more than just desolate. A desert (or a frozen lake) is void, but it's not formless. Either this word is a bad translation of the original text, or it implies that the earth really was mid-creation as I suggested. In much the same way that you could say that an artists sculpture is "formless and void" when the modelling clay is first picked up.This is in direct contradiction to the point I was responding to, in which "formless and void" was asserted to mean a condition of the earth post creation, a condition which it had reverted to an unspecified time after Gen1:1. The article you quoted from seems to agree, offering a rebuttal to the claim that Gen1:1 refers to the initial creation and "formless and void" refers to a reverted (unintended) condition.

The land would not be formless if it was covered with water, it would have exactly the same form that it has if it's not covered with water. Formless implies without form (like a potters clay). Is formless the correct translation? I'm not certain now, are you saying that there was no land anywhere at all (in which case formless would be an accurate word), or there IS land somewhere (in which case formless isn't the right word). And as Jar said this does not match what science says. Claiming that the bible means it was covered with water after the creation was finished is irrelevent, if it says that it was covered with water at any time at all this is going against science. Hence why people arguing for Noahs flood as a literal event that covered the entire planet tend to have such a hard time on this site. Yes, I know. That was exactly my point. It definitely is not refering to the concept of a planet here. Nowhere do I actually see the concept of a planet referred to at all. It seems in the beginning there was water (which isn't explicitly created), and from that water everything else was produced (including the Earth).

Wow, it seems I was sometwhat accurate with my reading of the first few verses of the KJV. I guess that goes to show (as you say later) that it isn't a bad translation at all. I certainly can't read Hebrew, but I struggled with French and German so maybe language isn't my thing.