Is the Bible the Word of God II?

The database for the original thread for this topic became corrupted, so I'm opening a new thread for it. I apologize for any inconvenience.The original thread for this topic lost all posts after February 8th, but it still exists. It can be found by changing your list settings (upper right on the List All Topics or Great Debate pages) to List All Topics.--Percy
--EvC Forum Administrator

I believe I'll be able to restore the messages from the past week, but I can't get to it till later tonight.Quicksink, hit refresh. Your browser isn't aware the software has rewritten the page with your message at the bottom and so doesn't reload it, but only displays the copy it already has in it's cache. Hitting refresh causes the browser to load the latest version of the page.--Percy

Unfortunately I am unable to restore the posts of the last week to this thread. I apologize for the inconvenience.--Percy, EvC Forum Administrator

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Mister Pamboli writes:
Genesis 5 at the very least says that Adam had more sons and daughters than just Cain and Abel, so I don't think its an issue. It is one of the favourite "gotcha" questions raised by each generation of biblical-contradiction-hunters.

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This interpretation might be a stretch. When there were only four people on the entire earth (Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel), Cain kills Abel and then we read:

Gen 4:15b Then the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him.

The only people available to find and kill Cain at the time were Adam and Eve.

Gen 4:16 So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Since Adam, Eve and Cain were the only people in the world at the time, Cain went to live alone. In the very next sentence we read:

Gen 4:17a Cain lay with his wife...

But there was no one to be Cain's wife, so this means that between Gen 4:16 and Gen 4:17 there must have passed a considerable period of time, even though they're consective sentences, during which events related later on in Genesis must have happened:

Gen 4:25 Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and names him Seth.

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Gen 5:4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.

And so at least 14 years must have passed after the death of Abel before the first girl to be born could marry Cain, all this taking place between consecutive sentences Gen 4:16 and Gen 4:17.Not impossible, but a stretch, and the text seems blithely unaware of the incongruities in what otherwise appears to be a chronological account. The story of creation, Adam, Eve and the fall and the tale of Cain and Abel have the feel of two different stories tacked together with a single interlude paragraph at Gen 4:1.--Percy

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Mister Pamboli writes:
Ah you've skipped verse three you naughty thing ...

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Since Adam and Eve do not have additional children until after Cain kills Abel, and since Gen 4:3 precedes the murder, that verse is irrelevant.Gen 4:15b-17 reads like this:

Then the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

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Cain lay with his wife...

Since there were no wives to be had at the time of Abel's death, in order for this passage to be possible at least 14 years must have passed between the end of verse 4:16 and the beginning of verse 4:17, and that just so Cain could marry his full sister. It's not impossible, but it's a stretch. The entire story makes more sense once you realize it was once two separate tales, at least two.A further point is that if the chronology of the Bible is so loose that 14 years can possibly be inserted between any two sentences when required to close the distance to the realm of possibility, then there are too many alternate possible interpretations to make it a useful reference about anything.--Percy

I'm afraid I'm having trouble understanding your original point. You came to the Bible's defense when No2creation raised the question of where Cain's wife came from, saying you didn't think it was an issue, that it was a favorite "gotcha" among Biblical contradiction seekers. I answered that I thought it was a stretch given that it required the insertion of at least 14 years between two consecutive sentences.You then answered that Gen 4:3 accounted for the missing time, but that verse is about the passage of time up to the incident where Cain kills Abel, ie, it's irrelevant to passage of time after the murder. Further, the Bible explicitly states that Adam and Eve had no more children until after the death of Cain:

Gen 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and called him Seth, for she said, "God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him."

So after Cain killed Abel, Cain would have had to wait at least 14 years before a sister could be born and become old enough to marry.But this isn't the impression the Bible story leaves in one's mind while it's being read. When it says that Cain killed Abel and then fled to the land of Nod where he slept with his wife it says it matter of factly as if there were people already living in the land of Nod among whom one could find a wife. This is, of course, impossible since the only people alive in the world at the time were Adam, Eve and Cain.There's nothing special about this problem. There are many other similar problems in the Bible, some worse, some not so bad. I'm not trying to make a big deal about this particular problem. I just didn't think it was accurate to say it wasn't a problem.--Percy

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techristian writes:
Since the majority here are trying to use science to disprove the bible...

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Not to disprove the Bible, but to present evidence that the Creationist interpretation of the Bible is incorrect.

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...I have only presented a scientific POSSIBILITY which would work. How can you prove that Adam WASN'T created with perfect DNA?

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You've got science backwards. Sciences builds frameworks of understanding and interpretation around bodies of evidence and calls them theories. Evidence is the key component. Not only do you not know what "perfect DNA" is, but you have no evidence for it anyway.

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That is precisely why evolution couldn't work. For a living organism to live, grow and reproduce, it must have at least 3 systems is place SIMULTANEOUSLY.

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Though you say "evolution", the ensuing discussion makes clear you're really talking about the origin of life, which has it's own forum. But just to briefly address this here, the origin of life, often referred to as abiogenesis, and evolution are independent topics. There are Creationists who believe God created the first life and then let evolution create the generations of species resulting in the life forms present in the world today, including ourselves.

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That is why scientists have almost totally abandoned Darwinian evolution.

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If this were true we wouldn't be having this debate.

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Darwin was not a scientist but an atheist who sought to justify his evil by trying to explain away God.

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Science judges theories by how well they explain the evidence, not by subjective assessments of their originators morality. Even if Darwin had been the Hitler of the 19th century it would diminish the value of his insights not one whit. However, the judgment of history is that Darwin was a scientist of the first rank, but was otherwise an ordinary man like many others.--Percy

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Hieyeck writes:
I ALREADY SAID, DNA IS THE KEY TO EVOLUTION. GET THAT THOURGH YOUR THICK SKULL (guess god made a mistake with your head).

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Ahem!--Percy

Martin J. Koszegi writes:

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In consideration of the notoriously Messianic passage of Isaiah 53:10, for example, beginning with the second Hebrew letter that appears in the phrase "he shall prolong," and counting forward in use of every 20th letter thereafter, the additional phrase "Yeshua [Jesus] is my name" appears. The probability of this combination occuring by random chance is one chance in 50 quadrillion.

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The book The Bible Code is based upon a very common statistical fallacy. There are numerous refutation sites around the web if you care to check them out, Scientific Refutation of the Bible Codes for one.

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But if you mean that evolutionists (people who accept by blind faith that NOTHING really did cause physical existence to come into being)...

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Evolutionists are people who accept the theory of evolution. Perhaps you're thinking of Big Bangers?

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The creationist advantage is that the physical and empirical evidences support their beliefs to a greater degree than they (the physical evidences)can be manipulated to support your beliefs.

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The earliest evidence for evolution is still the best, namely the distribution of fossils in the geologic column, with increasing differences from modern forms with increasing depth. This isn't an appropriate topic for this thread, though. If it interests you you could join one of the threads over in the Geology and the Great Flood forum.Welcome aboard!--Percy

Margin J. Koszegi writes:

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I appreciate the tip about engaging the proper thread. But just one more violation of forum: The evidence itself shows that the geologic columns were deposited more suddenly than over vast stretches of time. And the simple-to-complex life forms indicated from lower to higher levels in the columns, reflects an increasing ability to escape from the Flood.

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You may be interested in joining the Paleocurrents: the 'diverse' features of the GC were laid via rapid, correlated flow thread over in the Geology and the Great Flood forum.--Percy

Hi Theo!This is a reply to your Message 276 from the Biblical contradictions II thread. I don't believe the Bible contains the inerrant Word of God. What evidence do you have that it does?--Percy