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Author | Topic: Creation | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
Reading the stories as consecutive seems a bit of a strain, but if you're committed to the Bible being literal and accurate that comes with the territory.
The idea of humans before Adam is hardly new, and has a somewhat mixed history.( e.g. Pre-Adamite ) As far as resolving the conflict between evolution and creationism, even if you take an old Earth view and assume that evolution is the primary means of creation there is a lot more to do. The order of creation in the seven-day account is hardly in line with scientific conclusions. And the implicit geocentrism would seem to be a problem.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: I don't think that you will find anywhere in the Bible that says that Moses was "shown creation by God in six days". i don't remember it from my own reading and I've never seen anyone else offer a quote to that effect. There's not even a clear attribution of Genesis to Moses (who, in reality - if he even existed - is unlikely to have written any book of the Bible). Regardless, a young Earth view is not consistent with scientific findings, nor the idea that the creation described in Genesis 1 used evolution to bring about the diversity of plants and animals. It may be that you intended your initial statement to deny that you are a creationist - but I never said that you were.
quote: Omphalism. It's never been a popular view because it requires God to deceive. Unnecessarily creating evidence of a false past is obviously a deception - and Science has found evidence of a very long past, for the Earth and an even longer past for our Universe.
quote: I think that the same common sense that tells you that the Universe was not created a few minutes ago, should also tell you that the evidence of an old Earth is to be believed. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: A rather naive conclusion since there is rather clear evidence that there are two conflicting stories there. For instance the animals being created after Adam hardly agrees with them being created before humans.
quote: No, there is not. I am sorry if the use of "Adam" and "Eve" confused you into thinking that they referred to the individuals in the Bible but that is not at all justified by the evidence. If you followed the Bible, Noah would be "Adam" and you don't have a great case for identifying "Eve" with the Biblical Eve at all.
quote: I think that it is clear that you have a lot of work to do, before you are ready to publish.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7
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quote: I think you need a slightly deeper understanding of what the science actually shows. In each case DNA samples were taken and compared, and the time calculated is an estimate of the time taken for the differences in the DNA to accumulate. In one case the DNA came from the Y chromosome which passes down the male line, in the other it was mitochondrial DNA which (with rare exceptions) passes down the female line. Now, since it is hardly unknown for a man to have no sons and a woman to have no daughters it follows that there should be a convergence at some point. And if you think about it there is no good reason to think that the individuals identified are the most recent common ancestors. If we follow the Bible, and assume that the population was reduced to 8 people at some point then the Y chromosome common ancestor would be Noah (most likely). But we can't identify the mitochondrial common ancestor - we don't know the ancestry of the wives at all, let alone have a guarantee that they were all descended from Eve in an unbroken female lineage. However, we also have no evidence that the human population was ever reduced that low or even close to it. So - even assuming a literal Adam and Eve it is rather likely that the common ancestors shown by the DNA are other, unrelated people.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
Some dates.
While Wikipedia is very far from the last word it makes a good starting place. The origins of agriculture: Neolithic Revolution Around 12,500 years ago.
Y-chromosomal Adam
As of 2015, estimates of the age of the Y-MRCA range around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago
Mitochondrial Eve
her age is not known with certainty; a 2009 estimate cites an age between c. 152 and 234 thousand years ago (95% CI); a 2013 study cites a range of 99—148 thousand years ago
There don't really seem to coincide. In particular, despite the huge uncertainty, the Y-chromosomal Adam is a long way before the Neolithic Revolution.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: If that was your aim you would be better off embracing Genesis as myth and legend and recognising that as the reason for the conflicts between the two creation stories. If you choose to throw in with the literalists you have huge problems with the Genesis 1 creation story, with the dates, with the Flood. Reiterating pre-Adamite ideas does very little to deal with those problems. And, of course, there are better reasons to reject Christianity anyway, but that is a different issue.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: If you have a real interest in reconciling the Bible with science then you need to deal with all the relevant science. If, on the other hand, you are solely interested in reviving the pre-Adamite theology by falsely claiming that it reconciles the Bible with science, then there is indeed nothing more worth talking about.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
I have some comments on these.
quote: G1 is contrary to the Bible which presents itself as primarily a human creation.G2 seems like an excuse to distort the text to hide contradictions. quote: This is false. The Creation starts with the Primordial Ocean - common to Creation Myths in the Ancient Near East, and the cosmology reflects that. It is at odds with science in many ways, which you have so far refused to discuss even when the issue has been raised.
quote: I'll just note again that the Y-Chromosomal Adam is certainly not the MRCA (there are more recent ones). Also that your assumptions require that the Y-Chromosomal Adam is Noah who - according to Biblical chronologies - lived much too recently to be a plausible candidate. Further, the human population has never been reduced to an effective population of 5 as a literal reading of the Flood story suggests.
quote: Which includes some significant contradictions between the texts. If your doctrine refuses to acknowledge this your doctrine opposes the Bible.
quote: In all cases, the absence of evidence is only significant to the extent that evidence should be present. The absence of evidence for the Biblical Flood is, for instance, decisive.
quote: The order of creation is not consistent with what we know of evolution, and the account does not acknowledge the differences between ancient and modern forms.
quote: For this to be consistent with science, Noah must be placed in the distant past, contradicting the Biblical chronology - and even then science gives us absolutely no reason to identify the Y-Chromosomal Adam with Noah whatsoever.
quote: This conclusion is not adequately supported, since it fails to deal with the differences in the order of creation which you acknowledged in your D6
quote: This conclusion is clearly false, since most of the conflicts have been completely ignored. Which at this point looks like a deliberate tactic.
quote: As I have pointed out above this conclusion is also problematic, at best requiring dubious assumptions.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: Did you not notice "darkness was over the face of the deep" or "the face of the waters" ? There is the Primordial Ocean right there. The same waters are moved to uncover dry land in verses 9-10. Now, the presence of large amounts of water - or any ordinary matter prior to the Big Bang would be rather a surprise to science, wouldn't you agree ? And isn't the implied geocentrism - the failure to recognise that the Earth is even a planet entirely consistent with an ANE worldview and not at all with what we know now ? The Memphis Creation stories centering around Ptah have some rather obvious parallels:
...Ptah is the primal creator, the first of all the gods, creator of the world and all that is in it. He is not created, but simply is. In some stories he is the personification of the primal matter, Ta-Tenen, which rose out of Nun, the fundamental seas.
Ptah Edited by PaulK, : Fixed auto "correct" typo
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: The point seems to be that there is no "then" between verse 1 and verse 2. It seems likely to me that verse 1 says what the story is about, while verse 2 describes the original state of everything. Heaven and Earth are created later in the story. The ancient Hebrews had a geocentric cosmology so there is no need to suggest that there is a sudden shift of focus to Earth - there really is nothing else in the author's world-view to shift away from.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: Since the sky and the celestial bodies are all created in the rest of the text (starting in verse 6) and the dry land, called Earth is created in verses 9-10 it seems that there is good reason to think that they are created later. And certainly there is no good reason to assume that verse 1 refers to the creation of the universe as we see it, not when the stars aren't created until verse 15.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: That doesn't exactly contradict my point. The dry land - the Earth - is created.
quote: You seem to be contradicting yourself there. Are you assuming that creation must mean ex nihilism creation ?
quote: I think that forming can be called creation. Why do you disagree ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: The literal translation hardly helps you. There wasn't any hidden dry land - it should be pretty obvious that the seabed isn't dry just for start !
quote: You say that there wasn't any creation and then you describe a creation. How can that not be a contradiction ?
quote: Well, we have some forming which produces Earth, the sky and a distinct region of "waters above the Earth", so I see no reason not to call it a creation of Heavens and Earth.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: I guess I am going to have to Do you think that dry land was somehow simply hidden by the water ? How could it be dry if it was under the water ? And saying "let it be seen" does not contradict the idea that it is created. You really seem to think that a narrow literalism is the only possible reading.
quote: Well I am glad you admit that much. But feel free to go back and read your post.
quote: Which reveals a lack of substantive disagreement. Refusing to call something a creation even when something distinct is formed is at best a choice of phrasing.And surely the fact that the material is pre-existing is only relevant if you insist on ex nihilism creation which you denied doing. From your list I get the heavens created in day 2 and the Earth in day 3.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: So it is reasonable to say that dry land was not merely revealed.
quote: And yet you do exactly that when you insist that there is a move of focus to Earth. And you aren't really doing that here - certainly you offer no argument that any "foreign" understanding is involved.
quote: If you can show that Hebrew writers insisted on using words in that way, rather than varying words because it reads better as English writers do you might have a point. But simply assuming that they did might well be forcing a foreign understanding on the text - exactly contrary to your stated intent.
quote: Then I guess you are determined to avoid seeing a more general idea of creation and are pretty much stuck with assuming that it has to be ex nihilo to count.
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