Troy: You also have to remember that Genesis was translated at least 4 times before the English version we have today. Ancient Hebrew was very primitive. The writing language itself had no vows, spaces in between the words, and punctuations.
Who of the people of today decided they can interpret Hebrew from that long ago? How did anyone know how to translate those symbols? All of these things happened so long ago that our entire life and world of today is nothing like what it was then and to think that we could ever understand what was meant is completely ridiculous.
We really have no idea how the ancient people used the word that eventually got translated to "fish" for. It is entirely possible that they used the Ancient Hebrew word to describe "fish" as well as other sea creatures.
MiguelG: A third explanation would be that as the Biblical authors were men, regardless of their divine inspiration, their understanding was limited by their individual knowledge, wisdom, and cultural mores & biases.
That's such a great point.. just wanted to agree. What is divine inspiration anyways? Why should all of the people that haven't had divine inspiration come over us just believe that those people really have had divine inspiration come over them? What if they made it up? We only believe the bible here in america because that's what's most popular. In some places of the world people are born not even knowing what the bible is and I have 2 things to say to that. That seems wildly unfair that they don't have the bible to believe in if that's our history. If God was a loving God (and I don't mean to that to insult God) he would make sure that everyone was well informed about his book. Also, all of those people have completely different religions and ideas that they honestly believe are correct, so why would I want to be so ignorant to say "no, I live in american and I have conformed to believing in the bible like everyone else, and because of this I am absolutely sure that you're ideas are wrong." Our ideas are no more ridiculous and/or ingenious as theirs.
Arachnophilia: also, god hates shrimp.
Where'd you get that information from?
boomatt: Just to let you know back in those times they considered fish to be whales and sharks and pretty much all kinds of sealife.
Where'd you get that information from?
Troy: Perhaps when God inspired people of the accounts of Genesis people were primitive enough not to see a difference between fish and everything else in water. After all, they were all water dwelling creatures, and their name was "fish".
Speculation like this reminds me of how inaccurate the Bible and all of the things we humans have conformed to believe must be. It's impossible to really know what happened in the history of life and existence. When you can actually let go of all the things everyone has decided to believe and realize nothing has any actual merit, you'll realize that all you can do is accept the fact that we will never really know what we're a part of.
Troy: One might also say that viruses and bacteria are the only creatures left that we haven't been able to dominate over. If anything that can dominate over us, it's viruses and bacteria.
That's an interesting thought. Maybe virus ad bacteria are the next form of evolution to wipe out humans, they're just at such an early stage in their existence that it seems a lot less threatening than we're aware of. That would be Darwin's theory of natural selection on a much wider scale. Humans prevail, so something else has to come along and wipe us out.. here it comes. If you can let go of how a human percieves things you can realize that this idea isn't all that bizarre, but being that we ARE human.. we look at ourselves as the standard. Rhino's are attracted to Rhino's for companionship, humans are attracted to other humans for companionship. Who's to say that a whole world of bacteria to take over in a long term evolutionary state (or even short term) is all that bizarre? We only think it is because we are the standard or dominant race of our time. Now I'm not saying that I believe this absolutely bizarre theory I've come up with.. all I'm saying is that I'm not going to be so ignorant as to say that can't happen. I only wish I could live long enough to actually comprehend what's really going on. No one really knows, that's WHY there are so many religions. Religion = opinions. Opinions have no merit. Religion = no merit.
Troy: In the Vietnamese language, there is only 1 word for "green" and "blue". Wait a second, were the Vietnamese in ancient times all colorblind? Were they all retarded enough to not notice the difference between something that is green and something that is blue?
Once again, that's something we'll never be able to understand. I just figure at the time and place in their world that they were living. They had everything we needed. It's frustrating that we as humans only live JUST long enough to get a taste that we're part of something we can't understand... but we aren't given enough time to really understand it, we're only given enough time to speculate so much to drive ourselves insane.
™ Version 4.2
