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Author | Topic: Is the Bible the Word of God II? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
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 |
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
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
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
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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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
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. 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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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
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. 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
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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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Not to disprove the Bible, but to present evidence that the Creationist interpretation of the Bible is incorrect.
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.
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.
If this were true we wouldn't be having this debate.
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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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Ahem! --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Martin J. Koszegi writes: 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.
Evolutionists are people who accept the theory of evolution. Perhaps you're thinking of Big Bangers?
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
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Margin J. Koszegi writes: 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Hi Theo!
This is a reply to your Message 276 from the Biblical contradictions II thread.
Theologian63 writes: "And acceptance of the validity of any particular Biblical account or miracle is not the measure of belief in God." I disagree. If you discount portions of the Bible then you say God is a liar or Jesus is or many of the authors, speaking under inspiration of God, are. How can a person be a believer and think that GOD lies? Why would a person trust in an untrustworthy deity? I don't believe the Bible contains the inerrant Word of God. What evidence do you have that it does? --Percy
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