Stephen Hawking calls it the anthropic principle in The universe in a nutshell. We can only understand things greater than us by bringing it into a perspective we can already grasp. That is why allegory and parables are so useful.
OK, I can see that in a typical sense, but we're talking about God here. I can't see how God would describe things to these people in a way that would just become cloudy and confusing to the people of our time. A god, as he is described in your religious texts, would know of the confusion that would follow, wouldn't he?
Well, it definitely wasn't scientific observation
Obviously, because the descriptions are wrong.
Just like we don't know where the Aztecs got their accurate astrological information.
The difference is that the Aztecs information is accurate.
You have to ask the question: what was Genesis meant to convey? It certainly wasn't going to gain credibility by making something up that couldn't be confirmed
You're almost there, Jenyar. By making up something that could not be confirmed, what you're doing is creating a loophole; you're creating an alleged reality to which there is no alternative. "God didn't create the world!" "Oh? So I suppose you have it on authority as to just how the world was created?" You see the lack of an argument there was back then? Today, we can see right through it because we know how things work and how they are formed; the people back then
didn't.
Yet it is far more conservative theologically speaking than other creation accounts, where gods were fighting mythical creatures and created only amidst great odds and controversy.
The Sumerian account is simply that our God's father created the universe. Simple. That does not make it any more true.
It isn't exclusively either, but literal as far as its importance and God's involvement was concerned, while also loaded with figurative possibilities - i.e: meaning.
Yeah, it's "Loaded" alright...But seriously, I need to know exactly what is figurative about it. And what about God's involvment was literal?
Compare the Egyptian creation with Genesis. There are similarities, but the differences are enlightening:
The differences are that Genesis attributes the creation of everything to a singular god; while the Egyptian account gives god status to many of the so-called "creations" themselves.
The similarity is this: Both had a great interest in the skies, but neither had a great understanding of them. Neither tells us what exactly a star is, nor do they tell us what exactly the purpose of one would be. They both falsely attribute the moon as a "Light" when in fact it simply
reflects the light from the sun. It's the dodging of questions, and the wrong answers to the questions that stand out to me.
In a certain sense, of course it can be seen as "propaganda" for the God of the Israelites
There you have it!
Compared to other religions it is "factual", but it doesn't try to explain itself.
Other members of this forum might rip you apart for calling Genesis "Factual," but luckily for you, I understand what you mean!
Literally, it says God really created the universe as we know it in six days - but immediately we are made aware that the time and "days" would have been just arbitrary abstractions unless God ordered them as He did
But with that information--the information of what exactly a day is--how can you then question if the amount of time it took to create the universe? You just said it: "God ordered them as He did," so how is there any question? It has been laid out for you in plain english...(or Arabic...)...God created day and night, and then he said "It took six days." You have to realize that if he made a day, then set the Earth in rotation around the sun to be an indicator of the length of days, then you have to realize he said "Six Days" for a reason. If for no other reason than for you to know just...how...long...it...took!
(Disclaimer: I don't believe in any of this, but in order to speak with a theist, one must argue within a theists' realm!
)
What is day and night really, but what we call the separation between light and darkness?
So then there is no reason for it? Or importance?
Exactly because fact itself is morally ambiguous. I don't ignore the evidence of anything - my point is that the Bible pays only a passing homeage to "facts". They are dead entities, they make no difference to your life either way but in their interpretation and application
Let me set you straight on this, Jenyar...when you discover a fact, you know one thing more than you did a minute ago. You have learned, and are inspired to learn more. Facts beget education and enlightenment. At the same time, they are the
product of education, because you don't know something is a fact until you have proven it as such. So it matters
very much in our lives. If we did not know facts, we would not know, quite simply. And that is the downfall of religion, that the suposed "facts" are all already laid out for you. There is no reason to question, nor any reason to search for answers. That equals ignorance.
I am frequently accused of being overly "emotional" when emotion is irrelevant in the discussion. But people forget that I am not proposing an alternative to science,
We all know that. And we know that because science--being the study of the material world--knows what you claim to be truth is no alternative. It isn't true, doesn't exist, doesn't happen. Simple.
You constantly talk as if science is this great entity, like it's some sort of being that is rival to your god. But it's not. It's simply the means of searching, gathering, and identifying truths.
It proposes a way of looking at and doing things that fits our existence in a creation that God intended. It fosters an outlook on life that will remain true, valid and relevant no matter how our own perspectives change. An outlook that includes God in the whole spectrum of human experience - not just the empirical one
You are
exactly right. But none of that means it is a true account. What it means is that it takes the fact that YES, we are here; YES, we are intelligent; YES, we do wonder and are curious; and it fits those facts into this...for lack of a better word, fantasy...that we were
created rather than formed via natural process. And that our lives have more romantic, storybook meanings other than what our true, natural meaning really is. See, without this book, and others like it, Man's outlook on life might have been quite different. Maybe we would accept murder as a means of revenge under the right circumstances...and we DO, really, for the most part. It's just the laws set which are based on the "holy" laws which do not tolerate those things. Maybe we would accept theft, if it was from the rich who suppressed the poor with thier great political power...and we DO, for the most part! But again, the laws, based on the "holy" laws, do not.
Consider this whole debate we are having about whether Genesis is literal or not. Your position (and correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but this is how I understand it) is that the credibility of the Bible is compromised by its apparent inability to justify its alleged supernatural source (and therefore authority) by including miraculous facts, that can only now be confirmed.
Yes, you're right. But, there are no "miraculous facts" in the Bible. And none have been confirmed.
If the Bible said for example "in the beginning God created a solar year, and the universe was created over 45 billion of these 'years' " once this could be confirmed, you would believe the rest of the Bible.
If you could show me that that exact passage was written exactly when it was purported to be, and man had no way of knowing such things back then, then yes, I would be more inclined to believe the book.
If facts were so important, why would God emphasize relationships and other unscientific approaches towards life?
Here's the logic behind my disbelief: The reason the Bible stays away from universal facts is simply because the authors did not know them. Any god who seriously was trying to get his people to believe him and realize that he existed and his power was real and greater than anything they had ever seen would certainly show something more. Tell the people what is going on, and what exactly everything is around them. Leave a mark that is relevant and believable to everyone who will every read the texts. Leave a simple fact that is unkowable but strikes a chord of interest and excitement in the hearts of men for millions of years. Do something to prove yourself.
But the god in this Bible does none of that. Sure, in his stories, he does some incredible things, but nothing that withstands the test of time. Nothing that could be seen, heard, smelled or tasted by men today. He speaks no incredible facts, or gives such incredible insight that only a god could have spoken the words.
Simply put, relationships and other "unscientific" aspects of life are much easier to tackle. Giving specific functions and origins of things is not...it was impossible for man back then. And how funny...no facts or functions or origins are written.
And if the earth's orbit had changed within the period of creation, how accurate would Genesis still be? Wouldn't the chronological "inaccuracy" before or after such a change compromise the message?
So you mean that God had his words written, then something about his creation experienced an unforseen change? According to the attributes of your god, and the attributes of creation itself, such a thing is impossible. God would have forseen the change in the orbit, and either A) made sure the orbit didn't change, or B) made sure we knew exactly the difference between an ancient day and a modern day.
But I know that Genesis is the least of your objections. No amount of "factual" information will get you to believe in the God who could create facts. In the end such information would still be relative to us, who are only indirectly relative God.
Genesis is one of my greatest objections, actually. It's the most transparent of the Bible passages.
And how dare you say that no amount of evidence could make me believe in your god? Truth is, there IS NO EVIDENCE. You have levied none, so how are you to say that none could sway me?
If this god could create facts, as you say he can, why does he not know of them? He states none in the Bible...
I hope atheroy read this as well. You admit that what is "natural" is limited to how much you can explain - or at least you think it is true for primitive cultures, as we ourselves undoubtedly were long ago.
Wrong. What you
know as natural is limited to what you know.
Therefore they would necessarily conclude that anything they cannot explain is "supernatural".
Wrong again! Supernatural is:
1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.
3. Of or relating to a deity.
4. Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous.
5. Of or relating to the miraculous.
6. Not of the material world.
So, suffice to say, just because we can't explain something, doesn't make it supernatural.
What you describe is empirically observed nature - which is as factual as we can get, yet we have to theorize quarks and dark matter and Planck lengths because it isn't powerful enough to even describe what we see. How much less what we don't see.
But now you're likening your god to a quark! How quickly a theist forgets that we're dealing with the most powerful entity in or outside of the unvierse! This god that you claim to be "like a quark" in it's invisibility was VERY visible in the Bible. He created man, walked and spoke with them, sent messangers in the form of angels, warned against evil in the form of deamons, and sent a living, breathing son to die for the sins of humanity. This god is very
unlike a quark in the sense that he is supposed to be the almighty, the one who created everything. He should be very visible, at least in the sense that we all KNOW he exists. And yet...we don't.
People don't have to attribute these things to God, you know. The paradigm comes first, then the explanation. In a superstitious culture, these things would be called ghosts or omens, in a more scientific culture, they would be phenomena begging for study, in a spiritualistic culture, they could be gods or signs from gods. They are just different ways of approaching the unknown.
Exactly, which is why the Bible is not the only version of what God is. Which is why some religions include many gods, and some include only one. This is proof against the stories of your Bible, or any religious text for that matter. If your god is as he is proclaimed to be in the Bible, everyone would know it.
The Israelites didn't deify the "pillar of fire" that lead them through the desert, did they, although I'm sure it was as unexplainable to them as it would be to us. They already had a God. And studying or explaining it naturalistically would not change that fact or the fact that it was "leading" them.
Right now, you're trying to use a biblical story to prove your point, and that is BS. A pillar of fire? How do you know that story isn't just a complete and total fabrication?
Are you beginning to see what Genesis managed to achieve? Nothing in its creation could replace the God of creation.
Exactly. For an uninformed person or people, your religion is a fool-proof trap. There is no way around it, simply because they did not have the information available to refute it.
That is why there is a saying that "science is a graveyard for dead religions and superstitions". But would a UFO replace the God of the Bible? How long did the creation of the same universe take on a planet that had 64 hour days? My guess is: six literal days.
I'm sorry, but I really can't decipher what you're saying here.
You would love to see the evidence, but you don't believe the evidence. You say you would love to know the truth, but would you believe the truth?
There is no evidence, first of all. Secondly, YES I WOULD BELIEVE THE TRUTH.
Science can be an opium: it creates an artificial space within which everything makes sense, where everything is explained. It gradually expands its borders, and that creates the hope that eventually everything will be explained - indeed, that everything is ultimately explainable.
It's not an opium; an opium would be theism. And you're wrong about the artificial space, because as far as we know, everything can be explained, eventually. If it is material--which is observable--then we can explain it, eventually. That is just enlightenment, man. You live, you learn, and the cycle continues. It's the perk to being an intelligent species, becuase not only do you procreate, but you get to discover and experience the thrill of it.
But it is still a bubble, similar to the bubble you think I'm in.
Wrong. The bubble you live in is one that prevents you from searching and failing, from thinking for yourself and falling on your face, from making decisions and living with the real consequences. You notice how all the punishments in the Bible for one's misgivings are in ways which can be explained away as natural phenomina? Everything has a consequence, but most rewards and consequences are in the afterlife, so they cannot be proven? Notice that?
Everything is laid out before you with religion. There is no learning or searching or questioning or alternative. People in the Bible were condemned by God himself for asking questions that posed an alternative to HIM. How is that for a bubble?
Although my experience is that living things behave differently than facts. They are just as unpredictable, inconsistent, controversial, emotional, irrational, unreasonable, imaginative, stupid, and contradictory as they are otherwise.
You have to elaborate, because I'd LOVE to hear of one living thing that behaves differently than the facts say it does.
why myth, imagination and art should not be able to describe truth as validly and accurately as equations and samples. It's a scary thought, but we have no reason to expect reality to behave as we'd like it to.
Because myth is the twisting and expanding of a basic truth. Jesus is a good example of this, most likely. Art is an interpretation of what might or might not be truth, and is always describing the feelings of the artist because of the events, rather than the events themselves. And imagination is the combination of many things, factual and non-factual. Hence, none of that can be valid in the description of truth, because the only way to know what the truth is is to have the truth itself described to us.
Depends on what truth you are illustrating. Will the second example portray accurately to your son how you fell in love with your wife? Will it create the expectation that he can expect the same kind of love, or will he wonder for the rest of his life whether his feromones will always send the right message to your brain? Will he live in fear of the day that his father's brain suddenly stops being incited towards love for him? But if you truly believed what you said in the first example, being called a "miraculous gift" would certainly leave no room for your son to doubt that he is more than the result of mating brought on by a sequence of events that are no more significant in your eyes than a pair of spiders doing the same thing.
Again with the emotinalism! Jenyar, the fact is our purpose is to procreate and spread our seed, advance our species. The way to achive this is through attraction and love, but those are simply reactions to chemical interactions in the brain. There is no other truth it be explained; it simply is what it is.
And by the way...your fear of reality is sad.
Now which of our examples above illustrates "the truth" more accurately?
The second one, because that's what ACTUALLY happened.
I can only tell you that science is a long way off from finding God, but that isn't a valid reason for not believing in Him. He exist as a living reality, not as a fossil of superstition.
If science is a long way off, then you cannot possibly know of him. You are material, and henceforth cannot interact or observe any other realm. Therefore, you cannot know God.
The biggest problem is that people expect evidence from the Bible to appear "different" than any other evidence presented out of history. The only repeatable evidence is in the kind of life you lead - experiential evidence is the only evidence you would believe anyway. Based on that you can judge whether the authors of the Bible were frauds or not. Otherwise you just assume they were liars.
See, that's the problem. The god described in that book does not ever make himself as known to us as he did to them. He never comes down and says "Hey, what's up?" to us like he did to them. He is a very apparent god to those people, yet he is not to us today.
And again, there is no real solid proof in that book of your god's validity. He never drops on us "You will discover this thing called nuclear energy." Nor does he ever tell us what the moon really is. So you're left to judge the character of the authors, which is something none of us can honestly do, and that of course means the Bible is a puzzle we cannot solve as of yet.
JD
