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Split Thread Should creationism be taught as Science?

psionl0 said:
No it isn't. "Stuff that already existed" (or words to that effect) do not appear anywhere in the bible.
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Darat said:
If it wasn't for the first few verses of Genesis you may be right. I provided the link above to the sample of a book that will explain to you what the Hebrew means.

I can only lead you to the information.
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"Darat has found you an argument; but he is not obliged to find you an understanding."

- Samuel Johnson (paraphrased)
 
Darat said:
The text we have is quite clear that god in Genesis was not credited with creating the universe, he formed the earth and so on from stuff that already existed. Only later redefinitions of god created a god that was to be credited with creating everything.
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That's interesting. I actually read it.

I'm not sure I agree, though, about being "quite clear". I think I would like to see commentary on the commentary to see if that's a general consensus among people who study ancient Hebrew.


That is.....if I cared enough to look it up, which I might, just for curiosity.
 
The word "universe" as referring to "everything" didn't appear until the 12th century French, and even then it only meant the whole world.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/universe

1580s, "the whole world, cosmos, the totality of existing things," from Old French univers (12c.), from Latin universum "all things, everybody, all people, the whole world," noun use of neuter of adjective universus "all together, all in one, whole, entire, relating to all," literally "turned into one," from unus "one"​

The bibble was written a long time before that

But even as late as the early 1920's "the Universe" referred to our galaxy only, because it wasn't until Hubble released his findings, that scientists and astronomers realised that the "nebulae" they could see in their telescopes were not inside the galaxy, but out side of it... a loooooong way out side of it


In short, the concept of a "universe" did not exist AT ALL when the bible was written. Claiming that Genesis refers to the creation of the universe is the mother of all goalpost shifts!
 
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smartcooky said:
The word "universe" as referring to "everything" didn't appear until the 12th century French, and even then it only meant the whole world.
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So what? Nowhere in the bible is there even a hint that the whole world was anything other than earth and the sky. There is no hint that limbo, purgatory or hell pre-existed anything that God created nor that God used any bits of them in his creations.

These failed attempts to demonstrate that most Christians do not believe in a God that created everything by dissecting words are pathetic.
 
psionl0 said:
So what? Nowhere in the bible is there even a hint that the whole world was anything other than earth and the sky. There is no hint that limbo, purgatory or hell pre-existed anything that God created nor that God used any bits of them in his creations.

These failed attempts to demonstrate that most Christians do not believe in a God that created everything by dissecting words are pathetic.
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What is pathetic is the failed interpretation of what has been said.

What is this thread even about? It’s bloody hard when you won’t say what you believe. It’s easy to take cheap shots when someone mistates something, misinterprets your unstated position, or you plain attack straw men. Same pathetic game every time. Yeah stick it to the dumb arse sceptics!
 
psionl0 said:
So what? Nowhere in the bible is there even a hint that the whole world was anything other than earth and the sky. There is no hint that limbo, purgatory or hell pre-existed anything that God created nor that God used any bits of them in his creations.

These failed attempts to demonstrate that most Christians do not believe in a God that created everything by dissecting words are pathetic.
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I, for one, have lost track of why it matters, even though it is interesting.
 
Early creation myths and how they might have been seen in their original cultures is deeply interesting. Naive assertions that contemporary translations can be understood literally from within our own worldviews are not.
 
I'm a bit puzzled by this insistence that the Genesis creation account wasn't intended to describe the creation of what we think of as the universe. The account explicitly includes the sun, moon, stars, etc. The only ambiguity seems to be whether God created the primaeval "stuff" from which he fashioned such bodies. But I don't see how it can be understood *not* to include everything we can look around and see today, everything the authors understood to exist (unless you're going to suggest that the CMB is that aforementioned primaeval stuff).
 
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Ex nihilo versus bringing order to a primordial chaos does seem quite different. Do not Christians see creation as the former?
 
Reformed Offlian said:
I'm a bit puzzled by this insistence that the Genesis creation account wasn't intended to describe the creation of what we think of as the universe. The account explicitly includes the sun, moon, stars, etc. The only ambiguity seems to be whether God created the primaeval "stuff" from which he fashioned such bodies. But I don't see how it can be understood *not* to include everything we can look around and see today, everything the authors understood to exist (unless you're going to suggest that the CMB is that aforementioned primaeval stuff).
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The bit that's probably puzzling you is that some posters are saying that those who wrote the Bible and referred to the sun, moon, stars, etc, didn't understand what they were the way we do. The sun, moon and stars were basically part of the earth. They were there for the earth's benefit and without independent existence. The early authors of Genesis didn't understand that it was possible for something to exist that was not tied to the earth in some way. This is why people are saying that Genesis doesn't describe the creation of a universe as we know it. It describes the creation of an earth as the authors understood it.
 
Meadmaker said:
I, for one, have lost track of why it matters, even though it is interesting.
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In the thread that Darat linked to earlier, he attempted to show that nobody believes in a God that created anything ex-nihilo (let alone an entire universe).

Edited by sarge: 
removed rule 12 violation
 
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Sideroxylon said:
Ex nihilo versus bringing order to a primordial chaos does seem quite different. Do not Christians see creation as the former?
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From the point of view of which *things* are part of creation, that seems to be a distinction without a difference. There do not seem to be any *things* one could point to and say: "That's a thing that exists", that lie outside of creation. That there have been different understandings about what is left when one subtracts all the things is unsurprising, and seems to be mainly a metaphysical, rather than cosmological question.
 
arthwollipot said:
The bit that's probably puzzling you is that some posters are saying that those who wrote the Bible and referred to the sun, moon, stars, etc, didn't understand what they were the way we do. The sun, moon and stars were basically part of the earth. They were there for the earth's benefit and without independent existence. The early authors of Genesis didn't understand that it was possible for something to exist that was not tied to the earth in some way. This is why people are saying that Genesis doesn't describe the creation of a universe as we know it. It describes the creation of an earth as the authors understood it.
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But they still intended their account to refer to the sun, moon and stars, and not just the earth. To suggest that Genesis only talks about the earth, and not hte sun, moon and stars, when clearly it *does* talk about the sun, moon, and stars, is silly. And if that isn't what you are suggesting, I'm not sure what your point actually is.
 
Anyway we should not be surprised that early creation myths do not bear the burden of contemporary understandings of the cosmos - which is the subject for science classrooms.
 
Reformed Offlian said:
But they still intended their account to refer to the sun, moon and stars, and not just the earth. To suggest that Genesis only talks about the earth, and not hte sun, moon and stars, when clearly it *does* talk about the sun, moon, and stars, is silly. And if that isn't what you are suggesting, I'm not sure what your point actually is.
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The point is that the sun moon and stars, in the point of view of the Bible, were mere accessories. Shiny things that were hung off the earth to provide light and "for signs". There is no concept of them having any independent existence.

We know that Betelgeuse and Antares and Sirius have absolutely nothing to do with earth. They exist in the universe, and would still exist even if the earth didn't. But according to the Bible, they only exist because of earth. God put them there for our benefit - for the benefit of earth and the people he put on it. The sun was created after the earth, in order to light the day. The moon was created after the earth, in order to light the night. The stars were created after the earth, "for signs".

Gen 1 14-19:

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
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There is no concept or hint of a universe as we understand it today. Everything in the firmament, and the firmament itself, is there for the benefit of earth. It can all be said to be part of earth. The sun exists in order to rule earth's day. The moon exists in order to rule earth's night.

There is no universe that earth exists in. Earth, and the firmament, and the sun, moon and stars that are in the firmament for the purposes of earth's signs, seasons, days and years, are all there is.
 
psionl0 said:
So what? Nowhere in the bible is there even a hint that the whole world was anything other than earth and the sky. There is no hint that limbo, purgatory or hell pre-existed anything that God created nor that God used any bits of them in his creations.

These failed attempts to demonstrate that most Christians do not believe in a God that created everything by dissecting words are pathetic.
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Well it is bloody important if you are going keep making excuses and dropping hints for wrangling Creationism into a science class!!

Evolution
The universe began 13.8 billion years ago, the solar system and the earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, life began about 3-3.5 billion years ago and evolved to become what we are today. We have PROOF of these things - we know that hominids have been running around on this planet for over 2 million years; we know modern man has been on the planet for the last 200,000 years.

Creationism
The world was magicked up by Big Sky Daddy 6,026 years ago. No evidence, nothing but blind faith.

How anyone can think these even belong on the same plane of debate is beyond astonishing!
 
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