God or the Big Bang

offtopic
(Doogie Hoosier) wrote in message om...

Unlike the God of the Bible, the God that I believe in would not order
the extermination of people that don't believe in Him.

This, to me, is one of the toughest aspects of the Bible to deal with.

The following, as the author himself wrote, may or may not help:

http://www.cin.org/mateo/m920729b.html

/offtopic


Clear skies!

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------------------- Richard Callwood III --------------------
~ U.S. Virgin Islands ~ USDA zone 11 ~ 18.3N, 64.9W ~
~ eastern Massachusetts ~ USDA zone 6 (1992-95) ~
--------------- http://cac.uvi.edu/staff/rc3/ ---------------

Why one and not the other??
???
Clear, Dark, Steady Skies!
(And considerate neighbors!!!)

"caz" wrote in message
...
???

I don't think the two can be distinguished by physical measurement. That
is, physical measurement will not tell you whether God was the cause of the
Big Bang.

caz wrote:

It could be both. There is no proof, and it is not likely that there
will ever be proof. Some people claim to have evidence, others say that
there isn't any evidence, either. In other words, you have to answer
this one for yourself.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-216.htm

This link is right up your alley.

On Sat, 6 Sep 2003 16:10:06 +0100, "caz" wrote:

???

Genesis 1:1-1:2: In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the
surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface
of the waters.

Sounds like a pretty concise summary of the first xx billion years of
the existence of the universe to me; the surface of the earth is a
dark, wet place whose atmosphere at this point is junky and dirty
enough that light can't penetrate. As the chapter progresses, the
atmosphere is cleaned up, troposhpere formed, light can reach the
surface, and eventually you can actually see out of it (sun, moon,
stars become visible) as we do today.

While I'm as certain as I can be considering my layman status (I'm
just a guy with a Dob who likes to look up), I don't KNOW without a
doubt that God started it all with a big bang; it appears to me that
scientists are still working out the details. However I'm quite
confident that at the very least the universe is a pretty old place.

For the record, I am a Christian who believes the Bible is the Word of
God, and that peace with God depends solely upon the work and ministry
of Jesus Christ. I think that it's only been recently that mankind
has developed the body of knowledge needed to truly begin to
understand Genesis 1, and that over time more and more Christians will
take a 'fresh' look at it and understand this. It's unfortunate that
many don't, because it leads to a conflict with the scientific
community that drives people away from relationship with the God of
the Bible.

-Victor Bruhn

Victor, I respect your point of view, but there are problems
with trying to fit the current scientific model into Gen 1 as it reads.
If "let there be light" is the "big bang," there is the problem with
the earth already existing before the big bang with elements
heavier than hydrogen and helium which are thought to
be made in dying stars. The creation of plants, animals, and
man follows in a natural ascending order, but the sun is created
after the plants and trees which would make no sense from an
evolutionary standpoint. Also it's thought that the earth
originated from the same debris disk as the sun and at the
same time.The order of Gen 1 would place them billions
of years apart.

Two possibilities are that you could reason the author didn't
record the events correctly as presented to him or miracles
could be invoked. My opinion is the Gen 1 creation story as
well as the Gen 2 creation story are very similar to other
creation myths from the region and were most likely
a product of oral retelling.

take care,
Rockett

Rockett,
It would not be unreasonable to be out of chronological order....
(reasoning behind plants before sun in Genesis...)
I've read where Job is the oldest book of Bible, predates
Genesis, and the books near the end of the Old Testament
are way out of chronological order. So it would not surprise
me that some of the individual phrases too, are
also not in chronological order. (What would guarantee that they,
individual sentences, are in proper chronological order, when even the
actual books aren't?). The only guarantee we have is that it, the
Bible, is correct, substantive-wise, but *not* chronological-wise.

Thus, the thestic evolutionary process can still be maintained, upheld,
and reconciled to Genesis in a non-literal interpretation, if one views
it in that light.
FWIW,
Tom W.



Rockett Crawford wrote:

Victor, I respect your point of view, but there are problems
with trying to fit the current scientific model into Gen 1 as it reads.
If "let there be light" is the "big bang," there is the problem with
the earth already existing before the big bang with elements
heavier than hydrogen and helium which are thought to
be made in dying stars. The creation of plants, animals, and
man follows in a natural ascending order, but the sun is created
after the plants and trees which would make no sense from an
evolutionary standpoint. Also it's thought that the earth
originated from the same debris disk as the sun and at the
same time.The order of Gen 1 would place them billions
of years apart.

Two possibilities are that you could reason the author didn't
record the events correctly as presented to him or miracles
could be invoked. My opinion is the Gen 1 creation story as
well as the Gen 2 creation story are very similar to other
creation myths from the region and were most likely
a product of oral retelling.

take care,
Rockett

Tom,

I agree that your position is a possible interpretation from
a faith perspective.

I think a simple explanation is that the Genesis 1
and Genesis 2 creation stories were creation myths,
just like many other creation myths from that region
during that time except these were set down in writing
hundreds of years later after much oral retelling.

There's indications that the author(s) believed the
sky was solid or semi-solid and the earth was
flat. Some believed the earth sat on pillars.
These were common beliefs in ancient times. It's
not surprising that they show up in the bible.

take care,
Rockett Crawford

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"Rockett" == Rockett Crawford writes:

Rockett There's indications that the author(s) believed the sky
Rockett was solid or semi-solid and the earth was flat. Some
Rockett believed the earth sat on pillars. These were common
Rockett beliefs in ancient times. It's not surprising that they
Rockett show up in the bible.

I'm not sure I would buy that the author(s) believed those things any
more than I would buy that someone who made a modern allusion the the
"four corners of the earth" believes the earth to be rectangular (or
at least four-sided). I'd call a lot of them poetic or cultural
allusions used to make some other point

Off on another tangent, I recall a book by Poul Anderson that's got to
be at least 25 years old called _High Crusade_. A little comment in
there by the characters (who were kidnapped from medieval times by a
UFO) concluding that they just misinterpreted the Biblical comments
about the "corners of the earth" and what it *really* meant was the
corners of the cubic universe 8-)

[The smiley is mine, the reference in _High Crusade_ is real]

roland
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Roland B. Roberts, PhD RL Enterprises
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