Genesis & Science - Friend or Foe?

[sayak83]

Sad.
It's not me. What is Good Science? There are many more of those.
Should you not be asking yourself that question though? Perhaps I should ask you... who are you to tell everyone what good science is?
Is good science determined by consensus? Google it, expert.
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity

That's the end of that.

So human evolution has scientific consensus, as 98% of all scientists and 99% of all biologists agree that humans evolved from apes. How am I wrong?
Scientific consensus determines what is and is not good science. That is my position.

 

[nPeace]

Just read the words ... pretty clear. Need examples? It can be scientifically shown that the Exodus did not happen and though Jerusalem is an historical city that is like a broken clock being right twice a day.

Since when is Exodus Genesis? Also "can be" and "has been", are two different things.
It seems you would like to start a thread on the Exodus. Feel free.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think I gave a very simple one - simple enough for children. Is anything wrong with the one I presented?
We are not going to get stuck on this, are we?
Okay, so we squeeze in publishing, and based on our conclusion we get a theory, or law.
Anything else? Can we move on?

Yes, as I pointed out it left out communicating one's results. Also the one that I posted shows what one does when a hypothesis is not quite right. That happens almost all of the time. One does not hit on the right idea right off the bat. Perhaps the most important step in that series is forming a testable hypothesis. That means one must think of a reasonable test that would show one to be wrong. If one can't think of a reasonable test that could show one to be wrong then what one has is not science.

 

[nPeace]

Nope. When the Bible says (line 1): in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And science says: the earth was born about 9 billion years after the beginning.

Then, we have a clear conflict. Independently from the earth having being created or not.

Unless you believe that “in the beginning” means “9 billion years after the beginning”. But such a level of rationalization would make science compatible with every work of fiction, or with any other religious mythology.

And that is the first line of Genesis. What follows is even worse. A real display of nonsense, when measured with what we know today. Which is to be expected, considering that the Bible has been written by some bronze age people who did not know anything of what we know today.

Ciao

- viole

Maybe you should ask what the firs line means. Unless you prefer to form your own opinion about it, and then project that opinion against what science says.
If that's the case, I have no intention of trying to stop you.
The Bible simply says, in the beginning God created the heavens and earth.

 

[nPeace]

A word of caution as to what scientists have discovered concerning 'water beneath the earth.' Finding water under the earth has been found by humans for millennia in groundwater, and caves. The water found recently by scientists is not free water it is water tied up in rock.

Thank you teacher. How could I possibly have known that.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Maybe you should ask what the firs line means. Unless you prefer to form your own opinion about it, and then project that opinion against what science says.
If that's the case, I have no intention of trying to stop you.
The Bible simply says, in the beginning God created the heavens and earth.

I think the objection was that our Earth is 4.55 billion years old. Our system is a secondary system at best. That means that our Solar System was formed after an older star died through a super nova. That is shown by the heavier elements. That might take some time to explain if you have not studied this at all. Our Earth, is much younger than our universe.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Thank you teacher. How could I possibly have known that.

One has to be careful when reading articles. Creationist sources especially distort them, but even those without an agenda are not much better at times. People are quite often totally unaware that object can have water in them and still be "dry". One of my favorite examples is drywall. It is made up of gypsum. It has far more water than the water in the mantle that you hear of. The chemical formula for gypsum is CaSO4*2H2O. That means for every CaSO4 (calcium sulfate) molecule there are roughly two water molecules. It is mined, heated so that the water is driven off and crushed and then water is added back and it is shaped into panels for drywall. When it is dried a second time they do not drive off all of the water and it is once again CaSO4*2H2O.

 

[nPeace]

Why do you believe it's history, rather than a metaphor about being human?

The entire Bible reports it as history - from Moses to David; from Solomon to Ezekiel; from Jesus to the last living disciple of Jesus.
It is not written metaphysically, and God himself - in relating it - says that it is history.
If you want, I can make a list of all the scriptures that show this.
If Genesis is not history, then all the characters right down to the apostle John, are mythical, and all the books too.

What reason do you have for saying it's metaphorical?

 

[Subduction Zone]

The entire Bible reports it as history - from Moses to David; from Solomon to Ezekiel; from Jesus to the last living disciple of Jesus.
It is not written metaphysically, and God himself - in relating it - says that it is history.
If you want, I can make a list of all the scriptures that show this.
If Genesis is not history, then all the characters right down to the apostle John, are mythical, and all the books too.

What reason do you have for saying it's metaphorical?

There is no reason to take such an all or nothing attitude. In fact as someone else already pointed out the Exodus never happened either. In fact the Bible is not as old as many Christians believe. Most of it appeared to have been written after the Babylonian captivity. For Christians the most important part of the Bible is found in the New Testament. treating the Old Testament can only lead to a loss of faith if one reasons at all rationally.

 

[nPeace]

The Genesis account of creation works for anyone who can step outside and see what exists. Sun, moon, stars, light, dark, plants, animals...and look at their dinner plate too. But science sees things in a much richer light. All these things are related through the various forces of nature and stars and animals are made from the same bits and pieces.

In many ways the Genesis story does match to the order of the appearance of things. The idea of the Universe as some sort of layer cake with waters above and below is a wrong cosmology but a naive person standing on an apparently flat earth would find this plausible.

Creation of the sun and moon after the water separation doesnt conform to what has happened. First there was gravity that formed the stars, and the planets and the moons...then water gathered together on dry land. That would be more accurate.

From what I understand, the Genesis account does not say the sun and moon were created after the earth, but rather before the earth was formed.

 

[nPeace]

I do not think a personal spat and name calling is worthwhile addressing the topic of the thread between you and @Subduction Zone.

I had a lot of issues and questions dodged and avoided by @nPeace that need to addressed. Such as 'What is good science?' It would be best to address this issue concerning Genesis and the Bible.

No need to lie or falsely accuse others either, but perhaps you just made a mistake.
The first page contains my post on what is good science. Maybe you missed it, or decided it didn't fit with what you wanted to say, so you dismissed or overlooked it. I don't know.

 

[Subduction Zone]

From what I understand, the Genesis account does not say the sun and moon were created after the earth, but rather before the earth was formed.

Genesis 1 11-13 on the third day God makes plants.

Genesis 1 14-18 God makes the Sun and the Moon on the fourth day, oh and the stars too.

Definitely out of order.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No need to lie or falsely accuse others either, but perhaps you just made a mistake.
The first page contains my post on what is good science. Maybe you missed it, or decided it didn't fit with what you wanted to say, so you dismissed or overlooked it. I don't know.

He did not lie. Another poster was calling names, not you. Have you not been reading your own thread?

 

[viole]

Maybe you should ask what the firs line means. Unless you prefer to form your own opinion about it, and then project that opinion against what science says.
If that's the case, I have no intention of trying to stop you.
The Bible simply says, in the beginning God created the heavens and earth.

Yes, and science says that the earth began to exist a few billion years after the beginning of the Universe.

Ergo, when there were already zillions on galaxies, stars and other planets born a long time before the earth.

If that is not a contradiction with Genesis, then tell me please how you call it.

Ciao

- viole

 

[shunyadragon]

No need to lie or falsely accuse others either, but perhaps you just made a mistake.
The first page contains my post on what is good science. Maybe you missed it, or decided it didn't fit with what you wanted to say, so you dismissed or overlooked it. I don't know.

Good science??? Still waiting. . . .

 

[shunyadragon]

Thank you teacher. How could I possibly have known that.

I do not know. your incomplete description is often associated with the Creationist claim of the origin of the waters of Noah's flood. Actually the existence of this water bound up in rocks of the interior is nothing new to science, but recently more is known concerning the amount and how the water is bound up in the rock.

 

[shunyadragon]

How do you arrive at the "sound objective verifiable evidence" for the age and order of distribution of strata?

An interesting subject worthy of a thread. Briefly, the deposition of the strata parallels the same deposition we see in the world today. It is cyclic and contains specific and discrete layers of limestone, shale, coal, and sandstone, with abundance of fossils that lived in place in the environment of they type of deposition. Individual layers contain drying crack, abundant tracks and evidence of animals. The limestone layers are vaste and hundreds of feet thick, contain vaste coral reefs and can only be deposited in shallow seas like the Bermuda regions. In the strata layers are vaste meandering river systems, windblown deposits, varved lake deposits, and erosional surfaces and soil formation just as we see in the world today repeated again and again throughout the thousands of feet of the strata. There are also many eroded volcanoes in the strata, flows of volcanic lava and ash within the layers.

The present evidence of living tree ring records, and over lapping dead tree ring records go back to before the Biblical record of Noah's flood. The living tree ring record is in trees more than 2.300 years. Varved lake deposits go back uninterrupted for more than 60,000 years as in Lake Suigetsu in Japan. Climate for over 60,000 years is recorded in these sediments, and the nuclear fall out for recent nuclear blasts is also recorded.

The nature of the deposition of thousands of feet of strata is simply physics of particle size, chemical reactions such as carbonate formation, living organisms like coral, and the physics of gravity and how particles behave in wind and water throughout the history of the earth as it happens today. If you take a course in sedimentology you would understand all the history of the strata of the earth.

This is not only 'good science, but excellent science!'

My professional degrees and work involve the geomorphology involved with this evidence. and I have been around the world intimately involved with the sites that demonstrate this objective verifiable evidence.

 

[Windwalker]

The entire Bible reports it as history - from Moses to David; from Solomon to Ezekiel; from Jesus to the last living disciple of Jesus.

There are parts which are history. There are parts which are poetry. There are parts which are mythological. There are parts which are allegorical. And so forth. As Subduction Zone pointed out already, why is it viewed with such an all-or-nothing approach? That wouldn't be wise. It's an easy way for one to lose faith when they set it up like that. All it takes is one error of fact and the whole thing collapses under such an artificial constraint.

If you look at any culture's origin myths, they read as history too. Mythologies do this. Gone with the Wind writes about America's Civil War, but the stories woven into that are fictional. Just because the Civil War happened, does not make the story actual history. And because it's not actual history, this does not therefore mean the story is crap, unless you need it to be factual first before it has meaning. That I consider to be a problem with the reader, not the literature. Same thing with the Bible.

It is not written metaphysically, and God himself - in relating it - says that it is history.

Of course the Bible deals with metaphysics! Metaphysics deals with the origin of things, beyond physics in other words. In fact most of what it deals with are metaphysical questions in nature.

If you want, I can make a list of all the scriptures that show this.

No need to. I've studied and read the Bible from cover to cover. Have you ever read the entire thing yourself?

If Genesis is not history, then all the characters right down to the apostle John, are mythical, and all the books too.

I am honestly not sure how you can leap from Adam and Eve being mythological characters to John being mythological. One does not follow through to the other. Each has to be looked at on its own.

I am guessing that you are needing to think in these all-or-nothing terms is because of some artificial construct you have superimposed upon the whole thing. I believe that is probably the artificial construct of the "Biblical Inerrancy Doctrine". That is a very modern doctrine, and not one that Christianity as a whole believed in previously. Not all Christians need the Bible to be believed in that way in order for their faith to be real. I consider tying one's faith to the modernistic Inerrancy Doctrine to be at odds with actual Faith.

If one loses faith in God because they found out there are errors in scripture, then I would say that faith was one built on a bed of shifting sand. It is faith built as a house of cards where one little tremor can topple the whole thing. Denialism about things like science and history because it runs into one's beliefs about the Bible, is a trainwreck of faith just waiting to happen.

What reason do you have for saying it's metaphorical?

I could easily write a whole book on this. In brief however, a metaphor points to something beyond itself as the thing to be considered. For instance, when you look at the night sky it is strewn with countless stars in a jumble of dots littering your field of vision. But if you draw a line from one point of light to another, and to another, and another, you impose a pattern upon it which the mind can recognize and relate to it.

This is what the constellations are. Orion is not actually up there in the sky, right along with Leo, or Scorpio, or the Big and Little Dippers. Those are metaphorical figures we use to try to relate to the transcendent.

Many of the figures of the Bible, the characters of Adam and Eve for instance, are images of humanity as a whole dealing with things like our human natures, sin and temptation, guilts, shames, regrets, pain and suffering, etc. Everyone can relate to this on some level or another. This is what good mythologies do. This is what they are for. Relatability. They are usually timeless truths that transcend cultures.

The myth of the Garden and the Fall of man is a story about us. To reduce it down to "historical fact" guts it of that. If it can't be "true" in a timeless sense, beyond historical facts, then it is a worthless story. It doesn't capture the imagination. It gets rid of imagination reducing it to a simple fact-finding task. It is imagining that is the wings of faith. Without that there, faith is dead.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Hey B. I didn't expect I'd find so many posts to respond to.
If I anticipated this, I would have posted on Monday, where I probably will have more time.
Again, I have to go... unfortunately.

Or, you can just ignore the ones who tread on our pearls, which saves a LOT of time.

 

[viole]

Or, you can just ignore the ones who tread on our pearls, which saves a LOT of time.

What other choice do you guys have?

Of course, what would save much more time is to not even start threads that declare that the Bible and Science are compatible. Since they are obviously not.

Ciao

- viole