God Recreated the Earth 6,000 Years Ago!

[Salvador]

I disagree about the apes. I believe they have a soul. They have feelings, can reason, and communicate what they want, like, dislike, etc. And we do know that early hominid species (H. habilis and erectus) 2 million years ago had figured out how to make the first simple stone axes (found in Olduvai Gorge). Also, based on how these axes were made, they must've had the ability to transfer the knowledge (teach and learn) and explain purpose of the tool (consciousness and mental reasoning). Also, we do know that apes can feel sorrow when a fellow ape dies. They also show signs of being able to help each other out when in danger, which suggests a primitive sense of being. It's also been shown that they know the difference between "you and me", i.e. they have a personal identity of "me", which suggests self-awareness (the foundation of a soul) in them.

So sorry, all of it points to the "soul" existing for at least 7-10 million years (history of ape species).

I'm sorry, Ouroboros. I should have defined the soul as an immortal spirit that is a part of everybody who is a descendant of Adam and Eve. I suppose apes, who are non-descendant of Adam and Eve, might have some sort of a soul in the sense that they have primitive human-like consciousness or awareness, but I don't think anybody who lacks the spiritual gene of Adam and Eve is going to be risen by God into another life of spiritual existence.

 

[nazz]

I voted yes because I can't rule out that possibility. But if so then God his all the evidence that he did so and created evidence to contradict it.

 

[Ouroboros]

I'm sorry, Ouroboros. I should have defined the soul as an immortal spirit that is a part of everybody who is a descendant of Adam and Eve. I suppose apes, who are non-descendant of Adam and Eve, might have some sort of a soul in the sense that they have primitive human-like consciousness or awareness, but I don't think anybody who lacks the spiritual gene of Adam and Eve is going to be risen by God into another life of spiritual existence.

Ok. Well, the concept of spirit is very undefined and very much differently understood between different people. And without any proper definition, it's very hard to specifically determine when, how, where, or if it came about.

Your original claim in this thread wasn't about the spirit though, but that Earth was recreated 6,000 years ago. Since we know there's written record, art, human society, and such older than 6,000 years, we can safely know that this spirit you talk about, or Adam and Eve, must've existed quite some time before that. So the 6,000 years option is out whichever way we deal with it.

 

[Salvador]

Explain archeology and history, then.

I think you misunderstood. Let's assume there was a flood, and that it occurred about 6000 years ago. Let's also say that it was wide-spread, but the places with significant elevation were more or less untouched.

Where are all the salt-water fish remains in areas currently above water?

Let's go a step further now. The animals that survived. Why are they spread out the way they are, if they were all migrating from one point(Noah's Ark)? Why are the only marsupials in Australia? Why aren't there giraffes in the Americas? Ect.

I think you misunderstood. Let's assume there was a flood, and that it occurred about 6000 years ago. Let's also say that it was wide-spread, but the places with significant elevation were more or less untouched.

Where are all the salt-water fish remains in areas currently above water?

Let's go a step further now. The animals that survived. Why are they spread out the way they are, if they were all migrating from one point(Noah's Ark)? Why are the only marsupials in Australia? Why aren't there giraffes in the Americas? Ect.

"Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. And the man gave names to every beast, and to the fowl of the heavens, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a help meet for him. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.... " - (Genesis 2:19- 20) If God could bring forth all the animals to Adam in the Garden of Eden, then God could have dispersed the animals and their descendants to anywhere in the world where they were most suited to live.

 

[Salvador]

I voted yes because I can't rule out that possibility. But if so then God his all the evidence that he did so and created evidence to contradict it.

Thanks, Doubting Thomas. I'm glad there is somebody, besides me, who is open to the possibility that the book of Genesis is a misunderstood narrative of historical events instead of a work of pure fiction.

 

[Jainarayan]

This runs arguably into problems even larger than the 'normal' 6,000 year suggestion, because the Egyptians existed more than 6,000 years ago, let alone other cultures around the globe.

Nuh uh! That's a trick of the devil to lead us astray. Just like them there dinosaur fossil bones.

 

[Jainarayan]

I'm not aware of any civilizations with written texts or human languages that are believed to have existed earlier than 4,000 years before Christ.

I'd call that a non sequitur. You're erroneously associating writing with civilization and language. There are societies today that have no writing (writing is not language) but they speak.

 

[Salvador]

I'd call that a non sequitur. You're erroneously associating writing with civilization and language. There are societies today that have no writing (writing is not language) but they speak.

I have no doubts that sub-human apes, who existed before the soul of our common ancestor named Adam, could crudely communicate with each other by making crude grunting noises or simple body language. However, I've not seen evidence of any complex human speech that goes back before the time of when Adam had first spoken with God about 4000 years before Christ.

 

[JayJayDee]

I believe that the biblical story of creation doesn't describe God's original creation of Earth, but it actually describes the recreation of the Earth 6,000 years ago by God for the benefit of newly formed life who would have souls such as Adam, Eve and their descendants.

I believe that you are operating under the assumption that humans "have" immaterial souls that inhabit their body. If you read the scriptures, it plainly states that living creatures, both man, animals and sea creatures are described as "souls".
The original-language terms (Heb., neʹphesh [נֶפֶשׁ]; Gr.,psy·kheʹ [ψυχή]) as used in the Scriptures show “soul” to be a person, an animal, or the life that a person or an animal enjoys.

So this is the first problem I see with your suggestion.

I believe that according to the first few verses of Holy scripture in the book of Genesis, the Earth already had existed with water during the first day of its recreation. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:1-2)

There is another way to view those verses. It is clearly established in science that the geology of the earth has been billions of years in existence. But if you read Gen 1:1, 2 again, you can see that those two verses can be viewed as two separate occurrences. There is no stated timeframe between them, so "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" could be viewed as the original "Big Bang", followed at an undetermined time later, by the Creator choosing to take a planet, formerly "formless and void", and beginning to fashion it into a suitable place for living "souls" to inhabit.
Earth was originally designed for living beings to enjoy "forever".....just because a rebellion took place did not mean that God's purpose in connection with the earth and its creatures (souls) was eliminated. (Gen 3:22-24; Isa 55:11)

I believe there was an older version of Earth that God had destroyed with a cloud of darkness and water, so that He could recreate the Earth with the right conditions for us humans who have souls. I think the first chapter of Genesis is widely misinterpreted as a narrative about the creation of Earth; whereas, it should be correctly interpreted as a narrative about the recreation of the Earth with more favorable conditions for human souls to exist.

Again we have to take into consideration what the word "soul" means in scripture. The idea that souls are disembodied spirits is not Biblical. This idea of an immortal part of man that is separate from his body is an ancient notion that has nothing to do with Bible teaching.

The connotations that the English “soul” commonly carries in the minds of most persons are not in agreement with the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words as used by the inspired Bible writers. This fact has steadily gained wider acknowledgment. Back in 1897, in the Journal of Biblical Literature (Vol. XVI, p. 30), Professor C. A. Briggs, as a result of detailed analysis of the use of neʹphesh, observed: “Soul in English usage at the present time conveys usually a very different meaning from נפש [neʹphesh] in Hebrew, and it is easy for the incautious reader to misinterpret.”

A "soul" lives and breathes and eats and sleeps......it is never described as something that can exist apart from the body.

Greek-English lexicons give such definitions as “life,” and “the conscious self orpersonality as centre of emotions, desires, and affections,” “a living being,” and they show that even in non-Biblical Greek works the term was used “of animals.”

What does Genesis actually say?........

In Genesis 2:7 (AKJV)....."And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Adam was not "given a "soul" but "became" a "soul" when God started him breathing.

It is interesting in the NKJV that verse in translated as "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." This acknowledges that "soul" means a "living being".

Does anybody else agree that the first few verses in the book of Genesis have been widely misinterpreted as a creation narrative; whereas, it should be correctly interpreted as a recreation narrative?

I don't. There is no "recreation" spoken about in Genesis. You are trying to squeeze an erroneous belief about an immortal soul into scripture by changing what the Bible says instead of seeing that your original beliefs about the soul is the problem.

 

[Nietzsche]

If God could bring forth all the animals to Adam in the Garden of Eden, then God could have dispersed the animals and their descendants to anywhere in the world where they were most suited to live.

And you don't see that as a problem? Your argument boils down to "a wizard did it", ignoring the reams of evidence for a natural rather than supernatural explanation. Your argument has precisely as much backing as me saying that I created the world seven hours ago yesterday.

 

[metis]

Human speech appears to have gradually evolved, but seems to have made a significant jump forward with the emergence of H.s.s. ("Cro-Magnon"), although even with them it seems to have grown slowly at first but accelerated tens of thousands of years ago.

 

[Jainarayan]

However, I've not seen evidence of any complex human speech that goes back before the time of when Adam had first spoken with God about 4000 years before Christ.

You won't but that does not mean it didn't exist. Linguists (language scientists, not translators) have calculated backwards, given the rate of word change and word loss from vocabularies that humans were chit-chatting intelligibly around 150,000 - 200,000 years ago. We can't definitively know what color hair, eyes or skin people had back then either, but anthropologists can make some pretty darn good estimates based on what they know today. It's called reconstruction. Many proto-languages have been reconstructed to several millennia BCE.

Editing to add a source:

Ask A Linguist FAQ: Oldest Language

How old is language?
Although this question is still being debated, most linguists assume that the full language capacity had evolved by 100,000 BC. This is when modern humans (homo sapiens sapiens) evolved in Africa with a modern skull shape (indicating modern brain function) and a modern vocal tract which would allow these people to articulate all the sounds found in modern languages. Some anthropologists speculate that language or parts of the language ability may have developed earlier, but there is no firm consensus yet.

 

[Salvador]

Human speech appears to have gradually evolved, but seems to have made a significant jump forward with the emergence of H.s.s. ("Cro-Magnon"), although even with them it seems to have grown slowly at first but accelerated tens of thousands of years ago.

I believe evolution can explain how soulless animals have developed, but it doesn't explain anything about how humans with souls have developed.

 

[Ouroboros]

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.... " -

That's another interesting thing about anthropology and our human history. I studied a little linguistics several years ago. Not a very advanced course, but I do remember that there's a lot of research been done in the roots of words. There are words that we can trace thousands of years back to the Indo-European roots. Other words have other backgrounds. And the interesting part is that words for trees, animals, plants, geological terrain comes from the different places where those things existed. If a place didn't have a certain kind of tree or animal, then they didn't have a word for those things, since they didn't know about them, and the words we use today have the roots from the places where they actually did have them. In other words, there are several roots to our words and that doesn't fit with one single person as a source at all.

 

[metis]

I believe evolution can explain how soulless animals have developed, but it doesn't explain anything about how humans with souls have developed.

The issue of exactly what is a "soul" and whether it actually even exists is quite contentious both theologically and scientifically. But one thing is quite apparent and that is that intelligence evolved quite gradually but not uniformly. There simply is no reason to suspect that a "soul" had anything to do with it, although there's also no way it could be disproven either.

 

[Salvador]

And you don't see that as a problem? Your argument boils down to "a wizard did it", ignoring the reams of evidence for a natural rather than supernatural explanation. Your argument has precisely as much backing as me saying that I created the world seven hours ago yesterday.

You won't but that does not mean it didn't exist. Linguists (language scientists, not translators) have calculated backwards, given the rate of word change and word loss from vocabularies that humans were chit-chatting intelligibly around 150,000 - 200,000 years ago. We can't definitively know what color hair, eyes or skin people had back then either, but anthropologists can make some pretty darn good estimates based on what they know today. It's called reconstruction. Many proto-languages have been reconstructed to several millennia BCE.

Editing to add a source:

Ask A Linguist FAQ: Oldest Language

I can't believe there were humans who were chit-chatting a long time before written language was developed. If there were people who could chit-chat, then they would have been smart enough to quickly figure out how to write down some of their ideas and thoughts from their conversations.

 

[MD]

And you don't see that as a problem? Your argument boils down to "a wizard did it", ignoring the reams of evidence for a natural rather than supernatural explanation. Your argument has precisely as much backing as me saying that I created the world seven hours ago yesterday.

Wait I thought you did?

 

[Nietzsche]

I can't believe there were humans who were chit-chatting a long time before written language was developed. If there were people who could chit-chat, then they would have been smart enough to quickly figure out how to write down some of their ideas and thoughts from their conversations.

Errr. You'd be wrong. Spoken language came long before written language. We know this because other animals have languages. Whales, Elephants, so on and so forth.

Wait I thought you did?

ssshhhh, I'm trying to stay on the down-low. Last time people got wind of it a whole bunch of goats died and just, it was horrible.

 

[Ouroboros]

However, I've not seen evidence of any complex human speech that goes back before the time of when Adam had first spoken with God about 4000 years before Christ.

Oldest jewelry: 100,000 years ago.
Oldest astronomical circle: 7,000 years.
Bow and arrows: 8,000 years.
Containers and paint supplies: 100,000 years.
Maps: 14,000 years.
Alcohol consumptions: 9,000 years.
Calendar: 10,000 years.
Arrow heads: 77,000 years.
Cave paintings: 40,000 years.
Burial: 130,000 years.
Burial with grave goods (sprinkles of ochre, sign of sacrifice): 100,000 years.
First symbols of writing: 7,000 years ago.

Nothing fits 6,000 years limitation.

 

[Jainarayan]

I can't believe there were humans who were chit-chatting a long time before written language was developed. If there were people who could chit-chat, then they would have been smart enough to quickly figure out how to write down some of their ideas and thoughts from their conversations.

You're still confusing writing with language. Writing is not language. As I said, there are languages today with no written form. The societies who speak/spoke those languages had or have no need to graphically represent the language. Writing is only a poor graphic of sounds. This is why even the IPA does such a poor job of transcribing sounds.