Got doubts about Genesis?

[Muffled]

Well, if you talk, for example, to any decent Episcopalian or Catholic priest, or Methodist minister, that is what they will tell you.

I believe a lot of churches have erroneous concepts. Baptists study the Bible assiduously and know the difference between allegory and literality.

 

[Muffled]

Why?

I believe Adam and Eve were not the first couple and that sin was already in existence in them. It only needed an instigator to bring it out.

I believe the flood was local. I believe the concept of a world wide flood to be a misinterpretation.

 

[exchemist]

I believe a lot of churches have erroneous concepts. Baptists study the Bible assiduously and know the difference between allegory and literality.

Why is it then that so many US Baptists seem to take the two Genesis creation accounts literally, even though they are mutually contradictory and even though the evidence of science, for several centuries now, is that they can't be taken literally?

 

[setarcos]

I believe Adam and Eve were not the first couple and that sin was already in existence in them. It only needed an instigator to bring it out.

Why not, if there was a first couple? Whatever you may believe about human evolution, creation, protohumans or modern homo sapiens we must agree that at some point there would have been one then two etc. properly defined. The first "Adam", the first "Eve". The first couple. What evidence led you to conclude otherwise as far as them being the first human couple? As far as the genesis account goes I believe there are unknowns yet to be revealed in God's own good time. I believe it is a mythologized analogy of a real event in human history.
Sin is transgression against God with consequence. The potential to sin is different from actualizing sin in reality. The potential to sin is not a sin but was a necessity in making man in the image of God with self awareness. Adam and Eve had potential but hadn't actualized that potential until the events depicted in Genesis which then actualized its concurrent consequences. Prior to transgression of Gods will Adam and Eve weren't sinners. They would have no conception of what sin was. They would have had no conception of what deceit was. This probably contributed to Eve's readily believing the serpent's deceit.

I believe the flood was local. I believe the concept of a world wide flood to be a misinterpretation.

That's one theory. I think this theory is on the right track. But oh what fun it is and intellectually stimulating to entertain alternate possibilities in order to see if they may be rationally plausible in anyway.

 

[setarcos]

Why is it then that so many US Baptists seem to take the two Genesis creation accounts literally, even though they are mutually contradictory and even though the evidence of science, for several centuries now, is that they can't be taken literally?

Because, unfortunately from a human frame of reference there are very few absolutes. Science is solidly based in speculative probability. And no matter how abundantly probable a particular explanation may be that littlest of cracks in the threshold of reality is enough for speculative theists to have faith in their beliefs.