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Not even Christians believe the *edit* of creation

DavidSMoore

Member
There are many different interpretations of the bible.
Very true. And that poses an interesting dilemma. Imagine that you are a divine being who has an extremely important message that you wish to disseminate to all the peoples of the world. What would be the best method for doing that? The use of human language would seem to be one of the least reliable. In the first place there is no one language that is spoken universally-- and there never has been such a language. Secondly, human languages evolve. Thirdly, the human languages are replete with cultural nuances that are difficult to render in other languages. All in all it would be better to find another method for conveying divine truths.
 

Kathryn

It was on fire when I laid down on it.
You do realize that you are calling the National Council of Churches of the United States of America stupid, right? That is the organization that holds the copyright on the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition that we've been discussing. I suggest you take up your concerns about the proper translation of the first paragraph of Genesis with them.
Thankfully, though I live in the US, they aren't the boss of me - LOL.
 

Kathryn

It was on fire when I laid down on it.
Very true. And that poses an interesting dilemma. Imagine that you are a divine being who has an extremely important message that you wish to disseminate to all the peoples of the world. What would be the best method for doing that? The use of human language would seem to be one of the least reliable. In the first place there is no one language that is spoken universally-- and there never has been such a language. Secondly, human languages evolve. Thirdly, the human languages are replete with cultural nuances that are difficult to render in other languages. All in all it would be better to find another method for conveying divine truths.
Which is one of many reasons why I am Roman Catholic, but I digress.
 

Pogo

Well-Known Member
Very true. And that poses an interesting dilemma. Imagine that you are a divine being who has an extremely important message that you wish to disseminate to all the peoples of the world. What would be the best method for doing that? The use of human language would seem to be one of the least reliable. In the first place there is no one language that is spoken universally-- and there never has been such a language. Secondly, human languages evolve. Thirdly, the human languages are replete with cultural nuances that are difficult to render in other languages. All in all it would be better to find another method for conveying divine truths.
You could create beings with curiosity and desire for logic and let them figure it out.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
Then it would be a shell, not a dome.

And isn't a dome shape similar to a shell shape? What is your point? If someone is observing the sky from any point on the earth, it is a dome shape, which is sort of a shell shape. And overall it is a spherical shape, but it appears that it is being described from a point on the earth,,,,,,,,,, iow a dome shape.

@Brian2:

If your footnote in the RSV is correct then it could mean "When God began to create, He created the heavans and the earth".
The footnote reads:


Or When God began to create
The "Or" means "Instead of", not "in addition to".

So your NRSV(Updated Edition) reads:
Gen 1:1 When God began to create the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

This seems to be saying that God created the heavens and the earth and initially He created an earth that was complete chaos and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

I prefer the simplicity of just about all the translations we have.. Eg. the Berean standard Bible.
1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.


There isn't much difference really between that translation and the NRSV(UE)
In both, God creates the heavens and the earth and in both it shows what the earth was like back then.
 

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
There isn't much difference really between that translation and the NRSV(UE)
I find it to be significantly different.

Parenthetically, in reference to the JPS/NRSV rendering, Nahum Sarna notes that "[t]he Mesopotamian creation epic known as Enuma Elish also comments in the same way. In fact, enuma means 'when'."
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
I find it to be significantly different.

Parenthetically, in reference to the JPS/NRSV rendering, Nahum Sarna notes that "[t]he Mesopotamian creation epic known as Enuma Elish also comments in the same way. In fact, enuma means 'when'."

There us a difference in the translation "wind" instead of Spirit and I suppose it is possible to get the idea that the material of the earth was already there and just needed organising, and imo the translation suggests that God created the material first and then began to create the earth, which sounds right from a science pov of the order of what happened.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Some believers have allowed themselves to be fooled by evolutionists, which is normal, since some evolutionists do not even understand that doctrine and believe that it is true only because of the position of those who preach it.

Not sure if I understand you correctly because of the ambiguous use of words like "doctrine" and "preaching". But if you are trying to say that "evolutionists" only believe in evolution because of supposed claimed authority of biologists and alike, then that surely doesn't apply to me.

While I, off course, value expertise (not "authority") over layman opinions, the first reason I accept evolution is because of my understanding of both the model of evolution as well as the evidence in support of it.


Jesus Christ was not an evolutionist, but on the contrary: he believed that the Creator made a unique couple at the beginning of humanity as the Bible explains.

Then Jesus was demonstrably incorrect as it can be demonstrated through genetics that human kind ever consisted of a single breeding couple.
 
(The New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition was published in 2019. The organization that holds the copyright on that version is the National Council of Churches of the United States of America. So it represents the orthodox Christian interpretation in the United States.)

Did the Updated Edition edit creation?

This whole notion of editing creation is an interesting one.

It’s thinking outside the box.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Very true. And that poses an interesting dilemma. Imagine that you are a divine being who has an extremely important message that you wish to disseminate to all the peoples of the world. What would be the best method for doing that? The use of human language would seem to be one of the least reliable. In the first place there is no one language that is spoken universally-- and there never has been such a language. Secondly, human languages evolve. Thirdly, the human languages are replete with cultural nuances that are difficult to render in other languages. All in all it would be better to find another method for conveying divine truths.
Divine truths?
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Some believers have allowed themselves to be fooled by evolutionists, which is normal, since some evolutionists do not even understand that doctrine and believe that it is true only because of the position of those who preach it.

Jesus Christ was not an evolutionist, but on the contrary: he believed that the Creator made a unique couple at the beginning of humanity as the Bible explains.

Matt. 19:4 In reply he said: “Have you not read that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female 5 and said: ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? 6 So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together, let no man put apart.”

Many atheists with their own agendas entered theological schools and other religious institutions in order to shape religious mentality. Jehovah's Witnesses are people not molded by the world, and we help others escape human agendas...

2 Cor. 4:3 If, in fact, the good news we declare is veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, 4 among whom the god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through.

Many self-proclaimed "Christians" also do not believe in the existence of the Devil. That does not mean that Jesus was speaking alone when the Bible describes a dialogue between him and that evil spiritual person who rules the human system of things from above.
Reality does not fool anyone, though people
are easily fooled by what they want to believe.

You are full of criticism for others while presenting
that you understand things you so clearly do not.

Less than nothing about evolution.

And, say, the meaning of taking lords name in vain.

As in the vanity mentioned above, wrapped in
the self assumed cloak of infallibility given
unto you by none other than God.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
You:

Are you accusing me of being one who doesn't understand the doctrine of evolution? I didn't elaborate a narrative of the evolution of the universe. Why don't you wait until I present such a narrative before you accuse me of not understanding it?

You:

Okay, let's see if you believe in the Devil. Here's what the Bible says about God's assessment of the creation:



So did God create the Devil?
Think about your answer before replying. If you say that yes, God did create the Devil, then you would in effect be saying that the Devil is good, since God said that everything he had created is good. Since the Devil is supposed to be the embodiment of pure evil, that would mean that evil is good. You'd better have a really well thought out answer to that one, because if you don't I'm just going to laugh.
On the other hand if you say that no, your omnipotent God did not create the Devil, then you would be acknowledging that there is a being who is absolutely essential to your theology who God didn't create. So I'm going to ask you who or what did create the Devil. You'd better have a really well thought out answer to that question or I'm just going to laugh.

Your posting has nothing to do with my original post. Just give me the yes or no answers to the three questions I asked in that post:

1. Do you believe that God fashioned the universe from the pre-existing substances of the chaos and the waters, as the first sentence of the Bible says?
2. Do you believe that the universe is an ocean of water, as the Bible says about the events of Day 2?
3. Do you believe that the Earth is a flat disk?

If you can't-- or won't-- answer those questions, then you and I will have no basis for further conversation.
If you think there is "doctrine of evolution"
there is for sure a lot you dont understand.
 

DavidSMoore

Member
This is the version I usually go with:

"1 In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. 2 And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. "

Alright, let's start with that. Note that Genesis 1:1 above doesn't mention the waters. In fact the entire story never specifically mentions that God created the waters. And don't forget that according to the events of Day 2 the entire universe is filled with water. So the waters are crucially important to the story.

Here's what the Douay-Rhiems Bible says in Genesis 1:8:

And God called the firmament, Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day.
(Genesis 1:8, Douay-Rheims)
So according to your preferred translation, Heaven wasn't created until Day 2. It therefore was not created before God said "Let there be light," despite the wording of Genesis 1:1. What Genesis 1:1 says therefore cannot be describing something God did before he said "Let there be light."

In fact, Genesis 1:1 - 2 is best described as an introduction. It's the author telling you, the audience, "I'm going to tell you the story of the creation, and here's the state of the universe at the time the creation began."

There is another reason why the NRSVue version is correct as well. Look at the overall structure of the story. Elsewhere in the story, whenever God begins an action it is prefaced with the words "And God said." There is no such phrase in Genesis 1:1-2. That's because it doesn't describe an action taken by God. It's an introduction.

The NRSVue is simply making it clear that the story of the creation is based on the assumption that the substance of the Earth and the waters both preexisted before God began the act of creation by saying "Let there be light." And that's because the author of the story was simply following a long held tradition in the ancient world that the universe was created from a preexisting chaos.

BTW, the fact that there is so much disagreement-- as evidenced by the postings on this thread-- about the proper interpretation of the very first paragraph of the Bible is clear proof that God's plan to communicate his message via human language has been a miserable failure.
 

DavidSMoore

Member
Here’s a short summary of the key elements of the creation story as related in Genesis 1:

Item #Biblical story element
1The substance of the Earth and the waters both preexisted before God began the act of creation by saying “Let there be light”
2The universe is an ocean of water
3The Earth is disk shaped
4The creation of the universe began sometime between 4200 BCE and 4000 BCE
5The creation of the universe was completed over the course of 6 days, or 144 hours
6On Day 1 God created light
7On Day 2 God created the Earth’s atmosphere
8On Day 3 God created dry land and plants
9On Day 4 God created the sun, the moon, and the stars
10On Day 5 God created marine life and birds
11On Day 6 God created land animals and human beings
12Once all species had been created God pronounced everything good, and he neither removed existing species nor added any new species.
Table 1

I’ll give the Bible partial credit for Item #6, with a few caveats. We might associate Item #6 with the Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB), since that is the afterglow of the Big Bang itself. But the CMB would originally have been emitted as gamma radiation, not as visible light, and because of the expansion of the universe it is now only observable as microwave radiation-- also not a form of visible light. Furthermore, that radiation was bottled up in the universe until a phase known as “Recombination,” which happened about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. At that time the universe had cooled sufficiently that electrons could bond to atomic nuclei, forming the first neutral atoms. When that happened electromagnetic radiation could travel freely throughout the universe. The point is that the CMB was not and is not visible light; and it wasn’t able to travel freely through space until about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

But although the Bible gets partial credit for Item #6, the remaining 11 items of the 12 listed in Table 1 are completely wrong in every significant respect. I’ll speak specifically to Items #1 and #12 below. I have plenty to say about the other items as well, but in this posting I’ll just concentrate on the first and last.

To consider Item #1 in detail I need to discuss the Big Bang theory. But first I should take a moment to describe what the word “theory” means in the context of science. In science the word “theory” does not mean “hypothesis” or “speculation” or “supposition” or “belief.” A scientific theory is:

a broad explanatory framework that is richly supported by an abundance of hard physical evidence.

So is the Big Bang theory a scientific theory by the above definition?

Well, it is certainly a broad explanatory framework since it tells us both how and why the universe has evolved over the past 13.72 billion years.

And it is indeed supported by hard physical evidence. I’ll provide 3 specific examples:

The expansion of the universe. The Big Bang theory predicts that the universe should be expanding-- and indeed it is. In every direction that we look we find that distant galaxies are moving away from us. This has been a core established fact of modern astronomy since the 1920s.

The Cosmic Background Radiation. Two researchers, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, were able to show that the Big Bang model predicted the existence of microwave radiation that would have been the afterglow of the Big Bang, and that it should fill the entire universe. They made every effort to convince astronomers of their time to search for such radiation, but no one wanted to look. So in 1953 they published their last paper on the subject and abandoned further research on it. Then in the early 1960s two Bell Labs researchers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, found that a radio antenna they were working with was receiving microwave radiation from all directions. In 1964 the connection was finally made that the two had accidentally discovered the CMB that Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman had predicted more than a decade earlier. Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize for their work, but Alpher and Herman were largely forgotten.

Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In his 1948 Ph.D. thesis Ralph Alpher presented calculations which showed that the Big Bang model predicts that about 3 seconds after the Big Bang, the universe would have cooled enough to allow protons and neutrons to bond together to produce atomic nuclei. He showed that the nuclei created during those first few seconds would have resulted in about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, by weight. His calculations have since been confirmed. This phase of the early history of the universe is known as “Big Bang nucleosynthesis.” After this period the universe had cooled too much to support the production of any further nuclei. Therefore all higher atomic numbered elements must have been produced later, in the cores of stars.

So yes, the Big Bang theory is a broad explanatory framework, and it is richly supported by an abundance of hard physical data. It therefore qualifies as a true scientific theory by the definition above. And it therefore stands in the company of the other great theories of modern science, including those of relativity, electricity and magnetism, and quantum mechanics, to name but a few.

Given the general framework of the Big Bang and its supporting evidence, we can now state definitively that Item #1 of Table 1 above simply cannot be true. After the period of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the only elements that would have existed were hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of lithium. None of the elements necessary for the creation of rocky planets existed at that time, so the earth could not have existed. The following table lists the chemical composition of the Earth:

ElementPercent
Iron (Fe)
33​
Oxygen (O)
31​
Silicon (Si)
19​
Magnesium (Mg)
13​
Nickel (Ni)
1.9​
Calcium (Ca)
0.9​
Aluminum (Al)
0.9​
Everything else
0.3​
Table 2

(A Brief History of Earth, Andrew H. Knoll, pg. 15)

The only type of physical object that could have existed after Big Bang nucleosynthesis was a star. So stars came first, stars then produced higher atomic numbered elements in their cores, some stars went nova and splattered those higher numbered elements throughout space, and eventually those material substances congealed to form rocky planets. The Bible says that the Earth and the waters existed before God said “Let there be light” and that stars didn’t exist until Day 4. That’s exactly backwards. Stars came first, then rocky planets. So Item #1 of Table 1 is wrong-- and not just a tad off, but completely dead wrong.

What about Item #12? Here’s a list of the major extinction events of the last 600 million years of life of Earth:

Table 3
Years agoEvent
550 - 540 millionEdiacaran extinction. All species of the Ediacaran epoch became extinct, perhaps because they were out-competed by newer forms of life.
445 - 443 millionLate Ordovician Extinction (Himantian event). Gondwanaland was covered in ice for 1 million years. 85% of all species and 30% of all families of animals went extinct due to plunging temperatures.
372 - 370 millionLate Devonian Extinction part 1 (Kellwasser event). 19% of marine families and 50% of marine genera were wiped out. The cause of this event is still debated.
358 - 357 millionLate Devonian Extinction part 2 (Hangenberg event). 97% of vertebrate species were wiped out, including all of the placoderms (armor plated fishes) and sarcopterygians (lobe-finned fishes).
252 millionPermian Extinction. Up to 95% of all species were wiped out. The lava flows that resulted in the Siberian Traps produced immense amounts of poisonous gasses, as well as massive amounts of carbon dioxide and acid rain with a PH of 2. Global temperatures averaged about 97 degrees F.
201 millionLate Triassic Extinction. 22% of marine families, 53% of genera, and 76 - 84% of marine species went extinct. Many terrestrial plants and animals also went extinct. The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province indicates that about 11 million square kilometers of lava were belched forth at this time.
65 millionLate Cretaceous Extinction. A comet smashed into the Yucatan peninsula and wiped out 30% of all animal families, including all of the dinosaurs except birds.

As you can see from Table 3, entire species and families and genera of organisms were wiped out, never to be seen again. If God pronounced everything he had created “good,” why would he have found it necessary to eliminate vast numbers of entire species? And not just once, but again and again?

Another important fact to bear in mind about life on Earth is that new species of animals and plants, aquatic and terrestrial, have originated throughout the entire 600 million year history of complex life on Earth. So the idea that the planet wide genome has remained essentially static over that vast stretch of time is utterly, irrevocably wrong.
 
If you think there is "doctrine of evolution"
there is for sure a lot you dont understand.
It sure feels like one if you look at all of the conjectural storytelling evolution has presented in its books ranging from human anatomy, macro evolution and even archaeology. You got to have a lot of faith to believe in a good portion of evolution.
 

Pogo

Well-Known Member
It sure feels like one if you look at all of the conjectural storytelling evolution has presented in its books ranging from human anatomy, macro evolution and even archaeology. You got to have a lot of faith to believe in a good portion of evolution.
As opposed to talking snakes and making people by ripping a rib out of one. Whatever you say.
 

AdamjEdgar

Active Member
You do realize that you are calling the National Council of Churches of the United States of America stupid, right? That is the organization that holds the copyright on the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition that we've been discussing. I suggest you take up your concerns about the proper translation of the first paragraph of Genesis with them.
None of that changes the facts.
We don't determine our theology via a single source...especially a single bible translation.
 
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