Posted on 05/30/2005 7:54:26 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Drop your condescending tone and maybe we can talk. Otherwise, believe what you want. I will take the biblical approach.
No, you go through gyrations to maintain your own interpretation, and then call this "the biblical approach".
I've already seen how you are willing to come up with absurdities in order to maintain your literalist reading. There is really nothing more to discuss if you are unable to see that your reading of scripture is interpretive.
Malaki, I don't believe a person who has studied the Bible would ask such an elementary question as this. Before the sun, there was the creation of light. Have you read Genesis 1:3-5?
Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.Malaki #316: Since this is figurative (do you really think God needs rest?), it is meaningless to speculate on the 'actual duration' of the 'seventh day' in Genesis 1.
Gen 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
God does need a rest! If you compare Genesis 2:1-3 with Exodus 20:8-11, an unmistakable comparison is made of God's 'rest' with Man's rest. Exodus 20:11 is the key verse (remember, this is after commanding us to rest on the sabbath:
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.Obviously, God does not need a rest in the sense that a physical body needs rest from work. However, God blessed this day and santified it. We could say to ourselves: Why keep the Sabbath? Because God leads by example. (or any day of the week or any period of any day to study scriptures for the Christians) If it is not good enough for God to have rested after creating the Universe?
I am surprised you have studied the Bible as you say you have, yet you do not seem to have faith in God. God has never asked anyone to come to him by scientific proof. He asks that we come to him by faith.1 You will find throughout the Bible that by faith is the theme, New Testament and Old Testament.
I hope that you come to Him by faith, not by scientific proof. If the way to God and to heaven is by scientific proof, few, if any, would be saved and go. Jesus said :
Joh 3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?Today's scientific proof will be tomorrow's scientific folly. Don't let this 'creepism' of doubting a few passages in the Bible creep into questioning the validity of all of Scripture. Salvation is not through works (scientific proof), rather it begins with faith.
1Hebrews 11:1-40, King James Bible
I never said it wasn't interpretive. It is interpretive based upon solid reasoning though. The normal use of DAY when included with the qualifiers is a 24 hour period of time. To say otherwise is eisegesis not exegesis. Looks like our discussion is at an end.
There can be no literal day and night in the absence of the sun.
God does need a rest!
Maybe your God does; mine doesn't. Not literally.
Obviously, God does not need a rest in the sense that a physical body needs rest from work.
Ummm... congratulations, you just interpreted that verse figuratively.
If you can understand "rest" figuratively, why can't you accept that "day" might likewise be used figuratively here?
yet you do not seem to have faith in God.
You have reached an errant conclusion. My faith in God is not dependent upon a mindlessly literal interpretation of scripture.
The interpretation was literal. God stopped all his work, he ended his work. Thus, he rested. Rest does not require a physical body to cease one's activity, although us humans have a tendency to think so. Consult a standard dictionary if you still have problems with the word 'rest.'
God rested so that we may rest. He rested to sanctify this day so that we may rest and observe this sabbath day. His physical labor, creating the heavens and the earth, did not tire him physically, or mentally, or in any other sense of tiredness. There is nothing figurative about this. God can, and did, rest to establish a precedent.
A figurative interpretation, however, is necessary for those wishing to dispute God's Word.
Your interpretation of scripture =/= "God's Word".
OK, how do you make a moon "light"? You set it in the proper position with a clear view. It has all the light of a burned out bulb otherwise. The sight of the sun and moon were thus "made". That is not "bara" the "created" verb.
The Hebrew verb used for "made", here, is the identical verb used to describe the making of the animals and of man. So your argument about the moon being "made" meaning only that it was positioned into view is either incorrect, or it implies that, likewise, the animals and man were not actually created at that moment, but only positioned into view.
That may not mean much, so let's try to make it more meaningful. Assume that the average human weighs about 50 kilograms. The weight of all these humans would then be approximately 10^101 kilograms. The weight of the earth is approximately 6 x 10^27 kilograms, so the weight of all these people would be roughly 10^73 times greater than the weight of the earth. Even if God intended us to inhabit planets circling other stars, this doesn't work out well. Assuming a planetary capacity of 10^12 (one trillion) humans, it would require 10^88 planets to accomodate all the humans. It is estimated that there are at the upper bound of the estimates 10^24 stars in the universe. Therefore, each star must have 10^64 planets all of which must be habitable by humans to accomodate all the people that would be alive. Obviously, God either meant for us to stop reproducing at some point, in which case, why would we be commanded to "be fruitful and multiply" or the death that was brought on by the fall meant something other than death of the physical body, maybe the spiritual death of separation from God and damnation to hell, for example.
Yes, I believe God's account of origins. He was there we were not. We all have the same evidence to examine, we all have our own bias.I choose to believe what God has chosen to reveal to us. Most today choose to believe men.
Your mathmatics are impressive, but loaded with as many asumptions as evolution. Perhaps God would have set a limit on reproduction at a later time.Perhaps he would have created another planet for them to inhabit, or any number of assumptions could explain your supposed population dilemma.
Luke 1:37
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
But the answer for me is that God knew from eternity past that man would fall and need a savior. And if you think that unfair, just remember the sacrifice that he provided was himself.
Ac 20:28
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
Do you actually realize that modern science tells us that time is not an absolute quantity, but rather that the passage of time depends on reference frame? Further, modern science tells us that, from the reference frame of the universe during the earliest times after the big bang the gravitational field would be very high leading to a very slow passage of time. Hence, modern science sees nothing inconsistent with the passage of six days in the early universe being equivalent to the passage of billions of years as seen from our reference frame. (This differing rate of time passage has been experimentally proven, BTW, by flying very sensitive atomic clocks around the earth in airplanes and then comparing the time on the travelling clocks with the time on stationary ones with which they were synchronized. Less time was seen to have passed according to the travelling clock than passed according to the stationary one.)
It is now morning in Hawaii. Is it morning in Iraq? Why not. If morning and evening are not based on the position of the sun, then should it not be morning in both places?
When is it morning at the North Pole?
Do you realize that ancient God knows no time, that time is a reference point that HE created for US?
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