It's the other way around.
BUMP
I also believe in a created universe that is a rather old place. I think Genesis does a pretty good job of explaining the big bang and subsequent events. Whether the time frame is interpreted as you state or viewed allegorically isn't terribly important to me. God wanted Moses to explain origins to people a few thousand years ago in a way they would understand. He wanted them to know that creation was a long and hard process, even for the omnipotent God. Had Moses brought back a detailed explanation of the big bang, quantum mechanics and the rest, the Hebrews probably would have gone back to worshiping statues of cows.
It's interesting to me that William Jennings Bryan was an old earth believer and that the scene from Inherit the Wind where he is broken on the witness stand for young earth views never happened in the Scopes trial. The calculation of a young earth creation date was done by one Bishop Ussher in the seventeenth century and is not in the Bible. Since some of my ancestors are Anglo-Irish Quakers who Bishop's Ussher's anglican ilk persecuted, I've never thought of his calculations as authoritative.
and the Host JimRob said "Upon this server, let there be Truth and Beauty and Light"...
AND IT WAS GOOD.
(Que the chorus!)
People may agree or disagree with the content but I hope all (including myself) will take note of your attitude and actions.
I would wish God’s blessings but it appears you already have them:)
This is what our predecessors believed, and, consequently, I demand that it be tought in every high school biology class in the United States. Screw evolution. In the Inuit Creation Myth lies the path to Truth, Justice and the American Way.
EXCELLENT! I have briefly read the entire article and will read more in-depth later. I see you have touched on some of my thoughts exactly. THANK YOU!
I think many refuse to believe because they start with the wrong attitude. Instead of being awed by the wonder of the universe and life, they try to tear apart these miracles which they know they are incapable of. So who could have performed what is judged to be impossible but a much higher being than ourselves? We must first be humble in order to understand. It seems you understand very well.
He says at one point that the blink of an eye to Him is as a thousand years to us. That has always been enough of an explanation for me personally. He also tells us we must have Faith in His Word. Amen
Nam Vet
Well said! I enjoyed your essay tremendously. Following is the theory that I believe best expains how dinosaurs, fossils and fossil fuels do not really conflict with a literal "7-day" creation account.
It is called the "Gap Theory". The first verse of Genesis begins: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." He created, but when he did the creating, it does not say. Perhaps eons ago. Prehistoric creatures were put here to walk the earth. They left a lot of fossil remains as they died out from natural causes, perhaps a meteor. The Bible goes on in verse 2 to say: "The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the waters."
I have read that the Hebrew word for "void" suggested something that once was and then was really messed up. Perhaps the war that the Bible later mentions between the angels of heaven where one-third of the angels follows Satan and gets kicked out of heaven, really messed up the earth, made it "void" and dark.
Now God looks upon the earth again and says in verse three: "Let there be light".... there already was a sun and moon, created eons before, He just lifted the darkness surrounding the messed up earth and let the sun once more shine upon the earth, and began the literal seven days of the new creation of earth in which he would this time instead of dinosaures put other creatures and man upon the earth.
It is a plausable explianation that allows responsible science to coincide with the Bible. I do not believe Darwin's theory to be "responsible" science as there are too many descrepancies (the main one being the odds on amino acids just by chance forming into complex "life" are just too great to believe that happened by chance. The Bible has no contradictions.... only misunderstandings of men reading into it more than is there. The Bible has mysteries that are not readily clear because this helps to separate the believers from the non-believers. The believers take the Bible first on FAITH..... then one by one the mysteries begin to become clear as the Holy Spirit reveals them to us. My interpretation is only a theory and like yousaid... we will one day find out the real truth. Until then I can only say, I firmly believe that we must take the Bible as the Word of God and literally true and know that there is an answer that fits with what we know to be true in science with no condidictions eventhough we maybe cannot yet see it.
There is no need to go that far. Most people who care about this probably know that the bible as we see it now is a collection of this and that selected for support of the church. In addition, a lot of the NT, while written clearly enough makes no sense when taken logically and literally. But it's in parables! Yeah, no kidding. And for a finale, consider that English was not the language in which the Bible was written; which means that translators wrote the versions commonly available in the US and that since translators as a rule are well-acquainted with the rules of grammar, the result would be grammatical.
As for my views on origins, I fall back to a very simply philosophy: Everything begins with God, and as such, anything is possible.
The problem with this is that the universe looked the same 6000 years ago as it does now. The planets were there, the stars were there just like now. There are old records. China has records going back 5000 years. The Pharoahs based a lot of their cosmology 4000 and 5000 years ago on the appearance of the heavens, and their constellations still look the same as our constellations.
JediGirl makes a good point. (JG, bumped ya like you requested!) Faith is not faith if you believe that you have tangible proof--why do we need to try to reconcile every verse in the Bible with the scientific & historic evidence out there? If we need to make reconcilations in order to be comfortable with our belief in the Bible, that would signify a lack of faith on our part.
To me, Genesis means more than a simple account of the creation of the world. It tells me that every human, every generation since prehistoric times has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In other words, we all repeat the story of Adam and Eve in our lives--we do such destructive things and we throw away so much good for only a simple piece of forbidden fruit.
As for its scientific and historical value, I am extremely hesistant to conjure up theories without any proof, although I've certainly thought about it. One thing, though: we all too often miss the spiritual point of those views! The first two chapters of Genesis are a good summary of the destructiveness of sin, and how easily our human natures give into it.
What we do with our personal lives and how we treat others around us is far more important than the degree of "literalness" of our belief in the Bible--read through the books of Romans and Corinthians to see how we should behave in the world and in the church.
Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.
One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.
The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.
Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
I have no problem with that conceptually at all. But at the practical and operating level it is not so simple. Which Bible, the KJV? If so, which VERSION of the KJV? The original which contained apocrypha? Which apocrypha? Or the later NKJV which corrected many acknowledged errors but may have added it's own? Etc., etc., etc.
>It is a revealed truth which cannot be discovered scientifically, a person either hears His voice...
Yes, but what if he reveals something different to me than to you?