God Created the World in Seven Days?

[Disco Jesus]

Yes, it is a metaphor.

[Gendou]

Disco Jesus

Yes, it is a metaphor.

Can you show why it is a metaphor?

[l4dyph03n1x]

The bible wasn't written to be read literally. Even though with idiot people like us, we need something bland to understand something we supposedly believe.

[Tarrou]

So the thread has officially entered the land of the one-liners. Great.
*plays taps*

[Gendou]

Tangled Up In Blue

So the thread has officially entered the land of the one-liners. Great.

A noble effort, if one doomed from the start due to the subject material.

[Tarrou]

Gendou

Tangled Up In Blue

So the thread has officially entered the land of the one-liners. Great.

A noble effort, if one doomed from the start due to the subject material.

It just seems like a zero-sum game. The process of interperting the bible using intra-biblical sources is doomed to failure because there are too many interpertations and one can always be concocted to refute another. And evaluating it with science is equally doomed because faith and an omnipotent god trumps science. Sigh. Ah well. The next project will definately be strictly biblical in nature.

[gigacannon]

In reference to something Gendou said, something that constitutes a miracle is curious to everyone. Quite simply, if something occurs, then there must be a mechanism that allows it to occur. Naturally, unless someone felt some sort of prohibition against it, anyone would want to understand the miraculous process so that they could harness the power themselves.

The nuclear bomb is miraculous, is it not?

Secular people can have as much interest in the Bible, and perhaps be better at analysing it, than Christians (due to their objectivity). As a point of fact, my girlfriend's sister is a scholar of various Middle-Eastern things, esecially the Bible. She lives in and studies at Oxford. She's quite non-religious, but is dedicated and curious enough to have learned ancient Hebrew.

Curiosity is a matter of personal taste. I will never be that curious about the Bible. My curiosity lies with philosophy and cosmology.

[Westonian]

gigacannon

The nuclear bomb is miraculous, is it not?

I wouldn't call it "miraculous" so much as "terribly destructive." Calling an atom bomb a miracle is a bad example - Teflon would probably be better, though it's no less an accomplishment of science.

Quote:

Secular people can have as much interest in the Bible, and perhaps be better at analysing it, than Christians (due to their objectivity).

You're assuming that non-Christians are inherently more objective than Christians. That's a pretty big thing to be assuming.

Quote:

Curiosity is a matter of personal taste. I will never be that curious about the Bible. My curiosity lies with philosophy and cosmology.

This may be why you're so very bad at arguing about it. How can you discuss something if, with all your vaunted objectivity, you won't study the work in question?

[Operation Shoestring]

The problem as i see it is you're making assumptions.

Who the said it was a "creation" account?

The words translated as "create" don't neccesarily mean to make something, they can be interpreted as the giving of function or purpose... think of L'engle's A Wrinkle In Time series... this may well be not creating, but "naming"

In the days of the isralites, existance was defined in terms of purpose, so this can be thought of not as "God Makes everything," but as "God puts thinsg in order, and delinates their function in the greater order of things."

[/summary of lecture by famous biblical scholar]

[Lysia]

AyanamiRei

The problem as i see it is you're making assumptions.

Who the said it was a "creation" account?

The words translated as "create" don't neccesarily mean to make something, they can be interpreted as the giving of function or purpose... think of L'engle's A Wrinkle In Time series... this may well be not creating, but "naming"

In the days of the isralites, existance was defined in terms of purpose, so this can be thought of not as "God Makes everything," but as "God puts thinsg in order, and delinates their function in the greater order of things."

[/summary of lecture by famous biblical scholar]

I heard a similar thing - he renders things into existence by the addition of order; hence the importance of "separation" in Jewish theology.

Or something.

[Theopneustos]

Chronowatcher

"...that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (2nd peter 2:8 )

All in all, dont worry about it. It's either:

1. 144 hour period
2. 144 million(ish) year period
3. allegoristic symbolism

You took that verse out of context. That's what most old-earthers use to support said long ages.

[Tarrou]

AyanamiRei

The problem as i see it is you're making assumptions.

Who the said it was a "creation" account?

The words translated as "create" don't neccesarily mean to make something, they can be interpreted as the giving of function or purpose... think of L'engle's A Wrinkle In Time series... this may well be not creating, but "naming"

In the days of the isralites, existance was defined in terms of purpose, so this can be thought of not as "God Makes everything," but as "God puts thinsg in order, and delinates their function in the greater order of things."

[/summary of lecture by famous biblical scholar]

If that is the case, then it opens up Genesis to other interpertations of how creation occured. The bible states quite clearly that God created the heavens and the earth. I would think that that is not in dispute, unless a scholar of Hebrew is about and wishes to correct something in that translation. Although, as I pointed out, God does this in an unspecified amount of time.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. - Genesis 1:1

Again, no specific span of time is mentioned here.

If, as you say, God really spent six days naming and giving meaning to all the objects in the universe (in a very Kant-ian manner, I might add) but we do not know how long he took in creating it, your hypothesis allows for an old earth and universe created in an unknown time frame and for the six day span to be literally true in the sense that it was not creation but rather definition that was given in those days.

Theo - Yes, he probably did. I often tend to interpert that simply as a statement that God and time are divorced from one another, what with God being eternal and all.

[Theopneustos]

Tangled Up In Blue

Theo - Yes, he probably did. I often tend to interpert that simply as a statement that God and time are divorced from one another, what with God being eternal and all.

Taking things out of contexts makes whatever is being used, useless. I once thought the same thing, until I learned what it really was talking about.

[Tarrou]

Theopneustos

Tangled Up In Blue

Theo - Yes, he probably did. I often tend to interpert that simply as a statement that God and time are divorced from one another, what with God being eternal and all.

Taking things out of contexts makes whatever is being used, useless. I once thought the same thing, until I learned what it really was talking about.

It does seem to have more to do with God's actions than his actual nature, doesn't it?

[Theopneustos]

Tangled Up In Blue

It does seem to have more to do with God's actions than his actual nature, doesn't it?

Well, first, it doesn't have anything to do with the Creation (yes, I believe that the world was created in six days - I'm a fundy, I guess). It's mainly speaking about the day of the Lord. It does bring up how people will purposely forget that God created the world by His word, and then it brings up the Deluge (the Flood). But then it tells us that the world will be judged again, but not by water (since God made a promise to never cause a global flood again). Instead, it will be judged by fire. Then it goes and tells us that a day to the Lord is a thousand years and vice versa. But when we read further, we see why this is brought up.

"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

What God is basically doing is waiting for more sinners to repent. And Christians who face persecution on a daily basis desire to be delivered. I suppose you can use this verse to say that God is eternal, but a better verse to use to show that God is eternal is Psalm 90:4. However, I wouldn't recommend the verse to be used, just to claim that the days mentioned in Genesis were actually God's days, and not mans - so that it may differ. Besides, that verse seems figurative itself, since it's doing a comparison, and is using the word "like."