"mcv" <mcvmcv@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:45db4a1e$0$324$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
Steve O <spamhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
"mcv" <mcvmcv@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:45daf78e$0$327$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
Steve O <spamhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
"mcv" <mcvmcv@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:45d974d9$0$334$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
Steve O <spamhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
"mcv" <mcvmcv@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:45d5b3e3$0$332$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
Steve O <spamhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
"Armin Held" <armin-held@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:er2nf0$fe0$00$1@news.t-online.com...
Because of their fertility,
mankind colonized the earth already during the sixth "day", as the
text
expressly states: "And it was so", Genesis 1:30.
Aww, c'mon, you are seriously trying to convince me that the entire
world
was populated and colonized by humans in one day?
Are you hallucinating on something?
How can an entire planet be colonized in one day when human
gestation
takes
9 months?
Cmon, huh!?
'splain that one!
Did you notice the quotes he put around "day"?
[...]
A popular theory is that, should this chronology have any relevance at
all,
the "days" probably refer to epochs or phases, possibly lasting
millions
or
billions of years.
Now why would there be such a theory when the bible in no way mentions
epochs, or billions of years?
The bible does mention that to God 1 day is like 1000 years and 1000
years like a day.
But not in Genesis, right?
In Genesis, it is specifically referring to days.
Are you aware that Genesis 1 is actually a lot younger than the rest of
Genesis? Read up on the various editors of the bible. There might be a bit
on that on wikipedia, but I once read a really thorough yet accessible
article about this on the Straight Dope website.
In short: Genesis 1 was written during the Babylonian exile, while the
rest of Genesis is much, much older.
We know this, because it also specifically mentions evenings and
mornings,
and epochs of 1000 years have more than one evening and morning.
Surely you could even understand this, it's not rocket science, is it?
Um, yes, except that those evenings and mornings happen before the
creation
of the sun. Perhaps another big hint that perhaps you should take it as
literally as you're doing.
So doesn't that alone tell you that it is a load of complete nonsense?
If so, why do you insist on looking for "interpretations" which somehow
justify the text?
The bible specifically refers to a day.
It is either correct or incorrect.
But nowhere does the bible claim that Genesis 1 is intended as a perfect
and reliable historical account.
I would never suggest it was.
It is as unreliable as the rest of the bible, so I'll ask you again... what
makes you think or imagine that when they were referring to days, they were
possibly referring to epochs instead?
Are you suggesting that the "interpreted" chronology of Genesis actually
reflects reality?
As far as I am aware, it is its folowers who describe the bible as
perfect -
the inerrant Word of God. (ummm...except for the deliberate mistakes)
Now yoou want to take its followers' word for it? A moment agoo you were
still insisting that your own interpretation was the only true one.
No- I was insisting that the Genesis story is complete and utter fabricated
nonsense.
YOU are the one who was suggesting it might contain some possible truth, by
suggesting that "days" referred to epochs.
For your information, most followers don't take this text as literally as
you are. YECs do, and to be honest, you sound a lot like them.
Young Earth Creationists are retards.
For the record, I do not take the text literally at all- it is my position
that it is nothing more than fabricated nonsense.
By trying to interpret the text, as you do, in trying to bring some meaning
to it, you are aligning yourself more with YEC retards than I am.
Common interpretations take it as
poetic license or alegory. Only particularly dense or ignorant people
interpret it as literally as you do.
Only particularly dense or ignorant people take it seriously at all, as
you
appear to do.
Do I?
Yes, I think you do.
You are a typical apologetic - you are perfectly aware that the Genesis
story is utter gibberish yet you still try to bring some truth to it
suggesting that it could possibly be correct, if interpreted correctly.
I think I can gues why you do that.
You are as deluded as the rest of them.
If you had an ounce of sense, you would realise EXACTLY what the writer was
trying to say - they were trying to say that the entire universe was created
by the hand of God in under a week.
For a long time, simple minded people were happy with that explanation,
until science intervened.
After that, other sinple minded people cam along and tried to reconcile that
irregularity by "interpretation".
I'm just explaining to you what the original poster probably meant
by those quotes around "day". It's a really common interpretation.
There you go again - there is no interpretation required.
The text is quite clear-it states the universe was built in six days.
It is either right, or it is wrong.
I admit it differs from your One True Interpretation, but if you weren't
being so unbendingly stubborn about your own infallibility, you should
have been able to get your head around this concept.
Why are you having such trouble understanding that I am not interpreting the
text, I am simply reading it?
It has already been interpreted for me.
If you are saying that the interpreters got it wrong and wrote "day" instead
of "billion years", then we wouldn't be having this argument.
Others dismiss it for the blatant nonsense it is, without having to
resort
to interpretations, poetic licence or allegory to justify its accuracy.
I'm not going into that here.
Why not?
I'm prepared to go there, why aren't you?
I'm just trying to teach you this one simply
tiny fact that there have been quite a lot of people who've read and
interpreted this text before you did. Yet you keep insisting on ignoring
anny other interpretation than your own. Your as stubborn as the most
literally-minded of creationist fundies.
<sigh>
It is not MY interpretation!
Other people have translated it for me, and they specifically mention "day"
and not "epoch".
They also mention "evenings" and " mornings"
It is perfectly clear what the writer was referring to - it does not require
any further interpretation.
They were simply referring to what they believed - that the universe was
created by the hand of God magically within six periods of 24 hours, with a
day of rest at the end of it.
Which kind of neatly segued into the working week plus a day of worship.
To apply further interpretation to a simple statement like that is totally
unnecessary.
1,500 years ago, no interpretation would have been required.
Science was not at the stage where it could then disprove the bible claims.
Goal post shifting like yours is simply a lame attempt to keep up with
science to protect your wacky belief system.
We see it all of the time, people "interpreting" other stories of the bible,
simply because they are far too unbelievable for modern people, somehow
trying to apply a modern explanation to account for it.
Intelligent Design is the finest and most recent example.
It's pretty sad and desperate, if you ask me.
All this means is that the bible is simply out of date.
But believers like yourself can't accept that, so they look for other
justifications or "interpretations".
Such goal post shifting has existed throughout the history of organized
religion.
Early accounts in the bible show God walking and talking with people in the
Garden of Eden.
There are even suggestions in Genesis that there was more than one God doing
this.
As time passed, and people realised the Gods did not walk among them, they
were shifted to a higher, more inaccessible place like mountains to account
for their absence.
After we developed the tools to explore mountains, and realised the gods
weren't there, we moved them to an even more inaccessible place- the sky or
the heavens.
When it was proven there were no gods there either, they were quickly
shifted to where they are to day- some invisible, magical soul depository,
once more out of the reach of science and their intrusive instruments.
Like I say, it's nothing more than goal-post shifting.
Then again, if you are a Christian, that type of thing will come easy to
you.
Perhaps you have been practicing self deception on yourself for so long and
you are unable to recognize this, which leads you into doing silly things
like interpreting a simple word like "day" into something else entirely
different.
It has to do with context. In this case, the context is a reasonably
well
known text that people have been trying to interpret in many different
ways over a period of over 2000 years.
No, the context was a group of primitive people trying to make sense of
their world and guessing how it came to be.
here
They got it wrong - they thought it all happened within a week.
It doesn't matter how many interpretations you care to put on it -
their
original guess still remains the same.
If you weren't already aware, they were waaaaayyy out.
So? I get the impression you think you're pretty smart for figuring this
out, but this is really nothing new.
Well, I kind of figured it out around the age of seven- I thought I was
smart then, but then again, I had parents who encouraged me to think for
myself and who didn't feel it was necessary to shove supersticious and
danaging nonsense into young minds.
Excellent. Unfortunately they apparently they forgot to teach you that
there
are other people out there who also think for themselves, some of whom may
have thought about certain subjects for much longer than you have.
And your final conclusion is that Genesis is talking about epochs and not
days?
Care to prove that, because I can assure you that the weight if evidence is
with me?
You don't seem to have figured it out at all, yet.
You're still taking it seriously.
I'm taking research into various sources, original texts, contexts and
possible meanings of those texts seriously. I take scholars and scientists
who've thought long and hard about this seriously. You seem to think
you're the Fountain of Infinite Wisdom or something, and other people's
research is completely irrelevant.
I am not as highly qualified as any of those scholars or scientists are,
except for one thing- my ***** radar.
Decent ***** radar is all that is required to interpret the bible
properly.
You, OTOH, fail to see it for what it is, and you are labouring under the
delusion that there is some kind of hidden truth in the Genesis account, or
perhaps any other parts of the bible.
Now, you can research the Genesis account as much as you want, apply any
interpretation to it you like, but ultimately, you are wasting your time- it
is nothing more than a silly and way off-target account of how the universe
is supposed to have been created.
Why you seem to think that a document written by supersticious goat herders
2,000 years ago requires research and scholarly or scientific interpretation
is completely beyond me.
You might as well spend your time engaged in scholarly research into the
story of the Tooth Fairy, for all that is worth.
Then again, if you had half a functioning brain, why would you bother?
Did YOUR parents insist there was some truth to the Genesis account or
something?
Not that I recall. They told the stories, but left me to decide for myself
what to do with them.
Were you home schooled, by any chance?
No (although I suspect the academic environment at home taught me as much
as school did). Were you home schooled?
No.
It is (according to some scholars
who know way more about this than you or I) not intended as a historical
record, it's a story claiming that God created not just mmankind, but
the earth and the entire universe. The how is less important, since the
details already contradict the other creation story in Genesis anyway.
And to me, all of this is blindingly obvious.
If it so blindingly obvious that the whole thing is just a manufactured
tale
invented by non technological people, then why do you think the Genesis
story has any relevance to the modern world at all?
Perhaps you agree with me that the whole of the bible can be ignored as
manufactured nonsense?
You're already accepting that the opening is faulty, so why not the rest?
Don't evade the subject.
I think you are the one who is evading here.
Why don't you just come out with it?
You believe in the bible story, but because you are not an uneducated
simpleton, you are required to justify those stories by other means and
"interpretation", right?
We're discussing whether or not 24 hours is the
only possible interpretation of the word translated as "day" in Genesis 1.
That's what made you go on your rant, and that's exactly what I'm trying
to explain to you here.
So far, you are failing to convince me that "day" means anything other than
24 hrs in this or any other context.
You have yet to submit even a single shred of evidence that it is referring
to a different time period.
So where has all of that scholarly research got you?
Criticism without knowing what it actually is
that you're criticising makes you look a bit foolish.
You are the one who appears to be confusing a day with a billion years,
and
trying to apply an interpretation to suit your own purposes when none
is
required.
How foolish is that?
Are you being intentionally dense, or was it by accident? I try to
explain
about context, history, interpretations, meanings and debate, and you
throw it all out as if you're the sole judge of How The Bible Should Be
Read.
All you need to do is read it, but first remove your blinkers and your
assumption that God exists.
From then on, you will have little to no problems interpreting what the
bible says.
You seem to have quite a lot of trouble interpreting what the bible says.
You are the one who insists it requires interpretation.
The bible was written as it was intended - literally.
No amount of waffling can disguise that fact.
Are you claiming that the writers did not believe that creation occurred in
under one week?
There are even people around today who believe that, so why shouldn't the
people who wrote it believe the same?
You prefer your own short-sighted interpretation that ignores the age,
the context and the language it was written in, as well as the work of
many more educated scholars (definitely not all of them christians or
jews) who did take all of this seriously and came to much more profound
conclusions than your own childish reading.
Profound conclusions?
How can you reach profound conclusions from a ridiculous fairy story about
the entire universe being "poofed" into existence?
Here's your chance here and now to repeat those "profound conclusions" here,
or else keep quiet about it and look foolish.
The reason my reading appears childish to you is simply because the text IS
childish - yet you are unable or unwilling to admit that.
You can *believe* whatever you like. What I'm attacking you about is
your complete disrespect for academic research.
I have no disrespect for any academic research.
What I do disresepect is the infantile and ridiculous claims in your bible,
whether they are intended as literal or allegorical.
There is no harm in reading that kind of thing for your own entertainment,
but to try to apply deeper meaning to it is ridiculous in the extreme.
The only type of worthwhile research when it comes to the bible is to
disprove the silly, divisive and dangerous nonsense it contains.
It doesn't specifically refer to that, it just gives that as an
example.
In any case, I don't think any Merriam-Webster definition can simply
invalidate a 2000 year old debate.
What 2,000 year old debate?
It is only relatively recently that the whole idea of the world being
created in 7 days has been questioned.
Ignorance such as your own reigned for most of the time.
Firstly, the Hebrew word for day can also mean "period of time". Instead
of Webster, you should have looked at a Hebrew dictionary. You do
realise
that the KJV was not actually the original version of the bible, do you?
More to the point: Genesis 2 uses the same word ("yom") to describe the
entire creation that Genesis 1 uses to describe a single phase in that
creation. Surely surely 6 days is not the same as 1 day?
As for when people started reading this text a bit more intelligently
than
you did,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis
summarises it thus:
"Both Jews and Christians have been considering the idea of the creation
history as an allegory (instead of an historical description) long
before
the development of modern science.
And rational people dismiss it as primitive mumbo jumbo, with no
relevance
whatsoever to the real world.
Have you noticed that throughout this latest post of yours, you seem to
realise your original point is undefendable, and you're trying to hide
that fact by defending a completely different position? I have. It won't
work.
Where do you get that idea?
Please indicate where I have done that.
While you're at it, if you sincerely believe that the Genesis account is an
allegory of a real event, please remove yourself from the closet and tell me
exactly what it is that you think it is an allegory for?
Two notable examples are Saint Augustine
(4th century) that, on theological grounds, argued that everything in
the
universe was created by God in the same instant, and not in seven days
as
a plain account of Genesis would require; and the 1st century Jewish
scholar Philo of Alexandria, who wrote that it would be a mistake to
think
that creation happened in six days, or in any set amount of time."
And there are some people who claim that the entire universe was created
last Thursday.
So what?
This was a refutation of your claim:
It is only relatively recently that the whole idea of the world being
created in 7 days has been questioned.
I've proven you wrong and now you pretend we were talking about something
else entirely. That's what.
Proven me wrong where, exactly?
Is this another allegory of yours, you know, where complete nonsense
actually takes on some kind of significant meaning?
They obviously weren't aware of the billion year history of the earth,
but
even they were smart enough to realise Genesis 1 was not intended as a
historical account.
So why do YOU think that the time periods are relevant, or have anything
to
do whatsoever with how the universe came into existence?
I don't. I'm not a day-age-creationist, if that's what you think. But
that's a common interpretation.
But you are a creationist, aren't you?
You just think you're smarter than the rest, by applying some kind of
pseudo - scientific interpretation which makes it all work.
You seem to think that the Genesis account is some kind of mysterious and
cryptic description of how the universe came to exist, which requires
interpretation to elicit the truth from it.
Not at all. If you know the context, the time it was written in, then it's
not hard to see that its message is that God created more than just
humans,
plants and animals (which is what the original creation story focused on).
Only now do people obsess about the exact details of the story, because
we're now at the point where we can figure out and understand those
details,
and some people seem to think that the fact that those details contradict
the details in Genesis is somehow a problem. It isn't. Genesis 1 focuses
on the big picture, and it tells that picture in a rather obviously poetic
form.
You keep saying, "It tells that picture.."
What sort of picture is Genesis supposed to be telling?
How can it be anything else other than a fabricated story aimed at a
gullible and primitive audience which has no bearing on reality whatsoever?
More to the point, why have YOU fallen for it?
It wouldn't even make sense for a story like that to go into all sorts
of chronological and biological detail.
It's not a story that makes any sense of all, either literally or
allegorically.
As a theory, it's a complete bunch of crap, whichever way you look at it.
You are simply trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear by tring to
apply "interpretations" to it.
Ths is possibly one of the strangest converstaions I have ever had.
Here's me, saying the bible categorically states the universe was created by
the hand of God within six days, and there's you, claiming that what the
writer really intended was something else, possibly six entirely different
time periods.
Why on earth I'm having this conversation, I don't know.
What I do know, is that you seem totally reluctant to state your position,
or verify exactly what you think was achieved within those six time frames.
You even seem a little scared to claim, "God created the universe, not
within six days, as stated in the bible, but within six time periods, of an
undetermined length" but for some reason you seem unable to say it.
Perhaps, deep down, on some level, even you realsie how silly the whole
thing is and that either interpretation is incorrect.
--
Steve O
a.a. #2240 (Apatheist Chapter)
B.A.A.W.A.
"Faith doesn't move mountains - it levels buildings" - anon.
"The Universe isn't about us." - Carl Sagan
.
