In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. --Genesis 1:1-3If we take the Bible totally literally, the earth is only a bit over six thousand years old. The fossil evidence to the contrary is completely false. And humanity created civilization (and writing) from scratch within about three generations.
Bull. Shit.
I am not saying that the Bible isn't a good guide--it is--just that it is not to be taken literally. I strongly believe that the Bible does give the history of the universe, just told in metaphor for a people far from advanced enough to understand the physics of the Big Bang.
God created us in His image. I think that refers far less to the physical, and far more to the mental and spiritual. If it is as I believe, do you really believe that He could use metaphor less well than His creation can to get the point across?
Ah ha! A topic near and dear to my heart. This issue threw me for a loop as well. Consider a couple of points for a moment. First, Genesis 1:1 is not the beginning of all creation. If you want the chronological beginning, that would be John 1:1. Genesis is merely the beginning of the story of man's time on earth following the war between Satan and God. A war which destroyed the heavens and the earth. Genesis, therefore, is the story of the RE creation. What walked the earth before the angelic war and how long there was between the original creation and the recreation is not spoken of in the Bible. Noodle that one for a bit, and let me know.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever notice that the creation story in Genesis is an excellent, metaphorical representation of the Big Bang, and kind of of the theory of the evolution of species?
DeleteDid you ever notice that people tend to argue God as a metaphor for the Big Bang, but no one seems to argue it the other way around? Since there is no one alive today who was present at the beginning, the Big Bang is as much an article of faith as Genesis. Similarly, people tend to be slavishly devoted to the theory of evolution and never stop to consider that it remains unproven and largely unprovable on a human time scale. Natural Selection, or repropudction of the fittest as my physical anthropology professor taught it, is simple, elegant and readily apparent to anyone as common sense; however, even that ignores the illogic of nature that apparently selected for a ticking time bomb in the appendics.
DeleteI don't argue God is a metaphor for the Big Bang--but no, I haven't seen that, either. What I tend to think is that He lit the fuse for the Big Bang, and set the dominoes in motion to create the universe, planets, and life. For life to have developed on its own, by accident, is so implausible that it takes more faith to believe than a Creator God who just flipped the switch to set it all off.
DeletePossible. Very possible. Scientists seem to want to ignore the possibility that the universe conforms to a certain set of rules because it was DESIGNED that way.
DeleteSome scientists, maybe. Others seem to look at the universe, and see everything working together so well as proof as the existence of God, that a perfectly functioning watch points to a watchmaker; how is the universe any different?
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