h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It has later occurred to me to reexamine my thoughts about the level of Genesis improbability.

If I may hazard a guess, I'd say that modern times have captured some remaining bits of maybe 1,200 religions since the dawn of time. Many of them represent worship of natural phenomenon like sun, wind, volcanoes, etc. Many of them worshiped graven images, invented around animals or combinations of animals. Many, too, have worshiped a general nature thing and imbued the natural world with magic where they did not understand phenomena.

Relatively few have been monotheistic, and even fewer have had so direct a god-influence as the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions; but, no matter. I suppose it's got to be equally feasible (odds-wise) that a half alligator, half man could represent any supreme creator. It's more a matter of believing that any power capable of creating a universe would have to be greater and of different 'stuff' than the creation.

Of all the religions, of which I've become aware, that happen to have a creation story in their tenets, the early book of Genesis is still the only one that comes so close to describing current scientific theory (which we still cannot be sure is 100% there).

Still, imagine the odds of rolling a 1,200 sided die and having it come up with the 'correct' side seven times running!?!? That's why I see it as so extremely implausible, even if translation and understanding problems obscure it some.

Just an additional 2 pence.

Hi FT,

I think you may have taken your Lug / Source / God hat off a day too soon there. I was rather expecting my next post to read something along the lines of:

"The next day, Lug appeared to me again. He explained slowly and carefully that Africa is not another planet. He took me on a flight and showed me the African plains, with huge animals ten times the size of a cow. Some had long noses and others had long necks. Giant cats hunt them.

"He also explained that the other worlds I had seen were not Heaven and Hell, but worlds like our own except that there is no life on them.

"This 'chemistry' thing Lug speaks of is going to take me some more effort, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. It goes like this..."

In other words, why would any tutor - divine or otherwise - not go back and correct some of the more glaring of his pupil's errors? Any human teacher would, so I can't see why any divine teacher wouldn't.

Then there are details in 'Giford the Iberian' (GtI)'s account that 'ring true' - the idea of other planets like ours, the description of flying through clouds, the fact that the Sun is far larger than the Moon. All these things are simply absent in the Genesis account. There is absolutely no way that I could have avoided mentioning the absence of a solid firmament, no matter how hard I tried. The best I could do was to say the stars are on a solid firmament but the sun and planets are within it. Again, 5 minutes effort from Lug and that could have been corrected too.

Not quite sure what you're basing your odds calculation on with the dice thing. Pretty much every religion says that a God or Gods created the world, and many mention separate things that were also created. It's true that most don't give an order, but since this is where the Genesis account gets it wrong, I don't see that that adds to its credibility.

Gif

Hey again, Gif:

Thank you for your patience. I guess I was calculating that very few biblical 'authors' wrote more than a small part of the many books of the old testament, so it took more than a few tries to get that message/story/myth/history out. Then it had to be distilled and socialized before it was added.

I'm not even sure when someone decided they should all be put together into a single anthology. Or, how they determined the order. Like the alphabet, it appears to have been largely arbitrary (there is no real reason that A should come before B, or M seven letters before T).

If I had been The Source (and, I guess I was), I might have given it a second try or I might have just smite GtI and found another 'victim'.

I don't know how Genesis would have read if the message was limited to "Don't worship the sun, moon, or stars. They aren't literally 'heavenly bodies'."

I intentionally avoided challenging the 'Lug' label. I can't imagine that it would concern a god what tonal label was being applied to them by primitive (if precious) creatures. Many religions insist that their god's actual name is either unpronounceable or with too much power for man to be so entrusted.

So, you'd have gathered from your vision that the other worlds had 'no life on them'? I'm not sure where that would have come from. One natural assumption might have been that ALL other worlds were populated.

[In other words, why would any tutor - divine or otherwise - not go back and correct some of the more glaring of his pupil's errors? Any human teacher would, so I can't see why any divine teacher wouldn't. ]

Strange thing about gods. For some strange reason they feel that they are superior to us, just because they have all their god powers and height advantage and logevity. They even tend to do as they please, much of the time without any input or obeisance to us.

Once a message has been delivered, they seem to leave it to us to sort out how we make use of it. Perhaps a true The Source would have had a way to pick the best available receptacle; the one that would most accurately transcribe the message within the limits of the vocabulary and 'understanding' of the time. The universe is kind of big for a god to spend too much time hand-holding something crawling around on a remote mud ball in a universe the size of... the universe, don't you think?

I see you make the anthropomorphic leap to comparing a human and divine teacher. Who even said that the attempt was to teach? This is the mistake people make when they try to compare Genesis with science. My contention has consistently been that it was not supposed to be a literal, scientific guide to the galaxy.

We humans have a tendency to confuse 'the message' when we put ourselves into the mix. Ask any politician who has found that they've delivered a speech (read message) on a controversial subject, only to find that people on both sides claim that the politician is fully aligned with their own agendas.

Chemistry? Tutor? Where would that have come from, exactly? What points were aimed at teaching, much less teaching science? The hardest thing for a god to do, apparently, is to keep us focussed on a larger message; and not read extra 'stuff' into it.

[Then there are details in 'Giford the Iberian' (GtI)'s account that 'ring true' -]

There's that 21st century viewpoint creeping in, as natural as it seems. As recently as the 15th century (even more recently in some countries), not only does this not 'ring true' but it could get you burnt at the stake for even vocalising these 'truths'. From the Iberian's social perspective, even saying that the Sun is larger than the Moon, may be enough to brand GtI as a loon (at best) or dangerous heretic (at worst).

[All these things are simply absent in the Genesis account.]

My contention has been that they aren't 'absent', but merely written under extreme limitations; limitations in language and vocabulary, limitations in scientific understanding of what they've been shown and how it relates to any grand scheme, limitations imposed by their society about talking nonsense about the god(s). I'm surprised that more people weren't put to death for even claiming to have had a personal connection with various gods, when the priests of those religions traditional stake a higher claim to religious understanding and proprietary god communication rights. ("YOU can't tell US what our god said; that's for us to make up, and don't you forget it!")

[Pretty much every religion says that a God or Gods created the world, and many mention separate things that were also created.]

I agree, there are all sorts of myths around turtles, left armpits, etc.

* Baiame, or the Maker of Many Things in Australia, started with flat, unpopulated land.
* The Chinese believe it was Yin and Yang forces (and actually mention the great light), but then made P'an Ku, the Ancient One, and had him making all mountains and digging the rivers.
*Some versions of Hindu say that the universes are made by Lord Brahma the Creator, maintained by Lord Vishnu the Preserver and destroyed by Lord Shiva. Some have Brahma as both creator and destroyer of universes. He creates by splitting in two and rejoining.
* The Muslim religion says that when God wants to create something, all he needs to say is "Be", and it becomes. This is hard to dispute, but but after creating angels, sun, moon, stars, and earth, God made it rain and had to ask the angels to bring him seven kinds of mud from which he molded man.
* The Sanema people start later in the process. The forest already exists along with a Curare-Woman, a Jaguar, and a Frog.
* The Iroquois, Huron, and other American Indian tribes believed that everything was created by a woman who dreamed dreams.
* The Norse believed that the giant Ymir was formed from rain and created, from his armpit, a man and a woman - giants like himself. And then a 'cow?' licks enough ice away to reveal another giant, ancestor to Odin.

Okay, so some few religions start with a universe of nothing. I supposed we could agree on that. Some even then mention a light, or colourful light. After that, virtually all of the more primitive (primitive in my anthropomorphic, biased viewpoint) go off a deep end by postulating that other stuff really already existed, or by just skipping ahead to the creation of man from mud and muck. That part of 'the message' seems to get through pretty often; start with nothing and man eventually arises from the muck; a pretty decent non-scientific analogy in my book.

But, the only thing that surprises me is the additional steps added that point to a naturally occurring evolutionary change from 'light', to 'life'.

You keep saying that [All these things are simply absent in the Genesis account] which is demonstrably a false statement. Perhaps we should go through the account one more time, but from your perspective.

I propose that you post any version of the seven days, one posting at a time, and we can discuss whether there is any fit to modern cosmological history or not.

As always, I look forward to your reply,

Hi FT,

It still seems to me that you have a lot more explanations for why the Genesis account doesn't match up to modern science than you do examples where it does match up. For example, you said in your last post that The Source's intent may not have been to teach, that people may have been persecuted as heretics for preaching what The Source revealed, and that 'God(s) move(s) in mysterious ways' and that we can't hold them accountable for their failure to teach as humans would. All those might explain to a greater or lesser extent why Genesis doesn't match science, but your original case was that Genesis DOES match science.

Part of my personal idea of the 'second visitation of Lug' was that The Source would speak - as in verbally, literally speak - to correct some of the wrong ideas GtI had picked up. That's where I got the better explanation of planets and chemistry from.

You blast other religions for 'postulating other stuff that already existed', but isn't that exactly what Genesis does with having day and night before the Sun is created?

What I said was "Then there are details in 'Giford the Iberian' (GtI)'s account that 'ring true' - the idea of other planets like ours, the description of flying through clouds, the fact that the Sun is far larger than the Moon. All these things are simply absent in the Genesis account." It's demonstrably true that Genesis does not mention any of the three things I listed, so I assume you are claiming that Genesis does describe something equally clearly - but I don't know what.

OK, here's my day-by-day breakdown of Genesis.

Day 1: Light. God creates heaven and earth (BEFORE the light you attribute to the Big Bang) and darkness. I understand you claim this to be a description of the Big Bang, and I think you understand that I think 'heat' would be a better description of microwaves than 'light'. If we still disagree on this, I think we just need to agree to disagree and move on.

Day 2: Then he creates 'a firmament in the midst of the waters'. The idea of a firmament flatly contradicts everything about modern cosmology, and I have no clue what these 'waters' are meant to be. I am sure you can come up with several plausible analogies, but that's not the same as saying they accurately describe reality.

Day 3: God 'gathers together the waters' (again, no real parallel with modern science), then creates all the plants, including comparatively modern types such as fruiting trees (around 65 million years old iirc)

Day 4: God creates the Sun, moon and stars. How did we have days before the sun? How did plants survive without the Sun? What is this 'firmament' that the stars are set in? This 'day' seems to be a mish-mash of events that took place between 14 billion years ago and around 5 billion years ago, with a healthy dollop of things that never happened.

Day 5: Sea creatures and birds. First life in the seas: around 4 billion years ago. Birds: more like 75 million years old. Whales (also specifically mentioned) mere nippers at around 20 million years young. Aside from naming things that really do exists, this bears no relation to taxonomy or the fossil record.

Day 6: Land creatures (after whales!). Perhaps we will disagree on why cattle are mentioned so prominently, but the entire 100 million years of dinosaur dominance seem to have been missed. In fact, of the 4 billion-plus year history of life on Earth, only the late holocene (i.e. the present) seems to have been mentioned. No mammoths, no sabre-tooths, no trilobites, no edicarians - not even a vague hint of demonic creatures in the ancient past which might be interpreted as loosely that way.

Day 7: God rests. Erm, and he would need to do that why?

Missing: any hint of the size of the universe or the insignificance of humanity. Any hint of the age of the universe. Well over 99% of all species that ever lived, not to mention most species currently alive. Evolution. Gravity. Chemistry. Any hint of a genuine understanding of... well, anything really.

The ONLY things I can see that tie in with modern science are that the stars, Earth, plants, animals and man exist. To me, this does not indicate divine knowledge.

Let me know what your take on all that was.

Gif

Ooh, got so tied up in the details I forgot the big picture!

The world was not made in 6 days.

Gif

Hmmm? Not one a day, is it? We seem to be having communication problems and we both speak the same language in largely the same society!

I probably won't be able to hit it all in one sitting, but we'll get started; apparently from scratch.


[It still seems to me that you have a lot more explanations for why the Genesis account doesn't match up to modern science than you do examples where it does match up. ...]

Yes, the meager contents of Genesis are not fully encompassing of whole libraries that represent the total amassed human knowledge of science.


[... For example, you said in your last post that The Source's intent may not have been to teach, ...]

What was meant was that 'The Source's' intent was not to teach science.


[... that people may have been persecuted as heretics for preaching what The Source revealed, ...]

I doubt that there is mucy 'may have been' about it ; but, what man may do in the name of his invention, religion, does not necessarily have anything to do with a creator's direct intent or wishes.


[... and that 'God(s) move(s) in mysterious ways' and that we can't hold them accountable for their failure to teach as humans would. ...]

When one proposes there is a god, yes you can bet that they will seem mysterious to a carbon-based sack of mostly water. And, one can be assured that you won't be able to 'hold them accountable' for anything. Just how would you propose that man could hold a god accountable? Would we fine god?, Jail god?, Shun god?, as if any of that would have any meaning to a god.


[... All those might explain to a greater or lesser extent why Genesis doesn't match science, but your original case was that Genesis DOES match science.]

My original proposition was that Genesis uncannily parallels science, not matches it, especially if you take into account the vocabulary and lack of understanding of the communicants that may or may not have received 'the message'. The main thrust is that, given a primitive civilization, and the idea that 'teaching science' was not the intent, man did an amazing job of SOMEHOW coming up with an unbelievable creation myth that turns out not to be so mythic as man long believed afterwards.

My real argument is that the Big Bang could not have happened without a creator intervention of some sort; whether it was causing an unpredicted and unpredicated event with 'let there be light', or causing an eternally existing singularity to become unstable.


[Part of my personal idea of the 'second visitation of Lug' was that The Source would speak - as in verbally, literally speak - to correct some of the wrong ideas GtI had picked up. That's where I got the better explanation of planets and chemistry from. ]

This is an example of the danger when the recipient of 'messages' puts themselves into the message and tries to 'fix it'. A message is a message. Certainly you've been part of the experiment where a phrase is whispered from one person to another, getting back to the source after 15 or more iterations? It rarely carries much of the meaning of the original phrase. This is the same process through which we read Genesis in modern English with all its thee and thou conventions thrust upon it.


[You blast other religions for 'postulating other stuff that already existed', but isn't that exactly what Genesis does with having day and night before the Sun is created? ]

This is unfair, I think. I don't blast other religions. Belief systems are highly personal things. I only bring them up to highlight the difference between a creation myth that starts with a void or nothing, and one that already has stuff in it. The latter can hardly be thought representative of how science views existence 14,000,000,000 years ago, whereas the void is pretty much what science now demands.


[What I said was "Then there are details in 'Giford the Iberian' (GtI)'s account that 'ring true' - the idea of other planets like ours, the description of flying through clouds, the fact that the Sun is far larger than the Moon. All these things are simply absent in the Genesis account."...]

Apparently, I misunderstood which details GtI felt rang true. Please point out which details rang true to him in your mind (yours is the only one that counts, here).

As to the things you mention that were 'absent in the Genesis account' the reason would be, Different Message. If the message was the relational sizes of major bodies in the solar system, they would not have been absent (though still subject to misinterpretation and garbled translations). It appears to be what GtI got out of it, and it wasn't even the message.

[... It's demonstrably true that Genesis does not mention any of the three things I listed, so I assume you are claiming that Genesis does describe something equally clearly - but I don't know what.]

True, those things are not mentioned; but 'clearly'? I believe the reason that many don't see a lack of disagreement between Genesis and science is precisely because the thousands year old interpretation and re-translation is anything but clear. Have I not made that apparent?

If it was clear, it would be so clearly wrong that I'd never see it, or clearly right that you couldn't help but see it. I suppose, at the end of the day, that is what this conversation is about.

Whoa! Time I get going already. I'll start with the first couple of days next go round. Perhaps later today.

Gee, this is good for shaking out the cobwebs!

Day 1: Light. God creates heaven and earth (BEFORE the light you attribute to the Big Bang) and darkness. I understand you claim this to be a description of the Big Bang, and I think you understand that I think 'heat' would be a better description of microwaves than 'light'. If we still disagree on this, I think we just need to agree to disagree and move on.

Deep breath, and deep sonorous voice:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

I often wish that I'd learned the ancient languages to see what some of these passages really said, in the words of the writers.

2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

We know the Earth to be a roundish, almost-globe. It patently cannot be simultaneously both created and without form and void.

We are told that God created his angels first, and presumably the heavens which they occupied. This, if true, could be the source of confusion that creates the paradox. Separating heaven from God (unless one believes that one can inhabit themself), may merely be a misunderstanding that was meant to describe god as 'the foundation'. Since the only foundation man knew back then was Earth, it seems a natural but erroneous assumption to make. Certainly an endless void would be 'deep'.

If God has a face, it would certainly be moving over his creation(s). This is an anthropomorphic error, not one I relate to 'the beginning'.
(Remember, these are just my explanations. I fully expect you to reject them or dismiss them. No problem, if at first you consider them.)

3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

My version of the big bang. Physicist have long joined Optics with Electrical Charges and Magnetics into one science, Electro-magnetism of with both visible light and microwaves are part. Of course a god would not be limited to visible light, as you and I; and, therefore, LIGHT.

4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

Separated may be an unnecessary word here, but it does seem part of the pattern. These faux paxs are caused by man's need to categorise and separate things in order to think about them. Newtonian and Einsteinian physics are virtually indistinuishable except in extreme gravitational fields. So, they feel free to ignore the minor impact of Einsteinian math in their experiments, except in the presence of a strong gravitational field.

We're always dividing and naming things: taxonomies, ontologies, catagories and catalogs. We obsess about it. An omniscient being would not need to do these things. If one KNOWS everything, one need not name it to identify it; it is itself. 75% of our science is deciding what to call stuff. If you MADE IT, you wouldn't need to.

5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

With the expanding of the universe, one has two views. Towards it, is light; away from it, is dark. There would be nothing else but light and dark at this point.

6 And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."

Waters is simply a misunderstanding of the gazillions of particles that are banging about like little droplets of not-quite matter. I can't imagine what word in their vocabulary would come closer to an accurate analogy. It's formless and mobile, transparent and substantive, it ebbs and flows with young gravity.

7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.

Again, merely gravity at work and play, separating the cooling particles into what we refer to as clouds. We still use this term when discussing cosmology. You'd think by now we'd be beyond the lack of vocabulary suffered by the bibilical writers! Above and below are human conventions, also based on gravity. There would have been no other reasonable choice of terms for a people constantly and continuously oppressed by the pull of a body the size of a planet.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

At this point, in my mind, there are no solid objects, just these clouds of not-even-dust.

More to come, as we get to Day 3!

9 And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so.

The third day sees much of the part of creation that we call evolution. Remember that we poor humans are linear, but a truly omniscient and omnipotent god need not be linear. Still, to communicate with us, things must be presented one thing after another. Our senses are not capable of seeing all views, angles, and aspects of world development at the same time.

This line seems to be addressing the gravitic drawing of matter into isolated spots. When they get big enough, we call them planets. Our scientists suggest that the world was a mass of molten slag at one time. The heat from compression kept it that way until it settle in and began to cool. Gradually, heavy iron elements 'tended' to be drawn toward the center of the mass, while lighter elements 'tended' to stay 'afloat'. The gases escaped the rock, but were held to the massive planet, creating an ammonium-methane atmosphere that rained down in a semblance of water; certainly it was liquid.

10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

So, now we have dry-ish land and wettish seas. Just gravity at work and play.

11 And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so.

Here, if you were being shown these next moments of Earth's life cycle, and the only life was microbial, viral, and unicellular, how would you try to describe it. What, in your existence, would you most likely to liken it too?

I'd probably be repulsed and confused. I'd see things that appear foreign (alien, if the word was in my lexicon). I may, just so as not to confuse and frighten 'the flock' temper the description of the vision and make of it something 'acceptable'. But, life is life; if it's not bird, animal, or fish, I may interpret it as the only thing left in my frame of reference; a plant.

As I watched the images 'bud' (divide), I'd certainly not recognize anything animal about that; but I might be familiar with taking 'cuttings' from plants and growing new plants from them.

12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

This is probably the first mention of genetics ever written (I'd love to hear of previous ones). "Each bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind." That's as succint a description of genetics as I think I've ever heard!

13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

Hi FT,

It would be helpful for me if you could point out where you think the OT matches our modern understanding, rather than where you think it may have been distorted from its original meaning. (Unneccesary words, faux pas, lack of Hebrew vocab, etc).

For example, I understand that you take 'let there be light' as a description of the Big Bang. On the other hand, taking 'light and dark' to mean 'towards or away' is something of a stretch.

Gif

PS, in answer to your questions, I would describe microbes mostly as 'very small' - and I am certain the Hebrews had perfectly good words for 'small'. If you've ever seen them through a microscope, you will know that they look nothing at all like plants, especially when reproducing. And humans have known that plant seeds produce more of the same plant since agriculture began.

PPS You still have the Earth being formed before the planets - or, indeed, the Big Bang. Where are angels mentioned?

PPPS What is the plural of 'faux pas'?

Plural of Faux Pas? Good question. I believe it stays the same, although I suppose you could say faux étapes.

Good points. I'll begin again and focus more on the parallels, but only if you've already bought into the interpretation/translation problems.

PS: I didn't want to seem to equate Light and Dark, with Towards or Away. I was just pointing out that anyone given a vision of the big bang would have two distinct visuals to remember. Toward the big bang would be all light, and facing away from the big bang would be all dark. Even as the light passes you by, there is nothing for it to reflect from; ergo dark.

It would hardly do to give someone a vision of the light (big bang), if it wasn't placed in the context of the void (remaining dark).

I, too, would describe microbes as very small; and of course I've seen them through microscopes. But, at the same time, if I didn't know I was looking at an extreme magnification (I doubt that any god's visions would come equipped with movie cyborg magnification readouts, not that they'd do much good for a primitive visionary), I would have to interpret it within my sphere of knowledge.

You are still falling into the trap of projecting 21st century knowledge on pre-century people. If you had no such knowledge and were shown something as extremely foreign to you as say an modern jet fighter flying through the air and firing missiles at tanks, do you really think you could describe it in their language in a way that would carry down an accurate, recognizable description in modern lingo? I sincerely doubt it. Heck, medieval knights would come away with a better description and still not be close, because they would project their times and knowledge into a description that would sound ludicrous to us, and nothing like modern warfare weaponry.

Well, I'll get back into it now.

Let's see if this is going to work better, or not:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Generic statement, such as a header in a cosmology textbook saying "The creation of the universe"

2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

It begins with an unknowable beginning, because modern science believes in a beginning that they cannot define until a fraction of a second after it has begun.

3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

An object that we refer to as a singularity is produced unstable or becomes unstable and creates what we call a "Big Bang", which means that where there was nothing, except perhaps a compact singularity, there is now massive amounts of energy and particles expanding and expanding.

4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

Energetic photons, in the still relatively smallish but rapidly expanding universe, act as a chaperons at a dance party keeping particles from joining together to form matter. As often as they try to 'stick', some outraged photon comes along and knocks them apart. An electron just can't catch a break.

5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

The 'area' into which the universe expands is like the void had been, and gives no resistance. The only thing that exists is this expanding pool or cloud of energy, particles, and light.

6 And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."

As this non-solid soup begins to cool, by expanding so far that the photons just can't keep up their separationist duties, particles find that they can now enjoy a dance without being swatted apart.

7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.

As the bits of matter experience gravity and begin to clump together, there becomes a separation between the general pool of energy, the clumps, and the non-clumped particles.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

As enough of the lightweight atomic particles clump together, gravity compresses them until they become self-igniting stars. The compression forces apart bonds so that some of the atoms gain larger nuclei and can hold on to more electrons. Eventually, they will explode and the now heavier atoms are even more likely to clump, compress, ignite, and explode giving birth to even heavier elements.

Hi FT,

Aha!

"Toward the big bang would be all light, and facing away from the big bang would be all dark. Even as the light passes you by, there is nothing for it to reflect from; ergo dark. It would hardly do to give someone a vision of the light (big bang), if it wasn't placed in the context of the void (remaining dark)."

OK, I think I see part of the problem here. You have - understandably - the image of the Big Bang being a giant explosion in space, right? And you're thinking of an observer stood (floating?) in space, watching the explosion heading towards them, right?

Unfortunately, it's rather more complex than that. The BB created not just matter and energy, but space and (probably) time too. Thus, the whole universe was the Big Bang. The universe was not (and is not) expanding 'into' anything - it's just expanding. For the same reason, an observer cannot be 'outside the Big Bang looking in' unless they are outside the Universe.

The upshot is that our hypothetical observer, in order to see the Big Bang, must be inside the Big Bang, since there is no 'outside the Big Bang'. Even if there were, radiation (including any light) from the Big Bang cannot reach beyond the Big Bang, since it's expanding at least as fast as the speed of light. (The speed varies according to which Big Bang model you favour, as does the possible presence of other dimensions.)

I think that explains why the dark/light thing makes sense to you but not to me. Unfortunately, it does indeed mean that there cannot be a 'dark' to contrast with the 'light'.

I like the 'electrons as chaparones' metaphor, though I don't see how it matches this Biblical verse, which seems to be talking about water (I'll grant you 'fluid, gas or plasma' if you like) being divided above and below a solid partition. Are you saying that one lot forms the stars and the other the Earth? If so, are you aware you're around 10 billion years too early for the Earth (or our sun, for that matter) to form? Are you saying 'firmament' means 'photons'?

Other than that, your water/matter analogy is still explaining why the Bible doesn't match science, not showing how it does. And you still haven't explained that pesky solid fimament.

Please remember I asked you to point out those parts of the Genesis narrative that you find a surprisingly good match for modern science - not those parts that you think may once have been good science but have been distorted beyond recognition. Or do you mean that when you read about a firmament dividing the waters, you actually through "Hey, that's a clear description of the role of photons in galaxy formation!"?

Gif

Loved the "Aha!", Gif!

I understood the fact that the entire universe was expanding, and not just expanding into empty space, even as I wrote it (quick of you to pick up on that so readily!!)

Yes, that is the current understanding vis-a-vis science. But, once again, you're seeing it from a 21st century, space-time bound perspective. If I were 'God', and was granting a vision of the 'big poof', it would be from a multi-dimensional perspective, many more than the familiar 3D+time. It would be seen, for the edification of the envisioned, as an expanding 'space' (or universe) into a void of extra-dimensional qualities.

I've mentioned that a God-created universe cannot contain the god. The god must be super-existing without being bound by the 'toy' created. Omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-spatial. This is not markedly different, in effect, than my 'creating' a ceramic pot and not existing within it.

I'm gratified that the chaperone concept works for you, but it is not mine. If you ever get the chance to read "Fearful Symmetry - the search for beauty in modern physics" by Dr. A. Zee, I suggest you take it. His sequel (and this will sound familiar) was "An Old Man's Toy - Gravity at work and play in an Einstein universe". Both great reads!

Again, I do not propose that there is a one-to-one, clearly defined match between Science and Genesis, nor do I contend that there need be. I'm describing parallelism that describes concepts that can be seen as poor translations of Sciences discoveries.

If I were to 'display' the functions of modern home computers to residents of 11th century Mongolia, what would actually be written down?

They would understand little of what they saw, use their own vocabulary for taking it down, and it would have to be translated into modern English for me to understand.

What are the chances that they would describe the Windows OS, Office Suite products, and the internet in a way that was clearly and indisputably what we experience today?

You clearly expect way to much from 'the bible' to the extent that it becomes clear that it can be nit-picked to death when they don't use modern terminology and scientific terms to describe what we have only recently discovered. Isn't it 'something strange' that some parts have survived that still hold some hint that something unprecedented and misunderstood was communicated to us that tells of a similar series of events?

If I claimed to be a psychic, and told you of unusual, non-investigative events that happened during your first twenty years of life, accurately enough for you to recognize them but not entirely in order and without names and places, would you write the whole thing down as a hoax, lies, or coincidence?

What separates us is the specificity of proof that we're willing to accept, and the exactness of translation that we demand. If you cannot be versatile and open enough to accept, on principle, the poor communicative ability of ancient languages, nothing more can be said that will make a difference.

We have hit either a loop, or a dead end. I cannot constrain myself to 21st century of science, nor the biblical story. My contention remains that there are parallels enough to allow both to be true, and less disagreement (in my mind) than most would have us believe.

I don't expect that you'll ever simply accept what I say as 'truth', and I'm not even certain of that for myself. I remain astounded that the events described can be interpreted so closely to modern theory, which we both know is not entirely concluded.

There is much work yet to be done in the 'proving' of sciences theories - many of which are still in dispute among the physicists. There is little more that can be done to translate the bible; it is pretty much set. What really makes me relate the two, and I know I've already said this, is that the 'singularity' that 'banged' was either eternally stable, or produced with an instability. Either way, an external hand (power, effect, force) had to be involved in either making it suddenly unstable enough to 'bang' or putting it there to 'bang'.

I don't see, and you have not provided, any other choice.

Ah, I see that you responded to the 'Doubting Thomas' bit. I suspected that it had been missed, even without rereading all 300+ entries.

(see, I am a bit psychic!)

I didn't want or mean to inflict myself on that thread. I appreciate your acknowledgment, of course, but don't intent to get embroiled in either indefensible side of it.

The stories written are what was wrote. There is no proof or evidence other than the word of the writers when they wrote it. Unfortunately (or, fortunately), there were few scribes that concerned themselves with the subjects at the time, and fewer still whose work has survived until now.

Some will suggest Josephus, but I have to discount anything written by a former Messiah who wrote for the Romans. The winners always control the recorded history, which is why I'd tend to give more credence to the non-connected than the established governments.

As an example, I can already get a sense of how history will record the whole Iraqi thing in the short-run, and how it will have to re-examine it in the long-run. No accurate history of it will emerge for at least 15-20 years, because the governments haven't finished writing their own versions as of yet.

Hi FT,

Yes, I get the sense that this is winding down too. Shame .

I understand your point, that you think the Genesis account only seems not to match modern science because of poor translation, difficult concepts and all the other reasons you have proposed.

My point is that you started out by saying that it DOES match science, but when challenged, you gave a list of reasons why it DOES NOT match science. As I tried to point out, the trouble is that you can work backwards from almost any myth and draw parallels that are not there.

So at the end of all this, I'm still not sure what these 'remarkable parallels' are (other than light = big bang), nor am I persuaded that the ancient Hebrew cosmology reflects any half-decent understanding of the Universe.

It's been fun, though. If we're not quite finished yet, I might ask you to answer your own question, and see how a Mongol might have described a modern, working Internet terminal, as explained and demonstrated to them by a Mongol-speaking Internet geek.

As to New Testament authorship, unfortunately we know for a fact that religious literature (Christian and non-Christian) from that period is filled with fakes, forgeries and people writing under other people's names. So relying on the essential accuracy of the Gospels is never going to satisfy a historian.

Josephus is an example in point - he used the word 'Jesus', but the remainder is now known to have been added by later Christian authors. We know this for the simple reason that we have recovered a more accurate version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus#Testimonium_Flavianum

Gif

Always with the fascinating links! Thanks!

I suppose that my method (describing why things don't quite fit) is a defensive sort of move. When you're defending a theory, the presumption is that the parts that are alike are apparent and that only the parts that aren't need to be explained.

I suppose the salient points of (alleged) agreement are (not by day number):
1 Void
2 Energy
3 Coalescing matter
4 Young planet evolution into land and seas
5 Primitive life before complex life
6 Evolution of many species
7 Man is left in charge of his destiny.

The rough vocabulary problems, translation problems, and even pronunciation problems are all secondary details to me; i.e. understandable and not very important.

It would be nice if there had been something like a refutation of Newton that later proved to agree with Einstein; but the main differences between the scientists and those who prefer to believe the biblical story are, in my mind, an illusion and caused only by the lack of intent for the bible to present science. Any one who expects any usable cosmological insights to come from ancient documents is more likely to find astrology than astronomy.

The Mongol thing? Maybe it's worth a try:

I was shown an object, about the size and shape of a small flat chest, such as might be used to present a bejeweled ceremonial knife. I could not tell if it was wood or metal, or perhaps fired clay.

It opened like a chest, on hinges. Soon after touching a soft spot on the inside bottom where the knife would be, the inside of the top emitted colors and lights. It seemed to grab a part of the sky but then covered it with arcane runes. Symbols of every description appeared and disappeared, but left no trace. No ink needed to be used, nor to dry, nor to be cleaned away.

As the many square soft spots on the inside bottom of the chest were pressed, the shapes and colors changed rapidly. Words and music filled the air from an unknown, ghostly source - the words, meaningless as a babies rambling, and the music was strange and horrible.

The voices did not respond when I spoke to them, not even if I yelled; so I'm convinced that I was in contact with the world of the dead - probably foreign dead for I did not recognise the tongue they spoke.

Sometimes the top of the chest filled with tiny people and animals dressed in fantastic, stupid looking costumes, doing incomprehensible things. Other times it filled with moving figures of every sort, some of them flat and shadowless; these were impervious to any kind of harm that was done to them. Their name sounded very much like the name of the city Khartoum.

I've studied Roman numbers and math, but what this thing called numbers were very odd and very consistent in shape. There were M times M numbers on this lid at a time, but they didn't seem to relate to anything that mattered, like counts of cattle or tribute.

I was shown a slyd sho, a term for a boring and seemingly endless series of sites of mottled background and more meaningless runes. I'm told that it is easier to suffer a slyd sho if one has do-nuts. I presume that do-nuts are thrown at someone to make them hurry up. They must be hard and pointy things; and perhaps we could use some for our soldiers to throw in battle.

There was something called access, which did not actually give me access to anything; all that was there was the opened chest and its bleating sounds. Eventually the top filled with a peaceful blue and everything else stopped and disappeared. It was the best part, just gazing at the sudden stillness in the quiet night air.

It was offered to me as a gift, but I explained that I could feel the same relief by having my wives all yell stupid things at me for a couple of hours and then behead a few. It sounded like such a good idea, suddenly, that I had the traveler with the chest beheaded. Made me feel ever so much better.

Later, one of my wive's happened to make the thing begin again. She saw someone cooking hot soup, and it suddenly looked like the soup was about to come right out of the chest at her. She took her own kettle and poured it into the chest. I guess it was just hungry after all, because it's been two moons and its never made another sound.

I don't even know why I keep it around. Maybe it's just because I haven't had an apple in so very long, and the image of one on the chest reminds me of their taste.

Hi FT,

My reaction would be:

1 Void - all creation myths say this, it's pretty obvious
2 Energy
3 Coalescing matter - far from clear in Genesis; I think you're seeing something that isn't there
4 Young planet evolution into land and seas - present in most creation myths
5 Primitive life before complex life - Genesis doesn't say this - sea life is generally not 'more primitive' than land life, and you admit ordering is wrong in Genesis anyway
6 Evolution of many species - Genesis doesn't mention this at all
7 Man is left in charge of his destiny - Genesis doesn't say this

As you point out, Genesis doesn't get the ordering of any of this right. I guess that's why we differ.

Was kind of hoping your Mongol might have been a little impressed with moving pictures, music, the ability to send writing to remote places, etc.

Oops, gotta run...

Gif

No accounting for reactions, I guess; but I feel that some of yours are demonstrably biased and probably wrong.

[1 Void - all creation myths say this, it's pretty obvious]
No, it's really not that obvious to primatives who have never known nothing. And it's not all that common, as I pointed out with those examples of various religions and their beginings.
I think you protest too much where the evidence shows that most non-Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions start with much, much more than nothing.

[2 Energy]
A very, very, big thing to me, as only those very few surviving religions ever began with a form of energy created by their creator, and yet you pass over it.

[3 Coalescing matter - far from clear in Genesis; I think you're seeing something that isn't there]
I understand your resistance here, the whole 'waters' thing is getting in your way. I see the whole 'separating waters' as the only viable way that anyone could have put 'dust and gasses gravitating toward each other' in a context that could be reasonably descriptive of the process.

If you can provide another one, fitting of an ancient text, I would be most interested in reading it. I feel you're still looking for science text where there is not meant to be any; so, of course you refuse to see it.

[4 Young planet evolution into land and seas - present in most creation myths]
Again, not remotely like most all creation myths; not present in mythologies that predate the various holy texts that are based on the monotheistic God-Allah creator being. You won't find it in the Norse, African, Chinese, Gaelic, Indian (East or American), Greek, Roman, or Iberian myths.

[5 Primitive life before complex life - Genesis doesn't say this - sea life is generally not 'more primitive' than land life, and you admit ordering is wrong in Genesis anyway]
[6 Evolution of many species - Genesis doesn't mention this at all]
It's not correct, certainly; but it is in there.

I have no idea what Genesis really says. Here is one version:
"20 And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens."
21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."
23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so.
25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good."

Now, this obviously creates the sense that this is a linear order of things; most especially because of the callout of the days.
It may be different for you, but I've been a programmer and tend to see the universe as a sort of immense program.
All the physical laws are like the initial setup for the program. They set the array dimensions, which are local and which are global, and define a lot of the variables.

Then some multi-use subprograms are written that will relieve the coder from rewriting tons of code each time a 'call' is made. The Whole "Let there be ..." is just a way of saying "Call Subprogram ..." for me.

Certainly, to get the desired results, some bits must precede other bits. Yet, other sections are not so mutually dependent and can run quite well no matter when and how often they are called.

The fact that birds come in early, and the 'sea-monsters' later; the fact that no one used the word dinosaur or spoke of the platypus; all these are inconsequential to the 'users guide' that the bible is supposed to represent.

You don't need to know where every *.dll file is, or what each one does, just to get to hootoo and post. All you need is the instructions that get you to the page and give you access. Who'd even want to have your manual spell out every detail that passed through the mind of the programmer, or all the rules that were laid out for the program. Certainly our version of earlier man (say a 10 year old given access to a computer for the first time) wouldn't understand it if you spelled it out six ways from Sunday.

[7 Man is left in charge of his destiny - Genesis doesn't say this]
This version says it pretty well:
"16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" --
23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.
24 He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life."
I can't think of a more direct way of telling man he is now in charge of his own fate, and can expect to respite except that which he provides for himself.

Here's another, minor bit to consider:
"In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground-- "
Not rain, but mist. As the planet was still hot, there was initially no way for their to be rain until water first evaporated into the air (which, being extremely hot, could hold quite a bit at first). It sounds a lot like I might expect of a humid atmosphere. If Genesis said also that it was Amonium-methane, who would have understood it?

I'm still not sure whether you are acting or being straight about this, but the probability is that we seem obstinate to one another. I feel that I am open-minded about this, but you seem to have an intractable opinion that no parallelism exists where it is obvious to me that it does.

I don't know whether you feel that you need to 'prove me wrong' or expect to 'wear me down', but all I've seen is a set of barriers designed entirely for the purpose of excluding anything that might be considered a parallel event, as if they could not be there through either coincidence or some deep insight into the cosmic experienced by an ancient ancestor. Perhaps those barriers are really a simple defense mechanism of your opinion.

For my part, I've never expected (or even desired) to 'prove' that the bible was 'accurate' or to convince you to change your opinion of what is 'truth'. I've only asked that you look at an unusually bizarre story that was written long before science even knew enough to ask the right questions and notice some similarities with what we now know.

I probably expected something along the line of "well, yes; there may be some parallels there, but what of it?" Not a continuing repugnance to the historical fact that most religions have far more bizarre origin stories that come nowhere close to science, and that the Genesis account could represent a garbled translation of something very similar to the story science tells.

The admission (if you felt it was deserved) would not lessen you or your opinion that there is no connection. You could still deny, until the end of time, that one thing has nothing to do with the other. My problem is that every time I suggested you take a lead role, you chose to have me go on as if just to have more to attack, as if looking for one weakness in my stance that would cause the whole thing to crumble.

Actually, this seems to me what Dawson does quite a bit.

Any way, it has been fun. I wouldn't even mind finding another subject some time, even if resolution is equally unlikely or impossible. Let's try to make it something where we both have an opinion to express though, and not just one side nit-picking at the other's opinion so much.
******************************
RE: [Was kind of hoping your Mongol might have been a little impressed with moving pictures, music, the ability to send writing to remote places, etc.]

See! Same problem. You cannot pull yourself out of the 21st century thinking and put yourself in another time. Your mind will not allow you to disassociate from that which you know!

What good would a mongol see in moving pictures, even if he understood what a picture was? It's not as if there would be cameras transmitting from enemy camps!

The music he'd have heard would have to be stored on the 'laptop', and therefore of a kind he'd not likely appreciate. Think Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, or Marillion are likely to appeal to him?

And, exactly to whom would he send writing in remote places? This is the first and only laptop he'd ever seen, and nobody else was likely to have one to connect with!?

This is a problem I find with many who have entrenched themselves in an opinion. The mind shuts down on so many levels when the imagination is not continually allowed to breath. I'd rather imagine a hundred things that turn out to be wrong than not be able to imagine because I've already decided what's true.

This is why fundamentalism of any sort, religious or scientific, is so dangerous. This is why people fight concepts like quantum theory; not because it cannot represent truth, but because those who have totally bought into it cannot accept that it may only appear to represent truth. The doubt is important, for without doubt, science cannot progress.

Perhaps it doesn't occur to you that your position is just as entrenched as a pure creationist's. They say where the literal translation and interpretation of the bible differs from science, science must be wrong. You insist that science is right, and that Genesis must be wrong because it differs from science.

I may seem like a fence-sitter, but I see two intractable stances where the true disagreements may not even be known, much less acknowledged.

I find enough similarities and parallels to suggest the third, unpopular to both, course; that perhaps the ancient text is not understood in two ways, both in the translation and in its context.

You don't expect lower school textbooks to cover particle physics, deep-space cosmology, and the Unified Field Theory efforts; why would you expect the bible to try and cover all the physics behind the creation of a universe in a few paragraphs that act more as a preamble than a lesson? And why should the creationists stick so hard to the written word, when they were told to go and explore their planet ("go fourth and multiply and cover the earth"-type statements.)

You are as much hung up on words like "waters" and "face of God" as the creationists are on "first day" and "second day" (you seem hung up with the "x day" concept as well).

It could just be that both extremes are wrong about the other. It's not unlike Einsteinian physics. Two observers may make different observations; but using Action Principles instead of formulas, their observations can be transformed so that the truth, that they are truly observing the same phenomenon, is revealed.

Hi FT,

Hmm, I'm sorry if you've got the impression I'm being close-minded. Given the effort I have put during this whole conversation into being open-minded, I'm actually a little upset you feel that way.

In fact, it sounds as though you're rather upset too, which would be a shame, as I had been enjoying this discussion.

To me, the close-mindedness seems rather the other way round, which tends to be the way in 'stuck' discussions. It sounds like you have latched onto Genesis purely because that is the account you feel familiar with, and are refusing to acknowledge the obvious differences between it and what we would expect of even a cursory, mistranslated account of the origins of the universe. Your original case was that upon reading the Genesis 1 account, you were struck by how closely it matched modern science. When I asked you where it matched, you produced a list of explanations for why the Genesis 1 account doesn't seem to match modern science on a casual reading.

Although all those reasons are possible, you've given little reason to think that any of them is correct. I'm not putting up any mental barriers here. I've tried to show that other creation accounts can also be creatively interpreted (using the imagination you've told me I'm lacking) as being accurate if you're prepared to stretch them enough. Your reaction, if you recall, was to nit-pick holes in them in *exactly* the same way that you accuse me of nit-picking holes in your interpretation of the Bible story. If I recall, once you found a single flaw in my Norse myth, you were prepared to reject the whole thing, yet when it comes to the Bible you ask me to overlook a whole raft of errors you cannot explain - and then accuse me of being close-minded if I cannot!

Clearly, I have been unable to persuade you that the Biblical account is not particularly more accurate than any other account; likewise, you have been unable to persuade me that it is more accurate. I don't think it follows from that that I am being 'close-minded'. I actually thought I'd done a reasonably good (if slightly tongue-in-cheek) job with putting myself into the mind of a 3000 year-old tribesman. I might ask whether you have succeeded in freeing yourself from the mindset that the Genesis 1 account *must* be accurately describing creation.

Yes, you are correct that I am 'hung up' on the 'days' idea - because it's central to the Genesis 1 account. I'm also hung up on the 'firmament', the order of events and almost every other central aspect. You, by contrast, seem to be 'hung up' on your own personal interpretation of some of the minor details - and if I don't agree, then I'm being 'close-minded'. Ironically, the one point you specifically use as an example of where I am 'hung up' is one that I did actually concede several posts ago - if primitive people were describing a liquid, gas or plasma, they might well describe it as 'watery'. It simply doesn't follow from that that when primitive people say 'water' they actually mean gas or plasma - they may just mean water. I've asked you time and again what reason you have to think that the original author meant 'galactic gas clouds', and all you have replied is that it might have been the closest he could come (despite the fact that I have repeatedly pointed out that Hebrew has perfectly good words for 'vast', 'filling the whole heavens', etc.) To me, it's inconceivable that someone would try to describe galactic formation to a beginner without mentioning that galaxies are big, which means I struggle to accept your 'mistranslation / lack of vocab' ideas. Clearly you disagree, but I have no idea why since you haven't told me.

This is not me being 'close-minded', this is you not explaining yourself, or possibly me not understanding your explanation. I also haven't pursued the fact that the Bible states that the Earth is created before light, as your idea of the first verse as a 'header' is at least plausible (although I don't find it convincing myself as it's not the style of the Pentateuch). Ditto ammonia/methane being described as 'mist'. Yes, if ancient Hebrews saw ammonia/methane they may very well have called it 'mist'; that doesn't mean that when they said 'mist' they were referring to ammonia or methane. It also rains in hot places, btw. In fact, the way you have interpreted this quote seems to show that the Biblical authors didn't understand that rainclouds ARE mist, and shows a lack of understanding of the water cycle. I don't recall mentioning the 'face of God', so I don't know why you think I'm 'hung up' on it.

You've also told me I am 'unable to get my head out of the 21st century', but I would ask you whether that doesn't apply equally to you? When you read Genesis, aren't you trying to fit it to your 21st century ideas, rather than to see what the bronze-age authors actually meant when they read it? Isn't that, in fact, the whole core of your argument? I would say that I have made considerably more effort to see what the original authors of Gen 1 probably meant - you have restricted yourself to what you feel they should have meant or must have meant, with no explanation of how you come to that conclusion other than some very stretched analogies.

And now I see you've had to bring in the Genesis 2 account to bolster the Genesis 1 account. For me, this is where your case collapses. You said yourself that you didn't think of the bulk of the Bible as accurate history. You must surely be aware that the two Genesis accounts are separate and contradictory? You must surely be aware that Genesis 2 contains talking animals and multiple deities, of just the kind that you claim separate other myths as being anthropomorphic and therefore less accurate than Genesis 1? Are you claiming that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is literal or metaphorical? What in science could it be metaphorical for? If you're bringing in the rest of the Bible, would that include the Noachian Flood?

Mythologies that involve the appearance of land out of water: Egyptian (several traditions), Mayan (http://www.jaguar-sun.com/popolvuh.html - another account that compares favourably with the Bible), Hindu(http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/ariel.htm), possibly Vodun (http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/ophelia.htm). Most of these also start with a void, or with chaos. That's a few minutes on Google - I'm sure there are many more. Note that one of these is included on your list of myths that do not involve the appearance of land from water.

On a deeper level, why have you chosen the creation of land as a measure? Could it be because this is a point at which you think the Biblical account scores over others? Why not choose, say, the age of the universe? Or the concept of binary stars? Could it be because you think other accounts are more accurate here? Isn't your unconscious bias showing here?

Finally, please note you have contradicted yourself here. You are trying to interpret the same verse both to mean a literal formation of land and water, and to be a distorted description of the accretion of matter into galaxies. This is the kind of thing that makes it so difficult for me to see any reality behind Genesis 1 - even your best examples are so vague that you could interpret them in almost any way you want.

However, it does rather sound like your definition of 'close-minded' is 'not agreeing with me'. There's a difference between me being close-minded and you failing to make a case. All I've asked is that you give a reason to think your interpretation is correct.

*****

Are you seriously saying that a Mongol might not have known what, say, a picture of a tree was? Or that he wouldn't have found moving pictures impressive? He doesn't have to find it useful to be impressed by it. Nor does he have to enjoy music to be fascinated by it, or to mention it in a description.

I assure you, you do not sound like a fence-sitter. My position is not entrenched, because I can tell you exactly what evidence would be needed to change my mind. What evidence would be needed to change yours?

"why would you expect the bible to try and cover all the physics behind the creation of a universe" I wouldn't. You told me it did, and I disagreed. That's where this conversation started.

I left 'energy' blank as I was still thinking about it as I suddenly had to dash off. The Bible certainly describes some form of energy, just as it certainly describes some forms of matter. I've already pointed out I think it's the wrong type of energy, and 'energy' is so vague as to be meaningless. Nor does it come before the first mention of matter, which seemed to be the main point in your argument. As I mentioned, it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on that point. Unfortunately, when I suggested that you responded by declaring me 'close-minded'.

*****

Who's Dawson?



Gif