Yes, Sab, try again, because you haven't gotten it right in the ONE attempt you made... What is the REAL form that the earth took in its actual 'beginning', and what are the errors that the bible writers make, in Genesis 1: 1-5...
In our past dicussions about this I have tried to make it clear that I do not disagree with you that they are indeed errors. My argument is that upon discovering the Bible has a margin for error that simply discarding it as a word of God is without warrant. Instead we are simply required to go back to the begininng of the Bible and reinterpret. That's the beauty of Genesis 1:1 it simply asserts the notion that God exists, was there in the beginning and is the creator of the heavens and the earth. Which typically is what both atheists and modern theists, like myself, do. The atheists conclude Genesis 1:1 to be a farse and theists conclude it to be a universal truth. This creates opposing forces.
Animal planet has some awesome film photography of a volcano errupting at the bottom of the sea. The process is explosive and sometimes ends with the creation of a land mass suspended in an endless sea. This is a perfect example of the law of opposites and the creative process that is a byproduct of opposing forcing meeting for extended periods of time. The 38th Hexagram in the Book of Changes articulates this process well:
In general, opposition appears as an obstruction, but when it represents polarity within a comprehensive whole, it has also its useful and important functions. The oppositions of heaven and earth, spirit and nature, man and woman, when reconciled, bring about the creation and reproduction of life. In the world of visible things, the principle of opposites makes possible the differentiation by categories through which order is brought into the world. I CHING 38
Genesis 1:1 says "God created the heavens and the earth" for a very specific reason. A reason I suspect has evaded most of the atheist community especially the ones with the world take over agendas (it's ok, it's through reason *Dr Evil side-mouth-pinky*). In a very old religion in China called Confucianism they tell a tale of a Dragon-Horse emerging from a Yellow River with strange symbols painted on it's armor that are now called the 8 Trigrams in Eastern religions. They are called Trigrams because they were simlply a tri-grouping arrangement of two symbols: a solid line and a broken line. Three solid lines in a row is grouped and called the Heaven Trigram and three broken lines in a row is called the Earth Trigram.
So, what is being described in Genesis 1:1? I do not believe it's speaking about a literal heavens (like what we see with telescopes) or even a literal earth. I think it was speaking about the stages of their Trigram counterparts: Creative and Receptive. If you swapped these stage words temporarily with the words used in Genesis 1:1 you get "In the beginning God created the creative and the receptive." This is a rough linguistic way to explain what the "beginning" even means. It means the beginning of creation, not just the beginning of the universe. For atheists when they see the word "beginning" their minds automatically jumps to the big bang for reasons of an empirical nature. This is because they have already chose to reject Genesis 1:1 as legitimate for reasons that were likely already considered by the writers of Genesis 1:1. This is their right, but to assume that the writers of the Torah, a book of law, that Zid so eloquently points out caused the death of so many, did not give consideration to atheism before writing Genesis 1:1 is simply wrong and absurd. They did consider it and they chose the same path that I choose. We chose to believe in God as the creator of the creative process. When the Torah explains God as "I AM" it means something entirely different to you than it does to me. When the Moses character tries to trap the Creator himself into giving a name he give a cryptic response. Why? It's because it's not as cut and dry as that and neither is Genesis 1:1.
So, when you continue reading through Genesis once you have legitimately gotten past Genesis 1:1 (without rejection), which I contend you actually have not gotten past it yet because of preconcieved notions, you will see it's talking about the creative process rather than the events that followed the big bang, which is the beginning of our known universe.
I wrote this three months ago so I wouldn't have to again:
Genesis 1
The Beginning
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.[1] 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said[2], “Let there be light[3],” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.[4]
6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.[5]
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.[6]
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.[7]
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.[8]
20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. [9]
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.[10]
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” [11]
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.[12]
1. The first verse of the Bible actually is just a paraphrase of the entire document of chapter 1. The rest is a human attempt at elaboration.
2. It's assumed that God is not actually using spoken language here because there is nothing to speak to. Therefore the concept of "speach" is actually just a literary device for describing the creative process of God. The writer would have no way of conceptualizing the means of which God created our existence therefore has to crudely depict the process through the spoken language of his time.
3. At this point we are forced to put our scientific instruments down and put our philosopher caps on. This is written by a human after all before the creation of the scientific method. It's important to put one's self within the writer's shoes so-to-speak to get the sense of what's being written. Once the original purpose is discerned then the instruments can be pulled back out. "Let there be light." What was the writers idea of light? It would likely not go beyond the sun, the moon, the stars, fire and lightening. So the writer could be trying to depict the creation of the process that generates light or electromagnetic radiation. "Let there be electromagnetic radiation" might be able to be switched in, imo.
4. The ancient context makes the days and seasons much more pivotal in the writers life and subsequent tone. I would guess that days and nights held deeper meaning to the people of the writers time. A "first day" and a "first night" are really just literary philosophical devices. For simplication they can be said to represent the inherent separation between the world of light and the world of darkness.
5. The sky, as science tells, it now is much different than what the writer knew it to be. The sky was much more mystical to them than it is to us. They knew it had a deep purpose within the cycle of life, but the details seemed to forever evade them. The story is attempting to describe the atmosphere which includes the water cycle, the ozone etc. At the end of verse six there is mention of time passing in a measurable way. This is a theme throughout the piece and seems to hold a special importance.
6. The earth started out as molten land and then was given water by an asteroid. The writer seems to have it backwards. Yet the message remains the same in both versions and that's that there is a separation between land and water that took place in the beginning. The earth didn't start out with inhabitable continents separated by seas. There was a process to that. The mistake of the writer is along the same lines of thinking the earth was the center of the universe or that it was flat. All justifyable mistakes because of lacking knowledge.
7. I believe the story has the floura forming on the earth very similar to the way scientists have found it to be so. Before there was complex life there were less complex life. Small fauna and all types of flora came before anything really large and complex.
8. As we read in many ancient writings they has always been a very wrong view of how the sun and the stars actually work. I think this is par for the course. Although there is wordage in the story's explanation of the sun and moon worth giving a second or third look.
9. The writer now describes more complex life in all the life habitats: land, sea and air. So far Genesis 1, in my opinion, follows the evolutionary story incredibly well for being writting many thousands of years ago.
10. Remember who's point of view the story is being presented by: YHWH the creator of the universe and his celestial creations. This story is an ancient human trying to describe the actions of the creators of the universe. So when we get to the evolution of man we are described the god's making us in "their image" so that they can rule over the animals like they rule over the universe. This is because the writer and his culture see a big difference between themselves and the animals. They also knew that they could survive off of the meat of the animals. They probably had debates about admitting their own behaviour in relation to their animal neighbors. Some were probably of herbivore decent and others carnivore decent. We still have this debate today with hunters and vegans.
11. The humans had had much time to test their hypothesis that the world was in subjection to them. It would not be illogical to assume this as generations pass by while you subdue your environment. Therefore when the writer describes the purpose of mankind it involves further subduing the planet which requires procreation. It's a rather eloquently simply answer to the meaning to life, imo.
12. The story concludes with imagry of humans frollocking about and subduing the earth and YHWH ever so pleased with the work. In essence that's exactly what still happening today. There is no reason to believe that YHWH hasn't been pleased with what has transpired. Maybe not in whole, but there has been a lot of frollocking, but a lot of ignorance and sorrow too. The NIV dubs this block "The Beginning" of which I disagree with. I would call it the Bible's version of the "The Ascent of Man." That said the next few chapters in genesis could be decribed as the "Descent of Man" which I believe is still going on today.
God is the creative and the known universe (including humans) is the receptive. Some creations have less free will than others based upon their stage in evolution, but only the humans are made in the image of God and therefore are his children of creation. It's not a coincidence that what we do best as humans on this planet is create. What makes us the top of the known food chain? Our creative process. The reasoning for Isaac creating a cloak for his prized son Joseph has special significance in what the Torah is trying to tell us. That we are creators just like God is. We still recieve connection with the one source of creation, but as children of God we are supposed to create our way into uptopia. Which is why things like the scientific method came to be. TO AID IN OUR SUFFERING. God wanted the scientific method to come to be. It's a fruit on God's tree and a wonderful fruit it is. It has given all kinds of things to mankind.
The fact that we are creators means we have to deal with the heavy ethics of risk vs reward. It comes with the creative process which is a gift not a curse. When I was going through the medical community they had me take several drugs that had small chances of lethal side effects. When a pharmaceuticals company makes a drug they often know that there is going to be a small amount of death as a result of their product. They can't typically predict how this death is going to come to be until after they try their creations on a willing recipient. It comes with the territory of the creative process. So, right there you have godly decisions being made by "mere" humans. And why are they even administering these drugs? They are trying to increase the quality of life by making calcluated risks and rewards. This is a luxury that the scientific method had allotted us. It was not available to the people who wrote the Bible down. Life to them was much more survival of the fittest and God worked with that stage of humanity as well. We could all do well to read what we wrote down about those human's connection with God because it will help us learn more about the God that exists today that still has a role in the creative process. However, as God's children we are creators and part of our purpose is to create things that solve our problems.
So, if you hear about the murder of kids or the rape of women, you have a responsibility to do something about it, because you have a creative brain. Spiderman's uncle is right in that with great power comes great responsibility.
-Sab
