AC & Delta, you have me at a disadvantage, I have no faith in God or the Bible. We stand on different planes.
"-If we then have to render an account for our lives to God, as the Bible tells us we will, there is nothing we will then be able to quote from a science book that will convince God that we deserve to be given eternal life."
There is no God and when I die it will be all over. I have experienced nothing in my 40 years on this planet that would even hint otherwise. No faith.
"-In my opinion DNA doesnt destroy my believe, on the contrary, it encourages it!"
What did I say about shoehorning modern wisdom to fit beliefs? ;-)
"-Wallflower, I think you believe in this science. And what you are saying about faith, which can make you believe in anything, also stands for faith in science."
Good point, but science is not a religion. We do not pray and trust in Jehovah to get a laboratory experiment to work. Results do not differ because of faith, or lack of it, in a experiment. Whereas the Bible is open to any interpretation you put on it. You can find a scripture to fit anything and vice versa. In 20 years time, when other great leaps in scientific advancement have occured and our knowledge has grown, there will be apologists who will still find a scripture to prove the Bible hinted at it first.
Donkey - Great thread - did not mean to hijack it.
DNA - belief destuction
by donkey 85 Replies latest jw friends
-
Wallflower
-
a Christian
Leolaia,
I have read a few different responses to your question.
1. Genesis 3:20 tells us "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all living." However, a careful reading of Genesis 3's context shows us that Adam did so only after God prophesied that He would raise up a Savior and that He would count that Savior as Eve's descendent.(Genesis 3:15) Since everyone given eternal life by God will call that Savior their "Eternal Father" ( Isaiah 9:6 ), Adam could truly say that Eve "would become the mother of all living." For she was the one God said would be counted as the original human ancestor of that promised Savior and "Eternal Father."
2. Since "all living" obviously did not literally mean "all" living things (including the likes of plants and animals), some understand this as a reference to the fact that Eve would become the mother of all of her race.
3. The fact of the matter is that the Hebrew word for all is often used in a less than all inclusive way, in many instances it simply means "many." If you need examples from the OT of this fact just let me know.
-
donkey
God made Adam on the 6th day, but it says nowhere in the bible how long such a day might have been. For all whe know a biblical "day" comprised of thousands, maybe millions of years. In that context (which is the right one imo) it is very likely that Adam and Eve existed longer then 6k years.
So you disagree then with the bible which states that Adam lived for 930 years? It is the ages, deaths and births of the bible that allow believers to establish their timeline of circa 4000 BC as the time when adam and Eve were created. Do you agree with the Bible or don't you?
I am always amused at how believers when cornered have to suddenly dig in and refer to the "original Greek" or "original Aramaic" or "original Hebrew" words. If the English bible is unreliable then unless you understand Greek/Hebrew/whatever fluently you are clutching at straws. Further you require even larger amounts of faith to believe the stuff you do because then it becomes full of contradictions due to translation. If you have to refer to some other language to explain stuff, then I ask you please to ignore the man behind the curtain since you have no solid basis for the beliefs. How can you prove that your understanding of Ancient Hebrew is correct? If you cannot then the approach is flawed and you are left with the English translation. Whatever it is it seems as if God has done everything to make it difficult for the common man to believe in him and what he supposedly said through the Bible.
Regarding the tower of Babel, do we have a clearer date as to when this occurred? According to bible chronology the flood occured circa 2,200 BC. This means people had to disperse from the tower of Babel to remote regions, learn to write their different langueages using different character sets and record information AFTER the tower of Babel. How long after the flood did the tower of Babel happen? This further shortens the time since there were many people affected by the Tower of Babel (not just a remote family)? Please look at ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Bushman and Chinese writing and ask yourself how these written words could have preceded the Tower of Babel.....there is evidence to support them being between 5,000 - 10,000 years old. This creates another dilemna for believers.
By the way, at the time of the global flood in the Bible we have Noah's 3 sons. Asking the next question we can look at the Y-chromosome. Only males have Y-chromosomes and we must therefore have inherited them from Noah according to the Bible. If we look at a cross section of males across regional/racial groups we not diversity among their y-chromosomes due to mutation of the chromosomes. This mutation (genetic drift) can be studied using a fairly well established rate of change and we find Chromosonal Adam to have lived over 60,000 years ago. That is a factor of 15 or more greater than what believers claim.
-
seeitallclearlynow
If the English bible is unreliable then unless you understand Greek/Hebrew/whatever fluently you are clutching at straws....If you have to refer to some other language to explain stuff, then...how can you prove that your understanding of Ancient Hebrew is correct? If you cannot then the approach is flawed and you are left with the English translation. Whatever it is it seems as if God has done everything to make it difficult for the common man to believe in him and what he supposedly said through the Bible.
That's how I see it too. And as far as the idea that according to the Bible, there will be a future accounting, and a possible reward, then what some seem to be doing, in effect, is buying a sort of life insurance policy, but they are the only beneficiary; and the purchase is made under threat of death if it's not bought (into).
-
-
stillajwexelder
and language itself eveolves of course - so eve n if we have the bible how do we know what was being said is what we understand today?
-
a Christian
Donkey, You asked: Regarding the tower of Babel, do we have a clearer date as to when this occurred? According to bible chronology the flood occurred circa 2,200 BC. Actually, Bible chronology dates the flood to about 2350 BC. ( JW Bible chronology, flawed by their incorrect 607 BC date for Jerusalem's destruction by Babylon, dates the flood to about 2370 BC. ) The Bible does not say exactly how long after the flood the tower of Babel was built. However, the events at Babel are believed to have taken place at the time of Peleg's birth, which is dated by Bible chronology. For the Bible tells us that Peleg was given his name because, "In his day the land was divided," which is generally understood as a reference to the events at Babel. (Gen. 10:25; 1 Ch.1:19) Bible chronology dates Peleg's birth to 2247 BC. However, the ancient Egyptian historian Manetho says Babel happened five years after the birth of Peleg. If he was correct, the events at Babel took place in about 2242 BC. However, none of this makes any difference to your DNA/Y-chromosome thesis. For the Bible teaches neither a global flood nor the creation of all the language groups and races of mankind at Babel. First let's tackle the Flood. That our earth has never been completely covered with water since land masses first arose from its primordial global sea has been firmly established by modern science in more ways than I can possibly here begin to mention. For a discussion of this subject matter see Problems with a Global Flood at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html .
A conservative Christian's typical response to such information is to say that they choose to believe the Word of God over the findings of scientists. This certainly sounds quite noble. And I suppose I would commend them for their stance if such a stance was called for by the Bible itself. But it is not. For a careful study of the flood account in Genesis reveals that the Bible does not tell us that the flood of Noah's day was global. And an examination of the scientific "evidence" presented by Christian fundamentalists in support of a global flood, sea shells on mountain tops and the like, quickly reveals that the presenters of this so-called evidence have a very poor understanding of science. ( By the way, sea shells on mountain tops are the result of earth's plate tectonics causing land masses to slowly rise from the sea over many millions of years. This process is an ongoing occurrence and can be proven by comparing the measured heights of various mountain peaks today to their measured heights just a few years ago.)
That the Bible itself does not tell us that a global flood occurred in Noah's day can be seen from a careful examination of the text. To begin with we do well to keep in mind that the word widely translated as "earth" in the flood narrative, giving the impression that our entire planet was flooded, is often translated elsewhere in the Old Testament as "land." ( In acknowledging this fact, the translators of The New American Standard Bible chose to translate the same Hebrew word as both "land" and "earth" throughout the flood narrative.) We can certainly understand that without our modern means of global communication and global travel ancient peoples must have had a much more limited view of their world than we do today. That being the case, it seems more likely that the flood account in Genesis recounted the story of the whole "land" of Noah being flooded than the whole "earth" being flooded.
But doesn't the Bible's story of the flood say that all the high "mountains" were covered with water? And if that was true, since water seeks its own level, wouldn't that mean the whole earth had to have been flooded? For an answer to such questions we again have to look at the ancient Hebrew language. The ancient Hebrew word which has been widely translated as "mountains" in the flood narrative is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament simply as "hills." You see, the ancient Hebrews had only one word to describe what may have been either a small mound of earth or a Himalayan peak. That being the case, the flood narrative can certainly be understood as telling us that "all the high hills in the land of Noah were covered with water to a depth of about twenty feet." (see Gen. 7:20, 21)
But what about the unmistakably "universal" language used in the account? Doesn't the Bible tell us that God destroyed "all life under the heavens" (Gen. 6:17) during the flood? Yes, it does. But it also tells us that "all nations under heaven" lived in fear because of Joshua's conquest of Canaan. (Deut. 2:25) We are also told that during a famine that occurred at the time of Joseph, "The people of all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph." (Gen. 41:57) And it tells us that at the time of Paul the good news of Jesus Christ had been "proclaimed to every creature under heaven." (Col. 1:23) Are we to believe such statements included the nations of people which then lived in North America, South America, China and Australia?
We must remember that the world of the Bible writers was a much smaller world than our world today. Their part of the earth was then for them "the whole world." We should also accept the possibility that Bible writers may, at times, have used larger than life expressions, just as we often do today. We often use figures of speech such as, "This book weighs a ton," or "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." This common form of speech is called hyperbole. It is certainly possible that it may, at times, also have been used by Bible writers. When we use such exaggerated figures of speech for dramatic impact we are being neither inaccurate nor dishonest. The same can be said for the writers of Scripture.
But why would God have had Noah construct such a large ark if it was intended to carry only Noah, his family, and a collection of animals from his own land? Could it be that Noah was instructed to build an ark big enough to hold every person in the land that was about to be flooded! An ark with room enough for all those who might repent but didn't? We know that "God does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance." How could Noah be telling a land full of people to repent and get on the ark if that ark had no room for them? God's plan of salvation today has room for everyone on earth, does it not? Should we believe that God's plan of salvation in Noah's day did not?
Another question that is sometimes asked is, "If the flood was confined to the land of Noah, why would God not have simply told Noah to take his family and pairs of animals and flee to higher ground?" Many who believe that the flood of Noah's day, as described in Genesis, was confined to the land of Noah say that the answer to this question can be found in 1 Peter 3:20,21. There we are told that Noah and his family, "were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism." So, they say that by choosing to save the lives of Noah and his family as they passed through the waters of the flood, God was symbolically pointing to a time when his people (Christians) would find salvation as they passed through the waters of baptism. Besides, if Noah and his family had simply fled their land they might not have been able to offer their neighbors the opportunity to escape the destruction which was soon to come upon them all nearly as long as they did.
Now, what about Babel? What are we to make of the Bible's story of the tower of Babel and the confusion of languages which there took place shortly after the flood? I believe that in order to correctly answer this question we must first deal with another confusion of tongues, the translation of ancient Hebrew into modern English.
Genesis 11:1 tells us that when the Tower of Babel was being built, "The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech."
As I just pointed out in my comments on Noah's flood, the Hebrew word that is often translated in Genesis as "earth," giving readers the idea that its writer was referring to our entire planet, is much more often translated in the Old Testament as "land." In fact, we find this to be the case in the very next verse (Gen. 11:2) which refers to the "land" of Shinar. I believe that Bible translators who chose to translate the Hebrew word "erets" as "earth" rather than as "land" in the Bible's historical accounts of Noah's flood and the tower of Babel are mainly to blame for many people's misunderstandings of both the Bible and the history of mankind.
The traditional interpretation of the flood and the dispersion at Babel has been that the total population of the entire world was confined to the land of Shinar in the post-flood era. It is said that these people, who supposedly amounted to all people living on earth, all spoke the same language and were all involved in building a tower. Then it is said that God confounded them, and off they went in all directions muttering Aztec, Mandarin, Swahili, and the like. They crossed oceans and reached far distant continents and changed their skin colors along the way.
This interpretation of Genesis has continued in spite of much extra-biblical evidence that has long been available which proves that it cannot be correct. To see that the JW and Christian "fundamentalist" interpretations of the events which transpired at the Tower of Babel must be incorrect, all their advocates have to do is count the mud brick ziggurats in Mesopotamia. Any number that exceeds one kills their interpretation. And the remains of over thirty such "towers" have been found all over the region, in twenty-seven different cities, hundreds of miles apart. Had the entire earth been devoid of humanity except for Noah's descendants who all lived in the land of Shinar where the tower of Babel was built, what would explain all the additional towers?
All those other ziggurats at all those other widely scattered sites could not have all been built at the exact same time as the tower of Babel. Thus they had to have been constructed either before or after the tower of Babel. If they were constructed before Babel, it would mean that Noah's descendants (if everyone then alive were Noah's descendants) had already begun to spread out and settle in widely separated communities, precluding them from all being at one place, which was the case according to Genesis 11:1,2. On the other hand, if the many other ziggurats were constructed after Babel, it would mean that after the Lord made clear to Noah's descendents that He didn't like them building such towers and after He prevented them from completing such a building project, they soon banded together again for the same purpose and successfully completed the building of many other such towers with no opposition from God. This makes no sense.
What does make sense is to understand that building ziggurats was very much the thing to do in those days. The tower of Babel was simply one of many Mesopotamian worship centers. Clearly, the building of the tower of Babel and the confusion of the participants' languages which then occurred seemed like a gigantic event to those who were there and passed the story down to their descendants. But the fact of the matter is that the tower of Babel was only one such tower among many which then existed. It was probably not even the biggest. And it was almost certainly neither the first nor the last.
So then, what did happen at Babel? Apparently some of Noah's descendants saw some of the fantastic places of worship built by their Sumerian neighbors, which were devoted to pagan gods. They then decided to follow suit and build just such a tower in an effort to reach their God. Due to their ignorance, the God of Noah's descendants tolerated the actions of the worshippers of false gods when they erected such structures in their foolish efforts to reach nonexistent pagan deities. However, God expected His chosen people to exercise better judgment. He was not pleased with their pagan copycat building project. So He put an end to it by confusing their speech. This action on God's part successfully brought an end to the spiritually misguided building project which Noah's descendants had begun and His doing so resulted in their being dispersed throughout their land.
As a final note, judging from the writings of Noah's descendants, some of which predate the time of Babel, the confusion of speech which took place at Babel does not appear to have been a permanent one.
Some may wonder why God said, concerning those who were building the tower of Babel, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." (Gen. 11:6)
Obviously no one can say for sure exactly what God meant. But I'll take a guess.
I suspect that God thought that, if He allowed His people to copy the religious building practices of their pagan neighbors, they might then begin copying other religious practices of those same pagan neighbors. Such as burning their children in sacrifice to Him. Or forcing their young men and women to work as temple prostitutes to raise money for Him. Or who knows what else? If God's people wanted to be like their pagan neighbors so badly, that they were willing to go to all the trouble of building a copy of one of their giant ziggurat temple towers, who knows what things they might have collectively done in an effort to be like their pagan neighbors? For them, as God watched them building that tower, anything seemed possible. -
a Christian
Seeitallclearlynow, You wrote: And as far as the idea that according to the Bible, there will be a future accounting, and a possible reward, then what some seem to be doing, in effect, is buying a sort of life insurance policy, but they are the only beneficiary; and the purchase is made under threat of death if it's not bought (into). God does not threaten to kill you unless you do things His way. God treats every one of us equally well, allowing His rain and sunshine to fall upon all of us, both those who choose to serve him and those who don't, allowing both good things and bad things to happen to all of us equally, both those who choose to serve him and those who don't, all of our natural lives. All of us, believers and unbelievers, will one day die. However, the Bible does say that after our deaths God intends to do what we all do, give extra special gifts to those He loves who also love Him. The Bible tells us that those good gifts will include eternal life in paradise. Do you really think that God should then give eternal life to everyone, including those who do not love Him or love what is right? Do you really want men like Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson messing up your eternity? I don't. I also have faith in God that He will judge all of us fairly, wisely and mercifully. To me that means that those who have not had an opportunity to come to know God will be judged by God with that in mind. To me that also means that those who have rejected the God of the Bible because of being stumbled by someone or something will also be judged by God with that in mind. Jesus said that even the people of Sodom and Gomorrah will be judged with mercy because they did not have as good an opportunity to come to know God as others have had. (Matt.10:15; 11:23,24)
-
-
a Christian
Frainklie,
Seems to be a page full of dictionary definitions. Which do you think I need to understand?