The Creation Account, Another Look

[101G]

Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:2 "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Let's discuss these two verses for starters. let's zero in on verse 2.

#1. Earth was a water ????????? do we really say planet? my question is, was earth a planet, as we define a planet, or not in the beginning. for the scripture stated, "WITHOUT FORM". so do we really identify earth as a planet in this beginning stage of development?

my second question, "was the sun actually shining, or was it even form yet. scripture stated, it was dark, no sunlight?. I have hear some scientist say the sun was formed but not yet shining, others, the sun formed but it was a thick cloud around the earth where no sunlight could penetrate to the surface.

for a general discussion we will start right at the beginning, with EARTH. I would like to hear the scientific side as well if any religious point of view.

thanks for your responses in advance.

[bluethread]

As I have stated before, the Genesis account has nothing to do with a scientific process. It is an explanation of what is perceived in a reflexive poetic format.

"Day 1"
Chpt. 1
1. The creator acts creating the unknowable and the knowable.
2. That which was knowable was chaotic and devoid of meaning and much was impreceptable and the essence of existance oversaw the fluidity of existance.
3. The creator said let there be enlightenment.
4. The enlightenment was called good and differentiated from that which was imperceptable.
5. The creator called the enlightenment Yom and the imperceptable Layil and the transition from perception to imperception and the transition from imperception back to perception was the first cycle of Yom.


"Day 7"
Chpt. 2
1. The unknowable and the knowable had been organized
2. On the seventh cycle, that which was knowable was sufficiently organized and infused with meaning.
3. The creator blessed the seventh cycle and set it apart for reflextion on enlightenment, the perceptable and the imperceptable, and the cycle between perception and imperception and back to perception.

So, to the question about the waters. As is the case throughout the Scriptures the waters represent, energy, motion and life. As with a cloud, it's essence is it's general appearance. If one wishes to closely examine it to define it based entirely on physical properties it disappears into vapor.

[William]

[Replying to post 1 by 101G]

earth was without form

This could be read as 'the earth had no life forms.'

[101G]

[Replying to post 11 by bluethread]

thanks for the reply. not saying that you're right or wrong, but consider this. energy is every where, in many form, but the Spirit moved over the water, yes it could be said that it was in static form, but if static then properties.

again this is where I say Volatilization occurs. and that's a scientific process. so I must disagree there only on that point.

but I do agree with your assessment of days. Light here is metaphorically speaking of "WISDOM" in the form of "KNOWLEDGE", or enlightenment. this is prove out in Proverb 8:22 ... ect, and 1 Corinthians 1:24.

I don't believe the bible is a reflexive poetic format of the Creation account. if anything, it use metaphoric language in ideas to convey scientific language unto the common person or man.

again science is saying the same thing the bible is saying in a common language.

[101G]

[Replying to post 12 by William]

true, it could, but we know from scripture that "LIFE" forms came later.

[bluethread]

I don't believe the bible is a reflexive poetic format of the Creation account. if anything, it use metaphoric language in ideas to convey scientific language unto the common person or man.

That presumes our current world view to be the true essence of things. That is rather presumptuous and myopic, IMO. I think the essence of things far surpasses scientific explanation. There are a multitude of things in the universe that can not be verified empirically, so simple science can not determine it's essence. Rational science can extrapolate principles from empirical experimentation on to the non-empirical, but in doing so it adds a degree of uncertainty and still does not provide sufficient explanation for the universe. One can them appeal to theoretical science. However, the degree of uncertainty at that level even creates heated disagreement within the scientific community as to it's value. Therefore, presuming the current world view to be proper basis for interpreting ancient literature does not seem to be a wise approach to me.

[101G]

let's examine Genesis 1:9 "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

Genesis 1:10 "And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Evaporation: Evaporation happens when a liquid substance becomes a gas. When water is heated

Volatilization, The conversion of a solid or liquid into a gas; vaporization; evaporation or sublimation

Volatilization of solids in the broad sense includes any process which results in conversion of matter from the solid state to the vapor phase. Volatilization may occur in two principal ways. Solid may be converted into vapor by (1) evaporation, in which case the gaseous molecules formed consist entirely of atoms supplied by the solid, or (2) a chemical reaction between the solid and another species to form gaseous products. In the latter case the other species may be a gas, another solid, or a liquid.
Antonyms for volatilize, Accumulate, appear, gather

APPEAR.

Genesis 1:9 "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

So through the process of Evaporation, and then Volatilization with

Deposition: Under certain circumstances, gas can transform directly into a solid. This process is called deposition. Water vapor to ice - Water vapor transforms directly into ice without becoming a liquid.

To better understand these processes one can examine many papers on these processes, this one do a good job for the average layman.
Physical Changes.
http://dl.clackamas.edu/ch104-02/physical_changes.htm


Just image all of this science is right in the Genesis account. And some of these sciences we the common man is acquainted with like “distillation�. but again the transfer of data is in the language used.

[bluethread]

I prefer to start counting a new day form morning, it is more intuitive to focus on the beginning as when we wake up, rather than think about when the current day ending when we go to bed.

That might be more intuative to the person who has experienced a cycle of consciouness and unconsciousness repeatedly. However, one who experiences such things for the first time would have no such frame of reference. That one would first experience consiousness and then the first transition that one would experience was that from consiousness to unconsiousnes followed by the transition from unconsiousness to consiousness. This bias toward cnsiousness being the first state is implicit in the fact that the most common phrasology is consciouness and unconsciousness and not the other way around.

[Neatras]

I'll wait for when the discussion starts talking about the sun being formed on Day 4, or flying animals being created prior to land animals, despite all physical evidence being to the contrary.

101G, your book is scientifically deaf, not to disparage its writers. The book's creation myth is indistinguishable from other creation myths, which were a dime a dozen in those days. The scientific language you believe you can pull meaning out of the book is due to what's known as the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. Ad hoc justification for wild claims that very slightly lined up with what you want the text to mean, while ignoring all other aspects of the text, the context, and the historical interpretation that work against the narrative you are presenting to us today.

You've tried very, very hard to convey to everyone that we should all consider everyone else's viewpoint, but I get the feeling that this is not practiced by yourself to the extent that you would expect from others. I won't inject any kind of malice or deception into your words, but I've noticed in recency that a trend among theists is to call atheists close-minded for not believing Christianity's claims. Full stop, they simply believe that by not being Christian, it is a consequence of close-mindedness that theists somehow don't present.

We've provided to you many, many data points of all known physical evidence that clearly shows that the Genesis account is incapable of accurately representing the Earth's history, but you cover up your dismissal with "Well have you considered this?" Followed by a wall of nothing but Bible verses.

That does not constitute a sound argument, and does not have any staying power when you are in a discussion with non-theists, people who do not accept bible verses as sufficient argumentation, not out of close-mindedness, but out of an awareness that any sufficiently scientific argument must contain multiple lines of confirming evidence.

101G, let's not examine Genesis 1:9, which talks on about water gathered. And by not talking about it, we instead discuss planetary accretion, stellar fusion, and actual physical phenomena we can measure and predict. Your holy book is extraneous and wrong in enough places that it can be discarded as a model for the Earth's formative history, so to start, you should be making a case for why we should examine the text in the first place, not merely insist that it is a topic of interest when 90% of the people you are discussing with have much more informative and scientifically rigorous things to talk about.

[101G]

[Replying to post 18 by Neatras]

thanks for the reply. but I must differ on your assessment of the context of my posts. I do not post only scripture, but science documentation with scripture. re-read my posts.

is this a failing on my part? or yours in a lack of understanding both scriptures and scientific documentation? never mind, but it seem like science is confirming what God said from the beginning.

I believe science should be shouting for joy for that much of the creation account is confirm by scripture.

[DeMotts]

[Replying to post 19 by 101G]

101G I appreciate (and I'm sure others do) that you are trying to reconcile the creation account in Genesis with modern science but I think what Neatras is saying is correct, and it's disingenuous to accuse him of a lack of understanding of the scriptures.

It seems like you are picking individual verses of the account and trying to puzzle them together, saying "oh this could mean this, and science explains that". Science is not confirming what the author of Genesis is saying. You need to look at the complete context, and the order of the operation.

Genesis literally describes a planet formed with day and night cycles before the very star it orbits is created. It describes the moon as a "light" in the same style as the sun (it's not). It says that seed and fruit bearing trees existed before the sun they would require to produce seeds and fruits. It says that fully formed animals were deposited on earth in the order of fish, birds, then a break for a new day, then livestock, crawling things, and "wild animals". It doesn't make any coherent sense at all.

Science doesn't agree with ANY of this. I can't believe I'm advocating it, but if you're going to believe in Genesis you'll have to take some sort of metaphorical or poetic approach like bluethread (which I also think is untrue but I can't argue from a scientific standpoint).

Genesis is not scientific. It is exactly what you would expect a bronze age culture to produce when they sat around a fire and tried to come up with a story of how things got to where they were at the moment. They didn't know what a star was, they didn't know what evolution was, they saw the animals and the landscape around them and did their best.