What can we gather from Genesis?

[marco]

Can we extract anything good from the Genesis account of creation? God apparently told Adam, the first human: "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." He didn't say why he had planted poisonous berries in a perfect orchard. Adam seems to have lived on, having escaped the dangerous garden.


We can extract beautiful meanings from the tales of Hans Andersen, such as the Little Mermaid who learns that pleasure comes at a great price. From the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in Greek mythology we can understand that a man can enter his dark psyche to find something precious, only to have it snatched away.


Can we learn anything useful from the Genesis creation story?

If we accept the existence of Neanderthal man do we simply throw Genesis in the bucket?

[bluegreenearth]

Answer
Genesis declares itself to be about the start of time. It starts with...in the beginning...
The characters are Adam and Eve. We watch these characters move from their inception through the various stages of evolvement to being stand alone humans as we would regard same,today. If scientific evolutionary discovery had produced another formula for human life I would discard Genesis as being beautifully foolish. The long list of compilers of this narrative, back through oral tradition, found the same answer given to us with Darwin.If it was otherwise, I would consider soliloquies instead.

Ah... I think I understand now. Are you claiming the Theory of Evolution is compatible with the claims in the book of Genesis?

[Thomas123]

Yes, and thank you for your patience here!

[bluegreenearth]

Yes, and thank you for your patience here!

So, because you believe the Theory of Evolution is consistent with some of the claims in Genesis, are you concluding that the rest of the claims in the story are true?

[Athetotheist]

Genesis declares itself to be about the start of time. It starts with...in the beginning...
The characters are Adam and Eve. We watch these characters move from their inception through the various stages of evolvement to being stand alone humans as we would regard same,today. If scientific evolutionary discovery had produced another formula for human life I would discard Genesis as being beautifully foolish. The long list of compilers of this narrative, back through oral tradition, found the same answer given to us with Darwin.If it was otherwise, I would consider soliloquies instead.

Norse myth tells of the gods carving the first humans from pieces of driftwood. A Chinese goddess made the first humans out of clay. Darwinian evolution can be read into those accounts at least as easily as it can into that of a man formed from dust and a woman from one of his ribs, and arguably more easily.

[Zzyzx]

.

Genesis declares itself to be about the start of time. It starts with...in the beginning...

If an ancient book declares itself to be about the start of time do we just believe it without going to the trouble of checking its truth and accuracy?

If a different book makes a similar claim, which one do we accept -- the first one that came to our attention? Do we just defend the version that is popular in our culture and/or the one favored by our parents and preachers?

[Thomas123]

The Bible is up for scrutiny and its robustness of revelation ,withstands that scrutiny. We are still chipping away at it now. I want to deal with one question in particular on this thread that appears to recur, ie the inception of Adam and Eve, and the two conflicting accounts of same.
Question Athetotheist Post 84
'Darwinian evolution can be read into those accounts at least as easily as it can into that of a man formed from dust and a woman from one of his ribs, and arguably more easily.'

The compilers of Genesis, in their time are dealing with the old ' which came first' conundrum, without the support of modern scientific hypotheses regarding this subject. They had seen and experienced, births and copulation in their herds and in their relationships and they probably grasped rudimentary genetic transfer concepts from observing their crops etc.
Adam from dust, isn't that the truth. That is the way we are all heading. Adam filled with the breath of the creator God, Yahweh, and as such similar in being to the rest of the creatures.
Too much has been written into the intent of the script regarding, Adam being specifically made in God's likeness, in my opinion. If we conclude from this that Adam is reflective of creation which in turn displays Yahweh, then we are ok. If we use humanities features and paste them onto an omnipotent entity, then we go too far, even for metaphorical analogy. This wording opened the gate for the Christian actual Son of God.

Look at things like this. It is 2020 and many of us have had the opportunity to study our existences at length. Which was first, the man or the woman? When did we develop sex? How did it come about? How was the first baby born? Now do that without google and convince those who want a working answer with the plausibility of your findings. A little bit of credit should be given to the creators of this amazing placement of the first humans within the canopy of the Creator God, Yahweh.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to post 86 by Thomas Mc Donald]

Is it your understanding of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection that there was only a single pair of human beings alive on Earth at some point in our ancient history?

[Athetotheist]

The Bible is up for scrutiny and its robustness of revelation ,withstands that scrutiny. We are still chipping away at it now. I want to deal with one question in particular on this thread that appears to recur, ie the inception of Adam and Eve, and the two conflicting accounts of same.
Question Athetotheist Post 84
'Darwinian evolution can be read into those accounts at least as easily as it can into that of a man formed from dust and a woman from one of his ribs, and arguably more easily.'

The compilers of Genesis, in their time are dealing with the old ' which came first' conundrum, without the support of modern scientific hypotheses regarding this subject. They had seen and experienced, births and copulation in their herds and in their relationships and they probably grasped rudimentary genetic transfer concepts from observing their crops etc.
Adam from dust, isn't that the truth. That is the way we are all heading. Adam filled with the breath of the creator God, Yahweh, and as such similar in being to the rest of the creatures.
Too much has been written into the intent of the script regarding, Adam being specifically made in God's likeness, in my opinion. If we conclude from this that Adam is reflective of creation which in turn displays Yahweh, then we are ok. If we use humanities features and paste them onto an omnipotent entity, then we go too far, even for metaphorical analogy. This wording opened the gate for the Christian actual Son of God.

Look at things like this. It is 2020 and many of us have had the opportunity to study our existences at length. Which was first, the man or the woman? When did we develop sex? How did it come about? How was the first baby born? Now do that without google and convince those who want a working answer with the plausibility of your findings. A little bit of credit should be given to the creators of this amazing placement of the first humans within the canopy of the Creator God, Yahweh.

Human features aren't pasted onto the Tao.

And peoples all over the ancient world could make the same observations of their herds and crops; there's nothing special there. You seem to be picking your favorite ancient metaphor and reading into it what you want to find there.

[Thomas123]

Reply to post 87 bluegreenearth
Your guess is as good as mine if not better? The absolute answer to your question is to decide an agreed exact criteria for what qualifies as a human.I believe in the equality of life forms on earth and as such Adam the primate of early Eden is as much a human as is the Adam exiting the oblivion of his primorial past. Therefore there is no point of first,going forward or back. Nothing within the Yahweh creation is more or less.

What we see in the Genesis narrative, is an early human type stumbling on awareness that they were previously unaware of. I have spoken about my ideas in this regard on the Philosophy forum on a thread regarding the inception of the faculty of critical thinking into the human. I believe that the Adam Eureka event may well have been very localised and troop led if not in fact a single individual encounter, like the spontaneous apple incident depicted in Genesis. A simple case of someone going first! A bit like that old man in Wuhan,

[bluegreenearth]

Reply to post 87 bluegreenearth
Your guess is as good as mine if not better? The absolute answer to your question is to decide an agreed exact criteria for what qualifies as a human.I believe in the equality of life forms on earth and as such Adam the primate of early Eden is as much a human as is the Adam exiting the oblivion of his primorial past. Therefore there is no point of first,going forward or back. Nothing within the Yahweh creation is more or less.

What we see in the Genesis narrative, is an early human type stumbling on awareness that they were previously unaware of. I have spoken about my ideas in this regard on the Philosophy forum on a thread regarding the inception of the faculty of critical thinking into the human. I believe that the Adam Eureka event may well have been very localised and troop led if not in fact a single individual encounter, like the spontaneous apple incident depicted in Genesis. A simple case of someone going first! A bit like that old man in Wuhan,

Fortunately, no guessing is required at all because the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection demonstrates that there was never a point in ancient history where the total population of our species was one male and one female.