Dark Matter Rain

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21

Disjointed is exactly what struck me.

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In an oral culture with no books, when those narratives are put together in a collection, it’s going to be appear that way - we have a lot of emphasis in our culture in telling history in order. Genesis goes between getting in the weeds, and the overarching stories, so it’s not always chronological.

Did you notice this? What Are ‘Theophanies’ in the Bible and What Can Christians Learn from Them? - Bible Study This is a theme that runs through the narrative of Genesis.

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@thoughtful

It is relatively easy to elevate knowledge (gleaned from all the interwoven sciences) above the more primitive sections of the Bible:

  1. Talking donkey? Right.
  2. Multiple references to the firmament as a physical barrier that prevents the celestial waters from caving in on the Earth (and not the firmament as an empty space that would be unable to hold back the celestial waters).
  3. The solar-themed Samson with magical hair.
  4. The confusion between the Philistines of Exodus (post 1130 BCE) and the historically impossible Philistines Abraham met with, 800 years prior to the arrival of the historical Philistines on the southern coast of the Levant.
  5. The impossible nature of flood-centric fossil evidence, where giant marine reptiles of the dinosaur age uniformly drown before large mammals that could never co-exist with dinosaurs (sloths, bears, cows, gazelles, horses, zebras, giraffes, etc.).
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So what is the importance of the Bible to you?

25

@thoughtful

The Bible is a book that needs to be decoded for Creationists so that they can see how de novo creation of Adam and Eve CAN be compatible with millions of years of fossil evidence.

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That’s the entire importance of the Bible to you personally?

27

@thoughtful,

To let zealous Christians walk around in full-science denial is a very dangerous place for society to find itself.

There has to be a satisfactory way to adjust interpretations of the Bible to fit in with reality.

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Again, your response has nothing to do with how you find the Bible to be useful. Or is it useless to you?

29

@thoughtful,

The Bible is a crucial book to work with if we are going to reach men and women of faith.

There are also parts of the Bible that I find personally comforting. I do not expect that these answers will satisfy you.