Continuing the discussion from Curious what theologians throughout history made of Genesis 4:
Yeah, no it isn’t. This is you distorting both science and the text of Genesis in order to force-fit them together. Many people have already pointed to instances of the problem, some of them, I think, unique to you. Others have long histories, like the claim that the creation of the sun is really just the sun being visible through the clouds for the first time.
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Re: sun becoming visible through clouds
Let’s start here.
[i]“In fact, the primitive Earth long remained covered in darkness, wrapped in dense burning clouds into which continuously poured water vapor from volcanic emissions.When temperatures finally cooled sufficiently, the clouds began to melt into rain” - Palaeos Hadean: The Hadean Eon
When the oceans formed due to the water vapor in Earth’s early atmosphere condensing, the atmosphere thinned enough to become translucent and finally allow the sun’s light to shine through.
It still wasn’t transparent, so you couldn’t see the sun itself, but translucent so that the sun’s light lit up the dome of the sky. This is where it says God said “Let there be light” and where it says day and night were separated. This is accurate.
We know the sun’s light was able to get through because next came the great oxydation event, requiring sunlight and oceans, both covered in Genesis early on.
Then, notice where the sequence about the sun/moon/stars is located. After plant life. And what did plant life introduce? They cleaned carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is when the atmosphere changed from translucent to transparent.
So, where before only the light of the sun could be seen, now with a transparent atmosphere the sun, moon, and stars were visible for the first time in Earth’s history.
What do you find particularly insightful? It appears that you just went through and tried to grab specific events throughout natural history and read them into the text.
As far as incredible accuracy, this is only something that is done in hindsight. It’s not like someone is actually reading the text of Genesis and then going to discover anything about nature. I mean no one ever had ever even began to think that day two of Genesis is talking about the great oxygenation event until after we find evidence for such by a close study of different geological strata. And then, various folks come in and claim that Genesis was describing that all along. This is not something that’s unique to Christianity as you can find all of the amazing things that the Quran predicted before hand and someone and so forth. No none of these are predictions of any kind whatsoever and are subject to change as we learn more about the universe.
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Re:Accuracy
It’s not intended to prove itself or God legitimate, or teach humanity about the natural world. It’s telling a story. Yes, after these things are learned, it can then be seen in the text that this is what’s being described.
Re:Insightful
These aren’t just random events in Earth’s history. Each is significant. Like the first time the sun’s light reached the surface. The first time the sun/moon/stars were visible in the sky.
It’s insightful in that it reveals how God operates. He doesn’t just miracle things into existence. All throughout creation, He wills it and the natural world becomes it. Not immediately, but over time.
It’s also insightful in how it’s constructed a block at a time. For instance, at the begining it mentions “the deep”. Then light. These two are ingredients being necessary for the next, the firmament (atmosphere). All of which are then needed for plant life. And so on.
Gotcha. So after we discover particular events we can find them in the Bible.
How about the Permian Extinction? That was rather significant. Or perhaps the Late Heavy Bombardment. Or microscopic fossils 3.5 Gya. Or endosymbiosis in the first eukaryotes. Or the other radiations that predated the Cambrian. In other words there were lots of significant events that shaped the future in great ways.
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I’ve always been interested in the prophets who get really excited about how they make sense of out of the strange parts of the Biblical narrative … even though the “interpretation” doesn’t provide us any new insights into atonement or into actually making, say, Genesis more believable. It seems to require even more sincere gullibility to accept the new interpretation than to simply conclude that a scribe got a few sentences garbled up!
oyyy … you went and did it now … The Framework theory ? Ugh.
I went through this with Reggie, verse by verse. And the problem is the Fowl of the Air…
They first appear on the day that fish appear. (By my reckoning, because the fertility of “the waters” is true whether they are above or below Heaven.)
Then the birds are mentioned in connection with the Earth (in my view, “the Land” or “the Country”), and so are no longer paralleled with either the waters or the sky!
K, sorry for giving the original writers too much credit.
Well, @Pevaquark, you’ve mentioned it now… and everything is going to go sideways from this point on … it’s almost as if we need a Framework of Framework theories…
I quote much of this directly from the article you link us to:
(A) Genesis 1-3 is an historical narrative (though not strictly chronological), not a creation myth.
(B) Genesis 1-3 is not an historical narrative; it resembles some other, older ANE creation stories.
(C) In the 19th century, the German scholar J. H. Kurtz put forth an interpretation that Ramm later called the “Pictorial Day” View, which he considered to be a type of “Moderate Concordism,” the overall position that Ramm himself favored. Kurtz described the creation story as “Prophetico-Historical Tableaux"… [dang it… which is it? A View or Tableaux? … then I remember … a tableaux is “a Scene”… it’s the perfect French word for the meaning of “Pictorial Day View”!!!
“…a depiction of a scene usually presented on a stage by silent and motionless costumed participants.” God knows French, right?
(D) Then there is Conrad Hyers and his article: “Dinosaur Religion: On Interpreting and Misinterpreting the Creation Texts,” < < man… so many choices… we can do either when we talk about Dinosaur Religion?
(E) Then almost as though he wanted to make his own Framework within a Framework, Conrad Hyers wrote a sequel article!: “The Narrative Form of Genesis 1: Cosmogonic, Yes; Scientific, No,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 36 (December 1984): 208-15, in which he employs an interpretive scheme highly similar to the Framework View, although that term is not used."
Again … more choices… Science NO… but cosmogonic? Sounds kinda sciencey to me… I’m taking a nap!
Sorry I didn’t mean to link to the substance of the article which I didn’t read, just the source for the image. I don’t have any mental energy to devote to such a hypothesis so I just deleted it from my post.
Sorry but your narrative is one of the worst examples of post hoc rationalization I’ve even encountered. You might as well fit 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history onto Oliver Twist or War And Peace.
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The point of the story was the story. Describing creation was setting up the story. It’s point wasn’t to teach humanity about the earth’s history.
Events like extinction events can be seen as edits being done along the way. Those edits are what shaped the world and us into what it is today. With the flood story being like a 7th mass extinction continuing that same kind of thing. It shows cohesiveness. The God of Genesis continuing to operate just as the natural world always has.
But the way the story is being told is the way it would be explained while sitting around a fire. Storyteller pointing to the trees and explaining how they came about. The animals in the field. The sea. Etc.
Mass extinctions of species of animals that weren’t familiar to the audience wouldn’t have been understood by anybody but us nowadays.
Yeah, I’ve been told that. But you have to admit, if it wasn’t so close, if it didn’t give me so much to work with, then even my “post hoc rationalization” wouldn’t work. No amount of word twisting or rationalizing would have gotten me anywhere.
To illustrate this, just try to do the same with Oliver Twist.
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Not true. You underrate your ability for post hoc rationalization. For example, Genesis says nothing about the atmosphere at all, whether opaque, transparent, or translucent. What it actually says is that on day 4 God made the sun, moon, and stars. In matters animal, vegetable, and mineral, you are the very model of a post hoc rationalizer.
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But the great oxygenation event, Big Bang theory and Cambrian explosion would be.
Please explain how it is that carbon dioxide makes the atmosphere translucent. That part needs a little work.
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All of that comes from our modern understanding. It just so happens there’s mile markers all along the way that shadow the text.
I’m not just making this all up. What I’m pointing at did actually happen. And did actually happen in that order.
I can’t twist some words around and make it all work like that.
I’m not an expert on the topic, but basically the key is that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and creates greenhouse conditions.
There are other planets and moons in our solar system that have reducing atmospheres like the Earth had back then. The moon Titan is a good example, and has a dense atmosphere much like the Earth had at the time to give you an idea …
All of what?
Of the parts that are in Genesis, many of them did not actually happen. And of the parts that did happen, many of them are not actually in Genesis. And of the parts that did happen and are in Genesis, many of them are not in the right order. If you’re allowed to ignore or rationalize all those parts, I suppose what remains might be an astonishing correspondence, but the astonishment is really in your ability to contort.
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