Your position is basically the Guilt by Association logic fallacy. Also, if an idea or tradition comes from a pagan culture, you are assuming that it is inherently corrupt and God is unable to use it for his purposes.
The Apostle Paul blatantly defied your sense of being “offended” and boldly used pagan ideas from pagan authors which were familiar to his Ancient Near Eastern audience. A great example is Acts 17:28 where he quotes from Aratus’ Hymn to Zeus where he applies to God what Aratus said about Zeus:
“for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.'”
Yes, the Apostle Paul was quite willing to adapt a pagan and pantheistic hymn to teach truths about the God of the Bible!
For other examples of the Bible using pagan literature and traditions where their pagan truths were applicable to Christian doctrines, see Titus 1:12 and 1 Cor. 15:33.
You need to warn the Apostle Paul about that “rule” that you have apparently invented on your own. He clearly didn’t get the memo. (Be sure to let him know that you are offended that he would adapt pagan literature.)
Have you ever noticed that the Apostle never quoted Jesus in his scripture writings but he did quote pagan philosophers?
I have not studied this. I believe it is the general consensus of the church, and I find no reason to disagree. But I haven’t read anything on it, so I choose to use “writer” instead.
That isn’t what I was intending to convey. Perhaps I missed what you were intending to convey. I do NOT believe that the only thing we should read in Genesis 1 is what God is ruling out.
If the ancient peoples all had a tradition that conveyed some truth, and it was corrected to be the complete truth, so that the story both conveyed what God did, as well as showed who He was that would fit a high view of scripture inspiration. But if we’re looking at Genesis 1 as just a
I find this view of the genre not to be encompassing enough.
I’m wondering exactly how I view Genesis 1 has anything to do with you wrote. If you don’t think Genesis 1 can be taken literally, then say so.
To be clear, when I read “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” I see this both as a summary statement : God created the universe. And I read it as a specific creation of the waters - that the universe was made up of waters initially.
I’m not satisfied with any other explanation so far of how else one is supposed to understand where the waters came from.
I do believe it’s clear that the Israelites knew that God set the sun and moon and stars they see in the expanse. But above that expanse was the waters described in Genesis 1.
I think you’re misunderstanding me. See my latest response. I’ll take a listen to the podcast - seems interesting, but since it’s long, I’ll reply later.
This is a brief tangential note but I’m including it here because it relates to topics recently discussed on other threads:
This brings to mind Psalms 148:7 in the NIV (and is similarly worded in a few other translations):
Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,
I once heard a radio preacher say that this was an example of the Bible writers being inspired with “scientific” knowledge unknown to their ancient contemporaries. After all, the unnamed author from ancient Israel would not have had any direct personal knowledge that there were oceans. (The “Great Sea” could be observed from the coast of Israel and they would know of other seas from the Torah. But they would have known nothing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and little about the Indian Ocean.)
The problem with emphasizing the word ocean in some English translations is that it is supplied for clarity and style—even though there is no separate word for ocean in the Hebrew text. (And there is no evidence that anyone in the Ancient Near East would have made our modern day distinctions between seas and oceans.)
The Hebrew word simply refers to the “great depths” of the only large bodies of water they knew. But there is nothing wrong with modern day translators bringing the concept into a worldview more familiar to us—where the deepest of ocean depths can point us to the Creator who made such handiwork.
This is a great example of appreciating the beauty of an English Bible translation and contextualizing it to the world we know—but not treating the translated text as the final authority as to what the original author actually stated in his own ancient context and worldview.
@Swamidass, this relates to some of the questions and points you have raised recently on other threads about understanding the ANE (Ancient Near East) in order to understand the Bible. [I was happy to let @deuteroKJ address those topics so well because his training and experience is at least a generation more up-to-date than mine— _and_ most of my exegetical and hermeneutical background is in New Testament. My Torah training was relatively limited and some of my professors were part of that “old guard” last-gasp JEDP hardcore tradition of the post-WWII generation.]
Well, with my interpretation of Genesis 1 you have quark-gluon plasma/ primoradial waters created, then primordial light/aether: all the leptons, the rest of the bosons (inflation). At the beginning of Day 2 evening was probably when what I’ll call the “aether” was separated so that there could be darkness at the beginning of that day. So Cosmic Dark Ages. Higgs probably on Day 2 after God separated the quark-gluon plasma that made earth from what made up the rest of the heavens and stretching them out (expansion of the rest of the universe). At this time the atmosphere of earth and the Milky Way Galaxy was likely formed as well.
Then on Day 3, God made the earth and plants in a form we’re more familiar with but much different because plate tectonics, etc only came into being after the flood.
On Day 4, the sun, stars and moon were created and so the rest of the Milky Way was filled in along with plasma in the rest of the universe possibly being able to form structures on its own: the cosmic sea. But of course probably Black Holes had to be specially created since I think they are probably have an extra dimension. And I think there’s possibly a hidden extra dimension since the aether would no longer exist and now we have photons, as well as electons creating electricity separately. But since they can be changed into each other, something’s going on there. Anyway, Day 4 was probably when the CMB was created when the extra dimension was hidden and we have the leftover light.
So the CMB and the Cosmic Dark Ages are not in the right order. Also if negative energy dark matter or some other theory is true, I don’t think the universe has to be expanding. I think the Bible uses stretches out in a past tense. Jamie Farnes postulated that new particles could be added to deal with the expanding universe. But if it isn’t expanding, there’s no need to postulate that.
Lol, this all makes sense in my head, but I need to go get a Ph.D. in physics to understand it. Some other creationist scientist will have to roll with it. Oh, if I understood it, I think I’d also have a good theory of everything.
I think the CMB is just a mirror image of the quark-gluon plasma in the second heavens just as God created the stars and took the aether away. But yeah, I really don’t understand what it is. I have a hard time picturing how it’s created. I want to study it more, but I felt like I had enough of an interpretation that fit with the Bible and science that I let it go for a while.
I am willing to consider your thoughts here. As always, they sound interesting. This is your thread so feel free to input more of this mirror image and second heaven. Details would be pretty important.
Well, @swamidass shoot, if I could award Nobel prizes for science and theology, I’d certainly pick this theory as I was just about to drop this idea - emergent (that it existed first in creation) and virtual (I’m beginning to think virtual particles may just come a bubble of space with different dimensions than ours).
“Emergent” will have a specific meaning to a cosmologist, namely, from a small, hot, dense big bang. The CMB must be pervasive and it must be [mostly] uniform across all spaces.
What was your specific method to accomplish this?
[I jumped to the CMB from your emergent particle. Your emergent particle might work ok, but I am much more concerned with the CMB in your ideas.]
The CMB would be pervasive and uniform because it would be what was created on Day 1 that filled the universe. God only separated this on Day 2 to make the second heaven out of it. It would remain uniform.
I cannot take that away from you simply because of the nature of the discussion and that you have included God who is pervasive, and naturally, would be pervasive in his creating domain. Too, I think I saw a hint that you appealed to 1. a reflective property regarding the CMB and 2. some kind of “clearing away”. Those would be important concepts to keep when positing a “residual” temperature we find today in space.
Earth’s atmosphere is made of mostly nitrogen and oxygen. Both of those need to be made in supernovae. You are going to need time for large stars to form, forge those heavier elements, go supernova, and the coalesce into a new solar system.
Next, the correlation between distance and redshift is consistent with billions of years of expansion. You will need to fit that into your model. If there was expansion greater than the speed of light then we wouldn’t be able to see distant galaxies.
You will need stars before the Earth in order to produce the heavier elements.
Where is the evidence to back this?
They are in the right order. Negative energy is what is causing the expansion of the universe, and dark matter has nothing to do with the expansion.
If I understand it correctly, the ratio of elements is predicted by what we would expect from a hot plasma that cools to the point that atoms form.
Actually the ability to see distant galaxies is not a problem depending on the initial conditions and the line element chosen. However, since she is wanting the creation to commence at the macro level, a horizon problem looms in her model. To date, I have not figured out how to overcome this in other YEC models (which is why I always opt for a small, hot, dense beginning). So yes, this could be a problem. Not sure yet if it is insurmountable, however.
Not required in a “macro” creation.
True, the negative energy is attributed to dark energy, not matter. But this may just be a simple misunderstanding in her model.
In positing a hot plasma model of this size, then a rapid cooling, there could potentially be a problem.
It’s a matter of parsimony. If we have a natural process that can explain the observations then there is no need for a supernatural process that exactly mimics the natural process.
