Ok. I have not had access to a computer in a few days, but fear not! I have located a passage that speaks of the mind and power of God, which I feel is relevant to this conversation: Isaiah 40:12-31.
Mangetout’s reference is also relevant. Hmm. Wonderfully so.
Try 1 day = 1 BILLION years.
Please try to understand. The Bible was written by men several thousand years ago as a collection of stories about God and friends. There is nothing mystical about the Bible. Its simply a bunch of good (if sometimes contradictory) stories about how to be nice to each other.
Also keep in mind that it was written during a time when people thought it thundered because God was angry, people got sick because God was angry, crops failed because God was angry. In other words, people knew jack shit about how anything worked in the universe.
There are still a lot of unanswered question in the universe. But is the Earth 5000 years old is not one of them.
The Bible is not a scientific journal. You shouldn’t look to the Bible for scientific stuff any more than you should look to a physics book for emotional and spiritual guidance.
Try this on for size:
Man cannot fully understand the mind of God. However, there’s nothing to stop Man from trying to get as much understanding as he can manage.
One way to do this is to study how God reveals Himself to us. The most obvious way God reveals Himself is through His creation; thus, studying that may lead us to a fuller understanding of Him. Therefore, for those of us who are Christians, it behooves us [sub](how often do you get to use a phrase like that?)[/sub] to learn as much as we can about the world around us. And we ought to use the best tools available to do it, if we’re going to do it effectively. And the best intellectual tool is the scientific method. So, there is no conflict between being a Christian and being a scientist.
The Bible is a collection of stories about how God has shown Himself to us in the past. It’s handy reference material, especially the New Testament, when it talks about God revealing Himself by coming down from Heaven and living as one of us. However, it’s important to remember that God is a merciful God, and only reveals Himself to the extent that we can cope with it - so, many of the earlier revelations are expressed in terms of the human mind-sets prevailing at the time. So, we have stories of creation which agree with the general idea of such things at the time they were written. Let’s face it: if Moses had come down from Mount Sinai talking about Big Bangs, singularities, and cosmic background microwave radiation - they’d have locked him up.
The salient points of the creation story, to my mind, are 1) God made the universe, 2) it wasn’t a long job, what with Him being God and everything, 3) He went about it in an orderly fashion, starting with FIAT LUX and working up to rice pudding and income tax by logical steps, 4) the end product of this process was rational beings such as our good selves. (Or, maybe, the end product as far as we know).
Just a thought.
Steve: that is a very reasonable view of things, and while its not going to convert me, I do wish more Christians saw things that way… it would make them infinitely more tolerable
No it doesn’t. The preachers say that. Nowhere in the book does it say to give all your money to god. Since he created everything, what would he need with money? It’s the preachers pulling a big con on all the faithful.
Mick, I think you should read Scylla’s post again.
-Ben
I just had to chime in with another vote for Steve Wright’s POV. Very well-put and concise.
I remember reading (no cites, sorry, it was years ago) that in the ancient Hebrew (or whatever the Bible was originally written in) that the word for “day” was one of those words open to interpretation and with several meanings; more specifically the word for day meant (sort of) “this time period I am talking about right now.”
Which basically meant that it could mean a 24-hour day or 3 weeks or 5 years or 700 years or 6 million years or whatever. The implication was that in six relatively similar groups or blocks of time, the Earth was created.
As a Christian, I have to side with the creation theory, but at the same time, I can’t just ignore scientific fact.
I always figured the creation was an evolutionary process.
As Scylla said, the Bible is full of metaphors and parables, so I seriously doubt we are supposed to take it literally.
Don’t get me wrong here, but where does it say that if you’re Christian you have to side with creation theory? Does that mean that by not siding with creation theory, I’m not a Christian? (Well, some people say that Catholics aren’t Christian anyway, but that’s another topic.)
Maybe I’m sticking on a small point, but it’s one that I’ve heard too often.
Sorry, I really meant just me, personally.
I did not mean to imply someone is not a Christian for not believing in the creation theory.
I believe what the Bible says (but not literally word-for-word) about creation; as I said before, I believe it was an evolutionary process.