It’s right here:
When you have to explicity replace the meanings of the words in your source text, you are clearly doing something wrong. If you’re going to do that, it’d be better to ignore the text entirely, especially if your whole point was to show that the [unaltered] text matches up.
Science is silent as to what existed “before” the Big Bang. There’s some indication that time itself began with the Big Bang in which case the phrase “before the Big Bang” is meaningless.
Light did not escape and fill the universe at the beginning. It took several hundred thousand years before the early universe was transparent to radiation.
Subatomic particles existed from the very beginning. When the primordial plasma cooled enough for them to condense into atoms, that’s when light first shown. The Bible has it backwards.
Since the orginal light was emitted long before the first suns or planets formed it’s kind of odd to refer to it as the light of day. And there wasn’t any darkness at that point – just glowing gas everywhere.
The primordial hydrogen gas was definitely not a fluid.
Tim, your argument amounts to “When you ignore all the discrepancies, the similarities are striking!”. Well, of course they are, because you’re ignoring all the discrepancies.
Yes, I’ve read Genesis. Here are some more fascinating Creation Myths.
But–what do they have to do with Macroevolution?
(Once again–many religious folks are quite able to appreciate their favorite Creation Myths as poetic & symbolic. But they don’t confuse them with Science.)
Grr. Correction. Yes, hydrogen gas is technically a fluid. It’s not a liquid though.
If the Hebrews were looking for a metaphor to describe the early plasma, why choose a **liquid ** metaphor? Why not call it “fog” or “wind” instead of “waters”?
But night is not “darkness.” Night is simply the shadow of matter blocking the light.
While mildly original, you have to twist all of science and all of theology into curlicues in order to get to your conclusion. Light does move in waves, but not in “waves” of light and dark. If the light filled the universe at the Big Bang, then you have to wait for matter to form before you can have darkenss, yet Genesis talks about God “dividing” the light from the darkness before matter (with one exception) is created. Beyond that, “the waters” already exist prior to light. Light follows water which is clearly contradicted by the scientific view of the Big Bang as well as your interpretation of Genesis.
You are trying too hard. Your interpretation does not make sense on a simple reading of the text and trying to force your odd interpretation (that no one before you seems to have understood) onto the text of Genesis alongside the observations of science causes you to violate the words and the spirit of both. That is why I suggested you stick to the macroevolution discussion in this thread and tackle (hwowever hopelessly) your exigesis of Genesis in a separate thread.
Timtupp, you’ve given us your interpretation, or match, between an ancient, imprecise story and the current scientific theory of creation. You’ve managed to fit them in ways that satisfy you by overlooking some details that others cannot.
What do you hope to prove? That the better match you can make, the more holy the story? If I can find another version of creation that I can match as well or better, will you be willing to believe in that one instead, even if the god(s) invoked are foreign to your background?
Did you ever try the same “match game” with Nostradamus? Now there’s a clever writer who wrote nebulous verses that have been interpreted by many as prophetic, always after the fact. It’s amazing how accurate predictions can be AFTER something happens!
Now if a biblical reader of 500 years ago had looked at a bible verse and derived the big bang from it, or the germ theory of disease, or postulated dinosaurs of 65 million years ago would be found, ideas/theories which subsequently were proven over time, maybe we’d have something. But no theologian of 500 years ago tried that successfully. Why do you think that is? Could it be because the “wisdom” of an ancient writing is only “revealed” when someone interprets it in a certain fashion?
Think about it.
I can’t believe this didn’t cross my mind before, but since the subject here is supposedly evolution I believe it’s fair to ask, timtupp, what’s your take on “Adam was created from dirt” and “Eve was created from Adam’s rib”? If you have cooked up some way of reconciling those with evolution (or basic biology in any form, for that matter), I would be amazed.
Indeed, you would be!
Just out of curiosity, timtupp, have you ever read a cosmology book, and if so, which one? Your model of cosmology seems to come from a mixture of skimmed popular articles on the Big Bang and wishful thinking.
And by the way
Prior to the Big Bang there was no matter period, with form or without. It’s not clear what form even means here. Others have already told you that the universe was opaque at the beginning. And what exactly is the face of the deep here?
Ask yourself why God wouldn’t want to inspire something that makes you twist the story around to get anywhere close to the truth. By your logic I could probably find an argument for saying that the 10 commandments require adultery! Is the moral code you get from the Bible a straightforward reading of what it says, or is it a translation so it says what you want it to say?
Is this supposed to mean that the Bible story is other than utter hogwash?
Yep.
“What do you hope to prove”
Only that the bible and science don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“your odd interpretation (that no one before you seems to have understood)”
http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Big-Bang-Dis...y/dp/0553354132
http://elronsviewfromtheedge.wordpress.com…y-blow-account/
“What’s your take on “Adam was created from dirt” and “Eve was created from Adam’s rib”?” - Mistranslations of the original Hebrew and a God who uses laws (of science) to accomplish His works. (We could make a female from a male’s rib today - cloning).
Cloning. Right. :rolleyes:
By the way, by what basis do you select those particular verses to believe as being mistranslations? If it’s just because they’re clearly mythological, then all you’re doing is ignoring the parts of the bible you don’t like and lying to yourself as to your justification. In which case, you can do it with all the parts you don’t like. Here, I’ll help: the entire book of genesis is actually a (rather overlong) mistranslation of “In the beginning, there was the big bang and evolution and all that stuff. Also, don’t worship me!” There! All the contradictions with science are resolved!
The problem you have is that e.g. the Bible uses ‘days’ where science uses ‘billions of years’.
If the Bible is the Word of God, it should tell us something. Instead you are stuck with saying that science is correct and that the Bible text has to be changed to fit science.
So there are mistranslations? How many more are there?
Instead of the Bible being the authority you want it to be, again the Bible just has to fit in with whatever science says.
And cloning anything (let alone a human) is a pretty recent development!
Are you saying that for 2000 years this Bible verse has been a complete mystery to all Christians - and that God intended our generation to be the first to understand His Word?
timtupp, would you care to address any of the contradictions that I pointed out above?
Specifically, how to you reconcile the Biblical creation story with the fact that the first light didn’t shine until several hundred thousand years after the Big Bang?
If the Bible said something like “And God said ‘Let there be hot fog’; and there was hot fog.” … THAT would be a pretty good approximation of what creation was actually like.
How would an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful god allow such a horrible and misleading mistake as a mistranslation of his perfect, sacred, holy words?
Was he asleep at the switch that day?
[QUOTE=timtupp"your odd interpretation (that no one before you seems to have understood)"
http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Big-Bang-Dis...y/dp/0553354132
http://elronsviewfromtheedge.wordpress.com…y-blow-account/[/QUOTE]
Since I generally do not read crackpots, even well-intentioned ones, I admit to having missed that particularly odd concept, before.
I’m not sure which is scarier: that someone else actually did combine all the errors you have presented as some sort of reconciliation of Genesis and science or that more people than you have actually accepted his errors as presenting a valid argument.
I see no conflict between Genesis and science because I do not see Genesis as a scientific tract, but distorting the words of Genesis to match up to misunderstood physics and cosmology is just not the way to go.
You are still stuck with water existing before light, light and darkness existing as separate entities without a source, and “days” occurring when no physical matter exists.
*::: shrug ::: *
And what exactly does all this have to do with micro vs. macro evolution?
Actually, you could only clone a male from a male and vice versa. A clone is an identical twin.