Genesis 1

[Bronzeage]

Suppose, for the sake of argument, an Omnipotent Being that is independent of time and space, created the Universe and everything in it, which we observe today. Is the fact that humans do not understand how it happened, evidence that such a being does not exist?

Yes, it is.

It isn't very strong evidence; But it gets stronger each time we discover more accurate and detailed ways to describe the universe, without finding any hints whatsoever of the alleged omnipotent creator.

By the end of the twentieth century, it had become clear that we understand all of the interactions that are possible at scales relevant to humans, and still there's no hint of any gods - which rules out all the other major ideas of the people who hypothesised an omnipotent creator to begin with. That's pretty compelling evidence that their remaining idea isn't coming from a source worthy of our respect.

If some guy claims to have been kidnapped by aliens in a flying saucer, and we know that he has a long history of telling tall tales, and we have found zero evidence to support his claim, and the only people who are supporting his claim are those who supported his earlier false claims, then that's pretty good evidence that the aliens in flying saucers don't exist.

Even if aliens in flying saucers in fact DO exist, it would be foolish to believe that they do, based on the evidence before us in that scenario.

The evidence boils down to 'we cannot 100% definitely prove that this unevidenced speculation isn't true', which is the same level of evidence we have that there is no flying spaghetti monster.

Our evidence that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist is exactly as good as our evidence that an omnipotent creator doesn't exist.

I don't see how being unable to comprehend something is a basis for drawing conclusions about it.

I think you misunderstand my position.

I am saying that we DO comprehend things, and that our comprehension rules out the assertions being made by people who are a) ignorant of the state of human knowledge; and b) desperately hoping that because they don't comprehend the subject they thought they owned, therefore nobody comprehends it.

The fact that so many people who thought they did comprehend it turned out to be incorrect, does not change that.

The fact that either our best physical theories, that have been experimentally tested to vast precision, repeatedly and independently, and never found to deviate from reality by one iota, are seriously and obviously wrong; OR gods (as described by every major religion in history, and the vast majority of the minor ones) are impossible.

The only god concepts not ruled out by modern physics are a tiny number of unpopular ideas that avoid being demonstrably wrong by not saying anything in particular about anything much.

That most people lack the understanding of reality to grasp that their beliefs must be false is a failure of our education systems. But it's an unavoidable conclusion - the God of the Gaps ran out of gaps when the Higgs boson was confirmed to exist, and to match its theorised properties, at CERN.

A large number of ideas that had been assumed to be the domain of philosophy and theology turn out to be addressed by physics - and in so doing have shat on the careers of a lot of philosophers and theists who never expected their navel gazing to become testable.

In the beginning there was a proposition, which proposed, "Suppose, for the sake of argument, an Omnipotent Being that is independent of time and space, created the Universe and everything in it,".

The idea of this kind of proposition is to accept it for the sake of argument, instead of arguing whether it is true or false, and proceed to discuss whether a human has any possibility of understanding such a thing.

As I said above, a list of things about which people have been wrong, does not have any bearing on some other truth. Just as people once thought the sun could breed maggots in a dead dog, does not mean that flies do not exist.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It has a poetic structure.... though YECs believe the sun, moon and stays were literally created a day before the plants. If you believe that a day can be a thousand years it creates an even bigger problem....

Framework interpretation (Genesis) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

​

	First triad	Second triad
Day 1	Let there be light (1:3).	Let there be lights (1:14).	Day 4
Day 2	Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters (1:6).	Let the water teem with creatures and let birds fly above the earth (1:20).	Day 5
Day 3	Let dry land appear (1:9). Let the land produce vegetation (1:11).	Let the land produce living creatures (1:24). Let us make man (1:26). I give you every seed bearing plant... and every tree that has fruit with seed in it... for food (1:29).	Day 6

What I found interesting is that God explicitly finds good in each day, except Day 2. And I have no idea if that means anything. Usually a poetic structure is intact and where it isn't, that is symbolic.

When I called this out in Religious Experiences in College, the teacher, a Brother in the Catholic Church (and otherwise very bright guy), said he had never noticed that before.

 

[bilby]

It has a poetic structure.... though YECs believe the sun, moon and stays were literally created a day before the plants. If you believe that a day can be a thousand years it creates an even bigger problem....

Framework interpretation (Genesis) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

​

	First triad	Second triad
Day 1	Let there be light (1:3).	Let there be lights (1:14).	Day 4
Day 2	Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters (1:6).	Let the water teem with creatures and let birds fly above the earth (1:20).	Day 5
Day 3	Let dry land appear (1:9). Let the land produce vegetation (1:11).	Let the land produce living creatures (1:24). Let us make man (1:26). I give you every seed bearing plant... and every tree that has fruit with seed in it... for food (1:29).	Day 6

What I found interesting is that God explicitly finds good in each day, except Day 2. And I have no idea if that means anything. Usually a poetic structure is intact and where it isn't, that is symbolic.

When I called this out in Religious Experiences in College, the teacher, a Brother in the Catholic Church (and otherwise very bright guy), said he had never noticed that before.

Yeah, firmament is a bit meh.

It just sits there dividing waters from waters. Not great, not terrible.

 

[lpetrich]

 Framework interpretation (Genesis) and  Genesis creation narrative I like this translation: Genesis 1 NRSV - Six Days of Creation and the Sabbath - Bible Gateway

I remember coming across that framework interpretation, but in a different form.

Day	Environments	Day	Inhabitants
1	Light	4	Sun
	Darkness		Moon, stars
2	Sky	5	Flying animals
	Water		Aquatic animals
3	Land	6	Land animals, humanity
	Plants		"You may eat these"

God creates by commanding and separating. In day 1, he separates light from darkness, in day 2, above-sky water from below-sky water, and in day 3, land from bodies of water. God commands light and the celestial bodies into existence, and he commands the land to make plants, the sky to make flying animals, the water to make aquatic animals, and then the land to make land animals.

After all this creative work, God takes the next day off, making the seventh day the first Sabbath in the history of the Universe, or at least the built Universe.

 

[lpetrich]

I say "the built Universe" because although the Genesis 1 story is often interpreted as creation from nothing, it may also be interpreted as giving form to formless matter.

As to creation from nothing, one theologian claimed that God created time also: Augustine on the topic of time

From the NRSV:
1. (In the beginning when God created / When God began to create / In the beginning God created) the heavens and the earth,

2. the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while (a wind from God / the spirit of God / a mighty wind) swept over the face of the waters.

So the Earth didn't initially have much form.


As to antecedents of that story, the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish is sometimes mention. In it, the god Marduk cuts monster Tiamat in two, making the earth and the heaven.

Predecessors to that story? I think that it's from a creation motif reconstructed for the speakers of the ancestral Indo-European languages. Its best-known form is the creation of our familiar Universe from the body parts of the giant Ymir.

 

[excreationist]

I say "the built Universe" because although the Genesis 1 story is often interpreted as creation from nothing, it may also be interpreted as giving form to formless matter.

BTW this web page talks about alternatives to Young Earth Creationism in terms of Genesis 1 (to 11) in depth:

Old Earth Creation Science Belief Systems

A table showing the events of history along with the different old earth creationist belief systems

www.oldearth.org

Theistic Evolution (Allegorical)
Theistic Evolution (Literal)
Progressive Creationism (Literal)
Gap Theory (Literal)
OEM Joint Theory (Literal)