How can so many people believe in a literal interpretation of genesis?

Question

It seems pretty clear thats its phony to me, besides who really believes god made plants before he made the sun......

god made plants on the THird Day

The Fourth Day
14 God said, "I command lights to appear in the sky and to separate day from night and to show the time for seasons, special days, and years. 15I command them to shine on the earth." And that's what happened. 16God made two powerful lights, the brighter one to rule the day and the other [e] to rule the night. He also made the stars. 17Then God put these lights in the sky to shine on the earth, 18to rule day and night, and to separate light from darkness. God looked at what he had done, and it was good. 19Evening came and then morning--that was the fourth day.

What bible are YOU guys reading???

dzeyoyo123: sorry to be the one to tell you, but a theory DOES mean PROVEN beyond a reasonable doubt in a scientific context....look it up

Answer 1

Absolutely... a literal interpretation of Genesis is the only way that it makes sense. That is clearly demonstrated by the 'cosmology' of Genesis.

In biblical times, people thought that the earth and heaven were all that there was... and that the earth was essentially a 'terrarium' (you might want to look that up). They thought that the sky was a solid object, called the 'firmament', and that the sun, moon, and stars were affixed to it. So, essentially, heaven is 'on the other side of the sky'.

The story of Genesis is comprised of the myths, superstitions, fairy tales and fantastical delusions of an ignorant bunch of Bronze Age fishermen and wandering goat herders, lifted from the oral traditions of other cultures, and crafted into a tale that incorporated some of their own folk tales and pseudo-history. This collection of ignorance provides the basis for the Abrahamic cults of desert monotheism... Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The cosmological aspects of Genesis are perfectly understandable, if you contemplate it in the proper context. At the time the bible stories were concocted, the perception was that the earth was the object and the center of creation. Why? Because they had no reason to think otherwise. Today, as we advance science, we stand upon the shoulders of all the scientists that came before. Back then there were no shoulders to stand upon... so they did the best they could with what they had... their senses.

* They had no concept of 'outer space', and so they conceived that in the beginning all there was were dark waters.

* They had no concept of 'nothingness'. Remember, the concept of 'zero' wasn't invented (discovered?) until thousands of years later. With that in mind, the term 'void', as it is employed in Genesis, can not refer to 'nothingness'... it can only be applied in its alternative definition, which is 'empty'. So, the waters were dark, formless and empty (devoid of content).

* They thought that all of creation consisted of the earth and an unseen 'heaven', and they thought that the sky was a 'thing'... a substantive 'firmament' that was created by god to separate the waters and differentiate earth from heaven, when both were created.

# They had no idea that Earth was a planet, orbiting the sun.

# They had no idea that there is no firmament... that the sky is not a 'thing'.

(If you don't believe that they thought the sky was an object, consider the Tower of Babel, that they were building to reach heaven. Apparently, God ALSO thought that the sky was an object, since it concerned him so much that he confounded their speech, so as to disrupt their project and keep them from reaching his domain. God must be pretty much of a dumbass, if he doesn't even know the actual configuration of the universe that he created. So much for the 'inerrant' bible.)

* They thought that the sun was a light that god had placed upon the 'firmament' to differentiate night from day.

# They had no idea that the sun is a star... the center of our solar system.

# They had no concept of 'stars' in the same sense that we understand them today.

* They had no idea that night and day were a consequence of the earth's rotation.

* They thought that the moon was a light that god had caused to travel across the firmament to enable man to differentiate the seasons.

# They had no concept of the moon as a satellite.

* They thought that the stars were tiny lights that god had placed upon the firmament to provide for omens. (Some thought that the stars were 'holes' in the firmament that allowed the 'light of heaven' to shine through.)

# They had no idea that the stars were suns, just like our own sun.

# They thought the eyeball-visible planets (Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn) were 'wandering stars'.

# They had no idea that the planets were actually sun-orbiting bodies, just like earth.

* They had no idea that the earth, itself, is a planet.

# They had no clue as to the actual nature of the earth, our solar system, the place of our solar system in the galaxy... or even of the existence of our galaxy. (Up until very recently, we didn't even know that there were other galaxies. Our galaxy, when it was first known that there actually WAS a galaxy, was thought to be the whole universe.) From their perspective, the 'earth' and 'heaven' (i.e., whatever existed on the other side of the sky) represented all that there was.

Basically, they viewed the world as a 'terrarium'. (You might want to look that up.)

I do not say this things to disparage what they thought back then. They were trying to do what science is trying to do today... trying to understand reality. Today, we have technology and disciplined meta-procedures (scientific method) to help us extract answers from nature.

Back then, they did not.

Today, we have 'theories' to provide consistent explanations for what we are able to observe in nature, supplemented and validated by the additional information that we are able to extract from nature by means of our technology, our disciplined methods and our intellectual tools (mathematics, logic). Most of our theories are incomplete, so we continue to work on them... because we know that they are incomplete.

Back then, they did not have disciplined methods, and they did not have the technology to extract answers from nature. The only information they had access to was what they could see with their own eyeballs. There was no technological knowledge base or scientific context in which to interpret their observations, so they had to appeal to their imaginations... and the 'supernatural'... in order to make sense out of what they saw. Actually, what they really achieved was deluding themselves into thinking that they knew the truth. Amazingly, over time, this delusion has become codified, institutionalized, and incorporated... complete with franchises.

Basically, Genesis can be thought of as a 'theory', concocted by people who were constrained by lack of technology, methodology and intellectual tools... but they sure weren't constrained by lack of imagination.

Today, we try to interpret Genesis in the context of what we know to be true of the universe... galaxies, stars, planets, moons, gravity, orbits, inclination of the earth's axis, planetary rotation, etc. They problem is that Genesis can't be interpreted in terms of those things, because Genesis was written by men, based on oral traditions, and those men did not know about those things. They could only write about what they could see and what they could guess about the reasons that lay behind what they saw. In any event, it provided them with a mechanism to quell the innate anxiety that comes with fretting about how and why they came to be here.

They guessed wrong.

So... I think that the cosmological aspects of Genesis require a literal interpretation... no metaphors... no allegory... no hidden meaning. The key, though, is in understanding that the literal interpretation does not lead to a description of the way things are... it leads to a description of the way they thought things are. It leads to a naive description of reality, concocted by people who were doing the best they could with what they had.

It is absolutely appalling, though, to realize that hundreds of millions of people, TODAY, including participants in this forum, BELIEVE that this ignorant bovine excrement is actually TRUE.

Answer 2

Why would it be a problem to make plants before the sun? Remember He already made light, if that's you problem, if not , then the plants had no sun for a little less that 24 hours-that can not be a problem. I believe the problem is with you and not the Bible. Besides, you have no explanation of how anything came about.

Answer 3

According to Gen 1:3 God made light before He made plants. Check it out, Read the first chapter of the Bible again to straighten out your chronology.

That things appeared out of nothing for no reason and ended up as they are now seems more phony than the "theory" of intelligent design.

Answer 4

Plants wont die after one day if they dont get CO2....so whats your point?

and He made light before plants

3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Answer 5

Its a big screw-up the original Hebrew is very different from the English translation and the catholic church changed it to simplify it for its clergy. The original Hebrew indicates no time table for each day but just that God set aside some form of time for each creative session. Remember that a moment to God is a thousand years. LOL

Answer 6

First of all god made the sun before he made plants (what bible are you reading?) i believe in genesis because even if it took 6 days or 6 ages(the words are the same in hebrew) i know my God created me!

Answer 7

Please be aware that the Hebrew of Genesis does NOT say that God made plants before he made the sun...

I subscribe to a literal-metaphorical interpretation of Genesis (a combination of literal and metaphorical depending on the context and the evidence).

I am an old-earth step-wise creationist.

For more detail regarding Old Earth Creationism, see http://www.godsci.org/gs/crea/oec.html

I used to be an atheist. Over a period of time however, I grew convinced of the existence of the Christian God, and ultimately committed my life to Christ (e.g., see http://www.godsci.org/gs/chri/testimony/seek.html ).

Cordially,
John

Answer 8

Do you think that the plants all died between the day that He created the plants and the next day when He created the sun? He created LIGHT on the first day. What do plants need to photosynthesize? The sun? Nope! LIGHT!

Answer 9

how can so many people believe in any other theory of the origins of the universe or life, without proof? they are after all just theories...but wait...some theories make more logical sense right? well, that could be debated, especially since there are still so many things that are not even understood and proven by science yet...so i challenge all those that imply christians are brainwashed by saying that THEY are the ones that have been brainwashed in school to ignore other THEORIES...emphasis "NOT PROVEN".....

Answer 10

I see you never read Genesis... God made the sun first.

Helps to do some studying before you attempt to look smart.