A question for the Christians: What is your rebuttal to the following?

Question

The Bible says that God made Adam and Eve, and they procreated to make all the other humans that have ever existed. But how can this be when we know now through science, research, etc. that it takes a minimum of about one thousand humans to expand a species? If you have less, and especially a lot less, the DNA running through the gene pool will be too closely related to make anything other than increasingly dumber, physically deformed, and mentally disabled individuals. Keep in mind that when the Bible was written, DNA hadn't been discovered yet.

The Bible says that the earth is around what, 6,000 years? But with scientific methods such as carbon dating, we can proove that the earth is closer to 4 billion years old.

There aren't enough rain clouds our water in circulation to flood the earth 40 ft above land (like in Noah's arc), and evidence showes that it never was near possible. Remember that when the bible was written, they didn't understand things like the cirsulation of water.

Answer 1

You make some good points. Those that say the bible is not meant to be taken literally are talking out their butts. Just look at the cosmology of Genesis, for example. 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 death 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 and their imaginations.

* They had no concept of 'outer space', and so they conceived that in the beginning all that existed 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' (the sky) 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... a solid barrier... 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 'lesser' light that god had caused to travel across the firmament to enable man to differentiate the seasons, and provide illumination at night.

# 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 (Mercury, 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. A terrarium.

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

I'll take a stab at it. Before I do though I do have a question as well. With evolution even at the beginning wouldn't there have had to have been in the beginning of the human species one couple. Now in response to your first question. The Bible does not say that they procreated to make all the other humans that ever exsisted. It could be possible that God created others, which is they answer a lot of people give when someone asks where Cain got his wife. About your second question the Bible never gives a specific date for the creation account. People assume six thousand years because they have added up the dates for the various genealogical accounts and this is the tally they get. However Dr Geisler a famous christian apologeticist and author has shown gaps in the genelogical records that could account for a lengthier period of time. Don't assume that all Christians hold a young Earth view many of the most famous Christian of the last few centuries were certainly open to and Old Earth view, C.S. Lewis, J.P. Moreland, etc... However it should also be noted tha carbon dating is a tad unreliable, and geological layer dating is very circular reasoning, I don't know if I am an old earther or a new earther I don't think it's really that important when God made it happen. As far as the flood covering the Earth forty ft above all land that seems to be a misinterpritation of the text, In Gen 7:19 it speaks of how all the high hills of the Earth were covered then the water rose fifteen cubits(forty feet) and the mountains were covered up, it does not say that the highest mountain in the world was forty feet underwater.
As far as how all this could of happened it all boils down to your worldview. Many people think theist of any variety cheat when they say I don't know God did it, but it follows from how they see the world. The bigger mistep is for an atheist to take the Bible and say, we know this couldn't have happened, therefore the God you claim exists based off of this couldn't exsist. But it's purely a circular rational. The only reason some think these things couldn't have happened is because they base their assumptions off of a completely naturalistic worldview. If Christians and other theists are correct, that there is a God, why would a God who can create a universe with a word, have so much trouble with the objections raised.

Answer 3

It is called Faith for a reason.

I can not answer the DNA thing, I am not a scientist.

Carbon Dating can be wrong - depending on the location and method, I have seen some results off as much as 100 years on a known subject less than 50 years dead.

As a Christian, I think things can be taken out of context in the Bible. I believe the world to be millions of years old, I don't think there was enough water to cause a global flood. I could say "God can do anything He wants" but that would be a cop out answer. Truth is, we really don't know how the earth was formed.

Perhaps evolution and the creation of the world was part of Gods plan all along - I mean even if the Big Bang theory is true, something had to create the atoms that collided, and someone had to put them in motion. . .

Answer 4

You're not taking into consideration the fact that Adam lived to be 900+ years old, so he did a lot of procreating with poor Eve. He was married to Lillith before Eve (ancient Jewish texts), so its possible they had kids before she got ticked at Adam and left. Before the fall, childbirth wasn't much in the painful department, so I'm guessing Eve pushed out quite a few kids. Even at 1 a year, we're looking at a few hundred kids, then her kids, grandkids, etc., all living in the 900+ year reign. So what does that mean for humanity? Well, how many people do you know who wear glasses or contacts? Very common things, but still not 20/20 vision, its a birth defect. Know anyone with a hearing aide? Why do we have birth defects? Like you said, "Increasingly dumber, physically deformed and mentally disabled individuals"???? You just described the condition of humanity.

Where exactly in the bible does it say the earth is only 6,000 years, I must have missed that part.

Answer 5

Human logic can never explain Gods work, because He is infinitely more intelligent.

The Bible never says at all how old the Earth is.

I think you would find, if you chose to read the Bible that clearly the increasingly "dumber..." etc children were created. At least they were not as 'pure' Life spans took a drastic downward shift by the end of the book of Genesis (starting out at around 1000 years)

Also, perhaps you should apply your logic to your own statements..

"Remember that when the bible was written, they didn't understand things like the circulation of water." Is it possible, just perhaps, that there are countless things the current generation does not understand? Absolutely. God is still more intelligent than us, because infinite intelligence is just that, infinite. You cannot even fathom that with your mind.

The human brain is far too simplistic to understand everything. While I can appreciate your argument, and your thirst for knowledge, discounting the record of God's actions as containing in the Bible (the only record we have) based on research preformed by humans, which incidentally would lend itself to being inherently flawed research as we are flawed beings, is laughable.

If you want to scrutinize the Bible and Christian beliefs, you might want to uphold yourself to the same level of scrutiny. Argue that I didn't all you want, but the answer is, just as you put it, "they didn't understand"

Nor do we, you, I, everyone... it is impossible to fully understand, because the human brain is limited, and we are imperfect therefore inevitably prone to flawed research and logic.

Answer 6

Not every text in the Bible is history or straight fact. This is a perfect example. The two stories you mention are teaching stories handing down through tradition. (Not all Christians read the Bible literally.)

Think about George Washington and the infamous cherry tree. What if it was proven that he never saw (much less chopped down) a cherry tree in his life? Is that the point of the story? No, the point is to emphasize his honesty and integrity.

Answer 7

i will respond to one of your claims. the bible teaches that the earth is more like around 10,000 years old, but what is 4,000 years when 4 billion is at stake. my question for you is "How old was Adam when God made him? Was he one second old or was he a middle-aged man? He appeared to be a middle-aged man, but technically he was only one minute old. so when God created the earth, how old was it? it appeared in perfect funcitoning order after the whole process of creation, but it was only days old. i wonder if these same tests were conducted back then that they would claim the earth is billions of years old. As i already proved, God can make a brand new thing look like it has been around for a while

Answer 8

Christians, at least the ones that believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis don't care about science. The Bible is 100% true and anything that says differently is of the devil.

It's willful ignorance, bliss by choice.

Answer 9

Look here for some... ... interesting answers.

Among other things he claims carbon dating is not accurate. And that there was a layer of ice in the atmosphere that came down or something like that.

Answer 10

they didn't understand things like the circulation of water. THEY DID read the Bible.
This discussion is foolish as the Bible tells the story in its own way, it is poetry and should be read that way.
It is not a collection of facts, it is a way to explain things so everyone could understand it at that time. Don't read The Bible letter by letter.

Answer 11

I say with God all things are possible! Science is not exact! and the water came from the rain, the oceans and seas and rivers! Perhaps He melted the polar ice caps!