God, creation and humanity

[Charity]

Originally Posted by angellous_evangellous

I never knew that I was so virtuous.

A man of many talents......and much country music....

[Ringer]

Originally Posted by Jayhawker Soule

I disagree. See here.

I was reading through this thread and had a few questions. My main questions being...

These few different translations indicate that creation ex nihilo isn't an open a shut case. The consensus being that God used the chaos (desert waste) to bring order. Where or when did this chaos originate? If God is eternal and assumingly existed before the chaos, wouldn't that mean God would have to create the chaos before he brought order to it or is the implication that chaos has always been, in the same was that God has always been?

[angellous_evangellous]

Originally Posted by Charity

A man of many talents......and much country music....

It's truly unbelievable that Hootie has been on the same stage as Willie. It's disturbing and confusing.

Billy Bob's is supposed to stand for something. Like good music.

note:

YouTube - Willie Nelson Live at Billy Bob's Texas - "Whiskey River"
YouTube - Don't Think I Don't Think About It (Live) (Hootie at Billy Bob's - BOO!!!! BOOOO!! hisssss)

[Random]

Originally Posted by Charity

The Bible doesn't attempt to prove God, it assumes Him. The Bible begins with the assumption that God exists and that He existed eternally before He created humanity and placed life on earth. No where in the scripture is chance taught for the creation of the universe or the human race. God created matter out of nothing and formed it into living objects. The Bible does not tell us how the human race and the universe were actually created. It does assert the premise that God brought it all into being.

For me, the Biblical creation narrative suggests that the writers of Genesis were attempting to write from the perspective of God's sudden self-awareness; that I believe is what is meant by "creation". More specifically, the self-awareness of God created in Him a sense of time - ie. that there was a "time" when he was not self-aware. This led to conception(s) of things, including himself; but since it was ordered out of chaos, the gestation period between God's conception of the things created (light, animals, plants, Man etc) and the actual realization of them in terms of physical manifestation varied. This would explain why the scientific order of the appearance of things on earth differs from the Biblical order, amongst other discrepencies.

Originally Posted by Charity

Those that reject the Biblical version of creation start with presuppositions on which their claims are based. Everyone has their own assumption but is it able to be proven scientifically? On what evidence do our assumptions rest

I assumed based on subjective experimentation over a long period that physical reality and matter are illusions (albeit existential ones); and now Quantum physics is proving it slowly, atom by atom and quark by quark. There is only energy - should we call that God?

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by Autodidact

Science rests on the minimum assumptions necessary to be able to understand the world, assumptions that we all use and rely on in our daily life, such as that there is a world outside of ourselves, that it is possible to learn about it by observation, that 1 + 1 = 2, A does not equal -A, and the like. The Bible, like all religious books, makes up a long list of assumptions that are not shared, not obvious, and not generally agreed on.

To put this differently, all of what science assumes, you do too.

Some assumptions, though, are unfounded --such that there is an "ourselves" that "the world" is "outside" of (which of course places us beyond the world).

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by Ringer

If God is eternal and assumingly existed before the chaos, wouldn't that mean God would have to create the chaos before he brought order to it or is the implication that chaos has always been, in the same was that God has always been?

Yes, either

• God did it, or
• something else did it, or
• nothing did it.

Amen.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by Random

For me, the Biblical creation narrative suggests that the writers of Genesis were attempting to write from the perspective of God's sudden self-awareness; ...

... and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[angellous_evangellous]

Originally Posted by Jayhawker Soule

Yes, either

• God did it, or
• something else did it, or
• nothing did it.

Amen.

Preach it, brother!

[Random]

Originally Posted by Jayhawker Soule

... and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

True, but the literalist perspective on Genesis is only one aspect of the encoded meaning(s).