Is Gen 1-3 "real" or is Atheist Darwinism "Real"?

[BobRyan]

At this link the statement is made that what we find in Gen 1-3 "is not real".

... My point Canady is that the story of Adam and Eve is NOT REAL
http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=955076&postcount=15

Since the thread where this is posted is really trying to debate the issue of "Free will" and not the issue of atheist darwinism vs the book of Genesis - I decided to produce some of the arguments there - on this thread to focus on the subect the Rew_10 brought up in his quote.

Is Gen 1-3 "real" or fake? Real or "simply an easter-bunny style story from which you can draw some general principles"??

How are the "details" of the "creation account" (Gen 2:4) used in the rest of scripture?

Are they relied upon as being "real" or "fake"?

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

My initial response is to show that the Bible stands on the foundation of it's opening statement about God as our creator. It is a house of cards - (as atheists well know) that is linked back to it's opening declaration about the work of God as Creator. Those "details" are referenced at key points throughout scripture.

Just a few examples will serve to illustrate the point.

In Romans 5 Paul makes his argument from the REAL fall of the REAL Adam.

In Paul's letter to Timothy (1Tim chapter 2) Paul makes his argument from the REAL fall of the REAL Eve and the REAL temptation involved. Paul does not 'teach this' historic fact "I now announce to you that Eve was first tempted" rather he relies on the fact that the reader already has access to this historic bible truth to make his argument for order in the church. He is not arguing FOR the validity of scripture here - he ASSUMES it!

13For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
14And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.

In Exodus 20:8-11 God makes His argument from the REAL seven day creation event. God says that mankind was to observe a REAL 7 day week because "IN SIX days GOD CREATED... and RESTED the Seventh day therefore YOU are to WORK six days and REST the seventh" Exodus 20:8-11.

But imagine if you will that Paul in Romans 6 and in his letter to Timothy - and God in his own Ten Commandments were both arguing from "an EASTER BUNNY fairy tale" to make their case!!

How "different the Bible would be read today".

in Christ,

Bob

 

[Rew_10]

When I say that the Genesis account of Adam and Eve "is not real", I'm more saying that it has to be merely some sort of metaphor.

And I must ask why you must associate Darwinism with atheism. Nearly any reasonable person, after being educated in evolution, will see the mass amounts of evidence that support it, and in turn accept it. There are many, many Christians that can plainly see that belief in God and acceptance of evolution are not in opposition. With the current evidence, I also feel very certain that we also share a common ancestor with primates. Here's a short clip of Ken Miller from a lecture of his.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1zeWWIm5M

I just don't see why Christians feel that they must take so much of the Bible literally. All of the Bible was written by very fallible human beings that CLAIMED to be influenced by God. The Bible is a text that has been passed through time for 2000 years, and, without a shadow of a doubt, has been manipulated hundreds of times at least. Leon Trotsky was written out of Russian history in the past century, do you not think that a 2000 year old text hasn't been tampered with?

The same is true for the Genesis account of Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark is not possible within the physical laws of the world. I'll happily explain why if asked, but it is entirely clear why it couldn't take place. One could say that God changed the laws of nature and physics to allow it, but if we look to Occam's Razor we can easily conclude that it was either a metaphor or just a human fallacy.

I just feel that more faith should be put in God and less in the Bible. I feel sure that God does not condone the Christian treatment of homosexuals in any way. Homosexuality is a regular occurance in nature among many species and is in no way an abomination of man. Again, merely because something is written in the Bible or any religious text doesn't mean we should abide by it. Just as we don't kill our children for misbehaving or keep slaves.

 

[tragic_pizza]

Is Gen 1-3 "real" or is Atheist Darwinism "Real"?

The answer to your question is "yes."

 

[Not_hard_to_find]

When I say that the Genesis account of Adam and Eve "is not real", I'm more saying that it has to be merely some sort of metaphor.

[snipped]

I just don't see why Christians feel that they must take so much of the Bible literally. All of the Bible was written by very fallible human beings that CLAIMED to be influenced by God. The Bible is a text that has been passed through time for 2000 years, and, without a shadow of a doubt, has been manipulated hundreds of times at least. Leon Trotsky was written out of Russian history in the past century, do you not think that a 2000 year old text hasn't been tampered with?

If you negate the opening of the Bible, why retain any of it? Of what value is a metaphor?

 

[canadyjd]

Nearly any reasonable person, after being educated in evolution, will see the mass amounts of evidence that support it, and in turn accept it.

Charles Darwin said that if cells were more complex than thought at the time, evolution could not stand. Cells were thought to use very simple chemical processes for storing and using energy. We now know that cells are stunningly complex. Far more complex than Darwin imagined.

For evolution to be true, changes to an organism must occur at the DNA level. Why? Because cells cannot function without the DNA to "tell it" what to do. In fact, even the most simple cells have DNA and cannot function without it.

That means all living cells must have began with a fully intact DNA strain. Evolution cannot allow for a DNA strain to "evolve". Why? Because cells cannot function without it. DNA must have "appeared" on the scene suddenly, and fully intact, for any life to function.

Life is far too complex to be explained by evolution.

I just don't see why Christians feel that they must take so much of the Bible literally. All of the Bible was written by very fallible human beings that CLAIMED to be influenced by God.

You have a very poor understanding of the inspiration of scripture.

The Bible is a text that has been passed through time for 2000 years, and, without a shadow of a doubt, has been manipulated hundreds of times at least. Leon Trotsky was written out of Russian history in the past century, do you not think that a 2000 year old text hasn't been tampered with?

You have a very poor understanding of the textual evidence found in thousands of manuscripts that show remarkable consistency in the transmission of the text.

I just feel that more faith should be put in God and less in the Bible.

You can't know God if you don't know His Word. It is His revelation of Himself to His creation. If it is not, we have six billlion opinions about everything.

I feel sure that God does not condone the Christian treatment of homosexuals in any way. Homosexuality is a regular occurance in nature among many species and is in no way an abomination of man.

And so the reason for dismissing the authority of scripture becomes clear. If the bible isn't true, then what God said about homosexuality can be rationalized away and a more humanistic, secular view can take its place.

peace to youraying:

 

[BobRyan]

When I say that the Genesis account of Adam and Eve "is not real", I'm more saying that it has to be merely some sort of metaphor.

Understood - but I think your choice of words initially was very accurate when it comes to the "net effect".

There is a story in the OT about the trees voting for a king -- certainly we can all agree "that was not real".

We all know what that means.

The key is that in all of those "learn from the lesson of the trees voting for the king" nobody ever says "becareful what you say to your trees in this world for your tree could be voted king some day". In other words REAL behavior is not motivated by appealing to "fake details" by pretending that the event was REAL.

"FOR IN Six days the Lord MADE the heavens and the earth and rested the seventh day... therefore YOU are to work six days and rest on the Sabbath".

See?

And the same thing for "Eve was the one FIRST deceived" to argue for some kind of order between men and woman --- it does not work if the appeal is to a fairy tale.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[tinytim]

When I say that the Genesis account of Adam and Eve "is not real", I'm more saying that it has to be merely some sort of metaphor.

And I must ask why you must associate Darwinism with atheism. Nearly any reasonable person, after being educated in evolution, will see the mass amounts of evidence that support it, and in turn accept it. There are many, many Christians that can plainly see that belief in God and acceptance of evolution are not in opposition. With the current evidence, I also feel very certain that we also share a common ancestor with primates. Here's a short clip of Ken Miller from a lecture of his.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1zeWWIm5M

I just don't see why Christians feel that they must take so much of the Bible literally. All of the Bible was written by very fallible human beings that CLAIMED to be influenced by God. The Bible is a text that has been passed through time for 2000 years, and, without a shadow of a doubt, has been manipulated hundreds of times at least. Leon Trotsky was written out of Russian history in the past century, do you not think that a 2000 year old text hasn't been tampered with?

The same is true for the Genesis account of Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark is not possible within the physical laws of the world. I'll happily explain why if asked, but it is entirely clear why it couldn't take place. One could say that God changed the laws of nature and physics to allow it, but if we look to Occam's Razor we can easily conclude that it was either a metaphor or just a human fallacy.

I just feel that more faith should be put in God and less in the Bible. I feel sure that God does not condone the Christian treatment of homosexuals in any way. Homosexuality is a regular occurance in nature among many species and is in no way an abomination of man. Again, merely because something is written in the Bible or any religious text doesn't mean we should abide by it. Just as we don't kill our children for misbehaving or keep slaves.

And what church do you attend?
Do they hold your beliefs?
If so, let us know where it is, so we can let the world know to stay away from your heretical teachings.

I am glad I have a solid foundation called the Bible.
It is true whether your finite mind can explain it.
God is bigger than your mind, and He gave us the Bible.
I'll be praying for you and your church that you will wise up before you die.

 

[Helen]

The evidence is pretty strong that all of Genesis is a series of eyewitness accounts signed off by the authors themselves. Genesis is accurate historically, scientifically, theologically.

 

[BobRyan]

Charles Darwin said that if cells were more complex than thought at the time, evolution could not stand. Cells were thought to use very simple chemical processes for storing and using energy. We now know that cells are stunningly complex. Far more complex than Darwin imagined.

In fact long after Darwin they discovered the DNA code - and then we find Francis Crick (co-discoverer of DNA) concluding that this is FAR too much complexy to come about via entropy and chance.

Atheist darwinism - is a good stop-gap-solution for atheists but it is totally worthless as a science. Colin Patterson was quite right when he said that the "the act of story telling about how one thing gave rise to another is NOT science!! It is a story easy-enough-to-tell but NOT science"!!


Atheist darwinism only serves atheism - not the Genesis "account".

The Genesis account serves the Gospel - in fact it is the foundation for it.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[annsni]

You know what's interesting? The science of evolution is not complete - and there are so many things in creation that point to a creator yet the evolutionary scientists WILL not acknowledge them because then they'd have to acknowledge a creator. I'm going to believe my Lord over a bunch of men - men who definately have an agenda. God said that He created the earth and all that's on it in 6 days - and I believe that. Evidence points to that truth too. :thumbs:

 

[BobRyan]

And I must ask why you must associate Darwinism with atheism. Nearly any reasonable person, after being educated in evolution, will see the mass amounts of evidence that support it, and in turn accept it.

Darwin began is work as a Christian... but when it was over EVEN HE admitted that the doctrines central to Darwinist natural selection are so contradictory to the word of God that even HE had to choose one or the other - and HE chose his darwinist stories - and declared to the scripture to be just "so much story telling" rather than fact.

He finally had to embrace the atheism that his darwinist naturalism was serving!

But then "who was Darwin to know what Darwinism was all about" eh?

Well how about the latest example where we have TWO camps of EVOLUTIONISTS duking it out. One camp is on the "intelligent design" side of the fence and the other on the atheist darwinist side of the fence.

Now "you would think" that CHRISTIAN evolutionists would choose the intelligent design side since that is the ONLY side that has a prayer of accepting the truth of Romans 1 that declares that the invisible attributes of God "Are CLEARLY SEEN in the things that have been made".

But on this board we have seen time after time -- that even among Christians -- if they hold to darwinism they can not tolerate ANY conformity to what God declares to be fact EVEN when it comes to supporting fellow evolutionists that happen to AGREE with the concept we find in Romans 1 about "What is CLEARLY SEEN BY PAGANS to be associated with the invisible attributes of God in the things that HAVE BEEN MADE".

No clearer test exposing the underlying cancer could have been imagined.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

There are many, many Christians that can plainly see that belief in God and acceptance of evolution are not in opposition. With the current evidence, I also feel very certain that we also share a common ancestor with primates.

"Feeling certain" is one form of belief.

But as Colin Patterson pointed out - such story telling is not science.

And as Simpson proved to the world in his horse series - the fraudulent practices of evolutionists in the past have resulted in such glaring examples of story telling regarding a sequence "that never happened in all of nature" such that even atheist darwinists (acutal atheists in this case) all agree that it is "lamentable" - the way the fraud was promoted before school children.

And then there is the disconfirming evidence of Entroyp - where Isaac Asmimov boldly admits that the transition from molecule to human mind required "a massive DECREASE in entropy" no matter WHAT we see in the lab to the contrary!

How facinating for the open minded student of science!!

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Jack Matthews]

The evidence is pretty strong that all of Genesis is a series of eyewitness accounts signed off by the authors themselves. Genesis is accurate historically, scientifically, theologically.

Genesis is not an eyewitness account, at least, the beginning of it obviously is not. It is a record of oral tradition which, in and of itself in Hebrew history, is quite a powerful tradition. If you compare the two accounts of creation in Genesis, Chapter 1 with Chapter 2, you will see that the order of creation differs between the two. The first account indicates that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, after the plants and animals. But Genesis 2:5-7 shows that Adam was created prior to the plants. How do you reconcile an apparent discrepancy, especially if you are applying a literal interpretation to these scriptures? The Genesis 1 account is pretty clear that the land produced the vegetation and trees that God created on the third day, and Adam didn't appear until the sixth day. And Genesis 2 is just as clear that Adam appeared before the vegetation and trees did. Could it be that Moses, in recording creation, simply included the various versions that were part of Hebrew oral tradition, without comment? Anything in the first eleven chapters of Genesis had to come from oral tradition, and most likely the accounts of Abraham's descendants, up to Jacob or Joseph did too, since no written Hebrew language existed in their time. Unless you hold to a more contextual, historical interpretation, rather than a literal one, it is hard to explain the discrepancies.

 

[BobRyan]

Here's a short clip of Ken Miller from a lecture of his.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1zeWWIm5M

I just don't see why Christians feel that they must take so much of the Bible literally.

Suppose we ignore all the Bible examples where THE VERY DETAILS given i Gen 1-3 were appealed to as fact (the ones I SHOW at the start of this thread ) as you are doing now.

Imagine then that the Atheist Darwinist "doctrines" are inserted as "fact" in place of God's Word - and THEN we try and see how this destroys the Gospel.

Ready?

Take your example above...

"And then through starvation, carnage and extinction God eventually evolved both APE and Man on parallel tracks. But one day as hominids by the millions sat bashing in their daily catch of monkey-brains God decided to doom them all to hell because one of them -- lets call him Adam-- had a bad thought".

"And then as God observed them slinking about their caves - He decided to RESCUE them from that hell-to come by sending His Son after they all were sufficiently walking upright so that ONCE again they could be returned to that paradise from which they fell".

What a joke this makes of the Gospel itself!!

And then there is the Law of God ITSELF "for in SIX DAYS the LORD MADE the heavens and the earth ... well not really ... but just pretend ... then in the same way suppose you were to not-really work for six days then not-really rest on the Seventh day... yeah that's it -- you know kinda like that -- but not really".

What kind of Bible would we have?

Can the Creator be trusted?

Can His Word be Trusted as the "account" it SAYS it is?

Can Darwin be trusted to KNOW something about Darwinism's naturalism -- when HE says at the end of it all - IT IS atheism??!!

This just is not that hard of a choice.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[annsni]

You know what? Christians who believe in evolution have not done their research - Biblical or scientific. Those that believe God created the world through evolution have been fed the lie that evolution has been proven and is true science so how could that be wrong? We just watched an excellent video at church (I gave it to the pastor and he HAD to get everyone in the congregation to see it - we showed it at church and in both jr. and sr. high youth groups), and so many people who saw it said that they never heard of a lot of the stuff on the video - that they just thought that evolution was fact and there was no argument against it. That was a sad state of affairs - but we've corrected that.

You can read the entire script of the video (it's a PDF) at http://www.illustramedia.com/scripts/UnlockingtheMysteryofLifeScript.pdf

WELL worth reading. The video is spectacular - I wish you could see it. You'd see that there are scientists who even wrote some of the books on evolution - textbooks that have been used to prove it - have now said that it's wrong. These are not just Christian scientists but unsaved scientists! Also, take a look at Helen's husband's site. There is a lot of technical stuff but it's excellent stuff!

 

[BobRyan]

Genesis is not an eyewitness account, at least, the beginning of it obviously is not.

Prophets in the Bible were shown BOTH the past AND the present.

Nothing new there.

Just standard "Bible".

Abraham lived long BEFORE Moses - but Moses is SHOWN the life of Abraham by God. "ALL SCRIPTURE is INSPIRED BY GOD" 2Tim 3:16 -- remember?

OR must we toss that out the window too?

It is a record of oral tradition which, in and of itself in Hebrew history, is quite a powerful tradition.

NOTHING in scripture tells us that "Moses was just writing down old family tales it was not actually INSPIRED by God and to be used for doctrine".

By contrast with THAT story telling above - we have the actual word of God saying "ALL SCRIPTURE is GIVEN by INSPIRATION from God AND is to be used for Doctrine and instruction" 2Tim 3:16.

Your problem above - is that you are getting your "Bible" from the History Channel's "stories".

But notice how often they say "But some Scholars BELIEVE" and then they spin one of their stories.

How many stories and spurious doctrines could be "spun" today if all we had to say was "Yes but some scholars BELIEVE..." and then add whatever story we so choose??

Think about it!

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Jack said
If you compare the two accounts of creation in Genesis, Chapter 1 with Chapter 2, you will see that the order of creation differs between the two. The first account indicates that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, after the plants and animals. But Genesis 2:5-7 shows that Adam was created prior to the plants. How do you reconcile an apparent discrepancy, especially if you are applying a literal interpretation to these scriptures?

Simple. Genesis 1-2:4 gives a "Chronological SEQUENCE" where the unit of time is given for EACH segment and the sequence is distinct.

Genesis 2:5-end of chapter 2 gives NO CHRONOLOGY AT ALL!

The text presumes the reader will fit the ADDED DETAILS in Gen 2 into the correct SEQUENCE and unit of time ALREADY given in chapter 1.

(A very logical thing to do IF the premise at the start is NOT "the Bible can not be trusted")

The DETAIL we have in Gen 2 is that God creates the GARDEN after creating man.. Adam and Eve but not that "Adam is created on day 2".

In Christ,

Bob

 

[annsni]

Genesis is not an eyewitness account, at least, the beginning of it obviously is not. It is a record of oral tradition which, in and of itself in Hebrew history, is quite a powerful tradition. If you compare the two accounts of creation in Genesis, Chapter 1 with Chapter 2, you will see that the order of creation differs between the two. The first account indicates that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, after the plants and animals. But Genesis 2:5-7 shows that Adam was created prior to the plants. How do you reconcile an apparent discrepancy, especially if you are applying a literal interpretation to these scriptures? The Genesis 1 account is pretty clear that the land produced the vegetation and trees that God created on the third day, and Adam didn't appear until the sixth day. And Genesis 2 is just as clear that Adam appeared before the vegetation and trees did. Could it be that Moses, in recording creation, simply included the various versions that were part of Hebrew oral tradition, without comment? Anything in the first eleven chapters of Genesis had to come from oral tradition, and most likely the accounts of Abraham's descendants, up to Jacob or Joseph did too, since no written Hebrew language existed in their time. Unless you hold to a more contextual, historical interpretation, rather than a literal one, it is hard to explain the discrepancies.

There is actually no discrepency between Genesis 1 and 2 - I'm ready for bed so here's a link for you that explains it: http://www.tektonics.org/jedp/creationtwo.html

 

[donnA]

that an easy one, the bible is always real, and you can reconcile science with unexplainable miraculous acts of God.