From: Jim Armstrong (jarmstro@qwest.net)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 00:26:54 EDT
richard@biblewheel.com wrote:
>[snip]
>
>I don't understand the last line. The word yatzar, used in the sentence "And
>God formed man from the dust of the ground," seems very clearly to imply
>direct form confering action, . Could you elaborate?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Richard Amiel McGough
>Discover the sevenfold symmetric perfection of the Holy Bible at
>http://www.BibleWheel.com
>
What might be your image of what happened in that man-creation event?
Thinking out loud for just a moment about what the actual process might
have looked like...
Might it have been a simple wasn't-there-a-moment-ago-but-is-now event?
Was there a flash? Or a Bang, considering the energy of formation
seemingly involved?
Or did an amorphous clay shape rise from the earth in response to unseen
influence, taking shape over seconds and then transforming into the
finished creation?
Or might there have been a slightly longer process, minutes of dust
gathering (atomic or suitable raw molecular ensembles), swirling,
coalescing, and settling into the shape and function of the finished
creation?
Perhaps it started with something more organic, nurtured, sculpted in
substance, complexity and function, layer by layer over a few hours,
until the final creation resulted?
Or could the right stuff have been put into creation's chemical retort
with just the right starting and sustaining conditions (creating an
attractor in complexity terms), so that only the additional ingredient
of time (days, years, centuries, or millenia - what's the real
difference?) was required to move from there to "ooze", and then on to
the desired result?
Which of these is wrong? Or right? Why might one think so? If these all
feel wrong, what scenario did you have in mind?
For me, the evolutionary process seems elegant, simple in essence but
incredibly fruitful, and for certain awe inspiring. It doesn't
even necessarily rule out a literal Adam and Eve, some feeling that the
"breath of God" created the essential self- and God-aware human
being at some point in the flow of man-evolution.
At the end of the day, at the very least it doesn't seem right to just
say, "I'm not sure how He did do it, but I'm absolutely sure that He
didn't do it that way!"
Ragards - JimA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Aug 01 2003 - 00:27:19 EDT