[asa] Evolution in the Bible

Michael wrote:
  Here some problems with his ideas;
   
  Who is the observer?
  Someone likely chosen by God. These are the first words of the Bible establishing God as Creator. Further, it gives great support for the first commandment as it rules out any other god as a creator.
   
  On what grounds do you assume a dream? Nothing in the text.
  Agreed. Unlike John in Revelations, nothing is stated to clarify this issue. But, I am not sure that an actual witness going off-world for the puropse of observing creation would have a clear understanding of whether it was a vision or not. Frankly, I'm not sure how I would handle it. I would probably not make a claim either way, but would just write what I saw.
   
  The firmament is a solid dome not sky
  Agreed. The firmament came before the Earth; no Earth, no sky.
   
  It is also supposition upon supposition.
  I suppose. Objective evidence should exist in any detailed creation story since this is an area that science offers scrutiny. Interestingly, what I see happening is that modern astromony now has evidence that may support one literal interpretation. It can't prove it, but plausibility may be emerging.
   
  Why not simply accept that Genesis 1 was a way of presenting God as creator to the ancient Hebrews in a way they could understand from an ANE background with no modern science. After so many failed attempts of harmonies and concordances in the last three centuries why suggest another one.
  Why not? My view is yet another one in addition to this one. Some things take time and much effort. Attempts to explain the blue sky failed for thousands of years. Even Rayleigh had it wrong in his first and powerful dimensional analysis approach, though he was close. [Maxwell's work enlightened him for the best known solution.]
   
  If science requires many steps to reveal the truth to which interpretation is correct for our phsyical world, then why not for Genesis. This makes great sense to me if we consider that it may be God at work at this, after all. If Genesis had offered quarks and Big Bang Theory and dozens of other prescient bits of knowledge as proof of its integrity, then what happens to faith? It is displaced with knowing.
   
  Either go for the framework idea or regard Genesis 1 as a hymn/poem to the creator written in terms of ANE cosmology?
  There are just too many exciting things happening in science to not use it for our edification. If the account in Genesis is an actual eye-witness account or a God given vision, then we will have to wait till science can catch-up. Of course, this does not mean that science is wrong. Evolution, Big Bang Theory, and essentially all of mainstream science is far closer to the truth than not.
   
  Indeed, it is today's mainstream theories that encourage a view I am strongly entertaining. Namely, that the word "waters" stated for day 1 and 2 may easily have been the best word to describe how our nascent solar systems disk appeared. Rayleigh Scattering that gives us our blue sky is not a mechanism unique to Earth. From space, the northern atmosphere of Saturn is very blue as would be seen with the natural eye. [For reasons unknown, the sky is nearly cloud free there.] Reflection nebula are blue due to Rayleigh Scattering, too. However, these would not appear blue to the unaided eye since the flux is much too low to trigger responses for our eye's color cones. Almost all nebula appear gray since only our extremely sensitve rods detect their light. The Eskimo Nebula, however, is one example where a good telescope will allow one to see a blue ring within it.
   
  In recent years, certain elements have been discovered in meteorites that clearly show our Sun was, like most stars being born, in a nursery with others, possibly hundreds of others. Iron 60, I believe, was one of the main elements that was found that ties us to a local supernvoa early on. Thus, our proto-Sun system may have adequate illumination to allow an observer to see the huge watery blue disk surrounding the nascent Sun.
   
  I don't reject an allegorical approach, I just do not see the need to put all literal interpreations (past, present, and future) into any coffin. We surely have plenty of coffin nails for some of the interpretaions, but not necessarily all.
   
  GeorgeA

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Received on Sun Dec 2 16:41:14 2007