Saturday, September 24, 2011

Rewriting Genesis

In these days, many Christians are compromising their beliefs to fit into the world. One way they are doing this is by trying to fit evolution into the Bible. One of the ways they are doing this is "You're stupid for limiting God, He could have used evolution if He wanted to!" However, what they fail to see, is that the Creator TOLD us that He did not use evolution. The creation account is clearly written. If you wanted to write Genesis in such a way that it is obvious the Almighty created everything about 6,000 years ago, in 6 literal 24 hour days, you would leave it just the way it is. On the other hand, if you wanted to write Genesis in such a way that it is obvious the Almighty used evolution and millions of years, it would need to be entirely rewritten. So, I will show you a post I made on another forum recently, where I did just that:

In the video we watched for this week it was mentioned that to clearly state that creation took place in 6 literal, 24 hour days you would write it just the way it is. However, to clearly state that God used long periods of time to create everything you would need to rewrite not only Genesis, but the entire Bible. I decided what it would be like to rewrite just the first chapter (roughly). Tell me what you all think.

"In the beginning, God created nothing. There was no earth yet, and everything was rather boring and empty, so God said 'Let there be light' and nothing exploded and started expanding over billions of years to form the universe. And God saw that this huge, powerful and random explosion that created all light and matter in the universe was good. Since there was no earth and sun yet, He couldn't name the difference between day and night, so He sat around for a few billion years."

"God was bored again and decided to shake things up, so He took some of the random matter expanding through space and directed it to form into the earth over billions of years before creating the sun. Suddenly bored of a giant ball of rocks and lava, He decided to make turn it all into water over billions of years, and He then separated some of the water from the rest with an expanse in the sky. Seeing this work He had done over billions of years, and the earth floating there for no apparent reason, He called it good."

"Bored with just a big ball of water and a bunch of random fire and junk floating through space, He decided to make plants. So over millions of years, he made some of the minerals floating in the mud across the face of the earth and had it evolve into plants. After about the first day, He realized that the plants early ancestors wouldn't even be able to survive without the sun... and that caused a dilema. However, He saw this as very good."

"After having created the plants, God decided it would be a good time to create the sun. [from this point onwards I am adding to what I wrote in the post] After waiting millions of years for the plants to form, while supernaturally holding them together, He finally had some of the swirling gas in space create the giant reactor hanging in the sky now. While doing this, He also caused some floating rocks to start crashing together and form the moon. He would later use these two floating objects, the sun and moon, to signify the difference between night and day. After supernaturally causing the plants to survive for millions of years without the light of the sun, they finally got a break. Looking upon the millions of years of rotting plant matter, horrible weather conditions, and cosmic explosions, He saw it as good."

For this rewrite, I tried to keep the order that we see written in the Bible and explain those through natural processes. As you see, it doesn't work. The Bible says the earth came before the sun, evolution REQUIRES that the sun came first. Evolution also requires only natural processes and no guidance from God. As you can see, in that couldn't happen. Now you either have a choice in this matter, believe what the Bible says as it was written, or believe one of man's constantly changing opinions on the matter. The two don't fit together.

2 comments:

  1. I think you have to go through Isaiah chapters 40-44 e.g.,"It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:..." Genesis alone doesn't give us the dynamic involved but is concerned more with the reasons for creation. Just as there was a spreading out in Genesis, there is a regeneration in Matthew 19:28 (Palingenesis). This likely refers back to Isaiah 34:4 "And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree."

    In short this is a complicated issue where time is nonlinear and discontinuous, yet contiguous. I think you would enjoy Chuck Missler's and Lambert Dolphin's works on Genesis on creation in general. Take a look at http://ldolphin.org/time.html - it is kind of fun, but limited to time. Lambert has some great reading on Genesis, variations in the speed of light and Missler gives good commentaries on the Bible.

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  2. I'm sure that this made God laugh ;)

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