16 Jul 2015, 7:59 pm
nurseangela wrote:
Ok. So if one believes in the Big Bang then you would also believe that someone had to start it - God. Right?
That is the religious point of view and Pope Francis said as much in his speech. (Maybe you agree with him after all
) Quote:
Which means that an atheist couldn't believe in the Big Bang?
No. It's a religious view that certain things can only be accomplished by a conscious entity.
16 Jul 2015, 8:25 pm
16 Jul 2015, 9:12 pm
Kraichgauer
Veteran
Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 47,778
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
16 Jul 2015, 9:14 pm
16 Jul 2015, 9:43 pm
Kraichgauer
Veteran
Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 47,778
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
16 Jul 2015, 9:44 pm
TH wrote:
nurseangela wrote:
Are any of you Catholics?
I am. This actually didn't surprise me because it's right in line with what Pope JP II and Benedict said. Actually, the Big Bang Theory was actually first posited by a Catholic priest and scientist from Belgium: George Lemaitre.
Welcome to WP.
16 Jul 2015, 11:16 pm
16 Jul 2015, 11:18 pm
16 Jul 2015, 11:36 pm
Kraichgauer wrote:
TH wrote:
nurseangela wrote:
Are any of you Catholics?
I am. This actually didn't surprise me because it's right in line with what Pope JP II and Benedict said. Actually, the Big Bang Theory was actually first posited by a Catholic priest and scientist from Belgium: George Lemaitre.
Welcome to WP.
Thank you! : )
16 Jul 2015, 11:51 pm
Janissy wrote:
nurseangela wrote:
Ok. So if one believes in the Big Bang then you would also believe that someone had to start it - God. Right?
That is the religious point of view and Pope Francis said as much in his speech. (Maybe you agree with him after all
) Quote:
Which means that an atheist couldn't believe in the Big Bang?
No. It's a religious view that certain things can only be accomplished by a conscious entity.
How does that tie in with the Bible, though? It says that God made the earth in 7 days. Nothing "bangy" went on. Isn't it going against the Bible?
16 Jul 2015, 11:51 pm
Some important information is sorely needed here, in order to properly understand catholic thinking. The Pope, aka the Bishop of Rome, is not considered to be speaking ex cathedra unless he explicitly specifies that he is speaking on those grounds. What ex cathedra means, is that he is speaking for the assembly of himself and the cardinals.
This is the only instance in which Roman Catholics teach that the Pope can say something infallible; it is when the leadership of the church is in agreement. Here we do not see an example of the Pope speaking ex cathedra. See Vatican II.
And I swear, I'm not Catholic, you guys. 
I've simply read enough to play devil's advocate for many groups, including those that aren't Christian. But when it comes to Roman Catholics, Eastern and Greek Orthodox, Coptics, and other older order groups I feel they have been seriously misunderstood.
16 Jul 2015, 11:53 pm
nurseangela wrote:
Janissy wrote:
nurseangela wrote:
Ok. So if one believes in the Big Bang then you would also believe that someone had to start it - God. Right?
That is the religious point of view and Pope Francis said as much in his speech. (Maybe you agree with him after all
) Quote:
Which means that an atheist couldn't believe in the Big Bang?
No. It's a religious view that certain things can only be accomplished by a conscious entity.
How does that tie in with the Bible, though? It says that God made the earth in 7 days. Nothing "bangy" went on. Isn't it going against the Bible?
Not necessarily at all. See this post of mine:
Quote:
Here's a sampling of common misunderstandings and an academic perspective on them:
It has been supposed that Christians must believe the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old. However, there are traditions in the Talmud as old as the NT, and much discussion from the early church fathers on in which this idea isn't taken for granted at all. Augustine of Hippo is a prime example of a very pivotal name in Christian history who didn't interpret Genesis 1-3 literally, or date the rest of the OT this way either (see also Origen and Athanasius of Alexandria).
Let's examine a few facts before we dig in to this: the idea of 6,000-10,000 years and other even smaller estimates has it's first example in Jose ben Halafta's Seder Olam Rabbah, circa 160 A.D. However, this is clearly over two thousand years after Genesis was written or compiled, and in the Talmud we can see wildly divergent views on this matter. Early Christian discussion of the issue was no less divergent, with names like Clement, Africanus, Eusebius, and Jerome in favor of different literal interpretations and to name just a few individuals, Pseudo-Dionysus, Augustine, Origen, Papias, and Philo in favor of allegorical interpretations.
There are a few main questions at hand here: what is the genre of Genesis 1-3? How can we date Adam's genealogy? What does the language itself suggest about a literal six day creation, a global flood event, or Adam and Eve necessarily being the first hominids?
I think it's pretty clear that the flood was regional instead of global, Adam and Eve weren't the first hominids, there was no literal six day creation, and that it is impossible to date Adam's genealogy, for the following reasons: in the first few days before the sun and moon are even mentioned as being created, we see the word yod used. A yod is a literal day cycle, and the word itself invokes the actual image of first the sun, and then the moon, proceeding across the horizon.
At this point it's already impossible to think of the days literally because we have days being spoken of, and not in terms of a 24 hour period but a cycle of celestial bodies, before the necessary celestial bodies are even said to exist. Not only that but there is a perfect precedent for interpreting it as a theological allegory when we consider ancient Hebrews expressing themselves with acrostics. In the aleph-bet (aleph, beit, zayin, het, tet, yod, kaf/qof, lamed, etc.) used by ancient Hebrews, each member has a corresponding value as a symbolic number and can cumulatively build mathematical numbers with the others. This is called an acrostic alphabet, and most ancient Semitic languages used acrostic numerals. The symbolic significance of kaf/seven, is perfectness and completeness, qualities considered to be a reflection of and solely possessed by God.
On this basis, it is much more natural linguistically to assume that the account is an allegory meaning "God created everything with completeness and perfection". It was never intended to be a scientific account; instead it was intended to be an epic poem, that expressed artistically the manner in which God created and the theology of His relationship with Creation and Mankind. Assuming that it is somehow less "true" because of the genre is a mere insertion of modern Western thoughts into an ancient Near Eastern context, the kind of setting in which they would have been disinterested with a scientific account that didn't artistically and emotionally express theology.
As for dating Adam's genealogy, the difference between modern critical scholarship and A.D. Christian thinkers, is that they addressed it from a Hellenized perspective that didn't recognize the nature of Toledoth (the Hebrew practice of genealogy). A Hebrew person's Toledoth was a pedigree that linked him/her with any historical figures that they considered notable. Considering that, it was in no way a practice of preserving chronology. When we see in our English text "Adam begat, Seth begat, Jarrod begat, Hasharad begat" the word translated into "begat" is mizopan, which in Hebrew means "from the seed of". In no way does mizopan mean the very next generation (other qualifiers are necessary to be that specific), and all of these A.D. dating systems based on Hellenic thinking or similar A.D. Jewish ignorance of Toledoth, happened to use arbitrary methods of dating like "I'm going to assume that each generation equals forty years, and just add up the number of 'generations' in Adam's genealogy so I can multiply it by that". It must be emphasized that it is impossible to chronologically understand the type of genealogy that is purposely not chronological, but rather is used as a historical pedigree.
Are Adam and Eve the first humans? The bible flat out disagrees with that notion where Cain, who has killed his only brother Abel, gets banished and lives among other people. What they are instead, is the first hominids to enter into a relationship with God and be made in His image. God "breathes life into Adam's nostrils" and literally in doing so imparts His nefesh/spirit. This nefesh means that Adam is being given a special reasoning capacity, such that he has dominion over the environment and can contemplate and name creation, hence his naming the animals, feeling shame at his failure, being able to commune with God, etc. The tselem/image and dmuwth/likeness, respectively meaning in Hebrew "shade, or lesser version of" and "resemblance", is tied directly to the specific name being used for God: Elohim. Elohim signifies dominion and majesty, and the second part of Genesis 1:26 hammers in this association between the resemblance, and the very meaning of God's first biblical name (one of many that are all theological adjectives for Him), by telling us what Mankind will have dominion over.
And now we finish with some discussion of a global flood. I think I only need to raise two points to debunk this entirely: erets, which has been popularly translated as "the whole earth" in the story of Noah, actually means "mud/dirt" in it's most literal sense and has been translated according to context all throughout the bible as "mud", "field", "land", "province", "dominion", etc. It can signify anything from a single farm to an entire empire. So, as we can see now, there is no basic linguistic necessity for the flood being global. Is there proper context for such a translation? I should hardly think so, given that all of these newly endowed hominids turned into Mankind, were still in a pretty limited geographical region.
In fact, given a general sense of the rivers and landmasses named so far (although there are a few geographical names that still puzzle scholars here), it's obvious that Cain and Adam's respective tribes were still right around Mesopotamia. Given that, we've got two relatively small groups which have just started to domesticate animals and develop complex culture, living betwixt the Tigris and Euphrates, which are two rivers known to flood violently and on an unpredictable basis. Considering all of this, it would be awfully contrived to say that God flooded the whole earth when He could have accomplished the same goal by flooding a region smaller than a county.
When I think of all of this, I feel that at the very least these should be regarded as compelling accounts, as a beautiful literary accomplishment.
It has been supposed that Christians must believe the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old. However, there are traditions in the Talmud as old as the NT, and much discussion from the early church fathers on in which this idea isn't taken for granted at all. Augustine of Hippo is a prime example of a very pivotal name in Christian history who didn't interpret Genesis 1-3 literally, or date the rest of the OT this way either (see also Origen and Athanasius of Alexandria).
Let's examine a few facts before we dig in to this: the idea of 6,000-10,000 years and other even smaller estimates has it's first example in Jose ben Halafta's Seder Olam Rabbah, circa 160 A.D. However, this is clearly over two thousand years after Genesis was written or compiled, and in the Talmud we can see wildly divergent views on this matter. Early Christian discussion of the issue was no less divergent, with names like Clement, Africanus, Eusebius, and Jerome in favor of different literal interpretations and to name just a few individuals, Pseudo-Dionysus, Augustine, Origen, Papias, and Philo in favor of allegorical interpretations.
There are a few main questions at hand here: what is the genre of Genesis 1-3? How can we date Adam's genealogy? What does the language itself suggest about a literal six day creation, a global flood event, or Adam and Eve necessarily being the first hominids?
I think it's pretty clear that the flood was regional instead of global, Adam and Eve weren't the first hominids, there was no literal six day creation, and that it is impossible to date Adam's genealogy, for the following reasons: in the first few days before the sun and moon are even mentioned as being created, we see the word yod used. A yod is a literal day cycle, and the word itself invokes the actual image of first the sun, and then the moon, proceeding across the horizon.
At this point it's already impossible to think of the days literally because we have days being spoken of, and not in terms of a 24 hour period but a cycle of celestial bodies, before the necessary celestial bodies are even said to exist. Not only that but there is a perfect precedent for interpreting it as a theological allegory when we consider ancient Hebrews expressing themselves with acrostics. In the aleph-bet (aleph, beit, zayin, het, tet, yod, kaf/qof, lamed, etc.) used by ancient Hebrews, each member has a corresponding value as a symbolic number and can cumulatively build mathematical numbers with the others. This is called an acrostic alphabet, and most ancient Semitic languages used acrostic numerals. The symbolic significance of kaf/seven, is perfectness and completeness, qualities considered to be a reflection of and solely possessed by God.
On this basis, it is much more natural linguistically to assume that the account is an allegory meaning "God created everything with completeness and perfection". It was never intended to be a scientific account; instead it was intended to be an epic poem, that expressed artistically the manner in which God created and the theology of His relationship with Creation and Mankind. Assuming that it is somehow less "true" because of the genre is a mere insertion of modern Western thoughts into an ancient Near Eastern context, the kind of setting in which they would have been disinterested with a scientific account that didn't artistically and emotionally express theology.
As for dating Adam's genealogy, the difference between modern critical scholarship and A.D. Christian thinkers, is that they addressed it from a Hellenized perspective that didn't recognize the nature of Toledoth (the Hebrew practice of genealogy). A Hebrew person's Toledoth was a pedigree that linked him/her with any historical figures that they considered notable. Considering that, it was in no way a practice of preserving chronology. When we see in our English text "Adam begat, Seth begat, Jarrod begat, Hasharad begat" the word translated into "begat" is mizopan, which in Hebrew means "from the seed of". In no way does mizopan mean the very next generation (other qualifiers are necessary to be that specific), and all of these A.D. dating systems based on Hellenic thinking or similar A.D. Jewish ignorance of Toledoth, happened to use arbitrary methods of dating like "I'm going to assume that each generation equals forty years, and just add up the number of 'generations' in Adam's genealogy so I can multiply it by that". It must be emphasized that it is impossible to chronologically understand the type of genealogy that is purposely not chronological, but rather is used as a historical pedigree.
Are Adam and Eve the first humans? The bible flat out disagrees with that notion where Cain, who has killed his only brother Abel, gets banished and lives among other people. What they are instead, is the first hominids to enter into a relationship with God and be made in His image. God "breathes life into Adam's nostrils" and literally in doing so imparts His nefesh/spirit. This nefesh means that Adam is being given a special reasoning capacity, such that he has dominion over the environment and can contemplate and name creation, hence his naming the animals, feeling shame at his failure, being able to commune with God, etc. The tselem/image and dmuwth/likeness, respectively meaning in Hebrew "shade, or lesser version of" and "resemblance", is tied directly to the specific name being used for God: Elohim. Elohim signifies dominion and majesty, and the second part of Genesis 1:26 hammers in this association between the resemblance, and the very meaning of God's first biblical name (one of many that are all theological adjectives for Him), by telling us what Mankind will have dominion over.
And now we finish with some discussion of a global flood. I think I only need to raise two points to debunk this entirely: erets, which has been popularly translated as "the whole earth" in the story of Noah, actually means "mud/dirt" in it's most literal sense and has been translated according to context all throughout the bible as "mud", "field", "land", "province", "dominion", etc. It can signify anything from a single farm to an entire empire. So, as we can see now, there is no basic linguistic necessity for the flood being global. Is there proper context for such a translation? I should hardly think so, given that all of these newly endowed hominids turned into Mankind, were still in a pretty limited geographical region.
In fact, given a general sense of the rivers and landmasses named so far (although there are a few geographical names that still puzzle scholars here), it's obvious that Cain and Adam's respective tribes were still right around Mesopotamia. Given that, we've got two relatively small groups which have just started to domesticate animals and develop complex culture, living betwixt the Tigris and Euphrates, which are two rivers known to flood violently and on an unpredictable basis. Considering all of this, it would be awfully contrived to say that God flooded the whole earth when He could have accomplished the same goal by flooding a region smaller than a county.
When I think of all of this, I feel that at the very least these should be regarded as compelling accounts, as a beautiful literary accomplishment.
Last edited by Lukecash12 on 16 Jul 2015, 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
16 Jul 2015, 11:54 pm
17 Jul 2015, 12:02 am
17 Jul 2015, 12:04 am
17 Jul 2015, 12:06 am
| Similar Topics | |
|---|---|
| Pope Francis Says LGBT Blessings are for Individuals |
29 Jan 2024, 3:59 am |
| Francis Scott Key Bridge collapses after hit by ship |
30 Mar 2024, 12:50 pm |
| Faith (feat. techstepgenr8tion) |
09 Feb 2024, 11:15 am |
| Intelligent design has no place in science classrooms. |
17 Mar 2024, 8:20 pm |
