But then in a DC circuit, dimmers would no longer function, since they rely on the alternating current to turn the light on and off 120 times a second.
Hahaha, nothing's changed. That's why I think the article is so funny...AOL's phone agents are authorized to do just about anything possible to keep a person subscribed. I keep telling my mom to get DSL, but she's been on free AOL for...wow, I can't remember the last time she paid. But the person was right who said the free trial isn't worth it...Stuff takes over your computer.
To interpret something literally is to take the primary interpretation of the passage, if it makes any logical sense, unless dictated otherwise by the context. When the primary meaning of a passage makes "common" sense, we should seek no other, but take each word literally, by its dictionary definition, unless the immediate context says otherwise...If the Bible's literal meaning is not correct, there is no way of knowing which interpretation is. If the Bible is the Word of God and God gave it to reveal truth to us, then there must be a logical way to discern what it means without each person guessing his/her own metaphorical interpretation.
Isaiah 17:1 says: "The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap." I take this to mean Damascus will literally stop being a city, and be wholly destroyed, because it is the clearest meaning. When the Bible says Jonah was in a whale, I believe it, because it's the simple, 2nd-grade meaning of the passage without going deeper, and it makes common sense, although people disagree with it on other grounds.
In John 10:9, Jesus said: "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." I take this metaphorically instead of literally because the literal interpretation does not make common sense, for Jesus to be a walking, talking door. There is no reason to indicate the passage is literal--on the contrary, the context explains that Jesus is the door meaning He is the way of entrance, and this fits with other Scripture that says Jesus is the only way to Heaven.
No, I'm just saying the Bible doesn't teach three gods, so there is no grounds in saying it states that 1 == 3. The Bible says there is only one God. If it said there are three *gods*, that would be a real contradiction. Instead, it teaches a trinity, but the definition of that word excludes three gods--that would be tritheism or a triad. Jesus said "I and my Father are one," and the trinity teaches that three persons are one in essence. There are a variety of viable explanations (though many may disagree) for the tri-unity; some look no further than man, created in the image of God, with body, soul, and spirit. Certainly God is infinitely more complex than us, and understanding the infinite would blow our minds, but it's a starting point to the trinity dilemma.
Whether it's Christianity or evolution...well, I think it's both. It's Christianity fitting into the evolutionary mold, and I think holding science above the Bible in that manner (although I do think my faith is scientifically tenable) makes science a religion of sorts, since it is taking the primary position (I like 1 Timothy 6:20, KJV, as far as that goes). I don't think these Christians are going to find any missing links, because millions of people looking at a few chapters in Genesis is not something that's going to take years to decipher--the ideas are either there or they aren't. As far as fossil dating, it's interesting that evolutionary geologists date fossils by the rocks they are in, yet they date the rocks by the fossils that are in them (circular reasoning).
If the Bible is the Word of God, which is a viewpoint generally taken by Christians, then God is speaking to humanity...How are we to understand Him if not literally? If the primary meaning of a passage seems to make sense literally, then it should be taken as such unless there are clear indications to the contrary in the immediate context. Otherwise you have people guessing at a whole myriad of metaphorical interpretations (and also the literal) and no way to know for sure. If somebody holds that the Bible isn't of God, then that's more acceptable, but God cannot lie.
It's definitely possible to be a "thinking Christian" and not believe in evolution. Secular scientists have written against evolutionism, so it's not as clear-cut an issue as some choose to make it. I'm convinced by the non-biblical evidence that creationism occurred, but that is somewhat beside the point.
I believe you mean center of the galaxy, not universe, because those are completely different issues. As far as the whole Catholic Church debacle goes, the Bible never hints that the earth is flat (it actually suggests otherwise) and everything revolves around it. The RCC was simply buying into manmade traditions. Genesis 1 is completely different.
The ground was cursed after Adam's sin, and the flood certainly changed things as well. It's highly probable the plants at the time provided the adequate nutrition. I do believe in microevolution--that is, the gradual filtering of inherent, preexisting genetic traits within an invidivual. I don't believe evolution ever adds new genetic information. At the time of creation, all animals, and men, ate plants:
Genesis 1:29-30 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
In Genesis 9:1-3, God gives Noah explicit permission to eat animals. Isaiah 65:25 says "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD," perhaps a shadow of things to come, and a picture of God's ideal.
Augustine? Romans 5:12 makes original sin quite clear! Augustine only invented Calvinism.;-)
The Bible does not teach there are three Gods. The Bible says what it says, and the clear literal meaning is creationism. Thereofre, the burden of proof should be on a person who goes against the literal meaning to show how the allegorical meaning works out. I doubt anybody things the Bible hints at evolution...What is happening is people take its clear meaning and try to read evolution in there.
I haven't really seen any plausible explanations (not proven, just vague possibilities) to bring together both Genesis and evolution being true. At the very least, it requires a potential explanation of the logical inconsistencies. Let future generations figure out the exact details, but I think at least a possible explanation is required...Currently if a person believes in evolution and tries to believe the Bible, Genesis' first few chapters are relegated to the realm of fairy tales, something in the author's imagination as a cute story to explain something, much like those in Eastern religions. It it's TRUE, however, there is still a very long way to go.
From its beginning, evolution has been a religion of "it will all be sorted out within a few hundred years, tops." This is apparently no exception.
Obviously it was a patriarchal society, and it is fairly well-accepted, throughout the Bible, that the birth of a son is treated differently than the birth of a daughter, as far as the recording of it goes...Just read a few more chapters in Genesis and look at the genaeologies. Look almost anywhere in the Bible where it lists a person's children, and it will generally show the sons only. As far as literal interpretation goes, it means taking the Bible at its word instead of twisting it metaphorically to meet our preconceived notions when there is a simple, logical literal interpretation supported by the context. That it mentions two times when Adam knew his wife does not mean there were not other times in all that span, and I think it is almost certain that they did have sex in between the mentions of it...it doesn't say otherwise, and husbands and wives do tend to do that, especially with no Internet or TV back then.
There was sufficient genetic variation in the first humans that inbreeding was not yet a problem. Inbreeding would also exist with evolution.
There is a very big difference between apparently contradictionary and actually contradictory, and I think you made that distinction yourself with the wording you used. Two actually contradictory things cannot both be true, but two apparently contradictory things can be true if you examine them on a deeper level and resolve the apparent contradiction. It is much more difficult in this case because the Bible doesn't hint at evolution, but it is something people try to read in there to make the Bible work. If they do that, I'm saying they're going to need to explain a whole lot of things if they expect to get anywhere, because there are significant repercussions if there is evolution and natural selection before sin and death, affecting a wide range of Bible doctrines that many theistic evolutionists still hold.
When I asked for examples, I meant examples of how the Hebrew wording supports some theory over creationism, namely, evolutionism. How does your (1) support evolution? It seems you're just playing the "Bible contradictions" game.
1. There's no problem. There's no way to show that there wasn't the necessary light before the sun was created. Comparing plant science of today with back then can also be iffy, before the fall and before the flood, but assuming it was pretty much the same, then big deal if they survived 24 hours without sunlight (assuming there wasn't a comparable form of light, i.e., "Let there be light"). If evolution and Genesis work together, there is a huge discrepancy with that account, by the day-age theory you were apparently arguing earlier.
2. Your explanation doesn't make much sense. According to Genesis, Adam and Eve sinned, and as a result of that, death and the curse came about.
James 1:15 says "sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" and Romans 6:23 says "the wages of sin is death." The same cause-effect relationship is evident when God warns Adam of the results of disobeying him, death. Evil wasn't about them being made aware of anything, but rather directly disobeying God's commandment. Theistic evolution and the day-age theory do not make any sense of this matter, with death existing before its cause, which is sin.
Now, it seems you take Genesis as merely a story written by men to explain things. Fine.
My main argument is against people in Christendom who claim the Bible is the Word of God, as the Catholic Church does, and then try to maintain God's Word is true by allegorizing its meaning when it disagrees with what fallible men tell them.
People try to grapple with the word "yom" and neglect to explain how there can be millions of years of death and sin before the fall, which brought death and sin. Anyway, as far as yom goes, it's in the OT 2301 times, and, neglecting Genesis 1, used with an ordinal number (410 times), it always means a normal day, same whhen used with both "evening" and "morning" (38 times) and yom + either "evening" or "morning" (23 times) and yom + "night" (52 times). These clues in the context make the meaning clear, yet if it weren't a normal day, there would still be other things to worry about (e.g., if promoting evolution, then death before sin).
1. That would lean toward a 24-hour day, if they had to survive for a day without the sun. At the beginning when God said "let there be light" and the sun didn't exist, there are obviously other forms of light possible, so there is no contradiction.
2. They married their sisters (gasp!).
He could have had sisters at that time, for one thing, and Adam and Eve would've probably been fairly wroth. In Genesis 5:4, we see Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. Obviously Cain assumed there would be more a'comin', and he was right, and would have had good reason to fear them in the future. The wording "...every one that findeth me shall slay me" would allow for that.
If you're going to believe in the Bible and the main tenets of Christianity, then you need to get your head out of the sand and see what it obviously says. If you can show me how any of the passages in the Hebrew don't support creationism, then go for it, but the Bible clearly teaches that God created Adam, and then Adam sinned and death after that. To pretend that a straightforward concept can't be translated from Hebrew to English is ignorant unless you can show it specifically.
And the creation/evolution debate isn't as clear-cut as you make it, from a purely empirical standpoint, by saying to believe in the former is to "chuck all observable logic out the window."
Genesis and evolution: Believe one or the other is true, but not both. To believe that man is made in God's image is not compatible with evolution. Having hundreds of millions of years of death and suffering (i.e., natural selection) BEFORE original sin is not compatible with Genesis. Genesis 3:17-18 and Romans 8:19-22. The first day (yom), the second day, evening and morning, and so on, are very literal wordings. Claiming to be written by God's own finger, Exodus 20:11 affirms the literal interpretation. In Mark 10:6, Jesus affirms creation. If you want to allegorize the literal six-day creation presented in Genesis, then you're also going to have to allegorize sin and the fall, and therefore judgment, redemption, the cross, and most things about Jesus. If you're going to admit to all of that, then there's no point in holding on to any form of Christianity any longer. Take a position, but don't try to hold two contradictory positions simultaneously. The Bible is all divinely inspired or none of it is. Believe God or believe man.
Jesus said it best: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"
1 Corinthians 7:1-9 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. (2) Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. (3) Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. (4) The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. (5) Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. (6) But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. (7) For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. (8) I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. (9) But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
Hooray for infinite loops. I think I've downloaded their program a few hundred times by now...If we can get enough people on this for long enough, we'll pass Firefox soon enough...What's it at, 65 million?
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But then in a DC circuit, dimmers would no longer function, since they rely on the alternating current to turn the light on and off 120 times a second.
Hahaha, nothing's changed. That's why I think the article is so funny...AOL's phone agents are authorized to do just about anything possible to keep a person subscribed. I keep telling my mom to get DSL, but she's been on free AOL for...wow, I can't remember the last time she paid. But the person was right who said the free trial isn't worth it...Stuff takes over your computer.
It was quite obviously a joke...
To interpret something literally is to take the primary interpretation of the passage, if it makes any logical sense, unless dictated otherwise by the context. When the primary meaning of a passage makes "common" sense, we should seek no other, but take each word literally, by its dictionary definition, unless the immediate context says otherwise...If the Bible's literal meaning is not correct, there is no way of knowing which interpretation is. If the Bible is the Word of God and God gave it to reveal truth to us, then there must be a logical way to discern what it means without each person guessing his/her own metaphorical interpretation. Isaiah 17:1 says: "The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap." I take this to mean Damascus will literally stop being a city, and be wholly destroyed, because it is the clearest meaning. When the Bible says Jonah was in a whale, I believe it, because it's the simple, 2nd-grade meaning of the passage without going deeper, and it makes common sense, although people disagree with it on other grounds. In John 10:9, Jesus said: "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." I take this metaphorically instead of literally because the literal interpretation does not make common sense, for Jesus to be a walking, talking door. There is no reason to indicate the passage is literal--on the contrary, the context explains that Jesus is the door meaning He is the way of entrance, and this fits with other Scripture that says Jesus is the only way to Heaven. No, I'm just saying the Bible doesn't teach three gods, so there is no grounds in saying it states that 1 == 3. The Bible says there is only one God. If it said there are three *gods*, that would be a real contradiction. Instead, it teaches a trinity, but the definition of that word excludes three gods--that would be tritheism or a triad. Jesus said "I and my Father are one," and the trinity teaches that three persons are one in essence. There are a variety of viable explanations (though many may disagree) for the tri-unity; some look no further than man, created in the image of God, with body, soul, and spirit. Certainly God is infinitely more complex than us, and understanding the infinite would blow our minds, but it's a starting point to the trinity dilemma. Whether it's Christianity or evolution...well, I think it's both. It's Christianity fitting into the evolutionary mold, and I think holding science above the Bible in that manner (although I do think my faith is scientifically tenable) makes science a religion of sorts, since it is taking the primary position (I like 1 Timothy 6:20, KJV, as far as that goes). I don't think these Christians are going to find any missing links, because millions of people looking at a few chapters in Genesis is not something that's going to take years to decipher--the ideas are either there or they aren't. As far as fossil dating, it's interesting that evolutionary geologists date fossils by the rocks they are in, yet they date the rocks by the fossils that are in them (circular reasoning).
If the Bible is the Word of God, which is a viewpoint generally taken by Christians, then God is speaking to humanity...How are we to understand Him if not literally? If the primary meaning of a passage seems to make sense literally, then it should be taken as such unless there are clear indications to the contrary in the immediate context. Otherwise you have people guessing at a whole myriad of metaphorical interpretations (and also the literal) and no way to know for sure. If somebody holds that the Bible isn't of God, then that's more acceptable, but God cannot lie. It's definitely possible to be a "thinking Christian" and not believe in evolution. Secular scientists have written against evolutionism, so it's not as clear-cut an issue as some choose to make it. I'm convinced by the non-biblical evidence that creationism occurred, but that is somewhat beside the point. I believe you mean center of the galaxy, not universe, because those are completely different issues. As far as the whole Catholic Church debacle goes, the Bible never hints that the earth is flat (it actually suggests otherwise) and everything revolves around it. The RCC was simply buying into manmade traditions. Genesis 1 is completely different. The ground was cursed after Adam's sin, and the flood certainly changed things as well. It's highly probable the plants at the time provided the adequate nutrition. I do believe in microevolution--that is, the gradual filtering of inherent, preexisting genetic traits within an invidivual. I don't believe evolution ever adds new genetic information. At the time of creation, all animals, and men, ate plants: Genesis 1:29-30 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. In Genesis 9:1-3, God gives Noah explicit permission to eat animals. Isaiah 65:25 says "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD," perhaps a shadow of things to come, and a picture of God's ideal.
Augustine? Romans 5:12 makes original sin quite clear! Augustine only invented Calvinism. ;-)
The Bible does not teach there are three Gods. The Bible says what it says, and the clear literal meaning is creationism. Thereofre, the burden of proof should be on a person who goes against the literal meaning to show how the allegorical meaning works out. I doubt anybody things the Bible hints at evolution...What is happening is people take its clear meaning and try to read evolution in there.
I haven't really seen any plausible explanations (not proven, just vague possibilities) to bring together both Genesis and evolution being true. At the very least, it requires a potential explanation of the logical inconsistencies. Let future generations figure out the exact details, but I think at least a possible explanation is required...Currently if a person believes in evolution and tries to believe the Bible, Genesis' first few chapters are relegated to the realm of fairy tales, something in the author's imagination as a cute story to explain something, much like those in Eastern religions. It it's TRUE, however, there is still a very long way to go.
From its beginning, evolution has been a religion of "it will all be sorted out within a few hundred years, tops." This is apparently no exception.
Obviously it was a patriarchal society, and it is fairly well-accepted, throughout the Bible, that the birth of a son is treated differently than the birth of a daughter, as far as the recording of it goes...Just read a few more chapters in Genesis and look at the genaeologies. Look almost anywhere in the Bible where it lists a person's children, and it will generally show the sons only. As far as literal interpretation goes, it means taking the Bible at its word instead of twisting it metaphorically to meet our preconceived notions when there is a simple, logical literal interpretation supported by the context. That it mentions two times when Adam knew his wife does not mean there were not other times in all that span, and I think it is almost certain that they did have sex in between the mentions of it...it doesn't say otherwise, and husbands and wives do tend to do that, especially with no Internet or TV back then. There was sufficient genetic variation in the first humans that inbreeding was not yet a problem. Inbreeding would also exist with evolution.
There is a very big difference between apparently contradictionary and actually contradictory, and I think you made that distinction yourself with the wording you used. Two actually contradictory things cannot both be true, but two apparently contradictory things can be true if you examine them on a deeper level and resolve the apparent contradiction. It is much more difficult in this case because the Bible doesn't hint at evolution, but it is something people try to read in there to make the Bible work. If they do that, I'm saying they're going to need to explain a whole lot of things if they expect to get anywhere, because there are significant repercussions if there is evolution and natural selection before sin and death, affecting a wide range of Bible doctrines that many theistic evolutionists still hold.
When I asked for examples, I meant examples of how the Hebrew wording supports some theory over creationism, namely, evolutionism. How does your (1) support evolution? It seems you're just playing the "Bible contradictions" game. 1. There's no problem. There's no way to show that there wasn't the necessary light before the sun was created. Comparing plant science of today with back then can also be iffy, before the fall and before the flood, but assuming it was pretty much the same, then big deal if they survived 24 hours without sunlight (assuming there wasn't a comparable form of light, i.e., "Let there be light"). If evolution and Genesis work together, there is a huge discrepancy with that account, by the day-age theory you were apparently arguing earlier. 2. Your explanation doesn't make much sense. According to Genesis, Adam and Eve sinned, and as a result of that, death and the curse came about. James 1:15 says "sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" and Romans 6:23 says "the wages of sin is death." The same cause-effect relationship is evident when God warns Adam of the results of disobeying him, death. Evil wasn't about them being made aware of anything, but rather directly disobeying God's commandment. Theistic evolution and the day-age theory do not make any sense of this matter, with death existing before its cause, which is sin. Now, it seems you take Genesis as merely a story written by men to explain things. Fine. My main argument is against people in Christendom who claim the Bible is the Word of God, as the Catholic Church does, and then try to maintain God's Word is true by allegorizing its meaning when it disagrees with what fallible men tell them.
People try to grapple with the word "yom" and neglect to explain how there can be millions of years of death and sin before the fall, which brought death and sin. Anyway, as far as yom goes, it's in the OT 2301 times, and, neglecting Genesis 1, used with an ordinal number (410 times), it always means a normal day, same whhen used with both "evening" and "morning" (38 times) and yom + either "evening" or "morning" (23 times) and yom + "night" (52 times). These clues in the context make the meaning clear, yet if it weren't a normal day, there would still be other things to worry about (e.g., if promoting evolution, then death before sin). 1. That would lean toward a 24-hour day, if they had to survive for a day without the sun. At the beginning when God said "let there be light" and the sun didn't exist, there are obviously other forms of light possible, so there is no contradiction. 2. They married their sisters (gasp!).
He could have had sisters at that time, for one thing, and Adam and Eve would've probably been fairly wroth. In Genesis 5:4, we see Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. Obviously Cain assumed there would be more a'comin', and he was right, and would have had good reason to fear them in the future. The wording "...every one that findeth me shall slay me" would allow for that.
If you're going to believe in the Bible and the main tenets of Christianity, then you need to get your head out of the sand and see what it obviously says. If you can show me how any of the passages in the Hebrew don't support creationism, then go for it, but the Bible clearly teaches that God created Adam, and then Adam sinned and death after that. To pretend that a straightforward concept can't be translated from Hebrew to English is ignorant unless you can show it specifically. And the creation/evolution debate isn't as clear-cut as you make it, from a purely empirical standpoint, by saying to believe in the former is to "chuck all observable logic out the window."
Genesis and evolution: Believe one or the other is true, but not both. To believe that man is made in God's image is not compatible with evolution. Having hundreds of millions of years of death and suffering (i.e., natural selection) BEFORE original sin is not compatible with Genesis. Genesis 3:17-18 and Romans 8:19-22. The first day (yom), the second day, evening and morning, and so on, are very literal wordings. Claiming to be written by God's own finger, Exodus 20:11 affirms the literal interpretation. In Mark 10:6, Jesus affirms creation. If you want to allegorize the literal six-day creation presented in Genesis, then you're also going to have to allegorize sin and the fall, and therefore judgment, redemption, the cross, and most things about Jesus. If you're going to admit to all of that, then there's no point in holding on to any form of Christianity any longer. Take a position, but don't try to hold two contradictory positions simultaneously. The Bible is all divinely inspired or none of it is. Believe God or believe man. Jesus said it best: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"
1 Corinthians 7:1-9 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. (2) Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. (3) Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. (4) The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. (5) Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. (6) But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. (7) For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. (8) I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. (9) But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
Hooray for infinite loops. I think I've downloaded their program a few hundred times by now...If we can get enough people on this for long enough, we'll pass Firefox soon enough...What's it at, 65 million?