Absurdity in the Bible

by darth frosty 32 Replies latest jw friends

  • OBVES
    OBVES

    I have just posted the information on this thread what is the age of the universe according to the Bible .

    It is more than 15 billion years ! The scientists would agree with that age .

  • Rapunzel
    Rapunzel

    It should be noted that in the account of Noah's Ark, it is chaos that gets the upper hand over cosmos, with the Creator's complicity in the matter. In the account, it speaks of how God allows for the "waters from above and below" to inundate the earth, God's creation. Water in general, and the sea in particular, are almost universally seen as symbolic of the forces of chaos. In the Bible, Leviathan represents the chaotic force of the sea and water. In the Bible, Leviathan is God's "enemy."

  • Galileo
    Galileo

    First thing , not everybody can understand the Bible and if you have doubts about the verses of the Bible simply admit in your heart you don't understand but there might be some people already in the world who understand them. The Bible is the reflection of the infinite mind of God and it is difficult to understand and it may take years or even centuries to understand some of its verses.

    The fact there is so much division or confusion on the matter of existence of hell- whether it is or not - should already send shock waves through our bodies and cause us to pause and think how complicated the Bible can be.This is not an ordinary book and it should be so as it originated with the Creator of the endless universe we live in .

    The book of Genesis 1 should not be understood the way most people do ! They make a horrible mistake not knowing it is a description of the vision God Yahweh gave to Moses in 7 days from 40 days Moses spent on the Mount Sinai.

    The days given in Genesis 1 are the days from Moses' time when he lived and stayed on the Mount Sinai ! God Yahweh did not create the universe in literal 6 days ! The vision of creation lasted 6 days !

    So ,what we see here is a total reversal of human understanding on the creation ! For centuries mankind was in denial ! People had no slightest idea that Genesis 1 is a description of what Moses saw in 6 days .

    The literal creation based on my calculations using the Bible is over 15 billion years ! The scientists can tell you almost the same !

    6 days x 7000 years as one day with God x 360 days in a prophetic year x 1000 years for each prophetic year = over 15 billion years !

    God Yahweh continues His creation of the universe as new stars are being created so He cannot rest ! The rest given in Genesis 2.2 cannot be then a literal rest you think of ! It was symbolic and it was shown only in a vision ( like in a movie ) to Moses for a purpose.God Yahweh never rested and rests and will never rest as He upholds the whole universe every second and continues His creation of the universe.It is an on-going eternal process with no end !

    Who are you to criticize the Bible ?! You may not have understood the Bible completely what does it say !

    Wow! I never saw it that way! How could I have missed that?! Oh yeah, because I'm not a crazy person! Get some help. And remember, not all sentences need to end in an exclamation point!

  • SPAZnik
    SPAZnik
    34. God was angry because "the earth was filled with violence." So he killed every living thing to make the world less violent. 6:11-13

    Temper, temper.

    At least humans don't attempt such atrocities.

    Hey, wait ... doesn't this kind'a contradict the illustrative arguments JWs use about Why God Permits Suffering? Because like "a father can't just kill his accusers"? You know the one I mean? That whole argument about "universal sovereignty" and setting a legal precedent?

  • Anti-Christ
    Anti-Christ

    When someone wants to believe something really hard they will ignore, justify, try to explain, etc,.. things that are absurd, atrocious to balance or justify these things they refuse to accept, like a an alcoholic or a battered woman.

  • LtCmd.Lore
    LtCmd.Lore

    First thing , not everybody can understand the Bible and if you have doubts about the verses of the Bible simply admit in your heart you don't understand but there might be some people already in the world who understand them.

    Why the heck would any rational person do that?

    IF you apply that same principle to Grimms fairy tales the effect is exactly the same.

    The book of Genesis 1 should not be understood the way most people do ! They make a horrible mistake not knowing it is a description of the vision God Yahweh gave to Moses in 7 days from 40 days Moses spent on the Mount Sinai.

    There are three major problems here:

    1: Who says Moses wrote Genesis?

    2: Who says this is a description of a vision? It's written in the style of a documentation of events as they happened.

    3: Why is Yahweh to stupid to realize that his book makes absolutely no sense from a scientific perspective?

    The days given in Genesis 1 are the days from Moses' time when he lived and stayed on the Mount Sinai ! God Yahweh did not create the universe in literal 6 days ! The vision of creation lasted 6 days !

    ...

    6 days x 7000 years as one day with God x 360 days in a prophetic year x 1000 years for each prophetic year = over 15 billion years !

    So which is it? Was the vision itself 6 literal days long, or where the 6 days figurative for "Huge amounts of years"?

    And where are you pulling the 7000 years from? Also, if a day to god is 7000 years why are you multiplying it by an additional 360? And if a day to god is 7000 x 360 years then why are you multiplying it by an additional 1000?

    So in short, when god says "1 day" he actually means "2,520,000,000 years"... Does this apply to the rest of the Bible as well? Or just this ONE scenario?

    Lastly, if god is "ALL POWERFUL" then why did it take him so darned long to build the universe?

    This is what happens when you attempt to forcefit modern science into a 2000 year old book of myths.

    Who are you to criticize the Bible ?! You may not have understood the Bible completely what does it say

    And who are you to criticize The Odyssey? You may not have understood the Odyssey completely, and what it does say.

  • hotchocolate
    hotchocolate

    *** QUOTE FROM JOURNEY-ON: ***

    In the book, "The Science of God" by Gerald Schroeder, the above description is about the creation of the universe; light separating from dark and occurred about 15,750,000,000 years ago. Science would call it "The Big Bang" where light literally broke free as electrons bond to atomic nuclei and galaxies start to form. Day One actually ended about 7,750,000,000 years ago and that's when Day Two began where the heavenly firmament forms. Science would say the disk of Milky Way forms and Sun, a main sequence star, forms.

    Read this book....it will give you a whole new perspective on using modern language and scientific data to "explain" a lot of what sounds "silly" to most people in the scriptures.

    *** END QUOTE ***

    Hi Journey and Others.. thanks for this thread, this is my area of interest right now.. :-)

    The info from Gerald Schroeder is interesting, but IMO doesn't really fit with the Biblical account. The scripture says:

    "And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."

    So unless the electrons were flashing on a 24 hour rotational basis, it doesn't fit. The WT explanation for the whole "day/night before sun/moon" problem is that God created the luminaries on day one, but they were not visible to earth until day four, when it says:

    "14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day."

    The problem I have with this is that the Bible clearly says "God made two great lights" on day four. To re-interpret this any other way is twisting the Bible's words. I can't help thinking that the Genesis creation account was simply a basic perspective from someone with a limited knowledge of science. Someone who presumed that the light on the earth didn't eminate solely from the sun. Even the fact that the scripture says "God made two great lights" when in fact the only great light is the sun, we know the moon is a planet, not a light.

    The first chapter of Genesis seems to be written exactly as one would expect of a man that lived 3500 years ago. I'm not saying my mind is made up, but this is the conclusion I keep coming to.

    xxx

  • SPAZnik
    SPAZnik
    When someone wants to believe something really hard they will ignore, justify, try to explain, etc,.. things that are absurd, atrocious to balance or justify these things they refuse to accept, like a an alcoholic or a battered woman.

    hey Anti-Christ, would you mind repeating this statement for A Paduan's "The mind balks" thread?

  • lisavegas420
    lisavegas420

    a few of my favorites absuridities...

    When Saul offered David his daughter's hand in marriage, he said:`The king desires no marriage present, except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines...' (1 Sam. 18:25, New RSV

    As it turned out, David turned the tables on Saul in a spectacular way.`David arose and went, along with his men, and killed two hundred of the Philistines; and David brought their foreskins, which were given in full number to the king, that he might become the king's son-in-law.'
    (1 Sam 18:27, RSV)

    And remember Dinah? Because of her, I couldn't do many many things, no school dances, no parties.

    lisa

  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    All those who would posit that the creation account is "poetic" and "not to be taken as scientifically accurate" need to remember that the Bronze Age sheepherders who read this stuff took it quite literally.

    If the Bible said that God created light before he created the Sun, then by golly, he did!

    If the Bible said that God created the Earth before the Sun, then by golly, he did!

    If the Bible said he did it all in six days, then...well, you get the picture.

    In fact, the Genesis account of creation was taken as literal by most Christians all the way until the nineteenth century! It was only when modern science proved that the creation account was bunk that religious apologists started their argument that the story is not literal.

    You would think that an all-powerful God could have told the truth about the formation of the earth in a way that would not have been confusing to those ancient peoples and downright wrong to us.

    CyrusThePersian

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