A proof of God's self-evidence

The Old Testament begins with contradictory accounts of creation.

GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

GEN 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

GEN 7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, GEN 7:9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

In the New Testament, Luke and Mathew give contradictory geneaologies of Jesus.



First, you mischaracterize the book. The Old Testament is a compilation of different oral traditions. This is especially apparent in the portrayal of God - at one time a God who sits and has a meal with his followers, at other times a vicious God of War. Some scholars speculate the early Jewish god is a mix of two distinct deities - the calm God of the Jews already in Palestine, and the God of War Moses brings north from Egypt. The New Testament is also a compilation - the selections were politically motivated. Hence the inclusion of the Gospel of John and the exclusion of the Gospel Thomas.

As for taking the book literally: If we take the text literally, who decides which parts are figurative and which are not? Some argue that the creation story in Genesis is literally true and is not figurative.



How can this be? What constitutes 'Scripture' in organize Christianity has been almost exclusively a political decision. The books were written by different authors at different times for different people.

Viewing the Bible as one unified book is as flawed as viewing a newspaper as one unified article.



Then what happens when you publish two opposing works in the same volume? Consider the Epistle of James as compared to Paul's work.

The post where he describes his beliefs about the Bible

He is showing that while genisis 1.25-1:26 states beast came before men, and indeed implys that god named cattle
genisis 2:18-2:19 shows that man came before the beasts and named them himself.:Glasses:If taken literally of course. Another intersting point is that days are mentioned before a sun, thats the typical independent design loophole for the world being older than 5,000 years!

If you can't see the contradiction in that then ....:shifty:
:a-ok:we can have a party!:a-ok:

I don't see the contradiction in Genesis, and the "contradictory" accounts of Jesus' genealogy is simple to resolve: one was his genealogy through Mary, the other was through Joseph. If you can't see this...

The Gospel of Thomas was a Gnostic forgery.

And you have to take the Genesis account on faith...just like you have to take the Big Bang on faith.

And these are simply different aspects of God...I can be both kind and jealous.

They were canonized b/c the early Church Fathers saw that they were inspired, not the other way around, and most certainly not for political reasons.

Genesis - in the first account God creates 'every thing that creepeth' and then he creates man. In the second account, God creates man and then the other creatures. So, which one is it? Did man come first, or the other creatures?

The second part of the Genesis contradiction I show here (there are others) has the clean beasts going by sevens and then claims the clean beasts go by twos like all of the others. Either they went by sevens or by twos.

Regarding geneology - in order for that solution to work you have to make the assumption - the scripture does not say one is through Mary and the other through Joseph.



What on earth do you mean a forgery? The Gospel of Thomas was written around the year 50, making it earlier than all the other Gospels save Mark.

Honestly - how was the book a forgery? You can no more say Thomas is a forgery than I can say John is a forgery - both were written by men.



No you do not. Regarding the Big Bang, there is science, not faith. Regarding Genesis the most obvious solution is to not make the modern Christian mistake of taking the story literally.



Except that one is El and the other Yahweh. Two different dieties combined into one long ago.



Is this, too, a matter of faith?

Believe what you want, but I suggest looking up the history before articles of faith override better judgment.

Um, you do understand God has more than one title; YHWH is His name, EL is His title.

On the Big Bang: you do understand that essentially "nothing exploded", which smells of a Parmenidean theory of "nothing is something"; nothing is no-thing; it can definitely not explode.

The thing about the animals going two-by-two, some seven-by-seven...those were clean --two-by-two-- and unclean --seven-by-seven--. So there.

I retract my earlier statement about the GoT; still, it's just a collection of sayings...all of the other Gospels were the accounts of Jesus' life, and were harmonious accounts; not identical --as then people would accuse of collusion--, as each has it's own style. That raises a red flag right there. Please go read Strobels "A Case for Faith" and Strobel's "A Case for Christ", and come back to me.

Doesn't the assumption about the geneaology make sense? I don't see why that's a problem.

I'm familiar. What you've missed is the origin of those names. The early Jews who worshiped El were polytheists who gradually came to the conclusion that the worship of deities should be limited to El, husband of Asherah.



As I understand the theory, scientists do not suggest that "nothing exploded". Instead, it was a singularity (infinitely small, infinitely dense and therefore not nothing) that began to expand (not "explode").



You've got this mixed up. In one line the clean go by sevens, another line of the texts says the clean go by twos. Contradiction.



It is a collection of sayings - so what? With respect to the four gospels of the Bible, they are not entirely harmonious - scholars have discussed the drastic differences between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John.

As for Strobel - I can't imagine why I should read the ramblings of such an extreme Christian fundamentalist. He maintains that the Bible is absolutely true - not only that the Bible is free from all errors and contradictions regarding faith and practice, but also free from historical inaccuracies as well. Of course, the Bible, if we take the compilation as a unified whole (which is a mistake in the first place), is full of contradiction and is most certainly not absolutely accurate on matters of historical record.

Honestly, he's a megachurch pastor - he is a religious profiteer. Jesus overturned the tables in the temple, and men like Strobel make fortunes by reintroducing those tables and more.



The solution is invented. Lacks scriptural basis. It's invented out of thin air to defend the notion that the Bible should be taken literally.

The suggestion that the Bible is literally true would have been a shock to the authors of those texts.

Can you prove that the authors did not mean for the Bible to be taken literally?

Why is it so specific then?

How come archaeologists keep finding evidence that supports the Bible?

You can explain away anything by saying it was made up to solve a contradiction.

How do you know that about the authors? Did they say that to you personally?

I believe because I so desperately want to believe, you disbelieve because you so desperately want to disbelieve.

Ok, since from that singularity space-time came about, how did that singularity start? Everything in the universe has to have a beginning, so, if there was no space-time before the singularity started expand...how did it expand? My interpretation may be wrong, so explain this again for me

You ask a great many questions which are just as easily asked of you; remember that.



What do you mean prove? As you say, we cannot ask them.

Instead we have to ask ourselves what role these stories played in the lives of the people who invented them and wrote them down; after all, men did invent these stories. A history of creation was beyond their capacity - a man could not know what happened in the world before man came into existence. Genesis is not a factual history but allegory.

When taken as allegory, the stories are meaningful. When taken literally, they are confused and archaic.



Gilgamesh is specific, Wu Cheng'en's the Monkey King is specific, Dante's Divine Comedy is specific. These are all as specific as the Bible. We do not imagine these texts should be taken literally. To arbitrarily chose the Bible among the vast volumes of literature as being literally true is hasty to say the least.



Again, Gilgamesh is a good example here. Archaeologists have found Ur - which is about as much support as archeology can provide. Archaeologists cannot provide any evidence about what was really said between Moses and God - or even that Moses ever lived. Archaeologists have discovered the sight of historic Troy - but no one suggests that Homer is literally true.



Okay - how does this support the theory you presented? I'm open to the idea, but extremely skeptical. The Gospels in question make no mention of the lineages being traced from different sides of Jesus' family, so what gives you the impression that this is the case?

We have to look at the most likely explanation. In this case, it is far more likely that the two different authors, writing decades apart from one another, gave contradictory accounts of his genealogy. Sermon on the Mount, Sermon on the Plain, essentially the same sermon. Two different memories of the same event.



No, it's called scholarship - and there no lack of Biblical scholarship.



Your assumptions about me are incorrect. I am a Christian.

The misconception among fundamentalists is that if the Bible is not literally true, if the Bible makes contradictory statements, that the whole volume is worthless, that the Christian tradition is bankrupt. Couldn't be further from the truth. Again, fundamentalism is a minority opinion, especially throughout the course of history. The faith tradition obviously doesn't rely on literal interpretations if the faith tradition did not begin with literal interpretations.



I'm not a scientists, and as I recall, explanations as to why that singularity began to expand are being discussed and no one suggestion seems to have much favor over another.

Though, I'm not sure what this matters. The scientific account of the origin of the universe and the allegorical accounts are of no relation - they serve entirely different purposes.

If evidence of God were at all present it would not be through the bible. The bible as explained from another thread, "Who could possibly rationalize this- Bible" - or whatever it was called, is silly when trying to correlate the morality of God.

If I were to believe in God it would be away from literature, because literature is of bias. God is from pure introspection of what can not be proven by any other means.

logic and ontology theories can make His existence more probable.

Exactly. Some people are willing to have a pure faith, but some would rather see the light:lol:, that logic is a very good premise to finding the truth, even for something unprovable, you can only say it isn't when you try to reason first.

Specified complexity is answered by the fact that simple laws elicit complexity as is exeplified in the study of cellular automata. That a set of very basic rules can engender great and seeminlgy unpredictable and non patterned complexity is a well known fact among computer theorists and a long held belief for physicists and mathematicians. you can take a set of rules for costruction like the Mebelbrot Set and voila! An infinitely intricate set infinitely subdividable and repeating when magnified at the correct point. A set which in essence contains itself structualy but not spacially(the repating structure is equally dense but at the same time and infinite subset) can be so easilly constructed by a man made set of rules that it debunks the argument from structural complexity.

Believe only what is reasonable to you and you will find new depth to your self through skepticism and ultimately find where you truely stand and what you can accept as a base on which to build your ideals and your morals and yourself ultimately. It is an intersting plunge to take, adopting the role of the skeptic. It brings you right back up with stronger foundations if you are suited for it and can bear the shift in worldview. That is what I did, and I feel that it was correct for me and for some but not all.

You will find that the rational argument of god is indeed nonsense due to that it is essentially ideologically an infinite loop. Take the very basic precepts of reality on faith and adjust them when a challenge to them you can accept it presented. This is how worldview is established.

This is good. God is a thing which cannot be touched by mortal definition, and yet all definitions are of god by definition!

Whatever you feel centers you and is good and true for you, you will hold true reguardless of any challenge. Know that any challenge to what you hold true only holds wieght for you if it strikes an internal truth, and you shall come to realize that you are off center in your actions and beliefs. No idea can change you fundamentally.