God doesn't exist, but the genesis is a true story....

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It occured to me that if you think of god as non existent, unreal and not true, and then proceed to read the biblical genesis, the whole story becomes much more sensible... Smile

You just have to get your head around that god did all those things the book says, but he/it doesn't exist. Think of god as a narrative tool.

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Can't separate creation from god.

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@cicerone imposter,

Well, what if the first words of the genesis were:

"God did all things herein chronicled, but God does not and has never existed."

In fact, I would like to set that as a premise for this thread.
Creation is something god did. God isn't real, but creation is. I think that with the means at hand we should be able to reconcile this apparent contradiction and get a meaningful story out of it...
The interesting thing is how you would understand "god" every time it makes an appearance in the book.

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@Cyracuz,

In the first version of Creation, "The narrator" got everything out of order. Not to mention the time thing

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@Cyracuz,

My response is posted by farmerman. The so-called recorder of creation didn't even have their time lines straight. How can you believe such bull?

According to the comic book in question, it claims this planet is 7,000 years old.

Those kinds of mistakes makes the whole bible a sham.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

It occured to me that if you think of god as non existent, unreal and not true, and then proceed to read the biblical genesis, the whole story becomes much more sensible...

You just have to get your head around that god did all those things the book says, but he/it doesn't exist. Think of god as a narrative tool.

You called your god a tool, not me.

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@cicerone imposter,

Your adamant belief that it is bull is as unfounded in reason as the belief that it is truth. But that whole aspect of it is beside the point, since the truth of it depends entirely on what we want to get out of it.

If you remove god from the first part of the genesis it is possible to understand it in terms of dualisms being established. There is heaven and earth. Light and dark. Water and land...
The most basic dualistic frameworks of our perception are listed in quick order. It goes on to describe family relations, and in short order it has described the life of humans in a very general way. By means of establishing dualistic concepts which serve as foundations for human perception and social structure. I do not mean that it is this way because the book says, merely that the book is a description of it.
I don't know precicely what I'm getting at, it's just an open minded "what if".

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@Cyracuz,

It's founded on logic and no evidence for its claims. Nobody has ever proved creation, and you can't. It's a belief based on common sense; I don't believe in creation or miracles.

That is the point.

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The bible has the same evidence as Alice in wonderland and it has only 0ne author

1 Reply

Oh, for Pete's sake, it is all symbolism, allegory, parable. Arguing these subjects is dangerous and not fun. Each one of us has to find our own answers.

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@tenderfoot,

And yet you don't hear people claiming Alice in wonderland bull whenever someone makes a reference to it.
We do not know the intent of those who first wrote down the genesis. For all we know they had a similar intent as mr Dodgson.

Your objections are towards belief in the bible as literal truth, but I don't share or encourage that belief. I also don't feel I have to disregard it completely just because others place too much emphasis on it. I am free to explore the stories of the bible in the same way I would the story of Alice in wonderland. If I were to suggest small alterations to that story in order to emphasise certain metaphors that were useful to me, or to explore other aspects of the relationships within the story itself, you would probably not react with "but that book has no evidence to support it's claims", because the particular use we are putting it to does not require such evidence to give meaning.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

And yet you don't hear people claiming Alice in wonderland bull whenever someone makes a reference to it.
We do not know the intent of those who first wrote down the genesis. For all we know they had a similar intent as mr Dodgson.

Your objections are towards belief in the bible as literal truth, but I don't share or encourage that belief. I also don't feel I have to disregard it completely just because others place too much emphasis on it. I am free to explore the stories of the bible in the same way I would the story of Alice in wonderland. If I were to suggest small alterations to that story in order to emphasise certain metaphors that were useful to me, or to explore other aspects of the relationships within the story itself, you would probably not react with "but that book has no evidence to support it's claims", because the particular use we are putting it to does not require such evidence to give meaning.

I agree with your idea of exploring the meaning of the bible for one's self.
From that perspective, the bible serves as a sort of thinking tool. Many of the stories work very effectively in this manner.
One of my favorites is the story of Samson. Just what was he doing hanging around down there in that vineyard? I know why I might be hanging around the vineyard. That explains a lot about how someone could be constantly sleeping so soundly as to be repeatedly tied up by others. In the end, the drunken brawler was still able to be useful to his people, despite where his life of drunken carousing and chasing after ho's had led to.
There is a note of inspirational truth in that for many. So the truth of the bible is , in fact, what one makes of it.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz, You can get the same lessons from more enlightened writers of philosophy - and even religions like Buddhism where it doesn't require rationalization of contradiction of ideas and to ignore logic and common sense.

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@cicerone imposter,

Yes, you are probably right about that.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Well, what if the first words of the genesis were:

"God did all things herein chronicled, but God does not and has never existed."

In fact, I would like to set that as a premise for this thread.
Creation is something god did. God isn't real, but creation is. I think that with the means at hand we should be able to reconcile this apparent contradiction and get a meaningful story out of it...
The interesting thing is how you would understand "god" every time it makes an appearance in the book.

"God did all things herein chronicled, but God does not and has never existed.", is absurd.

This claim is as silly as silly can be...Surely If god did X then god exists is clear!

Absurdity is not a source of anything, is it?

1 Reply

@Owen phil,

Think of it like a riddle.
It's not plain, informative text.

Or, if you think of this X as god. X being undefined, we cannot relate to it, save through it's effects...

So X did this, but X has no presence, there is no evidence of it's existence. So X then has to be some concept which can achieve the remarkable feat of creating without existing. May sound illogical. It would depend on what kind of system your reality is described according to. Naive-realists are likely to tell me to go and preach somewhere else...

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Your arguments seem to be
THE BIBLE IS TRUE NEH?

BUT
Assume there is no God
and
Dont take the Bible as litereal truth

In that case , your points just evaporate in some smoke of meaningless worship over some bad writing and tall tales. Obviously the order and structure oif the story of creation itself are incorrect and mostly untrue.
Why not say the same about the life of Paul Bunyan? or The Great Coatl?

The argument, till now, has been a waste of time and your not helping it attain some point worth consideration.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Think of it like a riddle.
It's not plain, informative text.

Or, if you think of this X as god. X being undefined, we cannot relate to it, save through it's effects...

So X did this, but X has no presence, there is no evidence of it's existence. So X then has to be some concept which can achieve the remarkable feat of creating without existing. May sound illogical. It would depend on what kind of system your reality is described according to. Naive-realists are likely to tell me to go and preach somewhere else...

More nonsense.
Garbage in, garbage out.

It is not possible for anything to be that .."which can achieve the remarkable feat of creating without existing". This not only sounds illogical it is illogical.

What system of reality could possibly allow ...(X does Y) and (X does not exist), as true???

Logic abhors contradictions...Bertrand Russell.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

In that case , your points just evaporate in some smoke of meaningless worship over some bad writing and tall tales.

Only if you think in terms of naive-realism.

2 Replies

@Cyracuz,

How you think is irrational realism; there is no proof beyond a book written by several authors who were ignorant about geology, paleontology, anthropology, and science.

You need to seek your "savior" elsewhere.

0 Replies

God doesn't exist, but the genesis is a true story....

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