Re: BC, 21 Jan 08 - You know things have really changed when...

George Peatty <peattyg47-1230@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:47:55 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

This is not a textual issue, but an assumption; namely, that if the
universe had a beginning, it began ex nihilo.

I'd say that the assumption is yours if you assume that the book
credits God with creating the universe. All it says is "heaven and
earth" or "the skies and the earth". That's what he was beginning to
create, according to the story, and, according to the story, at that
point, at least water already existed.

All that can be known certainly is that there is no explicit
statement that water was created. Your statement that it already
existed is an inference, which may be reasonable, but not supported
by any explicit textual evidence, and contradicted by John 1:3 (and
other passages) of the Christian Bible.

Careful there: most translations of that seem to imply that it was
something like "Nothing that was made except by him", but that would
be consistent with a notion that there were things that weren't made.

My Greek is worse than my Hebrew, though, so I can't say much about
how good those translations are. In any case, it's not clear that the
author of John would have been familiar with Genesis in Hebrew,
anyway, as opposed to the Greek of the Septuagint.

Which raises a point here, specifically, that there simply isn't enough
information to satisfy everyone's curiosity. At some point in trying to
understand what we read, we make inferences and assumptions. One of yours
is that water already existed at the beginning of creation; one of mine is
the universe began ex nihilo.

Sure thing. I'm just a bit curious how much more explicit than

When God began to create heaven and earth--the earth being unformed
and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind
from God sweeping over the water ...

it would have to be for you to infer that at the beginning of creation
there was water for God's wind to sweep over.

And I have to say that I find it amusing that not only do creationists
have to struggle to find interpretations of scientific discoveries
that are consistent with their religiously-derived cosmogony, but
apparently they have to do the same thing even with the very stories
in their own book that purportedly led them to believe that
cosmogony, since the beliefs are apparently based on later--and not
particularly good--translations.

(And just to clarify: I don't believe that "water already existed at
the beginning of creation". I believe that the people who wrote those
passages of that book believed that water already existed at the
beginning of that particular creation. Which they may well not have
believed to have been the capital-C Creation of Life, the Universe,
and Everything.)

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Oh, forget it: I can't write about
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |this anymore until I find a much
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |more sarcastic typeface.
| Bill Bickel
kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx
(650)857-7572

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


.

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