Genesis 1:29: Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
Genesis 2:16, 17: And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
In the first creation account, god creates man and woman together, then gives them the world and everything upon it as a gift. In the second account, he creates man and limits him to the garden, prohibiting him from eating from a particular tree. The first account shows a god that hands creation over to mankind and leaves them to their fate. The second shows a god who can't help but micro-manage humanity. But most clearly, the first account shows that every plant across the planet is theirs for food, while the second account restricts this considerably and in two ways (1- only plants in the garden and 2-one specific exception to those). Aside from how different the stories are in the way they are told and the way they present god, that last detail is irreconcilable, unless you decide to fall back on "interpretation" for this one as well, in which case you have interpreted it into irrelevance.
Genesis 2:16, 17: And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
In the first creation account, god creates man and woman together, then gives them the world and everything upon it as a gift. In the second account, he creates man and limits him to the garden, prohibiting him from eating from a particular tree. The first account shows a god that hands creation over to mankind and leaves them to their fate. The second shows a god who can't help but micro-manage humanity. But most clearly, the first account shows that every plant across the planet is theirs for food, while the second account restricts this considerably and in two ways (1- only plants in the garden and 2-one specific exception to those). Aside from how different the stories are in the way they are told and the way they present god, that last detail is irreconcilable, unless you decide to fall back on "interpretation" for this one as well, in which case you have interpreted it into irrelevance.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
