(December 26, 2016 at 11:17 pm)snowtracks Wrote: God reveals Himself through Scripture, and Nature.So he's a bloodthirsty warmonger who treats women as property, and the inventor of smallpox. Got it.
Quote:*Note: 2'nd chapter of Genesis, tell the 'why' of creation and therefore is not in chronological physical order as chapter 1.The second chapter gives a different account, not a different version of the same account. In chapter 1 he creates man and woman together and gives them the whole Earth to fill and every plant to eat. In chapter 2 he creates man, puts him in a garden and says that he may eat of any tree in the garden with the exception of one. Only later does he create the woman as a companion. The creator of chapter 1 speaks his creation into existence, whereas the creator of chapter 2 forms things, plants things, and makes things grow... a hands-on approach.
The account in chapter 2 looks to be a fragment from a different creation story that sought to make god more personal and more human, not unlike many of the gods of the ancient past. The god in chapter 1 is the magical being that most people would describe him as today, conjuring a universe out of thin air with an incantation and creating humanity in his image (or their image, based on Genesis 1:26: "Let us make...").
And let's keep in mind that those theologians who interpret scripture are considerably less unified than those scientists who 'interpret' nature. It seems to me that only one of those groups is doing its job properly.
"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