I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Jon Paul]

Has it ever occurred to you that the church fathers interpretations of scripture in part or in whole could also be erroneous?They are men just like us and are not infallible in any sense so to say that just because they have studied the scriptures all of their lives does not make them entirely correct.

Of course it has occured. But I believe more in the fathers than in your private interpretation. Both because I think they are at a better intellectual position to interpret it, and because they are the Fathers of the very Church that I am a member of. The real question is if it has ever occured to you that your private interpretation could be errorneous, and in any case, that it doesn't represent my belief?

You said:"As a sidenote, light (photons) existence precedes the existence of the sun, anyway."If this is true it is irrelevant because the Earth derives its light from the sun.

It is not irrelevant in a cosmic order. And the sun did exist in the beginning.

He made the sun and the moons and the stars on the fourth day.So it looks like your orthodox interpreters were wrong and simply practicing what church fathers did best:Apologetics!In case you are wondering I was going to leave this issue alone but your calling me stupid just set me off again.

You are taking the verse out of it's context. Now, read it into it's context again, specifically the context that the universe, or the "all" has already been created in Genesis 1:1, in which God has already made the "heaven and the earth", which is the Hebrew idiom for "all", or "universe" in the Latin, or the "cosmos" in the Greek. What proceeds is the hexaemeron. You need to understand what the hexaemeron describes. It describes Gods elective creative activity of the Earth, the planet in which God creates Man and in which God becomes Man and men become as gods. That is it's significance.

St. Basils homilies on the Old Testament are probably the most extensive and releveant here.:

“By the two extremes (of heaven and earth) Moses alludes to the existence of everything”, says Basil the Great, “assigning a prior beginning to the heaven and saying that the earth is second in existence. Nevertheless, whatever exists between the two extremes was likewise made with them. Even though he says nothing about the elements of fire, water, and air, use your intelligence, and you will understand, first of all, that all [elements] are mixed with all others and that, along with the earth, you will also find water and air and fire”. (Hex., Hom. I, 7)

All things already existed from the first day of creation. “God created the heaven and the earth, not each one by halves, but the entire heaven and the whole earth, including the substance itself with form. He is not merely the inventor of the shapes, but the Creator of the very nature of’ all that exists…The Scriptural narrative is silent and exercises our mind to work, giving it a few things in order to be able to deduce from them the remainder”. (Basil the Great, Hex., Hom. II, 3)

On verse 2 (The earth was invisible and without form and darkness was over the deep and the Spirit of
God moved over the water): “Here again are more occasions for myths and sources of impious fabrications by men who twist the sayings [of Scripture] to agree with their own conceptions. They do not explain the darkness to be what it really is: air that does not receive light, or a place that is shaded or, in any case, bereft of light for any reason. They explain it as an evil power, or rather as self-existent evil itself that is adversarial and hostile to God… Why, O man, do you flee far from the truth, with intentions that will occasion your destruction? The expression is simple and understood by everyone. It says the earth was not visible. What was the reason? Because it was covered by the ‘deep.’ And what is the meaning of the ‘deep?’ A great deal of water of unfathomable depth..”. (Hom. 1I, 4)

“When the heaven was made by God’s command, in a moment it extended to fill its region, and it enclosed all that was in it as a continuous mass capable of dividing what was contained within from what was outside of it, thus making the space it enclosed unlighted by cutting off external light. Three things together are necessary for a shadow to exist: the light, a mass, and an unlighted place. Therefore, the darkness that covered the earth was due to the shadow of the heavenly mass [of vapor]. Try to understand me through this clear example: At midday you set up a tent of thick, impenetrable material and you shut yourself up in this improvised darkness. This is how you should imagine that darkness…At that time the water covered everything. This is why the darkness necessarily was said to be over the deep”. (Hom. II, 5)

In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. And the earth was
invisible and without form and darkness was over the deep and the Spirit of
God moved over the water.

So God has made the universe, including the Earth. The Earth is "invisible, without form, and darkness is over it", at this point.

Now, the hexaemeron proceeds. The first day describes the creation of light:

And God said, Let light be created, and light was
created. And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided between the
light and between the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the
darkness He called Night, and there was evening and there was morning, the
first day.

And the firmament in the Earth is described in the second day:

And God said, Let a firmament be created in the midst of the water, and
let it be a division between water and water, and it was so. And God made the
firmament, and God divided between the water, which was under the
firmament, and the water, which was above the firmament. And God called the
firmament Sky, and God saw that it was good, and there was evening and there
was morning, the second day.

Now, this firmament is the space between a heavenly mass of water [vapour] and the earthly water on top of the earth. So the light is not yet in the firmament of the sky, and "darkness and invisibility" is still over the Earth.

First when we go to the fourth day, in which "luminaries are created in the firmament of the sky", the darkness and invisibillity is dissolved:

And, God said Let luminaries be created in the firmament of the sky to
give light upon the earth, to divide between day and night, and let them be for
signs and for seasons and for days and for years. And let them be for light in
the firmament of the sky, so as to shine upon the earth, and it was so. And
God made the two great luminaries.

Before, the dense heavenly mass of dense clouds remained suspended above the firmament. Between these clouds and the ocean there was clear space, which the Scripture calls the “firmament” (1:6-8). Finally, much later, on the fourth day of creation, the clouds dispersed and broke up and separated as we see them today, permitting the clear sky to appear, and the sun, the moon, and the stars with it. It says on the fourth day specifically that the luminaries are made "in the firmament of the sky to give light upon the Earth". The Hebrew says "hayah", meaning "made to appear". The luminaries are now made in the firmament of the sky, and the light is in the firmament of the Earth, as opposed to in verse 2, in which "darkness and invisibillity" was upon the Earth. So God did not create the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. He made the two great lights in the firmament, along with other lights (the stars). We are talking specifically about the firmament, not about the sun or the universe or earth apart from the firmament.

So now you are telling me only those who can read/write/understand the original language of the texts can correctly figure out what the fuk this God is trying to say? And only those who spend a lifetime in peity "studying" this book can 'correctly' interpret it?

No, I am not saying that. If you are in doubt about what I said, read it again. I said that some peoples interpretations (the Church Fathers, who indeed have spent their whole lives studying it in it's original languages also) are more reliable than other peoples interpretations (chatpilot, who opens to book and jumps to a conclusion by taking things out of their context, like all good protestants).

Your God sucks for not making it (the proper/correct meanings) readily accessible to every human.

He did make everything we needed to know accessible, to humanity in it's prelapsarian state.

As to this fallen state, it is humanitys own responsibility that it has rejected Gods graces and fallen into ignorance.

And exactly because of that, there is a such thing as invincible ignorance. And everyone will be judged according to the light they have received.

The flying spaghetti monster is the transcendent other. It is immaterial, nonspatial, nontemporal and self subsistent. It is your imaginary man made God which is worldly, material, spatial and temporal and a contingent object.

It is not transcendent. It is made of spaghetti (matter) in time and space. And it is flying.

It is simply a straw man of arbitrary, and even self-contradictory (if you call it 'transcendent') predication.

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But it surely is the case. You (and all other theists from the dawn of time) have invented a being which is "conveniently" beyond any empirical test. As such you are free to espouse your belief in it....or Santa Claus for that matter....to your heart's content without ever having to face reality.

It is not beyond empirical and rational test. If I believed that, I wouldn't make an argument for Gods existence based on empirical knowledge of the universe. What I said was that it is beyond direct empirical observation, like many other things, for instance, other consciousnesses and minds. We can only observe the mechanisms associated with them, not directly observe the consciousness/mind itself. Or, if you see a footprint on the ground and no one around, you can presume that someone has been around even though they are beyond direct observation, that footprint (or a fingerprint) still serves as empirical evidence after the effect. This footprint metaphor describes how we can know God through empirical a posteriori knowledge of the observed universe and its nature, as done in my argument.

The reason it is beyond scientific test is not because it's outside direct empirical observation (many things in science are, and yet they are attested to by empirical evidence after the effect), it is because the scientific method a priori excludes anything outside of the natural world as within the scope of it's investigation. It is the philosophical presupposition of naturalism; methodological naturalism.