(July 10, 2015 at 2:15 am)snowtracks Wrote: Genesis 1: 2 states “ earth was formless and empty, and darkness over the surface”. This is a description of the Earth’s history 4.5-3.9 bya (Hadren Era heavy) to 3.9-3.5 bya (Hadren Era that cooled sufficiently for oceans to form). The atmosphere was opaque due to solar-system debris together with Earth’s atmosphere density would have blocked the Sun’s light from reaching the early Earth’s surface. Genesis 1:1 frame of reference (FOR) is the cosmos; Genesis 1: 2 is where the focus shifts from the cosmos to the early earth. The phrase “Let there be Light” means sunlight finally penetrates the opaque atmosphere that sufficiently cleared to transparent allowing the sunlight to reach the surface of the earth. Been consistently stating there is solar-system sunlight, and there's sunlight reaching the earth's surface.
This is a good example of how a simple and ambiguous story can be expanded on almost without limit in order to try and make it fit our modern understanding. The thing is, we have had Muslim followers come here and do the same with the Quran, taking a vague passage and using it to show how their holy book describes the universe with astonishing accuracy and foreknowledge. I mean, it's kind of cute that you think that you can take a story that says "god made stuff, and it was dark and lumpy and he made more stuff and it was awesome lol" and make it conform to the modern understanding of physics and the development of the universe. And it's cute that they can do the same thing. And it's almost as cute to watch you guys disqualify each others' work as if what any of you are doing is any different. But a real god could have resolved this by having his inspired writers working at something above a third-grade level.
"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