I know I'm late to the party here as they say, but anyways...
My personal religion is non-denominational Christian, as I believe I do not need any intermediary between myself and God. I do not need somebody to tell me what the Bible says for two reasons - a) I can read and b) true understanding can only come with the gift of illumination anyways. That doesn''t mean I won't listen to what other people say, but I do not automatically just take somebody elses interpenetration as the truth. That said, I do not claim any special understanding beyond my own personal interpretations, and the other outside reading I have done in parallel. Do I believe the Bible to be divinely inspired? Yes. Do I believe it is 100% literal? No, I believe a lot of it is to be taken metaphorically and/or in relation to the timeframe.
So, a few thoughts on topics from the last few pages of this:
-pre-flood people living for very long times
Long ages are not unique to the people; for instance, the sumerian king lists of the same era (3rd millennium bc) list reigns of 72,000 years each, which is much more absurd.
My personal belief is that the ages are more of a summary of a clan then of a single person. For instance, when it says that Noah lived 950 years, I believe this to be referring to Noah and his descendants. This is backed up by the very common theme of genealogies in Genesis frequently having exactly 10 names; the long ages fill in the gaps and summarize from one major patriarch to the next.
Other people believe that the ages serve a literary function, which I can also see, but I like my idea better.
-Moses age
Just a correction to whoever said Moses died at 1000 - he died at 120 according to DT 34:7
-The flood
I believe that the flood was local and constrained to the area of the patriarchs. As far as they were concerned, that was the "world". Considering how many non-biblical sources there are backing up a "great flood", I fully believe it happened. There's a good (but long) write up of this at
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html
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EDIT: The Ark
We know the size of The Ark from Ge 6:15 - "This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high." Converting, that is about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Big, yes, but not outside the realms of possibility for the knowledge at the time. Considering the flood was local, we just need the animals known to the patriarchs, which severely limits the number. Certainly there weren't penguins, polar bears, whatever else on the ark.
For comparison, the Titanic was 882 ft 9 in long 175 ft high.
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-Dinosaurs
I'm sure dinosaurs on the ark were meant as a joke, but that would be impossible, as we all know they were long gone by then. Some people then ask, why aren't they mentioned in the Bible? Simply put, they aren't important in the grand scheme of things. If you're telling people in the desert 3,000 years ago about how you created the universe, would you mention animals that died 65MYA? I doubt it. You try writting a one page summary of 4.5BY of creation and see how well you do
-Age of the earth
I'm a "Day-age" person, which means I believe that the days in Genesis 1 are not literal "days" but instead indeterminate periods of time. The hebrew word used is yom, which means "a peroid of time". This goes with above - if God had told the patriarchs he created the Universe by causing a quantum instability in a one dimensional point that then expanded into all energy and matter, tweaked the laws of physics to his liking, guided evolution, etc,etc, they would not have understood any of it. So he simplified.
-Evolution (I know it wasn't mentioned per se, just throwing it in)
I believe God used evolution as his tool of creation. He set the framework of the universe up more or less as a giant program with set variables and let it run, tweaking it here and there. I do not believe in random, non directed evolution for a variety of reasons that are way too long to get into here, as this post is already huge.
Your point of view is surprisingly similar to the one the Muslims have. Might I suggest you read the Qur'an? Very interesting book.
antwill said:
QUOTE(spinal_cord @ Apr 11 2011, 05:51 PM) -- Why are other planets not mentioned by holy texts? There are billions and billions of them after all.
Because the people who wrote those books, when the stories had been told for generations didn't know about the other planets, or evolution. That's why they only claim the Earth is thousands of years old, etc. And as has been said, you need to ignore evidence for faith to be maintained.
