Hi, Peg.
Peg writes:
in a thick atmosphere, the light from the sun could have reached the earth without the sun being visible. Just like on an overcast day, there is still light coming through but no sun. there is nothing unscientific about that.
I'm pretty sure Genesis 1:16 says that God created the sun and the moon on the fourth day (KJV, NKJV,and NIV, at least), not that He made them on or before the first day and made them visible on the fourth day. If you want to interpret it as "made them visible," I won't argue with you, but I will demand that you be consistent, because, once you allow a non-literal interpretation of one part of the Bible, you automatically question the correctness of interpreting the rest of the bible literally (e.g., "Did Jesus really walk on water, or was He just standing up in a little boat that the disciples didn't see?").
If you apply both literal and non-literal interpretations in your Bible study, you really forfeit the right to use the Bible's text as an authority in debate. You should admit that this argument is coming from your personal perspectives, and not from the Bible, as you are currently claiming.
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Peg writes:
the next day is the 2nd day in which it is said that an 'expanse' is made between the 'waters above and the waters below' this same expanse is later said to be where the flying creatures fly, therefore, the primitive atmosphere was a lot thicker and its logical that the light from the sun came thru it gradually.
I'm afraid I don't understand how creating a firmament/expanse/atmosphere between the oceans and the clouds translates into Adam's time having a thicker atmosphere than today.
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Peg writes:
and finally, in the first instance of Genesis the expression 'let light come to be' uses a hebrew word which means 'general light'
but in the second instance when its talking about the sun and moon coming to be, it uses a different hebrew word which means 'source of light'
this tells us that the initial light was coming from the sources of light, but not directly so because the atmosphere was so overcast...but once that all cleared, then the sources of light could be seen in the sky.
What it sounds like to me is that a "general light" was created before a "source of light" was created, which does not imply that the "general light" was coming indirectly from the "source of light" by any stretch of semantics that you want to offer.
Again, I won't complain if you want to interpret the Bible's text in this manner. But, I will complain if you attempt to pass it off as a literal interpretation of the Bible and/or as proof of the divine accuracy of the Bible, because that's being extremely unscrupulous.
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Could you imagine a professor doing this to you on an exam? "Alright, class, on question #4, when I said, 'mix,' I actually meant, 'shake,' so, anybody who wrote 'stir' gets five points taken off. Sorry, no appeals."
But, in this case, it's actually more like God saying, "Alright, when I said 'I made the sun,' I actually meant that I just moved the clouds out of the way so you could see it. And, when I said, 'I made the animals,' I actually meant that my wife cooked a couple of them for dinner that night. If this confusion caused you to renounce your religion . well, I guess you’ll at least know that it’s not your fault you’re in Hell. But, meh, who's keeping score, right?"
I personally find that an unacceptable view of God, so I prefer to think that He either used the right words, or that He didn't actually write the Bible and won't be docking us points for things that Moses got wrong.
Edited by Bluejay, : Minor corrections.
-Bluejay
Darwin loves you.
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