1 day every 7?

dabido: yup. i am so going to show THAT fundamentalist what you have just said. i don’t count the old testament in terms of ‘my idea of time’. not sure if TIME as a concept (as we understand in modern terms) actually existed then.

You might as well be an agnostic…that way you can choose to believe whatever you want. Excuse me but isn’t faith about accepting without question?

Yes … Yes … Yes … Yes … Yes … Yes …

‘This time, it was about Genesis. Metaphorical fable, or historical fact? You tell me. If I choose not to believe it is historical fact, should my faith be questioned? You tell me. Do you truly, truly, believe that God literally, historically, made the Earth in seven days?’

Space Warp Time!!!

First of all, the Hebrew word used in the Old Testament that gets interpreted as ‘DAY’ , does NOT mean DAY … it just means a period of time.
So, straight off the bat, anyone (even a Fundamentalist) cannot seriously take the TRANSLATION to be fact. When we read the Old Test. in it’s original language, we find God created the Earth in SIX Periods of time, then rested on the seventh.
If I was to tell you that it took me a period of time to learn to play guitar, would you think it took me a day?
No.
What if someone translated that comment into Malayu and they used the Malay word fo Day instead of a period of time, would that mean that I had suddenly learnt to play guitar in a day just because someone translated it that way?
No?
lol
Then why do so many people still believe it took God six days to make the earth?

Anyway, whenever this has come up, the thing peopel often say is, it doesn’t matter if it took God six seconds, hours, days, or even millions of years. God could have done it in any of them, and are we even sure time existed at the time God did it?
Maybe that is why the term used in Genesis is so ambiguous, as time wasn’t even there, and Genesis is just placing it in terms we mere mortals can understand.

The second thing in this arguement is that when peopel write, they often have a purpose. Too many people interpret the Old Testament (and indeed most religious documents) as though they are Scientific Documents. They are NOT, and they are not meant to be.
What the writer of Genesis was trying to show us, was that the reason the Earth etc exists is because of God. They are not writing a scientic journel about HOW the earth came about. There are two fundamentally different questions being asked here, and the answers will therefore be different. When people try approaching religious documents as though they are explaining the Scientific answers, they are missing the whole point of the writer.
It’s a bit like refusing to let your kids read Babar the elephant as elephants can’t talk! Look for what the writer is trying to say and interpret accordingly.

NEXT, there is a scientific and Biblical overlap. The Order in which God created things, does actually agree with the fossil record … this is different to a lot of other religions which seems to think that everything appeared at once (but if God wanted to do that, he could have as well).

As for the ‘Myth’ bit, I don’t see why you’d believe anything in the Old Testament is a Myth. There has been a lot of great archeological finds that have proven many of the things from the Bible. In fact, the more they dig up, the more things they find whcih confirm it.
I remember about ten years ago, a book called ‘The Unauthorised Version’ came out, and it claimed a lot of the Bible was nonsense as there was no evidence to support some things. One of my athiest friends shoved the book under my nose, and after we went through a lot of it, he discovered the book really didnt’ disprove God or the Bible. In fact, a lot of it was inaccurate.
One of the things it claimed was there was no evidence that King David ever existed. I was lucky enough to have a copy of a Newspaper article that I could show my friend, as they’d dug up a large stone plaque which had commemorated the win of King David’s armies (under the generalship of his son) over the Caananites. [In fact, I think my friend might still ahve that newspaper article! Doh!]

Of course, some things may NOT be able to be proven (such as Baalams talking Donkey and stuff), because, unless we can dig up his donkey, clone it and find it can talk to him (we’d ahve to clone Baalam too), we have no proof either way … but, like I said earlier, you have to look to the intention of the writer, what was trying to be said here? Was the writer saying God is just, or was the writer saying, ‘Hey, this story is proof that donkey’s can talk!’ ?
Whether you beleive Baalam’s Donkey could talk to him or not won’t really destin anyone to the fires of hell.
(And let’s face it, my dogs can tell me when they want to go outside to pee, so it is highly possible that Baalam was able to understand what his Donkey was sayin within limits of what it was doing, and the noise it was making. No one calls me a liar when I tell them my Dogs telling me it wants to go pee.)

Now doesn’t everyone appreciate my long comments? hee hee!

‘OK I’m going to bring you to Zoo Negara and hide the ring in a pile of elephant dung. Then you’ll have to go in and dig it out.’

I’m taking that as a marriage proposal. He is already talking about buying the RING! Congrats. When’s the wedding?

Fact: Six degrees of separation indeed!

I read Minishorts, how co-incidental is that considering I also comment here!!!!

By the way, where was the dinner?