Fair ****ing enough.

You know I did say this too: "Well, while God was creating everything in Genesis, it might have been mentioned.

...a sentence could have been put in saying "And then he created Earth in just the right place to have life spring up". It could have been done."

Funny you didn't respond to that.

I never said they were trying to make an encyclopedia of every known fact, I said they were trying to do a history of creation. And they clearly were. They put in Genesis.

Listen you two, even if they weren't trying to do an absolutely complete history of everything that ever happened,( which **** it I'll even concede they weren't for you guys if it bakes your respective cakes), they were trying to illustrate natural history and the creation of humanity as best as they could. Now if they did know what they were talking about in respect to this issue, they would have known about the fall of the dinosaurs and subsequent rise of mammals, and could have fit this into Genesis, which is their creation account. Yet It's mysteriously missing. And all of 1.5 billion years of evolution for that matter, is missing from Genesis. It's a ****ing joke of an account for being the word of God himself. So much more, yes including the dinosaurs, could have been put in. I'll defend this point only from here on out, you petty vultures can tear apart the rest of my responses if you want.

Dude, have you ever even read Genesis? It also doesn't mention lions, penguins, mammoths, elephants, carrots, cows, etc. etc.

Why then do you insist they specifically mention dinosaurs?

Finally, you're missing the point of the supposed straw men that you so readily believe I'm setting up. Since you missed it so completely:

The point of my response is that saying something like "If the Bible was really the work of God I would think he'd have the sense to mention _____________." is going to have wildly different things filling in that blank depending on where in history your point of reference is, so it's absurd to whine that he doesn't mention one specific thing which, to 90%+ of people in human history, is completely irrelevant. If he's going to include dinosaurs, you could just as easily demand a near-infinite amount of "important things" to the point of absurdity using the same logic.

Edit:

So, I'm a bit wrong - apparently Genesis does in fact mention cows, but doesn't mention *any* other kind of land animal specifically:

Genesis:

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

So there you go. That's as close as the creation story gets to mentioning horses, cats, rhinos, or Tyrannosaurus Rex. What should we make of this information?

Yeah, It's lacking.

My point was in regards to things with historical pertinence. I would think dinosaurs are historically pertinent was my point. Therefore "a cure to cancer" was a straw man in this regard since that information has nothing to do with history.

Okay, what about world war I or II? Pertinent to history? What about the fall of the Soviet Union? Pertinent to history? What about the Sumerians inventing the written word? The plague wiping out chunks of Europe? The eventual explosion of our sun?

There's far too much information about history (although it makes me giggle that you think a cure to cancer has nothing to do with history, unless you'd like to go back to my middle school and punch my history/social studies teacher in the face for making me do a report on Edward Jenner... it's been a long time since middle school, I'll double check for you to see if he's still there) to be included in any book, so why are you singling out specifically dinosaurs? If the Bible had mentioned dinosaurs, a different historical fact could be nitpicked ad nauseum until a hypothetical "perfect Bible" would be unreadable due to sheer size.

You have a very interesting definition of "meticulously." Almost to the point of being intentionally dishonest.

Glad you finally admit it was a strawman.

As I said before to Bunny,

Yeah I guess I should have said "vague and almost devoid of information to the point of not being able to be taken seriously" from the start.

I love this. RGT quote of the year?

"Yeah, I guess I should have said exactly the opposite of what I originally said."

Good to see we're on the same page.

Come on man. It's excruciatingly obvious ancient Israelites in no way were "trying to illustrate natural history." Read the damn passage. The guy writes down four sentences (including the information packed gems "and it was so" and "and God saw that it was good") and you're mocking it for not being exhaustive?

The point the author is trying to make in Genesis 1 is simple and direct. God made the world, and was happy with what he made. Now, while I don't agree that God made the world, certainly you can see how:

Person 1: "God made the world, and was happy with it."

Person 2: "But what about dinosaurs, mother****er? lololhahahaBBQ."

makes no sense whatsoever.

I think the simple point is that IF the Bible is really from God, and one of its points is to tell us about creation, that it might have mentioned Billions of years of evolution and Dinosaurs. ("hey, at some point you're going to find some giant skeletons that are billions of years old. I know some of you humans are going to read my words and conclude that the earth is only 6000 years old. Here's the real story....)

I think its a perfectly to question if there was a God and this book was the only written document he gave to people, what would he include and what would he leave out. Perhaps information about dinosaurs and how they relate to the history of earth would be more useful then pages of "Paul begat Dina Shore...". And perhaps it would be more compelling to people if it presented information more sophisticated about the history of the earth then that known by the people at the time the book was put together.

I kind of doubt 10,000 years form now this will be said.
Id take any odds and any amount of money on this one.
I most likely would. If the bible mentioned any extinct animals that exited long before if was written i would become a believer in one of three things. The biblical God, aliens or people who can see into the past.
Those are kind of vague i would need them to be more descriptive and accurate.

Definitely. I was merely addressing the dinosaur issue because that was the issue at hand.

I think it's a misconception that the Bible intends to say anything literal about creation. As previously stated, the main theme of the creation story actually has very little to do with creation itself, it mostly has to do with God's opinion of creation (he likes it) and, secondarily, how mankind is supposed to relate to God and to the creation around him.

I'd like to sidestep a moment for claritys sake on the issue.

Let's start with the presumption that God is going to deliver a book to mankind.

Furthermore, let's say that book is going to be given to His chosen people at the earliest possible time for it to be useful to them.

The book would, necessarily, have to be useful to the people at the time, as well as useful to people in the future, so that the writing would be passed down and get to as many people as possible. (IMO God should really just issue a revised and expanded edition once every hundred years or so, but let's just give the theists the benefit of the doubt and say that for whatever the reason, God only wants to do that **** once.)

There would be a limited amount of information that could be contained. Perhaps it's a large amount of information, but given that it's a book for humans read by humans, the information must have some finite upper limit before it becomes unwieldy.

Then, let's take a picture of all of human history, start to finish, from the time the Bible was beginning to be written (1600-1000 B.C.) to whenever humanity dies out.

There's a lot of important stuff that could/should be included. If God went out of his way to tell us about dinosaurs, but left out, say, mentioning of DNA, bacterial spread of disease, etc. etc. I'd call that pretty disgusting.

If we want to step away from the "social good" aspect of telling people about the world around him, giving a blunt and easily understood prophecy that came to pass would go much further for lending credence to the Bible than mentioning dinosaurs.

One can definitely argue that there's stuff that isn't in the Bible that should be. I agree. I simply think that "dinosaurs" should be pretty damn low on the heavenly list of "**** me make sure we fit in the book" and that's just looking at things from a reference point 3000 years after the book was written - I'm sure in 30,000 years, or 300,000 years, there will be plenty of things that we would have found fascinating or important to hear about, that people of that day will consider bland and obvious news.

It was meticulous for It's time, in just saying "God made a b c d e f g h i j k l m n and Adam and Eve etc." Of course that's not meticulous by today's standards, but that's my ****ing point. So there's no conflict between my statements in their right contexts.

I count 31 verses in Genesis 1. I don't know where you get "4 sentences" from in that head of yours. But anyway, you're intentionally misrepresenting my point here, which is that it should be more exhaustive if It's supposed to be an account of the creation of life. It wasn't just "God made the world, and was happy with it" in Genesis 1. He made all the parts of the world one by one, including the animals. And yet 1.5 billion years of evolution (including the dinosaurs) is not even mentioned. It does make sense to question why this and so many other things are not included in Genesis, and why it is so lacking in information.

Surely you can see that point?

Well not surely I guess, since your interest consistently seems to be in making straw men, and other blatant misrepresentations and mocking of arguments, and saying "LOL U R in Splendour's church! Derrrr", than in having a legitimate discussion/debate. In other words, you're a dumb ****ing arrogant full-of-himself little troll prick. And on my ignore.

My first inclination would be to assume they came across some dinosaur bones of their own and took a guess at what they were.

A quick google search suggests the first dinosaur bones to be scientifically described were discovered in 1824. For quite some time prior to that there are records of people finding "giant bones" "dragon bones" "ogre bones" etc. etc.

Given that it's very recent that we classify these old reptiles as dinosaurs (let alone presume to have a basic understanding of how they functioned) wouldn't essentially any ancient account of such an animal be vague and incorrect compared to what we know today?

I dont mean a description of bones but a description of an animal itself that men at that time couldn't have come up with form finding bones. Like maybe what pterodactyls wings were made of or like.

31 verses to explain the creation of the world is not meticulous for its time. But, I suppose you've compared the Bible to other ancient texts and found that other texts are even more lacking, making the Bible meticulous by comparison?

Four sentences that detail the creation of land animals specifically. Certainly not all of Genesis 1 is relevant to the creation of land animals.

Sure. But, as previously stated, the intention of Genesis 1 is in no way to give a full and accurate account of the creation of life.

Poetic repetition is a commonly used theme in Jewish allegory. To see the main point of the passage, look for which parts are systematically repeated.

variations on "God saw that it was good" are mentioned seven times in Genesis 1, once for each day of creation.

How you can claim to read the passage, see something repeated seven times in 31 verses, and then claim that that's not the main point... well, yeah. I guess I'm on ignore anyway, so go ahead and keep spouting your nonsense. You clearly have no education in ancient literature, no ability to research it yourself online, and no intention of learning, so I shouldn't be surprised at your ignorance.

Ah. Yes, that would certainly be helpful to some extent, but wouldn't it be easier and more useful to describe something else, given that we're asking for something that men alone couldn't come up with the answer to?

I'd personally take an accurate reconciliation of Newtonian and quantum physics, but I guess if Pterodactyl wings are your thing, I can't fault you for it.

Edit: reread, and okay, so it wouldn't be easier to describe dino wings than quantum physics (AFAIK), but it would certainly be more impressive/useful to us today.

"Sure. But, as previously stated, the intention of Genesis 1 is in no way to give a full and accurate account of the creation of life...It's only about God seeing it was good!"

lol...Let me get this straight. Your argument that you want us to buy is that the creation account isn't in fact a creation account? This is laughable. Of course It's a creation account, and of course that's It's purpose. Just thought I'd laugh at you one last time before I officially click you onto my list.

Well i was just sticking with the animal kingdom. But sure there are all kinds of things God could of put in there to make me think twice.

Better yet though he could of been right in the things he did describe. Maybe leave out that he created all humans from two people and instead go with how we did begin life on this planet. I know "and God made the primordial slime in our image" is less sexy but it would be better.

Your lack of reading comprehension boggles the mind. Of course, since it says something about the beginning of creation, it's a creation account.

However, the purpose for it is to show that God is pleased with what he has made, not be exhaustive and accurate in its technical description. How can you not understand this? I genuinely don't get it. I've restated it half a dozen times or more in this thread alone, and you can pick up nearly any book, video, three minute google search, theologian, ancient literature professor, or biblical studies course to confirm what I've said.

Here's a new idea: When someone makes a claim, spend two minutes of your life researching the validity of their claim before spending several hours debating it. You'll save yourself a ton of hassle.

But what your saying isn't completely true. Sure we shouldn't expect a complete description of creation form God. But the biblical God does describe some of his creation and those things are up for debate.

Very true. There are explanations that try to shoehorn the creation account into what we know about evolution, but imo a lot of them are silly.

I do wish the Bible was more clear as to weather or not Adam and Eve were the first and only people, as it can easily be taken either way (asking where does Cain's wife come from, etc. seems to imply other people around other than Adam and Eve), and that'd allow people to pin it as closer to "definitely right" or "definitely wrong" rather than, "welll..... ****."

"However, the purpose for it is to show that God is pleased with what he has made"

Yeah, that defies all logic. The purpose of a creation account is...an account of creation...not an account of God being pleased with his own creation, otherwise it wouldn't be a "creation account", it would be a "self-praising account". Him being pleased is secondary to it being an account of creation, not the main point. The main point is describing the creation of Earth/etc. That's what a "creation account" is. If all it was about was "God being happy with himself", then it would be 1 sentence long saying "God made everything, and he was happy with it". Yet it goes into detail.

I really dont see it as being able to be taken either way. If there were others before Adam and Eve that's still a problem. As Gods account of the creation of man should of started with those men. If not he should of said "and now i will create man, again, in our image to mix with the men i already created." I mean its pretty clear the writers meant it as the first creation of man so idk.

It's not so crazy a position to take. Read or listen to the first lecture (I think, one of the first couple anyway) of this Yale course available for free online about the hebrew bible. The prof's position is, IIRC, that the many (most?) of the stories in there were never meant to be taken literally, and would not have been taken as such by the people at the time. Rather, they are stories designed to describe a community and its relationship with its god. It's well worth listening/reading (there are transcripts of each lecture)

http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studie...tent/downloads

This link is in the video thread if you ever need to find it again.