Thread: What do you believe in?

Originally Posted by Str8Raz0r

"...and there was evening, and there was morning-the first day."(Genesis 1:5)

So how many minutes is that? How many hours? The word day means nothing unless you're on earth....

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

So how many minutes is that? How many hours? The word day means nothing unless you're on earth....

There are a few theories on that at well... I personally believe in a six day creation as one would measure a day today. Of course the earth seems to be slowing down a bit, so maybe it was a little quicker. One interesting idea is the "Gap Theory." It mentions that there is no time recorded in Genesis 1:2 and this could perhaps be the billions of years that "gap" some old-age estimations of the Earth and Creationists Young-Earth. Of course this is an idea, and doesn't seem (I haven't studied it very well yet) to compromise God's word. I am sure I could find glaring holes if I looked hard enough.

By the way.... Have fun and safe shaving!

I read that the original hebrew word meant 'period of time' as well as 'day'. When arguing about the bible, we should always keep in mind that the words might have meant something slightly different but similar.

We know that the universe is billions of years old. From archeological evidence, we know that humankind has been around for longer than what new-earth believers accept as the age of the universe. Personally, I think that the whole discussion is besides the point.

God created the laws of the universe. There is no reason whatsover that he would have needed to 'snap his fingers' and work within 6 exact 24 hour intervals when he had already set up the framework that would make it happen. There is no need for magic when we accept that God made the laws of physics. Besides, at the time, noone would have understood the laws of physics. They didn't know math. They didn't even understand fractional, negative, imaginary numbers, or even the number 0. Not exactly the basis for talking about details.

Genesis as it is written is how I would explain it to a scientifically illiterate person. It is how I explained it to my 6 year old. that doesn't mean the scientific explanation is wrong, or that there is a genuine conflict.

Originally Posted by Bruno

We know that the universe is...

Is that also a belief derived from axioms?

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Is that also a belief derived from axioms?

Fair point.
However, every source of information we have, looked at from various different scientific angles, points to the universe being billions of years old.
So far we have no reason to doubt the conclusion.

Originally Posted by Bruno

So far we have no reason to doubt the conclusion.

It's a shame the catholic church doubted it for so long. One has to wonder what they based their doubt on. What I am trying to say is that when it comes to religion, you cannot take any scientifically or even commonly held 'belief' for granted

We are on earth though and the bible was dictated by God and given to us. Therefore we believe it is true. We can also apply logic and the book still stands. The book of Genesis also gives a yard stick to measure a "day", and a little logical progression makes it stand out. Read Gen 1:14. Therefore every day stands up to the same yard stick as the same verbage (for each day) was used in the account of creation. It may be that each day (and night) was longer (than we are used to), this we do not know (yet). It surely was different before Adam ate the apple with Eve.

Jeff