Evolution or Intelligent Design

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Evolution was an ancient Greek philosophy, which Charles Darwin used as a justification for rasism. You probably don't know that the actual title of his book is this: "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."

Yes because the biblical explanation for the origin of man has never been used to justify racism. Cough "curse of Ham".

[Statilius the Epicurean]

All you did was make assertions. Several scientific laws prove the existence of God, such as the Law of Biogenesis. The Bible gives a great explanation for starlight: God makes the starlight in Gen 1:14 and makes the actual stars in Gen 1:16, remarkably distinguishing stars and starlight, and describing how the distant starlight can be seen. Chapters 38-41 of the Book of Job are a transcript of God talking to Job, and that is backed up by the fact that those chapters contain some of the most amazing scientific statements including light being in motion and deep sea springs, written thousands of years before the human discovery of those facts. The Bible mentioned "paths of the sea," which directly led to the discovery of ocean currents.

I don't think you understand just how wacky from a modern perspective the Biblical concept of the natural universe is. And this isn't me blaming the authors, because to be fair they were writing 2,500 years ago when only the most rudimentary cosmological facts were known, mostly thanks to Babylonian astronomers (and much of Genesis is borrowed/reworked Mesopotamian mythology).



Genesis tells us that above the sky there is a cosmic ocean separated from the earth by a solid dome (Genesis 1:7: "So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome"). To be a Biblical literalist you have to believe this picture over the most basic and obvious natural facts, like how space is actually a vacuum and not filled with water, and the Earth's atmosphere does not contain a solid vault separating us from the heavens.

Now, maybe you can argue the author of Genesis is being metaphorical here, but then there is no reason not to accept e.g. the story of Adam and Eve as metaphorical either.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

First of all you misquoted the Bible. It actually says this: "And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so."

Well, if we're going to dispute translations then the Bible actually says "וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹהִים, אֶת-הָרָקִיעַ, וַיַּבְדֵּל בֵּין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מִתַּחַת לָרָקִיעַ, וּבֵין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מֵעַל לָרָקִיעַ; וַיְהִי-כֵן". The word translated in English as 'valut' or 'dome' or 'firmament' in the KJV (and translated as 'στερέωμα/stereoma' in Greek, from 'stereos' i.e. solid, and 'firmamentum' from 'firmus' in Latin) is רקיע 'raqia', which comes fom the root 'raqa', meaning "to beat out a metal sheet thinly". See Job 37:18 ("Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a molten mirror?") and Ezekiel 1:22 ("Over the heads of the living creatures there was something like a dome (רקיע), shining like crystal, spread out above their heads."). There's really no other way to read Genesis in context other than the structure is solid.

Genesis 1:20 says this: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."

A more proper translation is something like "fly across the surface of the firmament". The word 'פְּנֵ֖י' is Hebrew for 'face', and is the same word used in Genesis 1:2 in the context of God hovering over the water, not in it.

According to the Bible, the firmament is heaven, which is split into 3 parts: Earth's atmosphere, space, and the third heaven where God lives.

The cosmology of Genesis obviously differs from other parts of the Bible, as they were written centuries apart by different authors writing in different languages in completely different social and theological contexts. So "third heaven" is a reference to one of Paul's letters, but there he is speaking in context of the common Platonic view that there were multiple, perhaps 7 or more levels of heaven to get through before one's soul arrived at God. In contrast the writers of the early Old Testament believed that one went down to the underworld Sheol after death, like a shade in Greek mythology.

Another interesting thing to note is how in Genesis the primordial waters exist before God's creation. In ancient Near East mythology the waters of chaos are tamed by the creator god who slays a sea monster: see the Enuma Elish, where Marduk kills the serpent Tiamat and creates the firmament which separates the waters from her body. It might even be that Genesis is referencing this story as a demythologised critique of Babylonian creation myth ("Yahweh is so powerful he doesn't need to battle any serpent to create the world" kind of thing). Of course there are also oblique references in other parts of the Bible to Yahweh's slaying of the sea monster Leviathan (Psalm 74), so this is a common theme of water/chaos tamed.

The waters between the atmosphere and space fell during the flood as rain, while most of the floodwater came from the water below the earth's crust.

Yet in Psalm 148:4 these waters still exist: "Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!". The post-Flood Psalmist's cosmic geography still includes the primordial waters above the heavens as separated by the firmament. And of course, without a solid structure to keep the above waters out, what physical force was preventing the water from flooding the earth at the instant of creation? And why didn't the water freeze solid in space?

Anyway, with reference to the Flood, something else we can look at is Genesis 7:11 ("on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.") where the "windows of the heavens" are literal windows in the solid vault in the sky which God opens to bring water down through.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

As opposed to doing what?? Textbooks for learning Biblical Hebrew are "extrabiblical sources", dude. It's literally impossible for a native speaker of any modern language not to use "extrabiblical sources" at some point in the process of reading and interpreting the Book of Genesis. If you can't understand a point this basic then there's no reason to think that you understand any other aspect of Biblical exegesis either.

The irony is that Jamison is using modern science to reinterpret the Bible: "science tells us that there is no such thing as a solid sky, so the Biblical author really must have meant this".

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Psalms 148:4 is describing water between space and the third heaven, not between the earth and space. You also continue to lie about what the firmament is and make strawmen based on that.

But the Psalmist refers to the waters above the heavens. How is it between space and third heaven if it's "above the heavens"?

Obviously this makes more sense if you take the Psalmist to mean 'sky' when they say 'heavens', as is normal, and the "waters above the heavens" refers to the primordial waters separated above the solid firmament in Genesis.

At this point I have no interest in this one against four debate where you have no interest in having an honest debate. Have a good night.

Fair enough.