in his name...wait what?

[Fnyunj]

Huh? You lost me on your first part.
As to Omnisentience and Omnipresence, God had neither before the New Testament. He had to rest after the first six days of Creation, he had to send angels into Sodom to investigate the number of moral souls living in it, etc. The concepts of omnisentience and omnipresence came later.

Well - if you count the concept of an Angel as an automaton crafted by God; an intelligent agent, then sure he's omnicient. Just not "directly".

I could buy the "not omnipotent" argument. On the other hand, if one is truly omnicient, and if knowledge is power, then one is functionally omnipotent.

The question isn't; why did he rest on the 7th day.
The question is; why did he take 6 days to finish the job?

[Jetsetlemming]

I can answer that question. God never, across the course of the bible, acts outright an obvious to his existence. He's always discreet, using a burning bush or a flood or a humanoid angel to do his work for him. It makes sense along these lines that he'd hold himself back and slowly instead of just poofing it all into existence. Even though there were no witnesses to see "OMG Look! It's God!" at Creation, the story's told later on, and it had to keep God's theme of subtlety.
I prefer, however, the thought of a God who has slight limits on his power and abilities.

[Linkara]

Furthermore, we have to stretch our interpretation of a "day." After all, while God may have created the concepts of day and night on the first day, the sun and moon weren't made until the fourth day, and how can you really measure the length of a day until you have a sun for the planet to orbit around? ^_~

To me, that could also explain dinosaurs and evolution - it all happened within three "days." ^_~

[ManaUser]

I can answer that question. God never, across the course of the bible, acts outright an obvious to his existence. He's always discreet, using a burning bush or a flood or a humanoid angel to do his work for him.

He did moon Moses that one time though.

[Honor]

I can answer that question. God never, across the course of the bible, acts outright an obvious to his existence. He's always discreet, using a burning bush or a flood or a humanoid angel to do his work for him.

He did moon Moses that one time though.

She, not he... Read the book fer cryin' out loud. And she didn't 'moon' him, she showed him her burning bush. *very small grin*

Obviously, the erasure of the 'S' later on was a clumsey attempt by insecure males to secure thier strangle-hold... Just like the censorship of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

[Toawa]

I can answer that question. God never, across the course of the bible, acts outright an obvious to his existence. He's always discreet, using a burning bush or a flood or a humanoid angel to do his work for him.

He did moon Moses that one time though.

She, not he... Read the book fer cryin' out loud. And she didn't 'moon' him, she showed him her burning bush. *very small grin*

Obviously, the erasure of the 'S' later on was a clumsey attempt by insecure males to secure thier strangle-hold... Just like the censorship of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Now taking bets on whether or not God is a futa...

Of course, this reminds me of a joke...

And so God created Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden, and (S)He said unto them, "I have two final gifts to bestow upon you. Who wants the first gift?" and Adam said "I want it!" and God said, "Very Well. I give you the gift of Peeing Upright," whereupon Adam said "Cool!" and ran behind a tree to try it out.

And Eve asked, "What about the other gift?" and God said, "Yes, other gift... other gift... I know I put it around here somewhere... Ah yes, here it is... Multiple Orgasms."

[Swordsman3003]

Furthermore, we have to stretch our interpretation of a "day." After all, while God may have created the concepts of day and night on the first day, the sun and moon weren't made until the fourth day, and how can you really measure the length of a day until you have a sun for the planet to orbit around? ^_~

To me, that could also explain dinosaurs and evolution - it all happened within three "days." ^_~

That is the biggest cop-out I have ever heard. Have you considered that the bible does not describe "and the next day, there were birds." It says God created them. Not to mention, it has the order of events all messed up, as far as evolution goes.

[BriHahn]

I can answer that question. God never, across the course of the bible, acts outright an obvious to his existence. He's always discreet, using a burning bush or a flood or a humanoid angel to do his work for him.

He did moon Moses that one time though.

She, not he... Read the book fer cryin' out loud. And she didn't 'moon' him, she showed him her burning bush. *very small grin*

Obviously, the erasure of the 'S' later on was a clumsey attempt by insecure males to secure thier strangle-hold... Just like the censorship of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

I've often wondered that myself. Everything I've read indicates that the female of the species used to be revered; that people worshipped the Mother of All as their god(dess). When did we suddenly go to the male version?

[Honor]

He did moon Moses that one time though.

She, not he... Read the book fer cryin' out loud. And she didn't 'moon' him, she showed him her burning bush. *very small grin*

Obviously, the erasure of the 'S' later on was a clumsey attempt by insecure males to secure thier strangle-hold... Just like the censorship of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

I've often wondered that myself. Everything I've read indicates that the female of the species used to be revered; that people worshipped the Mother of All as their god(dess). When did we suddenly go to the male version?

This is an interesting work on that subject...

[Honor]

Now taking bets on whether or not God is a futa...

I'll take Divine Dickgirl to win, for ten large, in the ninth.

Actually, there are a lot of mythologies and theories that suggest that the divinity must, by definition, contain nearly equal aspects of female and male energy, you know...

Furthermore, we have to stretch our interpretation of a "day." After all, while God may have created the concepts of day and night on the first day, the sun and moon weren't made until the fourth day, and how can you really measure the length of a day until you have a sun for the planet to orbit around? ^_~

To me, that could also explain dinosaurs and evolution - it all happened within three "days." ^_~

That is the biggest cop-out I have ever heard. Have you considered that the bible does not describe "and the next day, there were birds." It says God created them. Not to mention, it has the order of events all messed up, as far as evolution goes.

Get used to the big cop outs, sweet... It's how the whole shell game works. It doesn't take a whole lot of brain power to work out a story where you have a magical explanation for every inconsistency and mis-alignment, and these folks have had thousands of years to work on it.

Props to Linkara and others in this thread for using one that I hear used all too infrequently, though... Same one I offered up in sunday school while I was still a christian. (I started questioning and doubting and asking the tough questions at about ten, and was through with it, a budding buddhist, and openly agnostic with athiestic leanings by the time I was 16...)

To wit: "Science can prove X" "Ok... Then god made the universe in such a way that X would work. On purpose. Elegant, huh?"

My "spiritual leaders" were unimpressed (remember folks, this was the early seventies). My mother, on the other hand, was impressed.

She was a really good mom... Always suitably proud of my freakishly large IQ, always supporting and posetive and encouraging, and always pushing me to use it more and more...

[Warmachine]

Furthermore, we have to stretch our interpretation of a "day." After all, while God may have created the concepts of day and night on the first day, the sun and moon weren't made until the fourth day, and how can you really measure the length of a day until you have a sun for the planet to orbit around? ^_~

To me, that could also explain dinosaurs and evolution - it all happened within three "days." ^_~

That's just gibberish. That a particular unit of measurement was not defined at the time does not mean a value can have no measure. A glass of water still has a specific volume even if no one has bothered to measure it. Time elapses even if no clocks are running. A value can be retroactively measured after the unit of measure has been defined. A new unit of time can be defined and the time elapsed between two past events can be stated in such units.

If the time elapsed before the creation of the sun and moon was not measured, it'd be incorrect to describe it using an unambigious measure such as 'days'. 'Period' or 'era' should be used. It'd be plain lying to claim accuracy of measurement when the value is simply not known. If the values were known to be not 24 hours (to a reasonable accuracy), stating 'days' is still lying.

[Honor]

Furthermore, we have to stretch our interpretation of a "day." After all, while God may have created the concepts of day and night on the first day, the sun and moon weren't made until the fourth day, and how can you really measure the length of a day until you have a sun for the planet to orbit around? ^_~

To me, that could also explain dinosaurs and evolution - it all happened within three "days." ^_~

That's just gibberish. That a particular unit of measurement was not defined at the time does not mean a value can have no measure. A glass of water still has a specific volume even if no one has bothered to measure it. Time elapses even if no clocks are running. A value can be retroactively measured after the unit of measure has been defined. A new unit of time can be defined and the time elapsed between two past events can be stated in such units.

If the time elapsed before the creation of the sun and moon was not measured, it'd be incorrect to describe it using an unambigious measure such as 'days'. 'Period' or 'era' should be used. It'd be plain lying to claim accuracy of measurement when the value is simply not known. If the values were known to be not 24 hours (to a reasonable accuracy), stating 'days' is still lying.

That's a good construction of an argument, but it's more than is needed to deflate this particular line of bullshit...

The definition of a "day" in this case can only logically be that definition commonly used by the person doing the writing... If they'd meant "a day, the way God rekons it, which is a really long time to us." that's what they would have said.

If Stephen Hawking wrote "As best as we can tell, the big bank took about a week." we'd all know he meant a week as we humans rekon it, and not bitch and nitpick that there was no third planet orbiting a common little G class star in the outer spiral arm of one of the numerous galaxies to use as a reliable meterstick for all measurement of time in the universe...

They meant a day. More, they probably meant the working, daylight hours of a day, because the 24 hour day is something of a modern idea. They didn't say "day" because god has really long days, they didn't say it to be metaphorical, and they didn't say it to be allegorical. They said it because they were ignorant as to the realities of things like cosmology, planetology, geology, evolution, and biology, and - to them - six days of major magic seemed like it'd be plenty of time.

[LeftTentacleGreen]

God's a carnivorous pimp.. that's too funny.

Update: ok.. got to the end.. you know, I hate christianity as much as the next atheist socialist, but that was just mean.

[ManaUser]

I can answer that question. God never, across the course of the bible, acts outright an obvious to his existence. He's always discreet, using a burning bush or a flood or a humanoid angel to do his work for him.

He did moon Moses that one time though.

She, not he... Read the book fer cryin' out loud. And she didn't 'moon' him, she showed him her burning bush. *very small grin*

I was actually refering to Exodus 33:23 "And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen."

[Linkara]

Meh, I have my opinion on the matter. I was actually trying to make light of it, but I didn't expect such a huge reaction to it. ^^;; I've said before I don't take the Bible to be the literal word of God, I just thought as a cop-out, it was a neat one.

[Honor]

I was actually refering to Exodus 33:23 "And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen."

D'Oh!! I forgot that one!!

...I just thought as a cop-out, it was a neat one.

I'm on record agreeing, above.

[Linkara]

...I just thought as a cop-out, it was a neat one.

I'm on record agreeing, above.

Ah, I was confused at first, sorry, thought you were saying that cosmoslogically, a day is a day is a day because it was people who wrote it. ^^ My mistake!

Still, mind you, since I don't really know how it went down back in those days, there might not have been a genesis story at all, human beings may have just evolved as part of God's plan and the creation story was invented because the people didn't understand the biological circumstances around it at the time.

[Jetsetlemming]

As for the use of "day" in the story of Creation: I always chalked it up to a lack of a suitable long term for the time taken when it was "told" to the original author (whomever the hell it was that wrote it down). I doubt there was any good word for "a couple billion years" at the dawn of history. Just like with the native americans: Their methods of telling time were only based on days, lunar cycles, seasons, and generations.
Add onto that the countless times the Bible has been translated, and then translated again based on that first translation, then translated AGAIN, and you end up with plenty of room for wiggling in the bible.

[Putaro]

al·le·go·ry (ăl'ĭ-gôr'ē, -gōr'ē)
n., pl. -ries.
The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.
A story, picture, or play employing such representation. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories.
A symbolic representation: The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice.

Is anyone seriously advocating a literal interpretation of the Bible?

[Warmachine]

As for the use of "day" in the story of Creation: I always chalked it up to a lack of a suitable long term for the time taken when it was "told" to the original author (whomever the hell it was that wrote it down). I doubt there was any good word for "a couple billion years" at the dawn of history. Just like with the native americans: Their methods of telling time were only based on days, lunar cycles, seasons, and generations.

That's gibberish as well. If the scribe didn't have the best phrase for billions of years, he'd choose the longest unit of time, which, as you've pointed out, can include generations. The Israelites weren't famous for their mathematics but they could use 'countless' or 'immeasurable time'. Anything vague would be less ridiculous than 'day'.