Why does God, in Genesis, sound like a mythological deity in a mythological creation story?

Question

"1) Bible says Earth was created before the Sun (Genesis 1:1 and 1:16)
2) Bible timeline-6,000 year old human genealogy:
Adam/Creation to Noah/Flood - 1660 years
Noah to Abraham - 440 years
Abraham to Moses - 400 years
Moses to Jesus - 2500 years
Vs FACT: Human kind is more than 100,000 years old

The above is the evidence which the Christian creator God, according to the Bible, left behind of his existence. Ironically enough, it proves that the historical account of his existence is fictional.
If you think it’s metaphorical, know that creation mythology attempts to explain natural, historic events through extended metaphor. The bible is being perceived more as metaphorical over time since it keeps being discredited by more historical facts like the above.
(P.S. There is no biggest prime number)"

Answer 1

God sounds like that because it is fairly certain that at least that notion of God is.

Truth is, the Bible had a very important function of making people feel special.

In a book I am reading now by the mathematician/philosopher Bertrand Russell,

he examines why the church felt so threatened by the Copernican notion that the

earth was, in fact, not the center of the universe.

He speculates that, at least in the mind of some, if the earth was a fairly insignificant

celestial body, one of billions, or possibly trillions, in a vast universe, then the illusion that

it had a special place and meaning might suggest that people's sense of importance and meaning

might equally be an illusion.

To see the story of Genesis as anything other than a metaphor just shows how people are willing

to suspend their rational faculties in order to accept a most improbable story because it makes them feel good.

Answer 2

1) the earth wasn't created before the Sun. Our Solar system was created together.

2) the bible says there is no time in God's eye. That one day is LIKE a 1000 yrs. Meaning a short time to God is a long time to us. Each day of creation was not a 24-hour day. A 'day' could be 1 million yrs or 1 billion yrs. The Christians that believe the earth is 6000 yrs old is few.

3) Why couldn't God have created the process of evolution? Does evolution HAVE to exist in order for life to exist?

4) not all of the things in the OT are to be taken literal. The Bible was written in 4 senses.

5) if you hear that a Christian believes a certain thing, don't think that all Christians believe that too. There are over 3000 denominations in Christianity to date.

Answer 3

There's nothing logically incoherent about the earth existing before the sun. However, many people believe that the sun is older than the earth, and we generally speak of the earth's position in space as being in orbit around the sun.

If, as many people believe, the sun is older than the earth, then the sun has existed longer than the earth, and if the Bible says it has not, then the Bible would be wrong.

Also, if the earth's location in space has always been properly defined by its relationship to the sun, but the Bible says there was a time when there was an earth but no sun, then the Bible must be wrong.

It's my guess that these inconsistencies are what the question is referring to. But again, keep in mind that there is nothing illogical or logically incoherent about the earth existing prior to the sun. It's just something that lots of people don't believe to be true.

But why should the random and changing whimsical opinions of lost and confused humanity be permitted to be the ultimate judge of reality? If it's all we have to go on, then sure, why not, but when we have the authoritative word of God spelling things out for us, there is no reason to put our blind faith in people's personal opinions.

What are the reasons so many people have decided that the sun came before the earth?

I honestly don't know all of the reasons (and maybe not any of them), but I feel perfectly comfortable hazarding some ignorantly vague guesses.



1. We've tested the mineral content of various rocks and compared the numbers with observed radioactive decomposition rates, thereby determining when the rocks were formed, ie, the age of the earth.



2. We've analyzed the light spectrum coming from the sun to determine its chemical composition and compared that also with radioactive decay rates that have been observed, thereby determining the age of the sun.



3. We've proceeded from numerous theories about the formulation of solar systems and galaxies, the big bang, etc, checking vector paths based on current trajectories and so on and so forth, to determine when our sun would have come into being.



I dunno... probably a bunch of stuff along those lines. In other words, we have not drawn our conclusions about the length of time the earth and the sun have been around based upon first-hand witness -- rather, we have drawn our conclusions based on observations of existing phenomena.



This is kind of like trying to deduce how old a person is based on how tall they are, or the color of their hair, or the length of their fingernails, or how many teeth they have, rather than by witnessing their birth and counting each day and year thereafter.



While this kind of guesswork can often produce amazingly accurate results, sometimes it fails miserably, and I'm sure we all have anecdotes that we could share to prove it.



Now imagine that God actually created Adam as a full grown man, as the Bible seems to suggest.

If we were to look at Adam three seconds after he was created, we may guess, based on his height, his teeth, his hair, etc, that he had been around for 20 or 30 years. Of course, we would be wrong, and God Himself has clearly told us as much in the Bible.

The Bible suggests that God created Adam fully mature, that God created the animals fully mature, and that God created the plants fully mature. We see a pattern developing here. Why would we not also conclude that God created the universe fully mature?

We have a mature sun and a mature earth -- not because they are old, but rather because God created them fully mature, quite possibly so that they would immediately be capable of sustaining life.

This in no way, shape, or form contradicts any of the evidence available -- it only contradicts certain individuals' interpretations of the evidence.

Answer 4

Well actually, the only reason we know the sun is older by a little bit more than the Earth, allegedly, is because we compared the oldest thing we could find on the Earth, technically speaking, and the oldest thing we could find from the Sun. That's it. We've never been more than 7.45645 into the ground from what I've read and the center of the Earth is 4,000 miles down... so the possibility of finding something older on the Earth than what we have access to is pretty high. For example, the planet's water is even older than the Sun and we found this out like 5 seconds ago. Our understanding of science changes rapidly so who knows what we'll find out different next. I.e: the age of the Earth was thought to be 100 million by some in the 1800s, then it was bumped up to 1.6 Billion in the early 1900s, then it was bumped up to the 3 billion in the 1920s, and in the 1950s it was finally bumped up to the now standard 4.56 plus or minus 1 percent, aka, PLUS OR MINUS 70 MILLION YEARS (although on the calculator i got 45 millionish so idk how that source i read gave me 70 million), Billion figure due to the Canyon Diablo Meteorite (if it's a meteorite, how can it be considered part of our planet? Can someone explain that to me?). So the age just keeps creeping and creeping as we find older and older things. And who knows what's in the ocean. We've only explored 5% of it, so we could find something in the depths of the ocean older than the Meteorite. I mean I think it's just a matter of time before the age of the Earth passes over the Sun. And did you catch that + or - 70 million years figure? That means it's possibly that the Earth is older than the 4.60 Billion year old Sun. It's way possible actually.



As for that number of generations. No age of the Earth is given in the Bible. That's a fools errand given there are generational skips as evidenced in the scriptures itself. I would say almost all of the generation skips occurred before Abraham. Anyways, here is one example: Christ was the son of David, and in 1 Chron. 26:24, we read: "Shebuel the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, was ruler of the treasures." This was in David's time, several hundred years after Moses. Yet Gershom was the son of Moses, while Shebuel was twelve or fifteen generations from the person whose son he is said to be.

Answer 5

The literary genre is myth. The myth is the same general outline as those of surrounding religions. The teachings of the myth are in stark contrast to the similar creation-flood stories of the surrounding cultures.



The purpose of the story is not to factually recount events as they happened in the same manner that a modern history or modern archeology would. That way of writing did not exist when Genesis was written.



The purpose of the writing and the manner of writing it was popular at the time and understood at the time to be an explanation of how people came to be and what that means for how people act, relate to each other and relate to God.



To see scripture as the equivalent of a modern history book is to miss the point entirely. The fact that it is mythology does not make any less the truths that it tells.



Historical facts don't matter. This has nothing to do with metaphor. The reading of scripture overly literally is not important to Christianity. misperceiving it as bad history or lacking in facts really doesn't matter.



The first three chapters of Boadt, Reading the Old Testament, will disabuse you of your misconceptions. Educate yourself.

Answer 6

Well the obvious answer would be because you don't understand myth. A creation story must be told in myth form because there were no humans present. But that is the 'form'

Answer 7

Who ever wrote Genesis was probably instructed by the powers that be, to write a brief summation.



Those who seek will seek,...and will know.

There are many other sources available. The creation story is quite lovely when explored more fully.

Answer 8

Yes, the earth is less than 7000 years old and it can only live up to 7000 years or 1 week millennium, do you have a problem with that? well, you can choose whatever makes you feel good.

Answer 9

to evolutionists it sounds that way because it goes against evolution



nothing exploded.

and we don’t know why but the disorder became order.

and this ordered matter was inorganic.

and we don’t know why but the inorganic became living.

and then this living matter which was all made up of identical forms began to diversify.

and then some things diversified into living forms for reasons we can’t explain.

and they became varied, although unintelligent, and the unintelligent life forms became intelligent and articulate.

and then for reasons we can’t explain, the articulate life forms became language using, but not moral.

and then the language using life forms, for reasons we cannot explain, became intelligent articulate moral men.



''Vs FACT: Human kind is more than 100,000 years old ''

actually that is not a fact



(P.S. There is no biggest prime number)"

ok, so what?

Answer 10

'"1) Bible says Earth was created before the Sun (Genesis 1:1 and 1:16)





No it doesn't. Your first line was already false.

Answer 11

Even the pope accepts that evolution is proven, which proves that the literal interpretation of Genesis, and as such many other parts of the bible is not true. Matter of fact, if the first sin never happened, and that was just a metaphorical story about listening to your parents and not eating poisonous mushrooms, no matter how much peer pressure was put on you by a talking snake, then that means that Jesus didn't need to forgive us of our sins, and also that pretty much all of it except the moral of being nice to each other is nonsense.