Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Creation Questions

One thing I've been doing recently on Sunday night's is providing handouts with a large list of questions relevant to our current biblical study. Currently, we are studying Genesis 1-11 and the creation/evolution issue. I provided 84 questions from this section of Scripture. The Following questions were asked and discussed over the hour and a half. I always find it interesting to see what gets asked and what doesn't.

3. What is meant by ‘the heavens’ (plural) in 1:1?
8. If creation is ‘young,’ how can we see starlight from millions of light years away?
9. What is or what happened to the ‘water above’ the expanse of 1:7?
12. Who is the ‘Us’ in 1:26?
31. Did the serpent really talk (3:1)? If so, how?
49. Who was Cain afraid of if only 3 people existed (4:14)?
50. Who was Cain’s wife (4:17)?
52. How could men live as long as is described in chapter 5?
54. Who were the ‘sons of God’ referred to in 6:2?
55. What is meant by the 120 years in 6:3?
56. What were the Nephilim of 6:4?
59. Was the flood in Noah’s day local or worldwide?
61. How could they possibly fit all ‘kinds’ of animals into the ark?
62. Were dinosaurs on the ark? What happened to them?
66. If the flood was worldwide, where did all the water go?
72. Do all people/races really come from the eight people of Noah’s Ark?
74. How did land animals get to other continents?
83. Is there scientific evidence for intelligent design?

9 comments:

theajthomas said...

Dude - those are some good questions and some of them I have never heard before. Here's a quation about Genesis 1-2. Doe these accounts have to be literal (not just the old day debate) in order to be true? The catholics beleive that the creation account is true but not literal. Could that help answer questions like the snake talking and cain being afraid of the others and some of those detail questions. As for 8 I assume the same way you can see a full grown tree or a deep ravine.

matthew said...

Hey AJ. The previous week (the first week of this series) we discussed the 5 most popular interpretations of Genesis 1 including the allegory/symbolic interpretation you speak of.

Since I didn't post Sunday, I just added the handout as Sunday's post. So if you're interested you can scroll down.

As for #8, numerous possibilities emerge: 1. YEC's are wrong that the earth is young. 2. The speed of light used to be much faster (bad theory imo). 3. The light was created in transit (like what you said). 4. The universe is much older than the earth (this is a theory that makes some good sense to me, it can be found in a book by Dr. Russell Humphreyes entitled "Starlight and Time"

Robin said...

To me the creation account seems to leave open the possibility that the earth was around for a long time before the "7 days" of creation, ie "in the beginning" need not be the same as "day one", ie the earth was there but pretty much unlivable for a long time before started doing stuff to it.

Robin said...

Crap, I just scrolled down and discovered you already covered that one.

Kirk said...

Yes is the answer to at least one of these questions. I like Aaron's interpretation of Genesis: God made up people and tried to trick us. He makes me giggle.

Steph said...

Very good creation questions - things that are interesting to look at nd help people actually think about what they believe instead of just believing it, always a good thing.

On another note, neither of your blogroller things like me, and with no one else to blame, I blame you.

Steph said...

Oh, and another question - how would Eve have known that the pain in childbirth was increased if she didn't have kids until after the fall? (and a related question - what's the point of telling someone that something is going to be worse if they hadn't ever experienced it in the first place).

Owen said...

Hey Matthew- all good questions. I see it as much more symbolic that literal, and as such I havn't delved to deeply into the details because I think the stuff we are supposed to glean out of it are broader themes that we get best by not analyzing the Genesis account verse by verse.

BTW- I tried to ping and it didn't work. Help!

matthew said...

Q
"how would Eve have known that the pain in childbirth was increased if she didn't have kids until after the fall?"

A
I don't think it's necessary (nor does the passage say) that Eve knew the pain of childbirth before it was 'increased.' I think the verse is just saying that God HAD created childbirth to be painLESS, but now it would be painFULL.

Q
"what's the point of telling someone that something is going to be worse if they hadn't ever experienced it in the first place"

A
I'd think any child would appreciate being told she's grounded even if she'd never been grounded before. A whole bunch of "NO's" would be frustrating w/o an explanation. God was gracious enough to explain the reason for the difficulty.

Feel free to interact with those responses :)