[jacques_chester]

In any book composed of random fantasy elements, written by hundreds of authors, it is pretty much inevitable that some bits will, merely by chance, be correct.

Genesis is the same book that puzzlingly fails to mention the big bang, for example.

[glimcat]

In the beginning, there was light.

On second thought, do we have to count "the beginning" as the moment of the singularity or as the time when the universe became transparent to photons? Gonna end up with a holy war over that one.

Wait, it's all good. You start out with a dark and formless void, then you get your "fiat lux" afterwards. The Bible was right again!

[jacques_chester]

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Oops, there's water before there's light. Better retcon that sucker.

[michaeldhopkins]

The waters are figurative; they basically represent chaotic universal essence which God separates and shapes. If Plato wrote Genesis he would have said aether. We would probably refer to a singularity or strings or something else we think everything is made of.

[jacques_chester]

Or the waters are literal; and it represents that the Bible was written by a pre-modern people with nothing more than their imagination to guide them. I think Plato would have been embarrassed to be caught anywhere near Genesis.

[michaeldhopkins]

I assume you are saying that we should just believe whatever we like about old documents. I don't think that is a good idea. It's better to determine what the writers meant by conducting a careful linguistic study based on other texts, archeology and historical accounts written by people who seem to have had access to evidence that is now lost.

"Plato meets Moses" speculation is just fun, though. Since Plato was a monotheist I think he would have found enough common ground to debate with Moses. I expect the two would have disagreed on whether the forms were in God or residing elsewhere. The creation account in Genesis and in Timaeus are both geocentric accounts of an initially perfect creation, etc. They also would have agreed that the homogenous mixture of the elements was the same as the homogenous "formless and void," "surface of the waters" etc., but they definitely would have disagreed about the demiurge vs God/Satan, and also disagreed about quite a lot of what happened after creation. That's my speculation, anyway.

[jacques_chester]

> I assume you are saying that we should just believe whatever we like about old documents.

I'm assuming that we apply Ockham's Razor. That it's a collection of myths predating science is easier to uphold than the idea that every single Biblical author was steeped in magical realism.

Most of the genius in the Bible comes from outside of it: from the critics and commentators. In a way it's a triumph of brilliant minds over mediocre source material. But now we don't need to apply genius to myths, we can apply them to the real world. I rather prefer that.

[Apocryphon]

Apropos of nothing, here's water where there isn't light!

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2085298,00.ht...

[lelele]

> 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Big Bang.

[jacques_chester]

Evidence suggests that energy preceded matter -- ie that light preceded earth, heaven and water.

Look, the Bible is an anthology of twisted fairytales that's been an absolute bonanza of story fuel for the western tradition. But it's not exactly replete with reliable scientific information.

[glimcat]

I'm actually rather fond of certain portions of Leviticus which describe diagnostic rituals.

[jacques_chester]

I like how detailed the builder's specs for the tabernacle are. Paaaaages and paaaaages of expensive building materials. "The curtain tassels should totally be gold-plated platinum. PS my brother gets all the juicy cuts of lamb, God only likes the organs to be burnt".

Meanwhile, explicating the meaning and purpose of the Ten Commandments in all the thousands of odd corner cases -- including big ones like war -- are left as an exercise for the reader.

Wow have we gotten off-topic. Sorry HNers.

[glimcat]

The Universe is about 13.75 Gyrs old while Earth is about 4.54 Gyrs old.

[stan_rogers]

Well (he said somewhat flippantly), in a manner of speaking it does, if one can consider the condensation first of energy (fiat lux) then matter (the separation of the waters) out of chaos to be a pretty decent neolithic understanding of the process. (Not a believer in any sense -- I've actually used this point against 6-day creationists, realising that I was wielding a sort of double-edged sword.)