Comment by deckiedan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deckiedan | Hacker News Reader

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I absolutely agree.

As a side note: Its 6 days, not 7. Day 7 (the Sabbath) was for resting.

As a longer thought: God, as a omnipotent being, obviously doesn't need to rest, and given the idea that he (for lack of a better pronoun) is essentially keeping the universe running himself, the whole concept of 'God resting' is obviously (to me, and many others) poetic. Looking at the rest of the Genesis creation story through 'poetic narrative' lenses:

From the beginning of the universe until the start of human written history, we can divide it up into Eons (non-specific but LONG periods of time):

Eon 1: - The universe was 'formless' and chaotic. - Pure energy / light and darkness / vacuum / void become separate.

Eon 2: - The planets and other 'heavenly bodies' or galaxies start to spin together into units. - Planetary atmospheres form. (The separation between 'waters below' (the unknown depths of the sea) and 'waters above' (the vast 'ocean' of space') from a ).

Eon 3: - Focussing on Earth, the planet surface began to stabilise, continents appear. - Plants and other 'basic' forms of life begin to show up and spread all over the planet.

Eon 4: - The moon shows up, the atmosphere clears up a bit, stars are now visible, the earths spin is now stable re. Day and Night.

Eon 5: - Animals! Firstly water based, then birds. Maybe huge birds (dinosaurs?) No non-bird land-dwellers yet.

Eon 6: - Land based animals, 'finally' humans showing up.

Eon 7: - Now. Beginning of written histories.

The above pattern is a pretty strict interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, with most of the poetic stuff stripped out. It's kind of interesting how much of it does kind of map to our current understanding of the beginning of the universe and our planet.

What do you think?

Typical reinterpretation of Genesis 1. Unfortunately, the text also says: "it was the evening and the morning, the first day." i.e., the text goes out of the way to affirm that this was the task of a single day, not of an eon.

Well, kinda. What is an evening or morning when there is no sun, night, day time? More likely it's just a poetic turn of phrase. What I find interesting is you can stick to "it's poetic, but modern scientific understanding can fit in happily" And aren't forced into saying, "science and Genesis are incompatible".

If you're going to claim poetic turn of phrase, you really have to look at the text in its original languages. There are many examples of strained translations or outright mistranslations for religious texts.

The word used in the original that was translated into English words for day, night, morning, and evening could very well be "an unspecified subjective length of time", "literally 86400 seconds", "literally 43200 seconds", "the timespan for which any portion of the sun is visible in the sky", "the interval between waking and going back to sleep", etc.

The objective reality is that Genesis is a myth written by primitive screwheads that predated the invention of scientific inquiry. Any similarity to any extant theories on the origin of the universe are purely coincidental, highlighted by human brains that are hardwired to find patterns and meaning even where genuine relationships do not exist. There is no shame in having a religion that makes no sense scientifically, provided that you can keep it separate from any matters that require rational thought grounded in observable reality.

Let the religion be what it is. Attempting to reconcile it with scientific theory is pointless, and ultimately a waste of time, because science may just discard that theory and take up another any time new data become available. Indeed, theories like the Big Bang only became widely known because they are remotely reconcilable with Genesis. It isn't the only cosmology theory capable of explaining all the available evidence, nor is it necessarily the best one. Reconciling religion with science makes as much sense as explaining the biological basis for Harry Potter.

It does not matter if religion is made-up nonsense. The important thing is the tribal sense of community one gets from knowing all the same nonsense as everyone else, and the artistic inspiration one may draw from it.

Believing one's religion is the literal truth and also believing that scientific inquiry is the best method at our disposal for understanding and affecting our universe is no more difficult than believing that Star Wars is set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, while also believing that Star Trek is set a century or two in the future, in an alternate-history version of our own galaxy. We can simultaneously believe that all fantasy universes are separate, and never shall any two meet, and that they all somehow link together through the Stargate inside the Dark Tower.

Science and Genesis are incompatible. But they don't need to be compatible.

The poetic interpretation makes the most sense to me. These were a nomadic people living thousands of years ago with no concept of our modern scientific method, the big bang, or evolution. To interpret it literally, exclude the cultural context, and expect it to be a scientifically accurate description is a disservice to them.

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