Genesis is Literal

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whichwaytogo47

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The question is where is the inaccuracy in human understanding?

Is there an inaccuracy in the fossil record - i.e. are the timescales labeled for evolution?

Is species translocation (family translocation) accurate? In other words, are we born from primates or are dogs, jackals, wolves, foxes, or coyotes from bears (i.e. at the order level)? Or are we the last surviving species in the human family and thus cannot interbreed with other human species or even human genuses? Are bears and dogs from mice-like mammals? Are mammals/amphibians/reptiles from veterbate fish (i.e. animals with an inner backbone)? In other words, can we put any reliance on Darwinian evolution?

Is our definition of 24 hours the same as God’s definition of 24 hours? Is our definition of 13.6+ billion years or God’s definition of 6,000 to 8,000 years ago accurate? Can they both be accurate and interrelated? As God’s always in the present and had the power to create the universe, could we have different representations of the same time scale?

Did Satan create a fossil record to poke holes in the creation story? Did God create a fossil record to separate believers from non-believers?

Was there a global flood? Was it localized? Did it occur when humans were around? Did it occur on the same planet? Was there two of each family or kind provided and brought on an arc, thus about 1,400 animals were brought? Did God put everyone into hibernation so that animals didn’t maul each other to death on the arc?
 
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whichwaytogo47 said:
Did Satan create a fossil record to poke holes in the creation story? Did God create a fossil record to separate believers from non-believers?
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No.

The Catholic understanding of God doesn’t allow for this. The world was created by God for humans to explore and satisfy the natural curiosity that He gave us. There are laws of nature and physics and consistency in God’s creation. A Catholic shouldn’t regard the sciences and the faith as being in opposition.

We’ll probably never know how exactly life came to be on this planet. But we can definitely know that the creation in Genesis isn’t literal.
 
AdamP88 said:
We’ll probably never know how exactly life came to be on this planet. But we can definitely know that the creation in Genesis isn’t literal.
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But a Catholic Christian must believe the Bible, including Genesis, is literal. How it is literal is where I personally believe there may be differences. Time-scale, dimension, or other variables/(name removed by moderator)uts could have been different that allowed Genesis to be literal. Science and religion can be in congruence. What we don’t know is if the time scales of the Bible are the same as human understanding or if we can rely on the radiometric dating that scientists use. Assuming radiometric dating is accurate would mean that the 24 hour day that God had was different from our understanding of a 24 hour day. In other words, the biblical account is accurate and the human account is accurate. But God’s definition and human’s definition of time differ. Assuming a 24 hour day was accurate and the creation account was accurate, you’d have to assume that the assumptions made in radiometric dating were less accurate.

So humans could assume that the world was created 13.6+ billion years ago while the Bible can say it was created thousands of years ago. But that means there would be wide time scales (eons) which would encompass a 24 hour day.
 
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That’s actually not true. The Catholic Church allows for a non literal interpretation of Genesis.
 
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Start said:
That’s actually not true. The Catholic Church allows for a non literal interpretation of Genesis.
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Possibly viewing it as symbolic or figurative but not that it’s not literal. The Bible is to be taken literally but that doesn’t mean that a story has to be literally taken with the understanding that we have, such as a 24 hour day. It could mean it literally as we define or understand it but doesn’t have to. For example, while in the Bible you were to be stoned to death for adultery, it is not meant to mean that by today’s understanding but was accepting of the cultural practices at the time which is the context.
 
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The point of Genesis is that there is a definite beginning, a definite order, and God was in control of it. It is not meant to be a science or anthropology textbook.
 
As far as I know the only literal part is that we do in fact all descend from the first pair of humans as opposed to multiple Adams and Eves evolving in various parts of the world and being unrelated by blood. Hence we are all necessarily related by blood, from our original ancestors.

Days etc. are not literal. ‘Let there be light,’ may well be literal, why not? But not overnight evolution from nil to completely evolved species, nope.
 
angel12 said:
There’s no evidence to suggest that God plays “gotcha” with human souls.
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That is probably limited to Hollywood, not real life. But just because there’s an existence of a fossil record doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t trust in the creation story. And you should definitely not define the existence of a fossil record as proof God doesn’t exist. Such is folly and would put your soul in danger.
 
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The Catechism (CCC 390) states: “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.”

The same could be said for Genesis 1 and 2 (and indeed all of Genesis 1–11). It uses figurative language to affirm primeval events.

Honestly, it makes little sense to constrain “day” to “24 hours” when the sun isn’t even created until the 4th day.

To steal a line from the “Bible Timeline” study guide, the creation account in Genesis is more concerned with answering the who and the why rather than the how and the when. The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.
 
Joe_5859 said:
Satan does not “create”. Creation is good. God is the Creator. Satan only disfigures what has already been created.
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+1 He only distorts what is good into what is evil. It’s not that evil starts from bad, it’s that evil is manipulated from good (CS Lewis). Thus evil is the destruction of what is good and why evil is to be avoided.
Joe_5859 said:
Honestly, it makes little sense to constrain “day” to “24 hours” when the sun isn’t even created until the 4th day.
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+1 Agreed. But it is literal that God created the world. Thus, it’s literal. The fact that it occurred in 7 days is figurative to our understanding but probably literal in God’s timing.
 
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whichwaytogo47 said:
The fact that it occurred in 7 days is figurative to our understanding but probably literal in God’s timing.
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I’ve seen some Catholics that have equated the days of creation to different time periods that follow a spiral sort of pattern. I forget the details, but it was all very mathematical and interesting when I first heard it. 😝 It wouldn’t surprise me that such would be the case, but it’s not really a necessity either. Whether the earth is 6,000 years old or 5 billion really doesn’t change the essentials:
  • God created everything out of nothing
  • He created everything to be good
  • Man and woman occupy a unique place in creation as the only material being created for his/her own sake and in the image and likeness of God
  • God breathed his very life into our first parents; thus human beings are made up of both body and soul—a psycho-somatic unity
  • Our first parents disobeyed God and lost their state of Original Holiness; as a result, we are all born with Original Sin—i.e. an absence of the grace that ought to be there
  • No sooner had they done so than God was already promising a redeemer to save us from this mess
That’s what Genesis 1–3 is all about. It’s not a science textbook.
 
The Vatican has an observatory within its walls if that says anything…that’s certainly a long way from Galileo’s day. Anyway there are a number of relatively famous Priest Scientists out there.
 
Including the Catholic priest who was a friend of Einstein and proposed the big-bang theory.
 
EricF said:
Including the Catholic priest who was a friend of Einstein and proposed the big-bang theory.
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I am a supporter of the Big Bang Theory. I’m just saying that we need to believe the Bible is literal (not necessarily the stories but the framework or underlying meaning of the stories). It might be “figurative” to “our understanding” but the Bible is to be taken as infallible or thus literal even if presented metaphorically, symbolically, literal to the time, or poetically. But as a whole, the Bible is meant to be taken literally.

I also believe that the Vatican has had the observatory for at least 200 years.
 
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EricF said:
. It is not meant to be a science or anthropology textbook.
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The Old Testament is an anthology of contemporary religious belief.

Taking it literally is like worshiping literal sense rather than God.
 
whichwaytogo47 said:
I am a supporter of the Big Bang Theory.
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whichwaytogo47 said:
But as a whole, the Bible is meant to be taken literally.
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These two two quotes suggest to me that this discussion mostly hinges on the definition of literal. You’re willing to accept the Big Bang so I can know you’re not a YEC, but please give me clarification is any of my assumptions are wrong.

Would this be your definition of the literal in terms of Scripture: The literal is what the author intended to get across.

So for example, if I say “It’s raining cats and dogs” and used the definition of “literal” above, the literal meaning would be that it’s raining hard
By comparison in everyday speech the literal meaning would be that cats and dogs were falling out of the sky. I will use “literalistic” for that everyday meaning of “literal.”

As I understand you, you’re saying we don’t have to believe in the literalistic meaning of Scripture, but we do have to have to believe in the literal meaning.

Or are you saying that we are obliged to believe in the literalistic meaning of Scripture, but that we might misunderstand the literalistic meaning.

(Akin to if someone said “Water boils at 100 degrees” meaning 100 °C, but people misinterpreted them as saying water boiled at 100 °F or that it boiled at 100 K.)
 
You are not using the words “Literal” or "Literally correctly. Did Jonah “Literally” spend 3 days in a whale? If so, then he “Literally” spent 3 days in a whale. If not, then the story is not “literal” simple as that. That does not mean the story is not God inspired and that I do not believe it means something, nor am I taking anything away from God or The Bible. Something cannot be “literal” and "not “literal” at the same time. That is why we depend on The Church to interpret what is to be taken literally and what is not. And The Bible is a collection of different Books. Not a single book. Different books in it were written with different styles and by different authors while all inspired by The Holy spirit. Even Jesus says things that were not to be taken Literally.
 
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