[claims with *** to the left of them mean that i could not answer the disputes and that they are valid and should be more openly discussed and tested using science as well to come to a better understanding]
_Book of Genesis _
Claim 1: "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
>God purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey.
Answer: well if you continue to read the bible past that you find out that Adam sins... before this time there was no death, nor was there suffering
Claim 2: "In the beginning"
>When was the universe created?
Answer: when God said "let there be light", He created the universe, that is the origin of the term uni-verse, because it only took God one short verse to create it in its entirety
Claim 3: "In the beginning"
>What about the gap theory?
Answer: this is too complex to get into at this point so i am going to leave it for now, but you can look up the gap theory on your own time to find out all about it
Claim 4: The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from science is just the opposite.
Answer: science is a process of discovering the truth, and when applied to the distant past or future it becomes less and less solid in terms of accuracy, and uses more assumptions into its complex equations... the truth is that we do not know the actual order so to say it is "known" is very naive, try looking in a textbook from 50 years ago and see how different the "truth" was at that time, and 50 years before that, and so on. in another 50 years if we live to see it, i am sure that what is "known" will be vastly different and modified from what we presume to know now.
Claim 5: God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day. And how could there be "the evening and the morning" on the first day if there was no sun to mark them?
Answer: God is an extreme source of light, in fact he is the origin of all light. In the Old Testament, Moses is permitted to see God's back and that alone is so bright that he is hard-pressed to look, and when he returns to his friends they note that he is glowing and they cannot look directly at him because of God's light.
Claim 6: God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters.
Answer: yes, this would take a while, most people understand this firmament to be outer space, which divides water on earth from water in space (although not all bible scholars have agreed on what this means)... outer space is huge... lol
Claim 7: Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes
Answer: yes... He created man out of dust and He created the universe out of virtually nothing... so why are you quibbling about this?
Claim 8: God lets "the earth bring forth" the plants, rather than creating them directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all.
Answer: this isn't even a dispute by the author so i don't quite know what to say
Claim 9: In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament so that they can be used "for signs". This, of course, is exactly what astrologers do: read "the signs" in the Zodiac in an effort to predict what will happen on Earth.
Answer: again.. this isn't a dispute.. but yes the stars are used to foretell events... although it is said that the fallen angels taught this ability to the humans who were probably not supposed to know of this. the signs God is talking about are probably more along the lines of days, months, years, and festivals...
Claim 10: God makes two lights: "the greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night." But the moon is not a light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon to "rule the night", does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky?
Answer: this is a really bad claim. i don't even get it. obviously the moon doesn't produce its own light, but to humans it is a source of light during the night... an indirect source. so that is very irrelevant, and i don't know what he's talking about with the moon being up there in the day time... it's not ruling at that time because the sun is the only thing shining... wow.
Claim 11: "He made the stars also." God spends a day making light (before making the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard day's work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars.
Answer: this is completely false. God spends day one making: heaven and earth, light, and then day and night. on day three all he does is make the stars and planets, etc. [Genesis 1: 14-18], hardly an afterthought... i don't know what this guy is talking about? it's not even the same day, and it takes him much longer to make the stars (day 3) than the concept of light (day 1)
Claim 12: "And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth."
Answer: ...this isn't even a dispute, lol... the firmament is outer space as said earlier and thats where the stars are... in the second heaven... simple as that =)
Claim 13: In verse 11, God "let the earth bring forth" the plants. Now he has the earth "bring forth" the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of evolution.
Answer: the actual verse says "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his KIND cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his KIND"... evolution says you can go between species which is 100% false and not even close to what this is saying... only micro-evolution takes place, meaning within a species (such as thicker fur, larger and smaller individuals, etc.)
Claim 14: God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth.
Answer: yes
Claim 15: God commands us to "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over ... every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
Answer: ... okay?
Claim 16: "I have given you every herb ... and every tree ... for meat." Since many plants have evolved poisons to protect against animals that would like to eat them, God's advice is more than a little reckless.
Answer: every creature was vegetarian before the flood and before Adam sinned every creature could eat of all herbs and trees... so as a sort of punishment things such as poisons, thorns and thistles came to be after the fall of man (when Adam sinned). This is not so much reckless as it is revenge.
Claim 17: All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, and barracudas -- all were strict vegetarians, as they were created by God.
Answer: yes all animals were originally herbivores... but all animals we have today didn't necessarily exist in the beginning. if you think real hard about it you can figure out that species experience what is called micro-evolution and this creates the different kinds we see today... so there might have been an earthworm in the Garden of Eden, which subsequently over thousands of years has split off into different worms, for example. same with bats, insects, etc.
Claim 18: "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey."
Answer: hahaha, i love how this is the exact same as Claim 1. and i also love how evolutionists are fine with having the survival of the fittest where the strongest survive and weakest die off, yet all of a sudden it's horrible if you say God might have allowed it... try choosing your morality first instead of using it where it suits your needs
Claim 19: In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed.
Answer: once again... it's probably not that old and if you are patient enough you will have a new figure to put on your website about how old the universe is
Claim 20: Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms.
Answer: right... that's what happened...
Claim 31: The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare.
Answer: the general concensus here is that tectonic plates were created when the fountains of the great deep broke open (water channels under the surface of the earth), these plates began to shift and shortly after the flood was over, the mountains began to rise and the valleys sank because of this shifting. Read Psalm 104.
Claim 32: "The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained." This happens whenever it stops raining.
Answer: i don't understand the problem.
***Claim 33: Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn't germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period.
Answer: this is the only credible dispute thus far and it should be scientifically studied. i honestly don't know the answer for this but i am sure there is an explanation of some sort. i will look into it. i wish that only these sorts of disputes were left in this day and age so we could actually begin to have an intelligent debate about this.
***Claim 34: When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find their way back after the flood subsided?
Answer: the first question is a good one, as is the second question. the third question makes absolutely no sense though, so that almost cancels out the intelligence of the first two. kangaroos, if they did exist before the flood, would not have to only live in Australia... are they really that dedicated to it?
Claim 35: Noah kills the "clean beasts" and burns their dead bodies for God. According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all "clean" animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark.
Answer: seven of each clean beast was taken on the ark, as well as seven of all fowl...
Claim 36: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Although this would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet there is nothing in the bible to address it.
Answer: at the time, it was the best advice that could ever be given, because if for some reason not enough children were produced at that time, then humanity would cease to exist.
Claim 37: Genesis 9:2 states that all animals fear humans. Although it is true that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears, for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them.
Answer: first of all, it could be argued that this fear only applies to Noah and his sons, because that's all that God is speaking to when he says "the fear and the dread of you will be upon all beasts," etc. but i would also say that all animals do fear humans. sure if you are alone and a grizzly bear sizes you up and figures that he can take you on then he will, but they do so out of fear not because they're hungry.
Claim 38: "Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered." God gave the animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to animals and environmental destruction.
Answer: we need food, that's more important than the happiness of animals to God i guess. who are we to judge Him? at the time this is spoken, food would be much less available, so anything was fair game to keep humanity alive.
Claim 39: God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures. He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed.
Answer: there was no rain before the flood.
Claim 40: Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means "division"), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other creationists disagree.
Answer: the word Peleg in Hebrew can mean a division by water, so it is rightfully debated among creationists on whether or not this meant the breaking up of Pangea or simply the division of nations (tongues) after the Tower of Babel's destruction. i don't know why this is a bible contradiction though...?
Answer: How could anyone possibly know that?... But anyway, picture having a language (which you do) and then randomly one day deciding to change it to a different language... you would have to come up with a new word for each thing and there would be no reason to throw away a perfectly functional language. Unless you are saying that many monkeys evolved separately around the world into humans who then all chose to create language randomly in different parts of the globe, which is also a completely silly idea.
Claim 42: God worries that people could build a tower high enough to reach him (them?) in heaven, and that by so doing they will become omnipotent.
Answer: God never once worried that people could build a tower high enough to reach heaven, or that they could become omnipotent in doing so. This is completely invented by the author of the site to try to convince people who haven't read the bible and don't know any better. In that part of Genesis, God sees that they are trying to build a tower that can reach heaven, and so He says: "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do." Basically He is saying that the possibilities are endless when people unify against God, which is exactly what we see now with new technology, so let's just make sure that's cleared up.
Claim 43: According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved gradually over long periods of time.
Answer: what is the proof for that? why change a perfectly good language? refer to my answer to claim 41.
Claim 44: The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs... "Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah... Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years...", etc.
Answer: yes, there are countless people listed in the Old Testament who lived well into their hundreds, some up to 900 and some years old. While this does seem fictitious at first glance, it seems less and less so when you take into consideration the following things: before the flood there was no rain, no carnivores, and every animal we know today was larger. if you look at fossil evidence, you see that virtually every animal was 2 or 3 times the size that it is today... there must be a reason for this growth, and it would probably have affected humans too. it is good to research and think before simply saying something that we do not see today must never have been true.
Claim 45: "And they returned to the land of the Philistines." But the Philistines didn't arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1200 BCE -- 800 years after Abraham's supposed migration from Ur.
Answer: i am not disputing this because i have no clue what year this occurred... but i would like to see the evidence that places this event 800 years off of what the Bible says.
Claim 46: Laban learns "by experience" that God has blessed him for Jacob's sake. "By experience" means "by divination", at least that is how most other versions translate this verse.
Answer: i dunno
***Claim 47: Jacob displays his (and God's) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats.
Answer: this boggles my mind... i never knew this was in the Bible and i am confused of why it is even there, and it makes no sense so i will look into this. good dispute for once!
and if anyone wants to check out the actual webpage, here is the link: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html
-dan =)
