bornfree Posted September 30, 2012 Share Posted September 30, 2012 A friendship with an ex-JW led me to start studing the bible in the hope that I could somehow help him. It also led me to this site, which I find very interesting and informative. Our friendship didn't last, and now I'm left with so many questions I like answers to. How do you think, you ex-christians, would have answered this question as a christian? If I were to ask this question to christians, what answer should I expect to get. Genesis 1:1. In the begining god created heaven(s) and the earth. My question: From where did god create heaven and earth, It sound a bit like he moved in to the house before it was build. Looking forward to some very interesting answers. Bornfree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeasabird Posted September 30, 2012 Share Posted September 30, 2012 While the whole video, and for that matter the whole series is worth the time, pay particular attention to this video between 3:00 and 5:00. He puts it better than I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted September 30, 2012 Share Posted September 30, 2012 Welcom to ex-C. IIRC back when I was a Christian I thought the answer was "Because He is God. It's God's nature to have the ability to create things." It's been a few years though so my memory of a specific theology at a specific time is getting fuzzy. Why are you asking ex-Christians what their answer would have been in the past? I'm sorry if my answer isn't very helpful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted September 30, 2012 Share Posted September 30, 2012 I never thought about any "from where" when I was a xian nor did it occur to me that I should be thinking about any sort of "from where." As a xian it simply got created and the story moved to the next thing. I only thought about it critically after I left xianity. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eugene39 Posted September 30, 2012 Share Posted September 30, 2012 The Bible (i.e. God) said it, so that was good enough for me. I believed that heaven was a literal place out in the universe somewhere, and that's where God was, and that He had the power to speak the world into existence from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denyoz Posted September 30, 2012 Share Posted September 30, 2012 God (the Creator) created heaven and earth in his Mind, just like you can create a dragon in your mind. Everything we see (earth) and don't see (heaven) is in the Mind of the Creator and is made up of mind-matter. Modern physics has proven that matter, as we perceive it with our 5 senses, does not really exist. This is what I would say to a Christian if one was to ask me the question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornfree Posted October 1, 2012 Author Share Posted October 1, 2012 Welcom to ex-C. IIRC back when I was a Christian I thought the answer was "Because He is God. It's God's nature to have the ability to create things." It's been a few years though so my memory of a specific theology at a specific time is getting fuzzy. Why are you asking ex-Christians what their answer would have been in the past? I'm sorry if my answer isn't very helpful. Yes I know it's a strange question to ask ex-christians,"critical thinking", but if I could find out what you might have answered, I can use that to argue with. I have googled many verses from the bible and found many discussions on controversial verses, but this one came up empty for some reason. Truely enjoy your site. Bornfree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornfree Posted October 1, 2012 Author Share Posted October 1, 2012 Found this on youtube, 20 videos about Genesis, really funny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcdaddy Posted October 1, 2012 Share Posted October 1, 2012 Ask whoever originally wrote it. The Jews copied damn near everything from older "pagan" religions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenstar Posted October 1, 2012 Share Posted October 1, 2012 The randomicity principle is interesting... I think it kind of points to there always being SOMETHING... even if that something was only the probability that anything might occur. Quantum physics shows that 'reality' is really just the probability that things may occur, and matter/energy/space/time (ie: our universe) is just one of those probabilities. Quantum particles pop in and out of our universe without our understanding how or why. I'm sure someone.. or many someones are investigating this phenomena. It's all mathematics somehow. Do I understand itt? no, and it's okay to say, I really don't know. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duderonomy Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 bornfree, Hi. I would have answered that "we don't know what God created it from, but He created it by His word, which is Jesus. God is in His universe but also outside of it, and He existed before it was created." In my day, I could have also given chapters and verse to back that up, then I suppose that I would have pointed out that in the ages to come, God would explain everything. Pretty typical fundie answer I think, but that's my 2 cents worth. Edited for spelling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LivingLife Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 The subtext of Genesis is really we do not know how it exactly happened so lets just assume and make a statement w/o any proof. From there the story pretty much goes south. This level of explanation works in a kiddies bible and as the story progresses the tone is set that their genitalia is something to be ashamed of and moreso if you do not have the god antenna aka the penis. "they were naked and ashamed" Spare rib and mudpuppy then have the difficult task of making sense of it all and as one reads further, one does get the distinct impression, god is a pervert. He is so hung up on sexuality and who you can and cannot fuck. The only thing genesis leaves for the adult is the concept of original sin to make the rest of the story hang together. Anyone that has the slightest knowledge in genetics knows that a breeding pair cannot start a population off. We know that because of modern science. When a species hit 50 breeding pairs, the threat of extinction is severe and only human intervention will bring the species back from extinction. I think there is a case study of some American Eagle in this regard. Folk that have a literal take on origins and sp. creation or ID are mentally lazy. These folk need pigeon-hole answers and "I/we don't know" is not acceptable to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
★ Citsonga ★ Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 When I was a Christian, I believed that God created everything out of nothing (ex nihilo). Things couldn't exist before being created, and an all-powerful deity didn't need preexisting material to start with. Ironically, it's interesting how many Christians bash scientific explanations as silly when the very notion of an individual just poofing everything into existence is quite absurd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babylonian Dream Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 A friendship with an ex-JW led me to start studing the bible in the hope that I could somehow help him. It also led me to this site, which I find very interesting and informative. Our friendship didn't last, and now I'm left with so many questions I like answers to. How do you think, you ex-christians, would have answered this question as a christian? If I were to ask this question to christians, what answer should I expect to get. Genesis 1:1. In the begining god created heaven(s) and the earth. My question: From where did god create heaven and earth, It sound a bit like he moved in to the house before it was build. Looking forward to some very interesting answers. Bornfree. You have to imagine the world as the Early Hellenistic Era jews saw it. The world was always (eternally probably) existent, it was an ocean. Like with the primeval Tiamat, it always sort if just existed. Like with Marduk carving up Tiamat (they left the first chapter out of Genesis) after he defeated her, God carved up the ocean. Hence, the land is made of water..... This is where the Bible begins. Though the first chapter contradicts itself. Its hopeless to truly understand if you think its inerrant, but to know the contradictions, will help. This is why explaining it to them is hopeless. It might work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VacuumFlux Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 When I was a christian, I had two ideas to explain that. The first one was that, as with so many passages in the bible, it was a little redundant. So it was like a summary or chapter heading, and I imagined "and here's the details of how that happened:" between verses 1 and 2. It particularly makes sense when you see the whole creation story laid out again (with contradictory details, not that I noticed them as a christian) in chapter 2. The other idea is that the initial heavens and earth created in verse 1 were the "waters" and were "formless and void". It did kinda bother me that "the spirit moving over the face of the waters" seemed to have happened before even light was created, but I'd thought that the earth was created on day 2 or something. As I was deconverting, I found a lovely analysis of the poetry of creation story, written by a non-believer, that actually gives it more respect as literature than any christian I knew had bothered to do (they noticed it was poetic but were obsessed with it being a historical account). This is part one: http://dailymull.com/668/An-Unbeliever-Explains-Creation-Part-1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babylonian Dream Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 As I was deconverting, I found a lovely analysis of the poetry of creation story, written by a non-believer, that actually gives it more respect as literature than any christian I knew had bothered to do (they noticed it was poetic but were obsessed with it being a historical account). This is part one: http://dailymull.com...Creation-Part-1 I never came acrossed this guy before. Thank you VacuumFlux! So far, I like what he has to say. Helps you to understand the poetry that is the Bible. That reminds me. I remember the days when I thought that the Bible was this bland history book my parents made me read every day. Now its more like a work of literature I learned to love to read when I read certain parts. I'd read genesis, and get through grudgingly the Laws and whatnot to reach the stories after that. It only became better when you read it in its own right as a piece of literature, the way you'd read the Theogony, Illiad and Oddyssey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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