GENESIS: Snoopy's Short & Snappy Review

[Mendalla]

Does it say in the bible that the earth will be destroyed by fire? Or is this a scientific hypothesis?

It will kind of be destroyed by fire but life will be long since gone. The sun will swell into a red giant and probably swallow up everything out as far as Mars. However, other changes in the sun prior to that will likely end up making the Earth more like Venus before that happens. However, that's 4 billion or so years out so no worries.

 

[Waterfall]

It will kind of be destroyed by fire but life will be long since gone. The sun will swell into a red giant and probably swallow up everything out as far as Mars. However, other changes in the sun prior to that will likely end up making the Earth more like Venus before that happens. However, that's 4 billion or so years out so no worries.

Party pooper, don't you know fear keeps us on our toes to behave? "We know not the hour" is more effective

 

[Mendalla]

Party pooper, don't you know fear keeps us on our toes to behave? "We know not the hour" is more effective

SCIENCE!!! conquers superstitious fear. And besides, there's enough to be scared of just from other humans so why worry about how the world will end? Though I guess nuclear war is fire of a sort, too.

 

[Waterfall]

.

 

[Mendalla]

So in IT terms God factory reset the system but took a backup of some vital data first.

 

[paradox3]

For some reason, the Noah's Ark story is a popular one. I once knew someone who collected Noah's Ark figurines and artwork.

Where does its appeal lie, do you think?

 

[paradox3]

Villeroy and Boch has a line of Noah's Ark tableware as well.

 

[Mendalla]

Where does its appeal lie, do you think?

A boatload of animals makes a great toy, I think. Kind of like a toy farm on steroids. That may be part of it.

But there is a curious appeal to the idea of all life on Earth being in a nice compact place. It makes no sense in a modern understanding of the world where we know there are literally hundreds of thousands of individual species even just counting extant ones (i.e. not extinct one). We also know that flooding the Earth would absolutely not destroy all life. Some marine life would inevitably survive, especially in the deepest regions, as would a lot of microbial life. But it has an appeal. And that hopeful note at the end (which we aren't at yet) plays a role, too, I imagine.

 

[paradox3]

The story has God punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous. Does this appeal to our sense of justice, perhaps?

 

[Mendalla]

The story has God punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous. Does this appeal to our sense of justice, perhaps?

I think that has appeal until you think about what God did. Was it truly worth wiping out all of the biodiversity that God created at the beginning just because humans f-d up? Wouldn't a plague that only affected humans make more sense? I know Jae used to talk about how the Original Sin doomed all of Creation, not just humans, and I simply don't buy that idea. How can you condemn all life because one lifeform misbehaves? Dare I say it, it sounds more like the kind of rash anger you would expect from, well, a human.

 

[Waterfall]

Plus Noah's Arc is somewhat sterile in it's presentation...do we think of children dying, the elderly, wondering what they did to deserve it. No chance to plead for forgiveness or repentance or plead a case that possibly God is the co author of our sins by providing us with free will.

 

[paradox3]

The story also assumes the dominance and superiority of human beings. None of the "living with respect in creation" that we hold up in our creed.

 

[Mendalla]

The story also assumes the dominance and superiority of human beings. None of the "living in respect with creation" that we hold up in our creed.

There is actually very little of that in the Old Testament. The first Creation narrative kind of puts humans in a less central place but then the second undoes that entirely and gives a completely human-focussed Creation myth. Even the animals become part of God's plan to give Adam company.

And, indeed, most early religious traditions were humanocentric. Even Egypt with its animal-headed deities was, in the end about how the Nile and other Divine and natural phenomena helped and supported humanity, not about humans as part of a greater interconnected whole.

 

[paradox3]

Adam also gets to name the animals in the second creation myth. I remember a sermon about how powerful it is to bestow a name on another being.

 

[Mystic]

One thinks of the mass extinctions of life in ages past. And then there is the claim of archaeologists from the USA and Turkey to have discovered the landing spot of the real ark, complete with evidence of marine life at high altitudes there:

Archaeologists Think They Might Have Found the Real Noah’s Ark

A mountain in Turkey shows evidence of human activity in the area around the time the Biblical flood is said to have taken place.

www.popularmechanics.com

 

[jimkenney12]

Try to save them?

A friend of mine was dying of cancer. When I visited him in the hospital, our discussion included his comment that he felt uncomfortable with wanting his cancer cells to die. He was Bahai. In the Hebrew scriptures, people with other religions were seen the way we see cancer cells. Many Jews today see Palestinians that way and many others like Prime Minister King saw or see Jews that way.

 

[jimkenney12]

Genesis is a mashup of stories from the northern tribes and stories from the southern tribes.
Stories from the northern tribes refer to Elohim of God of the heights. Stories from the southern tribes refer to Yahweh or Lord or Adonai or I Am.

A Jewish scholar wrote a book called The Book of J based on the assumption that a woman in King David's court compiled the stories of the southern tribes.

 

[jimkenney12]

Remember the stories were created in response to a cataclysmic event and were explanations for why the event happened. They are projecting their ideas onto God

 

[unsafe]

Does it say in the bible that the earth will be destroyed by fire? Or is this a scientific hypothesis?

Yes it does ----God's promise to Noah was that He would never Flood the Earth Again ---So this earth as we know it today will be destroyed by Fire ---this happens at the end of the 7 Year Horror that God is bringing upon this earth ---

2 Peter 3:10

Berean Standard Bible
But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare.

 

[Mendalla]

A friend of mine was dying of cancer. When I visited him in the hospital, our discussion included his comment that he felt uncomfortable with wanting his cancer cells to die. He was Bahai. In the Hebrew scriptures, people with other religions were seen the way we see cancer cells. Many Jews today see Palestinians that way and many others like Prime Minister King saw or see Jews that way.

Jain are another who take reverence for life very seriously, with things like monks wearing masks to avoid inhaling insects and carrying a stick with a wool "brush" to push insects out of their way to avoid treading on them.