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Comment by ndsipa_pomu | Hacker News Reader

> And come on, we know holy texts are full of things which are clearly wrong, in exactly the same way astrology is. The temptation to gloss over them as ornamental bits is huge, but to believers they are doctrinal.

I can't think of any precise statements that are clear enough to be proved true or false. Usually holy texts have vague enough language that it's very much a case of interpretation. e.g. The Genesis creation story states that God created the universe in 6 days, but any attempt to demonstrate that it is false will have believers declaring that a "day" is not a precise measurement of time.

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Walking on water (or parting it at will) is rather unambiguous. The whole resurrection thing also would be mocked as taking Walking Dead seriously if not most people grew up seeing that believing this is acceptable.

An account of someone walking on water or parting it is clear enough, but is meaningless without supporting evidence. Of course, supporting evidence would need to be stronger than our everyday experience of people not being able to walk on water.

It reminds me somewhat of James Randi's debunking of psychic powers - despite people having witnessed miraculous feats of spoon bending etc. no-one could replicate it under controlled conditions.

Your view of the six days of creation is backwards. It is a story that is meant to justify the division into weeks and the concept of Shabbat, a day off once in a week.

It is probably the most widespread social policy that had ever been spread by any religion.

You can look everywhere in the world, including the non judeo Christian parts, and see the work week with a day off implemented.

It is such an intuitive and effective policy that nearly everyone forgot where it came from - but back then, it took a lot of effort to get people on board with it.

So don't judge the merit of the story by whether it's physically how the world was created, but by how the message and the consequences it teaches the reader have changed the world.

Every time you have the weekend to look forward to, remember that without some people believing God created the world in 6 days, you would be working non stop, or without the same day as your family to stop and rest.

It's definitely debatable whether that's how the world was created (I don't think it was that way), but the merits of the message of story are also undeniable. And it is the kind of message you can only get people initially on board with using drastic beliefs.

>The Genesis creation story states that God created the universe in 6 days, but any attempt to demonstrate that it is false will have believers declaring that a "day" is not a precise measurement of time.

The Bible is rather clear that God doesn't measure time like humans do.

"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."

2 Peter 3:8

The bible is a clear about a lot of things that are utter nonsense, I wouldn't use it as a guide for anything related to things like measurements of anything.

And a day is a day, no matter how you try to spin it after a couple of thousand years of peddling nonsense to try to make the gravytrain go a little farther.

This is no different than the Jehova's witnesses changing their 'due date' whenever it doesn't work.

Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” Romans 3:4

> This is no different than the Jehova's witnesses changing their 'due date' whenever it doesn't work.

Or much different than the excuses science's fan base will trot out whenever it gets caught speaking untruthfully, like their Theory of "Everything" Motte and Bailey.

It seems humans have to worship something, and what they worship is usually what is pushed by the mainstream, and whatever it is will be defended aggressively.

Welcome to planet Earth, please enjoy your stay.

... and thus some Christians claim the six day chronology in Genesis is really a six thousand year chronology... which still doesn't square with science.

To say nothing of the fact that 2 Peter was written centuries (if not longer) after Genesis, and there's no evidence the Hebrews themselves interpreted the account that way. The existence of the Sabbath falling within a single week rather than multiple millennia suggests they interpreted the six day chronology as... six days.

And the context of that verse clearly describes time from the human perspective relative to God's promises. The author isn't making a declarative statement about the way God experiences time, but pointing out that God doesn't operate on human timescales. That God may lay plans that take a thousand years to unfold.

That particular retcon doesn't make Christians look any better, it actually makes them look even worse.

Okay, so are the 6 days actually 6 thousand years?

I take it to mean the creation account is from God's perspective not ours.

I don't have the slightest problem with modern science and it's reckoning of creation.

The universe started with light in both accounts.

> The universe started with light in both accounts.

First light was estimated to be about 240,000 to 300,000 years after the big bang, so I would hesitate to say that the universe started with light [1]. You could determine that the first "day" started 300,000 years or so after the big bang, but then that throws off the other timings of creation. This demonstrates how the bible isn't even precise enough to be proven wrong as the "day" can seem to mean whatever people want it to mean.

> I take it to mean the creation account is from God's perspective not ours.

This sounds to me almost like a get-out clause as presumably God's perspective can be interpreted to be anything you want and cannot be proven false (similar to how an invisible pink unicorn's perspective can never be proven false).

[1] https://phys.org/news/2016-11-universe.html

That's just a bizarre definition of light. By that definition the center of a star is dark because the photons keep getting reabsorbed immediately. Which is always true from a photons point of view anyway, so what's the difference? In fact you might as well say that the universe was dark until the first eye evolved.

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