HAM DEBATE IS NYE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Every time I post, I include the first sentence of Genesis.  I do that for a reason.  It is to remind everyone of how ancient the world view of those who wrote and lived in Biblical times was.

Elohim is a word used for God, instead of Yahweh, and with that name there is a source of tradition interwoven with three other sources in the Torah.  It is called the Elohist Source, or E source.  

The E Source is associated with the Northern Kingdom of Israel and its concerns.  It has definite characteristics that set it apart from the Yahwist, Priest, and Deuteronomist sources.

Elohim is a plural noun, pointing to the sky dwellers that ancient people believed lived in the sky.

I want us to think how silly it is to explain legends scientifically.  It is a waste of time to calculate how the ark could be built to accommodate 14,000 animals. 

Better to believe Greek legends about the Trojan War and come up with theories about how they could build a huge wooden horse without the Trojans becoming suspicious.  

I've been watching with interest the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham.  I stopped because our broadband is not broad enough to show the debate without errors and long pauses.  I'll catch it on YouTube later.

I would like to make some observations after watching each thirty minute presentation.  

Bill Nye is teaching and Ken Ham is preaching.  The latter wants us to believe that his preaching is academic and scientific.  

Bill Nye has been presenting factual information.  Chris Ham has been presenting theology and sermons while maintaining that his theology is science.

It helps to have read a lot of the Bible when hearing those distinctions.

What find particularly interesting is the discussion about the age of the earth and the origin of the earth.  Ham brings up the Tower of Babel as proof of there being one human race, which ironically was not the case in the past, circa Southern Confederate states.

Being overlooked, however, is the Biblical theory of the sky.  The focus is so much about earth and outer space, but not the sky.

In the Bible, the sky is where God and other sky dwellers live.  The stars are lights, not suns.  The Tower of Babel agitated the sky dwellers as it got closer to where they lived.  That is why the one language was magically transformed into the entire Indo-European family of tongues.

That sky belief is the basis of fundamentalist theology.  Jesus comes to earth because his home in the sky is not very far away.  He is sitting at the right hand of God.  How?  Well, the mansion is not so far away and it has thrones and angels and stars and a stairway down to earth.

Is that poetry?  Certainly.  Did ancient writers know they were writing poetry?  Probably.  Did they believe their poetry was about the cosmos?  Absolutely.  

But we should know better today.  If fundamentalists believe the sky stories as literally as they believe the Garden of Eden and Flood stories, then time and space make little sense in reality.  

Blessings...