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Dear David,

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« Why make a hierarchy at all? Why not just enjoy the beauty of both. Do we ask: What is more beautiful, daffodils or Wordsworth’s poem about daffodils?”
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I guess we do, albeit, unconsciously. When it comes to making love, for example, most people prefer the real thing rather than just reading about it. Some pleasure zones are more sensitive than others. As One Under God might put it, it comes down to a question of brain or “beast”.

But then there are people like me who are allergic to flowers. I’d take the poem. Flowers are poison to me.

Let me tell you about something that happened about 40 years ago. I was showing a highly-educated young American business executive and his charming young wife some of the sights of Paris. They sat in the back seat of the car and hardly said a word as I drove them passed some of Paris’s most elegantly sculptured quarried stone buildings dating back several centuries: the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Pantheon, the Sorbonne, Montparnasse, Montmartre, the Place des Vosges (Victor Hugo’s residence), etc. They didn’t utter a word during the whole trip until I drove to the outskirts of Paris to show them some of the modern sky-scrapers that had mushroomed-up in recent years.

They suddenly sat up in their seats with an effusion of admiration and delight. They were absolutely thrilled by what they saw and couldn’t stop thanking me. Their cameras flashed and I drove them back to their five star hotel on the Champs-Elysée.

As you can see, that event has remained deeply engraved in my mind.

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i recall..that just like..the quaran
the bible/stories were oral..in the beginning
that much..like the bible..they were amalgamated..into a book

never/the-less..i..mention..a rebuttal..
i found online..[for hopefully..educative/reason]

It is..said:.."In the first..creation account..the earth was first covered..with water..and land did not appear..until later...

In the second creation.account..there was no water.at first...The earth was dry land..and was later watered by a mist.">>..

im wondering..does that..
derive from..the same source..david?

<<..But the second verse set..does not say that.."there was no water..at first"..at all...It says that there was..no rain,.which is not quite..the same thing.

It is said,.."Genesis..2:18 makes it plain...that the animals had not been created yet..since Adam..is described as being alone."

"Alone"..simply means..without a suitable helpmate,..which is somewhat curious.given that we have no textual justification..for assuming..that God had left the scene.

It is said.. "Genesis chapter 1..states that creation
took a full week..-seven days,..evening and morning.

But..the second creation story.. beginning in 2:4,..says this:
'These are the generations..of the heavens..and of the earth..when they were created,..in the day that the Lord God...made the earth and the heavens.'

This verse says..'In the day' -that is,..one day, singular
-'that the Lord God..made the earth and the heavens.'..In short, while chapter 1..spreads the creation out over a week,..chapter 2 compresses it..*entirely into one day."

This asserts that.."in the day"
means..on one particular day..based solely on the singular form..of "day" within that phrase.

It is argued..that in the first case,..man and woman were created together,..while they were created separately..in the second.

it is simply a matter..of establishing the chronology:
the last phrase of Gen..1:27 refers to an event..that takes place chronologically..much later than the first phrase.

We need to keep in mind...that we do indeed agree..that there are two stories here;..but they are complementary..(just like dual creation accounts..in other ancient sources),

and each reflects..an intact unit of oral tradition...It is only when we read them..as logocentric moderns..that we see a problem:..The two stories originally were told independently.

http://www.tektonics.org/jedp/creationtwo.html

Collins [Coll.WAP]..points out that there are cases..of unmarked pluperfects..in the OT,..and that the specific verb..in question in this verse itself..often warrants a pluperfect translation.

anyhow..its all good
but more..related..from..same
http://www.tektonics.org/jedp/creationtwo.html

Furthermore,..another contributor observed:

Gen...2:19 begins with VaYYiTSeR;..the verb "YaTSaR"
in the imperfect..with a WAW consecutive. ..Waltke and O'Connor ("Introduction to the Syntax of Biblical Hebrew", pp. 544-546)..say that..:

:.."It..(imperfect with a WAW consecutive).shows in Hebrew meanings equivalent to those..of the suffix..(perfect) conjugation."

Earlier, on p.490,..they had already shown..that the suffix conjugation..can have a pluperfect meaning;
later, on p. 552,..they show that the imperfect..with a WAW consecutive..that can also have a pluperfect meaning>>

whatever that means

<,..More than this,..there are also..various "exceptions" which crop up in Hebrew grammar..where the waw consecutive is used.

Greenberg,..citing the grammar of Jouon,..notes[Gree.UE, 37, 168n] that the waw consecutive.."sometimes occurs..when there is no idea of succession"..

and..that there are places..where a pluperfect can be rendered..in accordance with a summarizing..or recapitulating use of the waw consecutive

This name..best expresses..the prevailing syntactical relation, for by WAW CONSECUTIVE..an action is always represented..as the direct,..or at least temporal CONSEQUENCE of a preceding action."

Thus,.they said,.."the Genesis 2 narrative ..literally takes the form of a series of clauses..WHICH OCCUR..IN A TEMPORALLY ORDERED SEQUENCE"

and..because the "Hebrew syntax..tells us that the actions..*performed in such a clause are '...the direct,..or at least temporal consequence..of a preceding action'

in reality..they had been made..prior to the creation of man
is so entirely apparent..from chapter one..as not to require explanation...But the reminder..that God had "molded" them makes obvious..His power to bring them..to man..and so is quite appropriately mentioned here.

It would not.. in our estimation.. be wrong to translate yatsar as a pluperfect..in this instance:..'He had molded.'>>

context..in one nears
the context..in the other

Dear david f,

>>The differential equation resulting from Newton’s Second Law is a mathematical concept. Motion is a physical concept. <<

Yes, this is like the difference between a vector field and gravitational or electromagnetic field.

>>The answer seems to be that those concepts … seem more like mathematical concepts to me.<<

Perhaps so. I, as a non-physicist, was just wondering. In relativity theories (both) one questions some of the basic assumptions of Newtonian physics, but still talks about the Lagrangian. Refreshing my memory from the Wikipedia entry that OUG likes to copy from: it starts with different physical contexts, and then gives a general mathematical concept that can be used as a model of it. This is perhaps something like the difference between the spacetime of general relativity and a pseudo-Riemannian manifold that models it. Except that in the case of Lagrangians one uses the same word for both meanings, mathematical and physical. [Apologies for using this OLO trying to answer my own question.]

>> Their Creationism consists of a belief that the creation process described in Genesis is literally true. It obviously cannot be literally true since there are two accounts, and they are contradictory.<<

I think we have been here already. Yours is the third meaning for “Creationism” - in distinction to the two I mentioned - as a verbatim reading of Genesis, wheren one might nitpick for contradictions. You will not find a scientist who is a Creationist in this, silly, meaning of the word. Besides, I think even in a court if two testimonies do not differ in slightest detail there arises the suspicion that one is a copy of the other.

Thanks for your interesting observation about Sumerian similarities. Obviously the author - or rather authors - of Genesis did not live in a historical vacuum and used metaphors available to then from other traditions. It is an insight which a 21st century Christian (or Jew) can live with, the same as the insight that God created man not in a single act from “the dust of the ground”, but through eons of evolution.

Dear Banjo,

That was a fascinating story. That reminds me of the time I was working for Remington Rand, and one of our staff was sent to Switzerland. Most of the rest of us were envious of him. The grub complained that, although the service in the hotel was elegant, he longed for a hamburger and coke. The cuisine was too exotic.

You may not be allergic to daffodils. Typically pretty flowers like daffodils are pollinated by insects or other pollen bearing organisms, and their pollen would not affect you. It is generally those wind pollinated plants like ragweed and the grasses which cause hay fever. Since wind-blown pollen is most prominent at the time that roses bloom hay fever has been called rose fever. It is a misnomer. Maybe you can enjoy the poem and the plant. Some people are allergic to pretty flowers, but to be sure you can be tested for allergies.

http://allergies.about.com/od/fa1/f/flowerallergy.htm

Dear George,

I have no argument with the view that evolution is an expression of the will of a Creator God. It is something I cannot disprove.

However, I was not giving an abstract definition of Creationism. My friend’s graduate students were not aiming to become scientists. Their aim was to get academic credentials and use them to promote to students their belief in the literal truth of the account of creation in Genesis.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/10/wolfe.htm will direct you to an article on the push of fundamentalist Protestantism to gain intellectual stature. It gives a bit of the history of that fundamentalism with which you may not be familiar.

never the less..did eve come from..a rib?
or adam..made the same way..via loki..doing things lokies do

but eve..if not from..the rib..
then..not the true eve?

it occurs to..me
does modeling..[as in political..focus groups/polling]
facter in..the personality-type..that takes illusion as fact..or indeed the type..that takes surveys?]

anyhow

more on..seeing..from
http://new-birth.net/booklet/Gone_West.pdf
H.J.L...Describes his Death

“I BECAME unconscious..and after a time recovered,.or so it seemed.
Indeed, my mind suddenly became clear,..but I began to feel a heavy weight....Gradually I realized that
this weight was slipping away from me,..or rather, I was sliding out from it,..as if someone
were drawing his hand..out from a wet glove.

Then I began to feel free at –one end, so to
speak, and then I began to see again.

“I saw*..once more.,the room and the people in it.
Then I was free! free!..I saw myself*..[body/shell..lying stretched out on the bed,
and from my mouth came,;;as it were,..a cord of light...It vibrated for a moment,..then snapped, and from my mouth came away. At that moment
someone said,.‘I think he has gone’

Or if..they did not say it,..they thought it.*!*

Then I realized..*what I looked like..for the first time.
How different..from what I had always seen*..in my looking-glass!

But was it I?
It looked so strange.

“But even as I looked..I was aware of an awful feeling..of cold.”>>..

EDIT[cold is soul/body..out of..the material/body heat

..<<<..It pierced me..through and through..
Nothing I can write..can give you any idea ..of that cold...The icy blast pierced me..as no earthly wind
ever did or can...*I was a naked soul,..no..[material]..body,..nothing to give me warmth.

I shuddered and..shivered like this..for many a seeming age.
“Suddenly it seemed to grow.. little less...AND..I was aware of..a presence.

How can I..describe him,..this glorious being?

Then..I could hardly grasp..any clear idea,..but having
since been..in his company constantly,*

.I can describe him..a little better...yet..
Even now he..seemed to change*..every moment...>>

[as his..thought forms react..
to changed in-puts..[key*..to/with..feedback../a..instant feedback-loop]

*continues