It doesn't completely disappear at all. If we can't assume chronology in the order it is presented (and it is not presented in any other way) then how can anyone know when anything happened?
You are saying that "then" does not mean immediately after the previous statement. There was no-one to work the ground so he created man to help the plants grow. Otherwise, how do you explain the "and there was no one to work the ground", which are necessary components to plants springing up?

Yes it does say that only God existed before creation, but it's extremely arrogant to think that we are the FIRST creation. Who's saying that God didn't make the dinosaurs thousands of years before Genesis. There is an issue here which I feel like most people ignore. When I read the Bible, if I am reading it in a studious fashion, I look at the way that the sentences and paragraphs are structured.
INSERT PAUSE HERE
What you are doing, is putting these to separate paragraphs together. There is probably a reason that it was written this way. Perhaps the Heavens and Earth were not created on the "first day".

@rockz the word that translation translates as 'earth' is better translated as 'field', and is always used to refer to a specific plot of land. In this case, it would be the garden of Eden. It should also be noted that Genesis 2:4 and following are an account of Adam's history, whereas the Genesis 1 account is an account of the entire creation's history. We know this due to one of the words used at the start of Genesis 2:4
"The book of Genesis contains several sections that begin with the phrase which we sometimes render, "These are the generations of..." The word "generations" is the Hebrew toledot and has the connotation of a family history or succession. Toledot are given for Adam's line (5:1-6:8), Noah (6:9-9:29), Noah's sons (10:1-11:9), Shem (11:10-26), Terah and Abram (11:27-25:11), and so on -- there are nearly a dozen recurrences of the toledot introduction and method, and one of these, interestingly enough, is Genesis 2:4-4:6.

What does this mean? It means that G2 is not actually a creation account as such, but a "family history" of the first men in creation [Mat.Gen126, 12ff]. It is therefore a point to begin our argument by noting that anyone who reads G2 as a rehash of the creation accounted in G1 is missing the boat from the start." http://www.tektonics.org/jedp/creationtwo.html (section titled 'G1, G2?')

K_A, the Bible states that man is to have dominion over the earth, that we will be greater than the angels once we're in heaven, and that man is created in trhe image of God. It isn't arrogant at all to think that the purpose of the entire creation is for man to enjoy. Now, the Bible doesn't say exactly how long that first day was, but it also doesn't say that God made anything else. The Bible was written for men to understand, so the days spoken of are as long as a day is now. Dinosaurs were created first, but they didn't exist thousands of years before man. The Bible is clear on which day animals were created, and exactly how many days later man was created.

If the Bible was written for men to understand, they wouldn't be talkig about millions of years either. They would explain it in a simpler way, that still got the basic idea acrossed. The idea, is that everything was created over a period of time.
You don't know that. I imagine there could have been several "creations" before ours. Each one would have been different in some respects.
There are multiple ways of interpreting the Bible, The only correct interpretation, would be the one where nothing contradicts anything else, but we don't really have time to go through and figure all those out do we I don't really plan on trying to understand it all because it was written so long ago. I mainly just pay attention to the New Testament, which is rarely disputed and I know a lot better.

I think the point of the story was to say to not have sex with another man's wife. You seem to be assuming you have to have sex, or at least should be able to.

The Bible is almost entirely simple enough to understand. Just because men refuse to believe the basic ideas given doesn't mean that they are not simple and basic to understand.
The idea is that everything was created in six days. Even atheists can see that the Bible says that.
I do know that, because the Bible says it. You can believe it, or you can not. You can imagine what you want but if the Bible disagrees with you, you're wrong. All of the Bible is important, not just the New Testament.

@jack
Genesis 1:
The world was created in 6 periods of time of indefinite duration under current scientific standards, and translated as "days". Each day new things are created, with producers occuring on the third day, and man on the sixth.
Genesis 2:
God hadn't yet created producers because they required rain and someone to work the land, so he made streams to provide water and man to care for the vegetation.

Genesis 1 is specific, Genesis 2 is ambiguous, mostly due to people translating it the way they want to make the second story agree with the first. If Genesis 1 did not exist, we would not have a problem. In Genesis 1, at least two whole days pass before God creates man. In Genesis 2, it's "God created man. Oh, and he created producers. Oh, and he also created animals." That's an awfully stupid way to write.

Finally, it is clear in Genesis 1 that Adam and Eve were created at the same time, which suggests that God knew what he was doing. In Genesis 2, God presented animals which had to be all one gender, since Eve did not exist yet. It's certainly possible that retroactively animals changed to separate genders, but this is not in congruence with the Genesis 1 which clearly suggests that the animals reproduce beforehand. If you suggest that the animals were changed after God created them, you are saying that God made a mistake.

My bible even goes so far as to say Genesis 2: is "Another Account of Creation", which I believe, and I think the majority of Christians who have thought about it believe they are two different stories.

Isn't it much more likely that two separate people wrote Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 (God certainly did not write it--he relied on prophets and such), and the stories do not agree 100% because they are either misinterpreted accounts of what God told them, presumably in a dream or something where they can't remember every single detail? To further compound the matter, these were written in another language more than 2000 years ago, much of which had to be transferred via word of mouth. If you have ever played the "telephone" game, you'll know that it's quite difficult to get the original message across. Likewise, there was no spellcheck back then, and to assume that each copy made was perfect is ludicrous--humans by nature make mistakes. Certainly they were careful, which increases the probability of retaining the original message. With all these errors adding up, including translation errors, it is impossible to assume that the bible of today is exactly the same as the first copy of the book when it was written. If you do, and you follow the bible to the letter, you are worshiping the bible, not God, and you are not using your brain to think for yourself. You are using your brain to think for the bible, which is just a book which was written by humans a really really long time ago. If you believe that God aided in the translations and copies to preserve the 100% correct version of the bible, they why don't you believe that my interpretation is 100% correct?
It would have been easier to just say that God did not create everything just once and created Eden separately from the rest of the world after he created Adam, but I still don't know what you actually believe because all you do is link me to articles which don't agree.

1) Do you believe in god? If yes, go to #3. If not, go to #2.
2) Read the bible to believe in god. Go to #1.
3) Should we admire Jesus, and try to live a generous and forgiving life as he did? If yes, go to #5. If not, go to #4.
4) Read the bible again. Go back to wherever you was before you are told to do this.
5) Didn't Jesus kill a kid for brushing against his shoulder? If yes, go to #7. If not, go to #6.
6) Go read the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Go back to #5.
7) Wasn't everything done by Jesus holy, generous and forgiving? If yes, go to #8. If not, go to #4.
8) Shouldn't we kill/hurt/torture anyone who brushes against us? If HELL YES, go to #9. If not, go to #7.
9) Congratulations, keep it up and you'll be ensured an eternal life in heaven! [/sarcasm]

Infancy Gospel of Thomas is not part of te Bible. We're talking about the Bible here, not random books and stories.

Only because of the Catholic Church you hate so much.

The Council of Nicea wasn't Roman Catholic.

Quote

Catholic actually means "universal." It was a common adjective applied to the Church/churches in the 4th century. It is a mistake to assume the word "catholic" was a reference to the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which did not exist at the time of the Council of Nicea.

The Council of Nicea made a number of decisions that give us a clear picture of the authority of Rome at the time. Those decisions are called "canons." Canon VI reads:

Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges.

The extent of the jurisdiction of the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch are not exactly given, except for the bishop of Alexandria, but they were clearly not universal.

There is extensive evidence that there was no "pope" in the Ante-Nicene Church. Thus, any references at or before the Council of Nicea to the "catholic" Church or "catholic" churches are simply references to the Church universal.

From http://www.christian-history.org/council-of-nicea.html

woops, apparently one of the Esubius's was the first to compile a list of the books of the Bible. He wasn't Roman Catholic either.
Rockz I gtg to work soon but I'll reply eventually.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 29 2011, 4:26 am by Jack.

Umm the Bible never says that Dinosaurs were created in the six days. In fact, It's very vague as to what exactly went on, which is odd, because in some places it can also be very specific. It might also have something to do with the fact that it was an oral tradition for centuries.
The New Testament on the other hand is pretty specific and realistic as to what happened. This is probably because it was written by people who were there.

Dinosaurs generally move along the ground, or are flying animals, or sea creatures. All three categories the Bible addresses, so I'd say it's pretty specific. And no, it doesn't specifically say that on day 4 dinos were created, but it doesn't specifically say that about dogs or cats or seagulls or any specific creature other than man.

Seems like we are both argreeing on the information and getting different ideas from it.
You are saying that dinosaurs are included. I'm saying don't be so sure. Either way, we will never really know until we are dead.

...why would dinosaurs not be included? And why is it dinos that you think aren't included? Why not chimps or dolphins or ants?

I'm not saying that I believe it.
I'm just making the point that we don't always know exactly how it happened even if we have a record of it.

Well being vague can sound like anything epically if its translated from another language; that's how fortune tellers of all kinds work by being vauge.

Yes it is fairly obvious to me that the new testament is more realistic on what happened; mainly because of the fact it was written about 100 years after the death of Jesus. And it was more modernized compared to the old testament which was written in and around the time of Jews (right before birth of Jesus)

@K_A i understand that there is proof for Jesus but there is defiantly a lot proof for Evolution and Dinosaurs each of which have their own merits.
And each of which is its own discussion.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 2 2011, 10:08 pm by Tempz.

Everyone was Catholic before the Great Schism of 1054. Even then, the Orthodox church was pretty similar to the Roman Catholic church. It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that there were true non-Catholics.

It's spelled Eusebius. Also, the council of Nicea was called by Emperor Constantine. It was the true beginning of the Roman Catholic Church. Standardizing the canon was the most important things they did.

My bad on the spelling ;0

For a few hundred years before the Schism, the Roman Catholic church was the domiinant religion in the western world, yes. But before that there were numerous separate churches, and even during the Catholic's time of domination, there were still churches in parts o the world that remained separate.

They were called heretics, mostly because they believed crazy things like the crucifixion wasn't literal.