Originally posted by Marcml30
Nope, I was not around to see the world created and neither were any of the people that junior mentioned so how do we know if what they wrote was correct? Where did the information about the beginning of earth come from if not directly from God? See, I've always been told/heard that the Bible is infallible. Mainly because (my interpretation) if it is not infallible then the door is open, even if just a crack, for people to question inaccuracies. For example, "If this is incorrect then couldn't… the Flood, Jesus' ascension, etc… also be incorrect? That's why you have these inane arguments about a passage in the Bible that refers to rabbits chewing their cud and such. There are a number of debates raging about even smaller inconsistencies in the Bible than the one I just mentioned.
With the notable exception of John, the people I listed don't talk about the creation. John touches on it very, very briefly at the beginning of his gospel (In the beginning was the word...), but its just a small part of it, is not a narrative, and hardly fits what you discussed.
The creation is pretty much confined to the Old Testament - specifically Moses (as Genesis is attributed to him).
And while, yes, certain parts of it would have to have been received through prophetic revelation, VAST portions of the writings are the equivalent of historical documents. Kings and Chronicles are perfect examples of these.
As far as a 'spell' goes, I would assume you're using that to refer to revelation and prophetic visions.
As far as infallibility goes, well...
Its a bunch of books from a number of different authors. Some of the books are attributed to prophets, some are attributed to the court historians, and others contain inspired quotations. These books have been around for a long time, and the printing press and more modern methods of creating exact copies have only been around for a very, very short portion of that time (even the printing press doesn't provide an exact copy, though, since type can easily fall out of the old presses).
Paper wears out, and the only method of getting new copies was to have a man sit in a room and copy, by hand, the text of the book onto a new copy.
I would guess that, every now and then, that old man made a mistake. Sometimes he would catch the mistake, but if it was a minor difference, he might not worry too much about it.
As far as knowing whether or not its correct, its pretty much a matter of faith. But then again, so is watching footage of the Hindenburg disaster, and believing that it actually took place. Angels using camcorders to record the creation of the world so that a prophet millenia later could see it does sound a little odd, but isn't impossible.
For some reason, all of this has reminded me of something one of my college English professors once said. I have no idea if the man was religious or not, but he once pointed out something interesting. According to him, the question wasn't WHETHER God could create a rock that God couldn't move. The question was WHY would God want to create that rock in the first place?
And that, more or less, is my take on theological arguments that involve rabbits chewing their cud.
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