sparrow

The Bible doesn't seem to indicate anywhere that God "big banged" into existence the universe and all that's within it; but the Bible does seem to state quite clearly that God created the universe by "divine fiat" through the spoken Word: "For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:9).

I think that the unpardonable sin is mentioned in the Bible just in that unique statement in which some of the Pharisees, who after having heard Jesus' words of wisdom and seeing His great works, had accused Jesus of saying and doing these things by the power of Beelzebub and not by the power of God. And so I believe this to mean that the unpardonable sin was a specific sin peculiar to the time of Jesus when He walked upon the earth and consequently is a transgression that cannot be committed today.

I think that while many good people believe that God used evolution to create the universe billions of years ago, I personally do not believe that it is either wise or possible to bring evolution and creation into some kind of agreement. Evolution, whether it is defined as a process that happens by "natural selection" or by "random chance" is a material process by definition that has no need of God, the Director of all things, as evolution is a process that has no direction. And I don't see how a person could logically say that God used evolution in His creation without contradicting Jesus. In referring to Genesis 1:26-27, Jesus says, "But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female" (Mark 10:6) - and not "But from several billion years after creation, death, and destruction, God made them male and female."

Well said, Enoch. I think that the world view of non-believers immediately starts them off on the wrong foot with the premise that "nothing," and its two attributes random-chance and time, created a big bang that led to an intricately designed and precisely balanced universe; and that random-chance and time then made the universe so finely tuned that nature was able to break the law of nature that states living organisms can originate only from other living organisms (law of biogenesis). But since the laws of nature are the laws of physics, and since nature isn't a lawbreaker, life therefore coming from non-life is an impossibility. However, since atheists' presuppose that God does not exist, they seem to have blinding faith in that whatever created the universe, the world, and them, it wasn't God. They automatically have turned off their natural desire to comprehend the deep things of God; in other words, they seem to be viewing creation with a self-inflicted, spiritual blind spot to the reality of their Creator.

Concerning a hyper-literal translation of Genesis 1, I think that since Genesis 1 doesn't have any observable parable or allegorical-like elements about it, we should take Genesis 1 mainly as a historical and descriptive narrative. And since God is not the author of confusion, it seems unlikely that he would start the Bible off with symbolic words before He had defined first the literal "at face value" meaning of those symbolic words. In the verse before Jesus says "I am the door," John writes, "This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them" (John 10:6). "Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep" (John 10:7). The context makes it quite apparent that Jesus is speaking figuratively.