The Genesis account of creation is not mythical

Thanks Pro. Time to wrap things up, I don’t intend on making many rebuttals in this round. I thank Pro for his participation in this debate. Mythology I was very explicit in what I was arguing for in order to qualify Genesis as a mythical, indeed I provided two definitions in my opening arguments, indeed Genesis clearly qualifies as a myth under the following two definitions irrespective of whether or not the narrative is true: “A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events”” “A popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially : one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society” Indeed Pro never challenged these at all, as such it is perhaps debatable whether these alone win me the debate, however I took things a step farther by affirming the stronger mythology definitions, to which Pro again never contested in this debate: “A widely held but false belief or idea”[1] “A usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon” “An unfounded or false notion”[2] Clearly Genesis is a traditional narrative that invokes supernatural phenomenon, and I argued later that Genesis was written intended to be historical. Indeed given this and the fact I have demonstrated large portions of the narrative to be false indeed qualifies it as mythical. Falsehoods: I presented a number of major issues that the narrative makes regarding the truthhood of the narrative, which I list below: 1. Timescales (day-age rebuttals) 2. Spontaneous Generation vs Evolution 3. Creation of the Sun(Day 4) long after the Earth (Day 0/1) 4. Creation of Trees (Day 3) before the Sun, Stars and Life in Water (Day 4) 5. Creation of the Sun & Earth (Day 1/4) before the Stars (Day 4) 6. Creation of Day/Night (Day 1) before creation of the Sun (Day 4) 7. Commanding of reproduction (Day 6) after life already evolved (Day 3) 8. Creation of the Moon (Day 4) after creation of plants/trees/vegetation (Day 3) 9. God created anything whatsoever(!!) To summarize my defences of these points: 1. Gave reasons to accept the 24-hour or night/day interpretations 2. Uncontested by Pro 3. Only defence by Pro is a possible interpretation of what the ‘light’ means, yet no reasons why we should accept such an interpretation, sharpshooter fallacy 4. Uncontested by Pro 5. Uncontested by Pro 6. Same defence at point #3, no other substantial reason given 7. Uncontested by Pro 8. Only defence is a misunderstanding of the argument by Pro, Giant Impact hypothesis would have sterilized all life created on day 3 9. Pro only claims a lack of evidence, yet I provided the evidence in the standard model, scientific models etc. which adequately explain what we see without need for an interveining God as Genesis requires All of these I argued and evidenced were significant contradictions within the narrative when compared with the facts, Pro failed to respond adequately to virtually all of these problems, which are rather significant given it’s a large portion of the narrative. Given that Genesis clearly fulfils the other qualifiers for a myth, I hold I have easily fulfilled my BoP in demonstrating that the Genesis creation story is indeed a myth. Pro constantly accuses me of making strawman arguments, that Genesis didn’t have to be true, but I gave reasons why Genesis did have to be largely true to exempt it from qualifying as a myth. It contains all the supernatural elements one would expect from a myth story (as defined), and hence the only way it would escape from being a myth was if it was in fact true. Pro also misunderstands the sharpshooter fallacy, which I applied to his position since he attempted to come up with as many interpretations of the narrative as possible and only presenting/selecting the ones that most closely fit the facts, while ignoring all the other interpretations, including the most common ones that would most likely have been the intent of the author(s) of Genesis if we are assessing the facts objectively. The interpretation of a ‘day’ for example, I showed significant evidence that the word ‘Yom’ almost invariably means a 24 hour day, and if not that then a passing of night to day. Neither are reconcilable with the facts of the universe as we know them, yet Pro presents the day-age interpretation, which is a rare and poorly evidenced one. We have absolutely no reason to think the author(s) of Genesis ever meant a day-age interpretation when it was written, especially in light of corroborating evidence (how ‘evening came morning came’ generally means). Pro asserts that myths can be truthful according to Wikipedia, I checked the page for myself and seen no such assertion, which has been a common theme in Pro’s argumentation, which always go a stretch beyond what the facts state. The only mention of truthfulness in the Wiki is in the origins of myths:[1] “ Various origins for myths have been proposed, ranging from personification of natural phenomena to truthful or hyperbolic accounts of historical events, to explanations of existing ritual.” Indeed I will quickly concede that certain elements of the creation accounts may be based on real experiences (such as the Noah’s ark story being based on some flood that did occur), but that in no way means that it escapes mythology by being itself, false. Stories that have become folk legends, changed and become increasingly fantastical and supernatural, would clearly fulfil be mostly false, yet be based on original true events. In either case Pro presented no evidence that Genesis was even based on true events. Poetry: Pro again claims Genesis contains poetry, yet links me to a 3rd part website, which the article itself references no scholarly sources. I seriously question the credibility of this source, moreover Pro only asserts it contains poetry, and provides no evidence with the context of this debate it does. I gave reasons to accept that Genesis was written intended to tell a factual (albeit completely false) narrative, Pro has not addressed any of those reasons. Even if Genesis did contain some elements of poetry, it doesn’t follow the creation account IS poetry, which Pro asserted in the third round, yet another case of Pro going further than his facts allow. Pro’s Closing Points: I will rebut Pro’s summarization of points with a summarlization of my rebuttals: 1. Myths – I have shown this to be irrelevant even if true 2. Day – Pro ignored my evidence to the contrary, it does not support Pro’s BoP 3. Irrelevant, if the transmitted story is largely false, it qualifies as myth, even if it was of true origins given the nature of the narrative, supernatural elements etc. But Pro provided no evidence for this anyway. It doesn’t help fulfil Pro’s BoP regardless 4. Pro didn’t give those reasons (bare assertion fallacy) 5. Again irrelevant to the creation narrative, no reason to think it’s true anyway. Doesn’t fulfil any poart of BoP regardless as it’s mitigation 6. Mitigation only, also doesn’t explain the ordering problems even if true. 7. I demonstrated that the genetic ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ have nothing to do with the creation narrative. Pro also misunderstands what the genetic ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ actually mean, and ignores that we descended from a population of people, and not from just 2 people. 8. Again based on misunderstanding of the argument (explained earlier) 9. I have dropped this point for space, it’s only mitigation anyway Pro simply has not fulfilled his BoP for one, and most of his time was spent on mitigation, which was still unsuccessful. As such I ask voters to vote Con. Thanks for the debate TS! References 1. http://en.wikipedia.org...