Philosophical puzzles are puzzles about the nature of reality. Each one has but one solution, not multiple solutions (until we figure out what the correct solution is, there may be several candidate solutions in play - but the fact remains that there is in reality only one correct solution to any philosophical problem).

To solve philosophical problems requires being highly responsive to epistemic reasons (also known as evidential reasons). So, the ideal philosopher is perfectly responsive to epistemic reasons.

Needless to say, there are very few people like that. Most people's picture of reality is based largely on what they would like to be the case, or what they already believe (and can't be bothered to revise), or what they believe ought to be the case, or what they find it most attractive to consider being the case.

So, most people will reject the conclusion of an argument if they dislike it, or if it conflicts with the body of beliefs they already hold, or if they think it would be immoral to believe such a conclusion, or if they find it an ugly belief to hold. And they will do that regardless of how good the argument is.

Note: the perfectly rational person is not necessarily going to be the perfect philosopher. For there may be truths about reality that we do not have overall reason to believe. The ideally rational person recognizes what they have overall reason to believe and believes it. That we have epistemic reason to believe x does not entail that we have overall reason to believe it.

So, the dedicated philosopher may not be perfectly rational.

No, I said that by 'God' I mean a person who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

Now, what are you disagreeing with? Do you think I don't ,in fact, mean that by the term?

Er, I do. That's what I mean by the term. I'm an expert - the world's leading expert - on what I mean by the term 'God'. And that's what I mean.

Now, if YOU don't use the word 'God' in that way, why the hell would I care? All that means is that you use a word differently. Use it however the bloody hell you want. Use it to refer to your own bumhole if you want. The point is that that's not how I am using it here. Here it means what I say it does. It's my thread. So if you want to understand what I am saying, then you need to understand that I mean by 'God' an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenvolent person, not your bumhole. Ok? Sheesh.

My use of the term is also not unusual. And Christians certainly believe in God so defined. Christians also believe other things about God. But precisely why is exactly what I am questioning here. So, don't tell me what Christians believe. I am questioning the rationality of believing those additional things.

So, for instance, I am clearly well aware that most Christians believe that God created the world. I am questioning the rationality of that, given that nothing the bible says commits them to that additional claim and that additional claim operates to make their view less, not more plausible.

To be rational is to be highly reason-responsive. Reason-responsiveness has two components: a receptivity component and a reactivity component.

To be receptive to Reason is for one's faculty of reason to be reliably informing one about what one has reason to do and reason to believe. To be reactive to Reason is to be able reliably to respond to that information and act or believe accordingly.

Thus, a maximally rational person is someone whose reason reliably tells them about the reasons that there are, and who correspondingly acts and believes as reason bids them act and believe.

To be reasonable, by contrast, is to be suitably reason-responsive to moral reasons. A perfectly rational person would also be reasonable then. But a reasonable person will not necessarily be perfectly rational, for it is consistent with being reliably reason-responsive with respect to moral reasons that one might not be reliably responsive to instrumental or aesthetic or epistemic reasons.

This is also why a person who is highly reason-responsive to instrumental reasons - so, they've very self-interested and very good at doing what promotes their own ends - may not be reasonable if, that is, their pursuit of self-interest is not suitably regulated by moral considerations.

Similarly, someone might be highly reason-responsive to aesthetic reasons - and so be rational in that respect - yet not be reasonable (Gauguin, for instance, who abandoned his family to pursue his art - that was aesthetically rational, but not at all reasonable).

Jolly good. Now apply that to the bible. And then acknowledge that your case for thinking that 'day' in Genesis refers to something other than what everyone else means by the term is really incredibly stupid. The default is that the author of Genesis meant by 'day' exactly what we do. And given that reasonable assumption it is not remotely reasonable to assume that Genesis is about the creation of this world.
Tip: if you are driven to play the extreme sceptic card when confronted by an argument for an interesting proposition, then you've lost.

So how do you know that I mean by 'day' what you mean by 'day' or second or year? Pray, do tell

But how do you know you're not going to tell me? How do I know that you mean by 'me' what I mean by 'me'?

These really are very good points

But how does anyone know anything?

Another second - which could mean a house, or a 45 trillion billion years, or anything at all.

How do we know what anything means? How do we really know anything?

How, Vera? How do we really know anything? That's a good question, isn't it? Although how do I know it is? How do any of us really know anything?

Vera! How do any of us know anything!? How?

It's called arguing in a vicious circle. Your criticism of me will only work if I am correct. So, well done.

Imagine we're in a duel. You would put your gun behind your own head and attempt to shoot me through it. That's what you'd do. And you'd still miss.

Well, figure out what I am arguing and then figure out why what you just said made no sense at all.

What am I arguing, Hugh?

That's not the king James version.

Now quote my earlier answer

What makes you think buns are treacle numbers, Hugh?

How? Becuase you say so? The word of Gregory. Gregory, a man who thinks Descartes wrote 5 meditations, says so.

What does it say, Gregory?

Quote it. King James. Quote it. All of 1:16. Come along.

I refer you to my earlier answer.

Well, that's 1 minute (a.k.a. 100 million years) I am not getting back . Thanks.

Yes, thought so. So you were just repeating something you'd already said and that I had already addressed. Anyway, I recommend moisturizing your knuckles.

Quote?

Aren't we descendants of Adam? — Gregory

No. Not if that's not this place. See? Any bulbs in there at all?

Now, once more: do you think 6 days and 4.54 billion years are the same?

Read the OP. I did not deny that Genesis says God created a place. I deny that there is any compelling reason to think it is here. Christ almighty, you seem congenitally incapable of understanding anything you read! New levels of low. Do you wear a bib when you eat?

This isn't hard. Genesis says God created a place. That place doesn't seem to be here.

Do you remember earlier when I pointed out that the place described in Genesis was made in 6 days and that this place - the world - came about in 4.54 billion years?

Do you still not see a difference there? 6 days. 4.54 billion years.

If place A was created in 6 days, and place B was created in 4.54 billion years, is A the same place as B??

Look up 'question begging' and then read the OP and then try and say something relevant to it.

So?

What about it?

Anyway I doubt any Christians would be impressed with your particular understanding of the text. — Gregory

See?

I have only read Genesis. But anyway, you've nothing to add here - all you're going to do is repeatedly tell me what Christians typically believe and then provide question beggingly interpreted quotes from the bible.

Again, question begging. Read the OP. There's nothing irrational about my interpretation. There's everything irrational about the traditional one.

Look, if all you can do is simply tell me what CHristians typically believe, then you're no use to me.

Again, it's question begging to interpret it as you have done. I think you just can't see this. I mean, why not quote Genesis at me?

Hebrews 11 3 says "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear"

There's no claim that God actually created the world. 'Framed by' does not mean 'caused by' (whatever it does mean). And saying that a group of people believe something to be the case is not the same as asserting that it is the case.
Note, I do not deny that Christians typically 'believe' that the world was created by God. I do not deny that this is what Christians understand to be the case. But is it the case? Not 'is it the case taht they believe it" but "is it actually the case that God created the world?"

Colossians 1:16
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. — Gregory

Question begging - you've just assumed 'in heaven and on earth' refers to here. That's precisely what's at issue. It's not at issue that the bible says God created at place - a place consisting of heaven and earth. What's at issue is whether God created this place.

Er, okaaay. Good one.

You're not a very subtle person are you?

Read Genesis 'without' assuming that 'the earth and the heavens' refers to here. Don't be dumb. Don't think "oh, it must refer to here because, you know, that's what people have been stupidly assuming for thousands of years'. Try and think a little differently. Try it. Try being original.

Notice things, such as the fact the place described there is created in.....6 days. This world wasn't. They estimate it is 4.54billion years old.

Do you spot the difference? 6 days. 4.54billion years. 6.....days. 4,540,000,000 years.

No? Well, 4.54 billion years is 1657100000000 days.

"I'll meet you in 6 days"

Gregory: "so, you mean 1,657,100,000,000 days?"

Descartes wrote 6 meditations.

Gregory: "so, you mean he wrote 1,657,100,000,000 meditations? I thought he only wrote 5"

Thought about it some more. So maybe we have God and then some incredibly powerful being capable of creating us and the universe/world. — ToothyMaw

All I am arguing here is that nothing in the concept of God or in Genesis (or, I suspect) in the bible commits a Christian to the belief that God created the world.

I have not argued that the Christian can deny God created some place - for it does say that in Genesis.

Note: atheists typically do not believe the world was created by someone other than God. THey believe God does not exist and they believe the world has non-agential origins.

There's nothing, I am pointing out, that stops a Christian from simply accepting that.

Note too that denying that God created the world does not then oblige one to provide an account of what or who did create it.

I remember back to the aseity thread you argued that some original thing must have existed with aseity. — ToothyMaw

No, I argued that if there exist thinks that have come into being, then there also exist things that have not. I did not - and have never - argued that there must be one such thing. On the contrary, I have argued that all of us have that status. Minds - all minds - seem to exist in that manner for none of them are divisible. Being indivisible is what something that exists with aseity would be.

So if this powerful being that is less than god created us and this world he must have existed with aseity — ToothyMaw

I don't follow you. You seem to be thinking that if I claim the world was not created by God, then I am committed to the view that someone else created it. No I'm not. I do not know who or what created the world. I am saying that God didn't. That nothing in the concept of God implies he did - on the contrary, it implies he didn't. And nothing in the bible does either, so Christians can - and should - agree with me.

What space could there be for God if something comes into existence with aseity and creates the only space there is? — ToothyMaw

TO exist with aseity is not to have come into being. That's the point.

But anyway, you are attributing to me a whole load of claims that I have not and would not make.

Being omnipotent involves having the ability to do anything. That's entirely consistent with there being other powerful people around and so on. It's entirely consistent with other people and other processes creating things. There's no contradiction involved.

there is,
consider a god which creates a world, and god which doesn't.
which one is more benevolent? — SpaceDweller

There's no difference.

Note too that I did not say God did not create anything (although that too would be entirely consistent with being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent)

I said that there is nothing in Genesis that commits a christian to the idea that God created this world.

Yes, I am sure you do. And that makes you a what?

Did you read the OP??

This world appears to have been created incredibly slowly.

The place described in Genesis is created in 6 days.

The place described in Genesis contains people whose average lifespan is 900 years or thereabouts.

And so on.

Vera: oh, but it contains animals. So does here. Therefore it is here. Jesus.

Christ! Provide evidence that a Christian 'has' to believe the world was made by God. Stop just saying stuff.

What?

Oh do read the OP. Stop just saying stuff. Remember when you thought Descartes wrote 5 meditations?

Again, you are just begging the question.
You already think christianity is stupid, yes? That, for you,is in the bank. You think it,so it must be true. End of. You can't defend it. You just know it.

What I am doing is applying reason to the matter. I am questioning a basic assumption that many Christians make about the bible,but that is not in the bible.

Imagine that most people think something is illegal that isn't in fact illegal. And furthermore this thing that most people think is illegal actually operates to cultivate disrespect for the law in general. Well, then it'd be good to point out that the thing everybody has been thinking is illegal is not, in fact, illegal.

But if the bible does not say that God created the world, and if the concept of God does not imply it either, and if supposing it to be true creates problems that would not exist otherwise, then it should be given up. It has no philosophical or scriptural justification.

Focus.