I have read it for myself. The bible (in genesis) states that the earth will be here forever. This directly conflicts with everything we know about the universe. I am very confused. could someone explain?

Explanation:

The ancient Israelites were most concerned with their relationship with God. They did describe some things that coincide with modern scientific thought, but you must not confuse the two.

The scientific method was not fully developed until about  1600 CE which is a twinkling of the time that has passed. I suppose you could say that God did not bother to teach the Israelites that sort of thing any more than he bothered to teach them about Mathematics. Their counting system is one of the most peculiar on the planet. Technically there is no 14 because 14 would be the beginning of Gods name, and that was considered very disrespectful.

I'm a huge fan of the Old Testament because not only is it concerned with Prophecy and History (neither of which interest me much), but it is most concerned with conduct. Conduct is perhaps the only  branch of morality that we have any control over, and quite frankly we're very poor at it. If you can explain anything about the Holocaust and make it good in some way, I'd be very interested in what you have to say. Please don't tell me that it's Satan's doing. We are responsible for our conduct and we do not need to blame Satan for our wrong doings. We do it ourselves. And don't tell me it was Adam's doing, or poor Eve's either. That avoids the central issue that Conduct is concerned with. Us. Anything that avoids looking at the core issues of conduct is a cop out. We cannot get better by blaming something other than ourselves.

And avoiding  the contents of the Bible by saying it is not scientific, is no way to deal with one of its primary purposes. It never pretends to be scientific. You must deal with what it is, and not what it is not.

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"the land of the dead"