I tend to disagree Miamian, then again that portion of Biblical text was never problematic for my world view or faith as I buy into the overthrow theory and the fact men can say and think all we wish to on the matter, only the Most High knows so to speak,.

 

A day is not a unit of time to begin with.

 

Here is another idea Miamian, if one reads the OT, one sees allusions to things in the future, put into words by members of societies that were just enter the Bronze age? Iron age?

Point being, explaining astro physics to a simple people of that era is not going to go very well and "simple" as in without the benefit of thousands of yrs of collective thought compiled into the pages of books, not savages as those civilizations accomplished advanced things.

As the old saying goes "Italians were eating with forks when the French were still eating each other"..:lol:

 

There's too many theories on how the universe was created.

 

I believe the universe haven't been created and we are just the imagination of 12 year old autistic boy in Iowa who is in a universe who is just the imagination of a 12 year old autistic boy in Florida, who is just the imagination of a 12 year old autistic girl in Washington, who is....

 

All evidence tells me i am just part of a computer simulation

 

Not sure if serious

 

Silly, if that is so, there would be no Iowa.

 

of course there is. It is in the imagination of a boy in Florida

 

All in all, a very intriguing article and attempt at synchronism between Torah (and it's successor in my faith, the Pentateuch of the Bible) and the current emerging science. I can appreciate just enough of it to want to delve more deeply. For a long time, I have told my congregations that God could not have explained how God did what God did to the most intelligent individual currently living - (Just how do you create a sub-atomic particle from nothing????.. And what are the physics of a singularity???) let alone trying to fathom God explaining creation to Moses - other than saying "I did it. Don't worry about the details right now. Just write this down. Then, you've got more important stuff to do, like getting away from those schmucks working for Pharaoh (whichever one it was!)!"

 

While I agree with you, I think it would be nice if he said, "By the way, the world is round."

 

I'm just grateful they were able to round up sexed pairs of every animal species so I could enjoy the zoo like I did yesterday.

I'd like to know who it was in the Bible who chose which animals would become indigenous where, and then who it was who shipped all these animals off to their new locations around the world? Wait, did Pangea exist before or after the arc?

 

Whoah, whoah, whoah, doesn't the Torah forbid the Israeli occupation? Also, I've heard tale that when constucting Solomon's temple, that Solomon summoned a Jin (or Genie) and controlled it with a ring with the star of David inscribed. The six-pointed star is also ascribed to satanic practices, but that a bit more ancient and hazy...Also, what are your thoughts on the proposed Zionist conspiracy of the Ashkenazi Jews in Khazar. I've seen documentaries that paint the Talmud and their followers as akin to a Jewish devil sect that arose from clans of mongoloids from central Asia. However, I'm barely versed in the twelve tribes...Can you give me a clue?

As far as the 7 days (or cycles) of creation. Even the Mayan calendar has 7 cycles to kind of set up cosmic shop...When thought of in this manner, where 1 day or 1 cycle could actually be 2.5 billion years and then the subsequent cycle would be shorter, it's gives one food for thought...

 

Nah, there's plenty of material from maps to landmarks that would suggest that the continents of the world were configured quite differently. Fingerprints of the Gods is like mind expansion 101...

 

Which is a fine question, because mankind is SUPPOSED to discover such things DDupree, we were not simply downloaded with all knowledge of nature or science, not at all, like a child imitating it's parent we are SUPPOSED to investigate such things and draw our own conclusions and test them and reject them or accept them.

CS Lewis compared this to a conductor with various people doing what they do, scientists, cooks, naturalists, we are to search and discover, this to me is illustrated with the Adamic dialog about naming things.

As horrific as the non faithful people see the Roman Church's treatment of Galileo I could not agree more, a peaceful astonomer whose sole tresspass was actually thinking and observing more completely then some dusty theologian functionary strikes me as not the sort of thing to get ones' moral outrage screwed into a knot over.

 

Feckin' Catholics have been infiltrated by satanists for so long...Those a-holes were responsible for driving the sorceress to the devil. Thanks a lot, they've been the only one's healing people in Europe for like 2,000 years ("The Sorceress")...Man, Padre, society would gang up against a beautiful woman and set her ablaze due their jealousy. There were no alternatives to those women who practiced healing with herbs, they were driven to the devil and their vengeance is deep and justified. That was Western France during the middle ages. "Never was such a lavish waste of human life" ("The Sorceress")


http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/sor/index.htm

Direct link to a most fascinating read and commentary of one of the darkest periods of senselessness

 

I happen to think that computer you are using is a form of sorcery. You have until 2PM today to report to the stake.

 

Well, at least you didn't use the "A" word...So, I'm thinking there's some progress there.

BTW-Insulting is totally worth a response. I'm just telling you what I hear and watch on feckin you-tube. It's just that your responses are so typically cliche and dismissive that I've come to believe your projecting your qualities on to me. But I really would like to know the truth and if you are too arrogant to respond, well, it's just you're not really helping your case in this issue.

 

It totally is, I've mistrusted it ever since I laid hands on it...Like, a lot of things I touch with my hands

 

You LIE!

 

Way I see it Miamian, people have that sort of view, or they do not, there is no real middle ground so to speak.

It is sort of you have this sort of wrinkle to you, or it just ain't there which is fine with me baby, I learned long ago beating your head against a wall trying to make a doorway...does not work...:lol:

Let me add this Bro, what does strike me about the non faithful/religious is..they have no peace, none, they float from one crisis to the next, always anxious, or unanxious depending on their bellies or their wallet size or whatever need was met, or was not.

It is difficult to put into words, but it's there and I've seen it a million times bro.

 

Dude, I wasn't being sarcastic, and I don't take you seriously...that said, keep digging

 

Its okay, the Greeks figured it out along time ago.

Democritus did propose the idea of atoms, except that no one believed it and he desribed it as an unseeable indivsible object that all elements are made of.

He wasnt that far off.

 

A day absolutely is a unit of time. Not trying to detract the point the author is making about it being used in an abstract sense but a day certainly is a unit of time. It is the amount of time it takes for the earth to make a complete 360 degree rotation. What your saying would be akin to saying that a foot is not a measurment of distance.

 

Intrestingly enough this article makes a very similiar argument I make to explain atheisism.

I can buy that the bible did not literaly mean 6 days and it was speaking in an abstract definition. I believe many of the things written in the bible are mans best attempt at explaining abstract concepts to the masses. They scholars of their time did their best to write a story that attempted to put things that were difficult to understand into a context that people could wrap their minds around. Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate what I am saying is by sharing my concept of what the universe is and how old it is.

The universe is a bunch of matter inside nothing. Space is nothing but distance between the matter out there. We live on a ball of matter that we named Earth. Science tells us that matter can be changed to energy and I believe at some point we will learn that energy can be transformed into matter again. The matter/energy that exists in the universe is finite. It never increases or decrteases it just changes back and forth between forms.

OK now here is where it gets difficult to concieve. The matter has existed forever. Its age is infinite. There is no begining and there is no end. It just IS. We can assign a lable of a begining or an ending on things in their one state of being. We can say a person was born then died and thats their begining and their ending but the truth it that our matter gets recycled into the cosmos and transforms into another form. In terms of matter/energy its a zero sum loss/gain equation. Matter if forever.

Space is forever. What is space? Space is measured in distance. What is between us and mars. We say space but what is it? Its nothing. Space is nothing. It is the absence of matter. Space too has no begining and no ending, how could it, its nothing. Space is the distance between matter.


Now put historical context into this. Religion is older then science. Religion attempted to explain why rain would come, lightning, birth, death, fire, wind, etc..... Religion offered plausable explinations and the best ones got written down in books. The bible being one of the most popular. Then scientific methodology enters the scene and it begins explkaining things differently then the biblical version. Religion and science find themselves in direct conflict with one another but science steadily gains ground and continues to do so because of how it forms its explinations. They are more logical then religions explinations and they offer solid evidence by being able to repeat the same results over and over again in experiments. The more science proves, the more religion is forced to re-explain its doctorine. This article is a great example of that.

Now we are saying days are not really units of time and its an abstract concept. I find a lot of similiarities in the inteligent designh debates with this one. Its religion redefining its paramaters again.

Now if we can all agree that the bible uses mundane terms to help people conceptualize abstract concepts like days meaning billions or more of years. Maybe there are more abstract concepts written in there as well and perhaps the biggest ones of all are the existence of a diety and a soul. Maybe having a soul does not mean your conciousness continues after you die just that your energy transfers to something else after you cease to exist and maybe God is not an ominipetent being controling everything but the the system of physics that all matter and energy are governed by.

Please know its not my intent to disrespect anyone who is religious. Im well aware that my theroy could be wrong. Its just an alternate viewpoint that I am sharing as food for thought.

 

only question I have when I hear this argument is that ancient biblical scholars had no idea that the earth was billions of years old. and I hope no one is going to claim that God told them the universe was that old and the scholars tried to conceptualize it with the 7 day argument. But, to the rest of your argument that comes afterwards, I couldn't agree more. well said

 

I only meant that perhaps the authors of the bible understood that it did not take 6 days in its literal definition to create the cosmos, not that they knew the universe is billions of years old or more. They just used the terminology of days to make the concept easier to grasp. When you think it about it, its very clever. They divided the creation into 6 steps giving a structured format that explains an extreemely complex event and at the same by choosing days they impressed upon people a sense of ominpitence. Only a God of unimaganable power could perform such a feat.

 

I have no idea how one thing correlates to the other. I've seen a ton of religious people who live exactly like that and I've seen a ton of non-religious people operate the other way.

 

My issue is when people quote these abstract concepts as if they're literal truths. It's all open to interpretation. For example, Jesus could have meant, 'i'm the son of God in the same way as we are all sons of God' or 'I'm the literal son of God'. But most every religion seems to pick one interpretation and claim that everybody with a different interpretation is going to some form of hell. That close-minded intolerance is IMO the worst part of religion.

 

he was far off atoms aren't indivisible