Surely this will silence a lot of you...

Originally posted by Good Wolf
That begs the question, what do you believed happened at the beginning (time element removed)?

I believe God created it but I don't know how. Some verses show God speaking things into existence (the planets) and some show Him calling things into existence from previous creation (the land producing vegetation and animals) or Him creating them (like Adam from 'dirt' and Eve from Adam). There also appears to be a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. There is also a book called 'Genesis Unbound' where a Hebrew scholar explains the creation account from the Hebrew instead of the 'Christianized' English. He believes Genesis 1 is talking about the creation of the universe then Genesis 2 is speaking about the creation of the garden. Can't say I fully agree or disagree. I can only say I don't know.

reply to post by Lasheic


sorry

Isaiah 40:22 KJV

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in



one cannot argue here that the word for circle means flat disk as



Isaiah 29:3 KJV

And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.


uses the same word.

There is no Hebrew word for Sphere but obviously they had spheres such as oranges and what not


other passages with words such as corners ends of the earth etc can be tossed out as they are ludicrous as evidence

the end of time???

hold a ball up to the light it has an edge

david






[edit on 19-9-2008 by drevill]

reply to post by Good Wolf


centre of the universe...


could you let me know the passage(s) you are referring to so that i can look for myself? I'll be honest im not sure about them

cheers

david

Genesis 1:1

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Call my stupid but it sounds like who ever wrote this was not an expert on the cosmos. It says heavens. This either means Sky or heaven itself, if the earth was thought to be flat. But you could argue that that is not implied, but if the majority of the people of the time were ignorant to the fact that the earth is not flat and the writer wasn't, he would have to make it clear that the earth is otherwise. If I was writing the bible on the inspiration of God I would write Genesis to the best of my understanding of the universe. I would write it:

1 In the beginning, God created the Cosmos as a canvas for painting. 2 In the vast emptiness of the space in the cosmos he created matter which formed the planets and the stars to light and warm them.

Id write it as clear as possible knowing that many readers will be ignorant of the state of the universe. I can only assume that the writer of genesis would do the same. And what did he write? A paragraph so ambiguous that it fit perfectly with the flat earth belief. It didn't stress against it, which I find fairly conclusive because that is tantamount to encouraging the flat earth belief just as much as it encourages peoples misunderstandings rather than faces them.

Other examples of this is the firmament and the water above the earth. This cant have happened because to survive for thousands of years without boiling (and sterilising the earth when it came down) or melting. It would also shatter because of barometric pressures. We also know that night is not a cover to be draped over the sky like a curtain or a tent. There is also talk of stars coming down out of the sky which is laughable.

Sorry if I digress, I forgot the point I was trying to make.

..Centre of the universe, right so

Since the writer seemed to be ignorant to the spherical earth (or at least not ruling it out).

Because of this vagueness, when man came understand the universe a bit better, it was assumed that the earth was the centre of the universe. Sure this is not the bible, but a miss understanding of it by people. But it's a direct result of the "earth and the heavens" description.

We also know that the earth was not created at the same time as the universe, so it's misleading again. For that to conform to the bible there has to be an assumed 10 billion year time gap within the verse itself which is hard to reason. I mean G 1:1 doesn't even hint to the idea of the universe, and the earth sounds like it is most of the universe, by itself.

TO MY CONCORDANCE!

Heaven:

shamayim
shaw-mah'-yim

dual of an unused singular shameh [shaw-meh']; from an unused root meaning to be lofty; the sky (as aloft; the dual perhaps alluding to the visible arch in which the clouds move, as well as to the higher ether where the celestial bodies revolve):--air, X astrologer, heaven(-s).

This isn't really space is it? It's more just ... atmosphere at best.

We read on.

2 And the earth was[1] without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep.

What deep? The earth isn't on anything. There is no water under the earth. Underground streams are in the earth. If the writer likened the 'deep' to mean fiery liquid rock that would be something. Maybe deep space, but the picture isn't painted with a represented 'space', so 'deep' is meaningless.

Taking genesis 1 at face value makes no sense to what we know and it doesn't seem to have any deeper meaning because if there is its too hidden for it's readers (not to mention deceptive and responsible). After all, this is the same book that says:

37 Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. 38 Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, 39 they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted.

This story is even contradictory to a creationists understanding of genetics.



You're right, it doesn't say earth is at the centre of the universe, but nor doesn't even mention a universe.




Man, alive. That post was terrible for it's conciseness and grammar. I was typing my thoughts as they came into my head. Do forgive me for any confusion.

[edit on 9/20/2008 by Good Wolf]

okay seeing as you are using a concordanance..

Heavens

strongs;

heaven, heavens, sky
visible heavens, sky
as abode of the stars
as the visible universe, the sky, atmosphere, etc
Heaven (as the abode of God)

an astrologer does not study the sky...

I'd like to say the following

you say that we "know" the earth is not as old as the universe. so its misleading. Hang on a minute your first observation about heaven is incorrect so the first verse of the Bible is correct

first heavens and then earth

secondly the deep

strongs

deep, depths, deep places, abyss, the deep, sea
deep (of subterranean waters)
deep, sea, abysses (of sea)
primeval ocean, deep
deep, depth (of river)
abyss, the grave

so God made the universe then earth but his creation was in darkness filled all the spaces

What deep? The earth isn't on anything. There is no water under the earth. Underground streams are in the earth. If the writer likened the 'deep' to mean fiery liquid rock that would be something. Maybe deep space, but the picture isn't painted with a represented 'space', so 'deep' is meaningless.

sorry where does it say there was water under???????

deep is not meaning less unless you need it to be. genesis one at face value makes a lot of sense unless you have an agenda.

secondly id like to tell you a story

one day i woke up and the sun was shining on my garden pond and the fish sought refuge from the sun and hid amongst the depths of the pond

okay, was the sun physically on the pond? No but id have no need to tell you that as you would already understand this.

Are the fish hiding from the a person called the sun? No but you knew this also.

are the depths of the pond unfathomable? NO they are not

some things need no explanation,

As for genetics, not everything is literal

Ezekiel 31:1-9 KJV

David










[edit on 20-9-2008 by drevill]

Originally posted by drevill
you say that we "know" the earth is not as old as the universe. so its misleading. Hang on a minute your first observation about heaven is incorrect so the first verse of the Bible is correct

first heavens and then earth

Well we do know the age of the universe. About 13.7 billion yo. And the age of the earth, about 4.5 billion yo. So what was God doing for 9.7 billion years (rhetorical and off the point).

"In the beginning, 13.7 billion years ago, God made the heavens. 9.7 billion years later, God made the earth." That 9.7 billion year gap (round 2/3rds of all time) is hardly the beginning.

Now if I was writing a book to really ignorant people, why would I call the globe, the circle of the earth? What comes to your mind when I say "circle"
A two dimensional shape. So circle earth as opposed to ball, sphere, globe earth implies flat earth with an edge.

Now what comes to mind when to events are in the same time context? You assume (however unconsciously) that they happened at the same time.

State nothing which challenges these assumptions to be reconsidered. If you can walk 20 feet, you can walk 20 yards.

When I was young, say three, I thought the earth was infinite in all directions. This is an assumption I made because no one said any different. This is what happens when decisions are made on assumptions. I know this, does God, yes, but the Genesis author can't have.

So, the bible doesn't say the earth is at the centre of the universe but it doesn't say it's not. Since it paints a misleadingly small image on the wider universe, earth being the centre of the universe becomes assumed aswell.

That's why when it was discovered the the earth was not, the church cried heresy.


And the deep.

"..face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

What does this image imply to the ignorant. Especially those who believe the earth is a disk? The disk is on top of water. The 'deep' is synonymous with down in the seas and oceans today, it wasn't any different in the bronze age.

The last thing is that many heavenly bodies formed before the earth. The bible says otherwise. That fact alone will mislead many.

reply to post by Good Wolf


whilst i appreciate what youare saying

you are using the phrase

we know as a matter of fact, we do not! look in science journals/websites there is no uniform agreement.

In a study published today in the journal Science, a team of researchers says the universe is between 11.2 billion and 20 billion years old.

source

not bad, bit of a percentage swing there though. Very very accurate.

lets try earth though

this is from the United States Geological Survey.

So far scientists have not found a way to determine the exact age of the Earth directly from Earth rocks because Earth's oldest rocks have been recycled and destroyed by the process of plate tectonics. If there are any of Earth's primordial rocks left in their original state, they have not yet been found.

we cant use carbon dating as a lot of assumptions have to be made. I also use this argument when people start talking about the Turin shroud etc.

carbon 12/14 has to have reference and we can only reference as it is today.

david

Well ok fine. Let's throw a margin on the numbers, but the point remains.

Second, no one is going to carbondate rock, 1 because carbon 14 only appears in the remains of once alive organisms and sometimes in diamonds.

Carbon 14 forms in the atmosphere and is later absorbed by plants, to be eaten by something which is then eaten by something else, etc.

2 It's only any good till 50,000 years. Not good for dating the earth. Other isotope dating methods are used for things older than 50,000.

reply to post by Good Wolf


hello

was talking generally about carbon dating but all dating is based on assumptions that this and that happend becuse we see this now.

david

reply to post by drevill


What assumptions?

If you can work out the halflife of a radioactive or unstable isotope in the lab, you can used it to date things.

Carbon has produced a lot of troubling results over it's history, but that cos samples get contaminated. But this is a trouble that many dating technique has, take gentic testing fro example, it's notorious for contamination, when it works, it's damn accurate.

[edit on 9/20/2008 by Good Wolf]

reply to post by Good Wolf


but your arent listening to me.

The The decay constant is a probability. it is not a fact beacuse, for example the half life of the following

Uranium-238 = 4.5 billion years
Potassium-40= 1.25 Billion years
Carbon 14 = 5730

now the half lives are a assumptions based and observations over a fraction of the halflife there is no way to say how something will act over that length of time in todays or even thousand years time.

They are probabilities and a that is not a true fact IMHO

david

With the margins taken in to account, it makes a constant approximation of dates over ludicrously large amounts of time to a point dependant on the specific method. It's reliable enough to be depended on by many fields. The thing that they do to determine accuracy is the use multiple dating techniques to find consistent dates. Remember scientists don't take anything on faith that is inside science.

reply to post by Good Wolf


wow and Christians get stick for what we believe.

Its irrelevant that science uses it, all that shows is that where it is used it cannot be taken as fact

so we have gone from its a fact and now we have discovered the dating method is only a probability to science uses it so it must be okay.

sorry but that is circular reasoning.

david

Oh come on. We all know that absolute truth is unattainable. If there is one inconvenient truth in geology it's that the exact year of something is harder to know the longer ago it was. That's the point of error bars. We can say that something did happen (that's the fact part) at some time between a. and b. (that's the uncertainty). Where is the circular reasoning?

sorry not been paying attention what are we arguing now?

are we arguing the world is 6000 years old or what?

yes 1/2 lives are an estimate of the total process


the oldest rocks found on earth wont be as old as the earth, so even if the 1/2 lives are acurate and the oldest known rock on earth dates back i dunno say 5 billion years then the earth is older so anything over that is a guess

if your going for 6k then we have 60,000 years worth of ice cores locked in a big warehouse some. these ice cores and the study of them alerted us just how fast global warming could occur(im talking natural not the hippie crap here) and changed view points from the 80/90's itll take hundreds of years to todays omg turn of the light and dont leave the tv on standby or we will all die thinking

but pray tell what does this have to do with the topic>?

reply to post by noobfun


60,000 years worth of ice cores??????

sorry had to bite on this one, please can you show me the evidence of this and how its measured at 60,000?

cheers

David

I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to find your own info on ice cores. Ice cores are a great measure because they work like rock layers in geology, or rings in a tree. Each year ice is made on top of old ice. Inside the ice gas gets trapped which can tell us much about the composition of the air over spans of time. It's what we use to ascertain global temperatures and C02 levels among other things from times long since been.

reply to post by drevill

Alley and the GISP2 project finished in the early 1990s, they had pulled a nearly 2-mile-long core (3,053.44 meters) from the Greenland ice sheet, providing a record of at least the past 110,000 years. Even older records going back about 750,000 years have come out of Antarctica. Scientists have also taken cores from thick mountain glaciers

that quotes from nasa's website

earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

its a simple process really count the ring, and then cross check those rings with known data to check your counting matches known volcanic eruptions etc, also carbon dating on pollen smaples shown and several other dating methods are used which agree that the 1 year 1 ring like a tree is pretty acurate, accurate to less then 5% infact


www.don-lindsay-archive.org... describes some of trhe methods used to check dating of ice cores

seems the documentary underestimated it .. or it could have been quoting what was stored at the facility in america they were visiting

so again i ask

what age are we arguing here?

that the world is 6k? older? how old?

truth is we dont know how old it is and possably never will, our dating methods tell us its really old but they only indicate the stuff we are testing, we dont have material from the creation of earth to test its been melted down churned around spat back out eroded and reabsorbed an unknown number of times

becasue science doesnt have the answer it doesnt make science wrong just means we havnt figured it out yet or figured out a way to figure it out

'lack of proof is not proof of lack' as they say

reply to post by drevill


This is ridiculous. You are saying scientists can't know about the universe because they've not seen all of it, yet you know the bible is real when you didn't see it being written. Can't you see your massive double-standard? You doubt scientists who have corroborating evidence from all over their studies, yet you trust the bible when it is the only thing in the world saying it's true.

Scientific knowledge wants to be proven wrong. Scientists all over the world want to turn the establishment on its head, as that's the whole point.

Yes, there are holes in our scientific knowledge, but that is no reason to throw the baby out of the bathwater. The same knowledge and methodology was good enough to provide all the things you know about the world but haven't seen, yet as soon as it starts to highlight the absurdity of your beliefs, suddenly it's not good enough.

You seem to love hypocrisy rather a great deal.

Originally posted by Good Wolf
HOOORAAYYY!!!

It's great when people get their head out of the clouds like this. I just wonder If they have apologised like this to Galileo.
...

Apparently, you don't know history very well. The CHURCH didn't want to prosecute Galileo, IT WAS THE LEADING SCIENTISTS OF HIS TIME WHO PRESSURED THE CHURCH TO PROSECUTE HIM.

People tend to forget that.