An anarchistic reading of the Bible (2)—Creation and what follows

Whilst there may certainly be nothing sacred or “God-ordained” about the modern nation-state, lots of people do claim the connection of their state with the God of their Christian faith. Lots of those claiming to be Christian do not notice they themselves made themselves an own faith which in many cases has gone far away from the leader Christ Jesus his teachings. Even worse many of the conservative Christians and extreme right people have twisted so much the biblical teachings they do not see straight any more.

Lots of people in the so called democratic countries would like to build up their country to what they call to be a free nation, though they want to put a lot of limitations to whom may enter and to what others may believe.
A very good example of such deformation of the mind is the United States of America where there are some citizens who are totally convinced that it is their own home country, not recognising they themselves came from immigrants, thinking their laws should be build on their restricted view of the Bible, ignoring in a certain way the idea of freedom of the Pilgrims who founded their country.

Americans, convinced that the only state they have does not belong to the original locals, redskins or Indians, neither that it belongs to the Divine Creator, are convinced only they can work, according to their measures, to make ‘their state’ the most just and life-enhancing state it can be.
They are also convinced they should also work against their state as strongly as possible when it is unjust and undermines life. Though they often forget which measures or rules they would consider to be the just, righteous and most right to choose for.

Perhaps they can use an anarchist critique of the state and an anarchist affirmation of the human capacity for self-organizing to help to resist the undermining and, even more, to help them as they seek to construct a well-functioning society.

But most of all I would advice those who call themselves Christian to take up again the Bible and to go through it thoroughly.
All people interested in building up a community which can leave together in peace,is better to take up the manual given by the Supreme Writer and Divine Creator of all.

We can approach the Bible as a storybook and see it as providing a loosely coherent message, amidst a great deal of diversity, but than we shall miss out a lot of wisdom provide in it and would not be able so much to see our own stupidities and the stupidities of our governments who do not want to learn from the past, having the past repeating over and over again.

When we look at the Bereshith, the book of the Beginnings brings us the evolution of all things. Lots of conservative Christians do want to take its writing as a literal presentation from day to day, but it was never intended to be so. Moses neither the Client to write, wanted to present humanity with a factual historical scientist into depth account of what happened throughout the years of this universe.
The very beginning of the Bible provides much important information about the Bible as a whole, about the cosmology of the whole, about the character of the God seen to be central to the entire story, and about the relationships between humankind and this God.

Those people taking up the Bible, the infallible Word of God, should remember that the tale told in that Book of books, is to bring us knowledge about our own beings, our own self, how and why we are and how humanity develops.

In this Best-seller of all times, the One giving His Voice, the One Who asked to have His Words written down, This Creator God speaks of His Creation, which includes not only the human beings (male and female) being created in His own image, but also all the things He gave under dominion of those human beings (plants and animals). Though man could make use of it and could give it names, it has made a mess of it, and has done dishonour to the Creator of it. Too many have forgotten that humanity is commissioned to care for the rest of creation as God’s stewards. This is one of the good reasons lots of people should again or for the first time start reading the Bible to find out what their position on this planet is and what they have as task to do to come to a nice good peaceable world.

The Bible tells us what went wrong in the past and how the relationship between God and man became troubled. We do have to find ways to restore that relationship between God and humanity which is not one of domination, command-and-obedience. Yes it is rather a relationship of like with like. God has given several man of God to lead us and to show us the right way to develop. The prophet and master rabbi Jeshua (Jesus Christ) is the most important one to follow. after so much time that the people still did not come to understand the Torah, Jesus came to clarify it once again and to show the Way to God. though Jesus is the Way, he did not want to do his own will nor wants us to do only his will, neither to make him God or to worship him. He wants us to worship and to pray to the same God he prayed to, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, Who is also the God of him (Jesus) and his disciples.

We are told to put on the armour of Christ and to become like Jesus, and to put on the armour of God becoming one with God like Jesus is one with God. Though God is the Most High and even Jesus could not do anything without his heavenly Father, we also shall never be able to do anything without God allowing it to happen. But we are given the words of Christ and the words of the other prophets to help us to find the right way, trying to transform ourselves by the teachings of the master teacher and by the words of the very different books brought together in the Canonical Bible.

We as humans created in the image of God are also by that Creator asked to be like God. And, perhaps even more importantly, the picture here is that all humanity shares in this divine image — kingly, perhaps, but in a strongly egalitarian sense. As well, human beings are given power and responsibility.

The biggest problem is we all are responsible for our own choice and for our own actions. There is nobody else to blame for what we ourselves decide to follow.
It is up to us to take up the Book of books, to believe in it and to follow up freely its advice and wisdom.

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To remember:

to avoid the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (2:17) =  restriction >  arbitrary rule from a dominating God intended to prevent human enlightenment? => Such an interpretation contradict much of the surrounding story + much of what follows in the Bible.

restriction = symbolizing innate human limitations.

human beings seek to know + use that knowledge to dominate creation => will devolve into power struggles and develop hierarchies

To avoid such a dynamic =>  to step back from desiring too much “knowledge,” to accept limits, and recognize to live in trust.

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“temptation” to violate restriction = too strong => Adam and Eve break the close connection between themselves and God.

coming from human side — after they eat the forbidden fruit, God still seeks to hang around with them in the Garden

humans hide from God (3:8) = they become ashamed of their nakedness.

consequences of this turn toward disharmony = establishment of “enmity” between Adam and Eve (3:15) and of Adam as “ruler” over Eve (3:16).

Not God’s will

new tensions and struggles = characterize human life.

rest of story = God’s work among humanity to overcome this “enmity” and proclivity toward “rulership.”

“fall”= affirmation of fundamental character of human peaceableness and responsiveness to God = complicated by human freedom.

God gives humanity potential to turn away as a key part of basic loving nature of the relationships +> turning away has consequences.

fatalistic interpretation has underwritten power politics over the centuries — the “fallenness” of humanity used as an excuse for a politics of centralized, coercive power.

human proclivity to exercise power in dominating ways = target in story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.  = inclination to centralize human power and to create a “oneness” that serves centralized power.

“scattering” Babel-dwellers (3:4, 8, 9), God seeks to create the conditions for a different kind of oneness — human unity respecting diversity, decentralizing power, based on mutual respect.

rest of the Bible’s story describes long, tenuous process of such a oneness being established.

human beings being gifted through God’s Spirit to connect despite their differences in languages, points to the type of oneness God endorses.

God’s healing strategy

genealogy that will connect Noah with the founding of God’s chosen people, we meet the human founders of the Hebrew peoplehood.

God creates something new out of barreness + promises descendants, beyond counting, and the agents of blessing for “all the families of the earth” (12:3).

important intervention of God = vocation God gives Abram, Sarai, and their descendants = God’s response to what happened in Eden, the story of the Flood, and the Tower of Babel => God will bring healing, but it will be patient, non-coercive, based on love and not on domination.

Founding ancestor of God’s chosen people = far from being a king or powerful ruler.

God’s work to bring healing to creation = not linked with territoriality => no geographical kingdom and no human king.

The method for doing God’s work in the world is “blessing” and this work is intended to encompass “all the families of the earth.”

We will have to follow the rest of the story to understand better the political implications of this starting point. But we should notice right away the combination of a lack of state-centeredness and the optimism about the possibilities of this “blessing” spreading widely without domination.

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Additional readings:

  1. What is life?
  2. Leaving the Old World to find better pastures
  3. Men of faith
  4. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #1 Christian Reform
  5. Right to be in the surroundings
  6. Creator and Blogger God 2 Image and likeness
  7. Creator and Blogger God 5 Things to tell
  8. God wants to be gracious to you
  9. The giving and protecting God
  10. Testify of the things heard
  11. I Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late !
  12. A secret to be revealed
  13. Humility and the Fear of the Lord
  14. No fear in love
  15. If you want to go far in life
  16. Being of good courage running the race
  17. Wisdom lies deep
  18. God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies
  19. God should be your hope
  20. Your New Job Description — Bless!
  21. Count your blessings
  22. There can only be hope when there is a will to be and say “I am”

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  • American Pride: What Does the Bible Say? (endtimesprophecyreport.com)
    Throughout its short 230+ years existence, the country known as the United States of America has specialized in turning vice into virtue.  Exhibit A?

    Americans teaching that pride is a much-desired quality.

    “American Pride”: it’s on the airwaves; it’s taught in the schools; it’s preached from the pulpits.

  • Is This What US Interviewing Officers In The Embassy Go Through? (thechroniclesofrenard.blogspot.com)
    The experience of getting a United States visa in order to visit the United States of America can be quite challenging for a lot of people in The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

    Here is a humorous video about those interesting experiences.

  • Muslim Americans Insist Students Were Killed Because of Faith (voanews.com)
    The Obama Administration released a statement late Friday about the killing of three Muslim students this week in North Carolina. In the statement US president Barack Obama said “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.” American Muslim leaders agree and are urging authorities to label the shooting deaths a hate crime. VOA religion correspondent Jerome Socolovsky reports.
  • Akin Osuntokun: The winner takes all election (dailypost.ng)
    Politics is inherently conflict-ridden with a dual and contradictory potential to either serve as a conflict resolution mechanism or generate a momentum for the escalation of conflict to crisis and ultimately to catastrophe.

    The election of Barack Obama, the first African-American, to the office of the President of the United States of America (USA) is unique and indicative in several respects. It was a veritable indication of how far America has gone in functional socio-political integration and positive adaptation of social diversity. Yet it equally brought in its wake the manifestation of the negative potential of politics to serve as a predictor and harbinger of conflict and crisis.

  • United States Corporation & The united, “States of America” . . use this to help people understand! It is very important information! ~J (gunnygbb2.wordpress.com)
    This film explains the difference between the, “united States of America” which is a Republic, created by the people, and for the protections and freedoms of the people; and, a corporation called “The United States Of America”, which is a Corporation of the “District of Columbia”; Titled, “The United States Of America” this corporation was founded in 1871″.

Thinking Pacifism

Ted Grimsrud—February 2, 2015

This is the second in a series of posts.

In this survey of some biblical themes looked at from an anarchistic angle, I will not be real precise in my use of “anarchistic.” I’ll be talking about a sensibility more than a full-fledged political philosophy. The key “anarchistic” motifs I will focus on will be a strong suspicion toward centralized social power, especially kingdoms and empires, and an optimism about human possibilities for self-organizing and decentralized social power.

And I will be reading the Bible in fairly naïve and straightforward ways. I approach the Bible as a storybook and see it as providing a loosely coherent message, amidst a great deal of diversity. I will focus more on the loose coherence than the diversity—largely due to a desire to find usable guidance in the Bible. At the same time, in reading the Bible more as…

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Why think there is a God? (2) Goldilocks Effect

Those unfamiliar with astrophysics might get the impression that the Big Bang was just a random explosion of energy that just happened to produce galaxies with stars and at least one planet capable of supporting intelligent life. But nothing could be further from the truth. The more physicists have learnt about the conditions for a stable universe, and in particular a universe capable of sustaining intelligent life, the more it seems that the Big Bang must have been very finely tuned. Like Goldilocks porridge, the universe had to be just right.

One example of this fine tuning is the strength of gravitational force. If gravitational force were too strong then matter would clump together, if gravitational force were too weak then bounds between particles would be too weak. In either case, stars like our Sun could not have formed and without the Sun, life on planet could not exist. But what is really surprising is just how particular fine tuning is. If the strength of gravitational force had differed by one part in 1040 then our Sun could not exist. (1040 is scientific notation for a 1 followed by 40 zeroes, or in other words, ten thousand billion billion billion billion).

And the strength of gravitational force is just one example of many conditions that are remarkably finely tuned. Other examples include the difference in mass between a proton and neutron, and the density of the universe.

The point about these examples is not simply that they are improbable, but that they are crying out for an explanation. Imagine if you replayed the Big Bang over and over again, billions upon billions of times. And imagine that each time there was a Big Bang, you changed one of starting conditions (say, gravitational force) by a small degree. In almost every case the universe that emerged would either quickly collapse in on itself or would be entirely made up of hydrogen and helium; the scenarios under which the Big Bang produced a universe capable of sustaining intelligent life would be a tiny tiny percentage. This specified complexity requires an explanation and for a lot of people that explanation is a Designer.

And these examples of fine-tuning are not controversial. The physicist Paul Davies has written, “everyone agrees that the universe looks as if it was designed for life”. Both believers and non-believers agree that these remarkable coincidences require an explanation. However, there have been some attempts to propose an explanation that doesn’t require a Designer. Perhaps the most common alternative is the multiverse explanation, whereby there just are billions upon billions of universes and eventually one of them would turn out to be like ours. It is questionable whether this is a better explanation. Firstly, the multiverse is entirely theoretical and it is not clear how one might go about trying to prove it. Secondly, it seems odd to choose to hypothesize billions upon billions of universes just to escape the existence of one God. Thirdly, the multiverse hypothesis seems to complicate, not simplify the fine-tuning, as now one has to explain the origin of billions upon billions of universes.

God is the most straightforward explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe.

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Preceding article: Why think there’s a God? (1): Something from Nothing

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WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropie...

WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Dr. Robin Collins explains two kinds of cosmic fine-tuning (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
    I was busy working my way through “Debating Christian Theism“, a book published by Oxford University Press in August 2013. It features about 20 different topics from science, to philosophy, to history. For each topic, there is an essay by a world-class scholar in favor, and one opposed. So you get both sides of many interesting issues, at a very advanced level. The section on cosmic fine-tuning features a chapter written by Dr. Robin Collins.
  • Evidence For Universe Inflation Theory May Lurk In New Data From Planck Space Probe (mukeshbalani.wordpress.com)
    At first, there was nothing — complete and utter emptiness. Zero energy and zero matter.

    And then, out of this nothingness, the universe was born. Tiny, but extremely dense and packed with energy. And then, within a miniscule fraction of a second, it rapidly grew in size — inflated — by at least a factor of 10raised to the 25th power.

    This theory, known as inflation, is currently the dominant explanation for what happened after the Big Bang and for how the universe came to be the way it is today. But although many scientists now believe that inflation did indeed take place, they still don’t know how or why it started, or how it stopped. And so far, there hasn’t been any solid experimental evidence for this accelerated expansion. [8 Baffling Astronomy Mysteries]

    Scientists hope that in just a few months they might start to unravel the riddle, when they examine the next set of data from the Planck satellite. Since 2009, this radio telescope, run by the European Space Agency (ESA), has been mapping the oldest light in the universe.

  • Come Reason’s Apologetics Notes: Can Infinite Universes Explain Fine-Tuning? (christianreasons.com)
    Barrow & Tipler, in their landmark book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, note that if Einstein’s cosmological constant varied in either direction by as little as 1 x 10120, (which is a fraction so small that it would take more zeros to write than there are atoms in the universe) If this were to be changed by even that amount, the universe would expand too fast for galaxies & stars to form.
  • Craig’s Five Ways, Part One [EvolutionBlog] (scienceblogs.com)
    Writing in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas famously presented his “five ways” to prove that God exists. He relied largely on extrapolations from observable phenomena in our daily experience to grand claims about the origins of it all. Thus, he argued from the presence of motion in the natural world to an unmoved mover behind it all, or from the contingency of existence in the natural world to the presence of a necessary existent, and so on.

    These arguments have received detailed philosophical development over the years, from Aquinas and from many others, but they have not fared well. Few philosophers nowadays defend them, and for good reason. All of them rest on dubious premises, and their conclusions are generally underwhelming. (For example, there might be a necessary existent, but why should we equate a necessary existent with God?)

  • William Lane Craig debates Lawrence Krauss in North Carolina: Does God Exist? (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
    Would you like to hear a debate featuring the least intelligent atheist ever? Well, this is a good candidate.

    The full transcript of the debate is here at the Reasonable Faith web site.

    Audio of the William Lane Craig vs. Lawrence Krauss debate at North Carolina State University has now been posted at Apologetics 315. The people who recorded it did not do a good job, though.

    And I also posted some background information on Craig’s arguments.

  • Video, audio and summary of Wiliam Lane Craig vs Peter Millican debate (winteryknight.wordpress.com)

    This debate on “Does God Exist?” took place in front of a capacity audience at the Great Hall, University of Birmingham. It was recorded on Friday 21st October 2011 as part of the UK Reasonable Faith Tour with William Lane Craig.

    William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California and a leading philosopher of religion. Peter Millican is Gilbert Ryle Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, University of Oxford and a noted scholar in studies of Hume.

    The debate was hosted by the University of Birmingham Student Philosophy Society, and the debate was moderated by Professor Carl Chinn.

  • Did Alien Life Evolve Just After the Big Bang? (lunaticoutpost.com)
    Traditionally, astrobiologists keen on solving the mystery of the origin of life in the universe look for planets in habitable zones around stars. Also known as Goldilocks zones, these regions are considered to be just the right distance away from stars for liquid water, a pre-requisite for life as we know it, to exist.

    But even exoplanets that orbit far beyond the habitable zone may have been able to support life in the distant past, warmed by the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago, says Harvard astrophysicist Abraham Loeb.

  • Did Alien Life Evolve Just After the Big Bang? (space.com)
    “When the universe was 15 million years old, the cosmic microwave background had a temperature of a warm summer day on Earth,” he said. “If rocky planets existed at that epoch, then the CMB could have kept their surface warm even if they did not reside in the habitable zone around their parent star.” [Gallery: Planck Spacecraft Sees Big Bang Relics]

    But the question is whether planets — and especially rocky planets — could already have formed at that early epoch.

    According to the standard cosmological model, the very first stars started to form out of hydrogen and helium tens of millions of years after the Big Bang. No heavy elements, which are necessary for planet formation, were around yet.

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Why think there’s a God? (1): Something from Nothing

Let us start with the universe, the whole thing, the big picture. Why is there a universe? Why is there something rather than nothing? And how did all come about? These are big questions. Philosophers discuss these questions when looking at what is known as “the cosmological argument”.
There are many different ways of approaching the cosmological argument and many ways of stating it, but here is one common formulation:

1. Everything that has a beginning has a cause
2. The universe had a beginning
3. Therefore the universe had a cause

This is a deductive argument so if the premises (1 and 2) are true then the conclusion (3) is true. Intuitively, I think most people would accept the first premise and nowadays almost all philosophers and scientists accept the second premise, so it seems probable that the conclusion is true.

English: WMAP observes the first light of the ...

WMAP observes the first light of the universe- the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light emerged 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Patterns imprinted on this light encode the events that happened only a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In turn, the patterns are the seeds of the development of the structures of galaxies we now see billions of years after the Big Bang. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A good way to think about this is to try to imagine the alternatives. If the universe did not have a cause then either it didn’t have a beginning or popped into existence from nothing. But the universe did have a beginning. Around 14 billion years ago the universe began with the Big Bang. But the other alternative doesn’t seem particularly likely either. If you can get something from nothing, why do scientists spend so much time an effort looking for causes and explanations? If universes can just pop into existence uncaused then what is there to stop a brand new universe popping into existence in my shoe, say, or in my tea. If you find it just a little bit too unbelievable that the universe just winked into existence without rhyme or reason, then it must have had a cause.

The obvious follow-up question is what sort of cause are we looking for? The universe is space and time; what came into existence at the Big Bang was space and time. So whatever caused the universe to exist, whatever caused space and time to exist, must not exist in space (non-spatial) and must not exist in time (non-temporal) but – and this is the important bit – must also have cause power sufficient to kick off the Big Bang. And if you think about it, there aren’t that many options. If you are the sort of person who believes in abstract objects (i.e. that things like the number 3 aren’t just concepts but have independent existence) then you might identify abstract objects as potential candidates. After all, they are non-spatial and non-temporal. Unfortunately abstract objects don’t have causal power (the number 3 can’t cause anything). The only other available alternative seems to be an eternal and immaterial mind, and that sounds a lot like God.

“Aha!”, the atheist cries, “if the universe requires a cause surely God requires a cause too”. But this would be to misunderstand the argument. The universe requires a cause because it had a beginning (i.e. it is not eternal). But, God does not have a beginning (he is eternal) and so does not require a cause.

So if you can’t get something from nothing (and you can’t) and if the universe had a beginning (and it did) then it seems you need (some kind of) God.

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To be continued

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Additional literature

  1. Where did God come from?
  2. Attributes to God
  3. No good thing will he withhold
  4. Onsterfelijkheid – Immortaliteit
  5. Cosmos creator and human destiny
  6. Why is the age of the universe so different to the age of the Earth?
  7. Bible and Science (2): In the Beginning
  8. Bible and Science (3): Something From Nothing
  9. Bible and Science (4): How Did the Beginning Begin?
  10. Why did God take 6 days to create the universe? Why not do it in 1?
  11. Creator and Blogger God 3 Lesson and solution
  12. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets

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From other denominations:

  • The First Cause (christianreasons.com)
    The Cosmological Argument takes the reality of the cosmos to entail the existence of a something that created it.
  • Why the Kalam Cosmological Argument fails, and why it doesn’t matter anyway (freethinkingjew.com)
    There’s no way this amazing world could have come into existence by itself.  There must have been some sort of “uncaused cause” that created the universe.Philosophers have been aware of these sorts of arguments for many centuries, and yet philosophers have, by and large, rejected these arguments.  It’s easy to see why, when even just an average freethinker like me can see where these arguments fall short.
  • The 7 Most Intriguing Philosophical Arguments for the Existence of God (io9.com)
    Nietzsche is famous for saying that God is dead, but news of The Almighty’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated. Here are some of the most fascinating and provocative philosophical arguments for the existence of God.
  • Allan Gotthelf on Ayn Rand on the Existence of God (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)
    According to the axiom of existence, “Existence exists.”  Gotthelf takes this to mean that Something exists. (37)  If that is what it means, then it is indeed a self-evident truth.  For example, it is self-evident (to me) that I exist, which of course entails that something exists.  But it is equally self-evident (to me) that I am conscious.  For if I were not conscious then I would not be able to know that I exist and that something exists.  “That one exists possessing consciousness is the axiom of consciousness, the second philosophic axiom.” (38)The first axiom is logically prior to the second.  This is called the primacy of existence and it too is axiomatic though not a separate axiom. “The thesis that existence comes first — that things exist independent of consciousness and that consciousness is a faculty not for the creation of its objects but for the discovery of them — Ayn Rand call the primacy of existence.” (39)
  • The Cosmological Argument: Arguments Put Forward By Copleston In His Radio Debate With Russell (olaleyedesola.wordpress.com)
    The radio debate between Copleston and Russell occurred in 1948. Copleston was arguing as a Jesuit priest with the firm belief that the cosmological argument is a logical proposition that God must exist. Bertrand Russell, on the other hand, was arguing as an agnostic with the belief that not everything has a cause because the whole concept of causes derived from man’s observation of particular things. Therefore, according to Russell, to say that God is the cause of the universe is rather illogical. The debate as a whole was split into two parts: the arguments from contingency and the moral argument.
  • The Cosmological Argument Defined (herose4grace.wordpress.com)
    The cosmological argument is in disguise.  In its premise, it calls on experience to prove the existence of God but in its untainted bounds, it is an argument of reason.  The main point of this argument is the simple premise that something can not come from nothing. It is our experience that dictates this absolute.St. Aquinas proposes the cosmological argument which begins by recognizing certain facts of experience and acknowledges the existence of God to explain these facts.  This argument, therefore claims to be a posteriori, i.e., based on observation and experience as opposed to a priori which is based on reason.
  • Essential Doctrines (Part 1): The Doctrine of God’s Existence (pastorbrianchilton.wordpress.com)
    The doctrine of God that needs to hold true for the Christian faith is that of theism. Norman Geisler explains theism as, …the worldview that an infinite, personal God created the universe and miraculously intervenes in it from time to time (see Miracle). God is both transcendent over the universe and immanent in it” (Geisler BECA 1999, 722). Geisler mentions that theism holds that God is both transcendent and immanent. These elements of belief in God are essential to the Christian doctrine. One could prove God’s existence without proving Christianity, but one cannot prove Christianity without proving the existence of a theistic God. Transcendence means that God exists as a separate entity from the universe. In contrast to pantheistic religions, God exists apart from the universe. Therefore, the universe is a creation of God. Immanence describes God’s working within the universe. Deists, like Thomas Jefferson, believe in God’s existence, but do not hold that God works within creation. Creation is like a wound-up clock and is ticking apart from God on its’ own. However, theists understand that God works in creation. God reveals God’s self to human beings (e.g. revelation).
  • William Lane Craig lectures on naturalistic alternatives to the Big Bang (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
    This lecture might be a little advanced for beginners, but if you stretch your mind first, you shouldn’t tear anything.
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    The Big Bang cosmology that Dr. Craig presents is the standard model for how the universe came into being. It is a theory based on six lines of experimental evidence.
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    here’s a re-cap of the three main evidences for the Big Bang cosmology from Caltech.
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    The whole text of the article is posted online here.
  • Storkersen: God and The Big Bang Theory (iegrapevine.com)
    The man who theorized the big bang theory, George Lemaître, was an astronomer and professor of physics at a university in Belgium in the 1920s. In addition, he was a Catholic priest.
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    The fact is that while Lemaître attributed the cause of the big bang to God, it has been distorted over time and the cause has been attributed to matter or nothingness.There are various reasons why these two ideas coincide.
  • Does God Exist?: Trying to See Both Sides of the Question (adamstask.wordpress.com)
    Suppose:1) There exist things that are caused.
    2) Nothing can be the cause of itself.
    3) There cannot be an actual infinite regress of causes.
    4) There exists an uncaused first cause.
    5) The word God means uncaused first cause.
    6) Therefore, God exists.
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    the reason we ascribe to scientific facts some sort of objective and, in a sense, absolute nature is that they are validated by real-world experience; science begins in theoretical postulation, but if it is to be validated it must end in prediction of observations. And in the case of many multi-verse theories or other such theories one is left with only theoretical postulations that are less parsimonious and sensible than God.
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    the properties of God have intrinsic maximums. For instance, one could define perfect knowledge this way: for any proposition, an omniscient being knows whether is is true or false. An omnipotent being can do anything that is logically possible. An omnibenevolent being will always do what is right in terms of maximizing the good.
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    One of the ways in which Swinburne creates a more interesting argument for the case of theism is by rejecting deductive arguments, in the spirit of Cleanthes, for inductive arguments. Swinburne’s overall argument is placed within the setting of confirmation theory. He distinguishes between P-inductive statements, where the premises make the conclusion probable, from C-inductive statements, where the premises confirm the probability of the conclusion or make it more probable than it otherwise would be. 
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How to falsify a religion using scientific or historical evidence

With cyphers, diagrams and statistics people can juggle. It is true that every reasonable person can evaluate and reject different worldviews using evidence. For that reason it is also very important to know which reference works he uses as his basic or fundamental teachings and background.

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  • Cosmological evidence for leptonic asymmetry after Planck [CEA] (arxiver.wordpress.com)
    Recently, the Planck satellite found a larger and most precise value of the matter energy density, that impacts on the present values of other cosmological parameters such as the Hubble constant, the present cluster abundances and the age of the Universe. The existing tension between Planck determination of these parameters in the frame of the base LambdaCDM model and their direct measurements generated lively discussions and several interpretations.
  • A Dark Energy Mission (telescoper.wordpress.com)
    Here’s a challenge for cosmologists and aspiring science communicators out there. Most of you will know the standard cosmological model involves a thing, called Dark Energy, whose existence is inferred from observations that suggest that the expansion of the Universe appears to be accelerating.
  • The long war: a history of the conflict between religion and science (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
    Many in cosmology have never made any secret of their dislike of the Big Bang, the generally accepted start to our universe first suggested by Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966).

    On the face of it, that is odd. The theory accounts well enough for the evidence. Nothing ever completely accounts for all the evidence, of course, because evidence is always changing a bit. But the Big Bang has enabled accurate prediction.
    +
    Now I want to make a very, very important point about Christianity and the progress of science. And that point is that it is very important that Christians present the evidence in exactly the way that Denyse presented it in that article – in its historical context, featuring the conflict between naturalists and the experimental evidence.

  • big bang theory expiry date!? how much does the “horizon problem” undermine “big bang cosmology”? – 04min (societystacktrace.wordpress.com)
    Did you know the “Big Bang” has some scientifically recognized problems in terms of things that don’t fit observed phenomena & actual measurements? Enter the “Horizon Problem”. But wait! …the “Inflation Model” was supposed to rescue it all – then again, isn’t that just a theory?
  • What Caused the Big Bang? A Master Mason and Knight Templar Offers a Unique New Approach to Multiverse Cosmology (prweb.com)
    A central premise in Jeffrey Augustine’s work is that Infinity is a monolithic Unity. It is One. Augustine’s distinctive cosmology states that all universes are sub-infinite and are “sourced” by Infinity.

    Once sourced, Infinity launches these sub-infinite universes into the Multiverse in a “high-energy faster than light transfer process” that Augustine calls “Disunification.”

    Augustine says of this process, “Disunification is the mechanism whereby Infinity sources and then disunifies universes. Disunification is how Infinity populates the sub-infinite Multiverse. All of these sub-infinite universes can have different laws, thus allowing Infinity to realize every possible history and outcome as it evolves itself.”

  • How to falsify a religion using scientific or historical evidence (deadcitizensrightssociety.wordpress.com)
  • Ten Widely-believed Fallacies Today (christianityistrue.wordpress.com)
    Because Science has been proven to be the only reliable way to understand the physical world, it must be the only way to gain knowledge.
    +
    Modern public education is based on the false premise that The God of the Bible doesn’t exist.  So, from our very first days in school we are taught about a world in which God is irrelevant.  One is free to believe in God personally, but only if this belief has no impact on one’s life and understanding of the universe.  In other words, God is only acceptable if He is irrelevant and powerless.
    +
    There is plenty of evidence and arguments which show that belief in God is far more reasonable than believing that He doesn’t exist or, even, doubting that He does.  In a court of law, evidence will be sought and viewed differently by the prosecution and the defense.  Such is also the case between those believe in God’s existence and those who assume that God doesn’t exist.
  • Religion (thediaryofjensenvalentine.wordpress.com)
    Most of the religions were created thousands of years ago. When the man started questioning the world he was living in but the knowledge of that time wasn’t enough to give him the answers. Religion stepped into this void as supposedly it provided answers. Man made answers of course. It was the first attempts to philosophy just before science started. It has always been a brainwashing government tool. It kept the poor from murdering the rich back then. A psychological weapon. It forms the same ideology to people’s mind. Perhaps the most dangerous ideology ever because it’s not questionable. The criticizing of it could and still can cost your life. But that’s how the world changes. Criticizing old ideas. Yet, billions of people still believe man-made stories written thousands of years ago. If they read these books like they read any other, it would not be such a big of a problem. The problem is that people take everything in it literally. The talking snakes, the miracles etc. That’s one of the reasons to criticize religion. It makes potential intelligent people lose their sense of reality and say an enormous amount of stupid things, dumping down society.
  • Anfractuosity: The Case against Christianity as Will Fulfillment (birdandbabe.org)
    A common criticism levied against religion generally and Christianity specifically is that it is simply wish fulfillment, a human invention to help us manage our anxiety in the face of a chaotic world and eventual death.  Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.  And Christianity is just whistling in the dark to keep our hopes alive.Some answer such arguments by saying that just because we desire it to be true, doesn’t mean we are inventing it.  Starving people didn’t invent the idea of food.  Human longing could be an indicator of truth as opposed to falsehood.
  • Can Atheism Be Proven Wrong? (gretachristina.typepad.com)
    Is there any possible evidence that would persuade atheists out of our atheism?And if not — does that make our atheism close-minded and dogmatic?

    There’s been an interesting debate lately in the atheist blogosphere. (The media will no doubt point to it as a sign of a terrible schism in the so-called New Atheist movement; but really, it’s been a very friendly and civil conversation so far, among people who are fundamentally allies.) The debate revolves around whether there’s any possible evidence that could convince atheists to change their minds… and if not, whether that makes their atheism an unshakable article of faith rather than a reasonable, evidence-based conclusion.

 

WINTERY KNIGHT

I notice that a lot of new atheists seem to think that “I don’t like it” can refute a religion. What I often see among atheists is this tendency to set up expectations of how God would have acted and then complain that he doesn’t met those expectations. I don’t think that this is a good way to argue against a religion, because it’s subjective. God isn’t obligated to comport with atheist expectations.

So in this post, I wanted to show how a reasonable person can evaluate and reject different worldviews using evidence.

Falsifying a religion using science

Consider this argument:

  1. Hindu cosmology teaches that the universe cycles between creation and destruction, through infinite time.
  2. The closest cosmological model conforming to Hindu Scriptures is the eternally “oscillating” model of the universe.
  3. The “oscillating” model requires that the universe exist eternally into the past.
  4. But the evidence today shows the the…

View original post 553 more words

Bible containing scientific information

Does the Bible contain scientific information unknown at the time?

Answered by  

Some attempts to find scientific knowledge in the Bible are misplaced. For example, in Isaiah 40:22 the ‘circle of the earth’ does not describe the earth as a sphere; the Hebrew word for ‘circle’ is used, not the Hebrew for ‘sphere’ or ‘ball’. However, the Bible does contain information which has historically been of considerable scientific value.

Demythologizing the cosmos

Aristotle

Aristotle (Photo credit: Lawrence OP)

Unlike every other Ancient Near East cosmology, the Bible describes the universe in naturalistic terms. The sun, moon, and stars are inanimate objects rather than gods, the universe was not created from the recycled body parts of divine beings, and the universe operates according to fixed laws. Early Jewish and Christian commentators understood that nature is regular and orderly, since everything in nature takes place according to fixed laws which God has instituted, which never change. [1] [2]

This concept of the universe, which we take for granted, was revolutionary in the Ancient Near East and was not even approached by the Greeks until around the 4th century BCE. In fact the inadequacy of Greek science led to a complete dead end. [3] Unable to free itself completely from mythology, Greek science finally stagnated and failed to advance any further. [4] Western science was not revived until the 6th century CE Christian philosopher John Philoponus challenged the pagan cosmology inherited from the Greeks. [5]

“Expositio et quaestiones” in Aristoteles De Anima by Johannes Buridanus, 1362?.

A pagan Greek philosopher,  Proclus, had written a massive polemical commentary explicitly criticizing the Biblical description of the universe and its origin, on the grounds that it was scientifically unsupportable. Philoponus destroyed Proclus’ arguments in his reply, demonstrating the many flaws in Proclus’ work. [6] He also wrote numerous commentaries on Aristotle’s works which identified their errors, using the Biblical cosmology as his tool. [7]  This breakthrough was instrumental in the formation of Western science as we know it. [8] Philoponus’ work was used by later scientific investigators such as such as Bonaventure, Gersonides, Buridan, Oresme, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, all of whom made significant scientific progress as a result.

The universe had a beginning

Philoponus had defended the Christian cosmology, deriving powerful arguments from observations of the universe that it must have had a beginning, and that it was finite in duration. He singlehandedly debunked the greatest pagan philosopher and cosmologist in recorded history (Aristotle), as well as burying Proclus’ criticism of the Christian cosmology. Later Jewish and Christian cosmologists throughout the medieval era made similar arguments, based on the same observations. Christian scientists from Francis Bacon to Isaac Newton all understood this, for centuries.

Incredibly, some of the greatest 20th century scientists such as Eddington and Einstein claimed it could not be true (apparently Einstein later said it was possibly the greatest error in his career). Eddington even admitted he didn’t want it to be true, for philosophical reasons. [9] It was only recently that scientific evidence for the ‘Big Bang’ proved that the universe did indeed have a beginning and would have an end, contrary to what many scientists had believed.

Health & hygiene regulations

Examples of cleansing rituals (and other commandments), carried out under the Law of Moses with excellent hygiene benefits include:

  • Carrion is not to be eaten (Leviticus 7:24)
  • The examination and cleansing of objects known to have come into contact with infectious persons, and their destruction if they are unable to be cleansed (Leviticus 13)
  • The quarantine and routine inspection of those suffering from infectious diseases, and the washing or destruction of objects touched by that individual while infected (Leviticus 13, 14)
  • Dwellings known to be infected with mold are to be repeatedly cleansed and examined until the mold has been completely removed, persons in the dwelling to wash themselves and their clothes, any physical material in the house which carries the mold is to be disposed of outside the residential area (and replaced with new material), and if the dwelling cannot be cleansed or if the mold keeps reoccurring the entire dwelling is to be destroyed and the debris disposed of outside the residential area (Leviticus 14)
  • Men and women with abnormal genital discharges were to wash themselves and their clothes, if they touched anyone or anything without washing their hands that person or thing had also to be washed (Leviticus 15)
  • Cleansing rituals involved washing with running water, avoiding the danger of stagnation and the transmission of infection by contaminating a static body of water with unclean material (Leviticus 15)
  • Those in contact with a dead body to wash themselves and their clothes, and any open container which was in a room where a person had died was to be considered unclean, together with its contents (Numbers 19:11-20)
  • Latrines to be dug well clear of residential areas (Deuteronomy 23:12-13)

Historical, medical, and scholarly commentary on these passages has noted the value of these instructions. [10] [11] [12] [13] George Washington actually used and enforced the hygiene rules in the Law of Moses to improve the health of his troops, and to give them a significant advantage over their English enemies, who were not so aware. [14]

Egyptian medical science was crippled by its belief in the supernatural cause of many illnesses. [15] The Law of Moses never attributed sickness to supernatural evil such as demons (unlike the nations around them). This gave them a tremendous advantage when approaching the issue of health and medicine. [16] [17]


References

[1] Sirach chapter 16, verses 26-28, 180-175 BCE.

‘When the Lord created his works from the beginning, and, in making them determined their boundaries, he arranged his works in an eternal order, and their dominion for all generations. They neither hunger not grow weary, and they do not abandon their tasks. They do not crowd one another, and they never disobey his word.’

[2] Basil of Caesarea, ‘Hexamaron’, chapter 5, sections 10, 370 CE.

‘It is this command which, still at this day, is imposed on the earth and, in the course of each year, displays all the strength of its power to produce herbs, seeds, and trees. Like tops, which after the first impulse continue their evolutions, turning upon themselves, when once fixed in their center; thus nature, receiving the impulse of this first command, follows without interruption the course of ages until the consummation of all things.’

[3] John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January 2003.

‘The Greek concept of God caused a deep confusion between cosmology and theology and was a dead-end to science, as we know it in our time.’

[4] Wilderberg, ‘John Philoponus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

‘Reading Philoponus as well as the writings of his great adversary Simplicius, one gets the sense that in the 6th century CE, traditional pagan Greek learning had become desperately insular.’

[5]  Dan Graves, ‘Aristotle’s Earliest Creationist Critic’, 1998.

‘A widespread religion of Philoponus’s time was pantheism, a belief system that sees God as equivalent to nature. In his rejection of this, Philoponus argued that the Creator transcends nature rather than being within it. Having been created, nature exists without constant intervention by God. This radical conception shocked the pagans who believed the gods were imbedded within the material universe.’

[6] Wilderberg, ‘John Philoponus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

‘The Athenian Neoplatonist Proclus (c. 411-485), the teacher of Philoponus’ own teacher Ammonius, had written a defense of the pagan Greek (Aristotelian, Platonist) belief in the eternity of the world. His aim was to show that Christian creationism was intellectually untenable.’

‘Like the polemic against Proclus, Against Aristotle is mainly devoted to removing obstacles for the creationist. If Aristotle were right about the existence of an immutable fifth element (ether) in the celestial region, and if he were right about motion and time being eternal, any belief in creation would surely be unwarranted. Philoponus succeeds in pointing to numerous contradictions, inconsistencies, fallacies and improbable assumptions in Aristotle’s philosophy of nature relating to these claims. Dissecting Aristotle’s texts in an unprecedented way, he time and again turns the tables on Aristotle and so paves the way for demonstrative arguments for non-eternity.’

[7] John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January, 2003.

‘However, of greatest important is Philoponus’ cosmology, based upon his monotheism. Believing that heaven and earth were both created by God ex nihilo  he vehemently attacked Aristotle’s assumptions with regard to the eternity of the universe and its dichotomy into a heavenly and sublunary region.’

[8] Dan Graves, ‘Aristotle’s Earliest Creationist Critic’, 1998.

‘Philoponus’s application of Christian theology to physics prefigured a new era in science. The Alexandrian scholar was the first to combine scientific cosmology (the study of the nature of the universe) with monotheism and the Christian doctrine of creation. In doing so, Philoponus anticipated not only the findings but also the methods of modern science.’

‘Philoponus’ replies anticipated the great Renaissance scientists Galileo (1564-1642) and Simon Stevin (1548-1620).’

[9] Arthur Eddington, ‘The End of the World: From the Standpoint of Mathematical Physics’, Nature, volume127 (1931), p. 450.

‘Philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order is repugnant to me.’

‘I should like to find a genuine loophole.’

Eddington also acknowledged that the theory of the universe expanding, as proved by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, was a powerful argument for the truth of the Biblical description of the universe as having a beginning (Eddington, ‘The Nature of the Physical World’).

‘Religion first became possible for a reasonable man of science in the year 1927’

[10] C. Singer and E. A. Underwood, ‘A Short History of Medicine’, 1962.

‘Among the physicians of classical antiquity we find no consistent view of transmission of infection by contact. Indeed the whole idea of infection was effectively absent from them, so that preventive measures based upon them could not be developed. It was reserved for the Middle Ages to conceive serious official measures against spread of epidemics. These measures were constantly derived from the leper ritual of the Bible with its fundamental concept of isolation.’

[11] Kim Taylor, ‘Toxic Mold Assessment: Mitigation, and Prevention’, Federal Facilities Environmental Journal (Summer 2004), p. 60.

‘The first documented residential mold assessment and remediation was reported in the Old Testament (Leviticus 14) in which identification, evaluation, and cleanup methods were described. The cleanup methods described in Leviticus have not significantly changed in the present day.’

[12] Peter M Baldwin, ‘Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930′ (1999), p. 5.

‘The ancient Jews had been the first to develop not only the rules of contagionist prophylaxis detailed in Leviticus, but had also formulated other pertinent aspects of public hygiene: a weekly day of rest, protection of the food and water supply, concern with abnormal discharges of the genitals and more general bodily cleanliness, including perhaps (if one is willing to attribute also functional motives to religious rituals) circumcision.’

[13] T Thulchinsky & E Varavikova, ‘The New Public Health: An Introduction for the 21st Century’ (2000).

‘The Hebrew Mosaic Law of the five Books of Moses stressed prevention of disease through regulation of personal and community hygiene, reproductive and maternal health, isolation of lepers and other “unclean conditions”, and family and personal sexual conduct as part of religious practice.’

‘It also laid a basis for medical and public health jurisprudence. Personal and community responsibility for health included a mandatory day of rest, limits on slavery and guarantees of the rights of slaves and workers, protection of water supplies, sanitation of communities and camps, waste disposal, and food protection, all codified in detailed religious obligations.’

‘Food regulation prevented use of diseased or unclean animals, and prescribed methods of slaughter improved the possibility of preservation of the meat.’

‘The Mosaic Law, which forms the basis for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, codified health laws for the individual and for society, all of which have continued into the modern era as basic concepts in environmental and social hygiene.’

[14] Colonel Robert Anderson, Office of the Surgeon General Department of the Army of Washington, ‘The Evolution Of Preventive Medicine In The United States Army, 1607-1939′ (1968).

‘Like Pringle, Brocklesby, Tilton, and others, Washington invoked the Mosaic sanitary code, as stated in the Fourth and Fifth Books of Moses in the King James Version of the Old Testament, Numbers 5: 1-4 and Deuteronomy 23: 12-14. This is shown in the facsimile reproduction (fig. 7) of the broadside of his general orders for the Army under the command of Brigadier General McDougall, issued at Head Quarters, Peeks-Kill [in October? 1777]. A copy of this broadside (43) is reprinted as appendix A, p. 189. In this broadside, Washington refers to Moses as “the wisest General that ever lived, for he was inspired.” He might also, with good reason, have referred to him as “the Founder of Preventive Medicine,” as proclaimed by Wood and others (44).’

[15] The Eber Papyrus (a collection of Egyptian medical texts).

‘When thou meetest a large tumour of the God Xensu  in any part of the limb of a person, it is loathsome and suffers many pustules to come forth; something arises therein as though wind were in it, causing irritation. The tumour calls with a loud voice to thee: it is a tumour of the God Xensu. Do nothing there against.’

[16] Ashland Theological Journal, (29:170), review ‘Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan & Demons’ (1997).

‘In contrast to contemporary Ancient Near-Eastern texts, the OT makes no reference to demon possession or exorcism, nor do the people exhibit undue fear or fascination with these spirits.’

[17] Richard Hess, ‘Review: A Reassessment of the Priestly Cultic and Legal Texts’, Journal of Law and Religion, Volume 17, #1/2 (2002), p. 378.

‘Milgrom argues that there is a basic distinction between the religious understanding of spiritual forces in the ancient Near East and in Israel. In the former, priests used rituals and incantations to thwart the evil powers and intentions of demons. P eliminated the world view that held demons responsible for the evil in the world. In its place, people were to be held responsible for the wickedness. In this sense, people replaced demons.’

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Picture of Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei and A...

Picture of Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei and Albert Einstein (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Replies:

  • Russell Hamner

    your looking for the wrong kind of science, it is indeed political science and social science that has been hidden from you. do some research and reasoning. moses came down the mountain with two tablets, leviticus for the oganization of religion for social science, and deuteronomy for the oganization of political science, seperated by numbers which tells you to count all who are able to go to war i.e. government, and not to count the levites i.e. religion. in effect separation of church and state, so.. the covenant of god demonstrates the seperatio of church and state, the constitutionalist formed the united states, and the constitution on the seperation of church and state or in other words they formed them on the covenant of god.

    look out into your world and watch… it is coming to and end as you know it, soon the kingdom will come upon you as a thief in the night, for god has revealed his purpose, the wheel she is big and she turns very slowly but yet it comes, and yet it is upon you. repent for the kingdom of god is upon you lest the wheel crush you under its heel.

  • Brandy Williams

    Oh my did you all do your home work, however, I have a slightly different outlook. I think that the Bible is full of many different types of sciences; social, medical, governmental, and personal. Even archeologicly. While being the written word of God the practical uses for everyday life was amazing and the governmental applications the best ever displayed. If we all followed them now maybe we wouldnt be in these messes. Socially all the knowledge you need is to love thy neighbor as thy self and it is a magor undertaking to do so at times. I call that art a science! Personally why would you follow Gods order for all the different types of tithing its built to make you prosper and geez at the amount of training it takes to do that! Another science to me. We dig stuff up out of the dirt all the time that proves that the people of biblical times had to be smart ie the babylonian light bulb! I think we tend to over think things instend of practality, we need to focus on what is at hand. Why should any of us care how we make it to the other side as long as Jesus is our center. All we should do is focus on making the time we are given a type of heaven on earth and seek His kingdom first, treat others as we would be treated and watch a move of God spring from the works of our faith and hope. You know those things unseen. What good is it to be a believer is waiting to die some horrible death? Even though I may give myself up to be burned my life now is so much more important than how I leave this life and enter the next. Focus boys focus! Who is our focus?! Nothing but Jesus!

  • Michael

    Russell, I’m not sure where you came up with this perspective but I see several errors you might want to resolve. God was to be the King of the Jews, the same God that inhabited the Temple, the same God that will rule with “a rod of iron.” The Jews did not obey the “separation of church and state” proscribed in the tablets, they rejected God in doing so. (1 Sam. 8:7) God appointed the kings, all the way to the Messiah through the same line. The two tablets don’t separate “church and state,” we don’t even know how many words were on each. The logical split, however, first reveals our relationship with God (commandments 1-4) and then reveals our relationship with each other (commandments 5-10). Leviticus vs. Deuteronomy? Deuteronomy, literally, means “second law,” but practically it is the second “telling.” Those that were present at the time of the first reading had perished, judged for doubting God and His character. Those who had grown up or been born during those forty years then received the same law. “it is indeed political science and social science that has been hidden from you. do some research and reasoning”??? Considering what you wrote, I would encourage you to do the same. “the wheel she is big and she turns very slowly…lest the wheel crush you under its heel”??? Mixed metaphors doesn’t come close, there is no heel on a wheel, oh my! Read Genesis over again, and once you understand who the “seed of the woman” is and the references to bruising, move on, but slowly.

    ***

    Galileo Galilei. Portrait by Ottavio Leoni. De...

    Galileo Galilei. Portrait by Ottavio Leoni. Detail. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Additional reading:

  1. Deliverance and establishement of a theocracy
  2. Festival of Freedom and persecutions
  3. Observance of a day to Remember
  4. Were allowed to willfully break the Law of Moses
  5. Relapse plan

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  • Evidence from science, philosophy and history against Mormonism, the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
    “In contrast to the self-sufficient and solitary absolute who creates ex nihilo (out of nothing), the Mormon God did not bring into being the ultimate constituents of the cosmos — neither its fundamental matter nor the space/time matrix which defines it. Hence, unlike the Necessary Being of classical theology who alone could not not exist and on which all else is contingent for existence, the personal God of Mormonism confronts uncreated realities which exist of metaphysical necessity.
    +
    Mormons believe in an eternally existing universe, such that matter was never created out of nothing, and will never be destroyed. But this is at odds with modern cosmology.The Big Bang cosmology is the most widely accepted cosmology of the day. It is based on several lines of evidence, and is broadly compatible with Genesis. It denies the past eternality of the universe. This peer-reviewed paper in an astrophysics journal explains. (full text here)
  • Mathematical Cosmology – Math, Physics, Cosmos (mountainviewranchstore.com)
    Mathematical cosmology seeks to explain the often complicated theories of our universe.
  • Jerry Coyne’s Twisted History of Science and Religion (forbes.com)
    In his latest post on the topic, he promotes the false belief that there is a fundamental conflict between science and religion, and he even makes the wild (and admittedly unproven) claim “that had there been no Christianity, if after the fall of Rome atheism had pervaded the Western world, science would have developed earlier and be far more advanced than it is now.” (For some thoughts on that theory, see this post.)Historians have long realized that the great conflict between science and religion is a myth. But it continues to be an article of faith among the New Atheists. In contrast to his views on evolution, Dr. Coyne thinks that he can ignore the evidence from history and disregard the settled view of experts in the field. But, being a scholar and a rational man, we’re sure that he will change his mind if shown to be wrong.
    +
    Steven Weinberg said it best, ‘science is a corrosive to religion .. and it’s a good thing too’. The church fought hard and long to keep the earth as the centre of the universe, to keep mankind as a result of ‘special creation’, to keep disease and natural disaster as a product of god’s wrath due to the evil of mankind. Anything that might damage the ‘faith and morals’ of the common folk was forbidden regardless of it’s truth .. not exactly a pro-science view. (Edward MacGuire)
    +
    Enter Copernicus. His book caused a massive change in the way people thought about the universe. If you think this was a problem for the church: It was even more of a problem for the universities. Copernicus actually delayed the publication of his book, not because he was worried about the church, but because he worried about the academics! If I recall the history correctly, this was more than just a new model: It was “experimental” mathematics. (Izak Burger)
  • ‘Less Than 1 in 479 Million’: Mathematician Calculates Impossibility of Contriving Creation Account (christiannews.net)
    A mathematician with a historical timeline organization has calculated that there is less than a 1 in 479 million chance that Moses, the author of Genesis, made up the Biblical creation account.Margaret Hunter is owner of Bible Charts and Maps: an organization that produces the Amazing Bible Timeline. The timeline is a circular chart that portrays Biblical events—based on the scholarship of Bishop James Ussher—alongside other significant historical happenings. According to Bible Charts and Maps’ website, over 50,000 people have purchased the Amazing Bible Timeline.
    +Hunter quoted a letter from the Smithsonian Department of Anthropology, which says “the Bible, in particular the historical books of the Old Testament, are as accurate historical documents as any that we have from antiquity and are in fact more accurate than many of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Greek histories.”

    Ultimately, says Hunter, “The Bible is not a book of mythical stories of made up people fighting made up enemies, but a factual history confirmed by archaeological evidence at least as far back as archaeology has been able to take it.”

  • How to falsify a religion using scientific or historical evidence (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
    I notice that a lot of new atheists seem to think that “I don’t like it” can refute a religion. What I often see among atheists is this tendency to set up expectations of how God would have acted and then complain that he doesn’t met those expectations. I don’t think that this is a good way to argue against a religion, because it’s subjective. God isn’t obligated to comport with atheist expectations.So in this post, I wanted to show how a reasonable person can evaluate and reject different worldviews using evidence.
  • With Lines and Angles – Euclid – Changed the World – One Person (onepersonchangedtheworld.wordpress.com)
    In the Elements, Euclid deduced the principles of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of axioms. Euclid also wrote works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, number theory and rigor.
  • What Caused the Big Bang? A Master Mason and Knight Templar Offers a Unique New Approach to Multiverse Cosmology (prweb.com)
    “In the pages of “What Caused the Big Bang?, I introduce a striking new cosmology that transcends the models of Divine Creation and a spontaneous Big Bang that had no cause.””My book is written for people who are spiritual but not religious, who respect science but are not atheists,” Augustine noted. “If you have no use for the creation story in the Bible and likewise find the claim that the Big Bang just ‘spontaneously happened’ to be unconvincing, then you may indeed like what my book has to offer.”
  • Rare edition of the Bible on display in the Quad Cities (radioiowa.com)
    A very rare edition of the Bible is now on display in the Quad Cities. It’s a copy of the first hand-written and hand-illustrated Bible in more than 500 years, that was commissioned by Saint John’s University in Minnesota, and took 15 years to complete.

“Before” and “after” the Big Bang

“Before” the Big Bang

Big Bang!!!

Big Bang!!! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Before” the Big Bang there was neither space nor time say many, but how did the clash of sounds, the Big Bang came into existence? When we talk about a “Before” than we assume that there is also a “After”. Both “before” and “after” are time concepts. If time began with the Big Bang, it’s incoherent to speak of anything “before” it. The Big Bang is a boundary, just as the edge of our curved space-time is a boundary, and it’s equally incoherent to speak of anything “beyond.”

In case the Big Bang happened it was an “event”. Something, which is considered by several to have taken course in the past. If it happened once, it’s entirely reasonable to suppose it’s happened over and over. One possibility is an oscillating universe – its expansion reverses and ends in a “big crunch” which rebounds in a fresh big bang. Another is the multiverse concept, that big bangs are natural events in any universe; and our own may be creating offspring universes, for example, out of the “singularities” at the hearts of black holes, where the laws of physics go haywire.

The Originator of everything let His people know that they would never be able to get to know all that there is in the whole universe, because it would be like giving and specifying every grain of sand.

Artefacts of structure

When we look at the things and analyse them we can break all to be stuff to be just artefacts of structure, dust and water. We made in the image of God also consist mainly of water and dust. For some that too makes somewhat more plausible a Universe bursting from “nothing.” But then they forget that nothingness is still constructed from unseen very tiny microscopic elements. This world is but a small section of real existence

A popular idiom says “nature abhors a vacuum”. When you place existence in the vacuum of the universe, all neutrons and molecules found their place to become different things we give all sorts of names.

Sound, Void vain man and his stories

Vain man is void of understanding, and does not have an eye for the Void which was at the beginning. From that void resounded A Voice. The Sound of that Voice brought forth The Word that goes forth out of the Mouth of the Originator who makes clear that it shall not return to Him void. Whatever might happen, this Divine Creator shall accomplish that which pleases Him, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto He, the Only One God sends it. (Isaiah 55:11)

There are many and sometimes seemingly opposing versions of the origin of Creation. This is quite understandable given the circumstances and age of these accounts. Some of these stories were mediated knowledge received from pure sources but, in their rendering interwoven with folklores and legends of kingdoms, empires, cultures, races, etc. Even the most reliable accounts have not been able to separate the origin of Creation from the metamorphosis of the earth and man. Spiritual events are recorded as if they occurred on earth and the whole processes of spiritual developments down to the evolution of the material world (earth) and earthman which spanned millions of years are captured in few sentences or, said to have happened within one sun rise and sun down.

Despite the shortcomings in these stories, one can still glean grains of Truth. Firstly, Creation had a definite beginning, secondly, before the advent of Creation, the world was a formless, pitch-dark nebula or liquid ether and thirdly, Creation came into existence with the introduction of Light or, as one scripture puts it, with the words of God!

Opposing versions

Lerner's 1991 book, The Big Bang Never Happened

Lerner’s 1991 book, The Big Bang Never Happened (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are many and sometimes seemingly opposing versions of the origin of Creation. This is quite understandable given the circumstances and age of these accounts. Some of these stories were mediated knowledge received from pure sources but, in their rendering interwoven with folklores and legends of kingdoms, empires, cultures, races, etc. Even the most reliable accounts have not been able to separate the origin of Creation from the metamorphosis of the earth and man. Spiritual events are recorded as if they occurred on earth and the whole processes of spiritual developments down to the evolution of the material world (earth) and earthman which spanned millions of years are captured in few sentences or, said to have happened within one sun rise and sun down.

Light

Despite the shortcomings in these stories, one can still glean grains of Truth. Firstly, Creation had a definite beginning, secondly, before the advent of Creation, the world was a formless, pitch-dark nebula or liquid ether and thirdly, Creation came into existence with the introduction of Light or, as one scripture puts it, with the words of God!

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3 AV)

As such by the Word of the Most High Creator were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the Breath of His Mouth. He only had to Speak and it came into being. He commanded, and it stood fast, by his order it was fixed for ever or until the time it would change again under His command

“By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” (Psalms 33:6 ASV)

“For he spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” (Psalms 33:9 ASV)

By Act of Will of Supreme Source of life

Through the infinite Wisdom of the Almighty the creation took a perfect process. By an Act of the Will of God embodied in the holy command “Let There be…” And there it came into being and there was.

From eternity, the origin and Source of life is enthroned at unapproachable distances above all conscious existence. The Essence of the origin and source of life is the Ultimate Being. Without the Creator God, nothing is possible. Jehovah God is The Supreme Source of life and power in the Universe.

What often makes us not to understand the coming into being is that our perception wants to see everything straight ahead like we know it. This makes that we encounter creationists in this world who do not want to believe the world is a continuous evolving system, in which we are only a small part. Many human beings want to place them above the universe, thinking that they are more important than stars, fauna and flora. They made themselves to a superior race and by doing so they at the same time minimise the creation of the Most High Maker.

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Preceding article: Blackness, nothingness, something, void

Next: Nothingness

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Read also:

  1. Does He exists?
  2. How are we sure God exists?
  3. The Word being a quality or aspect of God Himself
  4. The Bible: God’s Word or pious myth?
  5. God of gods
  6. Only one God
  7. God is One
  8. Hashem השם, Hebrew for “the Name”
  9. Use of /Gebruik van Jehovah or/of Yahweh in Bible Translations/Bijbel vertalingen
  10. Cosmos creator and human destiny
  11. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
  12. Creator and Blogger God 3 Lesson and solution
  13. A viewpoint on creation
  14. The Origin of Life on Earth: Creation or Evolution?
  15. Creation of the earth out of something
  16. The World framed by the Word of God
  17. Is it “Wrong” to Believe that the Earth is a Sphere?
  18. Tu B’Shvat, the holiday of the trees
  19. Without God no purpose, no goal, no hope
  20. Man made life
  21. Men as God
  22. The professor, God, Faith and the student
  23. The manager and Word of God
  24. God has visited His people

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  • What Caused the Big Bang? A Master Mason and Knight Templar Offers a Unique New Approach to Multiverse Cosmology (prweb.com)
    What caused the Big Bang?In his new book, Jeffrey Augustine boldly answers this question. In doing so, he offers powerful new insights into the nature of Consciousness and Multiverse Cosmology.

    “In the pages of “What Caused the Big Bang?, I introduce a striking new cosmology that transcends the models of Divine Creation and a spontaneous Big Bang that had no cause.”
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    A central premise in Jeffrey Augustine’s work is that Infinity is a monolithic Unity. It is One. Augustine’s distinctive cosmology states that all universes are sub-infinite and are “sourced” by Infinity.

    Once sourced, Infinity launches these sub-infinite universes into the Multiverse in a “high-energy faster than light transfer process” that Augustine calls “Disunification.”

    Augustine says of this process, “Disunification is the mechanism whereby Infinity sources and then disunifies universes. Disunification is how Infinity populates the sub-infinite Multiverse. All of these sub-infinite universes can have different laws, thus allowing Infinity to realize every possible history and outcome as it evolves itself.”

  • Quran and Big Bang Theory (ministry786.wordpress.com)
    The overall Big Bang theory states that the universe started from an incredibly dense
    singularity that exploded. All matter, light and energy came from that explosion.
    The size of the universe increases as everything expands from this explosion.
    The theory is that of an expanding universe, meaning that the universe
    as a whole is expanding, instead of a static universe meaning
    that matter is expanding into a statically sized space.
  • Goodbye Big Bang, Hello Black Hole? A New Theory Of The Universe’s Creation (universetoday.com)
    This artist’s impression shows the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the active galaxy NGC 3783 in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). New observations using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile have revealed not only the torus of hot dust around the black hole but also a wind of cool material in the polar regions. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

    This artist’s impression shows the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the active galaxy NGC 3783 in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). New observations using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile have revealed not only the torus of hot dust around the black hole but also a wind of cool material in the polar regions. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

    Could the famed “Big Bang” theory need a revision? A group of theoretical physicists suppose the birth of the universe could have happened after a four-dimensional star collapsed into a black hole and ejected debris.
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    Most cosmologists say the universe must have been expanding faster than the speed of light for this to happen, but Ashford says even that theory has problems: “The Big Bang was so chaotic, it’s not clear there would have been even a small homogenous patch for inflation to start working on.”
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    it is clear from observations that the universe is expanding (and indeed is getting faster as it expands, possibly due to the mysterious dark energy). The new theory says that the expansion comes from this 3-D brane’s growth. But there  is at least one limitation.

  • Something you should know – Vedic Principles of Creation, A The Big Bang Theory (voyagegroupin.wordpress.com)
    The scientific theory of creation is that there was a big bang, which created the material elements (earth, water, gases, chemicals etc..). These material elements then somehow combined together and created the various planets and one species of living beings. These living beings then somehow changed their bodies and became another species, and so on. In this way the millions of species of living beings we know of were created. This is termed as evolution, thus one body changes into another and so on.
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    During the lifetime of each Universe, there are partial creations and annihilations. At the beginning of each day of Brahma there is creation and at the end of each day there is partial annihilation. One day of Brahma is 4.32 Billion years; the night is also of the same duration. We are currently half way through the current day of Brahma, thus we have existed for approximately 2.16 Billions years in the current small cycle.
  • Intelligent Design Should be Taught in Schools (themarshfieldtimes.com)
    It is annual practice in science classes to discuss origin theory. Whether it be evolution or Big Bang, it is studied and discussed. It is wrong that other theories are not brought up in in-class discussions, more specifically, creationism or intelligent design (ID).Evolutionists say all life came from one species of single-celled organisms, the Big Bang theory states that the universe came into existence as a result of a monstrous explosion in space and creationists believe the world as we know it was created by a higher power or deity.
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    It takes an incredible amount of faith to believe a random explosion in the cosmos can result in a complex, diverse ecosystem, or that every living thing evolved from a single-cell organism, but for many it is considered absurd to have faith in a creator who designed the universe. Look at a building, a car, a television; all of them were put together by someone or something. Everything we see in this world had to have a builder. It is common sense. Houses do not explode into existence. Why then, would Earth?
  • big bang theory expiry date!? how much does the “horizon problem” undermine “big bang cosmology”? – 04min (societystacktrace.wordpress.com)
    Did you know the “Big Bang” has some scientifically recognized problems in terms of things that don’t fit observed phenomena & actual measurements?
  • Evolution vs Creation: How the world came into existence? (unalototukia.wordpress.com)
    Since the 1900’s, multiple research on the universe has developed into a surprising theory that the world came into existence by a big bang that had occurred 10 to 20 Billion years ago.
    Scientists have also discovered an interesting fact about the relationship between humans and the great apes. However, creationists proclaim the universe to be youthful as there are multiple natural phenomenon which is conflicts with the scientific theory of the world being billions of years old. Creationists also believe that humans are made by God as both theories are referenced in the bible. The essay will discuss scientific theory and also religious beliefs on how the world came to be. With supporting evidence both theories will be questioned on accuracy to see which theory is factual and which is false.
  • Claim: “Qur’an mentions the big bang … so it must be of divine origin” (skeptical-science.com)
    A rather popular pattern is to take some modern scientific fact and claim that an ancient holy text also describes this recently discovered knowledge, hence the ancient holy text must have been written by God / Allah or whatever god concept of choice is being promoted. Almost all beliefs do stuff like this, so it should come as no surprise to discover the big ones, both Christianity and also Islam do exactly this.
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    The Quranic earth is wholly and consistently a flat earth with seven heavens around it, and that is wholly consistent with the prevailing creation myths that dominated in that region at that time, so the big bang claim is also very much at odds with that reality.
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    Yusuf Ali: Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe? And We have set on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with them, and We have made therein broad highways (between mountains) for them to pass through: that they may receive Guidance. And We have made the heavens as a canopy well guarded: yet do they turn away from the Signs which these things (point to)!Pickthal: Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe? And We have placed in the earth firm hills lest it quake with them, and We have placed therein ravines as roads that haply they may find their way. And we have made the sky a roof withheld (from them). Yet they turn away from its portents.

    Shakir: Do not those who disbelieve see that the heavens and the earth were closed up, but We have opened them; and We have made of water everything living, will they not then believe? And We have made great mountains in the earth lest it might be convulsed with them, and We have made in it wide ways that they may follow a right direction. And We have made the heaven a guarded canopy and (yet) they turn aside from its signs.

    Once again you can see that what we have here is an ancient creation myth that clearly describes the creation of the Earth and the heavens above it, and does not it any way describe the big bang as we understand it. Notice how in context the heaven above is just a canopy around the earth and so clearly we not only have a flat earth, but an earth that is the centre of everything.

  • God is One and the Same to All (shivshankardaily.wordpress.com)
    God is immanent in the Universe. He is both the Creator and at the same time within all Creation. In every atom, in every living being He alone is present. Gross and subtle, pure and mixed, simple and complex, in the end that there is no place where God is not. From the lowly worm to the infinite Universe He spreads. All is but one existence – One principle manifesting itself as this tremendous variety of Creation.
  • A toolbox to simulate the big bang and beyond (phys.org)
    The universe is a vast and mysterious place, but thanks to high-performance computing technology scientists around the world are beginning to understand it better. They are using supercomputers to simulate how the Big Bang generated the seeds that led to the formation of galaxies such as the Milky Way.A new project involving DOE’s Argonne Lab, Fermilab and Berkeley Lab will allow scientists to study this vastness in greater detail with a new cosmological simulation analysis toolbox.

Blackness, nothingness, something, void

Void and darkness

Darkness. Nothingness.

Void, so there was and there is ….. complexity. Empty spaces make up void, but than there is something to make the spaces in between. Then there is density, length, with, depth, hight … space. When there are periodic fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter of the universe, this means there is a stand still, a movement, but caused by what? If caused by acoustic waves then there would be sound and movement in space. If it would come to an explosion, call it Big Bang, than still it had to exist in the early universe.

Cosmology

First baryon octet

First baryon octet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) may provide a “standard ruler” for length scale in cosmology. does it help us to understand more about the nature of dark energy (which causes the apparent slight acceleration of the expansion of the universe) by constraining cosmological parameters? When there was a hot, dense plasma of electrons and baryons (protons and neutrons) then those also had to come into being.when there would have come overdensity gravitationally attracting matter towards it, the heat of photon-matter interactions creating a large amount of outward pressure, then there should have been something like emptiness and matter, something to cause limitness or presser on something else.. Then counteracting forces of gravity and pressure could create oscillations, analogous to sound waves created in air by pressure differences.

Collapses of masses, Big Bang and billion of years

Voids are believed to have been formed by baryon acoustic oscillations in the Big Bang—collapses of mass followed by implosions of the compressed baryonic matter. Starting from initially small anisotropies due to quantum fluctuations in the early Universe, the anisotropies grew larger in scale over time. Regions of higher density collapsed more rapidly under gravity, eventually resulting in the large-scale, foam-like structure or “cosmic web” of voids and galaxy filaments seen today.

When, according to scientists, approximately 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago the Universe was in an extremely hot and dense state and began expanding rapidly to cool down sufficiently to allow energy to be converted into various subatomic particles, including protons, neutrons, and electrons, there should have been all these elements. Subatomic particles, present in the nucleus of each atom having a mutual electromagnetic repulsion stronger than the attraction of the nuclear force, should still then have something to bring in force.

Books of man against books of Supreme Being

The Big Book made up of 66 books, brought together by men, beings of flesh and blood, got ideas in it which came from somewhere and bothered their brains. It let them think and handle, wondering about their being or not being, life and death. Being nothing, would it be being part of that void?

So that “Void” was considered part of the beginning.

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2 AV)

Spirit, Space and Earth

Mass map of Abell 1689.

Mass map of Abell 1689. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Space and Earth being without form, part of the so called nothingness, which was something not seen, because darkness did not reveal it,  bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss, so there was water to hover over.

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3 AV)

Then there was a God, a Being, a Spirit, not man not woman, not flesh, not blood. darkness was elevated so there was light.

Fluids and Being

When there was water, there was space or volume, the volume of void-space (such as fluids). Having darkness and light makes radiation and reflection. To have reflection there has to be material and volume of solids. Volume change tendency control. If void ratio is high (loose soils) voids in a soil skeleton tend to minimize under loading – adjacent particles contract. The opposite situation, i.e. when void ratio is relatively small (dense soils), indicates that the volume of the soil is vulnerable to increase under loading – particles dilate.

The Void also can denote excretion, the process by which waste products of metabolism and other non-useful materials are eliminated from an organism. In vertebrates this is primarily carried out by the lungs, kidneys and skin. The void as such could be the part of the being, the breathing or passage of air, the composure of the things, be it man or animal or plant.

Dependant Independence

Elementary particles need not be statistically independent and everything could move around without the other but would interfere with the other. Einstein observed that the exchange of radiation between bodies should involve an exchange of mass; light quanta have mass exactly as do ordinary molecules. In his derivation of this result, Einstein speaks about a “light complex,” an entirely classical concept, rather than about a light quantum. When, after Bose’s work, he did attribute corpuscular properties to light quanta, he distinguished clearly between photons (a word he did not use), zero rest mass bosons (another word introduced later) whose number need not be conserved; and massive bosons, whose number must be conserved. His prediction of a condensed state for massive bosons (see Einstein, 1925), now called a Bose-Einstein condensate, offered the first theoretical explanation of a transition between two phases of a system. The prediction was spectacularly confirmed some seventy years later, winning its discoverers the 2001 Nobel prize in physics.

A light ray divides itself, but a light quantum cannot divide without a change of frequency” (Einstein to H. A. Lorentz, 23 May 1909, Collected Papers, vol. 5, p. 193).

Originator of Big Bang

The Big Bang era of the universe, presented as...

The Big Bang era ofthe universe, presented as a manifold in two dimensions (1-space and

time); the shape is right (approximately), but it’s not to scale. (Photo

credit: Wikipedia)

For those saying because there was a Big Bang, so there could not be a Creator is like having the empty peace of paper, getting sings or drawings on its own, without someone using a pen, his hand or his brains to bring something on the paper.

The Big Bang does not contradict anything which is written in the Book of Books, the Bible or Holy Scriptures, which is inspired and infallible the Word of that Maker, the Being behind it all.

The void got formed.

Philosophers

A pagan Greek philosopher, Proclus, called the Successor, had written a massive polemical commentary explicitly criticizing the Biblical description of the universe and its origin, on the grounds that it was scientifically unsupportable. Philoponus, also known as John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria, was a Christian and Aristotelian commentator and the author of a considerable number of philosophical treatises and theological works, destroyed Proclus’ arguments in his reply, demonstrating the many flaws in Proclus’ work. {Wilderberg, ‘John Philoponus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.}
He also wrote numerous commentaries on Aristotle’s works which identified their errors, using the Biblical cosmology as his tool. {John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January, 2003.}

Cosmology, Philosophy and Science

This breakthrough was instrumental in the formation of Western science as we know it. Philoponus’ work was used by later scientific investigators such as such as Bonaventure, Gersonides, Buridan, Oresme, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, all of whom made significant scientific progress as a result.

Philoponus had defended the Christian cosmology, deriving powerful arguments from observations of the universe that it must have had a beginning, and that it was finite in duration. He single-handedly debunked the greatest pagan philosopher and cosmologist in recorded history (Aristotle), as well as burying Proclus’ criticism of the Christian cosmology.

Around 550 Philoponus wrote a theological work On the Creation of the World as a commentary on the Bible’s story of creation using the insights of Greek philosophers and Basil the Great. In this work he transfers his theory of impetus to the motion of the planets, whereas Aristotle had proposed different explanations for the motion of heavenly bodies and for earthly projectiles. Thus Philoponus’ theological work is recognized in the history of science as the first attempt at a unified theory of dynamics. Another of his major theological concerns was to argue that all material objects were brought into being by God (Arbiter, 52A-B).

Later Jewish and Christian cosmologists throughout the medieval era made similar arguments, based on the same observations. Christian scientists from Francis Bacon to Isaac Newton all understood this, for centuries.

To be or not to be true

Incredibly, some of the greatest 20th century scientists such as the son of a Somerset Quaker, Arthur Henry Eddington and Einstein claimed it could not be true (apparently Einstein later said it was possibly the greatest error in his career). Eddington even admitted he didn’t want it to be true, for philosophical reasons. [9] It was only recently that scientific evidence for the ‘Big Bang’ proved that the universe did indeed have a beginning and would have an end, contrary to what many scientists had believed.

The Bible did not want to give an exact picture of who everything came into being but does contain information which has historically been of considerable scientific value.

Biblical concept of the universe

WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropie...

WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Unlike every other Ancient Near East cosmology, the Bible describes the universe in naturalistic terms. The sun, moon, and stars are inanimate objects rather than gods, the universe was not created from the recycled body parts of divine beings, and the universe operates according to fixed laws. Early Jewish and Christian commentators understood that nature is regular and orderly, since everything in nature takes place according to fixed laws which God has instituted, which never change.

Sirach chapter 16, verses 26-28, 180-175 BCE.

‘When the Lord created his works from the beginning, and, in making them determined their boundaries, he arranged his works in an eternal order, and their dominion for all generations. They neither hunger not grow weary, and they do not abandon their tasks. They do not crowd one another, and they never disobey his word.’

Basil of Caesarea, ‘Hexamaron’, chapter 5, sections 10, 370 CE.

‘It is this command which, still at this day, is imposed on the earth and, in the course of each year, displays all the strength of its power to produce herbs, seeds, and trees. Like tops, which after the first impulse continue their evolutions, turning upon themselves, when once fixed in their center; thus nature, receiving the impulse of this first command, follows without interruption the course of ages until the consummation of all things.’

This concept of the universe, which we take for granted, was revolutionary in the Ancient Near East and was not even approached by the Greeks until around the 4th century BCE. In fact the inadequacy of Greek science led to a complete dead end.

Concept of Origin and Originator

John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January 2003.

‘The Greek concept of God caused a deep confusion between cosmology and theology and was a dead-end to science, as we know it in our time.’

Unable to free itself completely from mythology, Greek science finally stagnated and failed to advance any further.

Wilderberg, ‘John Philoponus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

‘Reading Philoponus as well as the writings of his great adversary Simplicius, one gets the sense that in the 6th century CE, traditional pagan Greek learning had become desperately insular.’

Inheritance

Western science was not revived until the 6th century CE Christian philosopher John Philoponus challenged the pagan cosmology inherited from the Greeks.

Dan Graves, ‘Aristotle’s Earliest Creationist Critic’, 1998.

‘A widespread religion of Philoponus’s time was pantheism, a belief system that sees God as equivalent to nature. In his rejection of this, Philoponus argued that the Creator transcends nature rather than being within it. Having been created, nature exists without constant intervention by God. This radical conception shocked the pagans who believed the gods were imbedded within the material universe.’

Religious experience versus scientific experience

Eddington argued from a novel interpretation of positivism that religious experience and scientific experience were equally valid parts of human life, but that neither could prove any particular sectarian dogma. This ecumenical, reassuring position was quite popular in the interwar period with the last surge of liberal theology, but became less relevant with the death of that movement around World War II.

Einstein loved to discuss scientific problems with friends, but he was, fundamentally a “horse for single harness.” His belief in strict causality was closely related to his profound belief in the harmony of nature, which did not have to exclude a Supernatural Hand behind it all.

Most of the people do want to look at the universe rationally, in mathematical terms, and by doing so they often become blind for the mystical elemenents we as human beings can not understand. It is not because we can not cope with the matter that we do have to cease to evoke a deep — one might say, religious — feeling of admiration in the Power behind all science.

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world,” Einstein once wrote, “is that it is comprehensible.”

Free inventive capacity of human mind

To discover the basic laws and concepts of nature we can either try to find knowledge by scientist, whose findings after some years may become outdated and not so right as people thought after, first arguing a lot.

Einstein argued that while we learn certain features of the world from experience, the free inventive capacity of the human mind is required to formulate physical theories. There is no logical link between the world of experience and the world of theory. Once a theory has been formulated, however, it must be “simple” (or, perhaps, “esthetically pleasing”) and agree with experiment. One such esthetically pleasing and fully confirmed theory is the special theory of relativity. There was the Galilean invariance or Galilean relativity that states that the laws of motion are the same in all inertial frames. Galileo Galilei first described this principle in 1632 in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems using the example of a ship travelling at constant velocity, without rocking, on a smooth sea; any observer doing experiments below the deck would not be able to tell whether the ship was moving or stationary. The fact that the Earth orbits around the sun at approximately 30 km/s offers a somewhat more dramatic example, though it is technically not an inertial reference frame.

We might also adhere that there exists an absolute space, in which Newton’s laws are true, an inertial frame as a reference frame in relative uniform motion to absolute space where all inertial frames share a universal time. {Newtonian relativity}

If it be a relativity generalising special relativity and Newton’s law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime we in a moment of time can appear or dispensary, be or not be.  In the curvature of space-time we shall not be able to avoid the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present.

Subtle but not malicious

When Einstein was informed of D.C. Miller’s experiments, which seemed to contradict the special theory by demanding the reinstatement of the ether, he expressed his belief in the spuriousness of Miller’s results—and therefore in the harmoniousness of nature—with another of his famous aphorisms, “God is subtle, but he is not malicious.”

This frequent use of God’s name in Einstein’s speeches and writings provides us with a feeling for his religious convictions. He once stated explicitly,

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all being, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men.”

It is not difficult to see that this credo is consistent with his statement that the

“less knowledge a scholar possesses, the farther he feels from God. But the greater his knowledge, the nearer is his approach to God.”

This should let us made to think about our position to the Divine Creator who provide human beings with brains so that they can think and have wisdom. Since Einstein’s God manifested Himself in the harmony of the universe, there could be no conflict between religion and science for Einstein. As Christians we should believe the Word of God and notice that many things written in it were first taught otherwise by man. Lots of people twisted words and told people they were in the Scriptures, but that ordinary people could not understand them. Many points of believe were created, people had to accept them, or they would be tortured and even be killed for other beliefs. The major points in this are that the world would be there in one go like we see it today, that the earth would be a flat surface, that God would be three in one (the Holy Trinity), that Jesus was God and that Jesus existed already at the time of the creation.

Looking into matters, taking time to study and for investigation

We should look into all matters, investigate them and make the right choices. The Creator provided the universe, placed human beings, plants and animals in it and gave guidance in His Word, to help them find their way. each of us has to use their brains to search, look for and to experiment. Each of us has also either to hear to the world or to see the Magnificent Hand of God and the Beautiful Works of God, which work faith.

Illustration of the expansion of the Universe ...

Illustration of the expansion of the Universe after the Big bang. In Bulgarian. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Einstein’s theory implies the existence of black holes — regions of space in which space and time are distorted in such a way that nothing, not even light, can escape — as an end-state for massive stars. There is ample evidence that the intense radiation emitted by certain kinds of astronomical objects is due to black holes; for example, microquasars and active galactic nuclei result from the presence of stellar black holes and black holes of a much more massive type, respectively. In time people will find out more about it. Many previous scientific findings may be considered mistaken. those faulty teachings where once taken as the truth and preferred above the Truth of God. We should know better and look for truth in the Bible, the Word of God. Studying that word we should come to conclusions and take the right choices doing the job god wants us to do.

No void anymore

We can have no void, having no members or examples. Today the void is gone. We live in the world not inhabited any more and is not deserted. Being part of those living elements of the universe, we can breath and move and fulfil duties.

When Einstein lay dying he could truly utter, as he did,

“Here on earth I have done my job.”

Shall we be able to say at the end of our life the same thing?

It would be difficult to find a more suitable epitaph than the words Einstein himself used in characterizing his life:

“God is inexorable in the way He has allotted His gifts. He gave me the stubbornness of a mule and nothing else; really, He also gave me a keen scent.”

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Additional notes:

  1. Proclus Lycaeus was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers who set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism. He stands near the end of the classical development of philosophy, and was very influential on Western medieval philosophy (Greek and Latin) as well as Islamic thought.
  2. The biblical findings and theological ideas of John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria broke from the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition, questioning methodology and eventually leading to empiricism in the natural sciences. His doctrine on Christ’s duality, according to which in Christ remain two united substances, united but divided, is analogous to the union of the soul and body in human beings and coincides with the miaphysite school of thought.
    He was posthumously condemned as a heretic by the Orthodox Church in 680-81 because of what was perceived of as a tritheistic interpretation of the Trinity.
  3. Arthur Henry Eddington was the first interpreter of Einstein’s relativity theory in English, and made his own contributions to its development; and he formulated relationships between all the principal constants of nature, attempting a vast synthesis in his provocative but uncompleted Fundamental Theory.

Please do find:

  1. The professor, God, Faith and the student
  2. The Origin of Life on Earth: Creation or Evolution?
  3. God of gods
  4. The Divine name of the Creator
  5. Two states of existence before God
  6. A viewpoint on creation
  7. The World framed by the Word of God
  8. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
  9. Creator and Blogger God 3 Lesson and solution
  10. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #1 Creator and His Prophets
  11. Cosmos creator and human destiny
  12. Creation of the earth out of something
  13. Creation gift of God
  14. Creation and the Bible
  15. God, Creation and the Bible Hope
  16. A viewpoint on creation
  17. Man made life
  18. The manager and Word of God
  19. Newton did not believe in a Trinity
  20. Trinity: A False Doctrine of a False Church
  21. God works faith
  22. Without God no purpose, no goal, no hope
  23. Finish each day and be done with it

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  • Could ‘Higgsogenesis’ explain dark matter? (phys.org)
    The recently discovered Higgs boson is best known for its important role in explaining particle mass. But now some physicists are wondering if the Higgs could have played an equally significant role in generating dark matter and baryonic matter in the early Universe, as well as causing the hypothetical dark matter asymmetry and the observed baryon asymmetry between matter and antimatter particles.
  • Nothingness (coggj22.wordpress.com)
    When you ask people about how life started, or even how the entire universe came into fruition, their answer would basically boil down into two categories – an answer which is derived from scientific explanations and another which involves an application of faith, a response born of their religion. In the scientific field, we see theories which seek to explain the origin of the universe such as the big bang theory, as well as ideas which aim to resolve the issue of how humans were formed such as Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.
  • Why Does The World Exist? (rationaloptimist.wordpress.com)
    In writing previously about Lawrence Krauss’s book, A Universe From Nothing: Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing? I called this the greatest question. Comes now Jim Holt’s book, Why Does the World Exist? Whereas Krauss’s was basically a physics book, Holt’s is mainly philosophical. At the heart of the problem is what nothingness means (as the alternative to the Universe we’ve got, full of stuff). Holt spends much time on this, discussing the plausibility of nothingness via a process of subtraction from our cosmos of somethingness. Meantime Krauss described nothingness in such a way that applying physics to it could get you a Big Bang; he talks a lot about field theory and suchlike. imagesBut the trouble is that religious apologists can always say their nothingness (not even fields) is deeper than yours and requires a god to get something going.
  • Creation Myth Flash Fiction (thewriterandpoet.wordpress.com)
    According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the universe should be empty. Matter and antimatter, which are identical except for their opposite electric charges, seem to be produced in equal parts during particle interactions and decays. However, matter and antimatter instantly annihilate each other upon contact, and so equal amounts of each would have meant a wholesale annihilation of both shortly after the Big Bang. The existence of galaxies, planets and people illustrates that somehow, a small surplus of matter survived this canceling process. If that hadn’t happened, “the universe would be void,” Schönert said. “It would be very, very boring for us, who would not exist.”
  • Accommodation of the Void (themanaoblog.wordpress.com)
    Even thinking about it in terms that can be thought as even being semi-friendly makes a lot of our brains itch. We loathe a void. A void means that we are empty of something and that the void demands to be filled. What we are not realizing is that there is a reason for the void and once it is that we understand the reason, there will be no more void. Too many of us are not accepting this. Too many people believe that a void is a bad thing when in reality it is only a neutral thing and doesn’t carry any negative energy until we choose to believe that it is something other than what it truly is, which is merely and only a void.Nothing in existence did not first come from a void. A void is really only an empty space that is waiting for the right and matching energy to come through to it and fill it. The reason that there is a void created is because that which was there to begin with no longer fits and neither does the energy that used to be there.
  • Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Made Simple (ritholtz.com)
    No time to read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time? In just two and a half minutes, Alok Jha explains why black holes are doomed to shrink into nothingness then explode with the energy of a million nuclear bombs, and rewinds to the big bang and the origin of the universe?
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    Nice story, but many astrophysicists do not accept this theory of universal birth.
  • [CEA] Constraints on Large-Scale Dark Acoustic Oscillations from Cosmology (arxiver.wordpress.com)
    If all or a fraction of the dark matter (DM) were coupled to a bath of dark radiation (DR) in the early Universe we expect the combined DM-DR system to give rise to acoustic oscillations of the dark matter until it decouples from the DR. Much like the standard baryon acoustic oscillations, these dark acoustic oscillations (DAO) imprint a characteristic scale, the sound horizon of dark matter, on the matter power spectrum.
  • Higgs boson may have played a role in dark matter creation (vr-zone.com)
    The most famous subatomic particle in recent years is no doubt the Higgs boson, which is responsible for defining the mass of particles. Now scientists believe it may also have an important role in the creation of dark and baryonic matter in the early universe. It may also have something to do with the asymmetry between antimatter and matter particles.The concept of asymmetry involves the idea that while the big bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, it didn’t. If matter and anti-matter had been created in equal amounts, they should then have eliminated each other, leaving… nothing. Of course, that’s not what happened; there was a slight excess of matter, meaning some was left over after all the anti-matter had been eliminated. That matter is what makes up our universe.
  • The impact of baryonic processes on the two-point correlation functions of galaxies, subhaloes and matter [CEA] (arxiver.wordpress.com)
    The observed clustering of galaxies and the cross-correlation of galaxies and mass (a measure of galaxy-galaxy lensing) provide important constraints on both cosmology and models of galaxy formation. Even though the dissipation, and more importantly the feedback processes associated with galaxy formation are thought to affect the distribution of matter, essentially all models used to predict clustering data are based on dark matter only simulations.
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    We conclude that predictions for galaxy-galaxy and galaxy-mass clustering from models based on dark matter only simulations will have errors greater than 10% on sub-Mpc scales, unless the simulation results are modified to correctly account for the effects of baryons on the distributions of mass and satellites.
  • Using the topology of large-scale structure in the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey as a cosmological standard ruler [CEA] (arxiver.wordpress.com)
    The Minkowski functionals are a set of statistics which completely describe the topological nature of each isodensity surface within the field, as a function of the density value.