The Cosmos

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The Cosmos

Post #1

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â—� Rev 14:6-7 . . And I saw another angel flying through the sky, carrying the everlasting gospel to preach to the people who dwell on the earth-- to every nation, tribe, language, and people. Fear God! he shouted. Give glory to Him! For the time has come when He will sit as judge. Worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all the springs of water!

Although most Christians readily agree that the cosmos is the result of intelligent design; they're divided over the very first two verses of Genesis which read like this:

1. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth. 2. 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."

Some sincerely believe the second verse indicates that the cosmos pre-existed its current form. In other words: a great cataclysm wrecked the Earth so that God had to reconstruct it. Thus; we today live on a renovated Earth. This posit is the so-called Gap Theory; which is explained pretty well on Wikipedia.

Others, just as sincere, believe that the six days of creation shouldn't be taken as 24-hour events; rather, as epochs of indeterminate length. This posit is based upon Genesis 2:4, which reads like this:

"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven."

The Hebrew word for "day" in that verse is yowm (yome) which is the very same word for each of the six days of God's creation labors. Since yowm in Gen 2:4 refers to a period of time obviously much longer than 24 hours; it justifies suggesting that each of the six Days of creation were longer than 24 hours too. In other words: yowm is ambiguous and not all that easy to interpret sometimes.
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Re: The Cosmos

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Well; for sure we have to buy some time somewhere, lots of time-- either with the gap theory or the yowm/epoch theory --in order to account for the 4.5 billion-year age of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, and Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass extinction events.

There are some serious geological issues too. For example: the discovery of fossilized sea lilies near the summit of Mt Everest proves that the Himalayan land mass hasn't always been mountainous; but at one time was the floor of an ancient sea bed. This is confirmed by the "yellow band" below Everest's summit consisting of limestone: a type of rock made from calcite sediments containing the skeletal remains of countless trillions of organisms who lived, not on dry land, but in an ocean.

Everest and its yellow band got up high like that by means of tectonic plate buckling and/or subduction; which are very slow processes requiring thousands of years.

And there are hominid issues. For example: in 1992, Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley, discovered the fossilized skeleton of a woman (nicknamed Ardi) in Ethiopia's Afar Rift who lived 4.4 million years ago. His forty-seven member team, over a period of 17 years, discovered portions of the skeletons of thirty-seven more individuals from the same era.

(Tim White's discovery sent evolutionists into a tail spin because the woman’s age, combined with her physical design, proves that apes and humans are separate and distinct species rather than sharing a common ancestor in an evolutionary chain.)

Personally, I prefer the yowm/epoch theory, but at the same time readily agree that the gap theory is equally possible.
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Re: The Cosmos

Post #3

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â—� Gen 1:5b . . And the evening and the morning were the first day.

When we think about it; a strict chronology of evening and morning doesn't define day, it defines overnight; viz: darkness. In order to obtain a full 24 hour day, we'd have to define a creation Day as a day and a night rather than an evening and a morning.

It was God himself who made sure that people understand that creation's days were not 24-hour amalgams of light and dark.

â—� Gen 1:4b-5a . . God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.

According to that verse; the days of creation were periods of light with no darkness in them whatsoever.

â—� John 11:9-10 . . Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.

According to Jesus' statement, day is a 12-hour period of light only rather than a 24-hour amalgam of light and dark. Which corroborates God's testimony that day is light and night is dark.

In my mind's eye, Jesus and his Father easily qualify as expert witnesses who know what they're talking about so I really think people should listen to them.
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[font=Georgia]NOTE[/font][font=Verdana]: Gen 1:24-31 says that God created humans and all terra critters on the sixth Day; which has to include dinosaurs because on no other day did God create beasts but the sixth. However; the fossil record, in combination with scientific dating methods, strongly suggests that dinosaurs preceded humans by several million years. Either those ancient critters' remains are left-overs from a previous cosmos, or the days of creation are epochs because 24-hour days don't really tell the story.

This "evening and morning" thing has been a stone in the shoe for just about everybody who takes Genesis seriously. But if we reckon those terms to simply represent endings and beginnings instead of physical hours; then the wrinkles in the first chapter of Genesis smooth right on out.
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Re: The Cosmos

Post #4

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â—� Gen 1:2c . . and Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

When that verse is considered with Gen 1:9; it's readily deduced that that the Earth's surface was completely submerged at first; so that the planet has been flooded twice in the past; but that was it.

â—� Gen 9:11 . . I will maintain My covenant with you: never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

Noah needed to hear that so he wouldn't get jumpy the next time it started to rain really hard in his neighborhood. There is still flooding going on in the world, but certainly not on the same scale as the Flood.

â—� Gen 1:6-8 . . And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

We can easily guess what is meant by water that's below the sky. But is there really water that's above it? Yes, and it's a lot! According to an article in the Sept 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine, Earth's atmosphere holds roughly 3,095 cubic miles of water in the form of vapor. That may seem like a preposterous number of cubic miles of water; but not really when it's considered that Lake Superior's volume alone is estimated at nearly 3,000.

Our home planet is really big; a whole lot bigger than people sometimes realize. It's surface area, in square miles, is 196,940,000. To give an idea of just how many square miles that is: if somebody were to wrap a belt around the equator made of one-mile squares; it would only take 24,902 squares to complete the distance; which is a mere .00012644 the surface area.

Some of the more familiar global warming gases are carbon dioxide, fluorocarbons, methane, and ozone. But as popular as those gases are with the media, they're bit players in comparison to the role that ordinary water vapor plays in global warming. By some estimates; atmospheric water vapor accounts for more than 90% of global warming; which is not a bad thing because without atmospheric water vapor, the earth would be so cold that the only life that could exist here would be extremophiles.

How much water is below the expanse? Well; according to the same article; the amount contained in swamp water, lakes and rivers, ground water, and oceans, seas, and bays adds up to something like 326.6 million cubic miles; and that's not counting the 5.85 million cubic miles tied up in living organisms, soil moisture, ground ice and permafrost, ice sheets, glaciers, and permanent snow.

To put that in perspective: a tower 326.6 million miles high would exceed the Sun's distance better than 3½ times.

â—� Gen 1:9 . . And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

Shaping the earth's mantle in order to form low spots for the seas and high spots for dry ground was a colossal feat of magma convection and volcanism combined with the titanic forces of tectonic plate subduction.

At the ocean's deepest surveyed point-- the Challenger Deep; located in the Mariana Islands group, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench --the water's depth is over 11,000 meters; which is about 6.8 statute miles (36,000 feet). That depth corresponds to the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747. At that altitude, probably about all you're going to see of the airliner without straining your eyes is its contrail.

Africa's Mt Kilimanjaro is the tallest free-standing mountain on earth at 19,341 feet above its land base. If Kilimanjaro were placed in the Challenger Deep, it would have about 16,659 feet of water over its peak. Were the tallest point of the Himalayan range-- Mt Everest --to be submerged in the Challenger Deep, it would have about 7,000 feet of water over its peak.
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Re: The Cosmos

Post #5

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â—� Gen 1:3 . . Then God said "Let there be light" and there was light.

The creation of light was a very, very intricate process. First God had to create particulate matter, and along with those particles their specific properties, including mass; if any. Then He had to invent the laws of nature to govern how matter behaves in combination with and/or in the presence of, other kinds of matter in order to generate electromagnetic radiation.

Light's properties are curious. It propagates as waves in a variety of lengths and frequencies, and also as quantum bits called photons. And though light has no mass; it's influenced by gravity. Light is also quite invisible to the naked eye. For example: you can see the Sun when you look at it, and you can see the Moon when sunlight reflects from its surface. But none of the Sun's light is visible to you in the void between them and that's because light isn't matter; it's energy-- some might even say force --and there is really a lot of it.

Space was at time thought to contain absolutely nothing until radio astronomers discovered something called the cosmic microwave background. In a nutshell: CMB fills the universe with light that apparently radiates from no detectable source. The popular notion is that CMB is energy left over from the Big Bang.

The same laws that make it possible for matter to generate electromagnetic radiation also make other conditions possible too; e.g. fire, wind, water, ice, soil, rain, life, centrifugal force, thermodynamics, fusion, dark energy, gravity, atoms, organic molecules, magnetism, color, radiation, refraction, reflection, high energy X-rays and gamma rays, temperature, pressure, force, inertia, sound, friction, and electricity; et al. So the creation of light was a pretty big deal; yet Genesis scarcely gives its origin passing mention.

2Cor 4:6 verifies that light wasn't introduced into the cosmos from outside in order to dispel the darkness and brighten things up a bit; but rather, it radiated out of the cosmos from inside-- from itself --indicating that the cosmos was created to be self-illuminating by means of the various interactions of the matter that God made for it; including, but not limited to, the Higgs Boson.

You know it's curious to me that most people have no trouble readily conceding that everything else in the first chapter of Genesis is natural, e.g. the cosmos, the earth, the atmosphere, water, dry land, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, aqua life, winged life, terra life, flora life, and human life.

But when it comes to light they choke; finding it impossible within themselves to believe that Genesis just might be consistent in its description of the creative process. I mean, if all those other things are natural, why wouldn't light be natural too? In point of fact, without natural light, planet Earth would become a cold dead world right quick.
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[font=Georgia]NOTE[/font][font=Verdana]: An interesting thing about the laws of nature is that they're not absolute laws. No; they are created laws-- created as a companion to the created cosmos to regulate how the cosmos, with all of its forms of life, matter, and energy, behaves. Seeing as how God designed and created those laws, then He knows the secrets to manipulating them in order to make things in our world behave quite contrary to common sense.

Take for example the floating axe head in 2Kgs 6:5-6. Solid chunks of iron don't float. That's unnatural. Another example is the fire-proof bush of Ex 3:2. A bush that's impervious to fire is unnatural. It should have flared up and Moses knew it too but it didn't because God can easily modify the natural behavior of everything He ever created.
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Re: The Cosmos

Post #6

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â—� Gen 1:16 . . He made the stars also.

Alexander Friedmann's theory of an expanding universe was lent some credibility by Edwin Hubble's discovery that galaxies, in all directions, appear to be moving away from each other. Further studies revealed that the movement isn't steady.

For example: A galaxy called GN-z11 was reported by NASA in 2016 to be about 13½ billion light years distant based on an analysis of the spectrum of its starlight. But that was its observed distance. All during the millennia that its light was traveling to our neighborhood of the cosmos; GN-z11 was moving away. It's so-called "proper distance" is 32 billion light years.
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[font=Georgia]NOTE[/font][font=Verdana]: Light years aren't a measure of age, they're only a measure of distance. In other words: GN-z11's proper distance doesn't really tell us how old it is; only how far away it is.

Some felt that the effects of universal gravity would limit the cosmos' expansion and make it slow down; eventually stop it from expanding, and make everything shrink back to its original state. But we now know from the supernova studies of Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Reiss that the universe is not only expanding, but contrary to sensible expectations, the velocity of its expansion is accelerating; viz: gravity isn't slowing the expansion down at all, it's actually speeding up.

To illustrate that; let's imagine for a moment that the cosmos was expanding at 500 meters per second at 06:00 am this morning. By noon it might conceivably be expanding at 600 meters per second. (There's a mathematical term called the Hubble Constant for figuring out things like this)

There's something out there in the cosmos labeled, for convenience sake; dark energy. Nobody yet knows its source; but it is so strong that all the gravity of all the known matter cannot stop the dark energy from expanding the universe at an ever-increasing velocity. At that rate; the cosmos will never of its own accord stop expanding in order to shrink itself back into one solid glob of highly condensed material.

But I have to ask: towards what is the cosmos expanding? Where does the void end; if at all? My gosh; how much longer, and how much further can the cosmos' expansion possibly continue until it bumps into something or else pops like a colossal bubble? And if there is something to bump into out there; then what is it, and what's on the other side? Is the void infinite?

Of interest to me is the limits of the cosmos' observable horizon. In other words; seeing as how the universe has always been expanding, then it's conceivable that there are portions of the universe that are now so far away that we will never, ever be able to see them. The problem is: the further away a source of light is, the smaller its observed dimensions and thus the dimmer it's light until the source is so far away that an observer cannot detect even the faintest glimmer.

It took the HST ten days of exposure time for its cameras to gather enough light to resolve objects in the Hubble Deep Field. There's going to come a time when no matter how big the telescope and no matter how long its cameras stare into space, there are going to be objects out there that will never be seen.

The discovery of the cosmos' accelerating expansion was very discouraging for cosmologist Alan Sandage since he was once a proponent of the theory that the universe would some day shrink upon itself; and called the discovery of the ever-increasing velocity of the expanding universe a "terrible surprise." At a 1998 cosmologists conference in Berkeley California, Mr. Sandage told the gathering that contemplating the majesty of the big bang helped make him a believer in God; and willing to accept that the creation of the cosmos could only be explained as a miracle.

But even the Big Bang is problematic. Banged from what? Where did the material come from that banged? And how long had that material been in existence before it got around to banging?
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Re: The Cosmos

Post #7

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Non-human life for the Earth was created on a different scale than human life. Non-human life was created in swarms, while human life was created just one solo individual.

â—� Gen 2:7 . .The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

That one human life has the distinction of being the only human life that God ever created directly from the dust of the ground. All other human life descends from that one human life, including women, because they were formed from material amputated from that first human life's body.

This means that any and all human life made from women are descendants of that first human life that God created from the dust of the ground; whether virgin conceived or naturally conceived makes no difference.

â—� Acts 17:26 . . He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth

The koiné Greek word for "nation" is ethnos (eth'-nos) which basically refers to races, which for brevity's sake I'll just label Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australoid. There's a variety of sub groupings within those major divisions.

Some Christians are adamantly, and sometimes even angrily, opposed to any and all forms of evolution. But if we don't allow for at least a modicum of somatic mutations and adaptations we'll be hard pressed to provide an adequate explanation for the variety of human life on Earth, including Pygmy, that descended from the one and only human life that God created directly from the dust of the ground.
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Re: The Cosmos

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Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking spent a large percentage of his life figuring out how the cosmos works; but had to admit that he couldn't figure out the "why" of the cosmos; viz: why it exists at all instead of nothing at all.

I was once asked by a co-worker why I believed the Bible. I replied that the Bible takes a simple, uneducated welder like me and gives him the answers to questions for which the best and brightest have no scientific explanation.

I may not know everything there is to know about how the cosmos works, but through the science of faith rather than physics, I know whence the cosmos came and I know why it exists rather than nothing existing at all.

â—� Rev 4:11 . .Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are, and were, created.

This aging, retired old welder is one of the created things mentioned in that passage. I am insignificant in the grand scale of the cosmos with all of its life, matter, and energy; yet I exist per God's pleasure just the same as all the millions of wondrous galaxies floating around out there in the void.

Carl Sagan once remarked that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Well; personally, I consider the cosmos with all of its life, matter, and energy to be the most extraordinary evidence imaginable.

â—� Rom 1:19-20 . .What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-- his eternal power and divine nature --have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

The cosmos has been pounding the pulpit for God since time immemorial.

â—� Ps 19:1-4 . .The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

Back in 1980 there was a thirteen-part series on television called "COSMOS: A Personal Voyage" hosted by Carl Sagan.

I didn't watch the series at that time; and only recently viewed it on YouTube. It was my first experience with Mr. Sagan. I'd heard of him, but never actually listened to him speak.

It turns out; I really like the man. Sagan was very personable; sort of like Mr. Rogers: he was sincere, charming, soft-spoken, and educational; coupled with a talent for explaining difficult concepts on a layman's level. Sagan was a perfect front man for the scientific community.

But he was an atheist. Sagan stood against beliefs that the cosmos-- its life, matter, and energy --is the result of intelligent design.

Well; if there really is a heaven and a hell, then of course Sagan is definitely in the wrong place; and my heart goes out to him as I can only imagine the terrible, crushing disappointment that poor man must be feeling. His life's work was for naught: just a hobby-- an interesting way to pass the time until his time was up.
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Re: The Cosmos

Post #9

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The theological idea of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) is looking better all the time as inflation theories increasingly suggest the universe emerged from no tangible source. And although theorists energetically fantasize an endless parade of explanations for the origin of the universe, they have been doing so within the context of the known laws of physics; the meanwhile having no clue about the origin of those physical laws. In other words: they cannot explain where those laws came from in the first place-- nor can they explain why the known laws control matter and energy the way they do rather than some other way.

When people reach what is commonly called the age of reasoning; some of their very first questions are: Why am I here? Where did I come from? What is the meaning of life, and is there a purpose for mine? Am I here by chance?

I think it's very normal (or at least very common) for people to seek a justification for their existence; and without it, they can only conclude that the human experience is futile; which can be roughly defined as serving no useful purpose; for example:

Nobel Prize winner, author of several best-selling books, and recipient of at least a dozen honorary degrees, physicist Steven Weinberg (who views religion as an enemy of science), in his book "The First Three Minutes" wrote: The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself . . . the effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of a farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

In Mr. Weinberg's opinion, the human experience scarce escapes the categories of farce and tragedy; its quest for knowledge seems the only thing that gives humanity any justification to exist at all. The universe? It's just a meaningless void decorated with fascinating objects --a carnival side show of cosmic curiosities, so to speak.

Wouldn't it be sad if we only lived and died like insects and fungi? I mean, what would be the point of it all? They say a mind is a terrible thing to waste. What real advantage is it to have something so useful as a human mind if it's only going to die and stop working after many years of learning and experience? And what real advantage is it for the mind of the present to make the world a better place for the next generation of minds if the mind of the present doesn't live to see it? That's really no more significant an existence than that of the individuals in a bee hive or a termite colony.

I think people find comfort in perceiving themselves part of a grand scheme instead of walking across the stage of their all-too-brief life as an insignificant speck in a pointless cosmos. Belief that there's someone somewhere above and beyond themselves gives people's existence value, meaning, and purpose which, in my opinion, is at least one of the reasons why supreme beings are so popular.

Galileo felt that science and religion are allies rather than enemies-- two different languages telling the same story; a story of symmetry and balance: heaven and hell, positive and negative, weak and strong, right and left, up and down, night and day, hot and cold, God and Satan. Science and religion are not at odds; no, in reality, science is just simply too young to understand.

Dr. Robert Jastow, founder of the Goddard Institute for space studies at NASA, in his book "God And The Astronomers" says: "Strange developments are going on in astronomy. One of these is the discovery that the universe had a beginning. And that means there has to be a beginner. The scientist has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak, and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Agnostics and atheists claim there is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a supreme being. But they are foolishly invalidating perfectly good evidence all around them and within easy reach. There exists more evidence in the world of nature and in the sky to prove the reality of a supreme being than there does to prove otherwise.
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Re: The Cosmos

Post #10

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The cosmos is expanding in all directions, and not only expanding, but the rate of its expansion isn't uniform.

The latest data suggests that the expansion is roughly 73.24± kilometers per second per megaparsec. (Parsecs are a measure of distance; with a megaparsec being roughly 3.26 light years.)

For example: elements of the Virgo galaxy cluster are roughly 16.5 megaparsecs from Earth. So the rate of expansion relative to that area of the universe is about 1,208 kilometers per second. (751 miles)

To put that in perspective: the muzzle velocity of a 55 grain, .223 caliber rifle bullet is roughly 3,200 feet per second; which translates to a mere 6/10ths of a mile per second. Were someone to try to shoot the Virgo galaxy cluster in the back with a .223 the exact moment it passed the spot where they were standing, the bullet would never catch up fast enough to hit it.

Anyway; scientific reasoning says that if the universe is getting bigger, then there must have been a time when it was smaller: much, much smaller; in fact so small it was a mere speck. But scientific reasoning has a fatal flaw; it doesn't reckon with intelligent design.

According to Genesis 1:16, God set the stars in place. In other words; instead of beginning the expansion of the universe from a starting point; the cosmos' creator began its expansion from a starting line.
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