Gap Theory

[Willtor]

I think in a perfect world, we would have functioning senses of telepathy and our posts would not overlap. I suspect that this problem is related to the tilt of the Earth's axis.

 

[Willtor]

Stop it!

 

[shernren]

Nuts, now nobody else will get any room to post here.

 

[Dannager]

I'm wearing a tin foil hat. I am protected.

 

[Willtor]

I'm wearing a tin foil hat. I am protected.

Actually, if I recall, the latest research indicates that a tin foil hat only amplifies signals. That's why I never wear tin foil hats (no matter how stylish they make me).

 

[Dannager]

Actually, if I recall, the latest research indicates that a tin foil hat only amplifies signals. That's why I never wear tin foil hats (no matter how stylish they make me).

I can't trust anything you say. You aren't protected. You may be trying to manipulate me!

 

[Pats]

I can't trust anything you say. You aren't protected. You may be trying to manipulate me!

See that! It's a black jet hanging out over Wiltor's house.

Wiltor, how can you spread such things about the AFDB????

http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

 

[Willtor]

See that! It's a black jet hanging out over Wiltor's house.

Wiltor, how can you spread such things about the AFDB????

http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

I didn't say they weren't stylish. I said they were counterproductive.

 

[Pats]

I didn't say they weren't stylish. I said they were counterproductive.

That's why there's a black jet over your house.

 

[shernren]

In a perfect world, oldwiseguy wouldn't have to come back to this thread to find an entire out-of-topic page. XD

 

[LoG]

Myself, I see Gap Theory as a bit of a cop-out. It seems to have arisen out of the necessity to account for the old age of the earth, as geology has found it. And yet, GT subscribers continue to hold to a literal Creation account in Genesis, rejecting the theory of evolution out of hand. This sort of picking-and-chosing of only those scientific principles that don't contradict the Bible seems a might bit dishonest to me. What do others think?

Gap Theory proponents have been around for a few thousand years. It is not a theory that came about because of geology,but may have motivated some geologists to look for evidence of it.

At its core the Gap theorizes that there have been successive extinction/creation events over a long period of time. Every new creation event had God fine tuning the biological diversity to what we see in this particular one. The last extinction event took place at the Pleistocene - Holocene boundary when much mega-fauna that should have been best adapted to survive went extinct. God then re-populated the Earth 6000 years ago with only some the plants and animals from the previous creation. "after their kinds". Notice too

Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.


Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

The assumption is that this means He created this at this time although it doesn't really say that. More of a resurrection event.
Gap theory evidence comes from a wide range of sources that requires an open mind with no preconceived notions. As the model fleshes out, the truth of it becomes more and more apparent.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Gap Theory proponents have been around for a few thousand years. It is not a theory that came about because of geology,but may have motivated some geologists to look for evidence of it.

At its core the Gap theorizes that there have been successive extinction/creation events over a long period of time. Every new creation event had God fine tuning the biological diversity to what we see in this particular one. The last extinction event took place at the Pleistocene - Holocene boundary when much mega-fauna that should have been best adapted to survive went extinct. God then re-populated the Earth 6000 years ago with only some the plants and animals from the previous creation. "after their kinds". Notice too

The assumption is that this means He created this at this time although it doesn't really say that. More of a resurrection event.
Gap theory evidence comes from a wide range of sources that requires an open mind with no preconceived notions. As the model fleshes out, the truth of it becomes more and more apparent.

I liked this theory before I knew it had a name. And you are right. The theory makes more sense the more you study it, even getting into some pretty heavy stuff.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Let me just get some chronology in place to frame your origins theology ... it all seems hazy to me right now because I don't have any definite timeframes to deal with.

So God created angels, and the universe, 13.5 billion years ago.
He created the earth 4.5 billion years ago.
Lucifer and gang rebelled 6,000 years ago.
God almost immediately punished and bound them and sent them down to earth, 6,000 years ago.
Then God "recreated" the earth as "stated" in Genesis, 6,000 years ago.

Am I getting you right?

Not my numbers.

But being less esoteric, 360 is hardly a perfect number. Why? Because a year which is 360 days would still cause weekly precession - the tendency for every year to start on a different day, and therefore for every numbered date to have a different day each year. As a kid I kept noticing that every year started a day ahead - if Jan 1 last year was on Tuesday, Jan 1 this year would be on Wednesday - except for on leap years, and I got quite into perpetual calendars which would tell you the day of any year. And your 360-day year would have a similar problem, wouldn't it? You know what the perfect number would be, considering that? 364 days, or a neat 52 weeks. Never need to look at a calendar ever again - January 1 would be a Monday, February 27 would always be a Saturday, etc.

364 is good too.

So, do you have biblical proof that God intended the earth to have 360 days' worth of a year? Do you have biblical (and scientific) proof that God intended the earth to have a perpendicular axis? Do you have biblical proof that God intended a different orbit for the moon? Do you have biblical proof that the earth was originally a home for angels? Do you have biblical proof that angels even have physical bodies?

I just don't like 365 1/2 days. Regards angels: I have the same kind of 'proof' that evolutionists use.

Or is this all a figment of an overactive imagination?

This is a product of an active mind seeking answers to questions long ignored.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

quote=Willtor

oldwiseguy, you're espousing a philosophy of perfection that is different from perfection in the Christian sense. Perfection, in light of God, does not necessitate whole numbers in mathematical equations. It does not require inactivity on the surface of the Earth. If anything, it is quite the opposite. God is pleased to move in these things. The quandaries, perplexities, and intricacies of nature are a result of (not an affront to) God's creative work

Not at all. We are in the world that 'is', the present evil one, which is clearly in sad shape on every hand. This is validated by scripture, and by history, and by geology, and by many other measures. God's plan is to restore and renew 'all things'. Why restore something that is just fine as it is?

 

[gluadys]

I can't understand your fixation with 360. What's so significant about 360? It is just a coincidence that the Babylonians came up with the notion that the circle has 360 degrees in it. Interestingly, I have little to no idea where that came from. But my point is that 360 is a man-made number. There is nothing inherently perfect about it.

Actually, it's not a coincidence. From astronomical observations, the Babylonians had already established that it takes about 30 days to go from one new moon to the next and that there are approximately 12 moon cycles (months) from one vernal equinox to the next. Hence 12 * 30 = 360 days to a year.

They also assumed that all celestial bodies moved in circles, so they divided a circle into 360 degrees to correspond with the days of the year.

They also developed their base-60 numerical system from this. In some ways it is handier than a decimal system, because 60 can be divided evenly by 2, 3, 4 and 5, while 10 can can only be divided evenly by 2 and 5 and even 100 by only 2, 4, and 5.

They must have known that the numbering was approximate, not exact. At some point strict lunar calendars were replaced by sol-lunar calendars which added intercalary days annually to account for the extra five days in a true solar year, or, as in Hebrew usage, a whole extra month every few years to bring the calendar back in line with the solar year.

The addition of a leap year came with the Julian calendar. This accounts for the extra 1/4 day in a true solar year. Even this is not exact, and the Gregorian calendar instituted skipping a leap year every so often because a true solar year is actually a bit short of 365 1/4 days.

Eastern Orthodox Christians still use the Julian calendar to set the date of religious holidays. That is why they don't celebrate Christmas until nearly two weeks later than non-Orthodox Christians.

So, basically, you are right. It's a human construct based on early and imperfect astronomical calculations.

Seriously, though, perfect numbers are far more a Gnostic concept than a Christian one, the idea of hidden knowledge apart from the Bible. What are the numbers of the Bible? We have 3 - the Trinity, 6 - the number of creation and man, 7 - the perfect number of God, 12 - the number of God's assembly, 40 - the number of the wilderness, 70 - the number of God's thoroughness. Even if one could make up a numerology from the Bible it would be next to impossible to quantify 360 in it as any number of God.

Mystical Judaism is based on numerology. This comes from the fact that before Arabic, or even Roman, numerals were adopted, numbers were written using alphabetic notation. So aleph=1, beth=2, gimel=3 etc. So every word is also a number. And when numbers are understood mystically, you can derive numerous mystical ideas from the number connected with a word.

This sort of numerology appears in the bible. In Revelation, John refers to the number of the beast as 666. Coincidentally (I think not), a Hebrew variant of "Nero" is the number 666.

 

[LewisWildermuth]

oldwiseguy, you're espousing a philosophy of perfection that is different from perfection in the Christian sense. Perfection, in light of God, does not necessitate whole numbers in mathematical equations. It does not require inactivity on the surface of the Earth. If anything, it is quite the opposite. God is pleased to move in these things. The quandaries, perplexities, and intricacies of nature are a result of (not an affront to) God's creative work.

I wonder if oldwiseguy realizes that he is spouting classical Greek ideals of perfection, not Biblical views.

 

[gluadys]

At its core the Gap theorizes that there have been successive extinction/creation events over a long period of time. Every new creation event had God fine tuning the biological diversity to what we see in this particular one. The last extinction event took place at the Pleistocene - Holocene boundary when much mega-fauna that should have been best adapted to survive went extinct.

This is very like the OEC view. But I am not sure that OEC ever sees a complete extermination of life. It does see mass extinctions due to major global catastrophes, followed by the creation of new life forms for the new age.

Of course, science also acknowledges periods of global catastrophe leading to mass extinctions. But it sees the new life forms as evolving from the species which survived the mass extinction, as modern mammals evolved from the pre-Pleistocene mammals after the dinosaurs became extinct.

God then re-populated the Earth 6000 years ago with only some the plants and animals from the previous creation. "after their kinds".

The basic scientific problem with this time-line is that humans of our own species lived prior to the Pleistocene-Halocene boundary. How does gap theology deal with the evidence of human civilization that is 2-5 time older than 6,000 years? And fossil evidence that H. sapiens has been around for over 100,000 years?

Gap theory evidence comes from a wide range of sources that requires an open mind with no preconceived notions. As the model fleshes out, the truth of it becomes more and more apparent.

Could you be more specific about some of these sources?

 

[gluadys]

I just don't like 365 1/2 days.

Hardly a sufficient reason for saying it is not perfect.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

.

They must have known that the numbering was approximate, not exact. At some point strict lunar calendars were replaced by sol-lunar calendars which added intercalary days annually to account for the extra five days in a true solar year, or, as in Hebrew usage, a whole extra month every few years to bring the calendar back in line with the solar year.

It makes sense. But it is a little off. The only way the great balance found in the numbers could be off is if the earth moved slightly from a previous orbit, that reflected this balance. Lucifer and his angels striking the earth at the speed of light (E=mc2) would account for the awkward tilt, the slight out-of-orbit, and the vast destruction of the earth.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

I wonder if oldwiseguy realizes that he is spouting classical Greek ideals of perfection, not Biblical views.

Well good for me. I've always wanted to spout Greek.

Maybe you should put down the science book and read the bible for a change.