The Time Bubble Theory

[lucaspa]

"The Egyptians had a story "
They had lots of things including sacred cows. Moses got his direction, and inspiration from the Man.

You believe that 1) Moses wrote Genesis and 2) that Moses was inspired by God. The first is not true. The second may be true. It is what you believe. But you don't have the objective or even intersubjective evidence to phrase it like it is a fact.

Notice that there are many laws in the Pentateuch that were once thought to be true that you no longer think are true now.

 

[lucaspa]

lucaspa: "This isn't "lack of faith", it's reasoning faith at its best. It's trying to understand the message God intended, instead of trying to force a message on God"
Not believing God at His word, and feelin we have to compromise and accept an old world, and such to me is not great faith.

1. What we are dealing with is not God's word, but your word on what the Bible means. So I can easily believe God but not believe you.
2. Who created? God, right? Well, then, that makes the world also God's word. He created it, didn't He? That means that everything in the world was put there by Him. Including all the evidence that tells us the earth is old. We are not "compromising". We are accepting what God tells us in His creation and realizing that our interpretation of the Bible has to be modified.

"Without faith in a literal Bible, it's impossible to please Biblical literalists, but that isn't who we are interested in pleasing, is it?"
Apparently not.

Glad you agree. Why should we be interested in pleasing Biblical literalists?

"The way you are advocating isn't seeking, it's dictating to God"
Dictating to God? Believing His acount in His Own words is dictating? I didn't make the stuff up, it was Him who dictated it!

No, God did not "dictate it". The most the Bible claims is that it is "inspired", not dictated. Also, the question is whether you are understanding what God intended in the Bible. What you are saying Genesis 1 means is not "His Own words". It's your telling God what His words mean! And what you are telling Him is against what He wrote in His Creation.

Time, you are denying that God created. By insisting on only a literal interpretation of the Bible and refusing to consider any evidence from God's Creation, you are saying God did not create. That can't end well.

 

[lucaspa]

"Instead, what this guy is assuming, apparently, is that the farther away we are the closer to the speed of light we are moving and thus, the more time dilates for us."
No, it would have to do with whether you are in the God created dimension, or sphere, that is living under time. There, all things are limited and affected by it. Wheras, If you were not limited by time, such as God, who created it, then time would not exist. So, from this time limited bubble then, we would look out and natuarally assume that time was essential everywhere, as it is here. So, far or close, outside of the sphere, things would not take 'time'.

Nice, but how does this relate to the 6 days of Genesis 1 and a young earth. By your logic, the earth could be any age at all in our time but a completely different "age" or no age at all to God. So why do you view an old earth as a compromise and something not to be done.

Also, you claim God "dictated" the Bible. So, by your interpretation, God goes to great effort in Genesis 1 to make sure the "days" there are related to our time scale, by saying "evening and morning". And then saying the 6 days of creation is the same as the 6 days of the week with the day of rest being the Sabbath. So God, according to you, is directly dictating that the He created in 144 of our hours. Not 144 of His hours that looks like 13.7 billion years of out time in the bubble.

Can't have it both ways. You are saying contradictory things in different parts of the thread. The trouble with ad hoc arguments like yours is that they do contradict each other when you compare them.

 

[lucaspa]

"The Flood was falsified by 1831. Rev. Adam Sedgwick"
Well the problem here is probably that this fellow 'falsified' the flood using false assumptions, and false information.

Neither. He was head of geology at Cambridge and President of the Royal Geological Society.

The falsifying Rev doesn't seem to be mentioned much by evolutionists I've heard. Never actually.

Nice way to dismiss him. Won't work. Here is one evolutionist who mentions him prominently. There are others.
"There is another way to be a Creationist. One might offer Creationism as a scientific theory: Life did not evolve over millions of years; rather all forms were created at one time by a particular Creator. Although pure versions of Creationism were no longer in vogue among scientists by the end of the eighteenth century, they had flourished earlier (in the writings of Thomas Bumet, William Whiston, and others). Moreover, variants of Creationism were supported by a number of eminent nineteenth-century scientists-William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and Louis Agassiz, for example. These Creationists trusted that their theories would accord with the Bible, interpreted in what they saw as a correct way. However, that fact does not affect the scientific status of those theories. Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobservable particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended. The great scientific Creationists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered problem-solving strategies for many of the questions addressed by evolutionary theory. They struggled hard to explain the observed distribution of fossils. Sedgwick, Buckland, and others practiced genuine science. They stuck their necks out and volunteered information about the catastrophes that they invoked to explain biological and geological findings. Because their theories offered definite proposals, those theories were refutable. Indeed, the theories actually achieved refutation. In 1831, in his presidential address to the Geological Society, Adam Sedgwick publicly announced that his own variant of Creationism had been refuted:
Having, been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy ... I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation.
We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic Flood. For of man, and the works of his hands, we have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of a former world entombed in these ancient deposits. In classing together distant unknown formations under one name; in simultaneous origin, and in determining their date, not by the organic remains we have discovered, but by those we expected, hypothetically hereafter to discover, in them; we have given one more example of the passion with which the mind fastens upon general conclusions, and of the readiness with which it leaves the consideration of unconnected truths. (Sedgwick, 1831, 313-314; all but the last sentence quoted in Gillispie 1951, 142-143) Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism pp125-126

Of course, your tactic has nothing to do with the data that caused Rev. Sedgwick and the other geologists of the day -- previously creationists -- to admit that creationism was falsified.

Here's another "evolutionist" mentioning Sedgwick. Welcome to some real history of creationism!

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/2/part12.html
Many evangelical Christians today suppose that Bible believers have always been in favor of a "young-universe" and "creationism." However, as any student of the history of geology (and religion) knows, by the 1850s all competent evangelical Christian geologists agreed that the earth must be extremely old, and that geological investigations did not support that the Flood "in the days of Noah" literally "covered the whole earth." Rev. William Buckland (head of geology at Oxford), Rev. Adam Sedgwick (head of geology at Cambridge), Rev. Edward Hitchcock (who taught natural theology and geology at Amherst College, Massachusetts), John Pye Smith (head of Homerton Divinity College), Hugh Miller (self taught geologist, and editor of the Free Church of Scotland's newspaper), and Sir John William Dawson (geologist and paleontologist, a Presbyterian brought up in a fundamentalist atmosphere, who also became the only person ever to serve as president of three of the most prestigious geological organizations of Britain and America), all rejected the "Genesis Flood" as an explanation of the geologic record (or any part of that record), and argued that it must have taken a very long time to form the various geologic layers. Neither were their conclusions based on a subconscious desire to support "evolution," since none of the above evangelical Christians were evolutionists, and the earliest works of each of them were composed before Darwin's Origin of Species was published. The plain facts of geology led them to acknowledge the vast antiquity of the earth. And this was before the advent of radiometric dating."


I'm glad you at least consider him to have been, as the communists used to say, a 'useful idiot'.[/QUOTE]

 

[lucaspa]

Point is the Egyptians did,t part the sea, send the cloud, give the commandments, etc, God did. So about all the Egyptians seemed to do was get in the way. Until God made them a deal they couldn't refuse, to let His people go. So why harp on anything those pagan has beens would have thought?

You missed the point. The reason the Israelites would still be interested in Egyptian religion is that religion was a direct competitor to Judaism and some Israelites would be tempted to convert. After all, Egypt was, in Ezra's time when Genesis was compiled, a very powerful nation. People of the time thought that the validity of gods was determined by the success of the nation that had those gods as patrons. Egypt was very successful. Israel was not. Therefore the Israelites might think: "maybe the Egyptians are right". Genesis 2 was one way to counter Egyptian theology.

You have to put yourself in their time, not ours.

 

[lucaspa]

Time: Piece of cake! You may notice He made light first, before the sun, moon, and stars. So for a couple days that served as morning, and evening. He didn't lie at all. In fact the Bible says "God cannot lie".

Ezekiel 20:25 has God saying He did lie. He gave bad laws but told the people they were good laws.

 

[lucaspa]

Gen 1 is the order of creation. Gen 2 goes back and brings out more detail of things that already happened. They were not being re-created, or deja vu, or a new creation, etc. Obce you understand that chap 2 is a cinch!

Details of Genesis 1? Hardly. Notice that birds are created on Day 5 and land animals on day 6 before humans. Only after the animals are created are humans created, and then both male and female (both plural in Hebrew, so it's men and women). Now look at Genesis 2. You get one man created. Then you get the land animals and birds, then one woman. Not details, contradictions. You can't have it as a "detail" that birds are created a whole day before the first human and then have birds crearted after the first human!

Just look at how the fish and animals in passing, in chap 2 were refered to as being made out of the ground.

Actually, Genesis 2 doesn't mention fish at all. It is birds and animals that are formed of the same substance as Adam. In Genesis 1 they are spoken into existence.

"All of these contradictions can be avoided by not taking Genesis 1 and 2 literally, but that seems to be something you don't want to do"
No, not in this life, nor the next.

But you do. Your whole thing of God being in a different time bubble denies a literal Genesis. So, you are already in trouble.

True time does exist in the Universe. At least in our part of it, according to this theory. Now if we think of God as being 'outside the universe' that is a pretty far away God. I think of Him as in my heart. I think of Him as close enough to answer prayers. I think of Him as having a wonderful city of gold that He will also live in, and that will soon come to our earth.

God lives in a city of gold but also in your heart? Does He commute? How far away is this city?

Then we have all His angels, and spirit helpers, also very close by.

When were those created in Genesis 1? Which day?

 

[lucaspa]

I felt the same way when I read it. It all fits together so well.

When and where did you read it?

 

[lucaspa]

"So if we don't understand what needed to be corrected, we won't understand what was done to correct it"
Sounds reasonable. What is it you think needs correction anyhow? Perhaps if you let us know we can understand what needs to be done to correct it!

Please pay attention. It was very clear. The Egyptian theology had a story where immortal life was obtained by gaining knowledge. This was contrary the the Hebrew beliefs but, let's face it, it's a very tempting idea. It makes immortal life no longer dependent on God, but simply on what the individual does. Get enough knowledge and you are immortal.

So, what J (the author of Genesis 2) did was turn that Egyptian idea on it's head. She had the creation story such that people got knowledge but it did not bring eternal life. Instead, getting that knowledge disobeyed Yahweh and resulted in getting cut off from God and getting further from immortality. I'm not happy with the implication that God wants us ignorant, but at least the story emphasizes that eternal life does not lie with us. Nothing we can do can get it. Instead, it's a gift of God. Later on, the NT emphasizes that we can never deserve eternal life.

How did you manage to miss this? It was very clear!

 

[Drotar]

Time: Piece of cake! You may notice He made light first, before the sun, moon, and stars. So for a couple days that served as morning, and evening. He didn't lie at all. In fact the Bible says "God cannot lie".

Ezekiel 20:25 has God saying He did lie. He gave bad laws but told the people they were good laws.

The logic does not match up. God did not lie in giving the Israelites the Ten Commandments. Simply because they were temporary does not automatically mean that they were """bad.""""

 

[lucaspa]

So I think you are looking at this as some kind of exact order in Chap 2. I don't look at it like that.

Why not? If God dicated it, as you claim, then how can you not look at it as an exact order?

I don't really think it is. We're just going from a pan view to some zoom shots here and there. If you want specs, look at chap 1.

Who says you can do that? Not the Bible.

Chap 2 is not in chron order.

According to you, it must be. After all, God dicated it and doesn't lie. If it's not in chronological order, then God lied about the order.

It's fun seeing you paint yourself into a corner. After insisting that you will read the Bible literally until you die and afterward, we find that you read Genesis 1 literally but not Genesis 2. Tell us, what else don't you read literally? Jesus' crucifixion, perhaps? The Resurrection?

Well morning and evening was a day. Most of the bible is the same. If you hang on the few exceptions and try to override the plain timetable of the 7 days, you get away from something called the 'preponderance of the scriptures'. This is where you need to take the whole bible in context, and not pick out things that seem to be possibly unclear. What if someone said Jesus was not dead 3 days, and nights, but millions of years? Or that the sun stood still in the sky for a battle, not for a portion of the one day, but maybe thousands of years etc.

You know, I'm really glad you said this. So the preponderance of the scriptures is that day is 24 hours. Let's look at Genesis 2:4b: "in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens" Now "day" here couldn't possibly mean 6 days, could it? After all, that means Jesus is dead for 18 days and that the sun stood still for 6 days. But wait! Genesis 1 said God created in 6 days, not one day!

So, now what are you going to do? Stop believing God's word? Say that God didn't dictate this part? Perhaps say that God didn't mean it literally? I can't wait.

Science seems a big reason a lot of people try to reinvent the Genesis week.

No, God is a big reason people try to reinvent the Genesis week. Science is just another way of saying "reading the second book of God".

For me, I have nothing to hide from science falsely so called. I do not have common ancestors with flys and cockcroaches! I don't believe God needs to be made a liar, or apologized for, nor the bible disbelieved. Science that goes against Him is a dragon needing to be slain and fought. (not cowered from and appeased)

Which means that you end up fighting God! What do you think the odds are of you winning a fight against God?

 

[funyun]

Lucaspa just slapped u down, time.

 

[time]

You believe that 1) Moses wrote Genesis and 2) that Moses was inspired by God. The first is not true. The second may be true. It is what you believe. But you don't have the objective or even intersubjective evidence to phrase it like it is a fact.

I think God wrote the bible, I don't care if He used Ballam's ***! If I could whip up the universe and mankind, animals etc. in a week, I would be able to assure a record gets down to men in good enough order. He did.

 

[time]

Who created? God, right? Well, then, that makes the world also God's word. He created it, didn't He? That means that everything in the world was put there by Him. Including all the evidence that tells us the earth is old

This evidence He gave us chiefly includes His own words on the topic. He spells it out so even an unrebellious child could understand! As far as looking old, things seem to look a lot older to those who swallow the death pill of evilution.

 

[time]

The most the Bible claims is that it is "inspired", not dictated

I already mentioned He wrote some of it Personally, on the mountain with moses. Jesus spoke His words, I could say dictated them, I think, to many real people who simply wrote them down later. Then we have other cases, like John the Beloved, who was actually "carried away" in the spirit, to get the crowning revelation, not his own but "The revelation of Jesus Christ which He gave.." We get it 6 ways from sunday, but we always get it from from God.

 

[time]

Nice, but how does this relate to the 6 days of Genesis 1 and a young earth. By your logic, the earth could be any age at all in our time but a completely different "age" or no age at all to God

Well the prime objective or hope there was to knock the teeth out of the claim of millions and billions of years away. Once that giants are slain, we can have a look at the rats. (not that you personally are one, but these little knawing side pocket ideas of resistance that may want a 'taste' after the big battle)

 

[ForeRunner]

I already mentioned He wrote some of it Personally, on the mountain with moses. Jesus spoke His words, I could say dictated them, I think, to many real people who simply wrote them down later. Then we have other cases, like John the Beloved, who was actually "carried away" in the spirit, to get the crowning revelation, not his own but "The revelation of Jesus Christ which He gave.." We get it 6 ways from sunday, but we always get it from from God.

How many clay tablets did moses brig with him up the mountain? Or did he use extremely rare and expensive papyrus scrolls?

 

[time]

primary method would be the amount of red-shift in the light spectrum we recieve. However, we CAN determine, with less accuracy, roughly (within a degree of magnitude or so) how far away such a source is simply by the intensity of the source,

I have no problem as far as the theory goes, with distance measured in miles. The problem comes with time.

theory can't account for the apparent constancy of "c"

What do you mean by this? How in simple terms, is it that light from a star a billion light years away apparently constant?

And, oddly enough, the "not a real factor" time seems to match EXACTLY what we would expect if time and "c" are constants throughout the universe

Can you put your cookies on a lower shelf, preach?

time outside of local space DOES match our local space within a very close tolerance

Exactly how can this be simply demonstrated?

If time outside of local space either behaves differently, or is not a factor, we should expect that in general, any observations that we make should NOT be able to be related to specific time-frames. We should see either random or nonexistant correlations ..

No one thinks the creator didn't order things in a particular area just because they are not affected by time the same way we are. I see no reason for some type of chaotic, random behavior.

Where, exactly (or even close to exactly) does your "theory" place the edge of this "time-bubble"

Somewhere probably in the 1 light week, to several thousand light years away range.

(ie, non-time-bound correlations of cosmic phenomenon outside the "bubble" or cosmic phenomenon outside the "bubble" that disagree strongly with predicted behavior based on OUR measurements from within the "bubble"),

And what was an exact 'forinstance here, that would illustrate your point?

 

[time]

So, by your interpretation, God goes to great effort in Genesis 1 to make sure the "days" there are related to our time scale, by saying "evening and morning". And then saying the 6 days of creation is the same as the 6 days of the week with the day of rest being the Sabbath. So God, according to you, is directly dictating that the He created in 144 of our hours

Yes, the bible occasionally uses day in another fashion. Never to my experience in some confusing way. The record is very clear. Do the manly thing, accept it, or reject it. You won't please God and the devil anyhow, why p them both off?

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

When and where did you read it?

101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg.