Post by Dave on Jun 16, 2022 9:19:01 GMT -5
Robert wants to oppose a world renowned Jewish PhD Physicist and Astro-cosmologist
He is kind enough to present such a detailed book report – that to respond would feel disconnected
So – I just add my response within his post
Rob quotes Schroeder"
The reason the six pre-Adam days (Genesis 1:1 – 27) were taken out of the calendar is because time is described differently in those Six Days of Genesis. There the passage of each day is described as “There was evening and morning” with no relationship to human time. Once we come to the progeny of Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years before having Seth. Seth lives 105 years before having Enosh, etc. (Genesis chapter 5). From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human-based, earth -based. But prior to that time, it’s an abstract concept: “Evening and morning.” It’s as if the Bible is looking at those events of Genesis One from a viewpoint other than the earth, a cosmic view of time. What might be the Biblical perception of the timing of those events prior to Adam relative to our earth-based measurements?
Rob" I do not find "But prior to that time, it’s an abstract concept: “Evening and morning" this is perfectly the way Hebrew people count time, we worship Sabbath from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, evening to evening. And Hebrew people count a day from evening to morning.
G" It’s as if the Bible is looking at those events of Genesis One from a viewpoint other than the earth, a cosmic view of time
R" THis is the only assumption Gerald uses to postulate hsi errors. This cosmic view of time exists if you are in heaven looking down on earth (CORRECT), but does not exist on earth. You could view cosmic time from other stars, changing the frame of reference, otherwise all time on earth is local.
We look back in time, and measure of the universe to be 14 billion years old. But as every scientist knows, when we say the universe is 14 billion years old, there’s another half of the sentence that we rarely bother to state. The universe is 14 billion years old as measured from the time-space coordinates of the earth, that is, from our current position in the universe.
R" correct and Gerald fails to mention this frame of reference much in his paper, "the time-space coordinates of the earth, that is, from our current position in the universe."
Today, we look back in time and we see approximately 14 billion years of history and those years went by. But how would they be perceived from the Bible’s perspective of time? Looking forward from when the universe was very small – billions of times smaller – the Bible teaches that six days passed. In truth, they both are correct.
R" confusion. Bait and switch technique. On earth on our frame of reference time is local yom, one after another. From heaven looking on earth, time is different according to that position.
Two views of one reality from two vastly different perspectives
archive.org/stream/GeraldLSchroederTheScienceOfGodTheConvergenceOfScientificAndBiblicalWisdomFreePress2009/Gerald+L++Schroeder-The+Science+of+God_+The+Convergence+of+Scientific+and+Biblical+Wisdom-Free+Press+%282009%29_djvu.txt
A simplistic reading of the Torah places our human origins at less than six thousand years in the past. Yet fossils of Homo sapiens extend back sixty thousand years. Neither source of knowledge need alter its view. Nahmanides, seven hundred years ago, Maimonides over eight hundred years ago, and the Talmud, dating back some sixteen hundred years, discuss the existence of beings living before and alongside Adam They were described as human in shape and intelligence but lacking the soul, the neshama, to make them human. There is no trickery here.
R" I suppose Satan, the opposing elohiym power, adds subtle changings in the mind of so called wise, so to promote his dealings later in time. I disagree with the passage of Gerald completely. There are no fossils of that age, such is a made up conjecture of story telling.
There were no humanoid creatures before Adam.
Was it was possible that Adam had an ancestor. “The text of Genesis and the ancient
commentaries certainly [certainly, mind you!] leave the door open for that interpretation.”
Too often he is swayed by popular Jewish writings outside of the received Hebrew torah.
Sorry – Gen 1 = man (Humanoid) – before Gen 2 man (Human Being) = 100% Torah
Total agreement with the fossil record
Total agreement with Intelligent Design
Total agreement with Torah
The medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote that conflicts between science and the Bible arise from either a lack of scientific knowledge or a defective understanding of the Bible. This is a continuing problem.
R" Hmm? You mean the opposing elohiym power had to add some comprises in his writers over time? The inspired Hebrew torah is inspired, and lacks such additional comments for a reason.
It's different to modern science. Why would any believer be threatened when sciece validates scripture
The universe is tuned for life from its inception.
Genesis agrees: when life first appears on the third day, the word creation does not appear. We are merely told “The earth brought forth” life. Earth had within it the necessary properties for life to flourish.
R" Gerald alludes to the idea that plant life came about by natural force alone, not created...In other writings he suggests "God made matter from nothing and than shaped of made it" I suggest no such thing.
Hab 3:4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.
Something was coming out of the Creators hand, so something does not come from nothing. And God engineered this something, the terms created or made, or formed relate to the OVERALL processes of engineering.
Jews are nitpicking over word games to make new additions to the Hebrew torah.
Circles were perfect geometric shapes, ellipses defective. An infinitely powerful God would be expected to produce perfect orbits. The Bible did not claim this. The Church did.
Rob" Yes God made everything perfect in circles, but when sinning came more of the cursing of God came. Nothing strange about imperfect orbits.
REPEAT - The Bible did not claim this. The Church did.
The biblical concept of an infinite God is a God that could make all births perfect. I imagine if I were God I would. But the world as described in the Bible does not function according to our demands. Most children are born healthy and physically normal, but not all. Nature has its level of freedom,
R" correct, once sinning is allowed to exist, God must allow sinning to exist in all forms, including RA.
Not worthy of a comment
3. “And God saw the light, that it is good” (Gen. 1:4); “And God saw that it [the oceans and earth] is good” (Gen. 1:10); “And God saw that it [the origin of plant life] is good” (Gen.
1:12); and on and on. God sees that “it is good” seven times in the thirty-one verses of the first chapter of Genesis — the creation chapter. Almost a quarter of all those verses are devoted to God’s discovering that “It is good.” Didn’t God realize from the start that it would be good? Perhaps. But this is not explicit in the text.
R" Maybe God forsaw the Gnostics writings that would spoil His words?
Gnostic - God had the time and the privalage to enjoy his creation one at a time in an incremental progression
Time and again, the Torah implies that the infinitely powerful biblical God withheld control and allowed the world to follow its own course. With this godly approach to world management, the results were not always “good.” The Creator then redirected the flow.
R" Hmm? If sinning is to exist, than God has to allow sinning to naturally take its course, including the natural and moral RA associated with sinning. - OK - Free Will + Gen 3:15 = The Gnostic Contest
At each stage, God withheld control to a greater or lesser extent. This allowed the world to develop according to the laws of nature created at the beginning and the moral responsibility
The gradual evolution, of a trait that only slightly alters the morphology of the animal is referred to as micro-evolution. The change in longevity for post-Flood humans is micro-evolution. It is observed regularly in farmyards and biology laboratories. It finds no dispute in the Bible. Macro-
evolution, the evolution of one body plan into another — a worm or insect or mollusk evolving into a fish, for example — finds no support in the fossil record, in the lab, or in the Bible.
R" Gerald alludes to micro-evolution, but not macro-evolution. Personally I do not like any terms referencing evolution. Since the first science people were Christians writing of God's world, why must we talk of evolution words? natural selection is a Creationist idea.
So how are we to understand creationism? Biblically, creation is a divine act of tsimtsum, contraction — a spiritual contraction by which the Creator removes part of Its infinite unity (“Hear Israel the Eternal our God the Eternal is One,” Deut. 6:4). Complexity now appears where there had been the undifferentiated simplicity of One. The greater the tsimtsum , the more extensive the complexity and the greater the corresponding potential for mperfection.
Rob" I can relate to this idea.
DUH - it is the definition of ra - the movement away from God
Isaiah in two sentences clarifies this concept: “I am the Eternal, there is nothing else. I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil” (Is. 45:6, 7). The infinite source of light withdraws and darkness is created. The infinite source of peace ( shalom , from the root shalaim meaning whole, complete) withdraws and evil (lack of perfection) is created. The first biblical tsimtsum (Gen. 1:1) allowed the physical complexity of the universe with its laws of nature to emerge. Then followed the creation of the nefesh — the soul of animal life — allowing animals choice
strongly dictated by instinct and inclination (Gen. 1:21). The third and final creation was the human soul — the neshama — instilling free will in humans (Gen. 1 :27).
R" Hmm?
It may come as a surprise that belief in a beginning does not require belief in a Beginner. The laws of nature allow the creation of the universe without the need for a creator. “Quantum uncertainty,” an aspect of the physics known as quantum mechanics, allows the small but finite possibility of
something coming into being from nothing via what is nown as a quantum fluctuation.- Since quantum mechanics has a sixty-year track record for predicting and explaining bserved phenomena, this theory of a quantum fluctuation/big bang beginning too may be correct.
R" something Gerald says is weird.
According to the fossil record, gradual evolution has been found to be false at every major morphological change.
R" correct
Correct supports INCREMENTAL CREATION
Then, 530 million years ago in the Cambrian era, with no hint in earlier fossils, the basic anatomies of all life extant today appeared simultaneously in the oceans.- ------ The Cambrian explosion of life is one of the century’s greatest discoveries.
R" Gerald still uses the evolutionary time, that does not exist on our frame of reference.
An accurate description of macro-evolution as presented by the fossil record is that it usually takes place somewhere else and all we are left with is the punctuations. Darwin realized this far better than his overly enthusiastic followers. On no less than seven occasions in the Origin of
Species, he implored his readers to ignore the evidence of the fossil record as a refutation of his concept of evolution or to “use imagination to fill in its gaps.” The record’s leaps and bounds, he claimed, were the result of its being incomplete.
Biblical time before Adam is so highly compressed that there is simply no opportunity to describe the processes (or even the sequence except in the broadest of terms) that caused life to advance from the simple to the complex. The Bible is eager to get on with the story of humankind.
From Adam and forward, biblical time is time as we know it, no longer compressed. But less than six thousand years span the period between biblical Adam and the present, not nearly enough time for macro-evolution to occur, even by the most extreme interpretation of punctuated evolution.
R" correct, macro-evolution doesn't exist
Also correct is that creationist are in a hurry to race to man - The Bible is eager to get on with the story of humankind.
Scientific estimates of fossil ages and a multibillion-year-old universe come from a variety of diverse and independent measurements. Since the 1940s, carbon- 14 has been a standard method for dating fairly young fossils, those with ages up to about thirty thousand years. But with C- 14 there has always been room for suspicion. For the ages to be valid, the amount of radioactive carbon (i.e., C-14) in the
atmosphere must always have been constant. Carbon- 14 is produced by cosmic rays smashing into nitrogen atoms near the top of Earth’s atmosphere. If the intensity of cosmic radiation was different in bygone ages, then the C-14 dating system will be in error. There is now evidence that cosmic radiation has not been absolutely constant during the eras that C-14 is used for fossil dating.
Rob" correct past radiation was not constant, so clocks based on radioactive decay are irrevelent
“A thousand years in Your sight are as a day that passes, as a watch in the night” (Ps. 90:4). Perhaps from a biblical perspective the six days of Genesis include the fifteen billion years we earthbound mortals estimate to be the span of time since the beginning of time, just as a watch in the night might include a thousand years.
R" Hmm?
Ancient commentaries, those written millennia before the discoveries of paleontology and cosmology disclosed any hints that the universe was billions of years old, state definitively that the six days of Genesis were twenty- four hours each, the total duration of which was “as the six days of our work week.”-, ^
R" so if the commentaries are six 24 hr periods, why does Gerald seek to twist them more?
But these same commentators continued and described those six twenty-four-hour days as containing “all the secrets and ages of the universe.”- Now that sounds like Psalm 90:4!
R" so for these secrets, we dare to invent further cosmic clocks of enourmous ages?
Time is the only argument of a creationist
By the way, atoms to do age.
Rock do not age.
No such thing as time anyway... only the mind records the past ahead of us, as Jeff Benner explains.
Can you feel any of this? Are the clouds flying by at breakneck speed? No. So why believe it? Well, just as you can’t believe everything you read, you can’t believe everything you see. It takes research, intellectual effort, to find the truth. Our senses may be adequate for getting us to work and back, but when it comes to questions of the cosmos, our senses need help. The secrets of nature are
not always revealed by a literal reading of nature.
R" Modern science is not very good and discovering truth.
The confusion mounts. How can six days contain the ages of the universe? And if they are truly ages, then why refer to them as days?
R" Gerald wants to mock the old commentaries, and add the secrets of time...
The ancient realization that somehow the days of Genesis contained the generations of the cosmos is based on two biblical verses: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Eternal God made earth and heavens” (Gen. 2:4); and
“This is the book of the generations of Adam in the day that God created Adam” (Gen. 5: 1). In both verses, generations are juxtaposed to days of Genesis.
R" Yes I like this Gerald, relativity is written in Hebrew all this time. Pun intended.
Huge changes in gravity (G) or velocity (V) are required to produce easily measurable changes in the flow of time. And even with the needed large variations in G or y the flow of time wherever you happen to be will always appear as normal, just as it does right now. It appears normal because you and your biology are in tune with the local
system. Only if we view events across a boundary, looking from one location into another location that has a very different G or Y can we observe the effect of this extraordinary law of nature which was discovered by Einstein. The relativity of time is encountered only when comparing one system relative to another; hence the name the law of relativity.
R" IN order to experience huge changes in G you have to visit another frame of reference, something Gerald neglects to tell you...
My then eleven-year-old daughter, Hadas, exclaimed, “Dad, this is great! This is just super. Send me to that planet. I’ll stay there for three minutes, do two years of homework, come home and no more homework for two years!”
That’s not quite correct, is it?
In Hadas ’s time, three minutes will have passed. But for us on Earth, those three minutes will have taken two years. In those two years Hadas will have done only three minutes of homework and aged only three minutes. Upon return to Earth, all her friends will be thirteen while she will still be eleven.
R" correct. So why does Gerald invent billions of years into the spaceship called earth. Travelling in the Creation Week the earth space ship took just six days to travel.
Where is this other frame of reference you so badly seek?
That is the proven nature of time in our awesome universe. Had I watched Hadas from my low-gravity location, her time (and all her events, including her
aging) would have passed veryslowly. To me, events in my system were totally normal. From Hadas’s perspective, her watch and her actions were normal, but looking across the reaches of space from her high-gravity system into my lower-gravity system, she would have seen my watch and
everything else on Earth going very rapidly Between two beats of her heart, my heart would beat 350,000 times.
R" now the imaginary bait and switch, if you see from your reference to another reference, you see time slowing down. Yes correct. But you cares? Nobody on earth was looking into space, nor Creation week looking to another frame of reference.
There are any number of ages for our universe, each being correct for the location at which the measurement is made. And there are literally billions of locations where a clock, if we could place one there, would tick so slowly that fifteen billion Earth years would pass while it recorded only six twenty-four-hour days.
R" correct, Relativity different locations, different frames of reference have different times.
So finding an equality between the six days of Genesis and fifteen billion Earth years is not a problem. But unfortunately, this simple solution is inadequate. Individual locations are not relevant to the opening chapter of Genesis. If we are to discover the basis behind the exclusion from the biblical calendar of those six days of Genesis, we must identity the universal perspective of the Bible’s space-time reference frame for those eductive, six pre- Adam days.
R" No we don't have to, on earth the earth time remained six yoms in Creation Week. No need to seek how other worlds saw our time clock across space.
The biblical calendar is divided into two sections: the first six days of Genesis and all the time thereafter. Those six days are not, and never have been, included in the calendar of the years which follow Adam.
Time in the biblical calendar after Adam must have been Earth-based.
R" Not so. COunting time evening to morning is the correct way to record time. In our earth ship we have a single clock. Nobody cares to view another's clock across the trillions of light years of space. Our local based clock is based on the yom, Gerald agrees is six 24 hours.
Most important of all, we know that there is no possible way for those first six days to have had an Earth-based perspective simply because for the first two of those six days there was no Earth. As Genesis 1 :2 states “And the earth was unformed. . . .
Rob" Assumption and wrong.
If there was war in heaven, and messengers were banished to earth, than earth existed long before Creation of Man.
Earth was a desert as 2 degrees Kelvin, yes, because sinners lived there. Unformed, so of, but the rock was here, central stage.
I have an agenda, to demonstrate a harmony between science and the Bible. To limit my subjectivity, I have restricted my sources of scientific information to peer-
reviewed data that are accepted in physics laboratories of leading universities. I have limited my sources of biblical interpretation to the Talmud (redacted in the year 400) and the kabalist Nahmanides (1250), the two mainstream traditional paths to the deeper meanings held within the text of Genesis.
R" Yes an agenda to mix modern science into Hebrew science. They do not mix.
has the mysterious property of being both a particle and a wave. It is the wave aspect that allows us to measure time over cosmic distances. What we refer to as visible light is only one particular band of wavelengths in a nearly infinite range of electromagnetic radiations all of which travel at the same speed: the speed of light ( c = 300 million meters per second in a vacuum).
R" Yes light is both a particles and a wave.
A common error in exploring the brief biblical age of the universe relative to the discoveries of cosmology is to view the universe from a specific location rather than choosing a reference frame that embraces the entire universe and retains that universal perspective for the entire six days. The clock of Genesis starts with the creation of the universe and continues till the creation of humankind. It must identify the relative passage of time not between particular places in the universe but between moments in the universe as the universe evolved from the big bang.
R" moments? Time is not based on moments, but speeds comparing different frames of reference?'
Cosmic proper time does not replace conventional time but rather augments it
R" No need for another clock at all
Three aspects of the universe produce identical effects on radiation frequency. Positive differences in velocity, gravity, and the stretching of space as the universe expands all increase (stretch) the wavelength of radiation. Since the frequency of radiation (and hence the beat of the cosmic clock) is lowered in direct proportion to the increase in wavelength, this increase in wavelength slows the perceived passage of time. The first two of these three phenomena relate to differences in the flow of conventional time — biological time — between specific locations. The third, the universal stretching of space, equally alters the perception of time’s flow as reckoned by the universal cosmic clock. It is with his third aspect, the stretching of space, that I work — as did Nahmanides. That is to say, neither gravity nor velocity enters the calculations that follow.
R" Hmm? similar to Setterfield, a faster light ray produces a slower time clock, as does other things? Hmm? No sure.
Not smart enough to fathom this kind of thinking.
“And the earth was tohu and bohu .. .” (Gen. 1:2). The usual translation of this verse from the book of Genesis is “And the earth was unformed (tohu) and void (bohu).” Unformed or chaotic is a fair translation of tohu. But bohu does not only mean void. Both the Talmud and ahmanides state that bohu means filled with the building blocks of matter.—,—
A more accurate, though cumbersome, translation of Genesis 1:2 is: “And the earth was in a state of chaos but filled with the building blocks of matter.”
R" Gnostics would love that wouldn't they? NO, earth was experiencing RA because sinners were there.
That stretching of the light waves has slowed the frequency
of the cosmic clock — expanded the perceived time between ticks of that clock — by a million million.
R" Not smart enough to fathom this kind of thinking.
To measure the age of the universe, we look back in time. From our perspective using Earth- based clocks running at a rate determined by the conditions of today’s Earth, we measure a fifteen- billion-year age. And that is correct for our local view. The Bible adopts this Earthly perspective, but only for times after Adam. The Bible’s clock before Adam is not a clock tied to any one location.
R" That's funny I thought Creation Week of earth, was tied to earth....so as the stars raced away from earth they look old, yes, get that, a different frame of reference, but on earth inside the spaceship our time is local, so changes to earth is also local.
It is a clock that looks forward in time from the creation, encompassing the entire universe, a universal clock tuned to the cosmic radiation at the moment when matter formed. That cosmic timepiece, as observed today, ticks a million million times more slowly than at its inception. The million millionfold stretching of radiation since bohu caused that million-million-to-one ratio in this perception of time.
This cosmic clock records the passage of one minute while we on Earth experience a million million minutes. The dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 120 million years, as measured by our perception of time. Those clocks are set by the decay of radioactive nuclides here on Earth and they are correct for our earthly system But to know the cosmic time we must divide earth time by a million million.
R" Why do we also need a cosmic clock and where is this clock located? It has to be no based on earth. SO the only clock we have on earth is a earth based clock, the six 24 hour yom the Jewish commentaries write.
But Gerald wants to add more secrets into them.
That’s the peer-reviewed physics and the biblical tradition of this discussion. Now for the modern theology.
In terms of days and years and millennia, this stretching of the cosmic perception of time by a factor of a million million, the division of fifteen billion years by a million million reduces those fifteen billion years to six days!
Genesis and science are both correct. When one asks if six days or fifteen billion years passed before the appearance of humankind, the correct answer is “yes.”
The validity of this approach, cosmic time relative to local time, has been given the stamp of approval both by the prestigious, peer reviewed journal Nature (volume 342, 23; 1989) and the American Journal of Physics (volume 52:2; 1990).
R" I will check this out later.
The Bible limited its description of this period to the creation, and then to light separating from darkness (Gen. 1 :4). It mentions here an event that appears nowhere else in the entire Hebrew Bible, a one-time phenomenon described as the spirit of God hovering over the universe (Gen. 1 :2). Biblically, this was required to start the making of the universe following its creation. Physics also calls for a one-time phenomenon which it named inflation. This was a sudden and brief expansion of the universe immediately following the big bang. In a minuscule fraction of a second, the universe stretched from its point at creation to a size similar to that of today’s solar system. Shortly thereafter,
it is thought, the expansion “settled” into a rate similar to the currently measured value.
R" I do not like the way Gerald disrespects the MEDIUM that hovering over our Creation, or its purpose.
This is followed by plant life (Gen. 1:11). Though a simple reading of the text implies that all types of plants appeared on this day, kabalah corrects this misunderstanding, stating
that “there was no special day assigned for this command for vegetation alone since it is not a unique work.”— Of all the events listed for the six days, this is the only one that tradition states occurred over an extended period not limited to that particular day.
R" SO plants emerged from natural laws?
Science and Bible are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
R" I don't think so. Can be, but science people are generally opposed to divine science.
At the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, the Bible tells us that God used a wind that blew all night to split the Sea of Reeds (Ex. 14:21). Why an all-night wind rather than
perhaps a hand from heaven? That would have been much more impressive.
R" Was it really the Sea of Reeds?
God’s reply was short and to the point: “Is anything too hard for the Eternal?” (Gen. 18:14).
Rob" Ge 18:14 Is <pala'> any thing <dabar> too hard <pala'> for the LORD <Y@hovah>? Gerald is adding meaning not in the Hebrew? He is Jewish and does not like speaking YHWH, I get his pious nature.
In his closing address, Moses adjures the people to “Remember the days of old, consider the years of each generation” (Deut. 32:7). Kabalah tells us these “days of old” are the six days of Genesis, and “the years of each generation” are the historical records of civilization.^ Understanding the events of our cosmic and social past is a key to discovering the immanence of God. The Bible
insists the evidence is there for us to discover God in this world: “ You shall know that I am the Eternal” (Ex. 6:7; Ex. 29:46; Deut. 4:39).
God led the Israelites through the wilderness by a pillar of cloud in the day and a pillar of fire in the night. Cloud and fire, around the clock, inform us that God was leading every step of the way. As they marched directly toward their goal of Mount Sinai, God told the Israelites to change course, to
turn around and head back along part of the path they had just traversed (Ex. 14:2). This placed the Israelites in great danger. The Gulf of Akaba/Eilat now blocked their escape from the pursuing Egyptians.
R" so if Akaba, why also speak of the Sea of Reeds?
However improbable we regard this event [ the start of all life] , or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once. And for life as we know it... once may be enough.
Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time the “impossible” becomes the possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.-
These words were written by Nobel laureate and Harvard University biology professor George Wald and published in the widely read journal Scientific American.
In short, life could not have started by chance.
R" correct.
The Bible has no problem with this concept of life’s beginnings: “And the Earth brought forth” life (Genesis 1 : 12). In biblical language we are being told that the Earth itself had within it the properties to encourage the emergence of life. There is no biblical mention of a special creation for the origin of life. The laws of nature, created along with the creation of the universe, and the very special conditions on adequate to orchestrate the flow of the universe toward life.
So how can the development of life be explained?
R" Why must we know:?
Species of modern algae and protozoans have the space in their DNA for this neutral information.
Each of their cells contains as much as one hundred times more DNA than a cell of any mammal, including humans.—
R" wow? what does this tell us?
Since micro-fossils of primordial algae and protozoans have shape and size similar to modern specimens, it may be inferred that their genetic library was equally large.
The list divides animals into categories: the insects in one place, fish in another, and so forth. In Leviticus 11:18 birds are listed. Among them we find the tinshemet. Twelve verses later (Lev. 1 1 :30), the reptiles are listed. And behold, the tinshemet appears again. The same name, spelled identically ( tuf nun shin mem tuf in the Hebrew) is given for a bird and for a reptile because at one level of biblical meaning the animal fell into both categories.
In the entire Bible, there is the one reference to an animal that falls into two categories, the tinshemet. In the entire fossil record there is one fossil that falls exactly midway between two classes of animals, the archaeopteryx. And both the archaeopteryx and the tinshemet are part reptile, part bird. It is the “link” that never was missing.
Rob" Hmm?
This move toward order from chaos is not impossible provided the system had direction. There was and still is usable energy present to power the emergence of order. Order out of chaos is, however, such an unusual and improbable trend of events that the Torah mentions it six times.
R" SOunds Gnostic, I prefer God made this functional from the beginning in milliseconds, no need for chaos, no need for natural ra either.
Nature strives toward complexity because complexity carries with it survivability through intelligent adaptability. The simplest form of life, bacteria, lacks this feature. Though as a group bacteria have been on Earth longer than any other form of life, as individuals they are not a success story. Their genetic DNA lacks any mechanism to retard or correct for mutant errors in the transcription. Every mutation produces either a new variety or a dead cell. Massive numbers of mutations occur, the overwhelming number of which are nonfit and perish. As a group they survive by sacrifice of the individual.
R" I will check if bacteria have error checking DNA systems? Something wrong here?
It is possible to explain the hominid fossils that predate Adam as having been placed there as a test by the Creator. And that may be true. There certainly is no way of disproving this hypothesis. Here, I argue from a different tack: that the fossils record a true account of history, that they present no threat to Torah, and most important, that major ancient commentaries anticipated these discoveries.
R" wishful thinking on Geralds part? Not sure?
When I was first struggling with the questions of our origins, I steeled my courage to ask the renowned biblical scholar, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, if it was possible that Adam had an ancestor. Not knowing what to expect, I skirted the issue for a few awkward minutes. When I finally presented the question, his matter-of-fact reply almost bowled me over: “The text of Genesis and the ancient
commentaries of Nahmanides on that text certainly [certainly, mind you!] leave the door open for that
interpretation.”
R" My understanding is God made Adam in minutes from soil
Three billion years passed. The universe was now approximately ten billion years old. Thirty thousand light years from the Milky Way’s center and just north of the central plane of the disk, primordial hydrogen that had mixed with the stardust of bygone supernovae agglomerated, drawn together by mutual gravitational attraction. Most of the mass of the agglomeration was drawn into its center.
Rob" Time does not age things. Gerald is wrong. Space stretching does not make matter old, the term looks old is OK, as an imaginary idea, but time itself cannot make matter age. Matter does not age, it is measured or perceived to look old.
Tell me how can you get an old looking H atom?
Or how can a photon age?
Its silly to say such things.
humans, 1.4 liters, their jaw was more massive and their brow more sloped than ours. Stone tools found with the fossils appear to have been formed by deliberate chipping, a possible indication of ability to plan and to execute plans.
Rob" I saw living Neanderthal man in the poeple of Ranuangi New Britian in PNG back in 1987. Gerald is way off track here.
By forty thousand years ago Neanderthal had disappeared, replaced by Cro-Magnon, though the two had coexisted for tens of thousands of years. The morphology of the new hominids was essentially what you and I are today. With the appearance of Cro-Magnon, we find a marked increase
in motor skills.
The Hebrew word adam has its root in the Hebrew adamah, meaning soil. The creation of Adam relates to the human soul, the neshama. Since legend tells us that Adam was created twenty years old, is it possible that an Adam-like being lived for those first nineteen years without the neshama, and then became human at twenty with the
neshama' s creation?
R" My understanding is God made Adam in minutes from soil
For Adam, the order was reversed. The fact that Adam was first “made” (Gen. 1 :26) and only later “created” (Gen. 1 :27) informs us unequivocally that some amount of time passed during which Adam was fashioned. The neshama was implanted only after that vessel was complete. Whether that time was measured in microseconds or millions of earth years is not certain from the text. What is
certain is that the making of Adam’s body was not instantaneous and that its making preceded the
introduction of the neshama. Making takes time. The ultimate change from the final form into a human was instantaneous, the creation of the neshama.
Rob" Hmm?chapter 8
In an attempt to explain the amazingly rapid morphological changes observed in the fossil record, theories of evolution today talk of genetic bottlenecks in which very small herds undergo very large mutational changes. The herd’s small size allows a mutation to spread rapidly through it by breeding. But the smaller the herd, the fewer the number of mutations per generation and therefore the greater the number of generations required for a mutation to occur. The larger the herd the more mutations per season, but also, the more generations required for the mutation to spread through the herd. Confirmed evolutionists agree that you just cannot win if the classic concept of randomness at
the point molecular level of DNA is the driving force behind the mutations.— The time is just not there.
In Genesis 1: 1 we are told: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). In Exodus 3 1 : 17, we learn a significantly different account of our cosmic roots: “For six days the Eternal made the heavens and the earth” (Ex. 3 1 : 17). Is it “In the beginning” the heavens and the earth were created, or is it that it took six days for the heavens and the earth to be made? The objects of the
two verbs, created and made, are identical in both verses: “the heavens and the earth.” So we are talking of the same end product.
R" too much word games over words....
The universe was first created (Gen. 1:1) and then made (Ex. 31:17). That order was essential. Before the creation there was nothing with which to make.
For Adam, the order was reversed. The fact that Adam was first “made” (Gen. 1 :26) and only later “created” (Gen. 1 :27)
Hebrew has two words for soul, nefesh and neshama. They are represented by two divine creations mentioned in Genesis 1 : “And God created. . .every animal. . (Gen. 1 :2 1). All animals, humans included, share this first creation related to life. It signifies the infusion of the nefesh, the soul
of animal life. A few verses later when the text tells of humans, there is a further creation, one in which lower animals did not share. “And God created the adam. . .” (Gen. 1:27). That creation marks the soul of humankind, the neshama.
This dual nature of humankind appears with the first mention of mankind: “And God said let us make adam. . .” (Gen. 1 :26).
The “us” refers to the partnership, found in humankind, of the spiritual and material aspects of the world. Man has within him the animal as well as the godly.
R" Hmm? Yes man is partnered to God
Nahmanides concludes his extensive commentary on the implications of this lamed as: “Or it may be that the verse is stating that [prior to receiving the neshama ] it was a completely living being and [by the neshama ] it was transformed into another man.”— Another man! According to Nahmanides, who is the major kabalistic commentator on the Bible, the biblical text has told us that before the neshama there was something like a man that was not quite a human.
R" Not only word games, but letter games too?
From these unions came children that “were not human in the true sense of the word. They had not the
spirit of God. . .It is acknowledged that a being who does not possess this spirit is not human but a mere animal in human shape and form [!]. Yet such a creature has the power of causing harm and injury, a power which does not belong to other creatures. For those gifts of intelligence and judgment with which he has been endowed for the purpose of acquiring perfection,. . .are used by him
for wicked and mischievous ends.”- —
R" seems like Gerald is almost speaking of Dave's archon creatures, created by humans? Hmmm?
Here we have ancient accepted sources that describe animals with human shape, form, intelligence, and judgment. Suddenly cave paintings that predate Adam by twenty thousand years and ten-thousand-year-old inception of agriculture become understandable. These less-than-human creatures had human-like skills. What they lacked was human spirituality.
R" predate Adam by 20,000 years? I don't think so.
With whom did Adam have relations? Eve was the only other human woman there. The ancient commentaries imply that there were other mates available to Adam though they were not human. The fossil record might refer to them as Cro-Magnon creatures. Having been deprived of Eve’s spiritual contribution, the offspring of such relations would indeed be less than human.
R" weird idea Gerald
Creation of the universe from absolute and complete nothing marked the beginning of space, time, and matter. Theology has held that position for over three thousand years. Cosmology in the last decade or so has come to agree. These three parameters are characteristics of our universe, not of the Creator. Just as the biblical God is not composed of space or matter, God is also not bound by time. God is outside of time. And being outside of time means to exist in an “eternal or unending now,” an eternal present that includes past, present, and future simultaneously
Animals have choice because, according to the Bible, animals have a nefesh, and the nefesh provides the freedom to process and evaluate information. Biblically an animal is defined as nefesh hiyah — a living nefesh (Gen. 1:20).
R" yes Animals also have intelligence
There were all kinds of wonderful trees in the Garden, even one that gave eternal life and another that gave knowledge of good and evil. Now their Master and Maker and Creator had permitted Adam and Eve to eat from every tree therein. Well, almost every tree. There was one that was forbidden: the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And the punishment for eating from that tree was death. Luckily there was a loophole. To get around the promised calamity of death if they transgressed the prohibition, they could eat first from the tree of life and then later from the tree of knowledge. The choice was between eating from a tree that would grant life or from a tree that would bring death. In basic terms the choice was between life and death, not between good and evil.
R" correct.
It caught Zeng Li by surprise when I showed him where dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible. In Genesis 1:21 we are told that on day five God created the basis for all animal life. Among the categories of animals listed is one named taninim gedolim. Gedolim means big, and so we read “the big taninim .” Pickup five different English translations of the Hebrew Bible and you’re likely to find
five different meanings for the word taninim: whales, alligators, sea monsters, even dragons. Yet taneen, the singular of taninim, is a word that appears elsewhere in the Bible and its meaning is known.
R" Yes, and Gerald says mammals also lived with dinosaurs
In Exodus 3, the Eternal spoke to Moses from the burning bush and told him to return to Egypt to lead the enslaved Hebrews to freedom. Moses felt incapable of the task and so the Eternal gave him several signs, one related to his shepherd’s staff. When Moses was told to throw his staff on the ground “it became a nahash ” (Ex. 4:3). Nahash is the Hebrew word for snake. After Moses’ return to Egypt, when Pharaoh asked for a sign, Moses’ staff was again thrown to the ground and “became a taneen ” (Ex. 7:10). Why didn’t it become a nahash, a snake? And just five verses later, the Eternal tells Moses: “Get to Pharaoh in the morning, behold he goes to the water, and stand by the river’s edge and the staff which turned into a nahash take in your hand” (Ex. 7:15). It’s the same staff. The change is first referred to as a nahash, then as a taneen, then as a nahash. We know that nahash means snake from its use elsewhere. Taneen must be a general category of animals since it appears in the creation chapter of Genesis where, other than Adam, only general categories of life are listed. So taneen must be the general category within which nahash — snake — falls. The general category for snakes is reptile.
R" Hmm? "The change is first referred to as a nahash, then as a taneen, then as a nahash." Yes the snake is a simile of something else, a serpent creature?
In fact the passage of local proper time may be the same in both eras, but due to the stretching of space as the information passed between them (known as the redshift when referring to radiation frequency), the perception of relative time is very different. In this manner, the days of Genesis, as viewed from the start of day one, might indeed remain days and yet contain all the bygone ages of the universe, as we view those ages looking from the present back through the distant reaches of space and time.
Though flood stories are common to many ancient cultures, lines of native American civilizations show no break at the time of the biblical Flood.
R" Maybe they lived in the USA after the flood?
I do not know of any traditional
commentaries that totally satisfy this discrepancy between science and Bible. There are, however, some clues that may be relevant. Nahmanides notes that there may have been persons other than Noah and his family who survived the Flood (based on Gen. 6:4). The ark rested on a mountain in Ararat, a region believed (but not definitely known) to be in Armenia (Gen. 8:4). But as Nahmanides notes, there are many other mountains in the world higher than those of Armenia (on Gen. 8:5). The Mediterranean Sea may not have been affected according to a two-thousand-year-old tradition.- These sources indicate that the flood may have been local, not global.
R" Gerald is way off track now, a local flood?
Occasionally I hear the complaint: “Why didn’t the biblical calendar become earth-based on day three, when earth appeared?” This is a reasonable, though not a valid, question. The biblical calendar is a given and has been fixed for well over two thousand years. The biblical description of time is the same for the entire six-day period. It changes to earth-based time only near the end of the sixth day, at the creation of the soul of Adam (Gen. 1 :27). The Bible chose to use universal time, not earth-based
time, until Adam. We are not here to rewrite the Bible. We are trying to understand it as it is .
R" assumptions, "The Bible chose to use universal time, not earth-based time" Where is the proof for this idea?
In a bit of irony the Greek word for big or terrible reptiles is dinosaurus. If Genesis 1:21 were translated into Greek we’d read dinosaurus.
R" Maybe
--------------------------------------------------
D"This is assuming that you are standing still (static) and the universe is moving away from you
Technically – if the light source was moving toward you – time would blue shift (accelerate)
R" Gerald explains this with his daughter Hadras.
On another world she does homework in 3 minutes,
She comes back to earth to meet her friends now aged 3 years more than she has.
Only to us looking at the other world does time seem OLD
On earth the friend aged 3 years. On another world Hadras aged 3 minutes. Both had normal clocks ticking away.
Now if nobody leaves earth and all remains on earth, earth time ticks away a yom at a time. Only looking across space does the time become different.
D"Time is not linear – it is dependent upon speed and gravity
R" Yes, but each clock ticks away on its own gravity.
Earth yoms tick away with a 24 hour period of time. have down right back to Creation Week.
Why do you insist in measuring time outside of our reference frame with a different gravity and speed?
RP "But on my space ship, nothing about time slows down, because all things are inside the same frame of reference. Can't you see that?
D" You are correct and everyone sees that
R" great, than a earth based yom spaceship has it's own clock that is linear with time ticking away one 24 hour period at a time.
Our Creation week began around 6000 yoms ago. Simple really. I do not need to fathom the time on another gravity system or speed.
D"God is NOT trapped inside your space ship – His frame of reference – His perspective is so much LARGER
R" nor do I need to care about God's time or gravity system or speed.
D"AN observer on a different reference, say earth, (HEAVEN) trillions of miles (and 7 dimensions) away would see time from my spaceship slowing down. (and/or differently)
R" correct. But for us on earth time, we experience a day like all the days before us, Creation started 6000 yoms ago.
D"During the first 6.5 Days (Schroeder) – there was only God’s frame of reference – there was no human frame of reference
R" I see. Fair enough.
So our first yom from God's view took a billion yoms to reach God's face? Hmm? OK relativity.
Our second yom also took a long time to reach God's face?
But you are assuming earth was travelling away from God?
Not sure I agree. If earth was the centre of the Creation, than earth based time and cosmic based time would be the same yom?
D"Now – man looks BACK on those days of creation and they appear to us (the only way we know how to define them) – the only experience of time we have = our frame of reference
R" yes they (the stars) seem to look old.
D" Time seems to slow down – take longer – red shift – as we look backwards in time
R" Arrh no, not time in general, just our perception of the age of the stars...
D"Psa 90:4 For a thousand years (from the human frame of reference/perspective) = in Your sight (God’s frame of reference/perspective) are like a day just passing by, or like a watch in the night.
R" Yes, God gives us a week for SIN.
ROb notes your kind post about maths and Dillon's request. Thanks.
He is kind enough to present such a detailed book report – that to respond would feel disconnected
So – I just add my response within his post
Jun 15, 2022 17:17:19 GMT -5 @robertt said:
Full text of "Gerald L Schroeder The Science Of God The Convergence Of Scientific And Biblical Wisdom Free Press ( 2009)"The reason the six pre-Adam days (Genesis 1:1 – 27) were taken out of the calendar is because time is described differently in those Six Days of Genesis. There the passage of each day is described as “There was evening and morning” with no relationship to human time. Once we come to the progeny of Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years before having Seth. Seth lives 105 years before having Enosh, etc. (Genesis chapter 5). From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human-based, earth -based. But prior to that time, it’s an abstract concept: “Evening and morning.” It’s as if the Bible is looking at those events of Genesis One from a viewpoint other than the earth, a cosmic view of time. What might be the Biblical perception of the timing of those events prior to Adam relative to our earth-based measurements?
Rob" I do not find "But prior to that time, it’s an abstract concept: “Evening and morning" this is perfectly the way Hebrew people count time, we worship Sabbath from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, evening to evening. And Hebrew people count a day from evening to morning.
NO BEGINNING FOR DAY 1
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
The beginning of Day 2
Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
The beginning of Day 3
Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
The beginning of Day 4
Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
The beginning of Day 5
Gen 1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
The beginning of Day 6
Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
The beginning of Day 7
POINT – Day 1 has no stated beginning – it is just the time when God was
Most folk call that eternity – or infinity
POINT – Day 7 has no ending – IT REMAINITH
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
The beginning of Day 2
Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
The beginning of Day 3
Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
The beginning of Day 4
Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
The beginning of Day 5
Gen 1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
The beginning of Day 6
Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
The beginning of Day 7
POINT – Day 1 has no stated beginning – it is just the time when God was
Most folk call that eternity – or infinity
POINT – Day 7 has no ending – IT REMAINITH
R" THis is the only assumption Gerald uses to postulate hsi errors. This cosmic view of time exists if you are in heaven looking down on earth (CORRECT),
Gen 1 is written from God's perspective
There was no human perspectice to even consider - Schroeder
There was no human perspectice to even consider - Schroeder
We look back in time, and measure of the universe to be 14 billion years old. But as every scientist knows, when we say the universe is 14 billion years old, there’s another half of the sentence that we rarely bother to state. The universe is 14 billion years old as measured from the time-space coordinates of the earth, that is, from our current position in the universe.
R" correct and Gerald fails to mention this frame of reference much in his paper, "the time-space coordinates of the earth, that is, from our current position in the universe."
Today, we look back in time and we see approximately 14 billion years of history and those years went by. But how would they be perceived from the Bible’s perspective of time? Looking forward from when the universe was very small – billions of times smaller – the Bible teaches that six days passed. In truth, they both are correct.
R" confusion. Bait and switch technique. On earth on our frame of reference time is local yom, one after another. From heaven looking on earth, time is different according to that position.
Not confusing – not bait and switch – just simple relativity
You are standing on earth that is your frame of reference / perspective
God’s frame of reference is larger by a million billion galaxies and 10 dimensions of space/time
You are standing on earth that is your frame of reference / perspective
God’s frame of reference is larger by a million billion galaxies and 10 dimensions of space/time
archive.org/stream/GeraldLSchroederTheScienceOfGodTheConvergenceOfScientificAndBiblicalWisdomFreePress2009/Gerald+L++Schroeder-The+Science+of+God_+The+Convergence+of+Scientific+and+Biblical+Wisdom-Free+Press+%282009%29_djvu.txt
A simplistic reading of the Torah places our human origins at less than six thousand years in the past. Yet fossils of Homo sapiens extend back sixty thousand years. Neither source of knowledge need alter its view. Nahmanides, seven hundred years ago, Maimonides over eight hundred years ago, and the Talmud, dating back some sixteen hundred years, discuss the existence of beings living before and alongside Adam They were described as human in shape and intelligence but lacking the soul, the neshama, to make them human. There is no trickery here.
R" I suppose Satan, the opposing elohiym power, adds subtle changings in the mind of so called wise, so to promote his dealings later in time. I disagree with the passage of Gerald completely. There are no fossils of that age, such is a made up conjecture of story telling.
There were no humanoid creatures before Adam.
The writings of Gerald are strange at times"
Was it was possible that Adam had an ancestor. “The text of Genesis and the ancient
commentaries certainly [certainly, mind you!] leave the door open for that interpretation.”
Too often he is swayed by popular Jewish writings outside of the received Hebrew torah.
Sorry – Gen 1 = man (Humanoid) – before Gen 2 man (Human Being) = 100% Torah
Total agreement with the fossil record
Total agreement with Intelligent Design
Total agreement with Torah
The medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote that conflicts between science and the Bible arise from either a lack of scientific knowledge or a defective understanding of the Bible. This is a continuing problem.
Thank you for this - this is exactly my teaching - my belief - my point of view things only happened one way - God's Way Why would a believer be threatened when science validate scripture |
R" Hmm? You mean the opposing elohiym power had to add some comprises in his writers over time? The inspired Hebrew torah is inspired, and lacks such additional comments for a reason.
It's different to modern science. Why would any believer be threatened when sciece validates scripture
The universe is tuned for life from its inception.
Genesis agrees: when life first appears on the third day, the word creation does not appear. We are merely told “The earth brought forth” life. Earth had within it the necessary properties for life to flourish.
R" Gerald alludes to the idea that plant life came about by natural force alone, not created...In other writings he suggests "God made matter from nothing and than shaped of made it" I suggest no such thing.
Hab 3:4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.
Something was coming out of the Creators hand, so something does not come from nothing. And God engineered this something, the terms created or made, or formed relate to the OVERALL processes of engineering.
Jews are nitpicking over word games to make new additions to the Hebrew torah.
You just substitute your own word game for his
“The earth brought forth” life. – at lease he uses scripture
the OVERALL processes of engineering.
INCREMENTAL CREATION – God did it one at a time in an incremental progression
“The earth brought forth” life. – at lease he uses scripture
the OVERALL processes of engineering.
INCREMENTAL CREATION – God did it one at a time in an incremental progression
Rob" Yes God made everything perfect in circles, but when sinning came more of the cursing of God came. Nothing strange about imperfect orbits.
REPEAT - The Bible did not claim this. The Church did.
The biblical concept of an infinite God is a God that could make all births perfect. I imagine if I were God I would. But the world as described in the Bible does not function according to our demands. Most children are born healthy and physically normal, but not all. Nature has its level of freedom,
R" correct, once sinning is allowed to exist, God must allow sinning to exist in all forms, including RA.
Not worthy of a comment
3. “And God saw the light, that it is good” (Gen. 1:4); “And God saw that it [the oceans and earth] is good” (Gen. 1:10); “And God saw that it [the origin of plant life] is good” (Gen.
1:12); and on and on. God sees that “it is good” seven times in the thirty-one verses of the first chapter of Genesis — the creation chapter. Almost a quarter of all those verses are devoted to God’s discovering that “It is good.” Didn’t God realize from the start that it would be good? Perhaps. But this is not explicit in the text.
R" Maybe God forsaw the Gnostics writings that would spoil His words?
Gnostic - God had the time and the privalage to enjoy his creation one at a time in an incremental progression
Time and again, the Torah implies that the infinitely powerful biblical God withheld control and allowed the world to follow its own course. With this godly approach to world management, the results were not always “good.” The Creator then redirected the flow.
R" Hmm? If sinning is to exist, than God has to allow sinning to naturally take its course, including the natural and moral RA associated with sinning. - OK - Free Will + Gen 3:15 = The Gnostic Contest
At each stage, God withheld control to a greater or lesser extent. This allowed the world to develop according to the laws of nature created at the beginning and the moral responsibility
The gradual evolution, of a trait that only slightly alters the morphology of the animal is referred to as micro-evolution. The change in longevity for post-Flood humans is micro-evolution. It is observed regularly in farmyards and biology laboratories. It finds no dispute in the Bible. Macro-
evolution, the evolution of one body plan into another — a worm or insect or mollusk evolving into a fish, for example — finds no support in the fossil record, in the lab, or in the Bible.
R" Gerald alludes to micro-evolution, but not macro-evolution. Personally I do not like any terms referencing evolution. Since the first science people were Christians writing of God's world, why must we talk of evolution words? natural selection is a Creationist idea.
I also do not like the term – but it is Darwin’s Finches
Variation within a species – variation with a phenotype
Dogs – Horses – Humans – even mules
natural selection is a Creationist idea
EXCUSE ME natural selection is 100% Darwin!
Variation within a species – variation with a phenotype
Dogs – Horses – Humans – even mules
natural selection is a Creationist idea
EXCUSE ME natural selection is 100% Darwin!
Rob" I can relate to this idea.
DUH - it is the definition of ra - the movement away from God
Isaiah in two sentences clarifies this concept: “I am the Eternal, there is nothing else. I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil” (Is. 45:6, 7). The infinite source of light withdraws and darkness is created. The infinite source of peace ( shalom , from the root shalaim meaning whole, complete) withdraws and evil (lack of perfection) is created. The first biblical tsimtsum (Gen. 1:1) allowed the physical complexity of the universe with its laws of nature to emerge. Then followed the creation of the nefesh — the soul of animal life — allowing animals choice
strongly dictated by instinct and inclination (Gen. 1:21). The third and final creation was the human soul — the neshama — instilling free will in humans (Gen. 1 :27).
R" Hmm?
It may come as a surprise that belief in a beginning does not require belief in a Beginner. The laws of nature allow the creation of the universe without the need for a creator. “Quantum uncertainty,” an aspect of the physics known as quantum mechanics, allows the small but finite possibility of
something coming into being from nothing via what is nown as a quantum fluctuation.- Since quantum mechanics has a sixty-year track record for predicting and explaining bserved phenomena, this theory of a quantum fluctuation/big bang beginning too may be correct.
R" something Gerald says is weird.
According to the fossil record, gradual evolution has been found to be false at every major morphological change.
R" correct
Correct supports INCREMENTAL CREATION
Then, 530 million years ago in the Cambrian era, with no hint in earlier fossils, the basic anatomies of all life extant today appeared simultaneously in the oceans.- ------ The Cambrian explosion of life is one of the century’s greatest discoveries.
R" Gerald still uses the evolutionary time, that does not exist on our frame of reference.
and why a conversation with Robert is so unsatisfying
Scientific time is only a representation of order
Scientific time does not measure the clock – it measures volume
Human time – is the only perspective / frame of reference we have
Scientific time is only a representation of order
Scientific time does not measure the clock – it measures volume
Human time – is the only perspective / frame of reference we have
Species, he implored his readers to ignore the evidence of the fossil record as a refutation of his concept of evolution or to “use imagination to fill in its gaps.” The record’s leaps and bounds, he claimed, were the result of its being incomplete.
Biblical time before Adam is so highly compressed that there is simply no opportunity to describe the processes (or even the sequence except in the broadest of terms) that caused life to advance from the simple to the complex. The Bible is eager to get on with the story of humankind.
From Adam and forward, biblical time is time as we know it, no longer compressed. But less than six thousand years span the period between biblical Adam and the present, not nearly enough time for macro-evolution to occur, even by the most extreme interpretation of punctuated evolution.
R" correct, macro-evolution doesn't exist
Also correct is that creationist are in a hurry to race to man - The Bible is eager to get on with the story of humankind.
Scientific estimates of fossil ages and a multibillion-year-old universe come from a variety of diverse and independent measurements. Since the 1940s, carbon- 14 has been a standard method for dating fairly young fossils, those with ages up to about thirty thousand years. But with C- 14 there has always been room for suspicion. For the ages to be valid, the amount of radioactive carbon (i.e., C-14) in the
atmosphere must always have been constant. Carbon- 14 is produced by cosmic rays smashing into nitrogen atoms near the top of Earth’s atmosphere. If the intensity of cosmic radiation was different in bygone ages, then the C-14 dating system will be in error. There is now evidence that cosmic radiation has not been absolutely constant during the eras that C-14 is used for fossil dating.
Rob" correct past radiation was not constant, so clocks based on radioactive decay are irrevelent
Not irrelevant - just an inaccurate measure of time - because it does not indicate time - it indicates volume
Not irrelevant – helps with in indication of ORDER
Not irrelevant – helps with in indication of ORDER
R" Hmm?
Ancient commentaries, those written millennia before the discoveries of paleontology and cosmology disclosed any hints that the universe was billions of years old, state definitively that the six days of Genesis were twenty- four hours each, the total duration of which was “as the six days of our work week.”-, ^
R" so if the commentaries are six 24 hr periods, why does Gerald seek to twist them more?
But these same commentators continued and described those six twenty-four-hour days as containing “all the secrets and ages of the universe.”- Now that sounds like Psalm 90:4!
R" so for these secrets, we dare to invent further cosmic clocks of enourmous ages?
Time is the only argument of a creationist
By the way, atoms to do age.
Rock do not age.
Humans do not age. We are on average about 3 months old, every protein is replaced daily. We we look old is because of the DNA makes mistakes.
No such thing as time anyway... only the mind records the past ahead of us, as Jeff Benner explains.
Can you feel any of this? Are the clouds flying by at breakneck speed? No. So why believe it? Well, just as you can’t believe everything you read, you can’t believe everything you see. It takes research, intellectual effort, to find the truth. Our senses may be adequate for getting us to work and back, but when it comes to questions of the cosmos, our senses need help. The secrets of nature are
not always revealed by a literal reading of nature.
R" Modern science is not very good and discovering truth.
Your understanding of modern science is extremely outdated
R" Gerald wants to mock the old commentaries, and add the secrets of time...
The ancient realization that somehow the days of Genesis contained the generations of the cosmos is based on two biblical verses: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Eternal God made earth and heavens” (Gen. 2:4); and
“This is the book of the generations of Adam in the day that God created Adam” (Gen. 5: 1). In both verses, generations are juxtaposed to days of Genesis.
R" Yes I like this Gerald, relativity is written in Hebrew all this time. Pun intended.
Then why have you worked so hard at denying it
system. Only if we view events across a boundary, looking from one location into another location that has a very different G or Y can we observe the effect of this extraordinary law of nature which was discovered by Einstein. The relativity of time is encountered only when comparing one system relative to another; hence the name the law of relativity.
R" IN order to experience huge changes in G you have to visit another frame of reference, something Gerald neglects to tell you...
Or God waves his hand and theing change - like the sun erupting causing the atm of the inner planets to dissapate allowing eath to decompress to our current configuration.
That’s not quite correct, is it?
In Hadas ’s time, three minutes will have passed. But for us on Earth, those three minutes will have taken two years. In those two years Hadas will have done only three minutes of homework and aged only three minutes. Upon return to Earth, all her friends will be thirteen while she will still be eleven.
R" correct. So why does Gerald invent billions of years into the spaceship called earth. Travelling in the Creation Week the earth space ship took just six days to travel.
Where is this other frame of reference you so badly seek?
On the on hand you say you understand relativity
Then you act dumbfounded as if it was a foreign concept
One Frame of reference / perspective = man's
One Frame of reference / perspective = God's
I wrote that real slow so you could understand
Then you act dumbfounded as if it was a foreign concept
One Frame of reference / perspective = man's
One Frame of reference / perspective = God's
I wrote that real slow so you could understand
aging) would have passed veryslowly. To me, events in my system were totally normal. From Hadas’s perspective, her watch and her actions were normal, but looking across the reaches of space from her high-gravity system into my lower-gravity system, she would have seen my watch and
everything else on Earth going very rapidly Between two beats of her heart, my heart would beat 350,000 times.
R" now the imaginary bait and switch, if you see from your reference to another reference, you see time slowing down. Yes correct. But you cares? Nobody on earth was looking into space, nor Creation week looking to another frame of reference.
There are any number of ages for our universe, each being correct for the location at which the measurement is made. And there are literally billions of locations where a clock, if we could place one there, would tick so slowly that fifteen billion Earth years would pass while it recorded only six twenty-four-hour days.
R" correct, Relativity different locations, different frames of reference have different times.
a moment ago you called relativity bait and switch
R" No we don't have to, on earth the earth time remained six yoms in Creation Week. No need to seek how other worlds saw our time clock across space.
There were no humans - and therefor no human time / frame of reference - only God's
The biblical calendar is divided into two sections: the first six days of Genesis and all the time thereafter. Those six days are not, and never have been, included in the calendar of the years which follow Adam.
Time in the biblical calendar after Adam must have been Earth-based.
R" Not so. COunting time evening to morning is the correct way to record time. In our earth ship we have a single clock. Nobody cares to view another's clock across the trillions of light years of space. Our local based clock is based on the yom, Gerald agrees is six 24 hours.
No he does not - stop missrepresenting others to make you doctrine correct
Rob" Assumption and wrong.
If there was war in heaven, and messengers were banished to earth, than earth existed long before Creation of Man.
Earth was a desert as 2 degrees Kelvin, yes, because sinners lived there. Unformed, so of, but the rock was here, central stage.
revisit your comments after you get your PhD in astro-physics
reviewed data that are accepted in physics laboratories of leading universities. I have limited my sources of biblical interpretation to the Talmud (redacted in the year 400) and the kabalist Nahmanides (1250), the two mainstream traditional paths to the deeper meanings held within the text of Genesis.
R" Yes an agenda to mix modern science into Hebrew science. They do not mix.
ponderingconfusion.com/papers.php?id=increment
Incremental Creation
My point here is not to prove a correlation between scripture and science. However, it is my mission to show that these two warring factions, scripture and science, are not in conflict with one another.
Shakespeare asked the question, “What is in a name?” The process that populated our planet with life happened the way it happened; regardless of what you call it, Creation, Natural Selection, or Evolution. However, with the evidence at hand, Incremental Creation serves as the best-fit description of that process. Satisfying the fossil record and scripture, complete with incremental creative surges throughout the time line.
Incremental Creation
My point here is not to prove a correlation between scripture and science. However, it is my mission to show that these two warring factions, scripture and science, are not in conflict with one another.
Shakespeare asked the question, “What is in a name?” The process that populated our planet with life happened the way it happened; regardless of what you call it, Creation, Natural Selection, or Evolution. However, with the evidence at hand, Incremental Creation serves as the best-fit description of that process. Satisfying the fossil record and scripture, complete with incremental creative surges throughout the time line.
REPEAT The medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote that conflicts between science and the Bible arise from either a lack of scientific knowledge or a defective understanding of the Bible. This is a continuing problem.
R" Yes light is both a particles and a wave.
A common error in exploring the brief biblical age of the universe relative to the discoveries of cosmology is to view the universe from a specific location rather than choosing a reference frame that embraces the entire universe and retains that universal perspective for the entire six days. The clock of Genesis starts with the creation of the universe and continues till the creation of humankind. It must identify the relative passage of time not between particular places in the universe but between moments in the universe as the universe evolved from the big bang.
R" moments? Time is not based on moments, but speeds comparing different frames of reference?'
Like is wish I wasn't having this moment now
R" No need for another clock at all
Three aspects of the universe produce identical effects on radiation frequency. Positive differences in velocity, gravity, and the stretching of space as the universe expands all increase (stretch) the wavelength of radiation. Since the frequency of radiation (and hence the beat of the cosmic clock) is lowered in direct proportion to the increase in wavelength, this increase in wavelength slows the perceived passage of time. The first two of these three phenomena relate to differences in the flow of conventional time — biological time — between specific locations. The third, the universal stretching of space, equally alters the perception of time’s flow as reckoned by the universal cosmic clock. It is with his third aspect, the stretching of space, that I work — as did Nahmanides. That is to say, neither gravity nor velocity enters the calculations that follow.
R" Hmm? similar to Setterfield, a faster light ray produces a slower time clock, as does other things? Hmm? No sure.
Not smart enough to fathom this kind of thinking.
AGREED
A more accurate, though cumbersome, translation of Genesis 1:2 is: “And the earth was in a state of chaos but filled with the building blocks of matter.”
R" Gnostics would love that wouldn't they? NO, earth was experiencing RA because sinners were there.
That stretching of the light waves has slowed the frequency
of the cosmic clock — expanded the perceived time between ticks of that clock — by a million million.
R" Not smart enough to fathom this kind of thinking.
AGREED
R" That's funny I thought Creation Week of earth, was tied to earth....so as the stars raced away from earth they look old, yes, get that, a different frame of reference, but on earth inside the spaceship our time is local, so changes to earth is also local.
It is a clock that looks forward in time from the creation, encompassing the entire universe, a universal clock tuned to the cosmic radiation at the moment when matter formed. That cosmic timepiece, as observed today, ticks a million million times more slowly than at its inception. The million millionfold stretching of radiation since bohu caused that million-million-to-one ratio in this perception of time.
This cosmic clock records the passage of one minute while we on Earth experience a million million minutes. The dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 120 million years, as measured by our perception of time. Those clocks are set by the decay of radioactive nuclides here on Earth and they are correct for our earthly system But to know the cosmic time we must divide earth time by a million million.
R" Why do we also need a cosmic clock and where is this clock located? It has to be no based on earth. SO the only clock we have on earth is a earth based clock, the six 24 hour yom the Jewish commentaries write.
But Gerald wants to add more secrets into them.
That’s the peer-reviewed physics and the biblical tradition of this discussion. Now for the modern theology.
In terms of days and years and millennia, this stretching of the cosmic perception of time by a factor of a million million, the division of fifteen billion years by a million million reduces those fifteen billion years to six days!
Genesis and science are both correct. When one asks if six days or fifteen billion years passed before the appearance of humankind, the correct answer is “yes.”
The validity of this approach, cosmic time relative to local time, has been given the stamp of approval both by the prestigious, peer reviewed journal Nature (volume 342, 23; 1989) and the American Journal of Physics (volume 52:2; 1990).
R" I will check this out later.
everyone agrees - except you
The Bible limited its description of this period to the creation, and then to light separating from darkness (Gen. 1 :4). It mentions here an event that appears nowhere else in the entire Hebrew Bible, a one-time phenomenon described as the spirit of God hovering over the universe (Gen. 1 :2). Biblically, this was required to start the making of the universe following its creation. Physics also calls for a one-time phenomenon which it named inflation. This was a sudden and brief expansion of the universe immediately following the big bang. In a minuscule fraction of a second, the universe stretched from its point at creation to a size similar to that of today’s solar system. Shortly thereafter,
it is thought, the expansion “settled” into a rate similar to the currently measured value.
R" I do not like the way Gerald disrespects the MEDIUM that hovering over our Creation, or its purpose.
Rev 12:1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
Rev 12:2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
Rev 12:3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
Rev 12:4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
Rev 12:5 And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
Rev 12:6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
Rev 12:2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
Rev 12:3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
Rev 12:4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
Rev 12:5 And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
Rev 12:6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
that “there was no special day assigned for this command for vegetation alone since it is not a unique work.”— Of all the events listed for the six days, this is the only one that tradition states occurred over an extended period not limited to that particular day.
R" SO plants emerged from natural laws?
NO - God began and continued to created more as He pleased INCREMENTAL CREATION
Science and Bible are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
R" I don't think so. Can be, but science people are generally opposed to divine science.
TRUTH - science people are generally agreeable to an Intelligent Design - thay just refuse your doctrine of vegataerian sharks - which just keeps the intelligent away
At the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, the Bible tells us that God used a wind that blew all night to split the Sea of Reeds (Ex. 14:21). Why an all-night wind rather than
perhaps a hand from heaven? That would have been much more impressive.
R" Was it really the Sea of Reeds?
I say Red Sea
God’s reply was short and to the point: “Is anything too hard for the Eternal?” (Gen. 18:14).
Rob" Ge 18:14 Is <pala'> any thing <dabar> too hard <pala'> for the LORD <Y@hovah>? Gerald is adding meaning not in the Hebrew? He is Jewish and does not like speaking YHWH, I get his pious nature.
In his closing address, Moses adjures the people to “Remember the days of old, consider the years of each generation” (Deut. 32:7). Kabalah tells us these “days of old” are the six days of Genesis, and “the years of each generation” are the historical records of civilization.^ Understanding the events of our cosmic and social past is a key to discovering the immanence of God. The Bible
insists the evidence is there for us to discover God in this world: “ You shall know that I am the Eternal” (Ex. 6:7; Ex. 29:46; Deut. 4:39).
God led the Israelites through the wilderness by a pillar of cloud in the day and a pillar of fire in the night. Cloud and fire, around the clock, inform us that God was leading every step of the way. As they marched directly toward their goal of Mount Sinai, God told the Israelites to change course, to
turn around and head back along part of the path they had just traversed (Ex. 14:2). This placed the Israelites in great danger. The Gulf of Akaba/Eilat now blocked their escape from the pursuing Egyptians.
R" so if Akaba, why also speak of the Sea of Reeds?
I say Red Sea - and why you cannot build an entire doctrine around two words
However improbable we regard this event [ the start of all life] , or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once. And for life as we know it... once may be enough.
Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time the “impossible” becomes the possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.-
These words were written by Nobel laureate and Harvard University biology professor George Wald and published in the widely read journal Scientific American.
In short, life could not have started by chance.
R" correct.
The Bible has no problem with this concept of life’s beginnings: “And the Earth brought forth” life (Genesis 1 : 12). In biblical language we are being told that the Earth itself had within it the properties to encourage the emergence of life. There is no biblical mention of a special creation for the origin of life. The laws of nature, created along with the creation of the universe, and the very special conditions on adequate to orchestrate the flow of the universe toward life.
So how can the development of life be explained?
R" Why must we know:?
Romans 1:19 + Psa 19:2 - we want to know
Each of their cells contains as much as one hundred times more DNA than a cell of any mammal, including humans.—
R" wow? what does this tell us?
How AMAZING our Creator is
Since micro-fossils of primordial algae and protozoans have shape and size similar to modern specimens, it may be inferred that their genetic library was equally large.
The list divides animals into categories: the insects in one place, fish in another, and so forth. In Leviticus 11:18 birds are listed. Among them we find the tinshemet. Twelve verses later (Lev. 1 1 :30), the reptiles are listed. And behold, the tinshemet appears again. The same name, spelled identically ( tuf nun shin mem tuf in the Hebrew) is given for a bird and for a reptile because at one level of biblical meaning the animal fell into both categories.
In the entire Bible, there is the one reference to an animal that falls into two categories, the tinshemet. In the entire fossil record there is one fossil that falls exactly midway between two classes of animals, the archaeopteryx. And both the archaeopteryx and the tinshemet are part reptile, part bird. It is the “link” that never was missing.
Rob" Hmm?
This move toward order from chaos is not impossible provided the system had direction. There was and still is usable energy present to power the emergence of order. Order out of chaos is, however, such an unusual and improbable trend of events that the Torah mentions it six times.
R" SOunds Gnostic, I prefer God made this functional from the beginning in milliseconds, no need for chaos, no need for natural ra either.
Agreed - an omnipotent God would not need 6 day - or 6 seconds or a fraction of your millisecond
Instead - God created things incrementally over a 6 day period - one at a time - with time to enjoy each new creation to its fullest
Instead - God created things incrementally over a 6 day period - one at a time - with time to enjoy each new creation to its fullest
R" I will check if bacteria have error checking DNA systems? Something wrong here?
It is possible to explain the hominid fossils that predate Adam as having been placed there as a test by the Creator. And that may be true. There certainly is no way of disproving this hypothesis. Here, I argue from a different tack: that the fossils record a true account of history, that they present no threat to Torah, and most important, that major ancient commentaries anticipated these discoveries.
R" wishful thinking on Geralds part? Not sure?
When I was first struggling with the questions of our origins, I steeled my courage to ask the renowned biblical scholar, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, if it was possible that Adam had an ancestor. Not knowing what to expect, I skirted the issue for a few awkward minutes. When I finally presented the question, his matter-of-fact reply almost bowled me over: “The text of Genesis and the ancient
commentaries of Nahmanides on that text certainly [certainly, mind you!] leave the door open for that
interpretation.”
R" My understanding is God made Adam in minutes from soil
Three billion years passed. The universe was now approximately ten billion years old. Thirty thousand light years from the Milky Way’s center and just north of the central plane of the disk, primordial hydrogen that had mixed with the stardust of bygone supernovae agglomerated, drawn together by mutual gravitational attraction. Most of the mass of the agglomeration was drawn into its center.
Rob" Time does not age things. Gerald is wrong. Space stretching does not make matter old, the term looks old is OK, as an imaginary idea, but time itself cannot make matter age. Matter does not age, it is measured or perceived to look old.
Tell me how can you get an old looking H atom?
Or how can a photon age?
Its silly to say such things.
By 150,000 years ago, Neanderthal had appeared. The fossil record for this period is more complete. Neanderthals were similar to modern humans in many morphological respects. Amain difference was the shape of their skull. Although their cranial capacity was about that of modern
humans, 1.4 liters, their jaw was more massive and their brow more sloped than ours. Stone tools found with the fossils appear to have been formed by deliberate chipping, a possible indication of ability to plan and to execute plans.
Rob" I saw living Neanderthal man in the poeple of Ranuangi New Britian in PNG back in 1987. Gerald is way off track here.
You should have published in all the jouranals - where is your documentation - where is your validation
By forty thousand years ago Neanderthal had disappeared, replaced by Cro-Magnon, though the two had coexisted for tens of thousands of years. The morphology of the new hominids was essentially what you and I are today. With the appearance of Cro-Magnon, we find a marked increase
in motor skills.
The Hebrew word adam has its root in the Hebrew adamah, meaning soil. The creation of Adam relates to the human soul, the neshama. Since legend tells us that Adam was created twenty years old, is it possible that an Adam-like being lived for those first nineteen years without the neshama, and then became human at twenty with the
neshama' s creation?
R" My understanding is God made Adam in minutes from soil
For Adam, the order was reversed. The fact that Adam was first “made” (Gen. 1 :26) and only later “created” (Gen. 1 :27) informs us unequivocally that some amount of time passed during which Adam was fashioned. The neshama was implanted only after that vessel was complete. Whether that time was measured in microseconds or millions of earth years is not certain from the text. What is
certain is that the making of Adam’s body was not instantaneous and that its making preceded the
introduction of the neshama. Making takes time. The ultimate change from the final form into a human was instantaneous, the creation of the neshama.
Rob" Hmm?
Gen 2:7 and man became a hman being
In an attempt to explain the amazingly rapid morphological changes observed in the fossil record, theories of evolution today talk of genetic bottlenecks in which very small herds undergo very large mutational changes. The herd’s small size allows a mutation to spread rapidly through it by breeding. But the smaller the herd, the fewer the number of mutations per generation and therefore the greater the number of generations required for a mutation to occur. The larger the herd the more mutations per season, but also, the more generations required for the mutation to spread through the herd. Confirmed evolutionists agree that you just cannot win if the classic concept of randomness at
the point molecular level of DNA is the driving force behind the mutations.— The time is just not there.
In Genesis 1: 1 we are told: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). In Exodus 3 1 : 17, we learn a significantly different account of our cosmic roots: “For six days the Eternal made the heavens and the earth” (Ex. 3 1 : 17). Is it “In the beginning” the heavens and the earth were created, or is it that it took six days for the heavens and the earth to be made? The objects of the
two verbs, created and made, are identical in both verses: “the heavens and the earth.” So we are talking of the same end product.
R" too much word games over words....
Ha - says the master of word games
For Adam, the order was reversed. The fact that Adam was first “made” (Gen. 1 :26) and only later “created” (Gen. 1 :27)
Hebrew has two words for soul, nefesh and neshama. They are represented by two divine creations mentioned in Genesis 1 : “And God created. . .every animal. . (Gen. 1 :2 1). All animals, humans included, share this first creation related to life. It signifies the infusion of the nefesh, the soul
of animal life. A few verses later when the text tells of humans, there is a further creation, one in which lower animals did not share. “And God created the adam. . .” (Gen. 1:27). That creation marks the soul of humankind, the neshama.
This dual nature of humankind appears with the first mention of mankind: “And God said let us make adam. . .” (Gen. 1 :26).
The “us” refers to the partnership, found in humankind, of the spiritual and material aspects of the world. Man has within him the animal as well as the godly.
R" Hmm? Yes man is partnered to God
Jewish dualism = (yester tov) + (yeater ra)
R" Not only word games, but letter games too?
From these unions came children that “were not human in the true sense of the word. They had not the
spirit of God. . .It is acknowledged that a being who does not possess this spirit is not human but a mere animal in human shape and form [!]. Yet such a creature has the power of causing harm and injury, a power which does not belong to other creatures. For those gifts of intelligence and judgment with which he has been endowed for the purpose of acquiring perfection,. . .are used by him
for wicked and mischievous ends.”- —
R" seems like Gerald is almost speaking of Dave's archon creatures, created by humans? Hmmm?
Why would it suprise you that the jews have always accepted belzeebub and the shedim as their demonology?
R" predate Adam by 20,000 years? I don't think so.
Gen 1 man - vrs Gen 2 Human being
R" weird idea Gerald
Creation of the universe from absolute and complete nothing marked the beginning of space, time, and matter. Theology has held that position for over three thousand years. Cosmology in the last decade or so has come to agree. These three parameters are characteristics of our universe, not of the Creator. Just as the biblical God is not composed of space or matter, God is also not bound by time. God is outside of time. And being outside of time means to exist in an “eternal or unending now,” an eternal present that includes past, present, and future simultaneously
Animals have choice because, according to the Bible, animals have a nefesh, and the nefesh provides the freedom to process and evaluate information. Biblically an animal is defined as nefesh hiyah — a living nefesh (Gen. 1:20).
R" yes Animals also have intelligence
There were all kinds of wonderful trees in the Garden, even one that gave eternal life and another that gave knowledge of good and evil. Now their Master and Maker and Creator had permitted Adam and Eve to eat from every tree therein. Well, almost every tree. There was one that was forbidden: the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And the punishment for eating from that tree was death. Luckily there was a loophole. To get around the promised calamity of death if they transgressed the prohibition, they could eat first from the tree of life and then later from the tree of knowledge. The choice was between eating from a tree that would grant life or from a tree that would bring death. In basic terms the choice was between life and death, not between good and evil.
R" correct.
It caught Zeng Li by surprise when I showed him where dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible. In Genesis 1:21 we are told that on day five God created the basis for all animal life. Among the categories of animals listed is one named taninim gedolim. Gedolim means big, and so we read “the big taninim .” Pickup five different English translations of the Hebrew Bible and you’re likely to find
five different meanings for the word taninim: whales, alligators, sea monsters, even dragons. Yet taneen, the singular of taninim, is a word that appears elsewhere in the Bible and its meaning is known.
R" Yes, and Gerald says mammals also lived with dinosaurs
and so do I - so does everyone - is this a problem for you?
R" Hmm? "The change is first referred to as a nahash, then as a taneen, then as a nahash." Yes the snake is a simile of something else, a serpent creature?
Rev 12:9 ... the great dragon ..., that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world...
In fact the passage of local proper time may be the same in both eras, but due to the stretching of space as the information passed between them (known as the redshift when referring to radiation frequency), the perception of relative time is very different. In this manner, the days of Genesis, as viewed from the start of day one, might indeed remain days and yet contain all the bygone ages of the universe, as we view those ages looking from the present back through the distant reaches of space and time.
Though flood stories are common to many ancient cultures, lines of native American civilizations show no break at the time of the biblical Flood.
R" Maybe they lived in the USA after the flood?
I do not know of any traditional
commentaries that totally satisfy this discrepancy between science and Bible. There are, however, some clues that may be relevant. Nahmanides notes that there may have been persons other than Noah and his family who survived the Flood (based on Gen. 6:4). The ark rested on a mountain in Ararat, a region believed (but not definitely known) to be in Armenia (Gen. 8:4). But as Nahmanides notes, there are many other mountains in the world higher than those of Armenia (on Gen. 8:5). The Mediterranean Sea may not have been affected according to a two-thousand-year-old tradition.- These sources indicate that the flood may have been local, not global.
R" Gerald is way off track now, a local flood?
Sorry - but those other sources do point to a local flood
time, until Adam. We are not here to rewrite the Bible. We are trying to understand it as it is .
R" assumptions, "The Bible chose to use universal time, not earth-based time" Where is the proof for this idea?
the 6 days of creation - DUH
In a bit of irony the Greek word for big or terrible reptiles is dinosaurus. If Genesis 1:21 were translated into Greek we’d read dinosaurus.
R" Maybe
Job 40:15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
--------------------------------------------------
D"This is assuming that you are standing still (static) and the universe is moving away from you
Technically – if the light source was moving toward you – time would blue shift (accelerate)
R" Gerald explains this with his daughter Hadras.
On another world she does homework in 3 minutes,
She comes back to earth to meet her friends now aged 3 years more than she has.
Only to us looking at the other world does time seem OLD
On earth the friend aged 3 years. On another world Hadras aged 3 minutes. Both had normal clocks ticking away.
Now if nobody leaves earth and all remains on earth, earth time ticks away a yom at a time. Only looking across space does the time become different.
D"Time is not linear – it is dependent upon speed and gravity
R" Yes, but each clock ticks away on its own gravity.
Earth yoms tick away with a 24 hour period of time. have down right back to Creation Week.
Why do you insist in measuring time outside of our reference frame with a different gravity and speed?
RP "But on my space ship, nothing about time slows down, because all things are inside the same frame of reference. Can't you see that?
D" You are correct and everyone sees that
R" great, than a earth based yom spaceship has it's own clock that is linear with time ticking away one 24 hour period at a time.
Our Creation week began around 6000 yoms ago. Simple really. I do not need to fathom the time on another gravity system or speed.
D"God is NOT trapped inside your space ship – His frame of reference – His perspective is so much LARGER
R" nor do I need to care about God's time or gravity system or speed.
D"AN observer on a different reference, say earth, (HEAVEN) trillions of miles (and 7 dimensions) away would see time from my spaceship slowing down. (and/or differently)
R" correct. But for us on earth time, we experience a day like all the days before us, Creation started 6000 yoms ago.
D"During the first 6.5 Days (Schroeder) – there was only God’s frame of reference – there was no human frame of reference
R" I see. Fair enough.
So our first yom from God's view took a billion yoms to reach God's face? Hmm? OK relativity.
Our second yom also took a long time to reach God's face?
But you are assuming earth was travelling away from God?
Not sure I agree. If earth was the centre of the Creation, than earth based time and cosmic based time would be the same yom?
D"Now – man looks BACK on those days of creation and they appear to us (the only way we know how to define them) – the only experience of time we have = our frame of reference
R" yes they (the stars) seem to look old.
D" Time seems to slow down – take longer – red shift – as we look backwards in time
R" Arrh no, not time in general, just our perception of the age of the stars...
D"Psa 90:4 For a thousand years (from the human frame of reference/perspective) = in Your sight (God’s frame of reference/perspective) are like a day just passing by, or like a watch in the night.
R" Yes, God gives us a week for SIN.
ROb notes your kind post about maths and Dillon's request. Thanks.