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Poisoning the well already? There's a good case to be made that it's a big Christian tactic to take verses out of context, especially when discussing the supposed "prophesies" of Christ. I'm sure you wouldn't want the shit to flow back your way, now would you?
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First off, can we not discuss this peacefully? I don't appreciate the ad hominem arguments. If you're not willing to reason kindly, then I have no reason to discuss this any further.
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I find it interesting that in his original post, LinuxPup's Big Point was that the word used is "chronos," or "time." Now it's "aionios." I wonder why the discrepancy... It seems that Linux is just copying from online sources without actually looking into the claims to verify them.
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Both words are used. By the way, if you're interested in investigating the Bible yourself in more depth, check out <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org." target="_blank">www.blueletterbible.org.</a>
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Yes, surely he trancended time then, but there's no reason for him to still be doing so. In fact the whole idea of god being "before" time requires god to be in time; there must be a "then" (before time) and a "now" (during time.)
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Anything that transcends time, must always transcend time. Why? Because in order to lose the property of timelessness, and gain the property of timefulness, time is necessary, as change is dependant on time. Change is the passing from potentiality to actuality. God must be a constant, so to speak.
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The very act of creation suggests that at some point there was no Universe, and then there was one. This requires time.
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Why is that? A being that transcends time, and creates time, would experience everything in an "instant", as all points on a timeline with no beginning or end, are "now". Although all this is very difficult to comprehend (as an eternal being ought to be), I see no logical conflicts with this. You might try to turn my previous argument of the impossibility of God's change because of his timelessness against me, but remember, a timeless (eternal) being (God), cannot have a being, but the universe does.
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Every time I have seen this brought up, without fail, a theist will respond, "no, I don't think this is true; causality does not require time, time requires causality"
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It's easy to think of the universe going from non-existance, to existance, 14 billion years ago, but that of course is the fallacy of assuming time existed before the universe, and time is a property of the universe. I believe, from God's perspective, everything is "now", as I have said before. "Before" the universe existed, it's creation moment, and yesterday is all the same point. Because these are all at one point in an eternal "line" of existance, saying that time is necessary for time to have been created isn't valid. I don't see the supposed problem of a First Cause as a problem at all, but rather I see this as testimony of the tremendous power of this First Cause. It would be interesting if you could express your argument with mathematics, since mathematics is pretty much the only way to truly express non-physical problems such as this (i.e. the minimum of at least 10 spatial dimensions of the universe isn't possible to visualize, but it works out in the math).
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This is, of course, pure horsepucky. Why is it that it's so important for God to really, literally, be "spreading the Heavens out" when it supports your idea of the Bible's scientific accuracy, but when problems arise, everything must be considered relative, and metaphors must be made? The word foundation hasn't changed much in its meaning in 3000 years. It means a constructed base designed to keep something in one place.
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What I, LinuxPup, say doesn't make the Bible literal or metaphorical, rather the context does. There are three "heavens": The sky on Earth, Outer Space (universe), and God's kingdom. The creation context in Psalm 104 clearly eliminates the 3rd option. The fact that the stretching is in the active participle mood means it is an ongoing event, which would elminiate option number 1, as there is no ongoing "stretching" of the sky, which would relate to fabric. The most viable option is 2, the Universe. I don't say that the Bible clearly gives Einstein's theory of General Relativity, but rather it jives with it quite well.
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The problem is, "the Heavens" are not at all like a curtain, nor is the Universe, as I have already detailed. These phrases only make sense if you view the Sky as a solid, physical object, as the Ancient Hebrews did, modern revisionism aside.
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Tell that to Stephen Hawking and other astrophysicists. "Fabric" is an often used term, because it best describes spacetime in a way the layman can understand.
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More bullplop. From God's perspective, the Earth is a sphere. From our perspective, it looks like an endless plain, not a circle.
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You're ignoring the reference frame set up in that verse. The viewpoint is not on earth, but looking at it from some distance away. And in three dimensions, the earth (and everything else) is viewed in 2 dimensions, which is where you get the circle. Again, please keep your insults to yourself. I gotta go now... write back, ok?
LinuxPup
01-27-2002, 07:51 AM
Big Bang cosmology in the Bible?
