I understand where your coming from, but my main objection is what are you describing as the darkness? Keep in mind Gen 8:22 that says day and night will never cease, so we can't imagine that darkness represents any kind of evil. What are you saying would represent the darkness?
Darkness and evil are two different things. Darkness can be absence of knowledge, blindness, obscurity, and things like these. I'm not sure, honestly, and I don't want to speculate about pre-Genesis reality. But Jesus is the light, and he does illuminate the dark places and is the lamp of mankind when this all ends. And Genesis 1:3 doesn't make much sense in the physical universe, unless we're calling it a temporary 'work light', or just a general 'God started creating' On top of that, we know that Jesus was brought forth 'at the beginning'. It doesn't matter either way, just a cool thought really.
Exactly, and I don't mean to seem dogmatic, in the end it's just interesting when subjects like this come up so that we can explore all the possibilities. Hence why we are here... I am interested in hearing what you think the darkness was or is though...
Indeed! I'm a bug. I have no clue Not "evil", in this case. What is time? Is Jehovah in time or out of time? What was before time? Is there a number that can contain God's years? “Who is this who is obscuring my counsel And speaking without knowledge? Brace yourself, please, like a man; I will question you, and you inform me." Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? In which direction does the light reside? And where is the place of darkness? Job 38
Define: Light Hebrew: ‘owr in Gen. 1:3 Greek: phos in Gen. 1:3 (LXX Septuagint) Encyclopedia Britannica Light, electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation occurs over an extremely wide range of wavelengths, from gamma rays, with wavelengths less than about 1 × 10−11 metre, to radio waves measured in metres. Within that broad spectrum the wavelengths visible to humans occupy a very narrow band, from about 700 nanometres (nm; billionths of a metre) for red light down to about 400 nm for violet light. The spectral regions adjacent to the visible band are often referred to as light also, infrared at the one end and ultraviolet at the other. The speed of light in a vacuum is a fundamental physical constant, the currently accepted value of which is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, or about 186,282 miles per second. Quantum theory describes light as consisting of discrete packets of energy, called photons. However, neither a classical wave model nor a classical particle model correctly describes light; light has a dual nature that is revealed only in quantum mechanics. Therefor if Jesus is light, physically, he is a discrete packet of photons. Oh yes, that Greek word for light, phos is where we get all the words that are connected with light. I.E., photons, photograph, photosynthesis, photovoltaic, etc. If man didn't exist would there still be light?
Very good question, some would say nothing exists unless we observe it, that the universe is simply a collection of possibilities until the wave function is collapsed and we see the cat alive or dead. The more we learn about this universe the more we realize we don't really know.
You know it's very interesting, I've always held that I think the universe is infinite. Cosmologists think there is something wrong with their math because the reach infinite numbers when discussing black holes. And no matter how far away we see there are more and more galaxies. It's certainly within Jehovah's ability to make an infinite universe, which also means he's capable of making an infinitely old universe as well, think about that. He could have actually created our universe to have had never had a beginning. All of this of course is out of our abilities to even consider... But fun none the less to think of scenarios...
Can Jehovah create a round square? Maybe there are certain paradoxes that cannot be breached. 'Creation' by necessity implies that there was a point when the created thing did not exist. So I would speculate that either A) Jehovah and the universe are eternal together, or B) the universe is created ('big bang') Modern science and the Bible suggest B I think.
Paradoxes are only what our minds cannot comprehend. I would say Jehovah is not bound by the same rules and limitations. Of course Jehovah could make a round square and everything else you could think of, and that rock that even he couldn't lift, (if he chose too). Just imagine what you can't think of... Just look at our own universe...
Hi All: Genesis 1:5 is interesting in regard to light and day. According to this scripture they are equivalents in God's eyes. Day = Light, therefore Light = Day. So at the end of each creative period when God said "And there was evening and there was morning, a first day." He could have also said first "light", and "second light" etc., etc. Does that mean anything to anyone? frank
My opinion is that Jehovah created the physical laws and triggered what we, humans, call in an imperfect way, the Big Bang. Afterwards, he just let the things evolve on their own until he picked a planet on which he would create life. Afterwards, he may have created different primordial life forms, according to their kinds, letting them live and die, individually or in whole species and created later on other different but more "advanced" kinds of creatures, letting them too live, thrive and die, individually or in whole species, until he created mankind as we know it, eventually. Having created biological laws, Jehovah may have also let life "evolve", so to speak, according to said laws and to the extent defined by Himself at first. As I often say, the problem isn't in the biblical account or in the archeological findings which supposedly contradict it but in the way we interpret both the Bible and those archeological findings.
I agree with you. In the Genesis account, the luminaries are made and established as signs for Earth after vegetation was created. We know now that it's impossible as due to photosynthesis, plants can't live without light. One certainly shouldn't read the biblical account like one reads the Scientific American.
The universe can't be infinitely old. Firstly because he's expanding itself, hence a starting point is needed. Secondly, the physical laws are made in such a way that stars can't shine forever. They're created because huge clouds of matter (mainly hydrogen and heavier elements coming from defunct stars) collapsed and triggered nuclear reactions. An infinitely old universe would be dark and cold because all the matter therein would have had the time to collapse at one moment or the other into stars and to "burn" their nuclear "fuel" till there is nothing left. The only possibility for an infinitely old universe to exist is that Jehovah continues to create matter (hydrogen mainly) to fuel it just like you fuel a fire in a fireplace by adding logs. No new logs, no fire.
Of course none of us can be dogmatic about a subject like this, we know so little about our universe and even our brains that experience it. But you know me, I sometimes like to argue the other side to exhaust all possibilities. From what I understand there are stars that are older then the known universe, and no one knows why. From what I understand the universe is not just expanding but is accelerating and no one knows why. It may have something to do with dark energy and dark matter but no one knows what those are either. We are made of star dust right, and stars are made from elements of other exploded stars right? Well that's the chicken and the egg, you need stars to explode in order to make new stars, so what was the first star made of? There is a theory that this universe may come back to a crunch and then a big bang again, which theory would say the universe could have done this an infinite number of times. There is string theory that says this universe very well may be one of only a group of other universes in which the differences may only be a single choice someone has made for it says that every possibility no matter how remote all occur and we experience only one of them. Is this correct? I don't know. Why does light show properties of a wave and a particle? Why, when we measure the dual slit experiment do the photons actually collapse into a wave function, while without observing closely they are simply potentials? No one knows... There are infinities in math. The math at the center of a black hole goes to infinity. Cosmologists don't like this because they don't believe in infinity, but none the less they haven't as of yet been able to explain away why they get infinity. Is the universe infinitely large? You may say you think it had a beginning, but could the size be infinite? Of course we know if Jehovah wanted, it could be... What I say is, what is still remaining to be discovered is a lot more then what we currently know...
Hey SingleCell, Your wish is half fulfilled, my working hours will be 21h00-05h00 next week... What remains to be seen for me is how to be able to chip in on the db while working...
I'd be in his shoes, I'd be overjoyed too.... Whenever I read something about God's Creation, I have the same thirst for knowledge and awe before It. Unfortunately, the world and the scientific frame of mind has turned totally the other way around from what this surgeon means here.... (Master and Commander)
Agreed, and that's why so many discoveries are overlooked, ignored, and flat out denied because the enemy is blinding their eyes.
You only need a huge amount of hydrogen to make a star. Yes, there are still a lot of things to discover and we mustn't forget that those scientific fields are recent, only around 150 years old, at the most. And yet, what we have discovered in about 150 years is huge...