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EasterBeagle
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Now we just have to settle on how long it took (lol).
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Charlemagne_III
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The scientifically knowable origin of the universe is shrouded in mystery and always will be.
That is the ultimate ignorance of the gaps.
That is the ultimate ignorance of the gaps.
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EasterBeagle
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Not really, God created it out of nothing.The scientifically knowable origin of the universe is shrouded in mystery and always will be.
That is the ultimate ignorance of the gaps.
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Charlemagne_III
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Yes, but we are ignorant to explain how God created the universe out of nothing!Not really, God created it out of nothing.
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EasterBeagle
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The Catholic Priest who invented the “Big Bang” theory did have a hypothesis on that: "According to Fr. Lemaitre, the inevitable conclusion to the Big Bang scenario is the Big Crunch, when gravitational forces overcome and halt the expansion, causing the Universe to collapse in upon itself. The unfathomable gravity eventually creates one enormous massive super black hole containing all matter in the Universe, collapsing in on itself with such great gravitational force as to approach zero in size. The properties of matter falter as this super black hole reaches critical mass and explodes into pure energy, triggering another Big Bang, forming a new Universe. This cyclic recreation process is confirmed in both the Old and New Testament, God creates a new Heaven and a new Earth, as the old Heaven and Earth pass away (Isaiah 65:17, Revelations 21:01) (ArguingWithAtheists.com/Pages/Bible_References.htm).Yes, but we are ignorant to explain how God created the universe out of nothing!
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ThinkingSapien
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Personally I think it would be better to say “supported” instead of “confirmed.”
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EasterBeagle
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Or both. Thousands of years before scientific explanation, the Bible was the very first text ever to describe the earth as a sphere; “It is He that sitteth upon the sphere of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts: He that stretcheth out the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22). Likewise, the Bible is the very first text ever to describe the earth as free floating in space; “He stretched out the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7).
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Charlemagne_III
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I’m not aware that Lemaitre hypothesized a Big Crunch. That was a later hypothesis that has since been abandoned by many astronomers as lacking evidence.
Technically, Lemaitre discovered the Big Bang, he did not “invent” it. And the Big Bang as we know it was later called was developed from his theory of a cosmic “egg”. George Gamow called it the Big Bang. This was to distinguish it from the steady-state theory that had held sway for decades among the astronomers. A better analogy than the one from Isaiah is from Genesis.
Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.
“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”
Genesis, 1200 B.C. : “In the beginning God said: ‘Let there be light.’”
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EasterBeagle
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Atheists such a Sagan had big issues with a Catholic Priest discovering the Big Bang, Steven Hawking wrote hundreds of pages on the Big Bang without ever mentioning its founder.
In the beginning, when God created the Heavens and the Earth: The word “Heavens” represents the “Universe”, including our Milky Way Galaxy and Solar System, which was obviously created first as unmistakably indicated by the word placement in the sentence. The formation of our Solar System is believed to have begun approximately 4.6 billion years ago, resulting from the gravitational collapse of a portion of a giant molecular cloud. The majority of collapsing mass collected in the center (eventually becoming our Sun), as the remainder flattened into a protoplanetary disk that eventually coagulated into the planets, moons, planetoids, asteroids, comets, etc. The Earth would understandably be the third large formation of debris orbiting the center mass.
Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light: About 4.567 billion years ago the temperature and pressure at the core of the Sun became so great that it’s hydrogen atoms began to fuse, creating an internal source of heat energy that countered gravitational contraction until hydrostatic equilibrium was achieved. This event began the prime phase of our Sun’s existence, known as the main sequence. In short, the Sun ignited.
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Aloysium
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I interpret “Heavens” as the spiritual domain, containing far many more beings than those “below” us in the realm of animal and plant life.
It is clear that we would symbolize this reality by what we experience visually in the perfection of light dancing above us in the untainted background of the clear, unchanging sky.
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EasterBeagle
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Passages in the Bible Describing the Creation of the Universe
Most scientists employ the example of superimposed dots stretching out on the surface of an expanding balloon to illustrate the redshift of the galaxies moving away from each other in the “Big Bang” model. There are 14 mentions of God creating the Heavens in the Bible, 13 of which utilize the words "stretch, stretched, stretches, stretcheth, stretching, stretched-forth spanned, spreadeth and spread-out. This is a significant confirmation of the “Big Bang” creation theory in the Bible.
Job 09:08 Who alone stretches out the heavens
Isaiah 40:22 [It is] he that sitteth upon the sphere (note: this is the first written text ever on earth describing the earth as a sphere) of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. 42:05 Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein. 44:24 Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I [am] the LORD that maketh all [things]; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself; 45:12 I stretched out the heavens with My hands. 48:13 Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: [when] I call unto them, they stand up together. 51:13 And forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where [is] the fury of the oppressor?
Jeremiah 10:12 And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. 51:15 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by his understanding.
Job 09:08 Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, [and] hangeth the earth upon nothing (note: this is the first written text ever on earth describing the earth as free floating in space). 37:18 Hast thou with him spread out the sky, [which is] strong, [and] as a molten looking glass?
Psalms 104:02 Who coverest [thyself] with light as [with] a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.
Zechariah 12:01 The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
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Aloysium
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I appreciate your interpretation of scriptural quotes that speak of the heavens as they relate to what we see in the sky.
Not disagreeing with you, I am referring to Heaven as that reality that surrounds the Godhead.
As big as it is, the known material universe is only a part of creation.
Not disagreeing with you, I am referring to Heaven as that reality that surrounds the Godhead.
As big as it is, the known material universe is only a part of creation.
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EasterBeagle
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I agree, it’s just that the Bible seems to use these interchangeably, like they exist in the same location, but in different dimensions or something.
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cfauster
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Indeed, the modern distinctions we make today between spiritual and material dimensions likely were not held in the same way by the human Biblical writers God inspired to convey important truths. For example, see:
ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/ilj_ancient_science.pdf
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EasterBeagle
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Thanks for the link, one interesting fact, my wife went on a Church trip to Jerusalem. She saw the dead see scrolls. They have the oldest copy of Genesis carbon dating I think something like almost 3000 years. The only difference is that the Hebrew word for sky was used in place of firmament. Kind of changes the whole model concept.
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Aloysium
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Actually, what is space (space-time)?
It exists and contains everything.
It may be as close to pure being as it gets, at least materially speaking.
The heavens are heavenly.
Rather than empty, inhospitable nothingness, it is close to the fullness from which all creation emerges.
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EasterBeagle
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Nicely put. It’s interesting that 13 of the 14 mentions of creation in the Bible utilize the word “stretch”, just as planetary scientists claim that the expansion of the big bang is the stretching out of the universe, and that time itself is stretching out with it. It would be impossible for Biblical authors 3,000 years ago to know that without Divine knowledge.
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cfauster
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Interesting. I agree with a helpful blog post on the issue that suggests "we need to let context and usage inform our understanding of what shamayim and raqia mean in their specific occurrences. Sometimes ‘heaven’ refers to some aspect of the physical sky and sometimes it does not … The fact that Gen 1:14-17 uses the compound phrase ‘the firmament of the heaven’ further indicates that ‘firmament’ (raqia) is not one-for-one synonymous with ‘heaven’ (shamayim). The Israelites would understand this phrase to mean ‘the spread-out dome of the sky’.
That post is at:
letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/was-the-expanse-overhead-in-genesis-1-a-solid-dome/
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EasterBeagle
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Then God said, “Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other.” And so it happened. God made the dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it. God called the dome “the sky”: Planetary Scientists hypothesize that the Earth’s primordial atmosphere formed very quickly from Volcanic out-gassing, lacked oxygen, and would have been toxic to most modern life. Much of the Earth was molten because of extreme volcanism and frequent collisions with other bodies. As water cannot exist in its liquid form at such high temperatures, nearly all Earth’s liquid water was concentrated in the atmosphere in the form of steam vapor, much like Venus today.
Then God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear.” And so it happened: God called the dry land “the earth,” and the basin of the water he called “the sea.” God saw how good it was: Over time, the planet cooled and formed a solid crust, allowing liquid water to exist on the surface.
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cfauster
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OK … but again, from the blog post I recommended in my previous post: “However, the ‘waters above’ the firmament are not presented in Genesis 1 as clouds or mist, but as liquid water … there are different Hebrew words that would have been used for vaporous water.”
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