Religion Part 2 - Analysis

[Katamarino]

This is not a thread for discussion of religion! This is merely a question and answer session, we've got another debate going on religion as it is.

I have a few questions. I don't understand how they can be explained by creationist theory, and I would like to learn how, and if, they can.

I shall list a couple of preliminary questions, then some main ones.

1) Does the Bible provide a date, or date range, for the day(s) of creation? As in how many years ago? I understand a range can be arrived at by looking at the ages of Old Testament characters, what is this range?

2) There is much evidence for the universe being very old, in the Billions of years. If the Universe was in fact created merely thousands of years ago, why bother to create all this evidence to the contrary?

if anyone can give me explanations or links that would be great! I say again, I'm not trying to start a debate or offer these as any arguement against religion. I merely want to understand how things like this fit into the full picture. After all, if it all fits in, people will believe.

And Jeff I don't care how boring work is, offer nice happy explanations or nothing This isn't a 'how many people can I call names' thread for you!

[pbateson]

I'm Roman Catholic.

What about non-religon person? What we do with this?

[JeffinDEN]

Re: Religion Part 2 - Analysis

And Jeff I don't care how boring work is, offer nice happy explanations or nothing

I think there can be consistencies in both theories that support each other. For instance, I believe it is very possible that a God created the universe as we know it. Maybe the "Big Bang" was the way he did it. Evolution of species may very well been part of his PLAN for the universe. Thus, Man, as we know it arrived on the scene a long time ago via the slime. The Dinos departed in much the same way for reasons that we cannot explain, but still part of the plan. The Bible, could very well be the first "log book" of what we knew about our creation at that time. A method of trying to document what has taken place, and why. It could have been God's way of "checking in" on us. To begin the process of humans understanding him. He may have visited earlier, but no species had developed sufficiently to make note of his prescence in a format we understand. It could be only the first chapter with more to come. The fact that we are left here on earth with problems to sort out amongst ourselves, may not be of any concern to the God that created us. He has left us to our "own" so to speak, to build, to fight, to love, to learn, etc. Right and wrong to be determined at a later time, or not at all. Maybe we have misinterpreted the Bible. Years down the road, or hundreds of years more maybe we will get another visit, maybe not.

Proof may not exist in our life time for either argument.

[Triton1831]

Re: Religion Part 2 - Analysis

1) Does the Bible provide a date, or date range, for the day(s) of creation? As in how many years ago? I understand a range can be arrived at by looking at the ages of Old Testament characters, what is this range?

Using the Bible as a timeline, some religious scholars have determined that the age of the Earth is roughly 6000 years. That means it was created about 4000 years before the time that Christ lived. Created in six literal days, ie 24-hour periods.

Mind you, I don't believe that, but there's your answer. For a little more (hare-brained) explanation, here is a website that details one group's methodology:

http://www.creationevidence.org/cemframes.html?http%3A//www.creationevidence.org/fa_questions/107chron_erth.html

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[Triton1831]

Re: Religion Part 2 - Analysis

http://www.creationevidence.org/cemframes.html?http%3A//www.creationevidence.org/fa_questions/107chron_erth.html

Ok, the link I posted seems to just result in jumbled random type-face characters. But the jumbled characters make about as much sense as their "research". If you couldn't read it, I did a cut-and-paste; this is what those geniuses came up with (and I quote verbatim):

"Beginning with the archeological landmark event of the fall of Jerusalem (which has now been corrected to 588 B.C., instead of 586-587 B.C.) and counting backwards the prophesied number of years between this event and the division of Solomon's kingdom (390 yrs. + 40 yrs., according to Ezek.4:4-7), brings us to 1018 B.C.

From the end of Solomon's 40-year reign to the start of the Temple in the 4th year of his reign takes us back another 37 years to 1055 B.C.

From the start of Solomon's Temple "in the 480th year" (1 Kings 6:1) back to the Exodus from Egypt (hence 479 years previous) brings us to near 1534 B.C.

From the Exodus out of Egypt to Abraham's entering Canaan from Haran was exactly 430 years to the day (Gen. 12:10/ Exod. 12:40/ Gal. 3:17), thus around 1964 B.C.

Since Abraham entered Canaan at age 75 (Gen. 12:4), he was born approximately 2039 B.C.

From Abraham's birth to Noah's grandson (Shem's son), Arpachshad's birth, 2 years after the Flood started, was 290 years (Gen. 11:11-26), this places the onset of the Flood at around 2331 B.C. [definitely 4,300-4,400 years ago].

The genealogy of Genesis 5:3-32 precludes any gaps due to its tight chronological structure and gives us 1,656 years between Creation and the Flood, thus bringing Creation Week back to near 3987 B.C. or approximately 4000 B.C. !!"
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[AEagle40]

My personal idea of creation, please read it this time. The first part of Genesis offers no timeline so this does fit. This is also not to contradict Triton but to simply provide something that happens beforehand to prove that the bible may have started 4k years ago, but that creation has been going on long before, thus being able to relate it to science and religion.



Each day in the creation represents something as typical. The first day is the earliest possible history of the Universe. Now as I see it, this is not just one day but multiple millions and billions of years. For day 2, this is were all the different solar systems and galazies and star clusters and all that are created. We often refer to the sky as "the heavens" so this makes some sense. Onto day 3, I see this as the formation of our earth, except the earth is not quite formed yet. Day 4 is the millions of years it took to turn the earth from a volcanoish Hell to the habitat in which we live today. Day 5 is the process of greening the earth. This is when creatures like Dinosaurs would have lived. My theme, that each day is represented by millions of years is evident here. The idea of day 5 is that God created the seas full of life and the birds in the air. Science tells us that life would have started life in the sea. The birds represent an evolution. An evolution from the sea to the air, which is how science says so. Day 6 is were we are now. God is still creating "warm blooded beasts" and "man", plus alot more other things. We are still in this million year "day" and are still evolving. In case you havent realized, I believe in evolution and believe that God is what allows animals to evolve. Day 7 is the day God will rest, Judgement Day. This will be when God rests and stops creating everything, thus the world will end. Please take my theory as being realistic and not stupid. I will be more than happy to try to explain my theory more to anyone who wants to ask.

[JeffinDEN]

Well stated! I can agree to that explanation. Though I know some people here will want to know what paragraph of what chapter from what book to believe it.

[Triton1831]

I have no problem with AEagle40's theory of creation, either. He is admitting that the bible need not be taken literally, and has applied its lessons and parables to a cohesive and workable philosophy that works for him.
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[pepe]

I wrote a long piece explaining the evolution and the reason for life and everything from the big bang and when I pressed Submit, I got an
-Invalid session-timeout and my text vanished.
So now you'll never know the meaning of life. -Pepe-

[indian airlines]

Pepe,

Here's a trick my friend Richard told me. After typing a long post, to ensure that you don't have to type it all over again incase of an 'invalid session' error, just highlight the text, right click, and copy. That way, incase you do lose your reply, you can always just click reply again and just paste the whole thing, instead of typing it all up again.

-Tanuj.

[JeffinDEN]

he is just pulling our leg T....he didn't really have anything to say. He just wants you to believe that...

[indian airlines]

oh.

Anyway, the invalid session thing does happen - this is one way to avoid it.

[pepe]

The universe according to Pepe…

You are thinking way too small…

This is in a nutshell what I wrote before. The numbers and percentages might be approximates, but you’ll get the broader message. This is not science, it’s bits and pieces and thoughts in my own head only.

According to the latest microwave studies, the size of the universe is flat and infinite. If the big bang happened 16.5 billion years ago and nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, the universe would have started expanding from the site of the initial explosion in every direction, making it a circle not bigger than a radius of 16,5 billion light years. So the size would be max. 31 billion light years wide. But it is infinite.

Our galaxy has close to a billion stars in it. In addition there are billions of other galaxies in the universe. About 10% of those stars have planets going around them. More than 10% of those planets (if you scale the size of the sun and the planet) are approximately the same distance away from their sun, as we are from ours. Some stars are so big they burn more energy in one second, than our home planet uses during it’s whole life cycle.

So in effect there are hundreds of millions of sun-planet combinations where a single cell might have evolved before or after it evolved and started developing here on Earth. I think it ignorant to think that we are the centre of the universe lifewise, it’s like arguing the Earth is flat – a little outdated. You think they build those massive radiotelescopes for fun only?

A hundred years ago you were nothing. So for the first 16.499.999.999 years you were dead. But at least I can’t remember suffering all that time, so it propably wasn’t too bad. It won’t be any worse when I die again. A hundred years ago when you were nothing the whole universe was here, you just didn’t know about it. So something as vast as this was kept from you, but it still was here. Now it might take another hundred years before you discover there is something else as vast as the universe somewhere, you just don’t know about it yet. I find this just as viable and logical.

Religion was both a way to control the masses when society wasn’t as developed as today (don’t eat pig’s meat because it turns bad quickly without refridgerators) and also a comfort to people who lost loved ones and were apprehensive about dying. After Jesus died the disciples spread around telling stories about him, but if I remember correctly it was centuries before many parts of the Bible were actually put down in writing. So some of the stories might already have been spiced with a little local colour in time of writing.
There’s a lot of stuff in the Bible that makes me think of it as more of a “How to behave in Society and Book of Laws” of the time.

I hope I’m not offending anyone, these are just my personal views. The fact that I don’t believe in the Bible word for word doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a more general God in all of this. For all people and living things, regardless of race or religion. If there wasn’t something or someone out there, there wouldn’t be anything or anyone down here either. That would be too much of a coincidence. Out of nothing by chance suddenly sprang a universe?

We people are in the beginning stages of evolvement, i.e morons. If you took out your time-machine, went back 30.000 years, kidnapped a baby from the cave people and raised it as your own, no-one could distinguish him/her from other children in a couple of years time. Same looks, same intelligence. So we are still cave-people, but with better weapons. Kill, maim, rape,fight, when in fact we should never hurt anyone and anyone shouldn’t hurt you. Regardless of race or religion.

The universe as stated before, has existed 16,5 billion years, and will exist still longer. And the propability of you being alive RIGHT NOW, out of all that time is infinitely small. Why didn’t you die a billion years ago? Why aren’t you born 7 billion years from now? Well, you propably were/will be.
You are alive right now, because you are always alive.

If I wasn’t born at all, I’d be happy to think there is no point in life, but because I have been born and see the vast surroundings every cloudless night, I have come to think that:

Maybe those millions and millions of other planets aren’t lifeless. Maybe there is something going on we don’t know about yet. Maybe, when I die I go somewhere I don’t know of or remember now, it is now hidden from me as the universe was hidden from me before I was born. From there I evaluate my life, or whatever, and for some reason I get born somewhere else. To a planet with a higher civilization. This Earth could be a bottom rung in a long stair of evolvement or enlightement.

I hope I haven’t bored you to death, but if I have, you’ll know whether I was right or not. This is a gentle way to think of things. A 1 year old baby who dies is not only a matter of sorrow. It has been here on earth and goes back to the other plane between lives to wait if his/her death has made her parents learn some lesson they were given in this life. If a baby dies in the desert, maybe it was this soul’s first glimpse of life in this lifeform before he/she returned to the other side and so on. I find these thoughts comforting. Also I don’t grieve my relatives too much , because I believe they are not worse off than before they were born, but could possibly be on the other plane doing something worthwhile.

So my theory of evolution goes something like this. We were all on the other plane to start with. Billions of years went by in total serenity. Then one day someone went up to the big boss and said:" Dude, this sucks. I'm enlightened but bored. Let's do something else". So they did something BOOM!!! and now the souls can come slumming down to Earth or wherever to feel and experience. As soon as they get down here, they forget the other place. As soon as they get back there, they are free to stay or go someplace else. Simple really, but is it so?

The other idea, out of nothing into nowhere comes something, and from a 100 billion year timespan you get to be a part of it for a few decades. Sounds even more stupid. But you get to choose what you believe. Free will and so on.

While I'm at it, I might as well explain U.F.O's according to Pepe as well...

If we do not kill each other off in the next generations, and if our knowledge of things grows at it has done in the past 100 years, I don't think it entirely unlikely that our race say, in another 1.000.000 years (?) will figure out time travel ? If they do, they will propably want to take a peek into the past. Not meddle with it, but just to observe. Now let's say for arguments sake that they'd want to take a peek at year 2003. So the craft would have to be here in 2003. So you'd be out photographing planes to increase your viewcount and suddenly you saw a strange craft. I think it's more propable it's your grandgrandgrand...son come to a visit rather than an interstellar craft. Actually, even I don't believe this, but it's possible. –Pepe-

One more thing. Religion, regardless of which religion we talk about, should always only be about one person. You. And your possible salvation. I don't think I improve my chances of salvation by hurting or in any other way harming other people. Regardless of race or religion.

[JeffinDEN]

wow, all that typing and no one is responding....

[pepe]

Everyone has propably started on a pilgrimage to see the house I was born in.

As a matter of fact, even I don't believe in what I wrote earlier. It would be nice though. I just can't make myself believe that God or someone else took 6 days to create Earth, when the Earth is less than 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the total mass of the universe.
If it took Him 6 days to create Earth, did he create the other 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the universe in a blink of an eye?

-Pepe-