In the Beginning...

[Glassfan]

In ancient times, the words used in oral histories simply meant different things than they do today. The confusion and disagreement is our fault in making the translation scientifically literal. To an ancient, the "world" was perhaps twenty miles in any direction. The heavens were up because that's where the sun, moon and stars (the Powers) were. The ancients had no conception of quantum mechanics, relativity or evolution. They were children, primitives.

We should consider ancient texts to be like children's stories. Like explaining to your 6-year-old where babies come from. You don't whip out your human sexuality textbook and explain about gametes or haploid chromosomes; rather you give them a child-friendly story they'll tentatively understand. As they grow and mature into adults, they'll acquire more complete knowledge of things.

IMHO, civilization is like this. God gave the children of Israel a child's story to hold them over until Darwin, Einstein and Bohr come along.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Is time just a tool? No. Not in most formulations of cosmology.

Time can exist without physical change. However, I am not ready to say time cannot exist without change of some sort in some reference frame. String theory has everything being the interaction of probability and potential. It gets pretty abstract, but time could be a reference to change in probabilities or potentials. So, you might be right in some sense, but I am not comfortable with stating it flatly.

Measurement requires interaction. Most boundary conditions defy interaction. For example, absolute zero could never be measured. Measuring would introduce heat. Passive measurement would require radiation, of which there is none. That does not in any way undermine science.

J

I am not a fan of string theory. If there are real things that cannot be observed (measured/interacted with), doesn't that open the door for magic and other not very scientific phenomenon? Is the edge of the physical universe a hard edge or a squishy edge where where physical objects don't have physical properties?

No. The universe actually does contain 'things' that cannot be measured. It's one of the basics of quantum physics.

If something cannot be measured, is it/can it be part of the physical universe?

Time is not really a measurement of change. Time is not even a product of change. Time is the concept of bodies in motion. The only change in the equation, is the fact that a body has moved from point A to point B. If the matter in space has no motion, then it can have no time. The effect would be experienced as the "suspension of time". We are so conditioned to time, that we would even define this period of non-motion as time, because it is a period of waiting. We are anticipating that motion would begin again. Time and motion stopping is point A, and time and motion returning is point B. Only an entity outside of this system would be able to give any meaningful definition to this "period" of time.

So is there an edge or boundary to "this system"?

 

[warpus]

If the universe contains things that cannot be measured, doesn't that undermine science?

It would if science was meant to be a perfect tool. It isn't, it's just the best tool we have with which we can try to understand how the universe works. This tool, like any other, has its limits.

If something can't be measured, it can't be measured, it doesn't undermine science one bit. How could it? It might undermine a scientific theory which claims that all things in the universe can be measured, but there isn't a theory like that out there, I don't think, and even if there was, the theory itself would be undermined, and not science as a whole. I don't even know how you would undermine science as a whole. That's "just not how it works".

I'm curious where this question is coming from. It seems that you are perhaps under the impression that science is meant to be perfect - capable of answering all questions we throw at it. If so, that couldn't be further from the truth! Science has limits. It's just a process and a methodology, and those always have limits of some sort.

'Come into being' already requires time.

You'd think so, wouldn't you...

 

[Birdjaguar]

My point is that science is all about observing and measuring and those characteristics are embedded in the fabric of reality. If Science cannot measure or observe a thing, is it a thing?

I certainly don't expect science to be perfect by any means and it can "not know stuff". But one of the under pinnings of science is that reality is confined to the physical universe and that universe can be observed and measured. New tools will provide improved observation.

 

[onejayhawk]

I am not a fan of string theory. If there are real things that cannot be observed (measured/interacted with), doesn't that open the door for magic and other not very scientific phenomenon? Is the edge of the physical universe a hard edge or a squishy edge where physical objects don't have physical properties?

One of the problems is that physical objects and physical properties are an illusion of scale

If something cannot be measured, is it/can it be part of the physical universe?

This question was answered in the line you quoted. In subatomic physics, specifically Quantum Mechanics, it is not possible to measure both the speed and position of a particle. Whether a subatomic particle is "an object" is debatable.

So is there an edge or boundary to "this system"?

Not one that you can go to.

 

[Agent327]

My point is that science is all about observing and measuring and those characteristics are embedded in the fabric of reality. If Science cannot measure or observe a thing, is it a thing?

Science is also about (meaningful) hypotheses.

Yes, it is. Just remember the period of science is 2000-5000 years ago.

Genesis 1 reads well as a vision. Evening and morning would be transitions between visions. Each day depicts the writer's perceptual framework.

So you're arguing because Genesis I 'reads well as a vision' it qualifies as a science book? Surely not.

The fact of the matter is, there was indeed plenty of science around when the biblical books were written down. Its authors seem, however, remarkably uninterested in what science there was even then.

You'd think so, wouldn't you...

Not me personally, no. But 'coming into being' is an action, which means time is involved - however short in absolute terms.

I am not a fan of string theory. If there are real things that cannot be observed (measured/interacted with), doesn't that open the door for magic and other not very scientific phenomenon?

Not at all. Dark matter, dark energy - and black holes - are not really phenomena that can be measured. Not now any way. That doesn't exclude the possibility that they are there though. (A black hole may have a measurable event horizon, but the thing itself - beyond what comes out - can't be measured in any meaningful way.)

Is the edge of the physical universe a hard edge or a squishy edge where where physical objects don't have physical properties?

The universe doesn't have an edge.

If something cannot be measured, is it/can it be part of the physical universe?

As long as these are not flying spaghetti monsters or other things of magic, most definitely.

 

[timtofly]

Is part of the problem, humans want to put God into a religious "box" instead of viewing God as a scientist? It is true that the story is vague and simple. It is for all humans, not just educated adults.

 

[Senethro]

You can really tie yourself in knots trying to to read translated holy texts without scholarly or priestly assistance with the meaning the ancient people ascribed to it.

 

[onejayhawk]

You can really tie yourself in knots trying to to read translated holy texts without scholarly or priestly assistance with the meaning the ancient people ascribed to it.

Which assumes the scholars and priests have a clue.

One guideline is that a text will interpret itself. The whole work should be read in such a way as to be consistent in theme or message.

J

 

[El_Machinae]

I think that a scholarly tradition is much more likely to understand what the authors intended. And what the translators intended. A specific text can always speak to something inside of us, that's what art does. But the two interpretations are fair to separate.

 

[Senethro]

Which assumes the scholars and priests have a clue.

One guideline is that a text will interpret itself. The whole work should be read in such a way as to be consistent in theme or message.

J

Surely if this were true then there would be fewer denominations and sects in every religion.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In ancient times, the words used in oral histories simply meant different things than they do today. The confusion and disagreement is our fault in making the translation scientifically literal. To an ancient, the "world" was perhaps twenty miles in any direction. The heavens were up because that's where the sun, moon and stars (the Powers) were. The ancients had no conception of quantum mechanics, relativity or evolution. They were children, primitives.

We should consider ancient texts to be like children's stories. Like explaining to your 6-year-old where babies come from. You don't whip out your human sexuality textbook and explain about gametes or haploid chromosomes; rather you give them a child-friendly story they'll tentatively understand. As they grow and mature into adults, they'll acquire more complete knowledge of things.

IMHO, civilization is like this. God gave the children of Israel a child's story to hold them over until Darwin, Einstein and Bohr come along.

But God can do anything (supposedly), so why not create people who didn't need baby stories in the first place?

I remember when my mother finally started coming clean with all the ways she'd tapdanced around the truth when I was younger. All it did was make me wonder what else she'd lied about.

Is part of the problem, humans want to put God into a religious "box" instead of viewing God as a scientist? It is true that the story is vague and simple. It is for all humans, not just educated adults.

If I employed a "scientist" who turned out to be as incompetent as God, I'd fire him.

 

[Berzerker]

Time is not really a measurement of change. Time is not even a product of change. Time is the concept of bodies in motion. The only change in the equation, is the fact that a body has moved from point A to point B. If the matter in space has no motion, then it can have no time. The effect would be experienced as the "suspension of time". We are so conditioned to time, that we would even define this period of non-motion as time, because it is a period of waiting. We are anticipating that motion would begin again. Time and motion stopping is point A, and time and motion returning is point B. Only an entity outside of this system would be able to give any meaningful definition to this "period" of time.

I doubt this will clear up any confusion to what is actually being communicated in Genesis 1:1-5. Until the addition of light, the universe was suspended in time, because there was no motion. We have no clear definition of time.

The light followed the darkness just as day follows night... A semitic day starts with nightfall and ends with sunset to reflect their creation story. Time began before the light. What else did the light follow? It followed God's spirit moving upon the dark waters/deep covering the Earth (dry land).

Gen 1:2 shows God wasn't even first in the chronology, that suggests a primordial world preceded both God and the creation of Heaven and Earth. I believe the bible calls this world tehom, Tiamat to the Babylonians.

While the earth is probably still the earth, it was without form, so basically just matter.

Earth is God's name for the dry land appearing on the 3rd day when the water receded into seas.
Thats why its described as without form and void in Gen 1:2, it was not dry land yet. God did not create matter, the water preceded God.

Even saying that "in the Beginning God created solid matter, and gas (gases), and there was also a liquid called water", would not be contradictory to the text nor our current knowledge. That matter was "suspended in time" and had no motion, other than the movement of the "spirit". It was after the addition of light before there was any meaningful concept of time, and then only to God, as there were no humans around.

The face of the deep covering the Earth comes before God in the story. Thats relevant because the age of the planet is older than plate tectonics (dry land) and life by a few hundred million years.

 

[onejayhawk]

Surely if this were true then there would be fewer denominations and sects in every religion.

Why? Look how many sects the sciences have. I can be properly said that there are 6 billion religions on this planet.

J

 

[onejayhawk]

But God can do anything (supposedly), so why not create people who didn't need baby stories in the first place?

Because he chose not to is a valid answer.

Don't discount teaching stories. Children's stories have great impact on our world view. From the perspective of a diety, we never progress beyond infancy.

Another problem is that we impute our value system on God, even where we are told it's not appropriate. If you take the Biblical perspective, God wants growth beginning with an informed choice. So, from a literal perspective, all his believers are babies born with that choice.

J

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Why? Look how many sects the sciences have. I can be properly said that there are 6 billion religions on this planet.

J

Whut?

Science is not a religion.

Because he chose not to is a valid answer.

Don't discount teaching stories. Children's stories have great impact on our world view. From the perspective of a diety, we never progress beyond infancy.

Another problem is that we impute our value system on God, even where we are told it's not appropriate. If you take the Biblical perspective, God wants growth beginning with an informed choice. So, from a literal perspective, all his believers are babies born with that choice.

J

Yes, children's stories have an impact. Some of them have valuable lessons. But most people grow up and stop accepting the child's version of how the world works.

Thank goodness I learned some real biology and didn't have to go through life relying on the nonsense that my maternal grandmother handed me as to where babies come from (she used the old "we found you in the cabbage patch" story).

 

[Agent327]

Is part of the problem, humans want to put God into a religious "box" instead of viewing God as a scientist?

Whether God is a scientist or not has very little to do with the biblical authors. Or the Bible.

Which assumes the scholars and priests have a clue.

They do, actually. which teaches us a whole lot about the biblical texts.

One guideline is that a text will interpret itself. The whole work should be read in such a way as to be consistent in theme or message.

A text will interpret itself? By definition interpretation is not done by texts, but by readers. Seeing as the Bible was neither written in one go nor by one author, it's kind of an artificial interpretation to want it to convey consistency or a single message. There are various inconsistencies in the biblical texts (as one would expect with texts written by various authors) as well as multiple messages (as one would expect from texts dating from different periods). Not to mention that the interpretation by the believers in the Bible has undergone major transformations over time.

Why? Look how many sects the sciences have. I can be properly said that there are 6 billion religions on this planet.

Even if this were true, the conclusion would still be that no text interprets itself. But again by definition sects doesn't apply to science; I think you may be referring to scientific schools of thought, which - in science - are abandoned with new evidence; which is why we don't apply the term 'sect' to science: sectarian thought rarely responds to anything as mundane as new facts.

Because he chose not to is a valid answer.

Don't discount teaching stories. Children's stories have great impact on our world view. From the perspective of a diety, we never progress beyond infancy.

Actually, a Greek philosopher already called human ideas 'childrens' toys' (Heraclitus). The question remains, of course, why a God would want humans to keep their child stories and not progress to any kind of maturity. The answer, of course, would be that God did not create humans as such, but simply the basic conditions for life. Humans only appeared at the end of a fairly long process of evolution (which, to all intents and purposes, is a random process). Of course, God may - in his infinite wisdom - very well have foreseen such an outcome, but that still doesn't imply that God intended anything humans actually do or did. It is, in fact, contrary to a very central doctrine of Christianity: that the Son of God died for human sin. (Unless, of course, this was also foreseen.)

 

[timtofly]

But God can do anything (supposedly), so why not create people who didn't need baby stories in the first place?

I remember when my mother finally started coming clean with all the ways she'd tapdanced around the truth when I was younger. All it did was make me wonder what else she'd lied about.


If I employed a "scientist" who turned out to be as incompetent as God, I'd fire him.

What is wrong with an imperfect world? If that were the case, then we would never need science or scientist. Every one would know everything.

Who says God is incompetent? Letting humans run the show seems pretty competent to me. It is humans who have to give an account of why things are the way they are. If you think that setting a very high standard is being incompetent, and then creating beings that would mess it all up, you are taking away the very meaning of what it means to be human. If humans were perfect creatures, we would not even be having this conversation. We would have no choice in the matter, but forced to call God competent.

@ Berzerker

What would you call the phrase, "In the Beginning"? The text starts out "God created" as the first action. The majority text and humans accept that was an action, and not a preposition on what may have happened. The universe was created in one action. That has always been the argument, that God created everything out of nothing. The New Testament clears it up by explaining that the universe was spoken into being. God and the Word coexisted, and after the moment of creation, the Word manipulated the matter that was created. Arguing over the definitions of words to explain what happened, does not change the point that people have always known and accepted that God created and brought into being everything in the universe, and God was before the universe, otherwise, one would have to throw out the rest of the passages where humans mentioned that God was before all things as being wrong. In Hebrew as in English a word had several different meanings. The definition does not determine the context, but the context determines the definition. Otherwise one would have to declare every time they used a word, the specific definition, which would get tedious after a while. There was darkness before light, because light had not been added nor does it say that it was created. God just used the Word; "let it be". We could interpret this as God creating the universe and it was void of light, and then God "Who is Light" brought the universe to action. Even if you made it prepositional and said "In the beginning of God's preparation of the universe, it was still God doing all the action. People throughout history have stated that God is the universe, and everything in it.


If the universe came first, why is there no mention of that in the rest of the Bible? Where does it say that humans understood that God was a product of the universe, and not the other way around? God is the universe, because it came from the thought and Word of God. God keeps the universe in motion, because He is Light. Then if you want to get spiritual, and religious you can call the separation of light and darkness the spiritual balance in the universe. The current cosmology does not do away with God. Nor can it change the fact how humans have passed along their knowledge of the universe. The Genesis account is not an observation or hypothetical. It is the statement of fact of what someone said happened. If the author of the account was God, then God would have observed what was going on. Unless there is proof some where that the intent and purpose was anything other than statements of fact, claiming to know exactly what happened in the present seems pretty presumptuous. Calling it statements of fact based upon the knowledge we do have does not seem to be presumptuous. I am not claiming to know if it is true or not, but taking it in context with the rest of what people wrote about in the Bible.

What I believe or accept has no impact on what was written, even though like every one else, I have the ability to interpret it in light of all the experiences that I have gone through and either accept it or reject it. Calling it anything else seems to be sidestepping the facts, and gives us the opportunity to believe anything we want to believe on the topic. Stating that science is proving God and the Bible wrong does not make sense. It seems to me that it is refining our knowledge of how it happened, even if corrections are made in the different fields, it does not mean that the record is wrong, but the explanation may or may not be wrong.

Whether God is a scientist or not has very little to do with the biblical authors. Or the Bible.

Seeing as how the Bible was mostly stories of humans interacting with God, the point remains. God is not a concept nor needs to be relegated to a certain way of thinking. The point is that God relates to every human equally, and it is not God that hides from humans, but humans have the ability to remove God from their life. Science strives to be as objective as it can be and remove any personal bearing to avoid getting to the wrong conclusion. That would also apply to God. I accept that God has interacted with humans, but still leaves things in the hands of the humans who have been put in charge of this world. Whether it is all just an experiment is a speculation on my part. Neither do I feel inclined to start pointing out what may or may not be true in the Bible. I understand that humans seek the truth and do not like being deceived.

 

[Berzerker]

@ Berzerker

What would you call the phrase, "In the Beginning"?

a reference to a time when God created Heaven and Earth

If the universe came first, why is there no mention of that in the rest of the Bible?

there is no mention of the universe in the Bible, but Gen 1:2 clearly shows a sequence of events preceding the creation of Heaven and Earth and God was not the first to appear in that sequence.
God was preceded by a dark, water covered primordial world and from that came Heaven and Earth.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What is wrong with an imperfect world? If that were the case, then we would never need science or scientist. Every one would know everything.

Who says God is incompetent? Letting humans run the show seems pretty competent to me. It is humans who have to give an account of why things are the way they are. If you think that setting a very high standard is being incompetent, and then creating beings that would mess it all up, you are taking away the very meaning of what it means to be human. If humans were perfect creatures, we would not even be having this conversation. We would have no choice in the matter, but forced to call God competent.

If I were designing biological lifeforms, I'd make sure they didn't get sick. For that reason alone (there are many others), your God is incompetent.