Reasons To Believe

Oh come on. I mean we get more, geez! Oh? I thought they all look pretty similar to the naked eye. Bit of a handwaver job there Percy. Yet in Job it speaks of the "spreading" and then the waves of the sea. It is talking about what God does, not did. It says he spreads the heavens. Sorry if I don't buy into this, I feel it is your opinion. Okay, we do interpret differently, but this "stretching" is found to be consistent. To say the biblical author didn't believe in an expanding universe, is just speculation. It seems that this "stretching" is something God can get between, so to speak. Like "removeth mountains and they know not"??. "Treadeth on waves of the sea". Are these things he can do? - Yes, and things he is said to do. Why should I take the "stretching" and treat it differently to the other things he does, not did?

Well, yes. Some people think it's chance that one day there's bugger all, and the next, for no reason whatsoever - there is. I suppose I eat for no reason, sleep for no reason, breathe for no reason. I suppose the sun is just some more chance with some icing on top, and a bit of light. I suppose all the suns are chance, and have nothing to do with daylight. I suppose I am not unique and it is chance that I look and be the way I am. I suppose I don't exist. I suppose gravity is chance aswell as time, but then, why not let it all happen at once, oh well - let's add some more chance, do a dance and take away the romance. How can you explain faith when you don't have it? Well, if you support and understand faith, then you can understand that I know that God is resposible for creation. Before all these theories - I AM.

Maybe you should quote the relevant Biblical passage. If it says stars multiply, then it's wrong. If it says God multiplied the stars, then it's correct, at least from a religious viewpoint. Again, maybe you should quote the relevant Biblical passage. They look pretty different to anyone who cares to notice. Just off the top of my head, there's blue Sirius, the dog star, the brightest star in the nighttime sky. There's the smudge of Orion's nebula. There's the dim rider Alcor of the brighter horse Mizar. There's the red Rigel. There's the cluster Pleides in the bull's horns. No, it's talking about what God created during the creation week. He created stars in the sky and waves in the sea. He didn't keep creating them after creation week. God does not create the waves in the sea, not today, and not in the Bible after creation week. And the Bible doesn't mention the death of stars. If you have to already know what the Bible is saying before you know what it says, then it is telling you nothing. It isn't my opinion that you are casting a modern interpretation upon an ancient passage, it is a fact. The modern interpretation didn't even exist until modern times. You can hold out hope that ancient Biblical authors believed in an expanding universe, but all the evidence before you says they believed the stars were fixed on a canopy above a flat earth.--Percy

"The evolutionists and atheists far outnumber the believers.It is more likely that the believers in both evolution and the Christian God outnumber both the atheists and the literalists added together.If you disagree you may have a go at producing numbers that suggest otherwise."I suppose I shouldn't have said that because I have just joined this forum and haven't reviewed it entirely. It just seems to me so far that there are more posts from the atheist point of view than the theist point of view.

Knowledge and Faith
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hangdawg13, your post states your beliefs very clearly.
Just FYI, and so that the intention of this post is clearer I am not an atheist, but also do not have your certain conviction of "what is".As I asked in an earlier post, why, if a person is secure in a faith, to the point of calling it "knowledge", do you need proof in the form of confirmation from science? After all, scientific theories change as new discoveries are made.Or, if you do not need such confirmation, why do you find it exciting?BTW how do you get those nice neat boxed quotes from previous posts?To answer your questions: I suppose the only reason I find such things exciting is a combination of curiosity about God's creation and arrogance. I'm curious, but I also am a little bit of a rebel when it comes to the current trends of liberalism and evolutionism. If there were no people out there to argue with I probably would not find these things as interesting. But I also think the in depth understanding of God's creation can lead you to a better understanding of God's personality and a greater love for him. And yes, I am completely satisfied by my faith and the personal evidence of God in my own life as well as the lives of those I know. I suppose these things do strengthen my faith somewhat, and who knows? perhaps they will allow me to lead someone to Christ someday.

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"It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2

Make sure that is what you are really seeing. Many of us, as Christians, really object to nonsense such as is presented in those sites.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

If you die tonight I guess you will experientially KNOW, which one of us is right about Christ. And if you don't, well, we are all going to die.

Hi, Mike!Here's a passage from the Bible that Reasons To Believe probably didn't tell you about: The author of this psalm believed the number of stars were fixed, that God knew their number, and that he knew the name of each one.If the Bible really contained modern cosmological information, then the ancients would have had modern cosmological information, and Christian Europe would not have believed the stars were fixed, the world was flat, and the sun orbited the earth. In every age the Bible has been reinterpreted to be consistent with what is known at the time, and it is the same today.Man has the creative ability to cast novel interpretations upon anything he likes, and when performed by a poet they can have magesty and beauty. You can still be open to the poetry while not casting a blind eye at what is really happening. For example, you can watch a tearjerker of a movie and be moved by it, but you still understand it is just a movie and that it isn't real. In the same way, you can feel the beauty and magesty of powerful and effective apologetics while still understanding they aren't scientific.--Percy

Put a [ qs ] before the section you wish to quote and a [ /qs ] after, except without the the spaces after the [ and before the ].This message has been edited by Mr Jack, 06-02-2004 09:53 AM

You do it like this:[qs]BTW how do you get those nice neat boxed quotes from previous posts?[/qs]Click on the "*UBB Code is ON" link on the left of the message composition window for an explanation of that and some other useful codes.When you see someone do something in a message that you want to do too, click on the blue "Raw Text" button at the bottom of the message to see how they did it.

I disagree. It says how he interacts with creation aswell. He can treadeth the the waves of the sea. It says he "doeth" not did. It shows how he can interact, and do things which won't be found out. It is what he does aswell as what he did. He is not limited to the past. No. What I am saying is that they knew because they were inspired. Isaiah shows this aswell, Oh? Can you provide that quote then? Where does it say a flat earth? The "circle" doesn't mean flat earth, or he would sit within it. I was only referring to Genesis, where God says Abraham's seed shall be as numerous as the stars, I can't remember the passage. But how many look the same to the naked eye? Could you be so bold as to say each has a different glory?Time to read this Percy boy. In the second (final) line the verb spreads them out (NASB, NIV, NKJV) is mathah (used only this one time in the Old Testament) in the waw consecutive plus Qal imperfect form, so that literally we might translate it and he has spread them out . . . The participles in lines one and three of Isaiah 40:22 characterize our sovereign God by His actions in all times, sitting enthroned above the earth and stretching out the heavens, constantly exercising his creative power in His ongoing providential work. This characterization is continued with reference to the past by means of waw consecutive with the imperfect, the conversive form indicating God’s completed act of spreading out the heavens. That is, this one verse literally states that God is both continuing to stretch out the heavens and has stretched them out.

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Finally, the Bible indirectly argues for a big bang universe by stating that the laws of thermodynamics, gravity, and electromagnetism have universally operated throughout the universe since the cosmic creation event itself. In Romans 8 we are told that the entire creation has been subjected to the law of decay (the second law of thermodynamics). This law in the context of an expanding universe establishes that the cosmos was much hotter in the past. In Genesis 1 and in many places throughout Job, Psalms, and Proverbs we are informed that stars have existed since the early times of creation.Sorry but there IS possibilities to consider, though your doubts are understandable. I am not saying we don't have different interpretations - you do have a good point. For example, YEC's would say it is a young earth, derived from their interpretations. However, read the above carefully, the stretching and spreading, are both mentioned as past and present! Lighten up the gray text to make it visible above the background. --AdminThis message has been edited by Admin, 06-02-2004 12:45 PM

Of course you disagree. That's because the passage can be, and has been, subjected to many different interpretations. You're buying into the interpretation of a particular apologetic from Reasons To Believe, and there's nothing wrong with that. But casting a current interpretation on Biblical passages is what apologists have done since the Bible's beginning.The important point is that your chosen modern apologists at RTB didn't decide upon a modern cosmological interpretation until modern cosmology had already weighed in. Prior to modern cosmology, no Biblical apologists were describing an expanding univese and the birth of new stars. This raises a few questions:

• How do you know they were inspired?
• How do you know that inspired men of ancient times held modern cosmological views?
• Why weren't these views reflected in the ancient Biblical civilizations in which these men lived?

The questions are rhetorical. The fact of the matter is that these are views you accept on faith. I was writing not about any Biblical passage, but about the history of civilizations that used the Bible. History tells us they believed just as I said, that the earth was flat, covered with a fixed canopy of stars and orbited by the sun. Why would they believe this if the Bible told them the earth is a sphere that orbits the sun, the universe is expanding, and stars are still being born? The reason they didn't believe these things is because that's not their interpretation of the Bible. You can argue all you like about what "circle" really means, but what counts is what they thought it meant. They cast an interpretation upon it consistent with then current views. And in the case of European Christianity through the Middle Ages, they believed in a flat earth, an orbiting sun and a static universe because that's what they believed the Bible told them, and they held those views fairly determinedly in the face of contrary evidence. For example, the Spanish Inquisition held strongly to an earth centered universe, and Copernicus was sufficiently concerned by the threat that he disguised his conclusions. I can: You didn't originally mention a Biblical passage, but you used the word multiply. Now that you've identified the passage, we see that the word multiply is not used, and that there is no statement that the number of stars or sandgrains is increasing. Your elaborations increase with each reply. Since you didn't get the quote about Abraham right, I think you should quote the relevant Biblical passage. It's not really important here, but it's a good habit to get into. The important point is that you're still just casting modern interpretations onto ancient passages. There's no evidence that ancient peoples made these modern interpretations, and plenty of evidence that the interpretation of Biblical passages, a process called apologetics, has cast many different interpretations over time and often at the same time.Your RTB excerpt cites Isaiah 40:22: I guess I have the same reaction as someone in a previous reply to you: this passage with it's canopies and tents sounds like modern cosmology to you? I mean, that's okay if it does, but realize that that's just an interpretation, and that there are many interpretations, and that you have to keep in mind the reality that this is just apologetics. The fact of the matter is that no scientist ever looked at this passage, prior to the availability of the red shift data (and you can assume that tons of scientists read this, as it's a very famous passage), and said, "Aha! The universe is expanding!"The fact of the matter is that Isaiah 40:22 is just one short part of a much longer passage that is an ode to God's power and majesty. It isn't about cosmology. To the ancients the night sky resembled a canopy or tent, and the stretching is just an analogy to stretching the tent fabric across the framework. It isn't meant to taken literally. Earlier in the poem it talks about God measuring the waters in the hollow of his hand, holding the dust of the earth in a basket and weighing the mountains on scales. And I don't want to even guess how you might interpret God marking off the heavens with the breadth of his hand.The point is that this is poetry, not science. Poetry speaks to people's hearts, and apologetics interprets that poetry so it can speak to a broader audience. Only when you can point to a Biblical passage and tell me what it means before the scientific discovery instead of after you might have something.--Percy

I didn't err. For my version says; That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavenYou say; But you are ignoring the passage I quoted. You see, it seems they were most definitely saying, that the heavens were stretched and are stretched. I am aware that this may come under apologetics but I never claimed it was science. All I claim is that the bible says how the creation came about, which seems to agree with science. I have never said "it's a science book". And why should I? Did scientists create the universe or God? I am aware that I quoted the first person to come up with the Theory from RTB, and that it was a "creation event". They? Are they the prophet inspired by God? I am aware of man's beliefs concerning the earth, but it appears very possible, that God never made them get it wrong, they made the mistake themselves. Am I claiming that man is infallible? Can you quote where the bible tells them that? I never found such things in the bible, even when I was a child. People also burned witches in the past, and let demons out of people's skulls. I suppose you want me to believe it's the bible's fault. But people simply weren't able to without an idea of science, isn't that one of my previous points?As for my "mistake" about Abraham, don't tempt me to quote some more truths! I see you are really against me on this issue . I must express surprise though, as I thought it would be more pleasing to your side, if we used proper science, like the Big Bang.

Not the Bible's fault but Christianity's.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Reveal your true identity.