Seven reason why we should accept millions of years - Part 6 - the wrinkles tell it all

Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent.

The biggest explosion ever recorded destroys as many of our ideas of God

Does Science confirm the existence of God

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net

Fingerprints of God video - great watch - all about stars and blackholes

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

https://www.youtube.com/user/CSLewisDoodle

Blowing in the wind

A young soldier survived a wayward shot from a German sniper, at Arnhem. His mother was quick to claim it as God’s hand. Noted theological philosopher, CS Lewis was not impressed. He argued that the bullet was influenced by the moral choice of the marksman and the forces of nature.

No Lewis is not a cynic, he was just trying to arrive at a first cause for everything. He opposed the idea that nature begat itself, and I agree. I see the hand of a creator.

Now, of course I think his argument is a tad simplistic, but like Paul, Lewis is a virtual final authority.

As old as ....

I read an article by a leading associate of Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham, and whilst I do sincerely respect AIG, I feel the article (Did Jesus Say He Created in Six Literal Days?, Ken Ham, 2007) is worthy of some rebuttal.

He opens his arguments from Mark 10:6, “But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.” That is used to argue that Adam and Eve were with God from the outset, so the creation had to be young. That is just simply not biblical. Adam and Eve were created on day 6, not on day 1. Thus Jesus had something else in mind.

The breath of life

The discovery of pristine Oxygen on a comet, has puzzled scientists. The problem that the ESA probe, Rosetta, has now posed, is how oxygen can exist in a virgin state when it is so renowned for combining or oxidizing just about every possible element in the periodic table.

Originally the earth acquired its oxygen via photosynthesis, hence plants had to precede animal life, just as Genesis 1 confirms. Plants could feed on the carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere and reproduce oxygen, but it evidently took a long time for the earth to acquire enough oxygen to support life.

Let's just make it fit

It amazes me what lengths new earth thinkers will go to squeeze the creator into seven calendar days, when the bible does not presuppose that a day equals a day. Even our vernacular accepts that a day can mean an era, an epoch, a season, or a 24-hour moment of time.

The bible uses the word interchangeably – as in the moment Jesus stood in the synagogue to echo Isaiah’s words, “… to proclaim the year of God’s favor”, which ended up being 2,000 years. The 70 weeks of Daniel alluded to 490 years, the 3.5 days in the two semesters of tribulation implied 3½ years, and Peter confirmed that a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day.

And God said ....

The Big Bang concept was first postulated by Belgian priest and astronomer, Georges Lemaître. However, the expression was coined by noted astrologer Fred Hoyle.

The latter chose the term pejoratively, because he had so long advocated a dying theory, that of a steady state universe. The irony is that Stephen Hawking had hoped to have Hoyle as his supervisor, but fate conspired to leave him in the more inspirational hands of Dennis Sciama.

What a difference that little decision made. Sciama brought the very best out of Hawking and continued to promote his ideas long after Hoyle walked away in disgust over the threats posed by Hawking’s Black Hole research.

The sky is falling

The conspirators are having a boom season. First four blood moons, with the final one expected at the end of September, and now there are rumors doing the rounds that a large space object is headed our way.

One of the nearest misses of late was that of asteroid Icarus, which came as close as 5million kilometers to the earth. 

That was 5million kilometers closer than its previous pass, 19 years ago, but its trajectory is not naturally linear. The planets it passes on its next circuit could do anything to its orbit and potentially shift it back beyond the previous 10million kilometer mark.

Is there life out there?

NASA’s Kepler Mission has detected a near-earth rocky planet in a solar system that is quite proportional to our earth-sun relationship and similar to our home planet, except that it is orbiting its sun in 8.5 hours - so is hardly viable for life.

What do we make of that? Well, I guess it means that exoplanets in the expanse of space are possible. Potentially the bible confirms it is so as it points to a new heaven and a new earth, and we know that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us – these things can take time – millennia in fact.

Signs in the heavens

I have a dilemma. I had a desire to explore the signs of God in the heavens, but then I felt a deep check in my spirit. Many years ago I sat through a presentation by a Christian speaker who revealed how even the astrological constellations reveal the hand of God and foretell the destiny of the world. It was fascinating, but not pleasing to God.

The three wise men used star signs to accurately foretell the advent of Christ, so perhaps the bible does acknowledge that there is something in what is far from science.  Genesis 1 and other scriptures also confirm that God set signs in the heavens. Luke 21: 11 says, "... and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven."

The coming storm

The outstretched hand of the Lamb of God and the great coal of fire that is in His hands, portends a coming age of great struggle on earth. Thanks to Hubble there is a growing gallery of profound images emerging from space and this image is right up there with the best of them.

Actually one of the most amazing discoveries of late is a dark chasm in space, spanning billions of light years, which contains nothing - no stars, no gas, no matter, nothing. It is a dark void.

All of the signs currently visible and yet to become visible, predict a coming world crisis followed by the return of the King. 

Awesome power

My firstborn son is an amateur scientist. Having blown up all he could find, whilst burning house and home and shaking foundations or launching surface to surface missiles against neighbours, he also found time for the academic side of science. As far as he is concerned, if he spent all day at shool just doing science, he couldn't be happier. Isn't there a specialist science school out there? I suppose not. Sadly a not so good mathematics teacher has caused him to lose confidence in that vital link to a future engineering qualification, but its all coming back - a little bit of encouragement and support is doing wonders. 

In the process of helping him I took him out for some coffee. On the way, he pointed towards a red indicator light and said, "Dad there is enough energy in that small red dot to light a city". The point he was making related to Einstein's groundbreaking energy formula. 

Is anybody out there?

I was watching a bit of an old Toy Story movie, when I saw Buzz Lightyear land on planet Zurg. He immediately logged a report through his voice log (space term for Blog), saying, "the planet is deserted. There does not appear to be any intelligent life here".

Intelligent life? What's that.

If we have not reached trillions, we have certainly spent our billions of dollars, euros and roubles in a, as yet fruitless, seach for intelligent life in the distant litter of space. Some of found satisfaction in looking for plant life, as it props up the supposition that if there are viable conditions for life anywhere other than on earth, then intelligent life must also exist beyond our planet.

We would like intelligent life, but resent intelligent design.

He stands upon the circle of the heavens

Einstein argued that space-time can be warped. At the time the theory could not be proved, but subsequent observation of black holes confirms that he was right.

Similar to the error of parallax whereby light bends when we observe something under water, so space-time distorts our observations of reality.

When a black hole passes between us and a distant massive object, the extreme gravitational influences bend the light passing between the object and us, so we see the object in a different place from where it is or should be.

In the movie “Next”, scientists reproduce a supposed warping of space-time, enabling them to blend the past or future into the present. Think in terms of space-time being a continuous ribbon, which is then bent so that earlier or future scenes are wrapped back to coincide with the present. Einstein would concede that the plot was theoretically possible, but practically very far from feasible.

Now our galaxy is spiral shaped - because it has or at least had a spinning core. However, as we move further from the core, we get an effect called gravitational braking, which argues that matter cannot approach or reach the speed of light. Thus, the arms of the spirals start to bend into their familiar spiral shape because matter along the spiral cannot move around the core at the same speeds as matter nearer the core.

Now, as a very amateur scientist or, preferably, a rank amateur, let me ask, could the universe be a super-spiral, with a common core? Arguably yes. It had a common starting point, the moment of the big bang, and because the massive energy in the system could not be expressed only as an explosion, the core would have started to spin.

Okay, so theoretically we are all caught up in a massive spiral. Well then, could it be that gravitational braking also slows down the speed of orbit for matter further and further from the core? Again we could surmise that it be so.

Well then, is it possible that space-time, at a universal level, overlaps, so that yesterday is infinitely close to today? If so, then if universal time is a function of the core, the way our own solar time references the sun, can we argue that the fringes of the universe approach infinity in line with Einstein space-time theorem?

Now here is the real poser. Jesus is referred to as the “ancient of days”. That implies that He has aged, that He is subject to time. We could concede that, as He emerged some “time” after the infinite beginning of His Father. Accordingly, where Job 22:14 said. “He walks in the circle of the heaven”, did He imply that Jesus stands at the edge of time and eternity? Theologically, He mediated between time and eternity, but if He physically also stands at the edge of the universe, would we find Him seated in a state near-eternity, whilst still being part of the times and seasons of this universe?

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net

Light and Dark

Dark matter makes up the bulk of our universe, but what is it and why do we struggle to quantify it?

Mass is a function of a few variables, but can be derived by dividing density into volume. It is self-evident that matter of low density (feathers) in a given volume (a pillow case) would have less mass (lower weight) than a similar volume filled with high density lead balls.

Following the same logic we can reasonably estimate the mass of the universe. We do understand its mean volume (of the observable universe) from astronomical observations, which results in a diameter of 14billion light years. We can also detect the mean density thereof through sample observations across the universe (3 x 10-30 g/cm3 or 300 billion, billion, billion times less dense than water).

So we really do have a good idea of the mass of our universe and scientists will declare with reliability that it equals 3 x 10e55g.

Okay, so far so good.

What we can also determine is the mean mass of observable matter and we can also determine how much energy is in the system and convert that, using Einstein’s theory on mass-energy equivalence, into mass. When we tally all of that up, we find that we can only really account for 30% of the predicted mass of the universe. That is not a big error if you are still in a junior grade (I once bewailed a teacher who marked my nine-year old son down for getting a linear measurement wrong by a mere millimeter). But a 70% difference is very big for big people and scientists.

So we now have a new astronomical concept. Out there is just under 1 x 1055 of luminescent or detectable matter/energy. There are also bucket loads of undetectable matter. That matter has been called dark matter (because we can’t detect it, not because it is dark as such), but others have called it the “God Particle”.

2008 saw the beginnings of an elaborate laboratory analysis of dark matter, pursuant to some kind of clarification of what is out there.

I prayed about it. I am not sure I have a definitive answer, but I do know that “all things consist and are held together by Jesus” (Colossians 1:17). The bible has been proved to be a sound predictor of universal phenomena – it correctly initiates the big bag with radiant light and it also accurately tracks the metamorphosis of the earth through six distinct phases. So can we look to the scriptures to predict the “God Particle” and have the scientists inadvertently named it for what it is – could spirituality have mass?

Hey, I don’t know the answers here, I am just musing over the wonder of His creation and meditating on something that is truly taxing the great minds of our world. What I do know is that there is some mechanism that enable Jesus to literally hold it all together and when he releases that the universe will be folded up like a garment and cease to be (Hebrews 1:12).

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net

The span of His hand

It is now given that the universe was originally of infinite density, meaning it had infinite mass embraced within a very small volume, analogous to a grain of sand.

The bible says that God spans the universe with His right hand. Whilst I have no doubt that at one dimension God’s spirit does embrace the entire universe, for we were made by Him and for Him. However, there are other recorded manifestations of God that reveal Him in the form of men and here I specifically refer to an incident where Moses was caught in the cleft of a rock on Mount Sinai, as God walked by. Moses only saw the back of God, but what he saw was a man, for we are indeed created in His image.

We could deduce from many other scriptures that God has eyes, ears, a mind, nostrils, hands, feet and a heart. So we are a realistic depiction of the composition, certainly not the size or complexity, of the Great God who made the earth His footstool.

As such it is not improbable that when the creation was initiated, that the Father stooped, picked up a grain of sand and placed it in the right hand of His son, saying, “I hereby reserve you, from before the creation, to be savior of all” (Hebrews 13:8). Thus the creator (Jesus is specifically identified as the agent of creation in John 1), also became the guarantor of that creation, entrusted by God to use the created world to restore divine order and redeem the souls of all who fear Him.

Jesus, the light of the world then breathed over that grain and His glory filled the void to bring about the immense, immeasurable energy that resulted in our created universe. He is not only its guarantor, but is also the unseen force that holds it all together (Colossians 1:17).

By implication then, He also holds the power to remove the sustaining force of the universe and to then fold it all up as one would fold up a garment. 1 Corinthians 15 clearly declares that He will prevail until He has restored all things (a term also used by Newton to describe how all things return to a state of rest). When He has restored all things, “God will be all in all” and the season that described the 14-18billion years of this universe will be concluded, for God would have concluded His works.

A small aside here is that Romans 8 suggests that the power of the King, the same power that raised Him from the dead, already indwells us. Thus, He who fills the heavens and holds all things together, also dwells in us and when the angel sounds the trumpet, Jesus will merely call us and so shall we ever be with our God.

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net