Different Principles


Scientific reasoning has a history. The Greeks first sought to invent science about 2600 years ago. The difficulty they confronted was the problem of change. All ancient people believed in catastrophic battles among the planets, changing planet orbits and the vast life spans of their ancestors.  All ancient people assumed that everything continually changes, including matter. The Greek philosophers debated for generations looking for a first principle (arche) to solve the "matter changes" problem. One of the pagan philosophers wrote that we must just assume that the properties of matter do not change. He insisted that we must build all knowledge on changelessness, even though none is observed. Fifteen hundred years later, a Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas, urged Aristotle's system on the universities of Western Europe. The universities adopted Aristotle's system about seven hundred years ago. Over the centuries, Aristotle's physics failed but his elementary assumption (that the properties of matter are not emergent) remains the basis for Western science.

Westerners built mechanical clocks with their assumption that matter does not change itself.  Their clocks ticked methodically suggesting that seconds had equal durations. With equally valued seconds, they constructed precise ways of measuring and mathematical laws that predicted orbits and falling apples. Today, the definitions of matter and time, the system of measuring, the scientific method, the constants and the laws of physics all presuppose that the properties of matter are NOT changing relationally.  Today the most accurate instrument is the perpetual motion atomic clock. Yet we can see the past throughout the history of the cosmos in billions of distant galaxies. No perpetual motion atoms gleam from any primordial galaxies. In general, the farther from the past we see a galaxy, the more its atoms clocked minuscule frequencies compared to modern atoms.


Biblical physics also has a fundamental principle. The Apostle Paul wrote that the creation is in bondage to phthora (Romans 8:19-22). The Greek philosophers used phthora for the process of change that began at genesis and corrupts all things. According to Paul, the creation acts on itself as an orderly submission (hupotasso). This produces transientness, futility (maitaioteti).  Paul characterizes these universal changes using two Greek together-words. Things that change together, in an orderly way, change as a relation.   In relational change, things change in unison, in an orderly way.  In relational change, no independent variables exist. 

Biblical-time uses the cycles of the heavens, not clocks. According to Genesis, God made the heavenly lights to separate days, seasons and years. He placed the sun, moon and stars in the  raqiya. Raqiya is the noun form of the verb raqa, to beat out, pound out, spread out.  The Hebrew Old Testament repeatedly states that the heavens are continually spreading out.  It also calls the age of the first generations, the owlam: the great time, the long time. The New Testament calls it the chronos aionios, the agelong long ages.
The literal text suggests that orbits and time are always accelerating.  Simple evidence supports biblical-time.  This evidence is presented in subsequent essays.

Scientific reasoning was historically constructed on the foundational assumption of a pagan Greek philosopher. A literal reading of the Bible denies this assumption and even predicts it in 2 Peter 3:3 - 6. The Bible cannot be adjusted to fit science because its version of physics is based on a different foundational idea, that matter always changes itself. If matter and orbits are continually changing, no one can contrive a valid science. Indeed, Solomon wrote, "and I saw every work of God, I concluded that man cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun [in the solar system]. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover; and though the wise man should say, 'I know,' he cannot discover." Ecclesiastes 8:17

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Last revised October 23, 2008
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