Christian World-View: Time and Astronomy
Science is an orderly body of knowledge about the natural world. It is also a method of interpreting evidence that had its beginnings with the Greek philosophers. Scientists try to find natural explanations using natural laws. They assure us that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the laws they have invented. After all, their laws have been tested many times using logic, mathematics and the scientific method.
It is common for scientists to argue that the biblical account of creation is not supported by scientific evidence. In turn, Christians argue that true science supports the Bible. The Bible is clearly supported by a great deal of historical and textual evidence. Thousands of scrolls, ancient inscriptions, and written accounts from antiquity support the authenticity of biblical history. For example, Jesus miracles are supported by several accounts and even collaborated by His enemies. This is not scientific evidence. Scientific attempts to understand the past are based on an assumption which is not supported by the Bible. God defeats the world’s wisdom. He does not neeed to uphold His Word with our science but rather gets great glory by triumphing over humanistic reasoning.
It is important for Christians to understand where science works and
where it fails.
• The scientific
system achieves mathematically precise predictions with nearby
processes examined over a short period.
• Scientific laws, when applied to the long-ago or faraway, result in absurdities.
Scientists invent unsubstantiated things like dark matter, black holes, dark energy and the expansion of empty space to explain the distant universe. Their evolutionary version of beginnings is radically different from the biblical account. The Bible lists the generations and specific items of history all the way back to the beginning. Many of the names and places listed in the Bible have been verified from antiquity. Do the written records of our early ancestors have greater validity than scientific assumptions that are treated as self-evident and never tested?
I propose a radical principle for interpreting primordial evidence. It is radical because it denies the first assumption of the scientific system. This principle is also conservative because it follows a literal interpretation of the Scriptures and the simplest evidence. It was not radical in the Old Testament era. It results in an earth-history that agrees with the Bible and the simplest evidence. The prophets did not write scientific accounts of earth-history. They could not do so because the fundamental assumption necessary for scientific reasoning did not exist until after the close of the Old Testament. My Quest for Truth section of this web page, briefly explains how I arrived at this biblical world-view.
Replacing the elementary assumptions of the philosophers with biblical principles changes the way you think. In this section I will attempt to briefly explain a biblical world-view can change your thinking.
Why should we accept that elementary things (atoms) change as a relationship?
1. It is a simple literal way of understanding the scriptures.
2. It results in a biblical world view, not an accommodation between science and the Bible.
3. It shows how God defeats science (the wisdom of the world) without using deception.
4. It uses the Bible and simple evidence to answer many questions, such as the apparent age of the universe.
5. We can visibly verify the Old Testament statements about the earth and the sky. This visible evidence overthrows science by exposing its false assumption.
Why do scientists measure physical constants?
Every experiment that measures a fundamental constant assumes that something does not
change. The Greek text from Romans 8:20 shows that the subjection of
creation to inutility was
itself an orderly arrangement. Material things are under an orderly
system of decay. If matter
changes as a relation, constants are the product of the scientific
assumption, not reality as it really is. Constants define some
property of matter
in relation to some other
property. For example, the gravitational constant is a ratio of volume
divided by mass and time
squared. (m3 / kg sec2). Time, mass and lengths
are operationally defined in the scientifc system. They also are
circularly defined, since they rely on each other in a circle.
All of them presuppose that matter is not changing relationally.
If the volume, mass and
dithering motions of atoms change together, as
a relationship, the gravitational constant could stay the same while
every aspect of reality changes in parallel. When we look into
the distant past (far away galaxies), we see overwhelming visible
evidence of change, yet all the mathematical constants allegedly remain
the same. Constants,
surrounded by visible change, are evidence that
atoms change as a relationship, not that things do not change. This is
like chemical
equilibria - where the chemical relationship shifts together - but the
equilibrium constants
remain the same. We observe that the poroperties of matter change
relationally, the quantum frequencies, space matter takes up and its
inertial properties all change in parallel when we compare primordial
galaxies with closer ones at many ranges.
Is it time that changes?
Modern people always look for some independent thing that does not
change. For example, we often ask, were the creation days 24 hours
long? To an Old Testament person this would be an absurd
question. Hours are not fround in the original text of the Old
Testament. More importantly, how could you know the duration of a
day when days are defined cyclically. It is the cycles of the
heavens that defined, days, seasons and years. The sun, moon and
stars, the cyclical event markers, were not formed out of
prexistent matter until the fourth creation day. Time was not an
independent entity in the minds of Old Testament people.
We only know
how to think using the assumption that Aristotle invented.
We assume durations, such as seconds, are constant because we
previously assumed that atoms are perpetual motion machines.
Solomon said that God made everything
beautiful in its [‘eth] (time
of an event, usual time). However, we cannot understand the beginning
because God has set
[‘owlam] (long time) in our mind (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Everything was
beautiful but we cannot
understand the past or the future
because we have “long duration time” in our minds.
Solomon clearly states that our
understanding of time prevents us from decoding the past or
understanding the future.
To ancient people, time was part of the mysterious changing
universe, not an independent
“thing.” Paul writes about God’s secret wisdom destined for our glory before the ages - aion (I
Corinthians 2:7). The first thing God created was a relationship
with light. The form of matter was actualized when God said
“Let there be light.” Light lives in a house, which we call an
atom. The dwelling of
light is also a place of darkness because the paths of light in its
house are mysterious and
unknowable (Job 38:19 - 21). After the first rebellion, God decreed
that the relationship decays
in an orderly way - together (Romans 8:20 - 22.) Does all matter change
relationally? We know that light is
a fundamental part of
every property of matter. Indeed all that we know about matter is
detected with light. Someone might argue
that there is no underlying reality with which to compare a change in
the rate of time. I
absolutely agree, but I am not speaking of a differential change, but a
relationship that decays-together. A differential change is one that
involves a difference to something that does not change with it.
Relational changes are where no part of reality remains unchanging.
Don’t we measure conservation
laws?
Conservation allows short partial observations to claim an understanding of the entire universe. The foundation for all conservation is the first principle of the end time: that all things remain the same in Being. (See translation of 2 Peter 3:4 in My Quest for Truth section). Scientists cannot measure or mathematically analyze things that change together. Many people believe that man is the measurer of all things, and only what is measurable with instruments and verified with mathematics can be real. The reader should understand that God is not a deceiver, yet he can even defeat a system of measurement. He did not make a universe that tricks you into believing a false conservancy. The evidence that supports the Bible is visible, even here on our planet. The light from every atom in the universe is visibly different from modern matter. observed to change as it ages, when compare He even tells us plainly how the universe functions.
Why then do scientists measure laws of conservation? These laws depend on their elementary assumption. However, the universe is not very kind to them. According to their own measurements, the most-distant parts of the universe are violating their laws of conservation by accelerating themselves! They have to invent anti gravity or invisible dark energy to account for their measurements. It is not God who deceives them, but their own elementary ideas. The Bible did something that no scientist can do. It predicted the first principle of the end time. My faith is in God’s Word that is able to make such amazing predictions, rather than the assumptions of a pagan philosopher. In the long term, conservation is meaningless in a universe where matter decays as a relationship. If the volume, mass, charge, time, gravity, and energy within atoms change together, God defeats the laws of conservation, since they cannot measure some of the physical things that are happening. Why should you believe what cannot be measured? Because there is visible evidence that conflicts with their scientific way of reasoning.
Don’t scientists measure the light from the stars? Don’t they measure the radioactivity of the rocks? How could their measurements be wrong?
Scientists often make valid measurements. They do not write about the percentages of radioactive decay products in rocks. They use their first assumption to project the units of measurement into billions of years. Astronomers do not say that a star spectrum shifts so much. Instead they talk about the velocity of recession, space-time expansion and billions of years. They always assume the primary assumption when analyzing measurements of the past. Scientists never imagine that an atom can decay internally in an interdependent manner. The Bible says gold is self corrupting. (I Peter 1:7) This is what the Greek says, not my words. This is an unscientific statement, but it is grammatically accurate. A scientist would protest that no measurement has ever detected any changes in gold. If we reject the assumption of the end time mockers, it is not difficult to see how God defeats scientific measurements. He does not use deception, but by decreeing that substance should decay as a relationship, He defeats the greatest system of human pride, science itself.
How can the size and age of the universe fit into the few generations listed in the Bible?
In the Old Testament the stretching of the heavens is mentioned twelve times. The active participle refers to an action with unbroken continuity. God is stretching out the heavens like a curtain. He is spreading it out like a tent to dwell in (Isaiah 40:22). It would seem that this stretching of the heavens has continually happened since Adam. This implies that Adam’s view was different from our sky. Since we have the genealogies of both Joseph and Mary, this stretching of the heavens was happening during those generations.
Do you mean that the universe is expanding from a big bang?
Absolutely not! The Bible says that not one of the stars is missing. The expansion is not empty space stretching out or the creation of new stars. When we look back through time to the most-distant objects, we see tiny dense galaxies ejecting even tinier objects that seem to expand into micro galaxies. The visible evidence fits the words of the Old Testament - God is stretching out the heavens. Clues for the big bang involve mathematical equations that use their assumption to interpret galactic redshifts, not visible evidence. I believe that what the Old Testament refers to is the stretching out of planets, stars and galaxies. Primordial stars were compact and dense. Dr. Halton Arp [1] catalogued extensive evidence that the visible sky has spread out from ejections of quasars. Ejected matter often acts as though it had no mass, often rapidly moving without bending from the effects of gravity. As this primordial matter expands, its properties change together. The redshift changes, while it expands and responds differently gravitationally.
In this picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, I have deliberately blackened out the larger, brighter galaxies. Our eyes are normally drawn to the brightest objects, so I have removed them, so that we can focus on the regularly spaced strings of dim objects. Some strings only have a few dim galaxies, others are long and others are curved. Notice that dark empty areas surround the strings. (The picture is actually a mosaic and the upper corner was not photographed). Examine different parts of the picture carefully. Notice that many of these dim objects have equal spacing to their neighbors, although one would not expect them to all lie perpendicular to our line of sight. Twelve times in the Bible, God says he continuously stretches out the heavens. It would seem that this stretching is visible.
Someone could argue, if these ancient galaxies are dense and small, surely a black hole is gravitationally keeping them together. Such ideas are unnecessary if matter itself changes as a relationship. If primordial atoms were smaller, because the relationship has shifted, then we have no way to test what that means in a laboratory. The most distant visible evidence shows tiny objects strung out like bullets from a machine gun. This is the opposite of what one would expect from black holes or a big bang.
Our closest neighbors, the Magellanic Clouds, are connected to the Milky Way by a stream of gas. Did God put that stream of hydrogen there to deceive us? Of course not, He is not a deceiver. These micro galaxies were surely ejected from the Milky Way and left behind a gas trail. Someone could argue, “Astronomers say that the Magellanic Clouds are 160,000 light years away. The number of generations in the Bible conflicts with the evidence that two galaxies have moved 160,000 light years away since Adam’s day.” If you could think like believers in the Old Testament era, you would not think this was a conflict. They thought everything was decaying, including time.
Elihu, the young antagonist in the ancient book of Job, knew that God had spread out the sky like molten bronze. In Genesis chapter 1, the word firmament is related to hammering bronze. This word would suggest that the expanse of the heavens was dense like metal. I believe the first humans saw our galaxy convulsively spreading out, like hammer blows spreading out red hot bronze. Halton Arp lists many evidences that vast areas of the visible sky have spread out from the cores of a few active galaxies. Arp’s statistical and photo evidence is seen in x-rays, radio waves, and visible light. He argues that redshift is not a measure of distance and galaxies are not as far away as most astronomers claim. If this is true, then there is no way to calculate the distance to the galaxies. (See Jeremiah 31:37) If matter changes as a relationship, our ancestors could have seen the heavens being stretched out every night.
It is interesting that the oldest cave paintings are of animals that roamed the earth in antiquity. Some of the paintings have equally spaced painted dots. A few scientists have tried to identify the pictures and the dots with constellations or moon phases. It is interesting that the dots look like the strings of objects in the Hubble Deep Field photos.
The Great Bull or auroch from the cave of Lascaux. A string of black dots precedes the bull and a double row lies above his shoulder. Star like dots are also on his face and strings of white dots in the horns.
This cave painting of a horse has a string of red dots on his neck curving out from a red object on his head. A long curved string of black dots also seems to come from the oblong red “galaxy.” Ancient cave art often has strings of red or black dots.
Compare the cave art with this string of distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field North photo. Some of the faint blue objects are oblong or double. Notice the background is dark and the faint objects are regularly spaced. The strings are sometimes short, sometimes straight and sometimes curved, but our eyes are not deceiving us - they are really there.
If the elementary assumption of science is false, cave artists could have lived to great age and watched our Milky Way shooting out strings of globular clusters. This may seem incredible, but the first assumption powerfully controls how you think. Surely this is why Paul warned that the elementary principals of the philosophers can enslave us. I remind the reader that this assumption is the scientific dogma, since they never examine or test it.
How could the visible sky have spread out during the few generations listed in the Bible?
I have not found a single verse in the Bible that states that the earth is young. There are many verses that speak to its antiquity. Habakkuk writes of the ancient mountains and hills. In the New Testament, the Greek words archaios, ekpalai, pali, aeon and pote speak of the ancient time, the great while ago time. Our age is at the end of the ages (the aeons). Our “time is short” and the present order is passing away (I Corinthians 7:29). The mystery of the gospel was hidden for long ages (aionios) past (Romans 16:25). The scripture was written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages has come (I Corinthians 10:11). At the end of the ages (aeons), Jesus came to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26). Peter says that the heavens (the stars) existed long ago (of a long time).
The Bible clearly teaches two things that we assume are opposed to each other. It repeatedly speaks of the long ages past. It also says the earth was made for man and that our ancestors were here since the 6th day. The Bible also lists less than 80 generations from Adam to Jesus. What scientists say took billions of years, the Bible says took about 80 generations to the time of Christ. At the time of Christ, it is written that Jesus’ second coming is at hand, soon, quickly - yet two thousand years have passed. There is no conflict if you can break free from the elementary ideas of the philosophers. The Bible has it right and our scientific reasoning is what is wrong. The decay of the universe includes time that was much slower in the past. We live, as the Bible says, in the time is short age - the end of the ages. Remember, time is not a thing, it is part of a relationship that changes together with matter.
You are suggesting that the earliest humans not only lived several hundred years, but those years were equivalent to eons of time. What evidence is there for this?
Adam cataloged all the birds and land animals on the same day he was created. Fossil records show that many kinds of birds and animals are now extinct. It should have taken him several years to examine and name each one according to its characteristics, yet he it did all on the sixth day. (The Bible says Eve was also created on the sixth day.) He did not find an animal that could be his helpmeet, so God gave him an operation so that he might understand that the woman was his partner, from his side. When Adam awoke, he said, Now at length bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. How long was the sixth day? The “at length” word in Hebrew can refer to repeated things and so has to do with time. One translation renders this as “at last.” It was both a single period of light and darkness and a great long time.
Ancient societies recognized a difference between the primordial age and the temporal (current) age. They believed that primordial time was much longer than temporal time. [2] The Sumerian King List has survived on cuneiform tablets. The first eight kings reigned for 241,200 years before the flood. [3] The list shows that succeeding kings after the flood reigned for decreasing numbers of years. Concurrent kings on the Egyptian King List seem to have lived reasonably long lives. [The Egyptians were the first people to devise an ancient fixed-length calendar. Our modern symbolic calendar came from Egypt through Julius Caesar.] Were the Sumerians attempting to translate primordial years into their estimate of the temporal time of the scribe? The scribe wrote the list during the reign of King Utukhegal of Erech. Westerners are the only people in history who believe that time has an unchanging nature. This is a recent idea that started when clocks began to audibly tick away the seconds.
Dr. Jack Cuozzo used x-rays to study Neanderthal skulls. He documents how our facial bones grow and our faces change as we age. He claims that if we lived hundreds of years, our brows would be thick like Neanderthals. His x-rays show that Neanderthal children looked more like us than their parents. The fact that the children had different shaped heads from their parents implies that the shape of their skulls changed with age. The Neanderthal children also had tooth wear as though they were very old. Dr. Cuozzo claims that evidence from their jawbones shows that they ate soft foods. He x-rayed an infant skull with primary (baby teeth) that had worn enamel. The worn enamel on baby teeth implies that Neanderthal children matured very slowly. They were very old even though they were immature. The Greek poet Hesiod claimed that the ancient children played at their mothers’ knee until they were 100 years old. In the book of Genesis, the earliest patriarchs sired children when they were old, but later generations had children at younger ages.
Imagine that a single day in Noah’s time was equivalent to several years today. Our biological clocks are synchronized with the sun. All living things have their circadian clocks synchronized with the daily rhythms of our planet. If the day was long, then biological clocks would run slowly and our ancestors should have matured slowly. Vegetation, however, would grow incredibly fast because plant growth is tied to the sunlight. This could explain the trillions of tons of coal, much of which apparently came from a few generations of giant fern trees before the flood.
In Genesis 31, Jacob traveled from the Euphrates to Gilead in 10 days. This is a ground distance close to 400 miles. Jacob, apparently left in the spring since Laban was shearing his sheep and the flocks and herds were nursing their young. How could he have traveled thirty to forty miles a day while driving suckling lambs? The daily distances traveled by Greek armies recorded by Xenophon and the historians of Alexander are often greater than modern foot soldiers could travel. This only makes sense if you realize that ancient days were much longer than modern days. As matter decays, the orbits and days change-together, as part of a decaying relationship. A day for Jacob was much longer than a day for us but it was nothing compared to a day for his fathers. This is exactly what Jacob said to Pharaoh, “the days of the years of my life are few and evil compared to the days of the years of the lives of my fathers in their days.” (Genesis 47:9 - this verse uses the Hebrew word “days” four times). Jacob evidently believed that days change and the days of his fathers were better than his. Jacob was not a weirdo. In his days, everyone - pagans and the descendants of Abraham - all believed that everything was deteriorating. This deterioration included time, which is why they longed for the past when everything was so much better.
It is interesting that even today we commonly experience that days were slower in our youth and speed up as we age. Perhaps our memory of how things were in our youth is a more accurate gage of time than the clocks that depend on an assumption about the nature of time. If everything decays, Jacob, at the age of 130, should have had a clear memory of how much greater the days were in his youth.
What you are suggesting is that the Earth spins faster while increasing its distance from the sun. How could anything continuously change both the orbit and the spin rate of the Earth? Isn’t that illogical?
Things that change together are illogical by nature. According to the Bible, if anyone thinks he is wise according to this age, let him become foolish because God defeats the wisdom of the world with their own panourgia (craftiness, cunning, false wisdom - I Corinthians 3:19). No one has ever explained gravity conclusively. Newton said it exists but he could make no hypothesis about it. Einstein’s assumed that gravity is space-time warped around massive objects. He thought in terms of measurable relativity, not matter changing as a relationship. If matter changes in a relationship, there would be consequences, but these are not measurable locally with experiments. That does not mean that scientists do not measure accurately, but the only component of change that is measurable are differential changes.
The best way to see what happens when matter changes is to look back in time at the most-distant stars. I have repeatedly mentioned the long strings of dense blue objects like machine gun bullets being ejected from miniature galaxies. They do not seem to respond to gravity the way we would expect. Scientists admit that these quasar-like objects are very dense, but they think that a black hole compresses them. However, the bullet like objects are sometimes seen moving in a way that defies the rules of gravity. This should not be unexpected, since what they call “black holes” are also seen ejecting mass, not sucking it into a whirlpool. Remember that your primary assumption is very powerful. You will naturally try to make the evidence fit your primary assumption, even if it seems contradictory.
The visible evidence shows that primordial atoms did not act gravitationally like local atoms. Even in our galaxy, the outermost stars do not seem to move in accord with Kepler’s laws. This suggests that the outer parts of galaxies are at a different stage of decay than the inner parts. Remember that matter is not some solid object. When a proton is smashed, the parts have only a small percentage of the original “mass.” Whatever mass is, most of it would seem to be a nonmaterial relationship. In other words, if matter deteriorates as a relationship, mass (and gravity) could certainly change, since it is not something solid.
The Old Testament often uses words for ancient time, even though it is talking about a short time in years. This implies that the Earth’s spin was slower, but there are no underlying fixtures to which we can compare such “slowness.” Things, that change as a relationship, are essentially unknowable. It is impossible to make together-change fit the logical, experimental or mathematical system of science. If I am interpreting the Bible correctly, then the defeat of science will be total. Our wise Savior will get great glory when He proves that simple faith in Jesus triumphs over all those who use great systems of reasoning to mock His Word.
It really comes down to a contest of faiths. Do you have faith in the untested elementary principle of Aristotle, or the words of the Bible? The scientist’s faith can account precisely for many natural processes in the present. They invent absurdities like the stretching out of empty space and black holes to account for the changes they see in the distance. You could also abandon the first principle of the last days. This would allow you to understand how God defeats science. Whose faith will win? Will faith in God’s Word triumph over the untested assumptions of a pagan philosopher? Will mathematics, logic and science triumph over faith in Jesus, the God-man? A compromise position is not reasonable, since it results in too many discrepancies, biblically and evidentially. “Evidence, evidence,” cries the scientist. Evidence is interpreted in a way that fits your fundamental assumption. Change your assumption and you will change your whole world-view.
What you are suggesting is utter foolishness, says the scientist. I accept that assessment with great joy, because according to the Bible we need to embrace foolishness because God defeats the wise of the world with their own craftiness.
Does the decay of atoms help explain the geology of our planet?
In Isaiah 42:5 God says that He spread out the earth and all that comes out of it. In Isaiah 44:24 He says that He is stretching out the heavens by Himself, And spreading out the earth all alone. The Hebrew shows that the earth and sky are spreading out in unbroken continuity. Literally it says the earth is expanding in size.
The Bible says that at the height of the flood all the land was covered. At the end of the flood the mountains rose and the valleys sank and the water ran down to the place where God decreed. The Bible teaches that new seas were formed at the end of the flood. These seas will never return to cover the earth (Psalm 104:5 - 9). It also says that the stretching out of the earth was in the waters (Psalm 136:6). A great crack runs through the center of every ocean except the Pacific. In Job 38:25 God says that by wisdom he cleft a channel or division for the flood. The word for “flood” means a deluge. The original super-continent split so that the cleaving and expansion of the earth provided a place for the flood waters.
Does evidence exist to support that the earth increases in size? [4] Much evidence exists, but in this short section, I cannot list them in detail. The continents do not fit together unless you shrink the earth to about two thirds its present size. When you fit the continents on a smaller globe, you find that the early earth was mostly land. Our continents are covered by thick layers of sedimentary rocks with imbedded marine fossils. The middle of the Atlantic is volcanic rock without thick sediments like the continental rocks. Clearly the Atlantic was not in existence during the flood. A crack 60,000 kilometers long crack oozes out molten rock in the middle of most oceans. The continents remain in place while the earth expands producing ever wider oceans. The division of the earth into enlarging seas was still visibly during Peleg’s lifetime. Peleg’s name means division. It was the earth that was divided (Genesis 10:25) in his days. Perhaps it was in his days that the Mediterranean and Black seas were flooded. Evidence from the bottom of the Mediterranean shows it was once dry. A great underwater waterfall stretches across the straits of Gibralter showing that the water flowed in from the Atlantic. Someone could object that the flooding of the Mediterranean happened many millions of years ago. Peleg, however, lived in primordial time, the long-ago time.
What mechanism can explain the expansion of the earth? The simple answer is that modern atoms are larger than primordial atoms. Where did the energy come from to expand the earth? If their elementary assumption about the nature of matter is false, the logical causal system is inadequate to explain together-change. Matter could increase in size without the need to find the energy source because energy is part of a dynamic relation that changes together. Why are the oceans deep if they are continuously widening? The Bible says He is stretching out the earth and everything on it (Isaiah 42:5). The continents and oceans float on a plastic layer deep in the earth, but the oceans and continents have different foundations. Two geological distinct formations, the seas and the continents, are in balance so changes in oceanic lithosphere affect the height of adjacent continents. This is known as isostatic equilibrium. Why do we not measure the increase in the size of the Earth? You cannot measure changes caused by atoms that decay together as a relationship. Measuring rods, gravity, mass, time, the orbits of GPS and laser ranging satellites would all change along with the earth.
Try this simple test. Cut out the continents from a globe and attach them to a ball about two thirds the size of the globe. They make a good fit without the Atlantic, Indian or Arctic seas. If you try the same cutouts on a normal size globe, you can approximately fit Africa to South America, however, the opposite side of the world does not fit. The separation between Australia and Asia will run into the thousands of kilometers. Fossils and rocks from separated land masses show that they were joined in the past. This simple evidence makes no sense to those who hold the first assumption of the end time.
Metamorphosis, written by the pagan poet Ovid, describes how everything changes. In his golden age he mentions that men were governed by conscience with no laws or judges. The new oceans had not yet formed and the weather was always spring like. Why did the pagans think that some of the oceans were newly formed? It is interesting that Ovid’s early earth has several points of agreement with the biblical account.
What you suggest is dangerously close to the pagan myths. How could myths have greater validity than science?
The pagans invented myths to explain what they saw. Many ancient myths speak of a flood. The myths are not true, but they are based on an event that really happened. The Akkadian tablets known as the Enuma Elis graphically describe a great battle between two giant planets. One planet was smashed to pieces apparently by a moon from the other planet. They said the combatants were gods. The Bible also refers to a great battle in the sky in several passages but it does not say that it was a war between planet-gods. The ancient myths are attempts to describe what they saw according to their false planet-god religions. The Bible alone describes earth-history accurately. Scientific accounts of beginnings are attempts to describe what they have not seen according to their dogma. If one rejects the first principle, the dogma of the end time, it seems to me, that the evidence fits the Bible like a glove. Evidence is analyzed with elementary assumptions. However, I got my first principles from the Bible, not the pagan philosophers.
The first principle of the end time is an assumption that is almost never questioned. I have attempted to test it with simple evidence as seen from the perspective of biblical principles. I believe that Christians have very good reasons to reject the end time assumption. If you do, you will see earth-history from an entirely different perspective. I am fully aware that rejecting this elementary assumption means abandoning the Western system we are so familiar with. This can be deeply disturbing.
Why should a Christian conservative consider becoming a radical in the area of science?
In the world of politics and culture a conservative is one who is averse to change and holds traditional values. People will call you a radical if you accept what the Bible says about the physical universe as fundamentally true. They will say you are undermining the whole Western system just because of some words in the Bible. A biblical conservative is one who believes the Bible in the most literal manner. You should accept the simplicity of what the Bible says because it defeats human wisdom. This is what the Bible predicts. It glorifies God and not man. It seems to me that it does not violate the evidence from the earth and universe.
Proverbs 2:6 - 7 “For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright . . . ” The word “stores up” comes from a word meaning hide by covering over. The Hebrew word for “sound wisdom” comes from a root meaning to substantiate. (Substantiate means to provide evidence to support or prove the truth of something). The same Hebrew word is translated success in Job 5:12 “He frustrates the plotting of the shrewd, So that their hands cannot attain success.” Paul quotes this when arguing that God defeats the wise with their own wisdom (I Corinthians 3:19 -20). God decreed that everything decays together so that science, logic and mathematics cannot achieve success. He did this so that the truth is hidden except to those who get their understanding from His word. His Word triumphs over logic, mathematics and science. His Word is the only truth.
Copyright Victor McAllister February 20, 2004
[1] Dr. Halton Arp spent his life studying peculiar galaxies. He used the 200-inch Mount Palomar telescope in his early studies. He has written several books that I recommend to those who have a technical interest in the evidence that the sky has stretched out.
[2] Those who are interested in the ancient views of time, should read Mircea Eliade’s book: The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History.
[3] Translation of Sumerian King List. Parts of the text are chipped and missing and have been added from other copies. Some copies have differences of a few years for some kings, but there is no question they thought that the ancients lived vastly longer lives than they themselves did.
Lines 1 - 39 from a clay tablet:
After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years. Alaljar ruled for 36000 years. 2 kings; they ruled for 64800 years. Then Eridug fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira. In Bad-tibira, En-men-lu-ana ruled for 43200 years. En-men-gal-ana ruled for 28800 years. Dumuzid, the shepherd, ruled for 36000 years. 3 kings; they ruled for 108000 years. Then Bad-tibira fell (?) and the kingship was taken to Larag. In Larag, En-sipad-zid-ana ruled for 28800 years. 1 king; he ruled for 28800 years. Then Larag fell (?) and the kingship was taken to Zimbir. In Zimbir, En-men-dur-ana became king; he ruled for 21000 years. 1 king; he ruled for 21000 years. Then Zimbir fell (?) and the kingship was taken to Curuppag. In Curuppag, Ubara-Tutu became king; he ruled for 18600 years. 1 king; he ruled for 18600 years. In 5 cities 8 kings; they ruled for 241200 years. Then the flood swept over.
Lines 378 - 431 at the end of the tablet has a summary of the kings after the flood.
A total of 39 kings ruled for 14409 + X years, 3 months and 3 1/2 days, 4 times in Kic. A total of 22 kings ruled for 2610 + X years, 6 months and 15 days, 5 times in Unug. A total of 12 kings ruled for 396 years, 3 times in Urim. A total of 3 kings ruled for 356 years, once in Awan. A total of 1 king ruled for 420 years, once in Hamazi.
16 lines missing
A total of 12 (?) kings ruled for 197 (?) years, once in Agade. A total of 21 kings ruled for 125 years and 40 days, once in the army of Gutium. A total of 11 kings ruled for 159 years, once in Isin. There are 11 cities, cities in which the kingship was exercised. A total of 134 kings, who altogether ruled for 28876 + X years.
[4] For the reader who has an interest in the geological evidence that the earth was once smaller, read the books of Dr. S. Warren Carey. He was an Australian geologist (not a creationist) who cataloged extensive evidence that the earth was once smaller.