Journal Dannon's Journal: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 5
So, just the other morning, I was listening to this discussion of creation vs. evolution on the radio, and the question that came up over and over of the exact age of this ball of dirt we're living on.
Some people insist that the world is billions of years old. Others are adamant that it's only a few hundred thousand.
Here's my thought:
Einstein and Hawking have told us a few things about relativity, specifically, the idea that time really isn't the fixed constant that we think it is. And the theory goes that time is especially relative in certain hard-to-recreate circumstances. If the beginning of the universe isn't a hard-to-recreate circumstance, I don't know what is. I would be surprised if there weren't a lot of relativity going on back then.
From the theological perspective: Time is an aspect of this physical world in which we exist. God, Heaven, and the Host all exist beyond this world, in an Eternal state. Our senses just aren't all that prepared to grok what true timelessness really is. God's given us some clues, but we're very much accustomed to living by the clock and the calendar.
Add into the mix the fact that I've quite possibly overdosed on high-quality sci-fi in my lifetime.
So: Am I totally off my rocker to suggest that maybe a true seven-day creation and a billions-of-years creation may not be all that contradictory?
And I'll end with a joke from rec.humor.funny:
Mortal: What is a million years like to you?
God: Like one second.
Mortal: What is a million dollars like to you?
God: Like one penny.
Mortal: Can I have a penny?
God: Just a second...
Yes and no :-) (Score:2)
Am I totally off my rocker to suggest that maybe a true seven-day creation and a billions-of-years creation may not be all that contradictory?
Non-literalist Christians such as yours truly (and most mainline Protestant churches, along with the Roman Catholics and most Episcopalians/Anglicans) have always said that "day" in the context of Genesis is meant to be "some span of time", i.e. a phase, not a literal calendar day. Anyway it's hard to see how one could define "day" when the Sun and planets didn't
here (Score:2)
Those are moments. The one in the middle is the first moment, that's before time. All moments are connected through this moment.
They're around the outer ring, in time. You can only travel through time to the adjacent moments.
Now, in a twist of mobius/klein bottle proportions,put the outer ring INSIDE the hub.
It's all still in the first moment, which being the first moment and before time, MUST co
Re:here (Score:2)
It's a bit silly (Score:2)
For example, you've got day and night being created at the same time you're using the measure "day" to tell how long it took. Seems a little circular to me.
Genesis 1 [lds.org]
Seems like maybe we should make room for the idea that we're not talking about just a modern 24-hour period.
Re:It's a bit silly (Score:2)
The one thing that has always struck me as rather "wow" about the Genesis story of creation is how accurately it does parallel the scientific story, time scales notwithstanding.
Unlike a lot of other creation stories. The Greeks said everything started out with a bird with black wings that laid a golden egg from which came Eros, who made the earth and the sky fall in love. The Aztec creation story starts with the earth crumbling to ashes and all living people being eaten by jaguars, before Quetzacoatl