Millions of years ago ! ?
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"nothing comes from nothing" is an inexact statement of the facts.
no matter or energy or information is created. physically speaking.
((nothing new under the sun))
so God is neither matter, nor energy, nor information.
He is above, and beyond all such that can be measured - "the heaven of the heavens cannot contain Him"
greater in measure than "the universal set"
no matter or energy or information is created. physically speaking.
((nothing new under the sun))
so God is neither matter, nor energy, nor information.
He is above, and beyond all such that can be measured - "the heaven of the heavens cannot contain Him"
greater in measure than "the universal set"
there's a story i've heard about a man who worked at a museum of natural history giving tours.
when he comes to a set of brontosaur bones, he sez:
".. and this specimen is 150 million and 23 years old . ."
a kid in the crowd stops him -
"mister, i get why you say 150 mil, but where do you get the 23? how can you be so precise?"
"well son," - he sez - "they brought this skeleton in the same year i started working here, and i've been working here 23 years. they said it was 150 million years old then, so by common sense it's 150,000,023 years old now."
Strong's Concordance
Part of Speech: Noun Masculine
Transliteration: mayim
Phonetic Spelling: (mah'-yim)
Short Definition: waterNAS Exhaustive Concordance
Word Origin
a prim. root
Definition
waters, water
NASB Translation
flood (1), loins (1), pool (1), Water (5), water (373), watering (1), waterless* (1), waters (192).
Part of Speech: Noun
Transliteration: tehom
Phonetic Spelling: (teh-home')
Short Definition: deepNAS Exhaustive Concordance
Word Origin
from an unused word
Definition
deep, sea, abyss
NASB Translation
deep (22), deeps (8), depths (4), ocean depths (1), springs (1).
mayim: waters, water
Original Word: מָ֫יִםPart of Speech: Noun Masculine
Transliteration: mayim
Phonetic Spelling: (mah'-yim)
Short Definition: waterNAS Exhaustive Concordance
Word Origin
a prim. root
Definition
waters, water
NASB Translation
flood (1), loins (1), pool (1), Water (5), water (373), watering (1), waterless* (1), waters (192).
tehom: deep, sea, abyss
Original Word: תְּהוֹםPart of Speech: Noun
Transliteration: tehom
Phonetic Spelling: (teh-home')
Short Definition: deepNAS Exhaustive Concordance
Word Origin
from an unused word
Definition
deep, sea, abyss
NASB Translation
deep (22), deeps (8), depths (4), ocean depths (1), springs (1).
THE NATURE OF GOD AND THE INCOMPATIBILITY OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
The first thing that we must realize about the nature of God is that we can never sufficiently understand the nature of God. Perhaps the most sobering question which confronts us is not how do we understand the nature of God, but how do we approach the Word of God to understand what God has revealed of himself? For the word of God to have its proper place in connection with the mind of man, it must be given its agential position. We must take everything that God has revealed about himself in scripture and allow the text to superimpose upon our minds a revealed image of his nature. Without the influence of scripture, any concept that one may have of God will always be the sole product of the individual. When one removes one’s self from the inspired text all that remains to fall back on is the uninspired world of human intelligence.
If we are to enter this study in earnest, we must first suspend for the moment everything we feel that we already know about God. Let us not be guilty of bringing anything of our own into this study. Human intelligence, being what it is, has the tendency to insist that scripture agree with long held, deeply rooted, and cherished concepts of God. We must be willing to set aside experiential logic and begin with the word of God allowing scripture to influence and entrain the mind. This means that we may need to change the way we think, the way we speak, the way we read scripture and certainly the way we understand reality. This may challenge many of our ideas about God, which, for some of us, may prove to be very uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the word of God must be allowed to overturn all unrevealed ideologies about the nature of God. Unrevealed ideologies are inherently the product of socialization. As such, it will prove a great hindrance to the development of a biblically constructed theology.
The Limited Nature of Revelation
When I speak of revelation, I am speaking of the Bible as the exclusive writtenrepresentation of the mind of God given to us by the Almighty about himself. What I mean by limited is that God has not revealed everything to us about himself, Deuteronomy 29:29 and 1Corintheans 2:9-10. What he has revealed linguistically is found only within the Bible. Revelation is limited because of the limited capacity of the human mind to comprehend things it cannot envision and because of the inability of human language to explain things of the non-natural world. Revelation about God is very often anthropomorphic. This is because man can only understand that with which he has an experientialframe of reference. In order for God to reveal himself in scripture, he uses human language to present himself to us in terms with which we are all familiar and to which each of us can relate based on our own individual experiences. For example, in his relationship to man God speaks of himself as father, friend, shepherd, master, judge, king, and husband. He speaks of such physical traits as hair, wings, thigh, hand, arm, heart, and bosom. Hespeaks of character traits such as love, knowledge, wisdom, hate, will, anger, mercy, tenderness, and compassion. We are all familiar with these terms and can relate to them based on our own experiences, but only to a limited degree. We can only understand these terms to the degree that each of us experiences them at the personal level. This means that each of us will have developed different levels of understanding about each of these concepts. Regardless of one’s level of understanding of these terms, we can never fully understand them to the degree that they relate to God.
The Struggle of Human Intelligence
In an effort to conceptualize God, man has posed such questions as, where did God come from, how big is God, how long is eternity, or can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it? These and other such questions attempt to understand God within the confines of time and space.Since man draws upon comparisons to understand things in this world, he quite naturally tries to understand God in the same way. In the absence of revelation, he can do nothing else. Man feels that he must be able to qualify and quantify everything in order to understand and categorize it. The mind of the skeptic may find it difficult to accept the reality of something that cannot be proven empirically. In the struggle of the human mind to explain the nature of God, man has insisted upon measuring God through the process of natural comparisons. Since God stands outside of man’s ability to rationalize, it is impossible to conceptualize God in terms of time and space. Since we have nothing in our experience with which to compare God or eternity, these questions can add nothing to our understanding of God. God cannot be confined to time or space nor defined by any human metric. These are parameters of strictly linear measurements and can tell us nothing of theunseen world.
The first thing that we must realize about the nature of God is that we can never sufficiently understand the nature of God. Perhaps the most sobering question which confronts us is not how do we understand the nature of God, but how do we approach the Word of God to understand what God has revealed of himself? For the word of God to have its proper place in connection with the mind of man, it must be given its agential position. We must take everything that God has revealed about himself in scripture and allow the text to superimpose upon our minds a revealed image of his nature. Without the influence of scripture, any concept that one may have of God will always be the sole product of the individual. When one removes one’s self from the inspired text all that remains to fall back on is the uninspired world of human intelligence.
If we are to enter this study in earnest, we must first suspend for the moment everything we feel that we already know about God. Let us not be guilty of bringing anything of our own into this study. Human intelligence, being what it is, has the tendency to insist that scripture agree with long held, deeply rooted, and cherished concepts of God. We must be willing to set aside experiential logic and begin with the word of God allowing scripture to influence and entrain the mind. This means that we may need to change the way we think, the way we speak, the way we read scripture and certainly the way we understand reality. This may challenge many of our ideas about God, which, for some of us, may prove to be very uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the word of God must be allowed to overturn all unrevealed ideologies about the nature of God. Unrevealed ideologies are inherently the product of socialization. As such, it will prove a great hindrance to the development of a biblically constructed theology.
The Limited Nature of Revelation
When I speak of revelation, I am speaking of the Bible as the exclusive writtenrepresentation of the mind of God given to us by the Almighty about himself. What I mean by limited is that God has not revealed everything to us about himself, Deuteronomy 29:29 and 1Corintheans 2:9-10. What he has revealed linguistically is found only within the Bible. Revelation is limited because of the limited capacity of the human mind to comprehend things it cannot envision and because of the inability of human language to explain things of the non-natural world. Revelation about God is very often anthropomorphic. This is because man can only understand that with which he has an experientialframe of reference. In order for God to reveal himself in scripture, he uses human language to present himself to us in terms with which we are all familiar and to which each of us can relate based on our own individual experiences. For example, in his relationship to man God speaks of himself as father, friend, shepherd, master, judge, king, and husband. He speaks of such physical traits as hair, wings, thigh, hand, arm, heart, and bosom. Hespeaks of character traits such as love, knowledge, wisdom, hate, will, anger, mercy, tenderness, and compassion. We are all familiar with these terms and can relate to them based on our own experiences, but only to a limited degree. We can only understand these terms to the degree that each of us experiences them at the personal level. This means that each of us will have developed different levels of understanding about each of these concepts. Regardless of one’s level of understanding of these terms, we can never fully understand them to the degree that they relate to God.
The Struggle of Human Intelligence
In an effort to conceptualize God, man has posed such questions as, where did God come from, how big is God, how long is eternity, or can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it? These and other such questions attempt to understand God within the confines of time and space.Since man draws upon comparisons to understand things in this world, he quite naturally tries to understand God in the same way. In the absence of revelation, he can do nothing else. Man feels that he must be able to qualify and quantify everything in order to understand and categorize it. The mind of the skeptic may find it difficult to accept the reality of something that cannot be proven empirically. In the struggle of the human mind to explain the nature of God, man has insisted upon measuring God through the process of natural comparisons. Since God stands outside of man’s ability to rationalize, it is impossible to conceptualize God in terms of time and space. Since we have nothing in our experience with which to compare God or eternity, these questions can add nothing to our understanding of God. God cannot be confined to time or space nor defined by any human metric. These are parameters of strictly linear measurements and can tell us nothing of theunseen world.
(where is it translated "loins" ??)
i understand that it is a word that means properly water - or deeps, with reference to water. what i meant to get at was that (from the point of view of something like a gap theory, i guess) - is there a better or more adequate word Moses could have used to describe the cloud of hydrogen and elementary particles that cosmological theories suggest the universe soon after creation (and planetary systems before gravitational collapse) would consist of?
what word would Moses have used to describe an interstellar gas cloud or a nebula, if he had a telescope? i think "mayim" would have been a reasonable choice. and maybe that's just what he was describing right here in the context of verse 2.
i don't want to fuss over it. obviously Genesis isn't a physics/cosmology textbook and isn't intended to be. maybe i'm handicapped by higher education in science and astronomy. to be very honest, i want to believe in 'young earth' and literal 24 days in Genesis, but i can't reconcile it with the other evidences and things i've been taught, but giving leeway for imprecise language - that's not meant to be scientifically precise - and what *might* be but isn't specifically spelled out in the text, i think some sort of 'gap' harmonizes Genesis with modern science.
maybe i'm deceived. don't take me antagonistically towards you brother, that's the last thing i mean to stir up division in.
i still believe 100% Genesis is true. that the universe is 100% God's creation.
God who has been God from everlasting and is God for everlasting. who transcends time. who also created time. i'm just not clear on the details of how He did it. will be looking at blueprints in heaven eagerly, for sure
i thought maybe that perspective would make more sense to ivan.
(where is it translated "loins" ??)
i understand that it is a word that means properly water - or deeps, with reference to water. what i meant to get at was that (from the point of view of something like a gap theory, i guess) - is there a better or more adequate word Moses could have used to describe the cloud of hydrogen and elementary particles that cosmological theories suggest the universe soon after creation (and planetary systems before gravitational collapse) would consist of?
what word would Moses have used to describe an interstellar gas cloud or a nebula, if he had a telescope? i think "mayim" would have been a reasonable choice. and maybe that's just what he was describing right here in the context of verse 2.
i don't want to fuss over it. obviously Genesis isn't a physics/cosmology textbook and isn't intended to be. maybe i'm handicapped by higher education in science and astronomy. to be very honest, i want to believe in 'young earth' and literal 24 days in Genesis, but i can't reconcile it with the other evidences and things i've been taught, but giving leeway for imprecise language - that's not meant to be scientifically precise - and what *might* be but isn't specifically spelled out in the text, i think some sort of 'gap' harmonizes Genesis with modern science.
maybe i'm deceived. don't take me antagonistically towards you brother, that's the last thing i mean to stir up division in.
i still believe 100% Genesis is true. that the universe is 100% God's creation.
God who has been God from everlasting and is God for everlasting. who transcends time. who also created time. i'm just not clear on the details of how He did it. will be looking at blueprints in heaven eagerly, for sure
i thought maybe that perspective would make more sense to ivan.
(where is it translated "loins" ??)
i understand that it is a word that means properly water - or deeps, with reference to water. what i meant to get at was that (from the point of view of something like a gap theory, i guess) - is there a better or more adequate word Moses could have used to describe the cloud of hydrogen and elementary particles that cosmological theories suggest the universe soon after creation (and planetary systems before gravitational collapse) would consist of?
what word would Moses have used to describe an interstellar gas cloud or a nebula, if he had a telescope? i think "mayim" would have been a reasonable choice. and maybe that's just what he was describing right here in the context of verse 2.
i don't want to fuss over it. obviously Genesis isn't a physics/cosmology textbook and isn't intended to be. maybe i'm handicapped by higher education in science and astronomy. to be very honest, i want to believe in 'young earth' and literal 24 days in Genesis, but i can't reconcile it with the other evidences and things i've been taught, but giving leeway for imprecise language - that's not meant to be scientifically precise - and what *might* be but isn't specifically spelled out in the text, i think some sort of 'gap' harmonizes Genesis with modern science.
maybe i'm deceived. don't take me antagonistically towards you brother, that's the last thing i mean to stir up division in.
i still believe 100% Genesis is true. that the universe is 100% God's creation.
God who has been God from everlasting and is God for everlasting. who transcends time. who also created time. i'm just not clear on the details of how He did it. will be looking at blueprints in heaven eagerly, for sure
i thought maybe that perspective would make more sense to ivan.
But you see know how difficult is to take the old testament literally, even the ones who defend it and say is 100% correct have to explain it as a metaphore.
This has been my point long time ago, that the old testament can no be taken literally, obviously have limitations, culture, language, undestanding of the days, the cultural laws the in-congruent and a-moral laws in it. how they actually made God resemble man, Jacob, moses, how it have human emotions like repentance,anger and revenge.... etc.