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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 6/8/2008 3:45 PM (GMT -6) |   |
Ronald A. Newcomb said...Hmm, trying to answer this post and it isn't working. Yes, the post just before yours did that.
I mean my answer to your other post on the other thread that is a twin of the one here above.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 6/8/2008 3:51 PM (GMT -6) | |
Ronald A. Newcomb said...
I just completed the book, Four Views, God & Time edited by Ganssle but the views are those of Paul Helm, Alan Padgett, Wm. Craig, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.
Very interesting book but I was struck by the fact that all three had a naturalist cosmology behind their statements.
. . .
...the Judeo Christian cosmology that was missed through the entire book. Several arguments made would have been better made using the Christian cosmology. Thanks for your review and thoughts, Ron.
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 12/11/2008 10:06 AM (GMT -6) | | Revelation reveals riveting reviews relating to time issues as the angel opend the seventh seal in chapter 8 which starts: “And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.”
Also it strikes me that the words meta tauta, translated “after these things” is used repeatedly (Rev.1:19, 4:1, 7:1, 7:9, 9:12, 10:4, 15:5, 18:1, 19:1) translated in KJV either After these things, or after this, or hereafter. Remember all this is occurring in heaven. So clearly the sequencing is occurring, which sequencing requires time passage or the text is misleading.
It was interesting to hear the speaker at the EPS conference in 2008 where the speaker dealing with Open Theism pretty much fell on his face trying to argue against it with comments such as the Open Theists accept the simple interpretation of scripture as their strong point. He, of course, took the standard view that anything they disagree with is an anthropomorphism of some kind.
The presenter did a good job or stating our position well and a very poor job of defending against it.
While listening to him I realized that God also has contingent options for the future. I believe prophesy is all contingent in the specifics, that is the “when” and “who” is going to be the actualized events so prophesied because if not, then we have the same logical problems as the classical theists explaining free will in light of foreknown events. But that issue aside, it seems to me that the classical theist has a problem presenting God as having future contingencies because, again, if everything is exhaustively known, then nothing is contingent to God either. Ah, there’s the rub! However, Isa. 46:10-11 is tensed past, present, and future, it is God telling us these things he stated have not yet happened but he will do them in the future.
KJV: “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times [the things] that are not [yet] done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken [it], I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed [it], I will also do it.”
It seems to me if they escape the necessary and fundamental character of time either by claiming some different type of time or the absence of time, then the same problem exists because you would have trouble claiming this different kind of time and then describing special characteristics of that speculative time.
It would seem to paint them into a corner by moving the argument into heaven by eliminating the special knowledge they claim of God being somehow outside of time. This would throw them back to a Platonic argument but with no place to escape to in order to claim some other kind of time exists there especially in light of the verses above from Revelation which not only claim time, but specify how much time elapsed in silence as the seventh seal is opened.
On God’s contingencies, did God know that Satan would actually fall? Did God know he would have to sacrifice to redeem men if he created them? Did he have a choice in creating us? It would seem that if he foreknew the future events of heaven such as creation (creation must be a heavenly event because the physical universe didn’t exist at that TIME) then who ordered it so? You would end up with some super god above our God, which, rightly, no one would accept.
God must have a free will, therefore contingencies. Of course, the Plutonic god which never needs to move and therefore needs no time could be invoked if only he hadn’t created beings with free will which requires responses such as judgments, and so forth.
If those contingencies God has include fulfilling prophesies or interacting in any way with man, which is what the verses in Isaiah quoted above state clearly, then the fulfillment itself is contingent and the interaction with man is contingent therefore the events claimed to be foreknown cannot be. It seems to me that one would have a problem when one person had a contingency involving the other, but the second person did not have any contingencies, rather, his actions were completely foreknown.
The crux of defeating the Classical arguments would seem to be avoiding the escape mechanism they use, viz, time. This can be done by playing the game on God’s turf, if you will, and eliminating the earthly arguments. After all, the discussion is specifically theological. So, Revelation does this, it creates the scene in heaven and claims time passage over and over again even describing how much time passed in Rev. 8:1.
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 4/19/2010 8:37 AM (GMT -6) | | There are two basic world views: The naturalist view (only nature exists) and the creationists view.
The naturalist view of the universe is called the unbounded view. The reason it is called unbounded is that there are no boundaries to the universe itself because there is nothing beyond the universe. Nothing at all. There is no height length, width, location, or time (obviously the point).
To illustrate this view, draw Cartesian coordinates on a piece of paper then a circle around that entire diagram. Correct it so the coordinate system reaches the circle.
The second view, the Christian view (originating in Judaism and adopted by Islam) is the bounded view. Again, draw the Cartesian coordinates and the circle, where the circle is confined inside the coordinates.
This is called the bounded view because the physical universe is not all that there is. If you describe what in just past the past piece of physical matter in any direction in the universe, you would say there is location there which could be described by the coordinate system, were it so enumerated. There would also be time, in fact, all the dimensions would be present if not measured or used in some domain.
And this is the point. Time is not only a component of our physical universe, it necessarily exists outside the boundaries of the physical universe itself.
Hubble showed the universe is expanding, but where is it expanding to? You much have a location to expand. Let’s say for example only that I want to expand my home, but the unbounded view is much like owning a condominium where the laws state that you own everything from the paint on the want, in. Where are you going to expand to? You do not have a location do expand, the laws prevent you from having more space. But the naturalist view is that this condo can just expand and it creates the space as it expands. Dimensions expand with it.
The bounded universe view is that there are dimensions, space, location outside the physical universe, and, yes, time also, all the dimensions are present everywhere, and beyond the boundaries of our physical universe.
The classical views of theology fall into the trap of accepting the naturalists view of the universe itself without holding to naturalism. All the dimensions are equal in duration, that is, either they were all created at the same time (which, of course, requires time, so reduction ad absurdum), or they were uncreated, ergo, necessary. The classical theologist falls into the idea that they are created entities, and then we return to my first post in this subject.
We, as Christian, are in a battle for world views. I would posit that that is the same battle we as OV people are in oddly, trying to correct the world view of other Christians to a more Biblical world view.
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/19/2010 6:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Teaching Essential Doctrines at our descipleship program, it hit me which looking at the Doctrine of Man that we have missed an aspect of First Causes in relation to man being like God.
Just a quick segment of my lesson:
The Origin of Man
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
This is man’s original state in an uncursed world. God and man shared a free will loving relationship, which was God’s plan, God is love.
Man is created in the likeness, similitude, image, resemblance, or semblance of a God who is a trinity. What then would you expect man to be like?
What similarities do we share? What are the differences?
1) We are a trinity or trichotomy: Body, Soul, Spirit
a. Body is obvious, our physical selves
b. Soul is the life force that in humans also unites and enervates the spirit and body
c. Spirit is the aspect of man that fell in the original sin, and that which is everlasting, and which is reunited to God, or made alive when we receive Jesus as Savior.
2) We have morally significant free will
a. We know that certain things are right and others, wrong
b. We choose to do right (We, but not God, choose to do wrong)
c. We have intentionality to our actions
3) We have personality
a. Behavioral Attributes
b. Temperamental Attributes
c. Emotional Attributes
d. Mental attributes
i. Openness (being open to being approached)
ii. Conscientiousness
iii. Extraversion
iv. Agreeableness
v. Neuroticism (stability)
vi. Creative
vii. Aesthetic
viii. Kindness
ix. Reasoned
x. Abstract
xi. Emotion: Anger
xii. Hierarchical
xiii. Apprehensive
xiv. Liveliness
xv. Concern
xvi. Rule oriented
xvii. Social
xviii. Private
xix. Vigilant
xx. Changeable
xxi. Self Reliant
xxii. Perfectionistic
xxiii. Honesty
xxiv. Loyalty
xxv. Courtesy
xxvi. Enthusiasm
xxvii. Self-Control
xxviii. Receptive
xxix. Industrious
xxx. Patient
xxxi. Courageous
xxxii. Decisiveness
xxxiii. Perseverance
xxxiv. Calm
xxxv. Stable
xxxvi. Co-operative
xxxvii. Independent
xxxviii. Humor
xxxix. Generosity
If God had no emotions then no emotions could be “Godly” or Ungodly.” But then, where did they come from? The law of first causes applies here also. How can the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22) be love, joy, peace, and longsuffering? So God has emotions, is thus the sine quo non for emotions:
Happiness (Old English: Hap, happen, to be pleased with what has happened) (Creation Gen 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25)
Unhappy (I Cr 10:5)
Anger (Num. 22:22, Jos 23:16, Jdg 2:12, Jer 7:20, 42:18)
Wrath (Rom 9:22, Rev 14:10)
Jealous (Deu 6:15)
Displeased (I Ch 21:7)
Stable (Psa 78:35, “rock”)
Glad (Acts 11:23)
Love (Rom 8:39, Eph 2:4, 1 Jo 2:5, 4:7-20)
Gracious (2 Ch 30:9, Psa 86:15)
Hatred (Eze 35:11, Amo 6:8)
Changes mind, Repents (Jonah 3:9-10, Amo 7:6, Jer 26:13, )
Subborn (refuses to repent Eze 24:14)
Grief (Eph 4:30)
Compassion (Deu 30:3, 2Ch 36:15, Psa 86:15)
Indignation (Jer 10:10, Jer 50:25, Eze 22:13, Rev 14:10)
Abhorrence (Lev 26:44, Amo 6:8)
Patience (Rom 15:5, Rev 1:9)
Long-suffering (Exd 34:6, Num 14:18, Psa 86:15, Rom 9:22, 1 Pet 3:20)
Joy (Zeph 3:17, Mat 25:21-23, 1 Tim 1:6)
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Paul M. Blackmore
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| Posted 9/19/2010 10:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Excellent. I concur. Impassibility is "passe" for good solid Biblical reason. Traditionalists relying primarily on established Church orthodoxy to decide what they will accept or reject as good Bible teaching, take careful note.
Paul Blackmore
Psalms 119
96I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/20/2010 9:37 AM (GMT -6) | | Slowly infusing OT into the teaching becomes much easier with a well reasoned response, that is, a good apologetic for OT.
I was scheduled to teach the series and, having covered my own cosmological argument for God's existence in the first class, then the trinity we had already covered the three-in-one creating a tri-unity human (body, soul, spirit) and we deriving our primary characteristics from him, so, the first cause argument applied to emotions only made sense.
As you stated in your videos, why is it w "anthropomorphize" the references we don't like?
When you think about it, it makes sense because, in an earlier class, we covered the fact that humans filter things through their world view, or fundamental cognitive orientation, normative postulates if you will, and, these are fine tuned by theology also, ergo, OT is simply excluded because of preconceptions of the world view.
My friends at ICR did this to extreme also and under Henry Morris for a time actually held a presuppositional apologetic (c1971 before ICR), that is, you must first believe the Bible is the Word of God before we start to talk. Well, what if that is the question at hand? They have nothing to say.
Lest someone think I do not really know the good people there, I dated Henry's daughter, visited the homes of his other kids, went to their weddings, home schooled with John and his wife, and have very slightly helped Stave Austin define the extent of a fossil bed under the Colorado Plateau, helped them maintain their aquarium in the ICR museum for a decade or more, and so forth. I do mean they are friends.
I suggested that there was a meter that could be used to see when the last glaciers went through the White Mountains of California (central eastern California) with the data from the Bristle Cone Pines, the world's oldest living organisms. That their earliest locations in each spot could be plotted to see when trees were first growing in the glacial trough. Steve Austin thought it was a great idea, but the idea was never followed up on. Years later while looking at the data it occurred to me that there is 8000 years of data from those trees and they are entrenched in the idea the earth is only 6000-8000 years old and my method would have shown the flood as being about 8000 years ago, there would be no room for the antediluvian period. So the disorder of filtering out scientific information through ones fundamental cognitive orientation or world view, to prove a point, infects everyone.
Just as Calvin's student Beza became entrenched in what he invented in response to Arminius' five point, in what we call TULIP, so ICR is becoming entrenched in ever earlier times for creation. I have watched the time shrink from 25,000 year (c1971) to 6000 years (c1999).
I told them long ago that they did a great job of showing evangelicals why they should believe in the young earth view but isolated themselves completely from the main body of modern apologetics, e.g. Biola, by their dogmatic stance when they could have won the entire war instead of just one battle.
As you well point out in your Youtube videos, we OV people are the ultimate literalistic, but then, so are the people at ICR. Steve Austin and I dropped of Russ Humphreys at his hotel room once and driving off Steve, who also takes the Bible very literally commented how extremely literal Humphrey's was in his exegesis (note: Pick up his book Starlight and Time for a YEC cosmology), so why then are not more OV people YEC?
That, I cannot answer.
G2G
God Bless.
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Paul M. Blackmore
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| Posted 9/20/2010 10:27 PM (GMT -6) | | OV is a perfect fit with YEC. Agreed. I hold to a 6000 year old earth, or more specifically to a flood dated from Biblical chronology to about 4400 years ago. I have little faith in science as a discipline. Here are my reasons. http://godsmindovermatter.blogspot.com/ As a professor of Science I don't expect we would find harmony in this area, but I am glad that we can enjoy harmony in a general sense as YEC's and OT's. For me, the Bible must be able to extend its rule and authority over all matters it speaks to, even if and when science believes it sees things more clearly. Hope you find the article an interesting read anyway.
Blessings in Christ
Paul
Psalms 119
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/21/2010 11:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks Paul, I very much like your blog. But I think you assumed some thing that are not so. It is the flawed methodology that brings the 6000 years time frame I object to, and that is simply assuming things about the way the Hebrews wrote and told stories and their lack of chronology in the manner we use chronology. ICR assumes a direct and complete chronology of names in Genesis 11 to determine that 6000 years, and often in even the Bible, chronologies are not complete and antecedents are often referred to as "father" that are several or many generations removed. So we have a group of American Scientists, not Hebrew scholars determining how the Hebrew text is to be read.
I am not a naturalist in any way, and so usually avoid the word "scientist" because that term was defined by a naturalistic resurgence (Kant 1775 divided the knowledge base claiming religion was irrational thought, science, rational thought, then Hagel's dialectic synthesis attempted to do away with antithesis, and lastly Kierkegaard's irrational leap to faith) and the term "scientist" was defined as someone who seeks naturalistic answers to questions, thus excluding supernatural possibilities. So for 150 years the term is skewed against God, excluding anything supernatural.
My first issue with the 6000 years is the methodology. The second is simply trying to determine a date from the ancient past with such precision. Not a problem taking the Bible literally, but, we must understand the textual methodology of the writers. If not, then we have the creation of man in Genesis 1:26 followed by the creation of man in Genesis 2:7. Of course this is simply a retelling of the single event.
A license plate I spotted and sowed my wife was: TNUH2VL you simply needed to understand how it was written, and the licence plate bracket said "read as if in mirror." The backwards it is lv2hunt or "love to hunt."
In Nevada a Bristlecone Pine we have clear and convincing hard evidence of trees growing uninterrupted for 4800 years. They cut a living tree down that was 4862 years old in 1964. Even if all the other trees standing around dead had been killed by Noah's flood, this puts the date not after 2800 BC. ICR puts it at 2304BC +-11 years.
So my argument is methodology and the qualifications of those making the determinations. Morris himself used to translate Hebrew differently that Hebrew scholars to force his understanding. Hebrew scholars just wrote him off as ignorant.
Turn this around. Morris was a hydrologist, what if the Jewish Scholars tried to interpret the sedimentary layers, best done, of course, by a hydrologist or geologist? Would Morris have accepted their skewing of the data to fit their theory? No.
It isn't the Biblical rule that is in question, it is the understanding of a very small group of people and their interpretations of the data.
It might be helpful to know that many YEC that have left ICR will then object to similar things that they could not have done while at ICR because of the tyrannical rule of the administration. Again, remember, I have known these people for 40 years, this isn't speculation. Also, I do not hold millions of years theories, simple a few more thousands of years.
You state will in your blog the bias of science, and it is well understood that data is regularly excluded (heavens, look at the global warming fiasco) to prove a point. Science is not the unbiased purveyor of truth, but uninterpreted hard data must be accepted or we are at risk of the pain of idiocy that struck the Catholic church with Galileo. ICR has put itself squarely in that spot.
I simply hold the earth is between 10,000 and 25,000 years, which was Morris' statement when he came to California in 1969 to speak at our church. Thus my reference to Calvinism and Arminianism becoming entrenched, or digging in their heals simply to resist the other theology, both leaving the truth of the Bible to prove a point. Morris went from, say, the possibility of 25,000 year old earth to a 4300 year old earth in 40 years time, based solely on their private understanding of one chapter in Genesis against Hebrew scholars, and against a hard chronology of the bristlecone pine. They do rightly complain about the use of radiometric clocks when we do not know how the clocks were set in the first place, and the extreme inconsistency of those clocks (metrics), but then they ignore a clear and simple hard chronology of a clock that does not vary and we do know how it is set at the beginning.
So, like too many people, inconsistency and self assured beliefs, ignoring valid objections to prove a point. Risky business this.
God Bless.
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Similitude
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| Posted 9/21/2010 7:24 PM (GMT -6) | | | Professor Newcomb: ICR assumes a direct and complete chronology of names in Genesis 11 to determine that 6000 years, and often in even the Bible, chronologies are not complete and antecedents are often referred to as "father" that are several or many generations removed. So we have a group of American Scientists, not Hebrew scholars determining how the Hebrew text is to be read.
Jeff: Have you read much of Aardsma's stuff? He's pretty much on the same page with you. If you haven't, I think you would find his stuff fascinating. He makes a very compelling scientific case that the dating of the Exodous corresponds precisely with the "overnight" collapse of the old Egytian kingdom, which, to my knowledge, is still a mystery to academe. It ends up explaining a lot of otherwise coincidental aspects of archaeology in a straight forward harmonization with the Old Testament history.
I don't agree with his exegetical approach to the one verse he thinks is a textual error. I think it can be explained differently. Regardless, his work should not be ignored by anyone trying to make sense of the OT history from the point of view of giving it a SERIOUS benefit of the doubt. It's fascinating stuff.
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/22/2010 9:36 AM (GMT -6) | | Thank you Jeff, No, I had not heard of him, but have now read some of his material at BiblicalChronology.org. I like his thinking.
As Paul states (sorry, I forget where) scientists (whether naturalists or not) do build in bias from their presuppositions. In an article linked from Dr. Aardsma's site there are doubters which include my friend Dr. John Morris, who quite regularly shows his biases and the happen to be those of his brother and father. In this case, the location of the ark is his issue, which he derives from aerial photos of what seems to be an artifact, and so, this artificial item on the mountain, this work of art (i.e. man made item) he insists is the correct ark location, but he has been unable to find it. He is stuck on that site and would deny any other as he does in that article until verified by other sources.
John may well be correct. I don't know, but, when people visit s site deep in an ice crevasse and see rooms of wood and that wood carbon dates back to that exact time period, you must ask, how did that wood get up that high on the mountain? There are no records or evidences the mountain has ever been occupied by people, that is, no dwellings, it is simply too high and cold, and, even in hot periods when there may be less ice, still too cold to grow crops, and so forth, so this is not habitable land even in warm periods.
 he argues against the idea of "creation with the appearance of age" idea. I had the same objections when in High School Dr. Henry Morris first came to speak in San Diego at our church and stated this relating to starlight visible from billions of light years away. My immediate rejection was based on the idea that God would play this kind of game. He isn't like that, he is very very real. Now, as recommended to Paul above, they produce the best YEC cosmology in a small book by Humphrey's "Starlight and time" which does make absolute sense. SO ICR and other have opted for a much more rational approach to the appearance of age issue (Adam was not created as a newborn, rather as an adult, of, say, 16-40 years, so had the appearance of age, so, perhaps the entire universe was created as Morris said c1969-70 with streams of light between earth and the stars. After a dialectic approach, creationists developed a more rational Virtual History approach, which works quite well.
His chronology to me is a little tight claiming the flood was 3530BC +-21yrs, but creation was 7000 years ago so add 2010 to that flood date and we were 5540 year back to the flood and then only 1460 year from creation to the flood.
Possible? Yes.
How would that relate to the bristlecone pine data going back 8000 years? He defends this data by the way, and the methodology.
Could they be justified? Well, you get into the same problem with the appearance of age. What did the trees look like which God created? Did they have rings? Then you are stuck with a teleological reason for rings rather than a historic reason. (That is, is there a purpose for rings, do they have a function that perfectly created xylem does not answer, or are they simply xylem formed historically?)
If rings are teleologically necessary (they serve a specific propose different from the xylem) then surely God created trees with rings. However, if not, they God would not have created trees with rings. So, how do you explain 8000 years of tree rings?
1) They are mistaken about the age of the world only, and the older trees died in the flood but remained in place to give that historic record of 8000 years, or
2) They are mistaken about the time of the flood and age of the earth, the flood being 8000 years ago and the first bristlecones started to grow 8000 years ago at the end of the flood.
Since this is hard evidence, the only other possibility seems to be God playing the "creation with age" game.
I need to respond to him with this.
My guess is the later. And I would add a few more years, just for comfort, to the period between creation and the flood, yielding a minimum of 10,000 year from creation to now. Note, this is not a scientific answer, but then again, what/who makes science the sole purveyor of truth?
Thanks Jeff!
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Daniel M
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| Posted 9/22/2010 11:41 AM (GMT -6) | | Professor Newcomb: he argues against the idea of "creation with the appearance of age" idea. I had the same objections when in High School Dr. Henry Morris first came to speak in San Diego at our church and stated this relating to starlight visible from billions of light years away. My immediate rejection was based on the idea that God would play this kind of game. He isn't like that, he is very very real. Now, as recommended to Paul above, they produce the best YEC cosmology in a small book by Humphrey's "Starlight and time" which does make absolute sense.
Daniel: What about cosmic background radiation, and the formation of dense matter? Granted, my experience of astronomy only extends to 200 level classes, but we did the observations and the equations for the distance between galaxies, potential variables concerning the "slowing down" of light during the big bang, and cosmic background radiation. I want to read "Starlight and time" because at this point, i cannot accept a YEC because of what we know about the formation of stars and planets, let alone the speed of light. What we know about the formation of dense matter (formed in supernovae) and the shortest time frame we have for star-life runs in the millions of years. Which means the matter of earth would be the by-product of at least one supernova (although probably the combination of multiple supernova). And even super giant blue stars take millions of years to go nova. Plus it's pretty cool to think that we were forged in the stars.
So creation with the appearance of age doesn't end with star light, but with the whole of creation itself. Does Humphery's book address these issues aswell? I just don't understand why God would create a dynamic, growing, universe in the middle of the process. Isn't the process itself part of the wonder of creation? Since we can observe the birth and death of stars, why make the assumption that our star wasn't born in the same way?Post Edited (Daniel M) : 9/22/2010 11:45:09 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/22/2010 1:07 PM (GMT -6) | | Humphrey's book deals only with cosmology.
But lets digress a bit. If you remember the sequence injected by the naturalists, Mach and his student Einstein rejected the ether of Lorentz and others not because it didn't work, rather because first, it was a creationist theory, second, because with ether you could find an absolute coordinate for the center of the universe, and they wanted everything relative, and third, because you could not see or measure it.
If I go to the university and say, I hold to the ether theory I would quite literally be laughed out of the room. But why? Because, they think Einstein discredited the theory when all he did was deny it. So, light then, unlike every other thing, travels through no medium, and so we dangle wondering if it is a wave or a particle, rather than a particle creating a wave as is passed through its medium, just like every other particle. We have nothing to explain why gravity travels faster than light, and so forth.
Now zip forward the the theory of relativity. Einstein said, it didn't work because there was insufficient mass in the universe for what he and others observed.
Ah, is seems we need to have some other, invisible, nearly unmeasurable mass we now call dark matter or black hydrogen, which no one has seen but must be there because the relativity theory needs it.
This is the same theory, coming back in a naturalistic format, but missing some of its cloths.
If I go to the university ans say I believe in dark matter, everyone nods their head and looks at you as if you really understand.
They are the same theory and this answers why the particle of light leaves a wave pattern, and so forth.
Einstein was wrong and he knew it before he died, but refused to admit Lorentz was right.
So, there is dark matter. What happens in a gravitational field when the gravity is increased by more mass? This is the relativity theory. Answer: Everything speeds up.
So, Humphrey's suggests the big bang was a white hole (they are non-persistent) rather than the ultra-black hole it usually calls for. So what happens? After the big bang, starts ignite and the very warp and woof of the universe, the dark matter is so dense, even light is traveling faster than the "C" constant. Much faster precisely because the density is so extremely high. As God forms various aspects in the subsequent days, the universe expands very rapidly, and, on day 6 when Adam looks up, the universe looks very much like we see it today.
Remember, you are measuring "time" by a distance metric based on the idea of C, and if C differed in the past, or differs now because of different densities somewhere in the universe, then that is not a valid metric.
Ask yourself why physicists will insist on dark matter but will not integrate their understanding with the effects of relativity in a universe with increased density.
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Similitude
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| Posted 9/23/2010 6:36 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Dr. Newcomb,
Are you familiar with the works of the late Tom Van Flandern? He was working very hard on a model that used Lorentzian relativity. We couldn't agree with all the details, for he believed in an infinite universe (in time and extent). But he makes very good points about how sectarianly metaphysical much of physics has become and about how many of the more prestigious physicists will choose a counter-intuitive approach when it is not, stricly speaking, even necessary.
He brought up years back how we have a class of stars in our own galaxy for which the measured red-shifts are inexplicable by the modern theory of light. Don't know if that has changed, but it shows, as did Gentry on radiohalos, that there is data right before our very noses that seem to contradict modern theories. Typically, the math of certain theories can be very valuable if we can apply it technologically, whether or not the theory is "true" more generally. Apart from that, we want the mathematical predictions to be true for the class of data they claim to account for.
That's precisely what we don't have in modern theories. Heck, they can't even reconcile Einsteinian relativity with quantum theory yet without going totally space cadet in terms of dimensions, etc. I'm convinced the earth is significantly old. But I have no reason to believe that modern theories are necessarily even in the ball park on HOW old.
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/23/2010 10:53 AM (GMT -6) | | Not familiar with Tom Van Flandern's work, but it is also according to terms and meanings of terms.
I believe all dimensions are necessary, ergo eternal. It is interesting that the evolutionists deny creation ex nihilo but create a universe then demand this same process continues as the universe expands! (The term is equivocated a bit in that use, but it is the appropriate term, and without equivocation they are still struggling to define the cause of the primal pea that caused the big bang.)
What people do not realize is the extreme number of theories that are actually posited. Even for evolution itself, there are hundreds of them. Big push this year to pump Darwin and how wonderful his theory was, but what we call Darwinism today has flipped the first concepts Darwin posited on its head. Darwin believed a living organism developed a new structure and then passed that on to the next generation. Today evolutionists believe that an organism is mutated during gestation, and, if it survives, passes that mutation along. Not the same thing at all. But I digress.
While I believe dimensions are fundamental, i.e. necessary, I don't think dark matter was. It seems to be the very warp and woof of the universe, that which is expanding (if it still is), but certainly, that which God stretched out immediately after creating matter, which is what we see when we look at cosmic background radiation. It is that matter that causes the changes in the speed of the physical universe per Ethe theory of relativity. It is what is warped by a large mass such as a planet or star, it is that which light travels through, and so, when light travels past another large mass which is warping it, it looks like light is traveling faster when it is really the density change in the medium it travels through that changes, not time.
My problem with old earth is that I don't see any need for an old earth. Of God can create ex nihilo, and if he did "stretch forth" the universe as the Bible claims, I don't see any reason in light of the rest of the Bible for an earth more than a few tens of thousands of years. My guess is 8000-12000, but only a guess. I don't even argue the point until a theory reaches 100,000 or so. The flood explains large fossils, and large fossil beds, plate tectonics, coal beds, oil fields, and so forth much better than evolution does. (E.G. how do you create huge coal beds and oil fields with a tectonic theory moving plates at their current velocities? I have trouble knowing how fast organic matter deteriorates and then thinking even large quakes, say, at Laguna Salada where the earth moved April 4th of 2010 by two meters can bury a forest to make coal or oil. Yes, the rain water in the lagoon I photographed weeks before did shift as the half graben tilted under the normally dry lagoon, but the total effect was simply to remove the inches of water from the northern lagoon to the southern area. but on the next visit weeks after the event, this did not mean large animals were buried by the event and then fossilized. Even in Banda Ache, tens of thousands of people were killed and many washed into the ocean. Animals were killed also, but this normal catastrophic event did not make any large fossils.
What does?
Very large catastrophes magnitudes larger. Mt. St. Helens, a small volcano, made and "old fossil" named Harry Truman into a real fossil as he refused to leave and was buried under 300 feet of ash. And this was a small volcano.
So, large catastrophic events are the only explanation for large fossils. What kind of event is needed to bury plants thousands of feet below th surface to make oil? Coal? An even of a magnitude told in the stories of all cultures, best recorded in the Bible as Noah's flood.
Nearly all "old earth" evidences fit easily into the Biblical narrative. The Bible speaks propositionally, and authoritatively about history. So, what about the universe at large? Humphrey's cosmology does a good job of that. It probably will be revised at points, but it is a winning argument.
Tom: God's supposed (that is supposed by Greek philosophers 2500 years ago, then infused through Augustine into church beliefs) is the reason I started this subject on this board years ago. It is absurd. The idea so often touted by Lane, Beckwith, and Moreland that it is impossible to transverse an infinite amount of time is a misunderstanding of what time is and how it behaves. Have you noticed that it is always "now?" So it is with God also. The past is always things that happened previously and the future has not yet happened and God is always in the current time, what we call "now." Read the first post in this string.
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Similitude
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| Posted 9/23/2010 9:46 PM (GMT -6) | | As for traversal, Tom, it seems to me that what usually thinks of is an infinite series. But that usually implies a beginning. If God exists "necessarily" and is also temporal, He didn't begin. Therefore, there is no traversal in that sense. The human mind can not "compre"hend an eternal past in the positive sense of traversal. We just know that if a being has no beginning, it has always existed. And therefore, it never began a traversal.
We, on the other hand, having had a beginning, can not traverse an infinite. If you assume, as probably the majority of philosophers do, that time itself had a "beginning" (which is pure non-sense to my way of thinking about time), then of course NOTHING could traverse an infinite, because EVERYTHING that is known to have a relation to time had a BEGINING of that relationship if that view of temporality is valid/true.
To me, time and space are "kinds" of frames of reference. They are not beings. In that sense, they don't "exist." They are MERE frames of reference in terms of which we conceive and relate beings. But if we say time and space "began," then of course it seems that they are actually beings that "exist." Ever since Einstein, you have to ask people what they even mean by time.
So now days, because many of them posit the multiverse, they have now created "hyperspace" to be a frame of reference to talk about the multi "spaces." The definitions keep changing with the "theories."
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/24/2010 11:10 AM (GMT -6) | | Well put. This seems to have drawn us right back to a Socratic method of inquiry where we require of the one positing anything a definition of terms. I found this true in the life of this subject on this board, we had to define time and really incorporate several sub-concepts into the one. Some wanted time to be defined as the sequences of events themselves, others, merely as something created by the fact that things sequence. Einstein defined it by the measuring device used, which is an absurd error for a physicist (is a wave form only what is seen on an oscilloscope? then what of the waves we don't see, are they non-existent because they are not on the scope?).
The most straight forward definition is, time is the forth dimension.
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Tom
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| Posted 9/24/2010 11:07 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: As for traversal, Tom, it seems to me that what usually thinks of is an infinite series. But that usually implies a beginning. If God exists "necessarily" and is also temporal, He didn't begin.
Tom: I’m not sure that solves it, but I’m no mathematician. Still, as I read the argument in those who know it better than I, I don’t get the feeling that it’s solved quite so easily. I mean, the impossibility of traversing an infinite number of moments (or changes in states of mind, or experiences) it one of the things put forward for believing that the God who exists necessarily can’t also be necessarily temporal. The truth value of the latter is what’s being debated.
Jeff: Therefore, there is no traversal in that sense. The human mind can not "compre"hend an eternal past in the positive sense of traversal.
Tom: And why isn’t this an argument against a temporally infinite past?
Jeff: We just know that if a being has no beginning, it has always existed. And therefore, it never began a traversal.
Tom: That doesn’t seem quite accurate. It seems to me that what we know (if God has no beginning) is that in whatever world one supposes (temporal, atemporal, etc.) God exists in that world. I’m not sure “not having a beginning” implies never having begun a traversal. If God is atemporal sans creation and temporal since creation, then God did begin a traversal, namely, he began to temporally traverse the history of creation.
I guess I really do think the argument (against the possibility of a temporally eternal past) has “bite” to it.
Jeff: If you assume, as probably the majority of philosophers do, that time itself had a "beginning" (which is pure non-sense to my way of thinking about time), then…
Tom: My problem is that I’m uncomfortable with BOTH options—God having a temporally infinite past and a temporally finite past. I can’t see my way through to any sort of finality on the question.
Jeff: To me, time and space are "kinds" of frames of reference. They are not beings. In that sense, they don't "exist." They are MERE frames of reference in terms of which we conceive and relate beings. But if we say time and space "began," then of course it seems that they are actually beings that "exist."
Tom: Do you think space and matter are uncreated then?
Tom
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Ronald A. Newcomb
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| Posted 9/25/2010 10:05 AM (GMT -6) | | Space is uncreated, but not matter. Not even dark matter which is the matrix, the material, the base into which the visible matter is held. It is what God "stretched forth" (some 17 references in the OT) at the creation to pull it into its size. Now, this is a metaphor for the white whole big bang of Humphrey's description (white hole several dozen light years across, a singularity horizon, say, .5 Billion light years across, then expanding at many times C.
Naturalism claims nothing, including dimensions exist beyond the outer region of the expanding universe (but remember, this is described as a balloon expanding where all matter is on the surface of the balloon), and so, dimensions are actually being created ex nihilo continually as the universe expands. The question is, how does anything create itself? Or conversely, where is it expanding to? (Since there is no location to expand to with a limited size to each dimension.)
The dimensions are necessary (uncreated) the matter is created.
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Similitude
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| Posted 9/25/2010 10:39 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: Therefore, there is no traversal in that sense. The human mind can not "compre"hend an eternal past in the positive sense of traversal.
Tom: And why isn’t this an argument against a temporally infinite past?
Jeff: Because in the sense in which I'm meaning "compre," it's also true that we can't "compre"hend infinity even. Infinity is not a quantity. It is not a number. It has the preposition "in" to denote "NOT". It is a negation of finite. To my mind, finite and infinite are correlative concepts. We know what we mean by infinite, but we can't hardly define it except by merely NEGATING finite.
Does that mean we have absolutely NO positive idea of what we mean by infinity? I don't think so. But it does mean that we can't really put it into words. Indeed, we don't need to. Because we all know what we mean by infinite. But we can't "compre"hend it in the sense that we can finite quantity.
Jeff: We just know that if a being has no beginning, it has always existed. And therefore, it never began a traversal.
Tom: That doesn’t seem quite accurate. It seems to me that what we know (if God has no beginning) is that in whatever world one supposes (temporal, atemporal, etc.) God exists in that world.
Jeff: I'm not aware of any verb having no tense. And tense, to my mind, is defined in terms of time.
Tom: I’m not sure “not having a beginning” implies never having begun a traversal. If God is atemporal sans creation and temporal since creation, then God did begin a traversal, namely, he began to temporally traverse the history of creation.
Jeff: The question is, though, what does it even MEAN to talk about atemporal "existing." How does a state of being verb have no tense? Moreover, as you admit, it seems impossible to even conceive of what it means to be conscious or feel (which is required if we're gonna say God was insurpassably SATISFIED, sans creation) apart from temporality. "Feel" is a verb with a tense, after all. If we can't properly say God "felt," sans creation, in what sense can we say there was any relationality between the persons of the godhead? I literally can't even conceive of what that means.
Jeff: To me, time and space are "kinds" of frames of reference. They are not beings. In that sense, they don't "exist." They are MERE frames of reference in terms of which we conceive and relate beings. But if we say time and space "began," then of course it seems that they are actually beings that "exist."
Tom: Do you think space and matter are uncreated then?
Jeff: Right. To my mind, only BEINGS can be created. And time and space are not beings. Time and space are frames of reference by which we refer to beings in terms of the specific relations that are conceivable in terms of those frames of reference.
The problem, as I see it, is that philosophers have struggled with the temporality of God because they, like Lewis, assumed that positing an atemporal God solved problems with foreknowledge, etc. But that is just an assumption. We can't even conceive of what it means to be atemporal to have any idea whether those problems are solveable by that resort in the first place. And as open theists, that's not even our problem.
Indeed, aren't there process theists who argue that open theism is precisely what allows us to hold our categorical modes of thinking in terms of time, space, causality, and finality in a coherent manner?
"Traverse," per an epistemology that supposes time itself began, always implies a beginning. But if we don't assume that epistemology is the accurate one, the godhead is the one exception to that. The godhead, per open theism, can have precisely that kind of relationality we intuitively think it does--the kind that seems to require temporal relationality.
A lot of people like the idea of the big bang because it implies a beginning. The claim is that a beginning allows for a final cause of the universe. The problem is, final causality is either known to be real intuitively or not. But final causality, like causality per se, is not derivable a posteriori. If we hold that final causality is real, the only question then is whether final causality is intuitively believed to hold for all events or just some. The minority view is that it hold for all events. I.e., ALL events are, ultimately, explicable in terms of final causality.
But that minority view seems to be right to me. Here's how: For "natural" events, the "purpose" of those specific events is to be fitted to the inductive mind of humanity. For the validity of inductive reasoning is only knowable if we are knowably designed to apprehend via our natural mode of inductive inference. But induction requires, as an axiom, that "nature" is regular enough in its "operations" to be discernable by the inductive method.
But there are only two kinds of objectively calculable probability--the frequency approch and the total number of possibilities approach. By the latter approach, the view that nature is regular is mind-boggingly improbable. And, as Hume rightly argued, the frequency approach can not be applied to inferring whether nature is regular, for it will always involve assuming what you're trying to prove.
Thus, the minority view that all events are purposed in at least some sense is not only coherent, but actually seems to solve the ancient "problem of induction," in the only way possible. This is analogous to UR. Per UR, absolutely nothing is absolutley vain/futile, though plenty is vain/futile in other senses.
But this has implications about the finality of the universe as well, completely independent of a supposed creation of time and space. For induction, by its very nature, is a limiting methodology. Its very purpose is to systematize thought in terms of parsimony, etc. But this creates a kind of finality of its own. And this finality will inevitably result in systems of thought for which all causal inferences into the past will always terminate into a past state of initial conditions. The human mind, thinking inductively, will always be compelled to do this so long as it stays true to its own God-given categories of thought.
This is why science has become so metaphysical in nature. Science has lost its original constraint of intuition-based induction. Even God is assumed to be an unnecessary assumption in science now. But God can not be derived a posteriori without final causality being a priori in some sense. And many scientists don't even accept the legitimacy of final causality. And methodological naturalism is a methodology that is necessarily limited to non-finality (which would even include the Big Bang, since the Big Bang supposes ultimate causality, whether or not that causal agent is intellligent).
In short. There is a lot of epistemological confusion out there in the world of philosophical and "scientific" academe. There is great diversity of opinion, and they can't all be right. And many of them are incoherent and use circular reasoning in ways that other philosophers have already pointed out clearly.
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Tom
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| Posted 9/25/2010 10:49 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks Jeff. I get all the arguments FOR the essential temporal nature of personal relations (and verbs), etc., and the difficulty of conceiving of what 'atemporal' existence would even be like. BUT I really do appreciate the problem being expressed by Craig (and the vast majority of philosophers) about the equal inconceivability of a temporally eternal past. To be honest, I can't just say there's nothing to the latter because I prefer to former arguments for temporal personhood. I admit I tend toward the essentially temporal nature of personhood, but I can't dismiss the 'actual infinite' argument as illusory either. Seems pretty clear to me that if God were necessarily temporal (and verb-ing, viz., 'changing') then there are in fact an infinite number of discrete, countable, changes to arrive at the point of creation. And that sure looks inconceivable to me. If I was the only one supposing it I'd doubt myself, but dude, come on...a LOT of smart folk out there see this. That's not an argument either way, it must means I'm suspicious of attempts to dismiss it in a post or two.
Tom
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Similitude
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| Posted 9/25/2010 12:34 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: Seems pretty clear to me that if God were necessarily temporal (and verb-ing, viz., 'changing') then there are in fact an infinite number of discrete, countable, changes to arrive at the point of creation.
Jeff: Well, that is inconceivable. Because there's no such thing as an "infinite number." Any number, by definition, is finite. That's what I'm getting at with my point about the "compre"hendability of infinity.
Tom: If I was the only one supposing it I'd doubt myself, but dude, come on...a LOT of smart folk out there see this.
Jeff: On the other hand, have any of them ever come up with the conceivability of the relationality of the godhead, sans creation, in terms of atemporality? You see, for them, that is not a problem. As Corey once said, God, sans creation, is pretty nebulous.
I can't do philosophical theology that way. I don't know what it even means to talk about a necessary being whose attributes are only conceivable AFTER some "beginning." Because that means that God has no ESSENTIAL attributes that are knowable. For if His knowable attributes truly have a beginning, then they are truly contingent attributes, aren't they?
And, yeah, Craig is a smart guy. But he's also opposed to open theism. So what do we do? Assume that we're wrong about that too? That gets us nowhere. All we can do is try to be coherent as we know how. And I just don't see the problem you're talking about. Infinity is not a number. Infinite is not a quantity. The minute you start talking about an "infinite number," you're already misusing terms. And that really does create conceivability problems.
Remember, open theists are the minority. And that doesn't shake us a bit, does it?
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