Exalting Yahweh using Pagan imagery

Faith & Science Conversation
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We force observations to fit their worldview. This is why scientists tell stories about an invisible universe, to force it to fit their notion that “all things remain the same” see 2 Peter 3:3-6).

Aspectual languages, used everywhere before the Europeans colonized, have no problem distinguish past from future, without using verb tenses. The context might say tomorrow, or yesterday. In the non philosophical worldview, these were not time. They were different days. A day was marked by visible changes. In the original languages, as understood by a contemporary, the Bible never mentions time. It does not say, in the course of time. It says in the course of days. It mentions changes, such as months, not time. Redeeming the time, meant redeem the opportunities. Kairos was originally not a time word, but a word about opportune ways to live (see Hesiod). Jesus said the kairos is here: the predicted event, the opportune point when God’s word would be fulfilled. The authors of the Bible were not philosophers. They did not speculate about undetectable things like time.

However, the changes they recorded are visible, especially the history of how probably several trillion galaxies spread out into thousands of local growth spirals (spreading things Hebrew raqiya). Change and time are opposite worldviews.

Victor

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What do you mean by “time”?

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63

No, they’re not.

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64

…words never fell on deafer ears…

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Don’t mess with me. Bwahahahaha!

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66

Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe:
All mimsy were ye borogoves;
And ye mome raths outgrabe.

Amen.

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You are so right. People trained in a mature worldview lose their references when confronted with a different worldview.

Time is the most common noun in English. Yet only the text of the Bible fits the visible history of how probably trillions of galaxies (at many ranges) spread out from tiny cores of unformed matter. What we see is not time but change. Change and time are opposite worldviews.

Victor

68

No, they’re not.

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69

Got any corpus data to back this one up?

(Didn’t think so.)

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Actually, according to Oxford English Corpus the most used noun is time. As reported in Readers Digest (for what that’s worth).

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https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-can-corpus-tell-us-about-language

Please note that it is not the most common English word, just the most commonly used noun.

This is radically different from ancient aspectual languages that did not even have words for time or verb tenses to reference events to time. Moses could not talk about time, because his language did not contemplate it. He could not measure it, since ancient calendars and water clocks were adjusted to fit the variations observed in nature. For example, if a quarter moon appeared near the Pleiades during the spring equinox, the ancients added a 13th month that year. They did this to adjust the lunar calendar to fit the annual cycles of nature. Another example, the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians varied the amount of water in a clock for a military watch. A summer night watch used less water than a summer day watch, since days are longer in summer. The opposite happened in winter. Even if one used an angular measurement along the ecliptic, for a duration, this was not linear. The observed arc of the ecliptic varies in length throughout the year. Constants are impossible in a world where everything is observed to change. Thus they did not imagine that a clock measured time. It was merely approximating the variations seen in nature. Change and time are diametrically opposite worldviews.

Another example of how the ancients had no concept of time involves the early Roman calendar. The first Roman calendar only had 10 named months. The end of the year months were numbered. We can still hear the Latin numerals in our month names. September 7; October 8; November 9; December 10. For some reason the pagan Romans ended their political year at the end of the tenth month. They had two winter months without names. Why name a month when you did not have any agricultural or religious activities and time had no independnet existence? The mystical king Numa Pompilius named the two winter months of Januarius and Februaries during his reign.

Our concept of time controls our every moment. The ancients used nature’s changes, instead of time. (See Hesiod’s poem Works and Days).

Understanding the world with change, instead of time, produces a radically different Earth history. Why? We can see the past. The clocks and the orbits both accelerate together throughout the visible history of the universe. No wonder the ancient painted the Sun red and the sky brown, back when they worked in the sun without shirts or hats. No wonder they lived to grow Neanderthal brows as vast geological changes happened during a lifetime. (Please read the 6 geological markers and one anatomical one for a lifetime listed in Job 14, back when dinosaurs lived with men. Change and time are diametrically opposite ways of understand the world.

Victor

72

I forgot to add that the Roman months sometimes had 20 days and sometimes 35, according to two early Roman historians. A month was not time. It was an observation. If the new moon was obscured by clouds, that month could have more days. The next month might have fewer days, since the new moon was observed. A month was not a measurement of time. This, by the way, is a biblical. Elohim commanded the spreading luminaries in the sky (raqiya shamayim) to shine on the Earth and serve as markers fo days and years. He did not tell us to use notions of changelessness to measure time with atomic clocks. Visibly, all atomic clocks keep shifting their frequencies as the orbits also accelerate outward throughout visible cosmic history. Billions of galaxies become spreading things (raqiya in Hebrew) just like Elohim commanded.

Victor

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Well, this wouldn’t be the first time I made an idiot of myself.

I apologize, @godsriddle! For my tone as much as for the factual error.

I still don’t think this implies what you infer from it, but I’ll gladly grant you the technical point.

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How were the equally ancient Greeks able to determine the moment of time for a solstice even when it occurred during their night? If I remember you correctly it was medieval Europeans who “invented” time wasn’t it?

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I do NOT believe it the medieval Europeans invented time. Time is involves mathematical notions. Time is not like counting variable days.

Notions of time seem to have begun about 600 BC among some of the Indo - Europeans, but not all. The popes were instrumental in promoting Augustine and Beothius’s notions of time into Christianity. (Augustine studied Plotinus who had ideas about a timeless philosophical god.) The monks also were instrumental in building the first mechanical clocks (French word for bell). They trained medieval serfs to live by the bells, rather than the cycles of nature. No wonder Western people order life with clocks.

'Predicting a solstice does not require a notion of time. The ancient British could predict eclipses mechanically with their henges. They could stretch a rope from a sighted solstice pole. They might have a rule. If the length of ropes for a rising moon and a rising sun are equal, and the moon rises two fingers after the Sun sets, there will be a lunar eclipse today. The Babylonians were experts at predicting eclipses withour imagining that time exists or that the average lunation in days was time.

Change and time (science) are opposite worldviews. The biblical prophets communicated with the ancient changing worldview.

Victor

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No, they’re not.

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77

Oh yes it does. You might want to do a little research on what the Greek astronomers were capable of predicting. BTW, the solstice is not a day it is a moment in time. The next summer solstice occurs on June 21 at 10:07 UCT.

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The Greeks and Babylonians measured the position of planets relative to the background stars. In their system, the Sun moves east, not west. For example, the Greek Antikythera mechangism had planetary gears and even variable gearing to move the Sun, Moon and planets east through the ecliptic stars. Evidently they could use it to predict eclipses.

However it was not necessary to imagine conjunctions happened in time. In fact, even the Greeks could not imagine that time was linear. Such an idea violated the observations that the Sun, Moon and planets change speed, relative to the background stars. (Even the Greeks used the Babylonian System B to approximate how the Sun changes its angualr speed (angle per day) relative to the stars.

Ptolemy compared Babylonians eclipses from 800 years before with ones he observed. He used the Egyptian astronomical calendar that had a fixed number of days in a year. (This was great for counting days between events, but a winter month would eventually become a summer month). By dividing the number of days by the number of lunations, he could find the average days in a lunation, down to tiny fractions of a day.

However, this was not a measurement of time, in the Babylonians system. It was just the average number of days in a lunation. Yet each lunation was observed to vary, as they still do today.

When we add our philosophical notions of time to the Bible, we alter the creation account. Moses lists the days of creation as changes, mornings and evenings, not time. He counts the days, not philosophical notions of time.

Yet we confirm his words with the only history that we see exactly as it happened, long ago. Billions of naked cores of primordial matter spread out, sending out tiny globs packed with stars. The star streams spread out, often growing into local growth spirals. The atoms, the orbits and matter’s volume keep shifting throughout the visible cosmic history. What we see confirms the text, that he commanded them to become spreading things (raqiya). The bible repeatedly uses eon words for the age of the Earth. Yet it also counts few years. Jacob said the days and years of the son are shorter and worse that the days and years of the fathers (Genesis 47:9). There is a simple reason why. The pull of the Sun has an aberration. It gets delayed by the light distance. Thus, it pulls more on the dawn than the sunset. Gravity’s aberration , steadily accelerate rotations and orbits (days and years) as it pushes all orbits outward. Meanwhile the sun changes from red to white. The orbits of solar planets, exoplanets and the arms of billions of spirals galaxies have logarithmically increasing distances to their origins.

Change and science are diametrically opposite worldviews. Only the changing worldview supports the visible creation of the galaxies.

Victor

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No, they’re not.

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Then why did generations of Greek philosophers search for a first principle, arche, to get around the ancient worldview, that everything is changing? Why could they not find this arche, even after so many years of debates? Why were they unable to invent an empirical science until the disciples of Friar Thomas arrived at the notion that the essence of substance is changeless?

Why are all modern cosmologies so mythical? Why is the scientific universe 99% undetectable with any instrument? Perhaps it is because their science was built on a false first law (arche ktisis), the notion that all things remain the same (see 2 Peter 3:3-6). Indeed, even the measuring definitions and mathematical methods of modern physics depend on Thomas’ metaphysics.

In the two areas where Peter predicted, modern scientists obfuscate natural history. Peter predicted that in the last days people would reject that the plural heavens came out long ago (ouranoi ek palai) because they regard this first law, arch ktisis, that all things remain the same.

The only history that is visible is cosmic history. We can see back to the creation era, with telescopes, in all parts of the spectrum. Trillions of star globs came out long ago. Where did they come out from? The unformed, primordial core matter God created first. How did substances receive form? According to day one, the earth was unformed and dark until God’s wind continued to vibrate above the dark surface. He continues to command light to be light. Indeed, light dithers around within all substances, giving them extension to this very day. All galaxies became spreading things (raqiya) over the course of visible cosmic history, just as God continues to command. (Imperfect verbs are not like any tensed verbs).

Understanding creation with the ancient system of change, instead of modern philosophical science, is not the same. Only the ancient changing worldview supports the words of the text.

Victor