But it doesn’t, except in the sense that @St.Roymond refers to in God’s upholding it.
The first point is that in big bang cosmology the universe begins everywhere. The beginning is not localized in space, and it seems like a smidgen to move that theory so that it’s beginning is neither localized in time.
There was no ‘everywhere’ because there was no ‘where’. When the universe begins, it becomes everywhere, just like it is now. The ‘when it begins’ is still at time sub zero, t naught, t0, 13.8 Ga ago before our ‘now’.
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The Bible does not end where it begins, but rather beyond where it begins. The wrongs that trace back to the fall of humanity are dealt with by the end of Revelation, but the end is not a return to Eden; it is the coming of the heavenly city. Of course, both Genesis and Revelation have extensive symbolism; the apparent difference between a city and a garden is not necessarily as great in meaning as it might appear.
Jesus cooked and ate fish; presumably as a faithful Jew he ate the Passover lamb. Yet He did not sin. Psalm 104 speaks of God feeding the lions their prey; the whole psalm appears to be a meditation on Genesis 1. Pain is valuable as a warning that there is a problem; people with deficiencies in sensing pain tend to have health problems. (For example, the disfiguring associated with leprosy is partly due to the loss of nerve sensing in the extremities, leading to unnoticed injury.)
Predation is a part of the way God has made creation. It helps to add much more complexity and diversity in living things. Perhaps the five year old who thinks that Tyrannosaurus is really awesome is actually more theologically astute than the people trying to end predation.
Of course, we should not be cruel to animals nor to people; seeking to minimize suffering is a worthy goal (though not the ultimate goal - “people won’t feel pain if we give them enough vodka” is not a Biblical solution, for example). But to what extent do animals “suffer”? It is a difficult question.
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Yeah, most of my fellow students couldn’t make it past ten days.
Though come to think of it, those forty-day fasters weren’t being quite “acaloric” because they maintained twice-weekly attendance at the Eucharist where “Take, eat” and “Take, drink” were not treated as “Take, nibble” and “Take, sip” as in most churches; the bread was dense “peasant bread” given about golf-ball size and the wine was received as a good swallow. So they were probably getting around 500 calories a week.
I got told sternly to stop fasting at ten days after I fainted jogging to get from class to class and my blood showed serious anemia – and warned to never try going more than ten days, either.
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It wasn’t his purpose, but a result for one friend who made it forty days was that he ended up memorizing most of the Gospel of Mark – in Greek. It came about because somewhere around day eight he said suddenly the Greek was so clear he couldn’t resist reading it every possible moment and he came to grasp the Gospel as a whole rather than a series of stories/incidents.
I was more than a little rebellious about being ordered to stop, but the campus nurse made things quite clear: I could either guarantee that I would slowly work myself off the fast or I would be confined to the infirmary. What worked for me back then was friends who assigned themselves the task of making sure I was never without at least one of them around for the next week and that I stuck to the plan.
A bunch of us as college sophomores decided to join in a ten-day fast with World Vision. There was a dinner with speakers ten days before, and by every plate there was a pamphlet with suggested menus for the next nine days before actually starting, and then a set for the five days after ending.
I ended a ten-day one by going out for pizza with friends. I intended to stick to just a slice or two but the moment I took a bite appetite hit me like a freight train; I finished a large pizza by myself. The campus nurse told me if I hadn’t been in such superb physical shape and health that could have gone very, very badly.
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Hmmm…
Isaiah 11
Bible > BSB > Isaiah 11
◄ Isaiah 11 ►
Berean Standard Bible Par ▾
The Root of Jesse
1Then a shoot will spring up from the stump of Jesse,
and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit.
2The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him—
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and strength,
the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD.
3And He will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what His eyes see,
and He will not decide by what His ears hear,
4but with righteousness He will judge the poor,
and with equity He will decide for the lowly of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth
and slay the wicked with the breath of His lips.
5Righteousness will be the belt around His hips,
and faithfulness the sash around His waist.
6The wolf will live with the lamb,
and the leopard will lie down with the goat;
the calf and young lion and fatling will be together,a
and a little child will lead them.
7The cow will graze with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8The infant will play by the cobra’s den,
and the toddler will reach into the viper’s nest.
9They will neither harm nor destroy
on all My holy mountain,
The first chapter of Job tells us that your claim is totally wrong – Satan had to get explicit permission. He can’t just go around harassing humans, he has to ask.
It’s not a fact, it’s something you imagine and can only support by misrepresenting Job.
That’s your position.
I can’t figure out if you’re misrepresenting what others here say on purpose or what, but it is really strange to read your requests that other people support claims you make.
Locating the beginning in time is like locating it in space. This may be where block time comes into view as one of the most counter intuitive theories. How strangely beautiful or horrifying it would be if each point in time is at the center of a block universe.
And “you can be like God determining whatever you want”
Omg st roymond…what are you even arguing?
Job 1 absolutely does agree with my statement
my statement was that Satan can and does interract pysically with this world and an example of that is with the weather as he did in Job Ch 1!
This stupid argument about satan having to get explicit permission…that has no relevance to the fact he directly controlled the wind, whipped up a storm which blew down a flaming house and killed all of Jobs children!
.
When God placed the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of eden, i think we can safely interpret that in the manner in which it is obvious…such permission was given long ago!
Sin cannot be blamed on God…he is not responsible for it. That is the entire point of the laying on of hands on the goat Azazeel in the sanctuary service. It is representative of a day in the future when the responsibility for all sin will be placed directly on the head of Satan himself! Satan bears ultimate responsibility…not God.
What is my position? I gave you biblical passages that support my position and you reply by ignoring the bible and then referencing statements that dont even have any relevance? People dont even know what it is you are talking about (which is that Satan does or does not have the power to control the weather) I think yours is an argument that isnt even sensible as it appears that an inability to exercise biblical comprehension is the problem here.
What do you use to substantiate an “eternal” universe? Notably Scripture itself states that there was a beginning.
What I hear you saying is that because we cannot locate the center of the spacetime universe, we can’t know when it began. I don’t think so. Locating it ‘in space’ is exactly like locating it when the volume of space was zero. There was a beginning 13.8 Ga ago, at least as based on the CMB.
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Locating its beginning in time is analogous to locating its beginning in space. Or like determining it’s spatial boundary.
I understand what the Bible says, but right now I think it’s worthwhile to take in a view of what big bang cosmology has to offer.
We disagree. Time is not a location nor is it analogous to a location, and the elapsed time since beginning of the cosmos is measurable.
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This seems pretty standard:
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing and understanding relativistic effects such as how different observers perceive where and when events occur.
That does not say that time did not have a beginning, nor that we cannot know when that beginning was. Asking ‘where’ the beginning of time was or is is category error.
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- Which is really neat when one tries to calculate the speed of anything, e.g. Speed = Spacetime/Spacetime, because there is no such thing as Space or Time.
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We can disagree, but if there is not a where for the beginning of space, then surely there can’t be a when for the beginning of time
13.8 Ga ago. Any physicists want to chime in? (You don’t need to know where something was made to know how old it is.) Spacetime had a beginning, and if we know how old the cosmos is we know when time began.
(We surely still disagree. ; - )
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