I am indebted to John at Johns Justice for his contribution priot to this posting.
Imagine you are attending a lecture and you are asked to consider writing an essay on “What is Time ” Chances are you would hand in a blank piece of paper, as we can't say what time is, only that we can measure it.
Although it is understood that time is bent by gravity and matter, it’s convenient for the purpose of our current state, to assume time always moves forward. It doesn’t, but its okay for us to think that way as the differences are so infinitesimally small so we assume that if we wish to go from point A to B. And from a biological point of view its ok to assume decay begins at birth and continues on, moving forward in time until death. Hence biology tells us from birth, we will decay until death.
So we use all the tools at our disposal to understand from whence we came and the age of the universe. Why do we do this? Its part of our creation, to be curious, it gives a richer sense of the majestic nature of creation. To deny this, our curiosity, our ability to think, to discover, to change our minds, to find new truth is to deny our creation.
Why would we go to the Bible, with its poetic imagery of a transcendent god, to calculate the beginning of time? The purpose of the Bible, in speaking of time was to indicate the genealogy of Christ, back to the Jewish people which forms part of a Christian or more particularly Catholic view. The Jewish purpose of the 'Bible', as many commentators have explained after cold analysis, is one of land, property and heritage to maintain or get property.
The view whether as a transcendent image, or one to give authenticity to land is a poetic message from the ONE of whom time is present past and future. One that transcends time. As a prophet or as a disciple, the word was to illustrate in imagery a transcendent god, rather than to present a precise time for creation.
It’s sensible for us on our current state to make use of measurements that allow to us make sense of where we are, and where we wish to go. As we can measure the age of the universe and come up with the fact that it’s about 20 billion years old, give or take a few billion years. I don’t intend to go into the theory supporting this conclusion as creationists dismiss radioactive dating, atomic theory, and fusion.
They believe the light that we now see was created literally in just 7 days.
That’s what we see from many stars that have long since disappeared several billion years ago prior to the time it has taken for their light to finally reach us. And that's what we can see, not singularities (black holes) that represents the largest portion of all, perhaps 90% of all matter.
Time has no meaning to my philosophy, my belief in a transcendent God, the alpha and the Omega, the ONE who has no boundaries, to which time is now, the past, present and future. So it seems to me to insist on negating some of these Darwinian theories, is to teach something that was not intended by our faith.
I would like to quote from an article in the tablet on the 30 April 2005 by Richard Major and entitles ‘The Bibles battleground’
He talks about the implications for American Children if “creationism' prevails, as it may well. Views labeled creationist stretch on a spectrum from, the left,“evolutionary Creationists’ whom are really just ‘theistic evolutionist’ within the letter of humani Generis; to hard-line geocentrists, who deny Copernicus a well as Mendel: and beyond them literal believers in the Bible. But the great bulk of Creationists are either Old Earthier or New Earthier. Old Earthier admit that the universe is old enough for evolution to have occurred, but maintain on biblical grounds that in fact God created each species separately, long long ago. The traditional date, calculated from Old Testament genealogies by Ussher, the Jacobean archbishop, was 22 October 4004 BC, New earthier insist the date is about right.
It seems to me such arguments miss the point entirely, and their insistence is providing a lopsided view of creation, triumphed now in many states in America. An alarming development, against free thinking. It’s not as if a balanced view is allowed, to encourage debate, rather to outlaw scientific theories altogether.
I see a leaning towards fundamentalism sweeping the world within the Christian religions whose collective thoughts turn inward to an insistence there is only one truth. That is to literally interpret the Bible in a way that was never intended by its authors.
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