[metmom]

A friend of mine, who was going for his PhD in antropology and happened to be a Christian who knew Hebrew, told me some very interesting things about the first couple verses in Genesis. If anyone knows Hebrew and can let me know if these are wrong, please do so but, here goes... He said that there is a change in tense between the 1st and 2nd verses of chapter one. The first verse indicates creation and the second verse indicates that the Earth BECAME void, as if something happened to it to change its original form. From then on God had to clean it up, so to speak, and make it habitable for man. His theory was that it was the fall of Satan, shen Satan was cast out of Heaven. There are other Scripture verses that indicate that at one time Earth was a place of great mineral beauty.
As an aside, I also don't see why a 6 day creation is inconsistent with the laws of physics, etc. God could have simply established those laws at the same time He created the Universe. Just because there are oil and coal deposits, doesn't mean He couldn't have created the Earth with them in place, knowing that we would someday need them.

[RadioAstronomer]

---God could have simply established those laws at the same time He created the Universe. Just because there are oil and coal deposits, doesn't mean He couldn't have created the Earth with them in place, knowing that we would someday need them.----

Does that include all of the light coming from distant galaxies? How about the CMB, Lyman alpha forest, gravitational lensing, Boomerang data, nuclear decay and half-life, phylogeny, geological column, Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and stellar evolution, galactic formation, stellar nurseries, Earth/ Moon tides and lunar recession, dating rocks, continental drift, galactic rotation, colliding galaxies, supernova, 3rd generation star formation, fine-structure constant, etc?

CMB:

http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/cmb_intro.html

http://background.uchicago.edu/

http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/cmb.html

Lyman alpha forest:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/Lyman-alpha-forest.html

Gravitational lensing:

http://www.iam.ubc.ca/~newbury/lenses/lenses.html

Boomerang data:

http://cmb.phys.cwru.edu/boomerang/

http://www.nersc.gov/news/annual_reports/annrep00/02compsci_boomerang.html

Nuclear decay and half-life:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/halfli2.html

Phylogeny:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibit/phylogeny.html

http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html

Geological column:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html

Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and stellar evolution:

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Stars/hrdiagram.html

http://cassfos02.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/StevI.html

Galactic formation:

http://galileo.as.utexas.edu/research.html

Stellar nurseries:

http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Bima/StarForm.html

Earth/ Moon tides and lunar recession:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html

Dating rocks:

http://earth.leeds.ac.uk/dynamicearth/dating/

Continental drift:

http://kids.earth.nasa.gov/archive/pangaea/

Galactic rotation

http://web.mit.edu/davidl/www/astro.pdf

Colliding galaxies:

http://orca.phys.uvic.ca/~patton/openhouse/collisions.html

Supernova and SN1987A:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/additional_topics/supernova.html

Population I and Population II type stars:

http://www.astro.umd.edu/education/astro/mw/pop.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/stellar-population

Fine-structure constant

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/alpha.html

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/04/18_deep2.shtml

And lastly here is a good overall site:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm

[strategofr]

A friend of mine, who was going for his PhD in antropology and happened to be a Christian who knew Hebrew...

Embarassingly, I am a Jew, who does not understand the meaning of Hebrew (though I can sound out the words in the synagogue.)


"He said that there is a change in tense between the 1st and 2nd verses of chapter one. The first verse indicates creation and the second verse indicates that the Earth BECAME void, as if something happened to it to change its original form."


in my Bible, which includes Hebrew, English, and a huge amount of footnotes, it is translated thusly:

"In the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth---when the earth was astonishingly empty with darkness upon the face of the deep and the Divine Presence hovered upon the surface of the waters---God said, "Let there be light," and there was light..."

So, these very careful translators from Hebrew do show a tense change, from "ing" form (participle?) to past tense.

"As an aside, I also don't see why a 6 day creation is inconsistent with the laws of physics, etc."

you're right of course, but the fact is, there is detailed evidence for hundreds of millions of years of history buried in the earth, including geological evidence, millions of fossils (showing the gradual development of various species, most of which are no longer alive) that have been found, etc. All point to essentially the same story. Granting that God could have created this, doesn't it seem odd that he would have? Why would he? Just a fool everybody?