Posted on 02/04/2002 2:32:02 PM PST by RobRoy
Only he and religious people used to be catastrophists. It seems everyone is now.
I'll take a stab at it. It is the subject of time itself. Since I see time as a part of creation, I see God as existing outside of time. That is why I don't interpret the concept of "eternity" as time unending but, rather, a place outside of time as we know it.
So when you say God or anything "always" existed, your really saying they have existed since time was created or your saying they simply exist - as God described himself as "before the heavens and Earth were, I Am." What an odd mixture of tense in a sentence. I think this is one of the most powerful statements in the entire Bible. Oh, and on a side note, Christ also claimed to be God when he said "I am the I am."
Anyway, trying to describe when things, or God began in a paradigm that assumes time is the one constant drastically limits the scope of the question. If the assumption is correct, fine. If it's wrong, then the question is nonsensical, like asking a single man, "is it true that you've stopped beating your wife?"
The whole problem, ultimately, is that we are the equivalent of chickens trying to figure out when the barn was built. Chicken Run notwithstanding, it is a waste for God to even try to explain it to us intellectually (the limited brain, that is, as opposed to the vastly superior spirit).
A small detour from my present state of grappling with palingenesis:
Velikovsky was incorrect as far as his predictions of conditions on the planet Venus. When the Russians landed a couple of probes on the surface and found, not oil, not even burning mud, but intensely hot, dry rock bathed in sulfuric acid fumes, Velikovsky's day was over.
However, his high aptitude for research and speculation is uncommon.
For reasons unknown, todays headlines contain an article about whether there are other universes that cannot interact with ours and can never be detected. Just before the Big Bang there was a quantum instability. Such quantum instabilities must be happening all the time everywhere. Does each quantum instability give rise to a universe with some attributes --physical laws-- that may be the same as the laws of our universe or [usually] different? How many universes are beginning right now based on quantum instabilities within our own universe and the countless other universes? Can a universe is spawned from our own universe be detected? How many universes are there, and how many would be friendly to life as we know it?
Alan Guth asked some of these questions in his book "The Inflationary Universe" several years ago. I find it disquieting that one of the worldclass cosmologists can ask such questions and then say we can never know. It is like forming concepts of God, whether anthropocentric Christian models, or Unknowable Pagan models. Other universes are unknowable. What is the Cantor order of infinity of the number of other universes?
Yeah 8^>
And if the Lord waits a couple hundred more years, maybe this guys book will spawn a new "religion." I think that's the way most man made religions work: "Some guy smarter than me said it and it could be true so I'm going to believe it and trust eternity to that belief. Besides, the people in his religion are nice and support each other and the have a great voleyball league..."
So you won't mind if someone takes yours?
In all seriousness, no. But my wife and kids would.
However, the broader issue here is that I don't think you read my support of that statement. Do you have a response to it (good or bad, I'm not married to it and I won't be offended).
Then I'll rephrase the question:
2. Life isn't precious or sacred at all
So your family won't mind if someone takes yours?
However, the broader issue here is that I don't think you read my support of that statement.
Before taking up the issue with me, perhaps you should explain to your wife why she and your children are not precious.
Why, yes they would.
Before taking up the issue with me, perhaps you should explain to your wife why she and your children are not precious.
I'm sorry, ctdonath2, but I believe you are missing the point of the post. It is like the tired old metaphoricle question, "is it true you've stopped beating your wife."
My wife and children are precious to me.
Y'know, Jesus was precious to the apostles, but God took His BM away anyway.
Or did he...?
An observation I almost posted is that there are some ideas which are so preposterous/evil as to be not worth further analysis. "Life isn't precious or sacred at all" is one of them.
Good answer #72 notwithstanding, the original assertion is still completely wrong. Life IS precious. We ARE to protect life diligently and passionately. We are to undertake the taking or leaving of life as a profoundly grave matter. Knowing that one's spirit continues on thereafter is a joyous comfort (depending on _where_ the spirit continues), and we may take peace in knowing that God has decided when "it's time". However, in recognizing the nature & continuation of one's spirit, we must not neglect valliant efforts in protecting and sustaining the "container". There is an impact, often evil, linked with the loss of life. To even suggest that "life isn't precious or sacred at all" creates the grave danger that one may neglect the protection thereof, if not accept contempt for it and subsequently sinfully take it under the delusion that something lesser is worth more. Such ideas historically lead to "kill them all, God will know His own."
The initial premisis is basically a bull-in-the-china-closet way of saying the body is only important because of what it contains. Now, as you point out, this can be stretched to support evil acts. But then, people do that with the Bible all the time.
Velikovsky never claimed anybody would find oil on Venus and NOBODY at the time believed that Venus would be any more than ten or fifteen degrees warmer, latitude for latitude, than Earth. That makes for a gigantic correct prediction on Velikovsky's part which establishment science still refuses to grant him credit for. Carl Sagan's ridiculous "super greenhouse" theory is a piece of ad-hoc BS which is ludicrous on the face of it and ludicrous upon close examination. If the Russian probe destroyed anybody's theory, it was Sagans; Venera probes showed no sunlight whatsoever reaching the surface of Venus or even getting through the cloud layers and Russians noted that the surface light there thus had to be local, caused by the intense heat which Velikovsky predicted and local chemicals. You really need to check out my posting above (56).
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