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To: Alamo-Girl; Kolokotronis; Quix; betty boop; hosepipe; Forest Keeper; annalex; jo kus
A-G you always take every thread to am higher intellectual level. Thank you. Pleas don't stop.

Below is a picture of a tiny, very tiny section (less than your fingernail covers) of space, that actually shows only three stars (recognizable by a cross-like diffraction pattern formed by the secondary mirror ('spider') support of a reflecting telescope). The rest of the objects in this small field are galaxies. And the rest of the deep sky shots, all 360-degrees of it, are studded with nothing but galaxies.

A galaxy contains millions of stars. Ours, the Milky Way, home of our solar system and millions of stars in it, is traversed by light traveling at 160,000 miles per second (that's the distance from the earth to the moon) in 100,000 years.

A close-up of colliding galaxies. Note the stars (cross-like images) that are part of our galaxy. The white "puffs" in the larger galaxy are actually star clusters, not individual stars.

Our sun is an average yellow star, whose light takes eight minutes to reach us. Our closest star (α-centarui) sends light that takes 4 years to reach us. The light we see of our closest galaxy, the Andromeda, left 2 million years ago.

There are billions of galaxies out there. Their cataclysms and catastrophic extragalactic supernovae star explosions have been recorded by the images that traveled millions of years to reach us.

Galactic supernova — a giant star (arrow) expodes in a distant galaxy NGC 2841 50 million years ago.

When I say that corruption predates mankind, I mean it. We did not usher corruption as the Bible says. God did not create just the heaven and the earth. That much is obvious.

12,602 posted on 04/14/2007 9:20:45 AM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: kosta50; Alamo-Girl; Kolokotronis; Quix; betty boop; hosepipe; Forest Keeper; annalex; jo kus
α-centarui = a-centauri
12,604 posted on 04/14/2007 9:33:40 AM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: kosta50; Kolokotronis; Quix; betty boop; hosepipe; Forest Keeper; annalex; jo kus
Thank you so very much for those beautiful astronomic pictures, dear kosta50! And thank you for your encouragements!

It is shackeling God with anthropomorphic terms that places Him into a human-sized box. The Age of reason did that very well, when it humanized God and deified man.

Indeed. Mankind has a terrible tendency to anthropomorphize God. And when he does that, he misses the power of God.

That is the spiritual truth which is always underscored for me in the book of Job. Starting in chapter 38 God spurns Job harshly for speaking words without knowledge.

Returning to the astronomy… if I may assert another aspect for your meditation.

What appears to us to be such an awesome display in the universe can instead be understood as no more than the phenomenon of the mathematics of observation.

Please take a few minutes and experiment with this interactive display of the powers of 10.

At 10+0 meters, you’ll see a bush – but decrease the powers of ten and you’ll see a universe of molecular detail. Increase it, and you’ll see astronomical vistas.

This is part of what betty boop and I call the “observer problem.” What we presume to be “real” is strongly biased to our position as an observer.

All 1080 particles in the perceptible universe, for instance, may be multiply imaged from a single particle in a fifth, time-like dimension. Matter may be a shadow of extra-dimensional momentum components we cannot yet detect. Etc.

But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. - Luke 12:7

Only God knows objective truth, because all beings - whether physical or spiritual - are "in" Creation but He is the Creator.

When I say that corruption predates mankind, I mean it. We did not usher corruption as the Bible says. God did not create just the heaven and the earth. That much is obvious.

My spiritual understanding is probably different from yours, but I do not find anything irreconcilable concerning corruption and the age of the universe v. the age of man.

IOW, "all that there is" is God's revelation of Himself, His will and unknowable in its fullness. The revelation is not for this heaven and earth but rather, for the next heaven and earth.

Adam was to observe good and evil. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was placed where he could see it in the Garden of Eden. But he was not to feed on it, not to make it part of himself. By observing good fruits v evil fruits, he would have gained a better understanding of what it means that "God is good". Ditto for Light v. darkness, etc.

To use a modern metaphor, it is as if Adam was being shown a stage play [the physical universe] so that he could understand the difference between good and evil to comprehend that God is good and not evil. But instead of watching the show to absorb this revelation of God, he jumped onstage and became a part of it. He couldn’t step off the stage to be just a spectator again and thus he was banned to mortality, doomed to be an actor in the play he was intended to watch (Genesis 4.) He did it to himself. The only way Adam can get off that stage is to be born anew as a spectator, that is what Christ accomplished in the Resurrection.

So also [is] the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening spirit. – I Cor 15:42-45

This mortal life with all the good and evil, right and wrong, Light and darkness, is a detour wherein we build our own scales of justice by which we will be weighed. But it is just a stage play (to follow the metaphor) - what it is "about" is the next heaven and earth.

12,610 posted on 04/14/2007 10:11:37 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: kosta50; Alamo-Girl; betty boop; .30Carbine
Excellent post Kosta50... brings to mind a quote from Carl Sagan.. "Life had to happen first- Somewhere"..

I fully believe that place is earth..

And the biblical "heaven" will be (for some- maybe most) to populate(people) this wonderful Universe.. And that human life here, was and is qualifing "US" to do that and other things..

And that 1Cor 2;9 is beyond prophetic to being a promise..
Thanks for a very good post..

12,620 posted on 04/14/2007 10:48:54 AM PDT by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole....)
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