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Friday, January 9, 2015

GENESIS 1:2 ...darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters

GENESIS 1:2 ...darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters

There is water and ice in space!

An article “Astronomers appraise the amount of water in the Orion Nebula In astrophysics”, Research News, 7 February 2011 discusses this.

It makes a statement about water in the nebula as follows... “The astronomers report in their study that most water vapor originates near the surface of the cloud, and does not extend into the cloud by more than about one hundredth of a light-year, probably because it turns into ice.”

Water and ice exist in nebula’s!

In Genesis 1:2 we first find the Earth to be formless and empty which is a good description of a nebula. Then when we investigate nebula’s and their water, we find the water is part of this cloud.

Surely, it had to be if Earth was established from the nebula and we on Earth have 71% of the surface covered with water. Here is some information about how the water is distributed now days.

One estimate of global water distribution (Percents are rounded, so will not add to 100)
Water source	Water volume, in cubic miles	Water volume, in cubic kilometers	Percent of freshwater	Percent of total water
Oceans, Seas, & Bays	321,000,000	1,338,000,000	--	96.54
Ice caps, Glaciers, & Permanent Snow	5,773,000	24,064,000	68.7	1.74
Groundwater	5,614,000	23,400,000	--	1.69
Fresh	2,526,000	10,530,000	30.1	0.76
Saline	3,088,000	12,870,000	--	0.93
Soil Moisture	3,959	16,500	0.05	0.001
Ground Ice & Permafrost	71,970	300,000	0.86	0.022
Lakes	42,320	176,400	--	0.013
Fresh	21,830	91,000	0.26	0.007
Saline	20,490	85,400	--	0.006
Atmosphere	3,095	12,900	0.04	0.001
Swamp Water	2,752	11,470	0.03	0.0008
Rivers	509	2,120	0.006	0.0002
Biological Water	269	1,120	0.003	0.0001
Source: Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World fresh water resources" in Peter H. Gleick (editor), 1993, Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, New York).

There is a lot of water on Earth!

We need to understand however there is a lot more of other stuff as well. The Earth’s crust makes up about 1% of the earth and 1/40 of that is water so we have about 0.025% of the whole Earth volume being water!

The reason we see so much of it, is the water is on top!

Our water probably came from the solar nebula according to science. In fact to be more precise, it is a specific type of water in the solar nebula. Jessica Donaldson wrote a paper explaining that it was crystalline water ice photodesorbed by UV photons.

“The high amounts of noble gases and volatiles in comets and Jupiter have been a problem in the models of ice formation in the solar nebula. These gases are trapped by amorphous water ice, but models show water ice forms at temperatures of 120-180 K, too high for the formation of amorphous ice. Now Ciesla has shown that crystalline water ice that is photodesorbed by UV photons can reform as amorphous water ice in the cold outer regions of the solar nebula. This process can produce enough amorphous water ice to trap volatiles and noble gases to explain the volatile-rich atmosphere of Jupiter.”

Now another fact, Nebulae can be dark inside.

An article from Swimburne astronomy online[1] describes this in the following way;

“Dark nebulae are interstellar clouds that contain a very high concentration of dust. This allows them to scatter and absorb all incident optical light, making them completely opaque at visible wavelengths.”

Nebula are therefore large, ranging from millions of miles to hundreds of light years across.

Since a light second is about 300000 kilometers (186000 miles) , multiply that by the seconds in a year (there are 31,536,000 seconds in a year) and you get the idea.

BIG!

So when the bible says... darkness was over the surface of the deep...and we look at it in science terms we get an incredible perspective on God’s creation. A huge dark nebula containing water (probably about 0.025% of it being water) and of huge depth and size, is our only conclusion.

Our solar system, the sun(a star) and all its planets and asteroids came from a solar nebula.

Amazing isn’t it?

Then, God just frames this beautifully for us by stating “and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”.

God is bigger!

A clear statement is made of that, so that we are to be clear about this.

Hovering is what mothers do when infants are around. A mother keeps watch to ensure the child can have their immediate attention should it be needing help.

The bible chooses that word “מְרַחֶ֖פֶת” me·ra·che·fet meaning “moving, hovering”.

God was taking care of the birth of Earth.

I like that God makes clear that Holy Spirit was involved, we know Jesus was involved, because John 1:1-3 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” ...and we then find the “Word” refers to Jesus.

Genesis 1 speaks of God as “אֱלֹהִ֑ים” or Elohim which refers to a divine being with a multiple person composition. That is a God, that is somehow also god’s. Multiple within one!

God in all aspects of his personality was part of the creation.

There was probably a nebula’s that was dark inside, with water within it and on it’s surface, from which the earth was formed.

How would you explain that to simple man in 1400 BC?

Would the best description perhaps be “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep”.

I think it’s a very good explanation, but like the next part even more “and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”.

I like to think that science says we as humans are about 55% to 65% water. I love to consider that every drop was watched over by God from the moment it existed.

God loves us, of that I am sure. Do you believe that?

[1] http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/D/Dark+Nebula

Fri, January 9, 2015 | link Comments

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

GENESIS 1:1 Now the earth was formless and empty – how can that be?

GENESIS 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty – how can that be?

There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part. ~ Bram Stoker

They say around 4,5 billion years (take or give a bit), out of a huge interstellar hydrogen, dust, ice and water cloud called a nebula, we get the original earth, according to science.

So let’s ask the question of what a nebula is. The word nebula is Latin for “cloud”.

Are cloud’s formless and empty?

Pretty much!

We cannot grab them, or draw around their edges. They have no fixed form.

Yet they do exist! We can see them can’t we? We distinguish them as different from the surroundings don’t we?

  Similar with the nebula! These are interstellar clouds of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionized gases.

  These nebula are considered the birth material of planets like our Earth. At the start, something disturbs the cloud that then starts to clump together and due to gravity start to spin. Maybe some type of shockwave (did God speak again).

The dust that forms clouds of dust, gases, and moisture then spins into a fattened disk shape.

The middle becomes a central sun that comes together by gravity in the center of the dust cloud. It is initially hidden from view, but as time goes on starts becoming visible through the dust by blowing away the dust due to its solar radiation.

The dust clumps together randomly but as it gathers more and more, a planet grows into being. When it gets big enough, gravity pulls it into a spherical shape.

So, that original cloud is basically empty. We would call it part of the vacuum of space! Lots of emptiness! It also doesn’t really have edges, or a form. Like a fog bank doesn’t have a form. It is sort of there! Hard to say where the edges are right?

  A good simple description for simpler man to remember would be “formless and empty”

When was Genesis written?

They say probably it was written down about 1440 to 1400B.C. but it was passed on by word of mouth from much earlier, probably hundreds of years earlier.

NOBODY knew about nebula’s at that time.

The first real understanding of a nebula occurred around 1790A.D.

Therefore by deduction, it is an amazing miracle that the bible got it right that earth was created from a nebula isn’t it?

Would you have described our earth as formless and empty…it’s rather counter intuitive isn’t it?

I guess since God created nebulae, so it’s not so amazing…provided you believe in God!

Do you?

Wed, January 7, 2015 | link Comments

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

A new beginning – Genesis 1: Creating the Heavens and the Earth

A new beginning – Genesis 1: Creating the Heavens and the Earth

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ~Genesis 1

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~ Albert Einstein

Do you know everything we actually understand in the Universe has been estimated to be only about 5% of the universe?

The scientists believe that 95% of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy ... that we simply do not understand currently.

The rest (5%) is what we know!

If I told you a high school student leaving school and applying for a job understood only 5% of mathematics,5% of English, 5% of science, 5% of all their subjects, would you employ them?

Probably not!

We would not consider that person to have enough knowledge to be a reliable worker.

How come we as humans think we are so clever that we can tell whether God exists or not then?

We know that we only know 5% of what we can tell is here in the universe!

This is a fact!

Okay, so lets get back to the creation of the heavens and earth.

It’s nice to see the bible got it in the right order. Heavens then earth not the other way around.

“The current measurement of the age of the universe is 13.798±0.037 billion years ((13.798±0.037)×109 years) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model.” (Wikipedia) we are told.

The age of the Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%).(Wikipedia using U.S. Geological Survey, Geological Society of London, and Earth and planetary science letters) .

Okay, heaven is 13.8 billion years and earth is 4.5billion years old.

So the order is right!

Now about that word created...this implies made from scratch, ...established initially, ...started and other such things.

Today scientists have extrapolated using the Lambda-CDM concordance model (which is a model that contains a cosmological constant Lambda associated with dark energy and cold dark matter (CDM) and is considered the standard model of the big bang) and followed the universe back to what they call a singularity.

This model takes into account facts obtained from;

·         the existence and structure of the cosmic microwave background
·         the large-scale structure in the distribution of galaxies
·         the abundances of hydrogen (including deuterium), helium, and lithium
·         the accelerating expansion of the universe observed in the light from distant galaxies and supernovas

and finds that matter came into being around that time.

That is I think a “creation” event.

Would you agree?

Initially we are told the universe was so hot no matter particles existed, but as it expanded, it cooled and matter came into being. The forces developed symmetry which separated the strong and weak electromagnetic forces. This was a quark-gluon plasma universe and it cooled further, also enabling a full range of electroweak force symmetry to develop, and this led to all the particles we know of that are around us now. (We are made of them as well).

Today we can detect the cosmic microwave background radiation which is the remnants of that initial period. After this period a large stage stable structures now emerged as well as stars, quasars, galaxies and their groupings. Initially helium and hydrogen was processed through these star “factories” to create the building block of matter and life as we know it today. Earth, which is a late stage development, could only exist later in this sequence of events as it needed these elements such as iron, silica, carbon, etc. to be created within the universe before our earth could exist.

In simple terms ...
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ~Genesis 1

Isn't God great?

Tue, January 6, 2015 | link Comments

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