Opinion:Victorious Biblical Astronomy Part 2

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We often read that the fathers of science were Christians. Those who do not properly understand the past are at a disadvantage in understanding the present. The truth is that science had its beginnings among the philosophers, the lovers of wisdom from ancient Greece. The father of modern science and the inventor of formal logic was Aristotle, the pagan.

Aristotle’s foundational assumption was that matter could be destroyed but its attributes are fixed and unchanging. Fifteen hundred years later a Benedictine monk, Thomas Aquinas, succeeded in converting Aristotle’s system into a “Christian” world-view. He proposed a double-minded system, in which the Bible told us about God, and Aristotle’s metaphysics and logic would form the basis of science. The basis of Aristotle’s system was that matter does not vary in quality or nature.

A principle is a fundamental rule of conduct or thinking.

A first principle is an elementary but fundamentally important principle about matter and reality.

A first principle cannot be deduced from any other prior assumption.

A first principle is applied to all physical things in the universe.

A first principle has no foundation, no independent substantiation, being merely an assumption.

It is the historical starting point, the foundation, for scientific reasoning.

Scientific definitions of time and matter were based on a first principle invented by Aristotle.

The scientific edifice was built on and is dependent on this first principle.

The modern first principle is that matter does not normally change with age.

Everyone today seems to accept this first principle as self-evident.

Yet we can see the past in the distant skies with our eyes. Primordial matter is visibly different, yet it is arranged in a similar structure to local matter.

First principles are elementary, being introduced to our minds in childhood. Paul warned that the stoicheion (elementary principles) of the world can take us like military prisoners. Colossians 2:8 He even mentions that he also, as a child, was held in bondage to the stoicheion of the world. Galatians 4:3. Strabo traveled to Tarsus during Paul’s youth. He wrote that the schools of Tarsus were so devoted to philosophy that they were superior to those of Athens and Alexandria.

The Apostle Paul mentions a fundamental principle of the universe in Romans 8:19 - 22. In verse 19 he twice uses the verb hupotasso. Hupo means: under, place beneath - especially of an inferior position. Tasso: to arrange in an orderly manner. Polibius used hupotasso for troops who are arranged in an orderly way under the command of their generals. The Romans defeated the Greek phalanx because they executed their orders with precision, outflanking the Greeks at the moment they lowered their sarisa and could no longer maneuver. Roman troops were hupotasso because they individually and in unison obeyed in an orderly way. The double use of the word hupotasso strongly implies that the degeneration in the universe is an orderly arrangement.

In verse 19, the first hupotasso verb is passive. In Genesis 3, the Hebrew verbs used for the curse are also passive. God apparently did not have to create thorns. They were a passive consequence of sin and the curse. The second hupotasso is active indicative. The creation continuously and actively arranges itself under God’s command to become frail, less vigorous, having less utility.

In verse 21 Paul says the creation is in bondage to phthora. In the context of physics, this word was used for a continuous process that began with genesis, the creation of matter. The Greeks called this process: kinesis, movement or change. Plato used phthora for matter itself changing, genesis - phthora, coming into being and passing away. Aristotle on one occasion used phthora for the change in a city’s constitution: fundamental change. School children in that era would have understood phthora, in this context, as matter itself continually changing.

Origen was the first to expound a Christian world-view in his book “On First Principles” (De Principiis). In this book he interpreted this passage as matter corrupting, comparing this to Solomon’s “all is vanity.” He said the sun, moon and stars are subject to vanity because they are physical bodies.

Creationists today use the Romans 8 passage as authenticating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Here are three reasons why this passage could not be referring to the 2nd law.

(1) In verse 22 Paul applies this to the whole creation. Creationists interpret this as “everything created from the second day on becomes more frail.” On the first day, God created the heavens and the earth - all the matter in the universe. Matter was formless until God created light, which suggests that matter is a relationship with light. The second law is never applied to the internal nature of atoms. According to the second law perpetual motion machines are impossible. Yet atoms supposedly have atomic perpetual motion, always moving, never changing.
(2) The Second Law describes things that are chaotic and random. If the second law controlled the Roman army, each soldier would run in a different direction, each fighting an independent battle. The second law is not hupotasso, orderly, arranged-under.
(3) The Second Law does not act together - as a relation.

In verse 22, Paul illustrates this universal phthora with two Greek together-words. The first together-word is sustenazo: to groan together. If the Roman army broke into a city, the inhabitants would all groan together. Each individual would be affected by the same horror. Their separate groaning combine into together-groaning. The second together-word is sunodino: to be in travail together. This verb was used of a woman in child birth. Birth has together-pains because the muscles spasm together, all acting in sequence and together as part of a complex relationship. All the matter in the universe has together-pains, awaiting the glorious state when the sons of God will be revealed.

I Peter 1:7 mentions gold perishing. Peter used the present, participle, middle voice with the verb apollumenou, which means perishing. The middle voice means that gold is acting upon itself, a reflexive action. A participle is like the "ing" ending in English. Peter says that gold is corrupting itself now. That does not make sense to Westerners, but it was the way most people thought two thousand years ago, that matter continually corrupts.

We can see the past in the distant skies. Every primordial object had different light frequencies (quantum dimensions). The most distant galaxies are mostly dense dwarfs with shapes unlike local galaxies. The most-distant galaxies are often linked together in equally spaced chains. We can even follow how matter changes in each spiral galaxy by observing how every orbit (gas and stars) continually spiral out. When we compare the most distant galaxies with closer ones we see that stars are going in the opposite direction than predicted by gravity. We can also see in each spiral galaxy that all the stars and gas orbit in the same period, like a phonograph record, as they continually spiral out. The continuous expansion of the heavens is mentioned nine times in the Old Testament. We can see that no primordial atoms and no galactic orbits are "clock-like." God commands us to look at the starry heavens. It is here that we see the evidence for the triumph of His justice and truth.


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