Opinion talk:Victorious Biblical Astronomy Part 2

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From the article: Creationists today use the Romans 8 passage as authenticating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (1) Yet in verse 22 Paul applies this to the whole creation. Creationists seemingly interpret this as "everything created from the second day on becomes more frail."

First, you have included reference numbers (e.g. "(1)"), but no references. I'm not sure that the first of those sentences is correct. It also seems to be refuted by Creation Ministries International (and Answers in Genesis) here.

You say "Yet ... Paul applies this to the whole creation" as though that refutes any argument that Paul is referring to the 2nd law, but everybody accepts that the 2nd law applies to the whole of creation.

And I have no idea where you get the reference to the second day from. Some creationists in the past have suggested that the 2nd law only took effect from the time of the Fall, but I don't recall anyone suggesting that it only applied to things created from the second day onward.

Philip J. Rayment 09:39, 7 April 2006 (GMT)

Those are not reference numbers. I gave three resons from the text and the Second Law why it cannot be the proper interpretation. The second law is never applied to what God created on the fist day - the structure of matter - light giving it form. Could Paul have imagined that his words would authenticate a law of science in a way of thinking that did not even exist then?

You cannot examine a first principle while you are in the building that was historically built upon it. You have to climb down and dig down to examine the foundations. My claim is that the first principle is visibly false and God will do what He said, take the wise with their own skills. Victor

--Victormc 16:24, 7 April 2006 (GMT)

Those are not reference numbers.

Fair enough, and I see you have clarified that in the article. However, what that means is that you have not provided any support of your claim that "Creationists today use the Romans 8 passage as authenticating the Second Law of Thermodynamics". I offered a link that I suggested denies that. You have offered nothing to support your claim. The result is that you proceed to demolish an argument that I don't believe creationists actually make.

The second law is never applied to what God created on the fist day - the structure of matter - light giving it form.

I know of no explicitly-claimed exceptions to the 2nd law, except to the extent that it can be overcome by means of design and mechanisms. That is, I know of no creationists who claim that it doesn't apply to what God created on the first day, which includes this planet.

Co-incidentally, this response to a critic appeared on the Answers In Genesis web-site in the last couple of days. It could almost have been you that they were responding to!

Philip J. Rayment 06:42, 9 April 2006 (GMT)

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I liked what you had to say about first principles -- good stuff, well said. however, you're still making the claim that modern science is based on the assumption that matter never changes, and you've never addressed my questions about that -- i don't think that scientists make that assumption, so I don't know what exactly you mean. Ungtss 17:38, 7 April 2006 (GMT)

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By Proclus’ generation, he said no science discourses its first principle. “The science knows them through themselves, and the later propositions through them.” Then he stated “Whoever throws into the same pot his principles and their consequences disarranges his understanding completely by mixing up things that do not belong together. For a principle and what follows from it are by nature different from each other.” Scientists never mention their first principle, even though it is the historical basis for their way of thinking. Why? Because it has no foundation. To question it means you question the whole structure all at once.

The Greeks tried to establish science for hundreds of years, but each major philosopher tried to find changelessness in a different way. e.g. Plato thought matter changed, but he invented a parallel universe of changeless Forms. 1500 years later the Catholics rediscovered Aristotle. The pope said Plato (actually neoplatonism) was out and Aristotle was in and the colleges began teaching Aristotle’s metaphysics. In the same century the monks invented clocks to call people to prayer. At first the clocks did not measure time for time’s sake. The idea that time had a private existence was yet future. Even Galileo had difficulty with the idea that time could affect motion, as though it were a private thing. Newton carried Aristotle to the extreme, declaring that time was unchanging and unaffected by anything external. It was only then that they invented the calculus, defined mass, experimental methodologies and finally energy. Yet no experiment can compared a present measurement with the past without the first principle.

Why should we Christians accept a literal interpretation of the Bible with respect to physical reality, instead of following the system that was founded on Aristotle?

1. Because the Bible prophesied our first principle.

2. Because the Bible, in many ways, denies it. In the original languages, the Bible makes utterly unscientific statements. But we can’t think that way, so we tailor the Bible to fit our thinking.

3. Because the simplest evidence, not mathematical symbols, but visible things in the heavens shows the total triumph of God’s Word over human reasoning. Every single primordial atom was different from the modern variety and that is visible. In fact we can see the simple, visible evidence in how the stars and gas migrating out in each spiral galaxies for a biblical chronology - vast eons in few years. We are faced with two options.

A.) Aristotle is right - and a biblical chronology is wrong. Yet the scientific universe is 99% invisible because it cannot account for what is visible with its system of changelessness. Can God make foolish such a system that believes an assumption over what is visible?

B.) The Bible should be interpreted hermeneutically, even in the areas of time, matter, the stars and the earth. If matter continually changes, science cannot understand the past nor can it measure the heavens (as Jeremiah said). Experiments, mathematics and logic cannot decode the universe. Every bit of matter in the universe is visibly doing what Paul states - hupotasso phthora. Carefully examine our first principle. It is visibly false and what the Bible says is visibly true. “The pride of man will be abased and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day.” Victor

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I'm extremely impressed by your knowledge of history, historical philosophy, and metaphysics -- you've evidently put a great deal of study into this -- but i'm still not hearing an answer to my question -- who, today, among contemporary scientists, would ever say that matter never changes its form or properties? Ungtss 01:51, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

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Halton Arp, Narlikar, and Burbidge have proposed that “mass” changes with age as it is ejected from active galaxies as quasars. Arp claims that this is based on observations, such as high redshift objects surrounding and sometimes inside of low redshift active galaxies. Arp’s attempts to publish this evidence were thwarted by his peers. He had to publish his data in the commercial press. They still believe that something about matter is changeless. They have not questioned the first principle, although Arp acknowledged in an e-mail that Fred Hoyle once told him that everything depends on Aristotle. In my opinion, relational change is the only thing that both fits the simple evidence and the literal words of the Bible.

The problem with admitting that matter changes, is that we can invent all sorts of technical innovations in the present, but we cannot extend our laws or mathematics into the distant past. Paul said, God in His wisdom made it so that man by his own wisdom cannot find Him. Why? So that only simple child-like faith in the crucifixion of Jesus, what is foolishness to the world, will triumph over the wise and mighty. If matter changes, scientific chronologies and earth-histories would be utterly false. Victor --Victormc 04:04, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

You said they still believe that something about matter is changeless -- but you haven't said what it is. What about matter do they believe is changeless? Ungtss 13:58, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

In my opinion, the reason Halton Arp is a pariah is that he has published evidence against the first principle. This is unintended, since most scientists have never heard of the first principle. Years of observations brought him to conclude that most redshifts are intrinsic. Intrinsic means belonging to a thing by its very nature. Intrinsic redshift means matter itself changes with age as well as from local conditions.

Scientific theories assume that matter may change in a differential way, from motion, temperature, magnetic fields, chemical combinations - but not with age, except in radioactive decay. They always assume something must remain unchanged. In Einstein’s system matter changes under relativistic conditions. But underneath all the detectable change, he assumed there exists a symbolic realm, a mathematical realm. Although clocks change, his formulas refer to a symbolic realm of unchanging “formula time” which analyzes the observed relational change. Of course the symbolic realm cannot be detected - it exists only in the formulas.

The fundamental difference between thinking in Bible times and our system involves relational change. Peter said the first thing to know about the last days is their first principle (arche) that all things diamenei: remain unchanged in “being or relation.” We don’t say this or that changes in being or relation, because we always assume something is constant. Every living thing changes as a relation. The animal or plant continually changes in parallel, billions of operations working in unison and in sequence to reproduce, grow or age. Relational change is irreducibly complex. A caterpillar changes as a relation - every cell in its body dissolves into a biotic soup. Some of the genes suppressed so that it turns into a butterfly. That is change as a relation - parallel change - in which no element is king or independent of the others.

Is matter a relation. Quantum weirdness and non locality have only one simple explanation. Matter is a relation with light. The form or shape of matter came about when God made light. If matter is a relation, you cannot define its elements with precision. What is time? No one has every isolated a single bit of time. Experiments only can say this process is faster than that one. No experiment has ever compared a past second with a present one. But our first principle causes us to assume an unchanging time, and even use that assumption to build our math and empirical system. Yet every distant orbit and every distant atom clocks-differently than local stuff.

Paul used two Greek together-words to illustrate how creation changes. Things that change together, change as a relation. It is in the heavens that we can see the simple evidence that he meant matter changing as a relation. Astronomers often call this visible change “redshift.” The light shifts, all the atoms in each star shifted by about the same amount. But of course they can’t believe that most of this shift is intirnsic, which is why they claim the vacuum of empty space stretched out the light. No experiment has ever shifted light in a vacuum.

A change in first principles is mind shaking. Perhaps I should add a third essay on “constants” and stars. Our constants do not mean the same thing under Paul’s principle.

Okay ... I think I'm beginning to understand what you're saying. Let me try to restate it in my own terms. Aristotle's first principle is that the universe is mechanistic -- that objects have fundamental principles (or final causes) which are abstract, and do not change. Contemporary pagan scientists have a variety of views about what they believe doesn't change about the universe -- Einstein believes that there is a unchanging, fundamental mathematical formula that binds the universe together, etc. etc. etc. But in Mr. McAllister's view, this first principle is both unbiblical and incorrect -- unbiblical because the Bible defines all things in the universe in relation to each other and in relation to God -- so that nothing operates solely under its own principles -- and incorrect because science has shown that nothing in the universe has unchanging, immutable principles -- but rather, all things exist in relation to each other, and are thus interdependent and ever-changing. How have I done, Mr. McAllister? Am I getting closer to understanding your point of view? Ungtss 13:14, 9 April 2006 (GMT)

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That sounds holistic like a Hindu who says every part of the physical universe is part of the “one.” “Some god somewhere is dreaming and the universe is immaterial. An inanimate rock and I are all just part of the one.” I do NOT accept monoism, that everything, animate and inanimate are interconnected. God himself challenged Job, “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens or fix their rule over the earth?” God tells us that the universe operates by ordinances, and the same laws control the heavens and the earth but He didn’t seem to think we could find them.

He made plants, animals, formed stars in the pounded out place (the firmament) and made man in His image. There is individual identity and a some independence of action in the universe. There are also innumerable interconnections and interdependencies in nature that are extremely complex.

In the Romans 8 text analyzed in this article, Paul states several astpects of how the creation becomes less utilitarian.

1. The process is orderly, hupotasso, arranged under.

2. The second hupotasso tells us that the universe actively and continuously arranges itself under the command to become more frail. God does not have to pull on puppet strings. He gives the command and (in my opinion) matter continues to degenerate in an orderly way.

3. The emphasis on the two together-verbs (which are not translated in some English translations) implies that what Paul is talking about is a relationship that degenerates.

I am talking about matter, atoms. Every atom is a RELATIONSHIP. Why do atoms act holistically? An electron in an atom does not act like one outside. They are like two different animals. An “entangled photon” seems to instantly affect its twin, though they are kilometers apart. No local theory of matter fits that kind of evidence. The duality problem, is it a particle or a wave? Did it pass through one slit or both? Why is it that when the observer looks, the observation changes? These are not so strange if atoms are a relationship in which no element is independent.

Why do we measure unchanging atoms? The answer is that we don’t - we use the first principle to mathematically calculate things that no experiment can really measure. We mix our first principle with our measurements - so we can’t even separate what is real from what is a consequence of our first assumption. Yet every single atom in the past apparently had different dimensions, visibly had different frequencies, and visibly primordial galaxies had radically different motions. We can even see how this affects the stars and gas in every spiral galaxy as their properties keep changing as they spiral out. We do not need a single invisible entity (dark matter, dark energy, black holes, cosmological expansion, etc) if we just question a single elementary assumption. As soon as I have time, I will write a third astronomical essay, to counter the mental obstacles Westerners have to questioning our first principle. Victor --Victormc 00:11, 11 April 2006 (GMT)