Six days of creation is the parameter given in the book of Genesis for the creation. The first day was concluded before Earth or mankind existed. Thus it seems almost a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical error-an intrinsically vain and humanist error of equating the days of God to those of men and women. Some insist on giving human literal values to the term 'day' used in the K.J.V. with a unique sort of Platonic, non-relativistic meaning of 'day'. Newton made a similar mistake about the nature of time. The ancients believed time was the same all over the Universe. If it's 1 p.m. in West Palm Beach it is the same time on Alpha Centauri. The ancients did not have advanced knowledge of time zones, G.M.T. and so forth (just kidding). Until the renaissance the concept of galaxies was virtually unknown though Leibniz knew and until the 20th century the existence of extra galaxies unproven.
Dark Ages literalism is unreasonable instance of the effort to reinforce a particular dark ages cosmological hermeneutic for the book of Genesis. Strict scriptural reading does find mention of a beginning or concluding Big Bang or Big noise to begin or end the Creation. It is important not to read into the Bible terms such as 'Universe' instead of creation willy nilly. Inconsistent use of hermeneutic (a theological modal logic lexicon of terms and meaning values for interpreting scripture) can produce inexact an erroneous results just as sloppy astrophysics may in its own field. I do not mean to say though, that it is unreasonable to draw inferences and ideas regarding the steady state of the Universe and cosmology from scripture in comparison and contrast with what is known of the observable Universe today. No longer do scientists, dark age theorists or Mickey Mouse believe that the moon is green cheese and will fall to the Earth thus feeding us all (in memory of the ancient columnist).
Grudgingly perhaps some literalists admit the world is not flat and that the Sun does not circle around the Earth. Even so the recalcitrance of select evangelicals to adopt relativity as a valid parameter when interpreting Genesis can lead to some bad science and hermeneutic.
Genesis chapter 1 verses 1-5
“1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”
Christians should stipulate that God's power travels at least at the speed of light. The famous Twin's paradox used to explain time dilation in the special theory of relativity can usefully be applied to the following Genesis one parameters in order to show how many human days it would take traveling at 25,000 m.p.h. to go as far as God could at the speed of light in the same six days. to
5.785344×10¹² miles traveling at c (the speed of light) for six days
33,323,581,440 years it would take traveling at 25,000 mph to travel 5.785344×10¹² miles
That is six days of creation for God would take approximately 33 billion human years. Since I used the value of 25,000 for human rocket travel without time dilation speed effects of greater than 1% and the number might actually be somewhat higher I may have generated too high of value for the human experience. It could perhaps be just a few billion years.
God however is eternal and in some way may configure dimensions to create the complex appearance of energy and fields, space-time and form. His power would be super-luminal of course because all space-time coordinates and energized fields are contained within His being.
On the end of the planet Earth and the atmosphere (heaven definition 1 of 3) the Apostle Peter wrote...
2 Peter chapter 3 verses 12-13 “12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
The parameters of this description coincide with those astrophysicists predict will end the existence of the Earth a few billion years from the present when the sun reaches a red giant phase and will burn up the Earth's atmosphere and everything on Earth-that is the Earth will melt and dissolve.
A new place to live wherein dwells righteousness-Jesus Christ-is a place to look forward to not only for people living toward the end times when or wherever but for Christians of any age. The kingdom of God is a new 'land, Earth, realm etc.' regardless of its composition. The kingdom of God is within you-a relativistic space-time where place and spirit rather than time are juxtaposed.
Thanks for commenting-here are some ideas on the topic...KJV Mark 10-6" But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. "- I think that the verse refers to sexual rather than asexual reproduction yet is not addressing the issue of length-of-days. Literal in algebra means variable, and the word literal isn't in scripture at all, so I am not sure that taking a 'literal' view is too meaningful for determining what a 'human' view of scripture is. In fact the 'human view' of natural philosophy has changed substantially over history hence people tend to apply contemporary natural philosophy content in their hermeneutic. If the idea of what a day is could change (consider if future Christians live on Mars) the idea of one Earth day period is something of a constant to calculate how long God took to Create the Universe as in the initial equation. If the length of an Earth 'day' is 8 hours then the time it took God to create the Universe in terms of the equation expressed above would be something like 11 billion years. Jesus as God hasn't changed. Days in the first century A.D. had a certain length. I can't recall exactly what they were; one knows that terms about the hour of the watch on the day the Lord was crucified were fixed and that Biblical scholars have written on the subject. More humans understand special and general relativity now than in prior times of history where none understood that at all, yet God always understood relativity and knows what humans will think of after that.
In relativity mass becomes infinitely heavy when accelerated to the speed of light so only massless particles can travel at light speed. True massless particles are part of a field though and have an apparent rather than a separate identity. God though is pure spirit and not limited to being incarnate within mass and hence not even limited to light speed. Spirit is faster than light, yet days are terms within human parameters for understanding and temporal parameters of being. I believe therefore that since light was in the beginning-the fastest think about, that that is the point source for understanding the relation of God to a temporal world-universe He created.
I did take a New Testament Theology course (BS521)-So I have some idea about what has become a contemporary paradigm for the meaning of 'literal'. I don't want to get too far into that subject without reviewing it, and actually I am reading Watson's 'Divinity' presently. I wasn't intending to go far into hermeneutic issues here therefore. Did you ever read Rosenberg's books including 'Abraham; The First Historical Biography'-very good reading.
Some use the historical-grammatical hermeneutic with adherence to the letter of the text rather than a more metaphorical direction as you mentioned. I tend to recognize the philosophy of language and the idea of lexicons that are word-sets that various peoples use to infuse meaning in to language. That is, I don't agree with the left hermeneutics yet do recognzie the validity of language as more or less nominalist until given meaning by a reader. There is no intention of deception-it's just the way it is. I like Quine's point of view more so than Kriipke's neo-realist philosophy of logic. An advanced being from the future (God is more than an advanced being and doesn't have problems of course yet it is necessary to use human language in considering such issues because it isn't possible to use anything else) writing inspiring writing in 2000 B.C. would have the challenges of making himself understood then and in the future if that is what was intended. Keep in mind how cuneiform and number were invented in Mesopotatmia counting animals corralled with lines, strikes and so forth and how that evolved. There were not even adequate symbols to record words for some time and certain primary stories were repeated, recorded and passed around..the flood story for example. Yet people interpreting that with their own language later would uncover the writing and understand it as they would sometimes differently.
There are many subtleties in scriptural analysis yet the objective reality of physics where constants tend to be revealed is comparable a little to the constant qualities of God that are barely understood. Humans experience His glory a little and have scripture, the presence of the Holy Spirit and abilities to correlate elements of teleology with history perhaps. There is a dichotomy between spirit and mass or material substance however that seems self-evident. If God said that he created the world in six days then that is a condescension for humans to understand later. I am just pointing out that since relativity is actual in this Universe along with an Earth-day, and Earth did not exist on day 1, that the relationship being the six days of God may be convertible to 11 to 33 billion years for mankind using the primary sub-superluminal speed that God may have used for communicating to all of humanity-a rather elegant method.
I did take a New Testament Theology course (BS521)-So I have some idea about what has become a contemporary paradigm for the meaning of 'literal'. I don't want to get too far into that subject without reviewing it, and actually I am reading Watson's 'Divinity' presently. I wasn't intending to go far into hermeneutic issues here therefore. Did you ever read Rosenberg's books including 'Abraham; The First Historical Biography'-very good reading.
Some use the historical-grammatical hermeneutic with adherence to the letter of the text rather than a more metaphorical direction as you mentioned. I tend to recognize the philosophy of language and the idea of lexicons that are word-sets that various peoples use to infuse meaning in to language. That is, I don't agree with the left hermeneutics yet do recognzie the validity of language as more or less nominalist until given meaning by a reader. There is no intention of deception-it's just the way it is. I like Quine's point of view more so than Kriipke's neo-realist philosophy of logic. An advanced being from the future (God is more than an advanced being and doesn't have problems of course yet it is necessary to use human language in considering such issues because it isn't possible to use anything else) writing inspiring writing in 2000 B.C. would have the challenges of making himself understood then and in the future if that is what was intended. Keep in mind how cuneiform and number were invented in Mesopotatmia counting animals corralled with lines, strikes and so forth and how that evolved. There were not even adequate symbols to record words for some time and certain primary stories were repeated, recorded and passed around..the flood story for example. Yet people interpreting that with their own language later would uncover the writing and understand it as they would sometimes differently.
There are many subtleties in scriptural analysis yet the objective reality of physics where constants tend to be revealed is comparable a little to the constant qualities of God that are barely understood. Humans experience His glory a little and have scripture, the presence of the Holy Spirit and abilities to correlate elements of teleology with history perhaps. There is a dichotomy between spirit and mass or material substance however that seems self-evident. If God said that he created the world in six days then that is a condescension for humans to understand later. I am just pointing out that since relativity is actual in this Universe along with an Earth-day, and Earth did not exist on day 1, that the relationship being the six days of God may be convertible to 11 to 33 billion years for mankind using the primary sub-superluminal speed that God may have used for communicating to all of humanity-a rather elegant method.
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