Section 1.a A Brief History of the First History
The Bible/Torah>Genesis>1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth.
In my understanding, this is meant to illustrate that in the beginning of everything we know or can know, God created both the seen (physical, matter, energy, etc) and the unseen (energy, quanta, information, 'spirits', etc). Therefore, as we are meant to understand it, there was some beginning and at that event 'God' created everything.
So, what is this God ? So far as we might understand this verse God is the one who created everything we know or can know. Thats a pretty tall order, but it is a valid point as a matter of language. Whatever it is we come to know as God we must accept that He (or it if you prefer) is responsible for everything we know or can know. Thusly, no matter what dalliance we employ in our interpretations we must always be cognizant of the notion that WE did not create everything, it is not ours, as it were - not exclusively at any rate. So God is the owner, the creator, the intelligent designer of everything everywhere. So far, so good?
If we cannot agree on this most basic of introductory concepts it will not likely be of much utility for you to read any further. I do not believe that everything is just 'random' and I must confess that although I could accept a theory that the universe has simply ALWAYS existed and so there is no need for a creator, in that interpretation God would still exist as we have created it and it permeates things and time in ways we cannot understand through science at present. Things like psychic phenomena, the mastery of inter-dimensional realms, etc. God would always exist even if it is only as the highest form of consciousness when we finally attain that ourselves; A collective singularity, all knowledge, all power and benevolence and reason and prime motivation will always belong to this most supreme being as long as there are entities who must toil, suffer, think and exist in a physical plane as we do - in my opinion, of course.
1.b Highly scientific Biblical notions still not completely understood, certainly not in their origins
Next in this saga of the beginnings, we are presented with the idea that there was created somehow matter and spirit, and then LIGHT was manifest to produce a sort of bridge (wavicle) between the two (the Earth from verse 1:1 seem to be taken as for granted that it existed or was the focal point of the whole exercise and its subsequent effects). Without light, we would have no perception of matter, energy, self, anything really, so light seems to be the next closest thing to creation itself or the essence of God as it were. And so, then there was light, if there is any linear progression of this manifestation from beginning to end - and though it is seldom commented upon, the veracity of this proposition still seems sensible and astounding today; If matter and energy were formed at all, light would have been one of the very first proofs or experiences of this event. Even in high-end models of the big bang theory, at a few seconds after creation there would only be extremely hot plasma or nearly pure light energy laced with intangibles like vectors, forces, etc, which would then spew out and dissipate into solid matter and various energetic forces we now take for granted today.
I would like to interject a pet point of mine here. I do not particularly subscribe to the theory that existence is hundreds of millions of years old (the relationship between carbon dating and all forms of intense radiation is, at best, lacking).I shall hope to clarify this in more detail as we go, but for now consider it thusly;
If I was to erect a boiler and insert a nuclear rod, and behold I could produce energy for a small town for many many many years at capacity above any reasonable requirement, that would be nuclear power. Fair enough ? Now what if I told you I could expend that energy in an instant and all that would remain would be somewhat intangible radiation for thousands of years ? "MADNESS!" you would cry, then BOOM, an atomic explosion... that same amount of energy that would take hundreds of years to expend would be used up in one brilliant flash lasting only a few seconds. This is the nature of cosmological phenomena when we consider a creation event, the energy would be so massive and so complex as to defy our current understandings of time and space, and it may very well be that the entire reaction took only 7 days...or our sense of time is skewed by our relative position (see general and special relativity by A. Einstein). I say only 7 days very cautiously; you will say "come now, ONLY 7 days?!!" , but I would say to you; imagine a nuclear explosion of millions of megatons that combusted and continued consistently to burn and combust for even one 24hr day straight ! This amount of energy is well beyond most of our reckoning, and it is just possible that there are nuclear, radioactive or quantum reactions that we have yet to master with our understanding of atomic physics mostly attained in the latter part of the 1800s.
Perhaps 'God' being Lord of all information and existance, is more clever than we are giving him credit for at present.
Perhaps 'God' being Lord of all information and existance, is more clever than we are giving him credit for at present.
1.b2 About seperation from the pure source - the only day not deemed good by God.
But I digress ;p The next point and a very interesting one is something, again, seldom addressed in the information I am privy to,namely, the firmament. Indeed, what is it that controls surface tension of water, why is there separation between the ocean and the sky ? Is it gravity ? Certainly not exclusively! Is it thermal ? Quite possibly this is a little closer to the mark... is it chemical bonding ? What is it ? Whatever it is it is the next thing God dealt with, He created a barrier caused by density or temperature, or whatever; a sort of layering - a process of separation, as it were. Anyone with appreciation of chemistry will really take to this...if it were not for this type of density layering, nothing we know chemically would exist. Everything would have remained mono-atomic.
So here again we are presented with a highly advanced scientific concept in ancient texts that remains interesting and fundamental to early creation science (and science in general) today.
1.c Land vs. DRY Land
Next, lakes were formed, but it seems unreasonable to assume this means OCEANS in my opinion. Gathering the waters and allowing DRY land to appear sounds more like channeling through rivers and water tables as the planet absorbed fluid H20 from the sky and cooled and more water was brought down from the swirling gasses above. The reason I make this point is because in the later deluge, it would be required that the waters would have had to be pushed up all over the face of the earth again, but this does not seem sufficient to explain mass extinctions that occoured on the earth and the great expansion of the landmass (ocean floor) has surely absorbed waters far in addition to this initial provision that could be 'gathered up' to form mere lakes or seas that existed at the time.
It sounds to me like the liquid state of the atmosphere started to form all over the earth as water when cooling allowed this layering between the sky and earth, and the waters were gathered up into lakes around the globe.... we know this is more likely because the ocean bed has been proven to be quite young (70,000,000 years our of supposed 3.5 Billion of earth existance or about 0.02% of our history, which means that for the first 99.98% of our history the ocean floor did not really exist as we percieve it today (if at all) if we take the figures of 3.5 billion and 70 million seriously)...so at sometime (see Noah) the Earth was inundated with water from a new source and it adjusted to accomodate that new source after some 40 days of flooding and turmoil- which we shall examine in much more detail later on. Suffice it to say that I believe Pangea was the original crust over all the earth composed solely of the continental land masses we now see (albeit in perhaps a different distribution somewhat), and not that there was one massive landmass on the middle of one side, and then some 75% of the other side of the earth was devoid of land and covered in a massive ocean and the planet was the same size as today... if one really considers it for more than 10 minutes, this is really quite apparent (Pangea images).
In English translations these verses seem to denote that the waters may have been gathered in one place (i.e. a global ocean), but it would be more appropriate I think to say they "retreated to their place(s)" in English [not leastof which because we know waters at least collected in more than one body, not only one massive lake or ocean in the center of the map] . I.E. ;
In English translations these verses seem to denote that the waters may have been gathered in one place (i.e. a global ocean), but it would be more appropriate I think to say they "retreated to their place(s)" in English [not leastof which because we know waters at least collected in more than one body, not only one massive lake or ocean in the center of the map] . I.E. ;
GEN 1:9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. ...
But from my examination of Hebrew and Greek ancient sources it seems better to read it in english as:
""After this, God commanded (or caused) that the waters, which were seperated from the sky (below the firmament), should retreat into their proper place(s) and allow dry Earth to form...."" [whereas before the whole Earth was likely a muddy, mucky, mist laden ball as the atmosphere and terrain sorted themselves out. It has even been postulated by theologic scholars that no rain had ever properly occurred before the time of Noahs flood ]
We even see that the term the text uses is seas [severeal], such large bodies as the OCEANS (or pan global ocean of Pseudo-Pangean models) may not have existed at that time, for example in most of history the SEVEN seas were commonly thought of as the Mediterranean Sea, including its marginal seas, notably the Aegean Sea.,the Adriatic Sea, the Arabian Sea (which is now part of the Indian Ocean), the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, including the closed Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee
These were the oldest classical seven seas by most accounts for many years, though the term obviously expanded or changed over time and with exploration, but the idea here is that these seas are in no way adequate for the description OCEANS and there was no name given to our present OCEANS in the ancient world (barring any mention of Atlantis, which we may address later also, but especially the Pacific).
Now there are two obvious schools of thought that must emerge from these considerations;
a) no one had explored the oceans well enough to know what to call them and the areas to the far west was just the 'great western sea' or b) the massive expanse of oceans simply did not exist at this phase of our origins/or were vastly different (smaller) that we now know them.
For one moment I would like to again digress to Pangean theories; in my studies of space and earth sciences I produced a study on glaciers. It is widely hypothesized that glaciers are solely responsible for the depositing of various soils and plant matter across continents, but I find this terribly presumptuous and ignorant of many facts. If we again consider the fact that the oceans are, even presently expanding, the conclusion if we wind the clock backwards is that many of the continents of the earth were at one time touching and perhaps also more temperate overall. Thus we see great swaths of similar tropical rainforests in south america, africa and the phillipine islands. Unless this phenomena began in South america and was carried eastward by wind and aquatic migration, these regions must reasonably have been in much closer proximity at one time (acceptable to both Pangean models). It does not take a rocket scientist to see the 'jig saw fit' between america and euro-africa, but it takes some more reckoning to see the same marriage on the far eastern side of the map (especially since the map is not usually drawn in a way that lends to the mind making such considerations). But more on this later.
1.d Well, what does it matter where we really came from anyway ? You can't know where you're going if you dont know where you've been.
So really what does all this matter anyway ? Well, it is important to the understanding of this work that there are many disputed theories on the origins or the universe, the planet, the species and God. It is interesting because for most of us, these considerations are brushed aside as being too large or somewhat irrelevant to our present undertakings, but I herein argue that these are of the paramount importance to our day to day lives. This is because if God didn't create the Earth and Universe, etc then we may somewhat more acceptibly presume that our actions need not be moral, considerate of the creator or his creation and that free will trumps all other considerations and there are really no wrong answers or actions [ in short atheism is acceptable]. However, if we come to a sensible and justifiable aceptance of Gods existence and his hand in creation of both the planet and ourselves then we might better heed His instruction on right living [and atheism becomes the very foremost 'sin' and blasphemy]. But I do not hope to promote some arbitrary super "religious" morality, this is mostly just an examination of the place and post we find all of ourselves bound to so far as we retain the mortal shell. But again, the presence or lack thereof of oceans is somewhat unimportant and merely introductory. What point I hope that a person might retain from this introductory section is that the history of the planet and our species is not as fixed in fact as we might hope. We are pitfully ignorant of all that has preceeded us and its implications on our lives today.
2.a Of Biblical and Classical histories of Origins.
"... there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals;..." An exerpt from Timaeus by Plato, A Socratic Dialogue.
This again seems to reasonably demonstrate that the Earth has at sundry times been almost completely destroyed and humanity along with it. In the Bible, we find two such accounts to my mind; Adam and Eve and the 'destruction' of Eden, and Noahs flood. Herein are represented the two modes of destruction, as well as Sodom and Gamorrah to a lesser extent.....
This again seems to reasonably demonstrate that the Earth has at sundry times been almost completely destroyed and humanity along with it. In the Bible, we find two such accounts to my mind; Adam and Eve and the 'destruction' of Eden, and Noahs flood. Herein are represented the two modes of destruction, as well as Sodom and Gamorrah to a lesser extent.....
2.b The first warning to man and expulsion from Eden.
TO BE CONTINUED :)