How did God create light before the Sun?

He just wanted to give us Saturday off. Then he sent down Jesus so we could have Sunday off too. I am eagerly awiting the new messiah whose holy day will be on Monday. Three day weekend! So can I run as a messiah with that as my platform? Admittedly, there’s no threat of eternal hellfire or promise of eternal reward after death, but I think the fact that it is a here-and-now benefit is very compelling. Who’s willing to start a petition for me?

[Using my mod powers to get my post to make more sense]
[Note: This message has been edited by Gaudere]

May be the book of Genesis is mainly picture language, trying to illustrate the piont that God created everything, and that the seventh day should be holy. After all who would of been there to see it all happening and record it?

Libertarian – of course, Jews believe that God is spirit. The Bible sometimes uses human terms to describe God (“a blast from his nostrils” splits the Red Sea, or the “hand of God” covers Moses, or people feast “at the feet of God.”) However, to Jews, these are always taken as metaphors, expressing something in human terms that otherwise no human can comprehend.

Judaism also totally rejects the idea of “God becoming man” – the basic break between Judaism and Christianity. I think that there are some Christians who interpret those metaphors (“hand of God,” “feet of God” etc) as reference either to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit which has human form, but I could easily be mistaken on that.

Polycarp – The Torah (earliest Biblical Judaism) says nothing about the Messiah. Whether he was created in the Beginning, whether he is human, almost nothing. Throughout history, beginning in the time of Isaiah, the notion of Messiah has been interpreted in terms of the most fervent hope of the age – often, for a military leader who would rescue the Jews from oppression. And later in response to Christianity, for whom belief in a Messiah was so important. That help?

CK…thanks. Sorry for juxtaposing Torah and Messiah; it sounds like it may have confused the issue.

My suggestion, rephrased as a question, would be this: “In orthodox Jewish thought, there were four(?) things other than God Himself which predate creation. One of them is the Torah. Is the Messiah one of the others?” If so, then the syllogism I constructed would be on target. A Jew could say, validly by logic and his faith, that “if Jesus = Messiah, then Jesus predates Creation” without asserting as a fact the Messiahship of Jesus.

FIAT LUX!

Any other questions, wise guy?

How do we speak your name?


>< DARWIN >
__L___L

Okay some of these replies to this were just getting stupid so I’ll tell you what I always thought. It would take the light billions of years to reach earth from some of the most remote stars. The Bible does not account for those billions of years it would take. It seem to me that God created the light to appear it was coming from a star. The light was put in motion before its source. This would go right along with the young earth age theories as well as debunk the (in my personal opinion) the “speed of light is slowing down” theory.

Eric Wilson


And I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea. -Revelation 21:1

Uh, jab, you DON’T speak YHVH’s name. It’s against the rules.

A few points:

  1. I’m told the traditional text sez “Elohim” created the heavens and the earth–that is, “the gods.”
  2. The text refers to a “greater light” & a “lesser light”–not necessarily our “sun” & “moon.”
  3. The line “The stars he created also,” smacks of later interpolation. Anyway, he created them “also”–not necessarily at the same time.

Soo…
Most of the stars could have been preexistent. The lights created on “Day 4” may not have been our current sun and moon. Or other light sources could have existed PRIOR to “Day 4.” There may have been multiple creators, or several beings working as agents of the same authority. Which reminds me of the Silmarillion…

AAGH! Tolkien really WAS translating ancient elvish documents!

First of all, let me state my position - that of believing in a literal six day creation. If that turns you off, then please take no offense and feel free to read no further. I don’t believe that a singular opinion on these issues is critical.

It is of the utmost importance to know that light was certainly created first… before the sun or any other object. Light is itself a wondrous substance with both particle and wave like qualities. When it bumps into an object, that object can be discerned and indeed express beauty depending on what light is absorbed and what is reflected. Light is a unique and separate creation from other physical matter. Were it not for the previous creation of light… photons that carry these properties, the creation of a burning ball of gas would be quite pointless.

Do you believe that when the Bible says “God said let there be light” that god “made” light? Or do you believe that God didn’t make light but he just made the stuff that emits light (illogical, but if that’s what you believe, it’s OK!)?

If God “made” light then where did he put those photons? I would propose that when God “stretched” the heavens out he strung those photons out from the celestial embers that were designed for the their very beauty and majesty. Such an understanding make it unnecessary to resort to the problematic big bang theory, or Hawkins’ limitless multiple universes. It also lets us read the “six days” as simply that.

Again, it’s ok if you think otherwise! Blessings!

A note to anyone who wants to respond: the first 48 posts in this thread are from February and March 2000.

Yeah but there’s been a lot of new research since then

It’s the burning ball of gas that makes the light. If your god just created a batch of out nothingness, the light would be off at, oddly enough, the speed of light, and be out of sight in less than the blink of an eye. For there to be continuous light there would have to be a source of it.

Visible light is not unique, it’s just one small section of the electromagnetic spectrum. Did your god create all the rest of the spectrum at the same time he created light, or did he just focus on that one small bit of it that humans can see? And if he didn’t create all of it at the same time, what happens to a star that can only produce light and no other part of the spectrum?

When did god create the celestial embers? I don’t seem to remember anything about embers in Genesis.

And this isn’t understanding, this is conjecture and wishful thinking. You’re basing these assertions off the writings of desert nomads from 2000 years ago. For example, what do you base your proposal concerning god stretching out the heavens to produce light on? What is your evidence for this?

The big bang theory has a large amount of supporting evidence. The creation stories (both of them) are contradictory and illogical, and have no supporting evidence.

Actually light is not unique in its dual particle wave nature. According to quantum physics everything is both a particle and a wave. A thrown baseball has a wavelength (albeit unbelievably small). Also other particles besides photons can be used to discern the nature of matter.
It’s a free country you are welcome to your own opinion but not to your own set of facts.

Before this question can be answered, the question about whether a god of any kind exists must be answered first. Please do so. Show facts to support your statements, please.

Soup hasn’t posted here since 2004.

No it doesn’t.

If creationists actually could get around to reading physics and cosmology, and understanding it, they could make the argument that in the very early universe there was only energy, no matter, so in a sense light did come first. Of course the very, very early universe was opaque, being too dense for photons to travel. Matter began when the universe expanded and cooled enough for the energy to condense. So they could say the Bible is right, in a matter of speaking, but a stopped clock is right twice a day also. This stopped clock is right about once a year.

BTW - a nitpick. Saying the Bible was written by desert nomads makes you sound like you buy that Moses did it. It was actually written by city-dwelling priests about 2700 years ago. Sure there were legends that they collected from before that, but let’s give credit to the actual authors, not the imaginary ones.

Well, this comment is just as pertinent as it might have been in 2000. I must have slept through that year and missed the thread the first time around.

One explanation that Dr. Harry Rimmer – an apologist with the Moody Bible Institute – gave for the light creation supposedly out of sequence depends on a twist of the translation. Since Hebrew is not one of the one languages I speak, I can’t say how right he is, but basically he claimed that when God created light, he didn’t release the light for two days until he put it in a “light container,” the sun.

I guess if you must stretch the text to fit your beliefs, this theory isn’t all that crazy.

Well, I’ll never have a good use for this, might as well post it for entertainment value. I was told to write down my knowledge of Genesis as an exercise in evaluating popular knowlege.

Creation according to Kevbo:

In the beginning (how we know it was the beginning is left as an exercise to the reader) there was darkness. God said “Let there be light!” and there was light. God then made the earth, sun, moon and stars. Where the light in the previous step came from before god made all the light sources is a mystery ™.

God made man, named Adam, and plants and animals and fishes. (Bible is big on distinguishing between fishes and land animals) Significantly, there is no mention of God making any extremely large lizards, flightless birds, or other extinct species the fossil records tell us have roamed the ancient earth.

God made Adam in his image, but somehow Eve never had trouble keeping them straight.

But I’m jumping ahead. God saw that man was lonely and rather than have to keep seeing that or have Adam him go blind, he made a woman named Eve. By a huge stroke of luck Adam and Eve were both straight and romantically compatible, thus explaining why humanity has survived.

All this took only 6 days. This aggressive schedule was accomplished by doing things in exactly the right order, which the Bible makes a big deal out of, just in case anyone else plans to create another universe I guess. I can’t recall what he did on each day, but everyone knows that on the seventh day God [del]watched football and drank beer[/del] rested. Actually, I can’t recall if God got around to Adam that first week or not. For sure Eve was a follow up project though…I guess women have always needed longer to get ready.

With only one man, and one woman on the whole planet, it is not clear why Adam and Eve needed names. There were many copies of various animals, but none of these needed names apparently. Possibly Adam got into the habit of talking to himself and God before Eve came along. Eve also had at least one conversation with a snake, perhaps it wasn’t so silly that they needed names…but I am getting ahead of myself again.
Adam and Eve were provided with a sweet garden, called Eden, in which to live. Since other places are not mentioned at this point in the bible, it is unclear why this place needed a name. Eden, at any rate was a great place, with abundant food and tropical climate, such that clothing was not only optional, but unknown.

God made a big ol’ rule about not eating the fruit of one particular tree. Traditionally an apple tree, but I think the bible is actually ambiguous on the variety of fruit. A serpent with no name influenced Eve to break this rule. Why an all knowing god ever thought the rule would be obeyed is an exercise left to the reader. Similarly the question of why God made the serpent, and why talking serpents have become extinct is not explained. A pet talking python would be really cool: “Polly wantssssssss a live rabbit!” I guess there was only ever one talking snake, which explains why it didn’t need a name.
OK, I am drifting again. It has always seemed to me that God knew very well that sooner or later Adam or Eve would break the rule, but he miscalculated how long it would take and got impatient, and so sent the talking snake to hurry things along…just so he would have an excuse to punish. Pretty much a dick move if you ask me.

Somehow Adam and Eve then realized that they should be wearing clothing instead of running around starkers, which they now decided was bad. They didn’t have cars or television, or the internet, or Big Gulps, or McDonalds so they were probably both in pretty good shape and easy on the eyes, so it is not clear what was not to like. Also, who told them about clothing is left as an exercise to the reader. At any rate, that first season the fashion scene was all about fig leaves.

Due to that slip-up with the forbidden fruit, God stopped being a nice guy, and went all passive aggressive. Instead of being provided with every need, Adam and Eve had to start using the brains God had given them to solve all sorts of problems like coming up with clothes more durable than fig leaves. This explains why they didn’t kill themselves out of chronic boredom, and why humanity has survived.
In spite of now being ashamed be naked, and wearing clothes, Adam and Eve still apparently got nekked often enough to do some begating. They begat Cain and Able. Then somehow there were grandkids. I am not clear which woman bore Cain and Able’s kids. It could have been an unmentioned sister, which would have been gross, or Eve, which is even more gross, so maybe that is why the Bible doesn’t go into it. Why this very limited gene pool did not result in lots of extra toes and other mutations is either a mystery, or maybe we only started out with three toes, and a nose that wasn’t upside down over our mouths.
Regardless, starting from one male, and one female, it seems clear that there must have been a lot of incest in the early times, which seems to have been OK with God. What God just could not let go of, though, was that forbidden fruit episode. Even after Adam and Eve were dead and gone, he held their progeny responsible, and kept demanding sacrifices and such. He held on to this grudge for about 4 thousand years…but letting go of the grudge is a different story.
Important points: God created everything, and he worked really fast. That wicked Eve listened to the talking snake and broke an arbitrary rule, causing humanity to fall from grace, and generally pissing god off. God holds the mother of all grudges. Genetic diversity wasn’t really important in the old days, and incest was acceptable. Sundays are for screwing off. Apparently fig trees used to have leaves so big you can make clothes out of them…or maybe people were smaller in the old days. The fashion industry is really lucky Eve didn’t follow the rules.

I believe 40tribes has glurged and moved on.