Olber’s Paradox was mentioned in passing, and it is clear you’ve never heard of it, thus your post. If there was an infinite universe, then there should be a star in whichever place we looked, in fact infinite stars. Though they might be far away, light intensity is additive, and we would have the situation the OP alludes to. Of course we don’t. The solution to the paradox is that the universe is not infinite, thus there are regions of the sky which are dark. The same holds true for radio waves etc, except for CBR, which is a residue of the energy of the Big Bang, when the universe was very small.
Clearly, it is more than probable that Der Trihs will make another absolute and unsupported condemnation of religion or spiritual beliefs, inasmuch as he has already done so. However, it is rare that he posts such statements as personal attacks on posters and I do not expect him to repeat that behavior.
I will note, further, that there is no purpose served by your commenting on his behavior and your tongue-in-cheek “betting” is more likely to cause problems than to resolve them. You can desist from that behavior, as well.
[ /Moderating ]
There is a difference between the physical world and the spiritual world, each is a shadow of each other. The temple that God told Moses to design indicated this shadowing, as God said design this this way as this is how it is in heaven.
Scriptures seem to point to spiritual beings as stars, so that could be the shadow of each other, I see no reason why not, and as I pointed out above there are evil beings there too, ones of darkness, and there are black holes in space, so that fits also.
The Revelation passage you cite is of the new earth, the one that God will make for His people and he will dwell with us, which seems like God will no longer reside in Heaven (but perhaps God the Father will, God the Son might be the one on the New Earth, this is speculation, but not unsupported as Jesus will marry His church, so that indicated that He will have a different dwelling place then His/The Father.)
Another solution is the universe is expanding and light is being red shifted to such low energy frequencies that we can’t perceive it, and IIRC past a certain point the universe is expanding more distance between us and a far star then the light can travel.
Beyond the universe, some have speculated is what scripture refers to as ‘the outer darkness’, perhaps the worst place to end up, beyond the light of God, totally abandoned and being in torment.
I’m guessing that’s not the only indication, though the way you’ve put it suggests so. Anyway, I think you’re actually in agreement with me. Presumably Moses’ temple paled in significane to its shadow in heaven. Likewise, I would tend to assume that the light given off by stars, whilst impressive, pales in comparison to the Light that is God.
Could you cite me the pointers to spiritual beings being stars? Not that I disagree that they’re there necessarily, I’ve just not heard this suggestion before, so it’s interesting. And I would disagree that it fits, since black holes aren’t (as far as I know) beings, and so incapable of evil. The only connection is that they are dark.
Well, that only goes to show further that** lightwait’s ** using of the passage as indicative of current Earth is flawed.
Not that the stars as hydrogen fusion reactors themselves are the spiritual beings, they are a reflection of the spirit beings in heaven.
I would have liked it if he stuck around to answer some questions, as he left with things he stated that I can’t see scriptural support, and actually scriptural contradiction.
No it was just the one that came to mind without having to research, + it’s one that God said it a image of the one in heaven.
Lightwait, welcome to the Dope, and feel free to witness. Just don’t take it personally if somebody like me takes issue when you say something that contradicts what we know about the universe. (That has nothing to do with your metaphor for Jesus groupies like yourself being “lights unto the world”. I don’t believe it, and I have no use for religious belief, but it’s a serviceable metaphor.)
Der Trihs, I’m sure you get this a lot, but . . . stay off my side, couldja?
Meant to add: Whenever there’s a discussion like this I wonder about the ancient people who first promoted the idea of a single Creator of the whole world. At the time, their idea of the physical universe was miniscule compared to the one we’re now able to see using instruments and calculation. (Heck, the Universe as we know it exploded in size within the past couple of centuries, as astronomers realized that a lot of the “nebulae” they could see were actually entire other galaxies.)
So, thousands of years ago, the imaginary universal Creator only had to make one planet (in the modern sense), at the center of nested crystalline spheres, with one intelligent species. If our ancestors had had any idea of the real size and complexity of the cosmos, billions of light years across, with countless trillions of stars, untold numbers of planets, almost certainly many of them with life, probably many other intelligent peoples – would they still have posited that it was created and ruled, down to the minutest detail, by a genocidally-stern father figure?
I think part of the problem is the popular view of what God is. From mythology we have ‘gods’ sitting ontop of mountains with helpers carrying out the will of the gods. The helpers here are needed for the will of the gods to happen. This is different then with God, he wants others to help, but He does not need their help.
We tend to think of Him as much smaller then He is as we can’t comprehend how big He really is. People who have experienced the preasents of God have a glimpse of this and know that he can micromanage a universe such as ours without breaking a sweat.
Is there a debate going on here at all? Will the OP ever be back?
DT, more often that not, I like your posts. Actually, I like most of your posts that have nothing to do with religion. Every time anyone peeps about believing on anything, though, you just have to plow in and go all over the top with your scorn for it. What gives? Can’t you let one in ten go past? Make a joke once per year? Make a question before you fire all guns? Chill man. I am not a psychologist, and if I were, recent experience tells me that my diagnosis wouldn’t be welcome in this thread, but I do believe that your level of reaction to this type of thread is not in line with the rest of your persona. I am sincerely curious about this. Is this something you would be open to discuss?
Thank you.
As I experienced it, the Light is Love, knowledge, compassion, energy, it is everything, it is God. We, all of us, are a part of it, and share it.
lightwait has previously stated that he will not debate. He is seldom seen returning to the threads he starts. I would consider his to be just drive-by witnessings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I like “We are made of star stuff”.
Looks like lightwait witnessed and ran. So typical of those type.
I guess it holds true what Dave Barry said:
“People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.”
Yes I would agree with this, our physical world is darker then the spiritual one IMHO.
Fair enough. And thanks for the cites, on which I pretty much agree with your interpretation.
Same here, though i’m sure you have a wider knowledge base of scripture to go on.
The light keeps me from walking into walls.
Ah, but walls are also made of energy! Walk into one hard enough and you’ll see light. Run into it even harder and you may become a part of it.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Gen. 1:1
While thinking about what to write here, a truth about myself cropped up. I found that I often think and write from a negative/critical point of view. In my search to correct this difficulty, I learned that if we determine something is wrong, love will change our discernment into compassion, rather than criticism. Knowing that, I must continually ask God to remind me about love. This led me to think about my life prior to meeting Jesus. Sad to say, negativism has long been a problem in my life.
My desire is to go through as many of the following paragraphs as I can without railing accusation. Because of this, I’ll give you a candid view of me before knowing God-and how I came to know him. I believe my conversion to Christianity is integral to your understanding of any viewpoint I might possess; so, by giving you the capsule version, I’ll be getting everything out in the open-I can be up front. Maybe then, as I refer back to this chapter for reference, seeing who I really am will assist me in keeping the thoughts of my heart in the right place. With that said, I hope you will forgive my brashness in the next few paragraphs.
The terrible Day of the Lord
I believe that through his son Jesus, the light of the world, our compassionate God is graciously extending his gift of eternal salvation to all-without cost.
He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light. Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man, To bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living. Job 33:27-30
In my studies and prayers, I have grown to know that every word in the Bible is the saving grace of God. In fact, to those who believe, the words are God incarnate-life itself. I love knowing that all of the precepts, written down by the Judeo-Christian sages of old, are required for all to be saved. Each of us living, and all who lived, have in various ways fallen short of the Glory of God, but, in the Bible, no matter who we are and where we come from, our individual spiritual needs are met. The Bible covers every circumstance of life. It brings forth our fallen nature, and encourages us to collectively return to the righteousness of our inception. For those who have a personal relationship with God, the Bible incorporates the pathway to the true vision for man.
Close to two thousand years ago, the Revelation of Jesus Christ came to John the apostle in a vision from God. He was told to write what he saw in a book. I read the book. It’s about a place of beauty and wonder, a place full of the joy of eternal life. I believed the book to be true, and I asked God if I could go there. God is kind to answer prayer. Those who believe are raised at his own right hand with his son Jesus. It was revealed to John that God and the Lamb are a temple of light. I have been given to look upon the glorious light and am now a new creature in Christ; my hopes, thoughts and dreams are that everyone will choose the path leading to the temple of God.
For me, the coming of the day of the Lord was a terrible thing. I remember my first desire to read the Bible. It was to gather proof against the hypocritical Christians in the world. I had never read Scripture and I wasn’t positive who God is, but I was sure that what those “Christians” were saying could not be in their Holy Book. Because of the way they acted toward me, I believed the church to be a ruse; they and their Bible were one of the primary reasons I had given up hope in our society. They were playing a big role in the ruining of my life and I wanted them to stop. No person, group, or book, knew the answer to life and death; and I was going to prove it. Then I would find a way to leave the planet. I just couldn’t live any longer the way I felt.
Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Eccl. 2:17
Along with feelings of rejection toward the Christians, I had come to realize the physics community, of whom I longed to be a part, was hell bent to destroy the freedoms we as a social order innately sought. We allowed that branch of science, and their ilk, to hold back knowledge of the physical heavens from the rest of the world. Furthermore, we encouraged the physicists to surreptitiously feed our armies with the means to eradicate mankind. I began to see that the underlying impetus behind the conglomerate effort to know the workings of our solar surroundings was power-the kind that would allow man to rule man. Something was wrong.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the faceof the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Gen. 1:2
Even so, I believed the model held by the physics community to be the greatest of all paradigms; set in place properly, it would not only be a perfect ruling dynamic, but it had the wherewithal to save the world. I just couldn’t figure out why those we entrusted as caretakers of the paradigm did not want God in the equation. Though I personally didn’t think much about a supreme being, the purity of physics required all things be considered. I felt that if anything was left out of our calculations, we could not realize a true paradigmatic statement. That’s when I saw it; the laws of physics were set in a linear historical frame and they broke down by not being able to predict anything prior to what the physicists call a singularity. Theorems of cosmology required that in time past the universe was compressed to a state of zero. This infinite density, called a singularity, reduced man’s highest form of thought to a place of nothingness-where the light is turned off. Without God, we hit a brick wall; linearity needed to be replaced by an omni, that is, eternal frame. Be that as it may, while purporting gravity, the cosmologists saw all the heaven’s energy migrating toward a mass point and condensed into a state of vacuity. And with that, they realized the greatest weapon of them all-the Big Bang. My conclusions were: we were extracting from the heavens the exact method to manufacture great bombs, and by so doing, we had turned away from any relationship we might have had with God. We wanted to rule. The proof: our country was focused on the inevitable attack by those we feared might retaliate against our overt efforts to control their behavior. We didn’t trust God, we built fallout shelters to protect ourselves from our own unrighteous behavior. Just rewards, I thought.
We, the multitudes, kept our heads in the sand because we were supplied with gifts of placation-TV’s, VCR’s, electric mixers, motorized this and that, electric toothbrushes, and the like. Moreover, learning to operate these mechanical niceties kept mass man opiated-we were like babies in a playpen. We were taught to hold these contrivances close to our bosom, and we obliged by curling around them in a fetal position. Some of us protected our homes and workplaces with steel bars for fear of losing our wonderful contraptions. Our country generated enough money in the sales of these gifts in kind to pay for all the research and development we needed for our war machine.
As any bully would, we rationalized armed conflict to be a successful sociological process. After all, look at our efforts in the second world war; pulling together to stamp out tyranny was good! Further, because of the mechanical and electronic skills required for success, we reasoned we could live for a long time in the luxury of the spoils. Instead, we lived in fear of our enemy, and without God.
The indicators, the messages sent to us by our leadership, were that we would continually be drawn together if we kept the war effort going. Each war would be a goal-as though we were playing a game. We started manufacturing bombs and other weapons and put them up for sale to the world at large, always keeping the most sophisticated for ourselves. We devised electronic war games to alter the mind-set of our children in case we needed more than a generation to gain control of the earth. We inundated our little cowboys and cowgirls with electric mini-jeeps and machine guns that sounded real. In the name of God, our offspring would march in the pathways of our deception. We supplied weapons to any war we could find or covertly create. And, as though it were the ultimate game of chess, we used the powerful image of the “good life” in our country to draw the rest of the world’s eyes off what we were doing and what we could see (mathematically) in the heavens.
We utilized our knowledge of the heavenly mechanics to remain one step ahead in the weapons race. We were told it was a race created for the benefit of the people. Like every corporate conglomerate, though, we often realized an urgent need for expansion; with a change of venue here, and another tac there, we finally settled on Star Wars. Listen to the name and purpose of these words-Star Wars. Had we a motto for our growing madness, I think it would have said: bomb everyone who wants to bomb anybody-nuke the nukers. It was clear-cut that as a self appointed nation we alone would decide what’s good and evil on this earth. For a better vantage point, for us to rule with an iron hand, we took our venerable war machine into the heavens-the very place that has the ability to provide peace on earth.
continued