Why is the Universe so infinitly large?

[Guest]

STEVE7150 said one alternative would have to be that "God created an illusion of age to fool us into believing something that's not true."

There is nothing illusionary about “apparent age.”

When God created vegetation for example, it can’t survive unless it is growing in soil. Soil is “the layer of minerals and organic matter, in thickness from centimeters to a meter or more, on the land surface. Its main components are rock and mineral matter, organic matter, water, and air.” Note a main component of soil is organic matter. Organic matter is “the part of the soil that includes the decomposing remains of plants and animals, as well as the product of complete decomposition, known as humus.”

Wow, if we were to look at a soil sample on the sixth day of creation we would find organic matter which is logical since no vegetation could live long without it (less than one week in most cases). A non-believing scientist would look at our soil sample and deduce from the facts that the age of the soil would have to be x years old in order for the natural processes of decomposition to create the organic matter. The believing scientist would look at our soil sample and deduce from the facts that the age of the soil was only three days old (knowing that God had just created it) and only had the appearance of age, i.e., apparent age.

There are hundreds of woodland plants that can’t survive in full sun. They must have an over story of trees to create the proper environment for life. And in many cases only certain types of trees like Pines. Pines take dozens of years to reach maturely and create the necessary over story. So God would have had to create mature trees to ensure the proper setting if he expects these woodland plans to survive.

There are literally thousand of such examples. Far from tying to “fool us,” God is smart enough to know that a fully functioning interdependent ecological system must have all the necessary components in place from the beginning. As a result, it would appear to be older than it was.

[Guest]

Wouldn't even Adam and Eve appear to be older than they were when they were a day or two old?

[_thrombomodulin]

Well then if we must take everything God says literally than i guess the Israelites were in the wilderness only 8 days and not 40 years since God set up the Feast of Tabernacles as an 8 day celebration to SYMBOLIZE the 40 years in the wilderness.

I agree with Derek that not everything should be taken literally, however, the passage in Ex 20:11 should be taken literally. The reason is that Exodus 20:11 describes the basis for the 7 day week: It is because the Israelites were to immitate what God has done. The Hebrew uses the word 'ki', which specifies a casual relationship between God's actions and the Israelite law.

The Lev 23 passage gives no indication that the duration of the wandering and the duration of the feast were equal, so why would taking it literally imply that events were of equal duration?

if the heavens ... tell us ... universe is 14 billion years old and started with a big bang we have 2 choices.

I think it is worth mentioning (again) that the big bang model is based upon assumptions which are philosophical; namely the Copernican principle is a mere assumption that cannot be proven by observation. This leaves the door open to other relativistic models (i.e. white hole cosmology) which provide an explaination for the main cosmological observations: red shift, distant starlight, cosmic background radiation. As far as I am aware, the white hole cosmology does provide a valid mechanism for these events while retaining literal 24 hour creation days 6000 years ago as measured by clocks on earth.

The important thing to know is that if the theory of relativity is true, then time may flow at drastically different rates in different parts of the universe. In other words, some parts of the universe may be much older than others. Thus, it may very well be that the part of the universe where the earth is located is young, while distant parts of the universe are indeed old.

[Guest]

I don't really know if the age of Adam (everbody knows that origin of women not admiting their age started with Eve - LOL) began counting from the banishment or earlier, but if Adam and Eve were forever young before the Fall then they also would not show any age difference from the time of their creation. IMHO, of course.

[Guest]

Ok, but they wouldn't look like newborns, right?

[Guest]

Moses the writer of Genesis did make a reference to what is a day in God's sight and it was'nt 24 hours.
"For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night." Psalm 90.4
Now i don't take the thousand years as literal but symbolically saying that a day to God is a long period of time to us. Then Moses makes a second comparison of a thousand years to be like a "watch in the night" or a 4 hour period confirming that the day/thousand years is only symbolic but certainly not 24 hours. Interesting that Moses the writer of Genesis would make a divinely inspired statement like this. I think the gist of this is that God's days are not human days because God is not constrained by the limitations we as humans are under and He is telling us this for some reason possibly because he knows at some point these issues would come up.
There are other poetic descriptions in scripture that suggest the universe is far older than 6,000 years.
"I have been established from EVERLASTING" From the beginning before there was ever an earth. Proverbs 8.23-24
"When he prepared the heavens I was there." 8.27
No in one breath scripture is talking about wisdom being present from everlasting and then further emphasizing this point by showing wisdom to be present before the creation of the earth and the heavens. If they were only 6,000 years old why would God emphasize the everlasting nature of wisdom by drawing an analogy to the age of the universe? The argument does'nt make sense UNLESS the heavens are very old.
As far as Exodus 20.11 goes although it seems at face value to be an equal comparison there is nothing to preclude it from being a symbolic relationship between man days or 24 hour days verses God's creation days and his rest day. Not that God has real days of course but this man week being a symbolic emulating of the creation event.

[_thrombomodulin]

Moses the writer of Genesis did make a reference to what is a day in God's sight and it was'nt 24 hours.
"For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night." Psalm 90.4 ...

I do not yet know some details on your position, but it appears that is an ad hoc argument; let me explain: If what you're saying is true, then would we not be at liberty to take the word day to mean any duration of time in any passage that Moses wrote? Why shouldn't the word day anywhere else in Moses's writings also be subject to the possibly that it means a watch of the night, or a thousand years, or a long period time instead of a 24 hour day? For example, can we really be certain when God says in Lev 7:17 to burn flesh on the third day, that he didn't mean it according to his own time scale? Wherever the word 'day' appears, can we be certain of its meaning? If Genesis 1 alone is singled out as the only case in which it may have a different meaning, then it is an Ad Hoc argument which is fallacious. ("The Ad Hoc fallacy is to give an after-the-fact explanation which doesn't apply to other situations." - Kulikovosky)

The consequence of this reasoning seems to be that the meaning of particular words is different to God than it is to humans. If this is true, it ultimately undermines the ability of language to communicate. In other words, if God is trying to communicate with human beings and He uses His own set of words to which we do not know the definition, He has failed to communicate.

But, I anticipate the reply that he did define the word in Psalm 90:4. The verse says "For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night." This passage, however, is not defining the meaning of the word day (i.e. 1 God day = 1000 human years). It appears that a straight forward reading of the text is that it says God is not subject to time in the same way that humans are (using a literal 1000 years, 24 hours, and 4 hours examples).

We are not at liberty to take any simile found in the Bible, and then consider that the words which that simile uses could somehow be arbitrarily exchanged wherever else those words happened to appear in scripture. Again, why single out this simile alone? If this alone is chosen, again it is an Ad Hoc fallacy. If this principle of interpretation is valid, then could we not swap words arbitrarily elsewhere in scripture because those words happened to be used in a simile in a completely different passage?

I think the gist of this is that God's days are not human days because God is not constrained by the limitations we as humans are under

God is not subject to time limitations as we are, but he is communicating with us. It is reasonable to expect that communication will be meaningful to us.

and He is telling us this for some reason possibly because he knows at some point these issues would come up.

Why would he not have just told us the earth was old to begin with?

There are other poetic descriptions in scripture that suggest the universe is far older than 6,000 years.

The verses don't prove your point. These verses do indicate that God is everlasting. They do not speak about the age of the universe.

If they were only 6,000 years old why would God emphasize the everlasting nature of wisdom by drawing an analogy to the age of the universe?
The argument does'nt make sense UNLESS the heavens are very old.

Not at all, the verse makes sense because the founding of our universe is the very first event in our time-space continuum. In other words, it's the oldest thing in our physical world; so it then makes sense to compare the creation of the world to wisdom which has been around from the beginning.

As far as Exodus 20.11 goes although it seems at face value to be an equal comparison there is nothing to preclude it from being a symbolic relationship between man days or 24 hour days verses God's creation days and his rest day.

I think the preceeding text should have addressed this adequately.

Best Regards,
Pete

[Guest]

I'd like to go back to the main question in this thread, "Why is the Universe so infinitely large?"

Well, I'm not sure that it is infinitely large. It is certainly so immensely large as to be incomprehensible for us humans to conceive. But there may be a finite number of bodies in it .

Before I address the question, I'd like to share a bit about honey bees. I was a beekeeper for decades, and the thing at which I most marvelled was the "bee dance." When a worker bee discovers a nectar source, she does a figure-8 dance. Other worker bees follow her around as she does the dance, and then fly directly to the nectar source!

Studies have proved that if the centre of that figure 8 is vertical (straight up on the frame), then the nectar source is directly toward the sun. However, if the centre of the figure 8 is 43 degrees to the left of the vertical, then, the nectar source is 43 degrees to the left of the sun. The same goes for any other angle.

Now honey bees have never gone to school and learned geometry. Indeed, they they do not determine the direction by the angle, but by the pheromones of the dancing worker.

So why does the geometry of the dance indicate to us humans the direction of the nectar? This geometry has no explanation in evolutionary theory, for it doesn't help survival at all! Could it be that the Creator's only purpose was to wow us?

Could this be the only purpose of our gigantic Universe with its multitude of stars, star systems, and galaxies, etc.?

Psalms 97:6 The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory.

[Guest]

A very worthy thought Paidion ....possibly the best(if there is such a thing) response so far on this topic of consideration.

[Guest]

As to why the universe is so large, here is an article discussing the topic.

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... large.html