Genesis 1:1b Heavens and the Earth

November 27, 2012

Returning back to our search for dinosaurs and everything else, I am excited to share a piece of relevant information I discovered on Thanksgiving day:

A few days after Thanksgiving dinner, a popular tradition calls for two people to grab opposite ends of a dried wishbone and pull until the bone breaks in two.

The irony: The wishbone is special because it's one piece.

The furcula (the technical term for a wishbone) is formed by the fusion of two collarbones at the sternum. The furcula is an important part of a bird's flight mechanics — a connecting point for muscles and a strengthening brace for wings. The bone is elastic and acts as a spring that stores and releases energy during flapping. (Ever try to snap a wishbone before it's been dried?)

Scientists once thought the furcula was unique to birds. Paleontologists now tell us that the bone is also found in to two-legged, meat-eating dinosaurs including the Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. These reptilian movie stars didn't fly. Their furculas likely served as structural supports as the dinos held their prey.  

                –taken from George Frederick, Life's Little Mysteries

So turkeys are related to the dinosaurs!!!  There you have it; last Thursday you may have well just eaten a piece of history!  Gobble gobble RAWR!

Moving on.

Genesis 1:1b

As part of our introduction last time we looked at the first verse of Genesis in its original Hebrew

בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.

ha·'a·retz ve·'et a·sha·ma·yim eth e·lo·him ba·ra be·re·shit

read out loud:
bereshit bara elohim et ha’shamayim ve'et ha'aretz

I presented a case that the first half of the verse (bereshit bara elohim) establishes God as precedent to creation, outside of the limits of the physical universe and time, and is the causal force behind Creation itself, and through the act of creation time is born.  We also touched on the important deduction here that God is not “created” and God is not subject to time. 

In the auxiliary reading between the first entry and this text we also examined two other issues: the Apologetic defense of the Assumptive God and the Irrational nature of Scientific Review in the Absence of an assumed God.  These two points become increasingly important as we continue to read our Bible and as we engage with the world and other people around us.   The concept of the Assumptive God indicates that the Bible is written for people who are already predisposed or currently hold a faith in God.  If you don’t have such a predisposition, then you will struggle more than necessary with an already complex story.  The second point that we reviewed was the impact a world view that assumes God has on our interpretation of observed data (i.e. scientific review). A person colored with the disposition that God exists will ultimately see order and no mystery in the abundance of patterns we see in reality, e.g. Fibonacci numbers.  Whereas a person who does not assume a deliberate Creator will be left to interpret the same set of data as a random, perplexing, seemingly absurd-but-it-happens-anyway, type manner – the result of which is to put forth explanations where the mathematical probability of those solutions is so small that they become ludicrous when tested by the very methods of scientific review accepted by both believers and non-believers alike.   

As we continue into the remaining text, know that I assume God.  And I assume the majority of readers do as well.

Shamayim ve’et ha’aretz  (Gen 1:1b)

Heavens and the earth -one phrase not two words

The usual Hebrew word for "heavens" is shamayim, a plural form meaning "heights," "elevations" (Gen 1:1; Gen 2:1). (b) The Hebrew word marom is also used (Psa 68:18; Psa 93:4; Psa 102:19, etc.) as equivalent to shamayim, "high places," "heights."

According to modern Hebrew, Erets is applied in a more or less extended sense-- (1) to the whole world and everything created, ( Genesis 1:1 ) (2) to land as opposed to sea, ( Genesis 1:10 ) (3) to a country, ( Genesis 21:32 ) (4) to a plot of ground, ( Genesis 23:15 ) and (5) to the ground on which a man stands. (Genesis 33:3 ) The two former senses alone concern us, the first involving an inquiry into the opinions of the Hebrews on cosmogony, the second on geography.

-Easton’s Bible Dictionary and Commentaries

So when reading this selection text by itself, in our English speaking minds we see two subjects: heavens and earth.  It becomes easy therefore to run down a rabbit hole (which we will do in a moment) and explore exactly what Genesis means when it reveals the word “Heavens” and then again when it reveals the word “earth”.   And I believe there is some merit to doing this exercise because it will illuminate the comprehensiveness of God’s word.

However we must first look to the phase as a singular.  Does the phrase “heavens and the earth” have a particularly unique definition in Hebrew separate from the definitions of the individual words themselves?  And of course, the answer is “yes”.

The phrase "heaven and earth" is used to indicate the whole universe. Easton makes this claim, and it appears everywhere in modern Christian theodoxy (yes I just made up that word).  But where does he derive this understanding?  Well I searched and found out that in Hebrew the phrase is still in use today.  It is a Hebrew idiom meaning "all things" or “everything”.  If you do an exhaustive search of the phrase in Hebrew literature and spoken speech, you will discover that the idiom displays a conceptual and not necessarily scientific emphasis on this totality. For example, if you were a Jew, living during the time of Moses, and if you had a bad debt and the debt police came and took your house, your things, and your prized donkey, then your neighbor asks, “What did they take?” Your response could be “Shamaim ve’et ha’aretz”, i.e. “the Heavens and the earth” and your neighbor, being fluent in Hebrew would shrug his shoulders, shave his head, tear his clothes, and weep with you knowing that you were wiped out, but also knowing that the police did not actually take the heavens and the earth.

Ok. Seriously, the phrase has value to convey a comprehensive totality.

Dwell on this a moment, Moses is relaying to people recently escaped from Egypt about their history and he says to them “God created everything”.  The early Israelites take this to mean, literally everything.  They are not expected to have a knowledge about atoms, time, light, red shifts, gravity, f=ma, etc.  But they would assume that even the unknown was known to God and created by God.  So consider the same setting and now somehow Einstein is transported back in time to this very moment when the Israelites are being revealed this truth that God created everything.  Einstein suddenly states his theory of relativity and in doing so discusses special relativity and Red Shifts (the bending of Red Light in the presence of a gravitational field).  The Israelite when presented with this information may not understand it, but nevertheless can accept it and account it to being caused by God because red light shifting, if it did occur, would naturally occur because God decided that it should. And this phenomenon is a part of “everything”.

We cannot ignore then that the principal statement of the Genesis account is an arbitrary “everything”. It is even more emphatic than the Hebrew word for everything.  Our Bibles could have been written:  In THE beginning God created EVERYTHING (ha-kohl (הכל)).  Wouldn’t it be easier to have had our Bibles just say this?  The verse then would lay a foundation and a case that all of existence and reality is due to the creative will and power of God.  And the Christian could then credit every piece of science, every observed fact and data point back to God’s work – without argument and confusion.  And yet God saw fit to inspire those tasked with writing down the history of Creation to use a common idiom – which is open to confusion by those who are not native speakers of the language.  So there must be a reason right?  Yes, the phrase is emphatic, it is over the top, and it is in essence the Everything of Everything, Anything, and All things. 

Of course in addition to the overarching inference of “everything”, a deeper study into the words themselves unveils even more detail into God’s comprehensiveness.  (And to think, we are only in the second part of the FIRST verse of the Bible…)

Shamayim

Heavens

Yes it is plural – multiple Heavens. The idea of multiple heavens was clear to the ancient Hebrews and is deduced in Christian doctrine as well (Deut. 10:14; I Kings 18:15). Reading the Hebrew Scriptures and reading carefully through our texts and Apocrypha will reveal seven to ten heavens!  Somewhere in these heavens paradise was placed, and within it the treasures of life and of righteousness for the soul.  Oh, and God currently resides somewhere in there too.

So multiple heavens but is that it?  What IS Heaven?  Let us try to define this for the moment.   Well perhaps we can start by defining what Heaven is not.  It is not hard earth.  It is not ocean water.  It is not electrons.  It is not air, nor gas, nor stratosphere.  I would hazard to say that Heaven is not anything that contains “matter”.

From Dictionary.com

mat·ter

noun

1. the substance or substances of which any physical object consists or is composed: the matter of which the earth is made.

2. physical or corporeal substance in general, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, especially as distinguished from incorporeal substance, as spirit or mind, or from qualities, actions, and the like.

3. something that occupies space.

4. a particular kind of substance

 

In fact, as we will consider later (in Gen 1:1c), I believe that all matter is a type of earth.

If we agree that Heaven does not contain matter – then what about “outer space”?  Does it include outer space?  Nope, outer space is filled with stuff.   And besides we learn in the whole tower of Babel portion of our History, and by Christ’s own testimony, that God absolutely does not want us to travel into Heaven by any other means than salvation (ie. The Narrow Road).   Since we have sent men to the moon and hence into outer space, and we have not been “smoted” or “smited”, we can assume that outer space is NOT a type of Heaven.

So then, what are we left to infer?  God created multiple Heavens at the begging of time, and at the same time as he created the earth ( i.e. matter) – yet Heavens are not a type of earth.  Perhaps we have been interpreting this word “shamayim” too narrowly and with too much assumption?

We know through scientific observance today that in addition to matter we have energy and force.   No not the “Use the Force, Luke” type force, true force – gravity, electrical, magnetic, applied, frictional, and atomic, quantum, and many many more…

Force is the observance of the interaction between two different forms of matter in close proximity.  It is because we are able to observe force today, that many people assume a big bang yesterday (and a Higgs Boson tomorrow).    But the actual cause of force is God (or to the secularist, unknown).

So we can observe gravity but have no reasonable resolution to “why” gravity?  Obviously God applies this attribute to matter, but could the application of this attribute be useful in identifying Heaven?  And let me be clear I AM NOT PRESENTING A CASE THAT FORCES ARE HEAVEN.    But I am trying to align our modern assumptions about forces to the reality of what our Bible declares as true.

So let us talk about Shadow effect and multidimensionality.   Shadow effect is what happens when one phenomenon is obscured by another, and the shadow is what occurs at the intersection of the causes.  So when light hits an obtuse object, the object blocks the light and starting at the object and extending outward is a shadow.   By observing the shadow and the outlining light one can deduce an object without ever seeing the object.  Using this concept of shadow effect, modern scientists have deduced that perhaps the observance of forces are not just independent attributes of matter but in actuality the shadow effect of matter interacting with something else.

Hawking claims that forces may be the shadows of matter interacting with other dimensions.  ß note the plural of dimensions, not a singular dimension, but several.  Several dimensions, several Heavens… similar.  In the late 90’s astrophysics and quantum physics merged to this idea that there may be 7 to 10 dimensions in all, or infinite.  Hmmm.  Weird.  But if true, then could the forces that we observe occur help us see the shadows of Heaven?

But let’s go back to the beginning of this essay where we look at the statement that God creates “everything”, under this understanding, wouldn’t other dimensions be considered a part of that everything, and if the mind of Moses, or Adam, or Isaiah, or Peter, or the average Josiah Israelite cannot comprehend “higher planar dimensionality”, “energy to matter conversion theory”  and “sub quark interaction theory” – can it stand to reason that they could comprehend “Heavens”?

Scripture interprets scripture:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

 Rom 1:20 NASB

Yes I am presenting a bold interpretation, but it sure is useful in explaining what we mere “things that are made” are observing (, i.e. “clearly seeing”).

And by the way, I find it stupefying and glorious that several thousand years later (and still several hundred years from our present) Paul can understand and reaffirm that there are invisible “attributes” – even with the basic physics known at the time.

So we cannot concretely define what a heaven or the heavens are exactly, but we can improve upon our understanding and see that the can correlate with modern science – and without making a stretch either.   Uhm… but still no dinosaurs… must keep searching.

Perhaps they are in that part about earth?

Next time a “short” essay on matter, earth, atoms, dirt, dust, dark matter, and perhaps water and fluids… as we explore the remaining part of Genesis 1:1c and the beginning of verse 2! Yippee!

Your comments are invited.  Please invite others to read.  Be blessed.

 

Happy Wednesday.

 

 

 

Morning Moment

It is not some cosmic joke by which humanity merely "happened". 

It is not some beautiful coincidence that the very stuff of stars (i.e. star dust) is the very stuff that makes up our kind.

In our desperation to ignore the very truth in front of our eyes we claim to know the very minutest of details of a "just because" moment.

Why do we so desperately try to organize reality into organic and inorganic?  Most of us do not even know why we use those words.  We get confused. Does organic mean life?  But no -- it just means a lot of carbon.   Yet a lot of Carbon tends to indicate what we call life - but is merely having life, enough to justify being ALIVE?

Reality is causal  and it is created - not inorganic and organic, but rather created and uncreated.   We need physical space and matter and energy to exist.  We need dust, metals, gasses, the Higs Boson, solar flares, stars, gravity, water, heat, etc to exist. 

We can not help but observe that which is created and that which is caused by created things -- we are incapable of observing the uncreated.  It simply does not "exist" and therefore the uncreated can not be touched, tested, timed, experienced - fathomed at all in our finite minds.

Shatter your mind and suppositions for a moment and think about what you do not know.   How easily can your mind deduce things that exist, that are created.   But can any of us comprehend one thing, any thing that is not created that does not exist?  Even a unicorn exists metaphysically.

Alas, but we can all comprehend one such essence - a concept, an existence that is not created yet exists all the same.  

All of humanity can comprehend God - an uncreated god none the less.  We know His existence, yet we can not prove it, touch it, test it, time it.   Why is it that all of us in our hearts can know God? 

The mere essence of knowing one thing that is not created but potentially (heck we know the truth) Creator - should drive us to our knees. 

Instead we, like two year olds filled with self centered delusions, carry on as if we are the center of reality, that we are uncreated but exist none the less - by happenstance.

So the cosmic joke is us, in thinking that we merely happened.   That the infinitely seeming perponderance of universal coincidences and concurrences neccessary for existence all occured without deliberate cause, without being deliberately created.

Hmph... and why do we celebrate Christmas again?

Perspective: The Basis of Apologetics and Scientific Review - Genesis 1-1a

Before we move on to Genesis 1-1b, I thought it would be good to highlight a key take away from the previous post.  A good friend of mine (and Atheist) pushed back on something that I wrote:
 

faith must come before reason, or the Biblical Account of Life, the Universe, and Everything After is nonesense and subject to debate
 

In the first three words of Genesis we encounter "In the beginning God created..." and I lay a case that the emphasis placed on the word Beginning in Hebrew clearly points to the beginning of all reality.    And I then make the claim that if one is to believe this, then the believer must assume God's existence prior to creation - that God, in essence, exists outside the boundary of conventional time as we observe it.  So I argue that faith in God comes first, the validity and content of the Bible is secondary.

Why is this point so important?  Well, it colors our perspective on our interpretation of observed facts.  A person who rejects God will naturally interpret the same set of observances in a different manner - even if the statistical probability of that interpretation is less than the probability of an interpretation that includes God.

Consider Fibonacci and Lucas numbers.   On my blog I have posted three videos on the tab that give a great and easy and fun introduction into these numbers and their patterns.

The fibonacci sequence:  0+1=1  1+1=2  1+2=3  2+3=5  3+5=8  5+8=13 and so on (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21)
occurs everywhere in nature - plant leaves, pine cones, star fish, nautilis shells, cellular chromosomes, our brains, dog brains, electrons, the periodic table, the distribution of any given sand on any given beach, the frequency differentials between light in a rainbow, and on and on....  it also happens to be real good in engineering, space flight, computer programs, human speech and language, the patterns of poetry, the chordal arrangement of music, tempo, and modulating torque on engines.

For a person who observes this phenomena, and who is predisposed to faith in God, naturally will be inclined to believe that this is a symptom of  God's order.  And it is statistically more probable that this pattern is caused rather than random (considering how non-random the sequence is).

Yet a heart that does not naturally resonate with a belief in God, or rejects a belief in God, will be forced to attempt to reconcile these occurances through some other mechanism.  And it is here where we must first contend with the illogical mind attempting rationality.  That is the proposition that from Chaos, order chaotically arose.  It makes no sense and is statistically improbable.

Perhaps if such order were to arise in one subset of the natural world - the evolution  of animal life for example - then it would be slightly more probable?  However for this pattern to exhibit everywhere, and for other such patterns to emerge everywhere an apologist and any rational mind must contend with the likelihood of a Creator.

As we move forward into the next part of Genesis 1:1 and then throughout the rest of our study, we must keep this perspective in mind.   The world is quick to label something scientific and yet ignore the very basic foundations of scientific and philosophic review.    It creates much contention between the secularist and the Christ follower.

We must view the world through a lense of God existant, and not a lense of God yet to be proved.  We must learn to express our understanding not through rote, robotic "tracts" but through our own world view.  We must clearly start with a statement that we have an inherent belief in God.  We must teach our children the basis for this belief and catechise them into this view.  In this manner we can demonstrate that defending the faith is supported by scientific review rather than refuted by it.  In this manner we can move forward in earnest search for truth without any fear that our faith will be shaken.

Thanksgiving is coming up, so I need to end this rant and prepare for Thursday. 

Be well, enjoy your turkey time.   Comment and feedback is encouraged.  Please invite others to join and contribute.

genesis 1:1a Bible inerrancy, Science, and Creationism

I thought we could explore genesis and see how the bible matches up to science, or what we think of science, etc. etc... my hope is, after all, to figure out what really did happen to the dinosaurs. Please feel free to invite whomever would ENJOY this...
OK so for today, Genesis 1:1
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.
(remember hebrew reads from right to left) And this is taken from the P text (priestly text, most commonly used in translation by both orthodox jews and most Christian scholars... for more info see http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/Genesis_texts.html)
בְּרֵאשִׁית , בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים , אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.
ha·'a·retz ve·'et a·sha·ma·yim eth e·lo·him ba·ra be·re·shit
read out loud:
bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz
literally translated to English:
bereshit:
the first, in place, time, order or rank (specifically, a firstfruit) -- beginning, chief(-est), first(-fruits, part, time), principal thing
bara:
(absolutely) to create; (qualified) to cut down (a wood), select, feed (as formative processes) -- choose, create (creator), cut down, dispatch, do, make (fat).
elohim:
angels, exceeding, God (gods)(-dess, -ly), (very) great, judges, mighty
eth:
self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)
ashamayim:
air, astrologer, heaven(-s)
ve'et ha: is the conjugation of eth: self with the object of a verb to follow
aretz:
the earth (at large, or partitively a land) -- common, country, earth, field, ground, land, natins, way, + wilderness, world, all creation, matter
Now that we have ALL THAT OUT OF THE WAY, let us explore the first half of this phrase:
bereshit bara elohim
In the First Place in Time Created God
or
In THE Beginning God Created
It is important to emphasize that the first half of this scripture is crucial to ALL of Christian theology - it is vital to all Evangelical world views, and it lays the first premise to which all humankind must contend with. First is the assumptive of God. The scripture assumes God - it assumes the audience assumes God. God is named but not defined. It is in the absolute form (because of the use of the word "bara" before it). The reader therefore is not permitted to debate God - God just is. So we can infer from this that the Genesis account, and the whole Bible therefore, is explicitly intended for those people who in their course of life assume God. The importance of this can not be ignored. The remaining stories, teachings, premises, all of the Gospel, and everything in between is built on this premise that God does infact exist. If the reader/audience does not acquiesce to this point, nothing else in this book is relevant or meaningful because it is built then on a false proposition. Ergo, faith must come before reason, or the Biblical Account of Life, the Universe, and Everything After is nonesense and subject to debate.
So an atheist when arguing any other point in the Bible must first be made aware that the Bible begins with God - argue this fact first. With only three words of text and go no further. Bereshit bara ELOHIM ...
I promise we will touch science today in this prose, continuing on...
In addition to the assumptive of God, we find our first touch of physics - the element of time and point 0. Bereshit only is used as the begining word in Hebrew once - its position denotes Absolute beginning. Like absolute 0, this is the absolute start. In common use Hebrew, to say the beginning of a segment, or at the start of a story, the verb or subject is spoken first then the descriptor of time, like bereshit is spoken. So if the author was actually trying to identify the begining of the Heavens and the Earth, but at some point after the start of time itself, the author would be best served by writing: Bara BERESHI T'elohim... or if to emphasize God's work, Bara elohim BERESH et hashamayim...
But here we have the start, the first place in time being denoted. This is it, start. And it was the result of Creation by God. The inference is clear: 1. God exists outside of time and by deduction (since matter and space do not exist yet) He exists outside of matter and space as well. 2. Time is the result of SUCCESSIVE CHANGE OBSERVED between at least two different states - in this case Creation and non creation. God caused and observed creation, and as a result time is caused. And this is infact the modern description of time (check it out for yourself).
ok... so tomorrow, or some point in the future we'll look at exactly what God creates, space, matter, energy, dark matter, light, plasma, and the cosmos... just by finishing the first verse of Genesis 1....
Helpful reading before my next note:
A physics book...
And remember all creation displays His Glory...
Be blessed and Happy Thursday.

Confessions from a Hypocrite

http://www.sermonspice.com/product/38536/welcome-to-our-church-2011

I think we as a society have forgotten something along the way to progress. We forgot what freedom means. We forgot what it means to live in community with one another and God. Our Nobility has been sapped by our poor decisions and the never ending attack on our senses by the world around us.
Alot of you try to figure out why, how I became a Christian. It fits.

For all of us, it fits. I don't know why we make up so many lies as to why we believe or don't believe. I don't know why we have so many interpretations of one simple book.

But I do know this -- life is more full, more noble, and much less complicated as a Christian.

I mentioned earlier that we have forgotten what it means to be free. Freedom is not the ability to speak without censure. It is not the ability to date who you like, marry whomever you want. Freedom is not having the absence of discipline and perogative in our lives. Yet somehow, we have come to be deluded and think it is these things that define freedom.

I posit that Freedom exists when and only when an individual becomes self aware and has control of their mind - untethered to anything else in the world. You are free when you exist in the world but are not of the world. (PS that nugget's in the Bible by the way)

So how then can we achieve this? I contend that no other faith or philosophy on the planet allows for a path to complete freedom outside of Christianity. And I believe that no one can grasp the true freedom of life, the universe and everything (D.A. RIP 1952-2001) without being in a community of people who are themselves also pursuing the same thing.

The church experience should be one where you are not indoctrinated and brainwashed, nor brow beaten into a guilt laden submission of all temptations and desires. The link above describes my church experience at Calvary Chapel (we're in wikipedia too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvary_Chapel).

Anyway, I'm not perfect. But life is good and free. I did have to work hard for my freedom - but it didn't consist of paying for soldiers to fight terrorists, nor did it consist of teaching about creation or darwin in schools, nor does it require me to be consistently paying attention to the economic strife that is tearing our country down....

It required me to think, decide, and act in a manner consistent with my values.

Ok. done for now.

Spread the word - especially to young people.

P.S. Fun with QED-quod erat demonstrandum

In the world of physics most people translate QED as Quantum Electrodynamics... if you really want to have fun, interchange QED with the original QED of physics..."quod erat demonstrandum".

Most physics professionals today have forgotten that QED was once common for this Latin phrase. It literally translates in "what was to be proven" and is a common way of identifying the conclusion of a mathematical or logical argument.

It is the cornerstone of scientific pursuit.

Consequently QED is not QED.

Does Evil Exist, author unknown

A university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists?
A student bravely replied yes, he did!"
"God created everything?" The professor asked.
"Yes, sir," the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil."
The student became quiet before such an answer.

The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?" "Of course", replied the professor. The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody and every object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (- 460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have too little heat.

The student continued. "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does".

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor. "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. "These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love, that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

Thank You tiny Humans

My phone used to have a chord attached...and required analog dialing
Come to think of it, at one point, if it rang and no-one was home, it just rang...

Now, we don't have a "home phone"... our cell phones are surfing the internet, call forwarding to our skype accounts, and I text more than talk...

I hated trying to get the antennas "just right" to see a picture on NBC... then when the antenna went away, the cable bill, then satellite bill seemed enormous... now I just pay a simple $40 bucks for internet and get everything on line, highspeed, in HD...

Block Buster? hello Netflicks.

Light bulbs used to go out every other week -- and at 60 watts per bulb... lets just say my electric bill was yucky.. now my bulbs give off more light and only use 11 watts... what's more, they won't be changed for several YEARS...

My convection toaster oven cooks food faster and with less electricity than the oven we had growing up. Our microwave wont give us cancer.

My refridgerator as a kid didn't make ice, then it did, then it poured water, then it poured water and dispensed ice (both crushed and cubed)... now ours does all of the above, uses 1/4 the energy, auto controls the humidity, and I swear it can think... maybe not

I used to have an Atari, then a TSR 80, our upgrade was the commodore 64 and then the Nintendo... today I have a quad core, 64 bit processor gaming machine... and an Xbox 360, and wii.... did I mention that my keyboard and mouse are wireless?

When I was 4, dad would scold my sister for wasting good "tapes"... now I run through blank dvd's like yesterday's paper... whatever happened to the mix tape?

Walmart has EVERYTHING that JCPenny and SEARS only dreamed of having...

Speedracer gave way to GIJoe and Transformers... I loved cartoons... now they are movies with Actors.

Graduating Highschool was terrifying, because it meant leaving my world of friends and fun behind... letters and emails of promises... internet... then myspace and classmates.com (who would really pay when we all knew it would someday be free?)

Now Facebook.. well, here we are aren't we...?

don't forget calculators... I thought solar powered calculators were cool... don't ask me how to use a TI-83, ti-85 or those hp ones...but we have them.

Encyclopedias that noone read to Wikipedia... and Google...
Toll booths that we all avoided to EZ pass...

Clothing stores were targeted to girls... now express, BR, AF, GAP... all have guy clothes... and that's cool...

And who ever invented the Kureig coffee maker is my hero...

Life is pretty cool