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NASA orbital
computer simulations verified that our moon is not a captured rogue
satellite. No matter what angle, distance, speed or trajectory
is considered, the Earth does not capture the moon, it passes by. These simulations also show
that our moon (25% of the Earth in size) is too large to have formed around the
Earth. The Earth’s spin was initiated from a cataclysmic impact 4.5 billion
years ago. It is the general consensus of planetary scientists that
Orpheus, (a Mars sized planet that orbited between Earth and Mars)
impacted the Earth billions of year ago forming our moon (7
8). Impact Scientist Dr. Jay
Melosh confirmed the mathematical model, but also demonstrated that
most of the computer simulated mathematical test models resulted in
two moons that fell out of orbit after 2 billion years, crashing
into the earth. We are exceptionally lucky that the impact resulted in
one very large moon (9).
Food for thought: Throughout the Bible, the moon is referred to as
female and companion to the Earth (Gen 37:09, Solomon 6:10).
The Bible also recounts the creation of woman by being taken out of
man (Genesis 2:21). Likewise, the moon (female) was created by
being taken out of the Earth.
Previous to the impact, proto
Earth’s spin was negligible. Scientist believe the Earth
always had the same side facing the sun, just like the moon always
has the same side facing the Earth. We never knew what the
dark side of the moon looked like until it was photographed it with
orbiting satellite spacecraft. After the impact the length of
a day instantaneously became four hours. The earth’s spin has been
steadily decreasing ever since. If we attributed God’s day to the
Earth’s spin, shouldn’t it be at the beginning of the Earth’s
creation? Proto Earth's day at that time frame was negligible and
may have been many millions of
years. How long is God’s day? Why would we attribute it to the
Earth’s spin now, billions of years later? It is clear in the Bible
that God already had an established day before he began creating.
Psalm 90 attributes God's day to being much longer, "A thousand
years is as a day", the "thousand
years" is likely to be symbolic of periods incomprehensible in
earlier times (10,
11). As the Universe is God’s
realm, could God’s day be a complete rotation of the Universe?
Four hundred years ago the Catholic Church burned people at the
stake for believing the world was round and orbited the sun. As
science progressed, Church officials were eventually forced to
accept reality, particularly when their standpoints became more
and more untenable. As we discover other planets, suns, solar
systems and galaxies, it starts to become apparent that setting
God's day at 23hrs and 56 minutes is as absurd as when the Catholic
Church held that
the stars and planets are carried around by being embedded in
rotating crystal spheres moving around the Earth. Those who
continue to adhere to nonsensical standpoints eroded Church credibility.
Ideas that have nothing to do with the Bible, Faith and Morals
should never be elevated over the Bible, Faith and Morals. In
debates, atheists will endeavor to concentrate on the untenable
topics, recline and watch Creationist Christians bury themselves by arguing that Adam and
Eve had pet Tyrannosaurus Rexes (11).
In holding such ludicrous ideologies, credibility becomes
tantamount to that of the Branch Davidians, Jim Jones or those who thought they were
going to flying away on the
Hale-Bopp comet. In arguments, atheists have typically
retorted; "Sure, and a few years ago Christians would have us
believe that the Earth is flat and the moon is made out of cheese".
One of our contributing
editors is an Orthodox Rabbi who explains that the Jewish people do
not adhere to a literal six day creation. "Since the Hebrew word for
'day', "YOM", as used in the Hebrew Bible, can represent anything
from the daylight 'day' (or even part of it), to a 24-hour day, and
up to many years. It all depends on the context of the passage where
the word is used. This is not so much different from the use of
'day' even in English - e.g., 'today', 'nowadays', 'days are
coming', etc. The earliest scrolls used similar wording to reflect
not a 'day', but a period of time or a time frame. Those caught up
in the six day creation premise fall victim to myopic thinking,
basing their hypothesizes on rudimentary English translations. In
his book "The Science of God", Orthodox Jewish physicist Dr. Gerald
Schroeder, using proven science, actually "maps" the six "days" of
Creation into the six epochs of the development of the universe, and
comes up with a number for the age of the earth that is almost
identical to the consensus among geoscientists. Even if you don't
accept this point-of-view, the main thesis of the book is that this
universe did not get created by "accident"; rather, that there is a
Creator who designed it. Christians who adhere to a six day creation
should invest in a copy of Prof. Schroeder's "The Science of God" -
it is available in paperback for less than $10".
Scientists know the length of a day throughout time by examining
paper-thin rock layers called tidal rhythmites, which show the
frequency of prehistoric tides (11).
These slender petrified sediment layers reveal that primitive tides
were more
frequent and the days shorter. Dr. Marjorie A. Chan
verified how tidal records a billion years old reveal that a day at
that point was 18 hrs long. These time results are supported
by Continental Drift calculations, which are at a known rate of
slightly less than 3 inches per year. Moreover, as we are losing our moon by one
and a half inches each year, it becomes mathematically verifiable to
establish tidal frequency and corroborate sample dating by working
backwards, accounting for the moons gravitational effect.
Supported by three independent scientific studies yielding identical
results, the
science becomes rock solid.
The Average
Earth - Moon Distance = 238,857 Miles (the moon is moving away at
1.5 inches per year)
|
1.5 inches = .00002367424 miles
1 Billion = one thousand million |
Miles moon moved away in 1
billion years 1,000,000,000
years x .00002367424 miles = 23,000 miles |
Earth - Moon Distance 1 billion
years ago 238,857 miles - 23,000 miles = 215,857
miles |
Creationists have attempted to use the recession of the moon to
prove the Earth is only 6,000 years old, but their math is
completely erroneous
(11). There are still some
Pastors who preach that the earth is only six thousand years old,
notwithstanding that according to Biblical chronology and
archeological findings, these dates would be impossible, for it
would leave only 66 years between Noah and Abraham
(13).
Moreover, these calculations refuse to even consider how the Bible
recorded people in Adam's period living to almost a thousand years
of age (Adam died at 950 years), which could easily push the
Biblical time of the creation of man to as far back as fifty
thousand years. These Creationist allege that the Bible must
have meant months not years, which is hypocritical. Why hold
to six days and then claim that the Bible was wrong on Adam's age? Such wild assertions of a very
young Earth could only be possible if God made an atom by atom
snapshot of a previously existing Earth-moon system (as radio
isotopes of lunar samples confirmed that they originated in the Earth's
mantle) from another solar system, and
materialized a precise duplicate in our solar system.
Obviously such a
proposal would have to come with an explanation as to why. One
possible elucidation could be the 500 million years required to
accumulate enough organic matter to sustain advanced human
civilization. Another could be the rarity of the impactor scenario that resulted in our
necessary moon, a one in a
trillion collision. Yet, there are a hundred
trillion stars in our Galaxy alone. If we can
imagine such incredible scenarios in science fiction episodes like
Star Trek, it may not be too far fetched to suppose God done
something of the sorts. However, it would be a tough argument to float.
The Bible also describes the amazing
story of Noah's Ark, which is a lot easier to defend than the Earth
being 6,000 years old. In October of 2008, a group of Chinese
and Turkish explorers say wooden remains discovered on Mount Ararat
in eastern Turkey may be the remains of Noah's Ark. The group
claims that carbon dating verified that the relics are 4,800 years
old, meaning they date to around the same time
the ark was said to be afloat (14
15
16
17). Although the find has
been highly criticized by skeptics, an unbiased archeological team
is being organized to verify the find. In the 1970s, Haigh and
Maynard Smith investigated the variation in human hemoglobin and
concluded that the human species must have gone through a population
bottleneck in the recent past, if most of the variants are due to
neutral mutations (that is, mutations not subject to selection).
Researchers at the University of Oregon Medical School pointed out
that Noah’s flood would have provided such a bottleneck. |
