Huckabee believes the universe is about 5800 years old

Phil Robinson · Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 725 Location: MA

Think about that.

David Traver · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 02:35 pm Post subject:

Religions are happy to tell us the age of the Universe. The Jewish and Christian traditions for such dating can be traced to Babylon. See e.g. See e.g. http://religioustolerance.org/ev_bibl.htm [religioustolerance.org]

Also, our mysterious predecessors, the Maya, developed a very intricate calendar system that was not only good for predicting important agricultural and religious events, but also was alleged to have a starting and end date for the Universe. According to their last calendar it all comes to a halt on the Winter Solstice, 2012. (Skip the Christmas shopping that year - there will be no Christmas!) http://mayacalendar.com/f-introduccion.html [mayacalendar.com]

That some Christians look to religion for information about the starting date (a fixed date) and an end date (only God knows) for the Universe is not surprising in this context. It is an important part of what religions historically do. It's as common as an animal sacrifice.

My attention is drawn to the limitations imposed on Divinity by the world's religions. These limitations invariably reveal the scope of the imaginations of the founding cultures and their visionaries. In some versions the world marches on a turtle. In others the sun spins around the world. Some limit creation to a span of days, some thousands of years ago. Some claim to know when that week occurred. If Divinity is all powerful, could it be that the past and the future do not exist at all? Is it that what we see is spontaneously generated in this instant, this heartbeat, for purposes which are beyond our grasp? I've thought about this a little in another blog. http://traverlaw.stumbleupon.com

So here we are in a culture where mathematics and technology show us what can be made in the blink of an eye. Although I am not computer gamer, in some ways it seems equally plausible to me that the universe we see in those digitally-rendered worlds is just as old as the Universe we see in the night sky in our own back yards. That is, most video game images are redrawn 60 or 120 times per second. So, the digital universe that gamers enjoy is about one 60th of a second old. Given the high image refresh rate that we appear to enjoy as we drive to WalMart or scratch our butts, the Universe in which we appear to live might be no older than one 10,000th of a second.

Either God can do anything or She simply does not exist. If She can't give us a higher image refresh rate than a Gateway PC, we might as well go with what devout Christians believe, or the Mayans, or the Babylonians. If Divinity is unreal we could make up anything we wanted to the extent we could get other people in our culture to believe it.

In contrast, science presumes that its methodology provides reproducible ways of dating the Universe based upon experiments, such as measuring the speed of light and the red-shift of receding stars (or measuring the temperature of the background radiation of the sky.) Of course, if God exists, She could easily create such scientific evidence in the next 10,000th of a second with such stunning quality that it would fool any observer or any instrument.

Who is right? If God does not exist, I suppose I'll have to go with the scientists' opinions. They appear to have the most reasonable explanation of "now" that fits with today's Western culture. On the other hand, if God does exist, I'm going to allow Her the greatest degree of freedom, which includes the highest imaginable refresh rate. To Her I'll be grateful for the very clever and seemingly instantaneous 3D fractal rendering that we find so persistent and tasty. As with others before me, my intuition is limited by the times and the culture in which I live.

That some parse the Bible for a version of reality is not too bothersome to me, until such point that they ask me to make their cosmic perspective (or the inferences from such perspective) a part of our Constitution. I would not dream of making my version of reality compulsory reading in your schools.

See also, http://ykrandall.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/eternity-is-now/ (now is all there is.)