Smoky Mountain Bible Institute
Lesson #31
Our Geological place in the Universe
Our Geological place in the Universe
Welcome back class.
Please get settled in and take ahold of your pick point rock hammer and
hand lens so that we can continue our study in the geology. Although astronomy
(the study of stars) is a separate field of science, panning out and taking a
broader look can be beneficial in understanding the earth and its geology. It may seem a bit odd to start our study of
what the earth is made of in the vastness of space, but nothing exists in a vacuum
and that includes the earth. A perfect
vacuum is only theoretical, just like absolute zero is theoretical. The vastness of space is hard to fathom and
equally difficult to fathom is that all that space is full of particles—photons,
gravitons, dark energy, space dust. There
really is no such thing as empty space.
Space is full of particles of every size, the large spheres that burn
are called stars and the ones that are not on fire are called planets. Meanwhile moons, asteroids, comets and
meteorites fill out the sphears, particles and clusters in-between. That being said, the universe is estimated to
contain some 100 to 300 sextillion stars and the number of planets is theorized
to be greater. Over 99% of the matter in
the known universe is hydrogen and helium, leaving less than one percent of the
rest to all the heavier elements (the stuff the earth is made of): iron
(32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%),
nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminum (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2%
consisting of trace amounts of other elements.
The current
estimated age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, an estimate that is flawed
and leaves more questions than answers.
The universe is full of young blue stars. It is posited that new stars are forming all
the time. However, this has NEVER been
observed, not once! Planets like Neptune
and Uranus have a high gravitational strength that is puzzling based on known
rates of gravitational decay. If our sun
is billions of years old, it should currently rotate about once every three
hours, but it currently rotates once every 25 days. Our sun is also relatively calm compared with
most other stars and when it does send out a flair or a CME, (coronal mass
ejection), the radiation is absorbed and deflected by our magnetic field. This is what causes the phenomena called the
aurora borealis.
There are
other unique qualities of earth found in no other (known) planet that make it
uniquely habitable in accord with Isaiah
45:18 "He formed it to be inhabited!" Our earth’s 23.5
degree tilt does more than give us seasons—it provides the proper warming to
give us two large temperate zones on either side of the equator, making most of
the earth’s land surface habitable. Our
earth’s size provides for proper gravity, with the abundance of water and a
moon to keep its oceans from becoming stagnant.
These are all key ingredients to a perfectly balanced sphere in an
otherwise chaotic universe. The question
of whether or not there is extraterrestrial life is not addressed in
scripture. If God wanted to create life
somewhere else, he certainly could have; but when we consider the little we
know of this universe and its inhospitable and extreme hostility toward even
the extremist of known life forms, it is statistically highly unlikely that
life as we know it could exist anywhere else.
In understanding
the physical nature of the earth, early science first got many things wrong. Then it caught up with God's word, and
finally in many cases, rejected God's truth and started creating its own. There are some interesting examples. Isaiah 40:22 “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth” could be
understood as saying sphere, as
biblical Hebrew lacked the word sphere. However,
the scientific community once held the earth to be flat, and so too did the early
church, but this was man's error, not God's or His word. Jeremiah
33:22 “the host of heaven (stars) cannot
be numbered. Numerous ancient
astronomers claimed to have identified all the stars. The last time this claim
was made was by Ptolemy and the number was 1100. Job
26:7 “He .....hangs the earth on nothing.”
The scientific community once
held that the earth rode on the back of a large beast. 1Corinthians 15:41 “star differs from
star.”
Science once held that all stars were the same. It also once proclaimed that
light was fixed, air was weightless, and wind blew only straight, Job
38:19-20 "Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place
of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the
paths to its home?” Job
28:25 “When he gave to the wind its
weight and apportioned the waters by measure.” Ecclesiastes
1:6 “....around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.” Science
once claimed that the ocean floor was flat, and that it was fed only by rivers,
streams and rain. Jonah 2:5-6 “The waters closed in
over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my
head at the roots of the mountain” and Job
38:16 "Have you entered into the
springs of the sea.” Many of
these references are poetic in nature, but they carry a strange knowledge of
the way the world is when man had little or no understanding in this area of
science. I'm just sayin :- )
Well, enough
of our view from space. Next month we will start a discussion on rock types,
plate tectonics, Ice Ages, and canyons & fossils and we will do so in light
of a world-wide flood—a perspective long
since abandoned by those who think themselves more learned than God's word. Thank
you for visiting the Institute. See you
next month.
