Below the surface of practically all of the pressing political and news worthy issues we discuss here is a brewing and exceptionally active “social war”. Most of the issues we discuss here are just symptoms of a larger core social and moral problem in our Country, and throughout the world. To ignore the actual causes, and solely concentrate on the symptoms will be to our detriment.
In this vein, I present the following articles, and issues.
Thank G-d: once again it is Friday, and accordingly for Jews this means the beginning of the Holy Shabbat. Every week, Jews read a portion of the Torah and study it. Highly pertinent to many on this blog, this week we are reading a highly contentious portion around some parts called Bereishit (“In the beginning”) (Genesis 1:1-6:8).
The Creation of the World, and Adventures of the First Humans
Dateline: December 1968
From his window he could watch the blue orb of planet earth getting smaller and smaller. Looming in front of him in all its detail was a giant moon. Astronaut Frank Borman of Apollo 8 was filled with emotion, as he drew closer and closer to the fulfillment of one of man’s greatest dreams of landing on the moon. As the lunar module orbited, the crew could perceive the moon in its pristine state, untouched by human hands, exactly as it left the hands of its Creator. (One could imagine Adam opening his eyes for the first time and viewing a pristine Earth with the same awe.)
Borman wanted to convey this feeling to everyone glued to their TVs and radios, just so they could in some sense share the experience of this milestone in history. What text could express this feeling? What human poet or author could capture in words that awesome feeling of the smallness of man and the vastness of the universe?
To the ears of billions of earthlings, Borman declared, “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth!” The first chapter of Genesis was read on that historical day to all mankind. (In contrast to the Cosmonauts who orbited the Earth in Sputnik and proclaimed, “We went to Heaven and didn’t find God!”) This is the beginning of the story of man and his world.
Despite false claims to the contrary, Creation is deeply rooted in Torah. The following are a few exceptionally general, and basic statements of Jews regarding Creation.
“IN THE BEGINNING” – INTRODUCTION TO THE TORAH
Judaism believes that the Bible is a Divine book. Just as a human author generally writes about topics that interest him, we can similarly assume that the Divine Author of the Torah writes about things that interest Him. Here’s a bird’s eye view of the opening chapters of the Torah:
(1) “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth” (Genesis 1:1). What a contrast between the vast endless heaven containing countless stars, and one tiny speck in the universe called Planet Earth! Yet the following verse begins, “And the Earth was…” and the rest of the book focuses on Earth. Conclusion: God is interested in Earth!
(2) The six days of creation are described in detail. The trees and grass, the animals, fish, birds, and insects. Then was created one human. What a contrast between the vast expanse of planet Earth, and one individual person! Yet from this point on, the Torah focuses exclusively on humans (and NOT on the trees or insects). Conclusion: God is interested in humanity!
(3) After expounding upon the first human, the Torah lists 10 generations with no events recorded. These generations evidently did not interest the author and are only included for the purpose of chronology. Finally we find the passage, “and Noah was a righteous man” (Genesis 6:9), followed by an entire section concerning Noah. Conclusion: God is interested in “righteous people”!
(4) This is followed again by a list of names for chronological purposes. Another 10 generations go by, until we come to Abraham our Father. Abraham is 75 years old at the time the Torah speaks of him (more details of his youth are found in the oral tradition). From this point on, the Torah records exclusively the story of Abraham’s life and then that of his descendents – right up until the emergence of the Jewish people. The rest of the Torah recounts God’s relationship with the Jewish people. Conclusion: God is interested in the Jewish people who undertake a unique mission, to be a “light unto the nations,” to teach the world about spirituality and our Creator. (Rabbi Avigdor Miller)
There is a lot covered in the above article (many debated issues) so, if interested, I highly recommend the above link.
An antidote on the subject of Creation from a Jewish source.
“A disbeliever once asked Rabbi Akiva, ‘Who created the world?’ ‘The Almighty,’ replied Rabbi Akiva. ‘Prove it,’ demanded the disbeliever. Rabbi Akiva replied, ‘Come back tomorrow.’
“When the man returned on the following day, Rabbi Akiva asked him, ‘What are you wearing?’ ‘A robe,’ replied the man. ‘Who made it?’ asked Rabbi Akiva. ‘The weaver,’ said the man. ‘I don’t believe you! Prove it,’ demanded Rabbi Akiva.
” ‘That is ridiculous. Can’t you tell from the fabric and design that a weaver made this garment?’ answered the man. Rabbi Akiva then responded, ‘And you – can you not clearly tell that God made the world?’
“After the disbeliever left, Rabbi Akiva explained to his students, ‘Just as a house was obviously built by a builder and a garment obviously sewn by a tailor, so was the world (which follows a natural order) obviously made by a Creator!’ ”
(Author Note: This Thread is not to a space for name-calling, personal attacks, angry vitriol, etc. I expect those who are small minded, and intellectually constrained on this issue to be discussed, but I encourage you to please do so politely, and factually! In short, this is a Thread about G-d – so act in His image!)
I wish the Jews a blessed Holy Shabbat, and to all else a meaningful weekend and day(s) of worship!
Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.
That’s because young dinosaurs didn’t look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.
Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.
This means many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives, have been misidentified as unique species, the researchers argue.
How T. Rex Became a Terror
The lean and graceful Nanotyrannus is one strong example. Thought to be a smaller relative of T. rex, the supposed species is now considered by many experts to be based on a misidentified fossil of a juvenile T. rex.
The purported Nanotyrannus fossils have the look of a teenage T. rex, Horner said in the new documentary. That’s because T. rex‘s skull changed dramatically as it grew, he said.
The skull morphed from an elongated shape to the more familiar, short snout and jaw, which could take in large quantities of food.
But the smoking gun, Horner said, was the discovery of a dinosaur between the size of an adult T. rex and Nanotyrannus.
As I’ve said before on numerous occasions, palaeontology isn’t necessarily an exact science. Just ask Java Man.
It’ll be interesting to see how evolutionists spin this. The one science that they really, truly were pinning their hopes on to save evolution’s bacon – and it turns out the primary “scientists” involved can’t even distinguish juvenile and adult dinosaurs of the same species. This – along with the long procession of “proto-human hominid ancestors” whose skeletons are reconstructed based on the testimony of a couple of jawbones, or wristbones from an extinct species of peccary – calls into question the competence of the whole structure of the palaeontological pseudoscience. It really does. We all the time hear about “missing links” and whatnot that are discovered, only to later turn out to be deformed members of already-known species, and so forth. That’s what happens when the obsession to validate a philosophical presupposition takes the place of careful, empirical study.
I find it ironic that the discovery of a missing link is what calls the science of missing links into question.
What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth’s great heat stores.
According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.
The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).
For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.
But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.
These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.
So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.
Professor Easterbrook says: “The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling.”
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