My Actifit Report Card: August 3 2024 - Can Something Come From Nothing?

Science and religion sometimes agree but are often at odds with each other. And different religions also disagree with each other on some things.

I saw a 98 second YouTube video from Dan McClellan who is a Bible scholar. He says the translation accepted by most scholars of the first words of genesis is "In the beginning OF God creating the heavens and the Earth". So He didn't create something out of nothing. There was already water and chaos. How that got there, we're not told.

Science is thinking the whole universe was in a hot dense state and then expanded to what we have today. How did that hot dense state get there? No one knows.

Apologists like William Lane Craig and Frank Turek say you can't get something from nothing so God made space and time from outside space and time. Others point out that being outside of space and time means being nowhere never. Apologists say God was always there, wherever "there" is without space or time. People reply that the universe or cosmos could also have always been in existence and they give theories on multiple universes or a never-ending expansion and contraction cycle. But no one really knows.

The Bible seems to portray God making the Earth first before the sun, moon and stars. Some say He spoke them into existence from nothing but this new scholarship seems to indicate that there was something here already that God used to make the Earth when he began to make it.

Dan McClellan is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints and they believe God directed Jesus to create the heavens and the earth by organizing elements that already existed, not out of nothing. This is from a book called the Pearl of Great Price. But that book also contains a Book of Abraham which is "A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus." as shown right at the beginning on the church's website.

However, it is now known that the papyrus that was translated was an Egyptian document that has since been translated and says nothing close to what is in the book of Abraham. "None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham..." from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng#title2 which you can read if you want the full context. Remember that the church might want to talk about one of it's sacred books in the most positive way possible, which is only natural.

The church says God could have divinely revealed the book of Abraham to the person who had procession of the papyrus. Again, no one knows what the truth is.

It is okay to answer a question by saying, "I don't know". But people like to have answers and will create them either from divine inspiration or by scientific experimentation. Or they will create some sort of poetic metaphor or analogy to answer profound questions, which I think is what is happening in a lot of religious text. But in reality, I don't know!

Anyway watch Dan's 98 second video!

My activity

today was pretty good! I got over 10K. I moved around inside while it was storming outside. Finally it stopped and I got to walk. It was not too hot so I went a good distance. I also climbed 20 stairs and did 22 pushups.

I hope you're having a nice weekend! :)

This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io

Daily Activity, Stair Climbing, Walking