Many of our English words are in part or in whole lifted from the Greek. This is especially true of scientific nomenclature. For example, logy means the study of, so any word ending in logy has to do with the study of something; biology is the study of life; zoology is the study of animals; psychology is the study of the mind, etc. Ortho means straight in the Greek, so orthopedic means straight feet and orthodontics means straight teeth. Equi (equal) plus nox (nights) put together is equinox, or equal nights. When the letter 'a' precedes a word it means no or not in the Greek, so asymmetrical means not symmetrical. The word tom means to divide or cut in the Greek, so diatom means divided into two parts, and atom means not divisible.
The word atom has an interesting origin. The Greeks reasoned that if you started dividing a chunk of matter into halves, eventually you would arrive at a piece so small that it couldn't be divided. They called this smallest piece an atom, or something that was indivisible. Of course they had no idea of the modern concept of an atom. When scientists first discovered the atom, they thought that it was indivisible and so they called it an atom. Of course now we know that the atom does have many subatomic parts such as protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons, mesons, etc. However, the word atom is still used to denote a very small amount or size.
Stephen Hawking, the noted British astrophysicist and cosmologist, titled his book, "A Brief History Of Time." In this book he attempts to describe what happened at the "Big Bang." According to his paradigm, all the matter in the cosmos was once concentrated in one big massive chunk of matter. In a brief moment of time this chunk was torn apart by a tremendous explosion, and the pieces were hurled into space. These pieces in the form of atomic particles and cosmic dust have, over billions of years, coalesced into stars and galaxies. There is credible scientific evidence to show that indeed all the stars have a common origin and composition, and that they are receding from us in all directions. However, Hawking does not attempt to explain where the big chunk of primordial matter came from nor what caused the big explosion. As creationists, we believe that this original source of matter, energy, and life, was God.
Hawking's brief moment of time is used to describe how things began, but the Bible uses a brief moment of time to describe how things wind up The Apostle Paul describes the resurrection of the saints as occurring in "the twinkling of an eye" (1 Cor. 15:51,52). In this text the word in the original Greek for 'twinkling of an eye' is atomos, from which we get the word atom. Ergo, it should be perfectly proper to translate the text to read, we shall be changed, in a moment, in "an atom of time."
