I believe Genesis ch 1-3 are metaphorical.. after all how can/could a human.. any human.. actually know the mechanics and physics or even the cosmology of creating a moon, planet, solar system or galaxy.. or even a creature..
Humans see time in a lineal way when time may not even be linear.. Human views on mass, matter and whats tangible may be severely limited.. Little wonder Genesis ch 1-3 merely hints at what happened.. in cartoon form.. For several thousand years Genesis ch 1-3 was adequate.. Any more detail would have been confusing to humans then and probably NOW to most all..
Asked "what do you know for sure" today, most if honest would say.. not much.. Humans don't even know what Life is.. let alone what matter is or isn't.. Dark energy / matter is an absolute profound mystery.. Amazing since since almost all of this Universe is made of "IT/them"..
Anything else in this Universe thats NOT dark energy/matter is merely trace elements.. an after thought maybe..
I don't think it's metaphorical as much as lacking in a great amount of detail. I think it's an accurate description of what happened put as concisely as possible.
There is a lot to be said about uneducated folks not understanding if God went into great detail. But my suspicion is that even if He did, it would be beyond our comprehension as well, as arrogantly as we think we've arrived.
Even if He went into detail, if what He did varied from what scientists think they know now, they'd still say Scripture was wrong, because they are so convinced that they are right.
I think that God gave us as concise an explanation of what He did to let us know that HE was the one who did it.
Saying *In the beginning* gives the fact without telling how.
Saying the earth was *formless and void* tells us everything we need to know without going into the solar nebula theory and proto-planets, etc, which is our current level of understanding (and may not be right either).
Saying that He used dirt (the dust of the earth) explains the chemical composition without getting into chemistry, which was almost non-existent until fairly recently.
Perhaps the biggest criticism that should dare to be leveled at the Genesis account, isn't that it's wrong, but that it's simplistic for OUR culture in OUR day. It suffices for the rest of the world for all the time until now.
The other challenge that is made against it by the evos about why God didn't go into greater detail, again goes back to the argument that if there were differences, Scripture would always be declared to be wrong, not to mention that the Bible is long enough as it is without adding material that is not really relevant to the work of Christ for the salvation of man.
It reminds me a great deal of explaining stuff to mu kids when they were toddlers.
While they were very bright, their understanding of much of the world was very limited so I had to explain stuff to them as accurately as I could in terms they understood.
What I told them often lacked tremendous amount of detail but was true and as accurate as their current level of understanding allowed.
It is difficult for me to imagine any such thing as a divine "after thought." For this would be to suggest either that God's perfect Logos needed subsequent "correction," or that God is subject to being changed by His interactions with the Creation which He made in the Beginning. Neither concept seems compatible with the idea of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent creator and providentially sustaining God.
To me, dark energy/dark matter seem to be the main features of a structure specifying the geometry of the gravitational field that, in turn, underlies universal physical reality. But the fact is, we really know very, very little about these detectible "quantities" in nature at the present time.
Certainly I agree with you here: "Human views on mass, matter and whats tangible may be severely limited.. Little wonder Genesis ch 1-3 merely hints at what happened.. in cartoon form.. For several thousand years Genesis ch 1-3 was adequate.. Any more detail would have been confusing to humans then and probably NOW to most all.."
Thank you ever so much for sharing your thoughts, dearest brother in Christ!
Truly, time is not linear even in four dimensions (General Relativity) and certainly not in theories of expanded time like dimensions (e.g. Wesson).
And indeed, ordinary matter (Higgs field/boson) has not yet been created or observed. Even so, ordinary matter represents only about 5% of the critical density of the universe. The rest is 25% dark matter (high gravity regions in the center of galaxies, black holes, etc.) and 70% dark energy (negative gravity regions, space between galaxies.)