Posted on 03/18/2012 6:38:49 PM PDT by EnglishCon
A few people asked me to write this, after a couple of comments I made on another thread. The first few chapters of Genesis are, with minimal mental gymnastics, a clear and accurate statement of science, as we understand it today.
I am not talking from any particular creed here. Though a Catholic, (and without any authority!), I am from a background of a devout Protestant and much less devout Jewish culture who is, like many people, simply looking for answers. My training was as a Biochemist, at a time when we were first starting to map the genome. So, feel free to take this with a grain of salt, or a bargeload. This is not doctrine. Not meant to persuade or compell people to my views. Heck, I am still working out my views! My faith is solid. So is, to me, the evidence.
It is simply to analyse Genesis under the same scientific method that nuclear physics is examined. I will, for clarity, be using the King James Bible, available on-line at http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/KjvGene.html, as it is the version most people both know and accept. I will be simplifying some concepts - not losing the core concept, but trying to make them accessible. And please forgive me for any formatting screw-ups, I am more used to writing and passing things on to editors!
Genesis 1
1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Verse 3 is the core of the story here. "Let there be light." According to current cosmological theories, roughly 13.7 billion years ago, there was nothing at all. Without form and void in truth - there was no space, no time, nothing. Then that nothngness exploded. Why? We haven't got a clue. While we know it happened since the universe's background microwave radiation hum confirms that, We don't know why. We can never know why. Yet we know that the dark, formless universe exploded for no reason, creating it, and by extension us. We are told why, the word was spoken, and the universe in all it's glory was created.
6: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7: And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8: And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Stars don't come from nothing. Nor do planets. We can see the slow, steady aggregation of gases into stars. We have pictures, again testifying to the glory of God. Stars form from clouds of hydrogen gas. The heavier elements get spun out and away from the protostar. Eventually, the star's gravitational field gets strong enough to light the star. It is another flare of light, with the sudden solar wind forcing the light gases well out and starting random aggregations of heavier elements spinning and collecting. Getting bigger while orbiting the star. Outer planets catch a lot of the gas blasted away when the star ignites. Inner planets are looking at the heavier stuff that doesn't shift much under light pressure.
9: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10: And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. 11: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12: And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13: And the evening and the morning were the third day.
This is a twofer. A spinning ball of molten rock eventually cools down, though it keeps on spinning. There is water there. It can't escape, gravity is too strong. Something that hydrogen can do, water can not. It simply stays in the air as vapor, until the surface temperature cools to a level where it can condense and land. Then, of course, it finds the lowest level it can. You know the phrase "Water finds it's own level."
Our original atmosphere was totally unbreathable. That is in the rock record, not a guess. A mix of Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide and Methane, a teeny bit of sulfur, with a tiny bit of Hydrogen and a mass of water vapor thrown in. Genesis mentions the seas for a reason. All life comes from the sea. The first life to creep out of the sea and onto the shore was plants.
14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17: And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18: And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19: And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
OK, for this one I have to hit more rogue science than accepted science. I apologise for that. Roughly 3 billion years ago, after photosynthesis started, we got hit, hard. A huge blast of molten rock headed into orbit from the Pacific Basin like a homesick meteor and aggregated around our satellite. It is slightly rogue, but we know that lunar rock and Earth rock are identical. We have been there and checked. The rocks are identical.
20: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21: And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22: And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23: And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Every last living organism comes from the sea. Our blood chemistry proves it conclusively. Whether iron based or copper/magnesium based, if I take 10cc of blood from you, I can guarantee that the salt proportion is identical to the sea a couple of billion years or so ago. Again, there is no guess work involved, we have seas that have been dry for that long for comparison of the proportions. God is here clearly stating that we came from the sea. No get outs, no do overs. We even, if you want to be slightly fanciful, have a nod to dinosaurs. After all, they, or at least some of them, eventually became winged fowl.
24: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25: And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29: And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30: And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31: And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
This is the difficult one. One that I have problems with, since evolution and this statement of the Word seem at first glance to be at odds. So I am going to repeat something. Forgive me for stretching slightly to make a point.
We don't breathe water. Yet we came from the sea - that is from both the Word itself and the evidence as we understand it. We see random action. He does not. By definition God gets no surprises, he sees the consequences of everything. As a side note, that must be boring. Never a single surprise unless you deliberately don't look. No wonder he gave us free will! (Sure, I know. Putting human motivations and limitations on the Lord is demeaning. It is also tempting.)
Still, look at the order we are given. Fish, Fowl, every other living thing third. The classic chain of evolution. Plants first and so basic that they are every living thing's meat. Without plants, we simply die. Fish to reptiles/amphibians. Reptiles to birds and mammals. Mammals to primacy under God.
This was fun to write. Difficult, as I am more a biosciences person than a physicist, but fun. If there is sufficient interest I will do the same for Genesis 2.
Once more, I want to repeat. I don't seek converts to my viewpoint. How can one do so, when their viewpoint is "This makes sense but I am guessing the mind of the unknowable here." If you firmly believe that the world was created 6000 years ago as it is, may His peace and blessing be upon you, and I apologise for wasting your time. Part of this is seeking to explain things to myself.
Yet I want to pre-emptively defend myself from some of the more common comments, as I am not a total fool. The universe, and all that is in it, works through fixed and immutable laws, as far as we are aware. Shift the numeric value of any major constant by under 1% and we are a dust of sub atomic particles. The presence of constants themselves are profound indicators of the creator. One of my professors, way back when university was a place to learn and not an indoctrination center, said the mere fact that universal constants exist is one of the strongest arguments for God.
By their works shall you know them. We are told that. By the Lord's works shall you know him. He laid out, in terms a person who has never heard of an electron or the speed of light or Planck's constant can understand, where we came from and how.
Thank you for reading. May he bless and uplift us all.
for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
This is after the 7th day of rest that the earth was 'watered' without rain. So all that water of Genesis 1:2 had to go someplace.
When “literally” interpreting scripture, one does nothing but pick and choose among ones own preconeptions, looking for something that isn’t there.
The whole idea of an Intelligent Designer is a modern preconception, piously meant, I’m sure, but entirely absent from a plain reading of Genesis.
The formula, “Let the earth bring forth” is repeated wrt the animals, but in that case it is added, “And God made the beast of the earth ...” where this is not said of the grass and other plants. Isn’t this an indication of the lesser status of plants? Doesn’t this distinction fall afoul of our modern conception of the unity of DNA based life forms?
Stars don't come from nothing. Nor do planets. We can see the slow, steady aggregation of gases into stars. We have pictures, again testifying to the glory of God. Stars form from clouds of hydrogen gas. The heavier elements get spun out and away from the protostar. Eventually, the star's gravitational field gets strong enough to light the star. It is another flare of light, with the sudden solar wind forcing the light gases well out and starting random aggregations of heavier elements spinning and collecting. Getting bigger while orbiting the star. Outer planets catch a lot of the gas blasted away when the star ignites. Inner planets are looking at the heavier stuff that doesn't shift much under light pressure.
You're complicating things. The "firmament" and "water above the firmament" part are basically the ancient people's way of explaining rain. They saw water falling from the sky (firmament) which appears like a blue ceiling and concluded water exists beyond it, which is what rain is, as it "fell through".
Liberal verbal gymnastics can make any creation mythology appear to parallel reality, if you ignore the simple details.
In Genesis 1:7 God divides the waters and creates the firmament, which should not be confused with the common notion of "firm ground". The firmament, ( See Webster's ) means "The vault or arch of the sky," and it created a protective enclosure within the waters of chaos.
Gerald L Schroeder, The Science Of God: The Convergence Of Scientific And Biblical Wisdom
Yes, I agree. And I expect that when all the refining gets completed this earth will be returned to its Genesis 1:1 condition.
We’ve got to remmber the timeline too. How long was a day to God? 72 hours? 30 earthly days?
Do we know?
I compare Genesis with other creation accounts, such as the mesopotamian one, and find this far more spare and elegant, as a description of the reality we know.
Peter was the one elected to tell us how God calculates time. IIPeter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing,
that one day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So those days of creation are to us a thousand years per day. And by the end of the 7th day of rest Genesis 2:4 These are THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND OF THE EARTH (my King James has it all in caps as I typed) when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
Notice the usage of the word 'made' here instead of the word created in Genesis 1:1.
Or could the time be instantaneous. God said — and it happened? Immediately.
There is no doubt in my mind God can do anything or everything. However, since He took the specific steps to have Moses call and number these days of creation, and 'days' later have Peter instruct His method of time keeping I will accept what He had Written.
I’ll take them in order, and without prejudice.
1. Does God live in this Universe or outside of it?
My understanding is that no creator can live inside of his creation, or at least not for long. This is based on an, admittedly, faulty analogy. I find myself personifying the One when I think about this. Something I need to think more on, as I refuse to reduce Him to my level. Forgive me for a fuzzy answer on this.
2. What role does perspective play in understanding Genesis?
I teach my grandkids about the universe. The youngest is 4 and wouldn’t know an electron from a plum. He has no more idea of the elegance of the Aufbau principle than he does of the golden mean. I do think perspective and modern thought has much to give to bible study. We have a real drive to understand the glory of creation.
3. You have noted God’s signature in everything from the laws of physics to the microwave buzzes of the universe. How powerful is God?
God is all. One of the things that makes me laugh sometimes is talking to atheiests who demand I provide proof of God. (Not that I am saying you are - but it is the sort of question I get!) He shows his work absolutely everywhere. For a mysterious God, he is singularly bad at hiding his handiwork!
4. What does Hebrews 11:1 mean?
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
It is one of the most beautiful yet terrifying phrases in the bible. To borrow a phrase from a heretic - “Yet still, it moves.”
The deeper you dig into the works of the Lord - creation itself, whether on a macro scale or just confined to this one fairly insignificant planet - the more you see the perfection of God.
Yet, you neither want nor deserve generalities. I can only give you my personal take on that line:
God gave me a brain and an intense curiosity about the universe. I was blessed to be born into a time when many questions about how the universe works have been answered, and more are being answered all the time.
Not definitively, of course. Science does not do that. It is a human construct - possibly the only one we have ever done that can and will (reluctantly) admit it was wrong.
My faith is that God exists. He created all. He sent his only Son to die for our sins. The cynic in me says he did that because Heaven was empty and Hell was opening an annex. He also provided the Word, which is not merely inerrant, but totally accurate, if we are willing to examine it.
I may not worship him as you do (I am Catholic. Most people I discuss things with are not, so I am calling the percentages here). But make no mistake. The Lord God is our creator, our refuge and our destiny. And should you ever need a reminder of His glory, go outside at night and just look up.
Blessings to you and yours.
It actually plots as a nice curve if you use a logarythmic (sp? a word I always have problems with) scale.
My understanding - somewhat at variance with our priest - is that the term day corresponds to an action. Not 24 hours. Sort of like working for 2 hours one day and 20 hours the next.
Yet, our Lord exists outside time. Which I suppose means that everything is simply “now” to Him.
True.
The whole idea of an Intelligent Designer is a modern preconception,
Agreed. The growing body of scientific knowledge forced a rethinking of preconceptions by which Genesis had previously been interpreted.
piously meant, I’m sure, but entirely absent from a plain reading of Genesis.
I would disagree because inherent in the account is something every creative person understands and that is that you do not begin with the next phase of a project until design criteria for the present phase have been met.
In the Genesis account, God did not begin the next phase of creation until after he recognized the phase he was working on was complete and to his satisfaction... "And God saw that it was good". He knew what the desired objective was but needed some time to get there and only after recognizing that "it was good" did he begin the next phase.
The formula, “Let the earth bring forth” is repeated wrt the animals, but in that case it is added, “And God made the beast of the earth ...” where this is not said of the grass and other plants. Isn’t this an indication of the lesser status of plants?
Yes. I would agree.
Doesn’t this distinction fall afoul of our modern conception of the unity of DNA based life forms?
I don't see how it does but I don't claim anything beyond a layman's understanding of DNA.
Basically, plant life is a lesser (in complexity) life form and would have evolved first.
Moses sure seemed to think they were regular 24 hour days. Ex 20:8
Let's get something straight. Science is perfectly competent to discover and comment on the world before it--the world that exists today. It is not competent to comment on a world and/or situations totally unlike the world we have today. This includes not only cosmogony, but the world as it operated originally before the sin of Adam.
The first eleven chapters of Genesis are theology and history--not biology, not physics, not chemistry. Science is not competent to comment on cosmogony (the process and events that brought our present world into being). The "laws of nature" cannot be invoked here because the laws of nature did not exist. Anyone who believes in a single miracle--be it the talking donkey, the floating ax, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the liquifaction of the blood of St. Januarius, or the "miracle of the sun" in 1917--has forfeited the right to invoke the "uniformity of nature" as an excuse to retroject current conditions into the actual events of creation. Those who persist in doing so are guilty of both hypocrisy and internal inconsistency.
There is one and only one reason for treating the literal truth of the first eleven chapters of Genesis differently from everything else: a sociological prejudice against "trailer trash," with whom this particular section of the Bible is commonly associated. That is it. That is all.
People who reject the very concept of the supernatural--total atheists, materialists, and naturalists--are perfectly logical to reject the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Anyone who accepts a single miracle elsewhere does not.
I note that EnglishCon apparently doesn't believe in his religion's dogma of the "fall of man," since according to his uniformitarian cosmogony there was never a paradise to fall from . . . and certainly no original immortality for a fictitious Adam and Eve!
Once again, here is an article by Hugh Owen illustrating the absurd internal contradictions of cosmogonic uniformitarianism by people who otherwise set "nature" aside for numerous miracles. I doubt it will be read this time either.
Finally, let me state something that almost all chr*stians seem to be totally ignorant of. While there is certainly much mystery and many esoteric secrets with regard to the Creation which are hidden from the vast majority of us, there are and always have been those who have an authentic knowledge of these great mysteries. There is an unbroken line of great sages who have received this knowledge in an unbroken line. Those privileged few who have received this knowledge are not going to broadcast it (since it is forbidden to expound it before more than two people). All the hot air and all the ink spilled by everyone else on this subject is mere speculation--legitimate in the case of naturalists, hypocritical and inconsistent in the case of everyone else. In the meantime we may rest assured that, whatever these great mysteries might be, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are inerrant history written by G-d Himself and dictated to Moses letter-for-letter, just like the rest of the Torah.
Do we know?
Et tu, salvation?
And the mask comes off.
I imagine it went something like ‘And I formed man, and all other living things, from minute particles (atoms) too small for the eye to see, and absent the life that I gave to it - it will return to those minute particles.’
“Yeah, I’m gonna put down that you created us all from “dust” and to “dust” we will return.”
Thank you so much for posting that link! I find it VERY useful, and have saved it in my personal archives. bttt
I note that EnglishCon apparently doesn’t believe in his religion’s dogma of the “fall of man,” since according to his uniformitarian cosmogony there was never a paradise to fall from . . . and certainly no original immortality for a fictitious Adam and Eve!
Science has the duty to examine everything. While “without faith we do not find God,” learning of his glory first hand is a joy. There is a reason that some 70% of scientists (talking the hard sciences here, not the fuzzy ones) have a firm belief in God. They see his works all around them. For engineers it is 7%.
I stopped at the end of Genesis 1, as given by the linked version of the KJV, or this would be a record breakingly long vanity, and I ain’t THAT vain! Commenting on all the first 11 chapters of Genesis in one post would be painful to read and even more difficult to discuss!
Working on Genesis 2 now. Much more difficult, as some of the theories involved are contentious. And yes, I firmly believe in the doctrine of the fall, and the evidence, biological, social and indeed physical is there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.