Vanity: Genesis As Science, Chapter 1

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!

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.

Same old.

The illusion of the blue sky appearing as a “solid” background is what the “firmament” is referring to. Birds fly through apparently transparent part of the sky, and hence that separation, whereas stars do not appear suspended in air but rather, suspended in the “solid background” behind the transparent air, due to the loss of perception of depth at that distance.

But yea, keep spinning this with the mythology of “firmaments” and whatnot, and tell me how water separation fits into all this.

As I see it, the falling rain appearing out of no visible source in the sky is the water that the ancients called “from beyond the firmament”. Your “explanations” on the other hand require one to indulge in extreme obfuscation, in order to try and fit that water separation part in the entire narrative.

Considering how concise the creation account and other places in Scripture where God deals with scientific type information is and the level at which He speaks so that any can understand it, it is remarkably accurate.

Yes, I agree. God takes credit for it and I give him credit for it.

The particular manner by which he chose to carry out the creation process is not something he felt was important to what he was trying to accomplish with the bible otherwise, he would have told us more about it.

Scientists in their quest for greater understanding observe and theorize possible paths God may have chosen. While many of them may try to remove God from their theories, that doesn't prevent me from seeing the hand of God and giving him ultimate credit just in case this was the manner by which he chose to carry out his creation.

After all, when comparing two hypothetical creators, one who used intelligent design versus another creator who used theories compatible with orthodox science, I think it safe to say that the greater act of creation was carried out by the creator able to trigger the big bang and have everything ultimately form from that as opposed to the creator who had to periodically get involved via "intelligent design".

It is you who must do the spin, and thus you have moving stars and clouds etc. moving in different directions in a solid Heaven, and cannot allow firmament to mean a stretched out expanse which God placed as a separation , and which does consist of matter, and in which He placed moving things, including birds flying. Note also that Hebrew words involved are open to some variation in rendering.

I am honestly sorry if the atheistic “firmament” of your mind cannot tolerate such even as a possibility, but require it to confirm to your complicated desired construct.

So many people have a problem with the idea that God is in and is able to be in complete control of EVERY minute details of the universe, and yet we know that it's all being held together by His power.

As for Him controlling the details of our lives,.....

Psalm 139:13-18 13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.

Acts 17:24-27 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

God is the ultimate micromanager and not only is He capable of it, He cares enough for His creation to DO it.

And all your speculation on how the *mythology* developed is just that, baseless speculation because you weren’t there to observe the origin of the *myths*. It’s just what works for you to explain it away.

Your OPINION has been duly noted.

You can’t prove Scripture wrong on opinion.

Hm. It looks like you’re *starting* with the assumption that evolutionary theory is correct, and *then* turning to Scripture to find support for evolution theory.

For example, you wrote: “Gen 1:20 ‘Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures,’ Scientists say that life arose in the seas.”

Several problems with your interpretation: that took place on the 5th day, the same time that the birds were created. Land animals were created on the 6th day, *after* birds. And life existed on the 3rd day — land plants. And, hm, the sun and stars were created *after* plants, on the 4th day.

So, no, the predominant evolutionary theory is absolutely incompatible with Scripture. You must either discard Scripture or discard what your “scientists” say.

Scripture indicates that it didn’t rain until the time of Noah’s flood. Before then, plants received moisture from a kind of mist (see Gen. 2:5 and 6). Why was the rainbow such a big deal to Noah? Because one had never appeared before, because it had never rained before.

A reasonable theory about this “firmament” is that it’s exactly what Scripture says — a layer of water at the edge of the atmosphere. This water layer (or vapor canopy) collapsed after “the fountains of the great deep burst forth” (Gen. 7:11). (Regarding “fountains of the deep,” consider that there’s more water beneath the mantle of the earth than in all the oceans of the world.)

Interestingly, during the time this vapor canopy enveloped the earth, people lived hundreds of years. After that point, they came to live fewer than 100 years.

All this to say that the biblical concept of “firmament” is just what it says, and has fascinating repercussions in regards to lifespan, the Great Flood, and so on.

Do you believe that Jesus overruled the laws of nature in order to perform His miracles?

Did He really walk on water? Did He really change water to wine? Did He really cause dead people to come back alive? Did He really make a violent storm come to an end by speaking to it?

The Creator, since before the beginning, has been injecting Himself into His creation, overruling the laws of nature.

The last sentence of your last paragraph makes you sound more like a Deist than a Christian. Would you consider yourself a Deist, rather than a Theist?

Hm. It looks like you’re *starting* with the assumption that evolutionary theory is correct, and *then* turning to Scripture to find support for evolution theory.

No, by no means.

That was from years ago when the crevo debates were going on in response to the continual allegations of the evos against Scripture and that it wasn't *accurate* to science. I was just pointing out the parallels between Scripture and science for their information.

They can then refute the Scripture if they want, but then they are forces into a position of denying the science that has discovered years later what Scripture told us by divine revelation.

Science is just coming late to the party, thinking they've discovered something new only to discover Christianity at the top of the mountain when they scaled it.

Whether they like it or not, science is only verifying what Bible believers have known all along. Their problem is, they don't like the source but their coming to the same conclusions as Scripture by the *scientific method* and philosophy does not invalidate or nullify the fact that this information was given us by divine revelation and IS valid.

The other problem they whine about is the language that is being used, but the conciseness of the language, which conveys the most amount of accurate information in as few words as possible, does not mean that what is conveyed is wrong.

Scripture is not wrong simply because someone does not like or approve of the delivery.

For some intelligent speculation on creation and the big bang please read ‘Starlight and Time’ by Dr. Russell Humphreys PhD.

Dr. Humphreys has made some very interesting predictions that have been proven true by NASA. At my local library though the ‘powers’ that be chose to place his book in the juvenile section so you may have to work a little extra to find it.

Do you believe that Jesus overruled the laws of nature in order to perform His miracles?

I think it safe to say humans only know a fraction of the laws of nature. What Jesus did, he probably did within the total set of laws governing this universe.

Did He really walk on water? Did He really change water to wine? Did He really cause dead people to come back alive? Did He really make a violent storm come to an end by speaking to it?

As far as I know he did all the above.

Consider the "cargo cults". During WWII, tribesmen in New Guinea, Melanesia and Micronesia interacting Americans thought we were Gods capable of doing things so fantastic as to be miraculous. When Americans left the region, religious cults formed to lure the Americans back complete with mock airstrips, airplanes, etc.

As we know, Americans simply demonstrated a superior understanding of physical laws to these primitive people. Using that as an example, Christ didn't need to alter physical laws to perform his miracles, he may have just demonstrated a superior understanding.

See also "cargo cults" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RA4UnEuQ0

The Creator, since before the beginning, has been injecting Himself into His creation, overruling the laws of nature.

Or, might it be safe to say he occasionally injects himself into his creation and demonstrates a superior understanding of the laws that he created?

The last sentence of your last paragraph makes you sound more like a Deist than a Christian. Would you consider yourself a Deist, rather than a Theist?

I fail to see how it does?

I believe God knows every detail of our lives but does not control them.

Psalm 139:13-18 13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Your interpretation actually lessens Gods capabilities as a creator if he has to actively be involved with fetal development

God is the ultimate micromanager and not only is He capable of it, He cares enough for His creation to DO it.

He could be if he chooses to but I believe he chooses not to which is why he gave us free will.

Since I was courtesy pinged to your comment:

Do you believe that Jesus overruled the laws of nature in order to perform His miracles?

I differ slightly from fso301 here. I simply do not know. I have seen things that would be considered miracles by anyone, that simply made no sense going by what we know. I also accept that we don't know or understand more than 1/1000th of the complexity of the natural laws laid down at creation.

Did He really walk on water? Did He really change water to wine? Did He really cause dead people to come back alive? Did He really make a violent storm come to an end by speaking to it?

It is in the book. The last two could have rational scientific explanations given even now, the first two cannot by our current understanding.

The Creator, since before the beginning, has been injecting Himself into His creation, overruling the laws of nature.

Now I can agree with that, for it is also in the Word. He talked to Abraham and Moses in person. You don't get a voice coming out of a burning bush no matter how you try. Maybe the odd word from the crackle of the flames - we've all had that, but not a conversation. A burning peyote cactus on the other hand .... He physically lead the Israelites as a pillar of smoke or fire.

Considering that the laws of thermodynamics kick in so easily, I don’t believe that the universe can run on autopilot. I think that for life to grow and grow properly, it needs constant sustaining to override entropy.

Not that God mandates our every action, I am not a double predestinationist and do believe that God gave man free will which He will not override, I do believe that He must maintain some level of involvement simply to just keep things from flying apart. And I do believe He sets up events in our lives for us to encounter, but that He does not orchestrate our reponses, like puppets on a string.

One of the more memorable points in the book [Starlight and Time] dealt w/ white holes - the opposite of black holes but no racism inferred/intended. I think the concept of white holes either originated w/ Einstein or was simply inspired by his works.

Another interesting aspect [I’ve seen other FR posts/links along the same line of thinking] regards time relativity and how much apparent time elapsed in the creation week. Consider assigning day 1 ~ 3.5 to 4 billion apparent years and then cut the apparent years in half for each subsequent day. At the end of the 1st week ~ 6 days you have 13.7 to 15.7 billion years of apparent time lapse.

Regarding predestination: God says and shows His awesome abilities declaring that He knows the Alpha [beginning] from the Omega [ending] which for me says he created time and only he knows what will happen before it occurs [shown multiple times w/ fulfilled biblical prophesies] ~

Therefore we have free-will but he knows every thought and action we will take before we do. Prayer is our chance to invite God to alter the outcome(s). Sometimes yes, no or often wait but should always be asked in accordance with ‘His Holy Will’ to allow for only our Father God knowing each eventual outcome and what will work best overall.

Fo me ‘maintaining some level of involvement’ could be taken to the extreme that God is all-powerful [i.e. the ultimate source of all energy]. Therefore taken with Einstein’s E = MC squared implies how God created everything ex nihilo [out of nothing] for if we could take the zeroth thermodynamic law to absolute zero [e=0] then would the mass also go to zero [m=0] like some kind of cosmic collision?

This is not a vote for pantheism or God in all things as I believe the Bible quite clearly that God resides in Heaven and can not be in the presence of sin. But if we could see the big picture universe down the the ‘bottom right hand corner’ should be a trademark indicating ‘powered by God.’

I think the hydroplate theory explains this water separation fairly well since firmament iirc could be defined as earth and/or air. see creationscience.com where the water separation in Gen 1:6-7 might imply subterranean water - water that later flooded the earth when the fountains of the great deep burst open [Gen 7:11] and then it rained [1st recorded rain in Genesis] for 40 days and nights.

Do you believe that Jesus overruled the laws of nature in order to perform His miracles?

I don't believe I differ from EnglishCon. Because God exists outside of creation, he is not necessarily bound to the natural laws he created for our universe when operating within it. However, that doesn't mean he wouldn't first use his comprehensive knowledge of the natural laws governing this universe to effect what we call miracles.

Because humans do not come anywhere near having a comprehensive understanding of physical laws, I first allow that what we call miracles are feats which may be carried out via laws which while presently unknown to science are never-the-less part of the natural laws governing this universe. Only after ruling out natural law would I conclude a particular act was performed outside all natural laws but it will be a long time before humans are in a position to make such determination.

The Creator, since before the beginning, has been injecting Himself into His creation, overruling the laws of nature.

Now I can agree with that, for it is also in the Word. He talked to Abraham and Moses in person. You don't get a voice coming out of a burning bush no matter how you try.

Have you heard of flame speakers and plasma speakers?

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.