Not too many years ago, I engaged in a debate with a young man over an internet forum. The subject of the debate was the veracity of The Bible. My opponent postulated that the very first chapter of The Book of Genesis proved that The Bible was a complete work of fiction. His statement was that science has proven The Bible to be false. I answered him saying that, while science had, in fact, proven centuries-old interpretations of those scriptures to be false, all it has done is force a paradigm shift over how those scriptures may be interpreted. I offered the opinion that, by undertaking a very plausible but different view of how those scriptures were to be interpreted, the story laid out in Genesis not only dovetails nicely into what we now know about the creation of this earth but, when viewed from this new perspective, science does a nice job of reinforcing The Bible's account of creation.
When undertaking to shift one’s interpretation of these scriptures, it should be understood that, in doing so, I am not proposing to change what The Bible actually says, I am simply proposing an alternative to an interpretation which is based, not on prophetic utterance, but rather tradition. Science certainly allows itself latitude to shift its findings and statements in light of new evidence and, if scientists are to allow themselves that luxury, then a fair-minded person would allow religion the same. In fact, unlike science which often contradicts itself in light of new evidence, I am not proposing a shift in what these scriptures say, merely a shift away from how people have interpreted these scriptures.
When viewed from a vantage point that I personally consider to be more appropriate, Genesis and science go hand in hand and science does a remarkable job of reinforcing the account in Genesis. I first began studying these things when it became obvious to me that scientific knowledge and religious teachings seemed to be in conflict. I was fortunate enough to have a father who was a man of great faith and also a man with a mind that thirsted after knowledge, both spiritual and scientific. It was under his tutelage that I first began to understand how, contrary to the opinion of many, science and religion go hand in hand. When I first started looking into these seeming contradictions, I did as my father taught me and approached them with prayer, trusting that Heavenly Father would grant me understanding. I feel those prayers were answered. My hope is that, when you finish reading, you will be amazed as I was how a desert-dwelling nomad who lived six thousand years ago could get so many things right and in the correct order.
I should also include the statement that the purpose of this post is not an attempt to prove the biblical account by referring to science. Faith needs no proof. My intent on writing this post is to show to people that science does not prove The Bible false. Whether or not one believes that God is the creator of all things is immaterial here. The entire purpose of this post is to demonstrate that belief in The Bible and science can coexist.
Let me start off by stating the obvious. Our world was not created in six days. Various opinions have been offered to explain the difference between what was written in Genesis and what we know about the geological age and formation of this earth. One of which is that each day actually refers to a period of creation and is not meant to be taken literally.
My own belief is that the six days referenced in Genesis does, in fact, refer to six days. But in saying that, I am not stating that the earth was formed in those six days. I am offering the point of view that, over the period of six days, Moses was shown a series of visions which covered the entire creation of the earth. If The Discovery Channel was showing you a documentary series on the same subject and you were to report what you saw (with no real understanding of time lapse or even how what you were seeing was being conveyed to you, you might report it the same way…On the First Day, this happened; on the Second Day, this happened…and so forth)
Keep in mind that the visions Moses saw might be very similar to what we would experience were we to attend a planetarium and were shown movies on the creation of the earth. Six thousand years ago, Moses might very well have had what we now refer to as a virtual reality experience. Whether he understood it to be that way or not is immaterial. His challenge would have been to convey his experience in language that a group of ignorant desert dwelling nomads could have understood six thousand years ago. With that in mind, what I propose is to dissect the First Book of Genesis scripture by scripture and offer my own explanation of how it might be interpreted. I claim no special insight beyond that of a person who believes that faith need not be thrown out the window when science offers a seemingly contradictory point of view.
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
This is what we refer to as a thesis statement. It is the brief statement that precedes the rest of the composition which tells us not only the provocation behind the work, but where the focus will take us. Here Moses tells us exactly his motivation in writing Genesis. He’s not at all concerned with how the earth was made. Rather, he wants us to know who is behind it all. That one statement automatically compromises and mitigates any scientific criticism of The Book of Genesis because its intent was not to answer how but rather why the earth was created and, more importantly, by whom. If a reasonable and plausible explanation can be offered showing why the events described were listed in the order that they were given, then the integrity of the work remains intact.
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
One of the more popular conceptions of the biblical account of creation is the "Ex Nihilo" version or that God created everything "out of nothing". The Bible does not make that claim. The claim it does make is that the materials which made up our planet were, at one time "without form and void". The most popular theory or model as to how our solar system was formed is called the “Nebular Hypothesis” according to which, our solar system began almost 4.6 billion years ago as a molecular cloud of interstellar gas.
This is the model that scientists claim was the basic form of matter before our solar system and our earth was formed. If there is any more apt description of it than “without form and void” I can’t imagine what it might be.
What I find fascinating about this is that Moses, without the benefit of knowledge now available to us through centuries of scientific research...or even without the aid of a telescope, was able to somehow perfectly describe the conditions of our solar system as it would have existed "in the beginning".
The idea of creation from chaos is a popular one in Middle Eastern cultures. Both the Egyptian and the Sumerian creation stories have similar beginnings. However, such a coincidence does not call the story in Genesis into question. There are two ways of looking at coincidental stories from differing cultures. The skeptical way would be to insist that each creation story borrowed from and then embellished upon stories from previous cultures. Another way to look at it would be that cultures stemming from a common origin would likely have similar stories that evolve and diverge over the years. If the explanation offered by skeptics were correct, then the story in Genesis would be a more wild embellishment of the Sumerian and Egyptian creation stories since it would have borrowed from and embellished those older accounts. But, as will be seen, the Genesis story omits the errors of other creation stories and, when seen from the proper perspective, gets all of the events right and in the right order…almost as if the creator wanted to set the record straight.
The last half of the second scripture, “and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” might seem confusing; there was no water in space and there certainly wasn’t any in the nebular cloud of dust that was the supposed birth of our solar system. But remember that, in the proffered explanation, Moses would have been shown all of these events in a shortened time span.
Have you ever seen a cloud formation through time lapse photography? It takes on the very appearance of liquid. It would have been a very appropriate description if Moses saw this nebular formation in time lapse as I am suggesting. A look at just such an occurrence might lend more weight to what I am suggesting:
El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky - Tenerife from
Daniel López on
Vimeo.
For some reason, about five billion years ago, this interstellar cloud of dust began to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction. "For some reason" is a gap-filler that scientists use when they know what happened but don't know why or how the events got started.
Some postulate that a nearby exploding star started the whole process. "For some reason" is the point at which creationists, like myself, Like to say, "See? Here's a place where God might have had a hand in things". But you see, for the purposes of science, God isn't a necessary part of the equation. I know that sounds harsh for religious people...at least it sounded harsh to me when I wrote it but the simple fact is that science concerns itself with what happened and how it happened...not who caused it to happen. Even scientists get bogged down in this, thinking that, because they can explain how something happened and, even in some cases, why it happened, that they have somehow shown that God does not exist. But all they've really proven is that a generally-accepted paradigm of how something happened is false...and, as stated before, the purpose of this article is not to prove that God exists or that the Creation Story in Genesis is true. It is to show that science does not prove otherwise.
Anyway (back to the rotating cloud of interstellar gas and debris) once this nebulous cloud began to rotate the more dense portions of this nebula underwent what scientists refer to as a gravitational collapse and and condensed to form a rotating globule, a process that took anywhere from ten thousand to a million years.
As the collapse progressed, two things happened. The pressure increased and when the pressure increased so did the heat. Have you ever used an old bicycle pump to pump up a tire? The more you pump, the hotter the pump cylinder gets. That's because when atoms bounce off each other in a compressed atmosphere, they give off heat. Scientists call this the heat of compression.
The other thing that happens is that the part of the nebula that is closer to the globule begins to collapse and the nebula thins out in a sort of interstellar pancake around the globule
Eventually, the center of this center globule collapsed under its own weight until, deep in its interior, the temperature reached several million degrees. It was at this point that deuterium atoms began to fuse and give of thermonuclear energy. This slowed the collapse down a bit and eventually led to a second stage where hydrogen nuclei could fuse into helium, which then started the sun's current evolutionary phase. It was also at this point that the sun began to incandesce
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light
At an early stage, when this very young sun was still surrounded by this giant dense disc of dust and gas, the planets we refer to as the 'gas' planets, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn, began to form. They are called gas planets because they have no solid metals, rock, or even a solid surface to walk upon. What metals they do have are found at their core and are, very likely, molten due to the extreme pressure. The formation of these planets ejected a huge amount of the gas in the flattened disc and made possible the formation of the terrestrial planets (like Earth). Planet 'embryos' began to form in the disc and, over a period of several million years, violent collisions with other planet embryos and material in the disc caused them to increase in mass. These planets retained their spinning motion as they formed out of the stellar disc surrounding the sun.
It is at this point that I am proposing that Moses' point of view would have been shifted from an all-encompassing perspective of the solar system to our newly-formed earth. The next scripture gives us a clue that this is what happened:
4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
We now understand that the phenomenon of day and night is merely due to the earth rotating on an axis and exposing an ever-changing half of its surface to the Sun. Moses could have explained exactly how all this happened but, as pointed out in the explanation of the first scripture in Genesis, explaining how wasn't his purpose. Moses' entire focus was on who created the Earth. So, for the purpose of his thesis, why and how were not questions that needed to be addressed.
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Having witnessed a vision detailing a time-lapse account of the formation of the Solar System and the earth in its most primitive form, Moses is given a rest by God. Tomorrow, he will experience a new vision.
How water came to be formed on this planet is the subject of several theories. Some theorize that the infant solar system, still replete with ice-laden comets would certainly cause several collisions with the new earth and some water would come to our planet in this way. Other theories suggest that the huge impacts such as the one which created our moon would have resulted in rock vaporization. The impacts would have also given our earth the mass required to keep water vapor from 'leaking' out of our primitive atmosphere. The rock vaporization caused by the huge collisions would have condensed over a two or three thousand year period providing liquid water. Whatever the cause (and science does not fully answer this particular 'how') study of zircons suggests that water has existed on this planed for over 4 billion years.
One of the things that scientists look for when they search the skies for planets that might contain life is the presence of water. Without water, it would be impossible for a planet to sustain life...which is why it is so noteworthy that the most important ingredient to life on this planet is the very next ingredient that Moses mentions:
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.
Again, try and put these scriptures, not in light of what we know now, but in context of a man living six thousand years ago who would not have the ability to get these very important events in exactly the right order. Moses retires from his second day of visions with his record unblemished. His account is completely in line with what we know scientifically about the formation of the earth.
One of the most interesting claims Moses makes in Genesis is that which would have been considered preposterous in his time but, which science now proposes to be a fact at the time that the earth was formed...the idea that there was, at one point, not several continents on this earth, but a single super-continent which scientists call Pangaea.
By the time Moses existed, the earth had divided into several continents and masses of water. In fact. the area where Moses lived was the cross point of three of those land masses and two of those bodies of water...and yet, Moses next describes a young world that is exactly as geologists would describe it many thousands of years later
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.
The idea that the earth was, at one point, a single land mass, would have been preposterous at the time of Moses. Indeed, it would have been preposterous until man discovered the existence of tectonic plates and the phenomenon of continental drift that now, any fifth grader learns in his science class.
Moses is now witness to an earth that has formed exactly as described by modern science with conditions exactly as described by modern science. The very next thing he will witness will be the very next logical step in the formation of a planet which would sustain life, vegitation.
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. Note that Moses does not say that God put the seeds on the earth. Rather he says, "Let the earth bring forth", which is exactly how scientists say vegetation came to be on the earth...the earth 'brought it forth'. It is also noteworthy that the very next important step happened in exactly the order that both Moses and science describe.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
We are now half way through the series of visions that Moses would have seen and there is no conflict whatsoever with his description and modern scientific thought.
The presence of vegetation was the next important link for life to evolve for the obvious reason that plants give off oxygen and life, as we know it, requires oxygen to exist. The other interesting thing about plants is that, as they absorbed the carbon dioxide in our early atmosphere and gave off oxygen, an interesting phenomenon occurred...the primitive steamy or dense atmosphere cleared. The result being that anyone standing on the earth would begin to see beyond our atmosphere to the heavens beyond.
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. Verses 14 through 18 are where a lot of people say "aHA! See? The stars were NOT formed after the earth so that proves that the Bible is wrong!. Again, they are only correct if one takes a traditional view of these scriptures, tradition which is not based upon anything but centuries old interpretations. An honest and thorough consideration of how this information would have been relayed to Moses would have to include the possibility that he was not an ancient stenographer taking dictation from God but was the recipient of a series of visions viewed in first hand reality...visions which would not only show Moses what happened but impress upon him the awesome majesty of it all. Remember, Moses' reasons for writing Genesis was not to tell how God caused the earth to form but that he did cause it and that God is a being who inspires reverence, awe, worship, and obedience. Simply telling Moses all of this would not have left as strong as an impression as would showing him.
It is, therefore, consistent with the paradigm I am offering to say that Moses would describe the lights in the heavens AFTER vegetation had caused the atmosphere to clear to the point where they would be visible to a man standing on earth.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
The next step, again, is exactly in line with how scientists describe it...life emerges from the sea.
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.
Notice here that Moses, again says, "let the waters bring forth" Then he describes creatures, the kind of which he does not give because, in his day and time, he has no reference for what kind of creatures they are.
But he does recognize and describe fowl, whose taxonomy would have come after the creatures that he describes originating from the seas.
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.
I've always found it interesting that Moses next describes great whales since scientists claim that whales where once land mammals that returned to the sea. Realize that the formation of mammals on the evolutionary scale would have happened after birds and Moses, once again, gets the order right.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. After the formation of creatures that Moses does not recognize, birds, and then whales (all in the correct order) Moses now describes the formation of yet more evolved animals. He describes a myriad of animals. Again, his purpose here is not to say how it all happened but, rather, who is behind it all..and he ends with the most evolved creature of all, Man.
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 islife, 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. So, there you have it. The first chapter of Genesis described through an alternate paradigm which, in no way, detracts from what was said as Moses put down...simply viewed in light of what our own modern science allows us to believe might have happened. And the Bible still stands in light of modern scientific knowledge, indeed, corroborating what science claims.
I want to reiterate that my purpose in writing this is not to prove Moses' account true but to show that science does not prove it false. The truth of what Moses writes can only come through prayer and personal revelation....but I want to leave you with one interesting thing to take note of. Science claims that genetics prove evolution to be true and I will make the further claim that genetic material being used to build from lesser creatures to more evolved creatures is also in the Bible..
because God first creates Man from the dust of the earth and then takes a rib 'borrowing' genetic material to form Woman...a far more evolved creature.
