Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Creation & Science (Genesis 1)

Genesis 1:1-5 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

One thing that I really don’t see a lot of in the Christian world is the discussion of Genesis. But as a child I attended a Church of Christ private elementary school, and in every chapel period we heard another story from the Old Testament. These were valuable lessons that stick with me today some forty-five years later. Additionally we were taught that the Bible is the infallible word of God. That every word is true and inspired by God. So as I aged and was confronted with science and the educational system, it led me to questions. Questions of the infallibility of the Bible as the word of God. In Catholic high school I was taught that scripture was not necessarily perfect, but perfect for instruction, for symbolism, for the Christian, but not necessarily completely factual. But I would argue that it is indeed infallible. That not one word contradicts observations by Science. So let’s begin here, it what very well may be a multipart series.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God existence is eternal. He never had a beginning, and never will have an end. He is not bound by time and space. And in Genesis 1:1 we see that God is creating time and space as understood by Albert Einstein. He created the dimensions. He created a space outside of his plane of His existence in that moment. God, in this act, created Gravity… gravity being the interaction of energy with time and space. So God’s first act in the creation of the universe we know was to create the canvas for which to paint it on. He created time and space, and by default gravity.

“The earth was formless and void…” There was no earth, there was only time and space which to the writer most likely appeared as water. God moved over the surface of time and space. Or perhaps literally this new dimension of time and space was born out of God’s manipulation of water. Clearly I do not understand the literalness of this verse, but at the same time my lack of understanding does not make it any less true. The point is time and space was created first, and there was nothing but time and space.

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light…’” Here God might have well said, ‘E=MC2” “Let there be light” as said by God, established the law by which energy would interact with this new creation of time and space. E=MC2 dictates that when Energy exceeds the speed of light (C) then mass is formed. Yet until just recently science dictated that the speed of light could not be exceeded. However recent discoveries suggest that our universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, which offers plenty of explanation as to how mass is formed. And so not God has the canvas of time and space, the paint of the transformation of energy to mass, and his creation of the universe as we know it is about to begin. But first he must separate the light form the darkness.

The darkness, most likely know by science as dark matter, remains but a theory with no concrete evidence of fact. But certainly to come, and certainly the God particle comes from this one line of scripture.


“God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” This act of God call an evening and a morning a day will be critical later in study of Christianity and Judaism. A God day starts at sun down, not midnight. 


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