Did God light the fuse of the Big Bang?
Some have tried to fit the first creation account in Genesis chapter 1 into modern cosmology.
Seems natural enough. “Let there be light” could be the Big Bang. Each of the six days of Creation could actually have been billions of years.
There’s what seems like an upward “evolution” in the order of creation of living things that seems correct. Plants, lower to higher animals, then people.
But let’s take a closer look at what Genesis actually says.
From the get go there are problems. In the first two verses, Heaven and Earth are created. This is before the “let there be light” command which is supposed to be the Big Bang. According to theory, there was no space before the Big Bang for the Earth to exist in any type of shape or condition. Space itself expanded after the Big Bang.
In verse 5 God is separating light from darkness which one might interpret as something in the unfolding of the universe except that the Bible has God calling the light day and the darkness night and then there’s an evening and a morning. This would indicate that this is the Earth rotating and being lit from something other than the Sun (created “Genesis days” or billions of years later) which contradicts the theory of solar system formation which has the Earth and the Sun forming at the same time.
In verse 11 God creates the plants before the creation of the Sun which seems like a huge problem since plants obviously evolved to perform photosynthesis from sunlight.
Also the Bible has trees being created before “swimming creatures.” “Swimming creatures” or marine animals evolved in the oceans long before any life (including trees) began populating the land.
In verse 16 God finally makes the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. But dating of rocks from the Moon shows that the Moon and the Earth are virtually the same age. The Earth is not billions of years (or four “Genesis days”) older than the Moon.
Also all elements other than hydrogen and helium were created by the deaths of stars, yet the Bible has the Earth, land, water, etc… billions of years before the stars are even created.
Actually the Genesis chapter one creation story seems more in line with a much older Babylonian creation myth called “Enuma Elish,” at least as far as the order of creation in Genesis and the Enuma Elish’s “generation of gods.” Also similar is the dividing of Tehowm (Genesis waters or “deep”) into two with a sky dome or “firmament” and the slicing of the water snake “Tiamat” (Enuma Elish) into two.
It’s thought that the Genesis version was likely derived either from Enuma Elish or a similar older creation myth.
As if to prove my final point of the previously discussed topic:
One would normally be hard-pressed to get a neodarwinian to admit the following:
There’s what seems like an upward “evolution” in the order of creation of living things that seems correct. Plants, lower to higher animals, then people.
And you won’t generally find too may atheists giving creationists the following points either.
Seems natural enough. “Let there be light” could be the Big Bang. Each of the six days of Creation could actually have been billions of years.
I don’t believe in supernatural forces, but I do believe that I’m rapidly gaining respect for Capella’s honest observations.
Thanks! I do try to walk a block in my brother’s shoes (mile’s too far). ;^)
Which version of creation are we talking about? The Genesis 1 where animals are created before humans? Or Genesis 2 where animals are created after humans?
The Bible was written by a tribal ignorant man to impose over more ignorant people than he was.
It’ no useful to think he was a man inspired by god or so.
There is no god, no hell, no heaven. The only reality is the Nature. The prists are the people who believe in gos ridicolous.
I respect your website very much and the intensity of the work and studies you have obviously put in. However, your skeptic inclinations have caused you to overlook many biblical truths and present biased arguments.
Such as:
God said: “Let there be light”, made plants, and then made the sun.
When God said “Let there be light”, light came, however, it did not have to come in the form of a sun or the stars. God later formed that light into sun and stars. He obviously split that great light up into stars later in the course of creation. If you set about to make aluminum sheets, will you not first need the natural aluminum and then form it, shape it, and cut into sheets? Or will you get in one remarkable gesture?
If you notice in Genesis 1:2, it says “the earth was without form”.
“Without form” implies that the earth was neither round nor square nor triangular nor solid when God created it first. It was the very first phase of the earth’s creation.
When in verse 3, God “divided the light from the darkness” it is clear that it was then He performed another phase of the earth’s creation–he made it round.
“And the evening and the morning were the first day”.
Notice how perfectly everything fits into place for the first day covered from verses 1 thru 5.
In the first day, God made the light. He did not make them yet in the form of stars and the sun, but he made the light “be”. In the first day God also made the earth and gave it its shape. Isn’t that an orderly way of doing things?
Now look at verse 1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.
That’s the big bang…the very first phase of creation.
>Now look at verse 1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.
That’s the big bang…the very first phase of creation. <
Sorry, but that still backwards. Modern physics says that before stars there was only hydrogen and helium. More complex elements such as those that comprise the Earth were “baked” in the stars and in the supernova of stars.
The people that wrote Genesis were obviously ignorant of this because they have the stars coming after the earth has already been created.
In response to Capella…and before I go any further I must declare my sincere respect I have for his understanding of science and the elements of creation…I say he has no argument there at all.
Modern science is not infallibe…as it been shown time and time again that theories are constantly being discarded and replaced with new ones. Remember, scientists once believed that the atom was indivisable.
However, that’s beside the point.
If you look carefully, you will see, before God said “let there be light”, that the “earth was without form and void”. Would you not agree that it was at that time made up of only hydrogen and helium?
Modern physics suggests that the elements were baked in “heat”. There was no way it could prove that it was “stars”.
Remember, it is evident that it was after God created the great light that he gave the earth a round shape (divided the light from the darkness). It was this great light and heat that baked the elements.
Subsequently God would divided the great light into stars and set them up at strategic location and called them by name.
Does not modern physics agree that all the stars were one great ball of gas before it split up? That’s right: “Let there be light…and there was light”…a large unfathomable ball of burning gas to bake in the elements so that God could shape the earth and then split it up into the sun and all other stars.
The verse “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” could be transposed with verses like “In the beginning God started the creation of the heaven and the earth” or “When it all began, it was God who did the creation”.
That is the meaning of the verse.
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If you look carefully, you will see, before God said “let there be light”, that the “earth was without form and void”. Would you not agree that it was at that time made up of only hydrogen and helium?
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Sorry but no, because “the deep” and “the waters” is mentioned later in that very same sentence.
Water consists of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Oxygen is an element that didn’t exist until it was produced by fusion in the cores of stars. The stars and the Sun according to the writer(s) of this primitive creation myth didn’t exist until much later.
In any case, it’s pretty obvious that when it says the the earth existed in verse 1 that it was there in the mind of this creation myth writer with water on it because this water was later gathered together in verse 9 to expose the “dry land.”
Earth coalesced a little more than 4.5 billion years ago from bits of cosmic debris. Liquid oceans existed on the planet almost from the beginning, although in all likelihood they were repeatedly vaporized by the massive meteorites that regularly clobbered the planet during its first 700 million years of existence.
Oxygen makes up about one-fifth the volume of Earth’s atmosphere today and is a central element of life as we know it. But that wasn’t always the case. Oxygen, although always present in compounds in Earth’s interior, atmosphere, and oceans, did not begin to accumulate in the atmosphere as oxygen gas (O2) until well into the planet’s history. What the atmosphere was like prior to oxygen’s rise is a puzzle that Earth scientists have only begun to piece together.
The meaning of the word “waters” depends entirely on the significance of the Hebrew letter “M.”
The plural form “Maim” means “waters”; “anything held in solution,” universally.
The spiritual idea of the word “waters” is ‘some kind of universal source from which everything that constitutes the universe must he drawn’.
In Gen. I, v. 2. we are told that “the Spirit of Elohim moved upon the faces of the “waters” — while at the same time we are told that the “earth” was as yet merely a “germ within a germ” — a “possibility within a possibility.” Neither material land nor material water yet existed. But the “possibilities” of everything existed, latent, in universal Spirit.
I disagree that the text mentions that nothing yet existed. Clearly “the deep,” “the waters,” and something that the waters rested on existed in verse 2. Same waters that were a few verses later gathered together to reveal the land that the waters existed on.
But there was literally no space for anything to exist before the Big Bang. No space for “the deep” and no space for wind or spirit or whatever to sweep over the face of the “waters” which again it later says gathered together to expose the “dry land” of the earth that the waters had been resting on in verse 9.
Again, the earth also didn’t exist prior to stars because most of the elements and various compounds of the earth didn’t exist prior to stars which were created 4 “Genesis days” later.
Current cosmology has the earth, the moon, and the sun at about the same age, not the sun and the moon forming after vegetation had already come about on the earth and the earth had already been spinning for 4 “Genesis days.”
Sea creatures came about before trees, not the other way around as in the Genesis creation myth.
If one is allowed to retranslate words of the Genesis 1 creation myth into something else at will, one could also for example, turn “Little Jack Horner” into a description of modern Astrophysics.
Of course the ancient people who created the Genesis 1 creation myth thousands of years ago had no clue about modern cosmology.
Genesis 1 was derived from their primitive and often erroneous assumptions about the world around them. This is why even if words are retranslated to mean things they obviously don’t such as “day” to mean “billions of years,” that simply the order of things coming about in the Genesis 1 creation myth is hopelessly wrong.
Capella,
You’re missing the point by a mile.
The people at that time could not understand what was hydrogen or helium. “Waters” was not meant to be taken literally.
The big bang took place at verse one: the very start of creation and before the bringing into being of light.
Furthermore, there is nothing to stipulate that the events be recorded in exact chronological order.
Try writing an account of a cycling event with Mr. Lance Armstrong in “exact chronological order” without any retrospection.
God bless you.
Your claim that the Big Bang preceded the coming into being of light contradicts modern cosmology which says that there was a tremendous amount of light at the moment of the Big Bang and for some time afterwards.
As I said “waters” in verse two is the same hebrew word and is obviously refering to the same waters that were gathered together to form the seas in verse 9. Both waters in verses 2 and 9 are before stars were created which as I expained is impossible.
As far as a stipulation of correct chronological order, yes, of course it has to be correct if one is trying to shoe horn the Genesis 1 creation myth into modern cosmology.
Can’t have dry land, water which contains oxygen, and photosynthesizing plants coming about before the Sun and the stars. It’s impossible. The compounds that make up the earth, the water, and the cells of plants contain elements that didn’t exist prior to stars because stars “baked” them in their cores.
Plants evolved to specifically photosynthesize sunlight, so you can’t have them evolving prior to the existence of the Sun.
In modern theories of Solar system formation, the earth and the Sun form at the same time, not the earth and then much later the Sun.
The title of this article concerns whether the Genesis creation myth can fit into modern cosmology and because of these and other things the answer is a resounding no.
What many biblical scholars have agreed on is that genesis 1 and 2 cannot be taken literally. The authors who wrote Genesis had very little ideas on how the world actually was. They thought that water surrounded the whole earth, that waters were completely under the earth, that Sheol was a physical place that existed in the middle of the earth and the blue we see in the sky was actually water being held up by the dome. What I’m trying to say is that they had no technology that helped them understand how the physical world actually existed. Can you really blame them? The one and only thing that we should be concerend about in Genesis 1 and 2 was that God did in fact create the world!!
Other than your last sentence, I agree with you completely. I think that was exactly the situation. Excellent comment.
No…the creation story is nothing more than a reworking of the Sumerian epic of creation that preceded the bible by at least a thousand years!!!! It was a tremendous blow to the religious world when the Sumerian scrolls were unearthed in the late 1800’s and there was the same creation story. Of course, since people do not read or bother to research, most in the church don’t have one clue about the scrolls. The clergy certainly won’t tell them. That tired old story was repeated in every religion in the land with different names for the characters. Google Sumer Epic of creation and and come out of your cave.
I read your website every week, its great and got lots of information to take in and lots of interesting articles.
Thank you Hannah!
What I think Capella was trying to get at is Christians always state that the bible is the ultimate authority of anything it says between it covers and no matter how absurd it might sound you just have to throw common sense out the window and believe it. Webster and Coco come back and say “well they did the best at explaining something that they did not understand”. Maybe, but if he let’s that slide then next comes but of course there really was a Noah and Noah’s flood and by the way the earth is really only 6,000 years old because the bible tells us it is so. The topic is “Does the genesis creation myth fit the big bang theory and modern cosmology”. It does not, but I understand that you think they did the best they could with limited knowledge and language. My question is “How can the bible be the ultimate authority on all things if we are to accept your explanation that they did the best that they could with limited knowledge?
The executive summary in Genesis is the victim of bad writing, worse translating and awful embellishment. Way too too much time is wasted on piddling over some Iron Age scribe’s choice of words. It was written by disillusioned men.
I would have started it off this way:
“In the beginning, all the heavens and the Earth existed as One.” That would have resembled divine inspiration.
The OT is a more enjoyable read if you substitute the word “alien” for every reference to gods and angels. It’s only then that I can overlook some of the many idiocies.
Penny is really pretty on the series Big Bang Theory, she is quite perky too.`:.