A careful examination of the first Chapter of Genesis, regarding the SEQUENCE of the (14) events mentioned, provides amazing evidence! There is no possible way that any minimally educated (by modern standards) human writer of 1600 BC could have known that LIGHT came into existence before anything else! Or that mankind arose AFTER all the other events mentioned! Or that fishes were before all land animals, or that plants were before any animals at all. A human author of Genesis 1 would have had to beat odds of around 87 billion to one (called 14 factorial) to have selected the sequence presented. Yet, in just the past hundred years, science has advanced to the point of discovering that light came first and man was last and all the rest! From a strict logical perspective, this provides STATISTICAL PROOF that Genesis 1 could only have been written with the direct help of God Himself! No one else at the time KNEW the sequence! (A complete and thorough analysis is included below.)
AND, there seems to even be PROOF that the concepts of Biblical Creation and scientific evolution are totally compatible with each other!
I will briefly describe here what I see as the reason. (a) Christians believe the Bible, which includes that mankind was Created (Gen. 1:26) uniquely and separately from all of God's earlier "creatures". (b) Science includes attempts at logical understandings of all things, and that includes a "natural selection" which is popularly referred to as "evolution". (c) These two are seen as absolutely incompatible, because one insists that man was Created unique and the other suggests that man is not, being just an "advanced creature". Since Christians insist on believing the one, the other must then be dead wrong! End of discussion. Start of argument! Or at least, deaf ears!
IF this is the reasoning behind YOUR negative attitudes toward science, I have some really good news for you! The conflict that you see is actually the result of an assumption that some Christians made, primarily due to the English translations of the Bible, that is probably incorrect! And once that is straightened out, there is NO remaining problem at all!
It seems extremely likely that the Original (Ancient Hebrew) wording of Genesis 1:26 is accurate regarding (KJAV) "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" but that this English translation (and all other translations) have incorporated a translation assumption that may not be appropriate. That actual Original wording, transliterated, is just four words,"`asah 'adam tselem d@muwth" (Strong's O6213, O120, O6754, and O1823).
Each of those Original Ancient Hebrew words has an assortment of possible meanings. It is certainly true that it can be interpreted in the way it always has, of regarding a "physical resemblance" of humans to the Lord. However, the third and fourth Hebrew word have the possible meaning of "resemblance" or "similitude". There seems no reason to believe that we must PHYSICALLY resemble God. This Essay is based on a different understanding of this Scripture, that the "resemblance" referred to is that of us uniquely "having a Soul". (Nothing else does!) This small change makes an enormous consequence!
In other words, maybe God had arranged all the plants and animals, but then when it came time to Create humans, He chose to add a Soul, making humans absolutely unique, and "resembling Him" in a unique way where none of His animals ever had!
Nothing is really changed at all in Christian or Jewish Theology by this adjustment. However, it immediately makes clear what the unique feature of man is, of having a Soul, a fact that is clearly not applicable to any of God's other creatures. This simple adjustment then enables Christianity to be entirely compatible with the scientific findings regarding Natural Selection, or what is more popularly referred to as Evolution. Prior to man at Genesis 1:26, God may have Chosen to use genetic evolution to advance His many creatures. Man might therefore actually have been genetically preceded by the animals mentioned earlier in Genesis 1, but in Genesis 1:26, God made man absolutely unique by implanting a Soul in every man and woman. (At least all the men and women who are descendants of Adam and Eve, a subject for discussion below regarding the "people" that Cain met when he left Eden, who may have not been "people" at all but merely appeared to be!
With this slight adjustment in interpretation, all of Christian belief and all of modern science come completely into accord! In other words, Genesis 1 describes equally either the Six Day Creation or the far longer sequence of events that science has discovered, without suggesting preference for either of those two interpretations. Since science has no way to detect or study a Soul, the single issue that distinguishes the two views is then securely retained by Christians and Jews.
Noted above, in the discussion which follows, only one major understanding is seen differently than has previously been done. Genesis 1:26 includes (KJAV) "And God said, let US make man in our image, after our likeness". The NIV and other English translations are all very similar. ALL believers seem to assume this as meaning that our PHYSICAL APPEARANCE is like God's. The actual Ancient Hebrew word (tselem) can mean "resemblance" and there is not any actual implication that it is a PHYSICAL resemblance. This discussion makes a different conclusion from that Verse, in that the resemblance referred to is regarding man as HAVING A SOUL. If you think about it, isn't that a really important distinction that God would have wanted to make? One a lot more important than whether we look like Him or not? The Bible reads perfectly reasonably and logically with this understanding, but it then also permits "intimate agreement" between Christian beliefs and scientific research.
It seems to me that most Christians underestimate the Lord! Few seem anymore to be willing to believe where the Bible says that the Lord Created everything in Six Days, because they have been influenced by scientific research that discusses billions of years! As a Christian Church Pastor, I happen to believe the WHOLE Bible and so I do not question the Six Day Creation. I imagine God as being extremely busy during those Six Days! However, it happens that I was educated as a Nuclear Physicist, and I recognize that science is on solid logical ground regarding the Universe being around 15 billion years old. What gives???
I think the resolution is really simple! I believe that the Lord is billions of times smarter than any of us people, so we probably can never totally comprehend His Plan for us. However, I believe that He is Loving and Considerate regarding us. And so, even though, given His Infinite Power, He Created everything in Six Days, He knew our curiosity and desire to "logically understand" everything, and so He Wonderfully provided a totally separate and nearly independent "scientific perspective" for us to find (3500 years later) totally logical comfort in. So, when I personally consider religious issues, ONLY the Christian perspective has reliable meanings, but when I study scientific subjects, ONLY the scientific perspective might have reliable meanings.
In fact, He arranged everything so well that we cannot even tell which of the two understandings is actually the one that really occurred! If a person wants to trust "solid logic", NO terminal flaw can be found in a scientific star-formation / earth-oceans-land / plants-fishes-animals-man line of reasoning! However, if a person is willing to set aside some seemingly logical rules and purely accept what the Bible tells us, then NO terminal flaw can be found in that either! A critical issue in this is that the SEQUENCE of events MUST be the same in both views, even if the time scales seem outlandishly different.
When I was a teenager, before I was Saved, I became intrigued by the fact that Genesis begins with LIGHT. What an odd first thing to Create! But there it is! And then it dawned on me that according to the best scientific evidence, before the Earth and everything else, there were stars, millions and billions of stars. Light. Hmmmm!
And then when I looked at the end of Genesis 1, the LAST event of Creation was mankind, which ALSO happens to be the most recent major event in a scientific time scale. This was getting very interesting! When I wrote down the 14 specific events I saw mentioned in Genesis 1, in order, I was astounded to find that all but the birds were in EXACT AGREEMENT with the order currently understood by science! (As a Nuclear Physics student, I knew enough to know that the statistical odds of that just being a coincidence was far over a billion to one!) (the matching of the sequences is included in this Essay.)
In any case, that started me on a life-long effort at trying to understand how Genesis/Creation could be totally correct and ALSO that science (including evolution) could also be totally correct. After all, I was on both sides of that street! I have seen others present what seem to be "rationalizations" in trying to describe how Christianity and science can be mutually tolerated. Such arguments always seemed to me to require a watering-down of some aspects of Christian belief and/or a watering-down of the strictness of logic in scientific study, and therefore I always found them wanting. Because my life was intimately involved in both Christianity and in science/Nuclear Physics, I felt I needed more than that, if I were to feel that I was not letting one or the other or both down!
This eventually resulted in this "parallelism" Essay which attempts to explain how EACH can be totally and absolutely true, within its own realm, even though there APPEAR to be overwhelming conflicts BETWEEN the two viewpoints. Again, I personally truly believe that the Lord Created everything in Six Days, but His Compassion for us caused Him to also provide us a perfectly logical view of everything which seems to involve many billions of years! But I am aware that He might actually have needed billions of years, or two months, or any other interval of time, to do all of Creation. I see this as evidence of the amazing Love He has for us! And NEITHER of these perceptions is any "deception" to us, because they are EACH perfectly, absolutely, totally, and independently true.
By the way, my initial fascination regarding Light being first seems to have another wonderful result. Say that the Bible was NOT inspired by the Lord, that some ancient human composed it (just considering Genesis 1). In sitting down to weave a story that needed to mention 14 distinct events, would any human writer claim that Light was first, if he wanted ANYONE to actually believe his story? Not a chance! He might have woven many different fake stories, but I do not think any of them would have begun with Light being Created first! And now, over 3500 years later, science has come to AGREE that Light actually existed before anything else. Isn't that SCIENTIFIC PROOF that the Bible had to have been inspired by the Lord? It was composed around 3,600 years ago, given to Moses, and even just a hundred years ago, there was no scientist on Earth who yet realized that light existed first! There is NO way that any ancient human could have written Genesis 1, without God's help! When we consider that 14 specific events were mentioned, and we now scientifically realize that all but one are in the exact correct sequence, whoa! That alleged human writer would have had around 87,000,000,000 different storyline sequences to pick from! Yet, the sequence presented in Genesis 1 amazingly matches what modern science has discovered. I personally consider it to be intensely compelling SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that the Bible (at least Genesis 1) could only have been written with God's help. In other words, scientific proof that at least part of the Bible is reliable and valid. Even that God had to actually exist in order for Genesis 1 to have been written as it is.
Based on that statistical analysis of the actual events mentioned in Genesis 1, I really do not see how any logical, scientific person could deny that God had to have existed at that time, in order to provide that specific sequence of events. People might certainly question many other parts of the Bible, but this really is pretty close to "airtight" from a scientific logic perspective!
Amazingly, science may even provide logical explanations for some things that have always been troublesome to Christians, like where Cain went when he left Eden, and who he married!
If a human author had written Genesis 1 without God's help he could have listed the 14 events mentioned in over 87 billion different sequences. How could he have selected the sequence, beginning with Light first and Man last, which has now (3600 years later) been shown to be the sequence that modern science finally accepts?
This current Parallelism perspective is that there are two perfectly parallel understandings of existence, that of Christian Faith and that of analytical science, that are INDEPENDENTLY each absolutely true and complete and self-consistent. Trying to mix "facts" between them can appear to cause incompatibilities, but either alone represents a perfect and correct and complete view of the world.
A useful analogy involves language skills. Let's say you speak fluent English AND you also speak fluent Russian. You have the ability to have conversations in either language. But you cannot use both at the same time and make proper sense to anyone! You cannot decide to put a descriptive English verb in a Russian sentence, or apply Russian syntax in an English sentence. You cannot randomly mix together words, phrases or paragraphs from the two languages. Your expertise in English and Russian represents two independent "parallel" skills that are actually incompatible with each other. You can work at building your language skills in either language without being affected or concerned about the syntax and words of the other. THIS is how we should look at Christianity and science! The two are parallel and totally independent perspectives. Each is separately absolutely true and complete without any necessity for the other (just like with the languages). Each can be studied and expertise developed, (nearly) absolutely independently of the accomplishments or facts of the other perspective (again, just like with the languages). Very importantly, a person could be extremely fluent in English and barely understandable in Russian, or the other way around. A Venezuelan person may not know either. Some people might be perfectly fluent in both. Two independent spectrums of expertise exist, that have absolutely no relationship or dependence on each other. Similarly, a devout Christian could have excellent scientific skills or he/she could have none. An extremely analytical scientist could earnestly believe in Jesus or he/she could disbelieve. The two perspectives are totally independent of each other and can and should be developed AND CONSIDERED separately. In our English/Russian scenario, think about a question like "Which language is the CORRECT one?" The question is irrelevant. NEITHER language is inferior to or more incomplete than the other. Similarly, Christianity and science are each totally and equally valid and complete, and absolutely independent.
Note that an English grammatician could look at the sentence structure of a Russian sentence and think that he finds many errors. In his own realm of English, such a criticism might seem to make sense, but a Russian grammatician could confirm the correctness of the actual Russian sentence. Trying to apply rules and concepts of one, in analyzing sentences in the other, can be meaningless and misleading.
Even though it might seem that this premise involves relativism or subjectivism, those concerns are not present. In the same way that neither language is "relatively" better than the other, neither science or Christianity is better in any relative sense. There is no subjective aspects involved because they are (nearly) absolutely independent perceptions of the world.
It will be shown below that science does not need to "confirm" the existence of Noah's Ark, or the Burial location of Jesus, or the existence of the Ark of the Covenant. Whether or not it ever does, Christianity should not be based on that anyway. It must remain, as it always has been, a matter of personal Faith.
Now, this sounds hard! How should one overlook the impressive accomplishments of science and trust exclusively in Scripture (the way most Christian Churches try to insist)? That's actually the wrong attitude. A historical example involving Albert Einstein (described below) shows us that two parallel, seemingly incompatible understandings, can EACH be separately absolutely true. With other support, this essay will demonstrate how this applies to the long-standing debate between Christianity and science. As an extreme example of what it enables, it will explain how it is even possible to believe (in a strict Christian context) in a true Six Day Creation, while also embracing scientific research on stars that are known (in a scientific context) to be billions of years old! This, and the many other sticking points between Christianity and science, are NOT the overwhelming logical inconsistencies they have long seemed.
It is hoped that this essay will help Christians to maintain absolute and true Faith in the Lord and in every detail of Scripture, while also welcoming ALL accomplishments of science as being worthwhile and not perceiving them as challenges to their Faith. It is also hoped that analytical scientists will be able to maintain their rigid logic, while also opening their minds to the wonderful potential personal value of Christian Salvation.
With some differences among themselves, Christian Fundamentalists insist on belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin Birth and Divinity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious and atoning character of His death, His bodily Resurrection, and His Second Coming as the irreducible minimum of authentic Christianity (first listed this way in 1878 in the Creed of the Niagara Bible Conference). Science generally doesn't DENY these matters, but seriously doubts them because of a lack of documentation and physical proof.
There is ONE specific subject that invariably seems central to the
conflict. Christians believe that men have SOULS. (Science does not
necessarily have an opinion on this matter!) A variety of things
are sometimes meant by having a Soul, but usually a definition includes:
Christianity has ALWAYS very adamantly insisted that man was created separately from all other living things, and in that uniqueness, God invested man alone with a Soul and other spiritual, ethical, moral and intellectual characteristics. A central belief of Christianity has always been that no other of God's creatures has a Soul. That belief has mandated the need for a separate and distinct origin of mankind, which enabled and caused the unique presence of a Soul in man (which Christians can try to Save). Unfortunately, modern science is merrily roaring along proving more and more similarities between man and animals. Forty years ago, it was established that the blood of some primates is virtually interchangeable with ours. For a while, there was actually serious discussion about using such primate blood for humans during medical operations. Twenty years ago, evidence was found that the chromosomes of humans and some primates are more than 99% identical. Looming in the near future are analyses of the results of the Human Genome Project, which might find absolute proof. IF it WERE ever proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there ARE conclusive genetic links between mankind and lower animals, it would be presently be disastrous for ALL Christian Churches! (The premise of this essay becomes extremely important in this situation, where Christian Faith can SEPARATELY be true, even if it [sometimes] seems to totally contradict scientific findings.)
Science has already very well established the fact that the chromosomes of men and the chromosomes of certain chimpanzees are remarkably similar. In the past few years, technology has advanced to the point that the 3,000,000,000 component nucleotides that make up human DNA can be individually identified and sequences recorded. Researchers announced, early in the year 2000, that they had completed mapping the entire Human Genome. Several years earlier, it was discovered that the similarity between the DNA of mankind and of those chimpanzees is greater than 99% identical! Wow! In February 2001, scientists announced a number of amazing findings like that. For example, the X-chromosome of a housecat is apparently perfectly identical to a human X-chromosome!
Christian Churches are getting "cornered". They feel they must either continue to deny the validity of DNA and genetics and evolution (and all of their consequences) [a Christian Fundamentalist attitude] or someday publicly acknowledge it. Most Churches had been earlier forced to acknowledge that the Earth is not flat, that it seems to be older than 6,000 years and that DNA exists, and a number of other things. Each of these confrontations with scientific findings has represented serious problems for the Church, but it has always gotten through. This upcoming situation may be more serious. The uniqueness of the human Soul, and therefore the unique origin of man, is one of the most central concepts there is in Christianity, one that cannot be abandoned or modified.
Some Christian Churches have tried to "harmonize" their beliefs with the findings of modern science. Some have even acknowledged the likely validity of genetics FOR PLANTS AND ANIMALS (but not humans). This was dangerous, but it has always been carefully phrased to make absolutely clear that mankind is NOT involved in what is being recognized. They are now getting close to being forced to acknowledge the astounding similarities between some primates and humans, mostly because the ongoing DNA mapping evidence is becoming so compelling.
Those similarities logically imply more than a remarkable coincidence. Statistically, those similarities are far too great to just be accidental. They imply that the two different types of beings, humans and primates, must have originated from an ancient common origin. This would then lead to the conclusion that mankind and chimpanzees evolved from some now-extinct common ancestor (the popular "missing link"), because, essentially, that is a definition of evolution.
Christian Churches might be able to tolerate evolution, as long as it did not involve humans. However, the Church has effectively dug itself a really deep hole. The teachings of two thousand years of Christianity cannot tolerate evolution that involves humans. If humans evolved from some ancient, primitive life form, and are actually very distantly related to lower animals, this necessarily brings into question a number of the uniquenesses of mankind. Specifically, if Christian Churches ever acknowledged that, would that imply that chimpanzees also have Souls? Could chimpanzees be Saved if they could be brought to comprehend Jesus somehow? These are incredible questions! Whether they are meaningful questions or not, media reporters would ask these things of Church leaders. NO Church is prepared to respond to such questions, because they cannot! ALL Christian Churches have ALWAYS had to insist on the separate Creation of mankind, with the critically important consequences of these matters like the existence of the Soul in mankind alone.
Christian scholars call this a "slippery slope" situation. If a Church took even a single step in that direction, it would be almost certain that huge difficulties would follow. OK. So maybe you'd tolerate the possibility of chimpanzees having Souls, whatever THAT might mean! Then, what about gorillas? Since even dogs have DNA that is moderately similar to our own, what about them? (Many pet owners have long thought that their dogs and cats have intellect and logic and even Souls). And then, what about cows, pigs, horses? And rabbits, rats and mice? And birds, alligators and snakes? And spiders, flies, and mosquitoes? And amoebae and paramecia? Even trees, grasses, and seaweed have DNA that is moderately similar to our own. Would this mean that even THEY had Souls and emotions and knowledge of right and wrong? After all, these recent announcements regarding the analysis of human DNA are showing amazing similarities even between trees and people!
This reasoning is obviously ridiculous, but who could define just WHERE the cut-off point would be? Which types of creatures would have a Soul, like us, and which would not? A little thinking about this quickly establishes that NO sharp cut-off point could possibly be identified. If a Church acknowledged even a slight concession to science on this point of Soul, there would be no end to the "slippery slope".
It gets worse! If a Christian Church were ever forced to the point of having to admit such a possibility, that would be clear acknowledgement that two thousand years of Christian teaching has been wrong on a VERY central issue (uniqueness of the human Soul). Almost immediately, individuals and groups would attack the credibility of ALL the teachings of the Christian Church, including the accuracy and authority of the Bible!
Obviously, NO Church could participate in having this happen, or even ALLOW it to happen. Therefore, ALL Christian Churches have felt that they MUST continue to hold to that core belief that mankind HAD TO HAVE BEEN CREATED SEPARATELY FROM ALL OTHER CREATURES. They can have NO flexibility on this point! If they ever give an inch, a mile of established Christian belief suddenly will unravel.
(By the way, many modern Christian Churches DO acknowledge a number of findings of modern science: the billions of years of scientifically established history, the probable method in which the Earth and Sun were formed, ocean formation, etc. In a variety of areas, Churches are able to accept the findings of science, EVEN when they involve many aspects of the Genesis story. There seems to even be some implicit tolerance of the concept of evolution in lower animals and plants. Just NOT the one point involving mankind evolving from and being related to other life forms!)
Most individual Christians would LOVE to whole-heartedly support the Bible's Creation story. They are somewhat discouraged from doing so because of the impressive findings of modern scientific progress that seem to contradict it. Sadly, many Christians have become SO overwhelmed by science that they look to base their Faith on actual archaeological findings of Noah's Ark or on scientific proof that Jesus actually did Miracles or on other historical or scientific confirmations of Christian statements in the Bible. That actually defeats the whole concept of Faith! (This 'Parallelism' premise makes such external documentation unnecessary and essentially irrelevant within the religious context.)
Scientists, on the other hand, generally don't hold Christian beliefs in high esteem. They tend to just ignore the concept of religion and Creation as irrelevant. They tend to feel that Christianity (or any other religion) is just a collection of unsupportable and undocumentable claims of people who do not understand rigid logic. Instead, they rely on the long-proven methods of scientific investigation and they arrive at solid results that they absolutely believe in. (Have faith in, as it were!) They are generally willing to stake their professional reputations on those findings. Most scientists don't intentionally have animosity for Christian beliefs. (Such a statement probably surprises a lot of Christians). They often just consider the Christian community as following teachings that cannot match the brutal logic of their investigations, so they often may not have much respect for Christians. Some consider all of Christianity to be irrelevant! Not as an opponent, as a lot of Christians believe, but as a non-entity! Whatever findings they arrive at, they are proud of them, and they will defend those findings against any attackers. Such attackers often include Christian scholars, for the defensive reasons mentioned above.
Individuals on each side of the issue have often been cultivated into disrespecting their opponents. As a part of this, there is an implication that it would be pointless to even TRY to understand what the opponents believe, because it is so foolish!
There is an incorrect assumption embedded in this viewpoint. THIS is where the flaw is in the logic. The assumption is that a person MUST be wrong if they disagree with your view, which you KNOW to be correct.
This does not seem like much of an assumption. Our daily experience consistently confirms the validity of such an apparently obvious statement.
For example, a coin is lying with a President's picture visible. I call it heads. You say it is tails. I am obviously right. You disagree with me. You are clearly wrong. And, importantly, We cannot possibly both be right. A coin cannot be both heads and tails at the same time.
Philosophers even have a name for this concept. They call it "the Principle of Non-Contradiction". As far back as Aristotle, this principle of logic has confidently been applied to philosophy.
Any subject that involves absolute answers is effectively the same as this. We often refer to such things as "black and white" choices; shades of gray are not an option. ALL of our experience has always seemed to confirm that two mutually contradictory conclusions cannot both be true at the same time. This has always seemed to confirm the assumption that is implicit in the statement above. So, we have naturally come to automatically ACCEPT the assumption as true. Later, we will make the case that this is NOT always necessarily true, and that there has already been a prominent example of such a situation (involving Einstein) a century ago.
It could be VERY productive if each side would attempt to consider just WHY their opponents believe what they do. It usually comes down to whether it is possible to believe that the other guys feel they have good cause for believing what they do or believing that they are complete idiots! Often, it is more convenient to just assume that they are idiots, being misled by: the devil (science) or their leaders (Christians).
In many "olive branches" that are offered as potential "middle grounds", some substantial concessions are expected on one or both sides in order to "harmonize" the two approaches. Either science is expected to ease its strict adherence to fact and logic, or Christianity is expected to concede the reality of some important belief. This situation has always doomed all "middle ground" approaches to failure. And that seems certain to forever be the case.
Considering the Christianity versus science debate, be practical
for a moment:
If this is actually correct, (and it has been assumed to be so for the entire period of analytical science), then it is destined that NO resolution will ever be possible. An example is whether evolution and genetic adaptation has occurred, and more specifically, whether mankind descended from lower animals or whether he was created separately and independently by God, as per the Creation story of Genesis 1. There IS no middle ground here. The two explanations are mutually exclusive. It's true or it is not.
This sort of situation has always been central to the conflict between Christianity and science. Clearly, no resolution seems possible!
This popular trend toward attempting to resolve the conflict involves quite a few (promising?) loose ends, however. There are definitely things that the "other side" believes that can not obviously be dismissed inside of "our" beliefs. The temptation (and popular tendency) has been to just ignore such things, and to retreat back to areas of "our" strength.
A brief example of such loose ends on each side:
It can be VERY beneficial to explore such things with an open mind. If such exploration can inspire some respect for the intellect of the opponents, some LARGER perspective might be possible, that might be able to include the two disparate viewpoints as subsets of a bigger picture.
How could it ever be possible to find a resolution for such intractable subjects?
Many of the world's best thinkers got involved in this debate. Pierre de Fermat, one of the world's foremost thinkers, believed and aggressively supported a version of the corpuscular theory. Rene Descartes, another of world renown, believed and supported a slightly different corpuscular theory. Christian Huygens, who was equally respected and known, believed and supported a wave-based explanation. These men were the intellectual heavy hitters of the day.
To clarify the scale of the problem, consider the following. If the correct nature of light is as a particle, this implies a certain "graininess" where you couldn't forever keep dividing an amount of light in half (dimming it down, as it were). At some point, you would get down to one particle of light, and it couldn't be divided further. (If you could, the pieces would no longer be light, but something else.) In contrast, a wave nature implies ALWAYS being able to divide it in half, forever. No matter how small a wave is, you can ALWAYS make it smaller. You either can or you cannot keep dividing it forever.
And EVERYONE involved knew that both sides could NOT be correct! The two descriptions were irreconcilably incompatible with each other!
Light did NOT have a simple, single, fixed nature, as had been previously thought. Its complex TRUE nature just APPEARED to us to exhibit characteristics of being a wave OR of being a particle, depending on what experiment we did. It is now generally accepted that any experiment you could ever do will only show light to seem to be a particle OR a wave, and NEVER both at the same time.
A VERY important point here is that NEITHER side had to concede the slightest detail to the other. No "accommodating" was necessary and both sides could confidently know that they could fully believe EVERYTHING that they had ever earlier believed.
Christians and scientists today, (and, in a similar situation, even Young earth and Old earth Creationists) face a similar situation. Some just find it easiest to try to ignore the other side. But many thousands of the world's best minds have looked for major flaws in the position of the other side, in order to be able to claim victory by default, and all have been memorably ineffective in showing errors significant enough to displace arguments of the other side.
Before Einstein, an individual scientist could find comfort in his belief that light was a particle OR in that it was a wave. Each felt that his choice gave an appropriate explanation to fill in a gap in human knowledge. As it turns out, they were all right! Since Einstein, we find comfort in a more comprehensive explanation that clearly explains all of the confusing discrepancies that had befuddled scientists for centuries.
A similar situation exists in the Christianity / science debate (the main part of which is known as the Creationism / evolutionism debate.) Christians have always found comfort in the conviction of their beliefs. Scientists have long found comfort in relying on extremely rigid logic and indisputable facts. This partially explains why each group defends its ground so adamantly. Each side has total confidence in its established positions, which are all based on compelling evidence, arguments, and beliefs. There is no doubt whatever that what they believe is completely true!
The science/religion debate involves events of a very distant past history, and often of a subjective nature, which means that scientists have incomplete information with which to work. This same limitation also affects the Christian argument, both from the antiquity of the information and from the fact that the Bible wasn't really intended as a precisely historical document. Both sides therefore have huge gaps in their information base, which complicates the debate even more than the nature-of-light debate had been.
Therefore, it seems reasonable that a scientist, who understands and accepts the sophisticated duality of light and matter/energy, should be willing to consider a Duality understanding of Creation / Evolution.
Therefore, it seems reasonable that a Christian, who understands and accepts the sophistication of the Trinity, should be willing to consider the possibility of a Duality understanding of Creation / Evolution.
(By the way, the Duality referred to here is NOT related in any way to the religious concept of Dualism! Actually, they are almost diametrically opposite. Where dualism requires an exclusive CHOICE of one OR the other of two opposing choices, Duality's premise is that BOTH of the two choices are equally and continuously and completely and permanently true!) Because of this area of confusion, this premise is also being referred to as Parallelism.
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The Lord clearly DID create the world and the universe.
From the strict Christian Fundamentalist point-of-view, He actually did
all this in six days! He began by creating LIGHT. In the process
of Creation, He invested man alone with a Soul, and therefore created him
totally separately from all of His creatures!
And He caused descriptions of all the events to get to
Moses and thence into the Bible, several thousand years
ago. And He realized even then that He needed to
provide for the future natural curiosity of His humankind. During that six days of Work, with incredible foresight, He arranged for fossils to be available to be found in many rocks throughout the world, even though no one would even know what a fossil even WAS for thousands of years! He arranged sedimentary rock layers and magnetic "striping" and radioactive dating information that would later suggest enormous time intervals. He arranged the planets and stars and galaxies to appear basically as they do to us now. He arranged for the DNA double helix and evidence of similarities between the DNA of His humans and the DNA He put in other living things, even though there was NO actual relationship between them! He also left innumerable intriguing clues (and some red herrings) for the edification of the curious scientific humans that would come many centuries later, that could support a scientifically self-consistent evolutionary explanation for all of our questions about the past and the Universe and ourselves. Christians generally accept the Genesis story of Creation as absolute fact, and therefore irrefutable, because it is the written record that God had Moses write down in the Bible, which cannot have any errors.
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It clearly took around 15 billion years for all of the natural
processes to occur that are presented so briefly in Genesis.
Science has also clearly established that LIGHT came first!
Incontrovertible evidence has been accumulated to prove that the stars
and Sun and planets and Earth and Moon took unimaginably
long times to form. Oceans and the atmosphere gradually developed
on the Earth. Sedimentary deposition and rock formation occurred
over periods of millions of years, and when animals and plants
occasionally died under very specific circumstances, a fossil was
eventually formed from minerals from water that got deposited in
the hollow mold. Radioactive decay of certain elements is a natural and predictable phenomenon, which can be used to reasonably accurately find the age of some of such very old objects. All of the creatures that now live and have ever lived came about by a rather slow, completely natural process of individual variation, naturally selective survival, mutation and evolution, with mankind coming about by this same process. DNA similarities between man and animals and even plants are therefore totally natural and logical. The entire Universe, including the Earth and mankind, evolved in a natural progression of events. The Universe and all of its contents are therefore absolutely logical, and a (scientific) history of the past could be assembled without even having to rely on the Genesis story. Science knows that it is forever a "work in progress" so most ideas about the explanations and inter-relationships about all of these matters are subject to future revision and improvement. Therefore, science generally describes much of their effort as being "theories". It might be surprising, but strict science still considers gravity as a "Theory of gravitation" rather than the "Law of gravity" that is popularly referred to. True science is INCREDIBLY cautious before claiming anything as absolute fact! But many of their "theories" are virtually certain to be true (like gravity!).
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By impressively and lovingly planning ahead, He Created a Universe that could be perceived in either of two very different ways, and He made sure that each of the two ways was absolutely internally self-consistent! He effectively allowed future men to believe EITHER a story that involved one really impressive week OR a story that apparently required phenomenally long periods of time, whichever gave each of them the most comfort! But not both stories at the same time!
Clearly, there are clues in even more inaccessible spots on and in the Earth and elsewhere in the Universe, that we may not find for thousands of years yet. We current mortals are not necessarily the final generations. With His unlimited knowledge of our curiosity and inventiveness, it seems obvious that many future discoveries await us that even Sherlock Holmes would have difficulty deducing. How wonderful that He has provided for our entertainment and edification. He thoughtfully arranged for us to keep from getting bored. At the same time, He provided a consistency of logic in His Universe, such that we could achieve a level of understanding of the Universe. Every future discovery will certainly be compatible with both His Book and scientific investigation! That is pretty impressive just in itself!
God has very carefully arranged His Book and His Universe to be compatible with EITHER approach to understanding. There are actually NO direct contradictions between the two stories, no matter what advocates of either side tell you. NEITHER story can EVER be disproven!
The vicious attacks between Christian leaders and scientific spokespeople have become so common and expectable, that many people on both sides have closed their minds to the ideas of ever finding compatibility with people of the other side. If they each would just be open-minded enough to accept (tolerate?) and digest the knowledge of BOTH sides, they would all have TWICE as much background information to work with and should be able then to achieve even better understandings of the complexities of this life the Lord has given us.
approach a single wall of the building, (the corners of the building
overhand the cliffs) and therefore you are only able
to look into the single, small, dirty window centered on that wall.
There are no doors. As you look in, you see a large, basically empty room
with a single round, brown, apparently old, wooden object in the center
of the room.While you are pondering what you see, wishing you could get a better view of the antiquish round object in the building, you hear the voice of another person who has apparently climbed up a different path, and who came up to have access only to a single small window on a different side of the building. That person is apparently now also looking into the room, through his single small window that is present on THAT wall.
That voice begins commenting on the object in the center of the
room. Comments about the beauty and reflectivity of the shiny
new metal surface really confuse you. The rectangular shape is
so wonderful! The greenish color of the reflection of light off
the object is beautiful!
What is going on here? Is the person speaking a raving lunatic? Is he really looking into the building? Is he blind? Or stupid? Don't you wish that you could get around the corner to maybe knock some sense into his head? You can see with your own eyes, and he is clearly wrong, wrong, wrong! Fortunately for him, there is no easy path around the corner, and it would require you to climb all the way down and then back up on the other path to get there. What is the result of this? You are almost certain to disbelieve and disrespect the other person, and therefore you are certain to ignore any evidence he claims to be offering you.
It also turns out that if you express what you see to the unseen companion, an equally disrespectful attitude is likely to develop in him about you. Each of you is absolutely confident of what you are seeing, so you consider that to be the absolute and total truth. The unseen companion makes statements that are not compatible with what you know to be the truth. Such statements are obviously to be ignored!
Add to this situation, that a reference Book, the Bible, happened to be available just outside the Christian window, which does not actually offer explanations for the differences you are arguing about, but merely absolutely assures Christians that there is really only ONE OBJECT in the room and that THEIR VIEW of it is CORRECT and ACCURATE.
What neither of you know is that the object that you both are looking at in the room (and which neither of you has actual access to) is actually an object shaped like most of a 55-gallon oil drum, lying on its side, with the top (round) surface facing you. The other person is looking at the side, which appears to be rectangular. The materials and textures and colors of the drum's side and top are different, which explains the other disparate findings of the two of you.
If the two of you choose to be so narrow-minded as
to only believe what your own eyes see, neither of you will LISTEN much or
learn much and neither of you will ever understand the true nature of the
object much better. Each of you sees something that seems to make sense
to you, and seems to give a complete and self-consistent and
comforting concept to you. Why look farther? Why even consider some
stranger's comments that seem clearly incompatible with what you
can see with your own eyes?
However, if the two of you would somehow be willing to give some credibility to each other, intellectual growth could occur. Each of you could have nearly twice as much information to build from. Eventually one or the other of you (maybe named Einstein??) might eventually realize that a more complete explanation exists of what you both saw. A moment of inspiration might be that it was a cylinder, lying on its side, with the end facing you.
It might even then happen that the companion notices that very thin line that rises up from the right edge of what he sees. He might then realize that that is probably the EDGE of the round disk that YOU are looking at. Prior to the constructive conversation between the two of you, he might not even have noticed that line, and certainly wouldn't have understood its significance. Your collective knowledge of the object is now greater than the sum of your independent knowledges! A whole new vista of understanding has been gained!
With just the information from the view through one window, neither of you could ever figure out such things.
Once the basic concept (of front and side views) was presented and found acceptable to both of you, the other details could quickly be analyzed to develop a decently complete idea of just what the object actually seemed to be. You two would start to ask productive questions of each other! Sharing your knowledge and insights would become exhilarating! Will the resultant conclusions be absolutely correct? Probably not, particularly since neither of you would likely figure out that much of the top part of the drum had been cut away, but they will certainly be a LOT more correct and complete than would otherwise have been possible.
The point here is that, it is easy to be very narrow-minded as to only believe what your own eyes see through YOUR window, without even considering that there might be different views that exist of the object in the room. This attitude would cause you to ignore or dismiss anything you might hear from those unseen strangers that you have no reason to respect. If such a person happens to say ANYTHING that seems to contradict what you can personally see and already personally know as the (complete) Truth, why would you even consider it? Actually, from the Christian side, considering the emotional intensity often associated with devout religious belief, your immediate response is likely to be violently defensive. Blasphemy! Heresy! How DARE someone try to pollute the purity of what you KNOW to be the Truth with such LIES!? From the scientific side, such emotional response is less likely, but often there is a general dismissal of "illogical" statements by "unschooled Christians."
As a result, neither of you will probably learn much about the true nature of what's in that room. Each group has a view that gives it certain information about the room's contents, some of which is uniquely visible from that view. Since the Christian group has been Divinely given a Book that insists and confirms that the view being seen is AN accurate and correct and true view, why even pay attention to strangers who are trying to convince you of strange things that are clearly not even compatible with the Book?
Each view makes sense in itself and does not appear to be incomplete in any way. With nothing apparently missing, why look to untrusted, unknown strangers for their peculiar (heretical??) opinions on it? An implicit assumption is made by viewers through each of the windows. We just stated that the Christian window was even accompanied by a Book that confirmed that the view being seen is AN accurate and correct and true view. The assumption is in extrapolating that to meaning that the view is THE one and only accurate and correct and true view. But, the reality is, that with just the information from the view through a single window, whether you realize it or not, which DOES show you the Truth, there are additional Truths that you have no possible way of ever comprehending.
This situation seems to be similar to the "Babel" situation. Without full and complete mutual respect and open and honest communication, none of us have any hope of truly comprehending a deeper level of God's Plan.
Once people would become willing to accept a more comprehensive communication between Christianity and science, we could then probably learn much more by comparing notes with each other. Unfortunately, because of the location and position of the building, it is fairly difficult for an individual to ever get a good look in both of the windows himself. Advancement will probably devolve to whether people can establish enough respect for those "other" viewers to come to accept what they say without any way of personal verification. But, if this can be achieved, each could start to ask productive questions of those other viewers to refine existing understandings of the actual Truth.
When the author explores scientific matters, such as astro-physics, great distances and apparently unimaginably long time periods are perceived, and evolutionary associations are acknowledged between all living things. When he studies his Bible, he sees and fully accept that Creation took Six Days and that mankind was created absolutely independently and uniquely and separately from all of God's other Creations. These two EXTREMELY different perspectives are not seen as any logical impasse, because of this Duality/Parallelism approach. As long as one doesn't try to "mix and match" between specifics that are seen in viewing through the two windows, there is never any confrontation with any actual contradictions. Each perspective is (individually) absolutely complete and self-consistent and obviously true.
It would only be if one tries to "harmonize" a Six-Day Creation in 4004 BC (seen through one window) with the presence of dinosaurs that died off 65 million years ago (seen through the other window), that one would be faced with apparent contradictions. But this example, and all others, are NOT actually contradictions! They only seem so because of an error in trying to mix things seen from the two windows. In reality, (through the Christian window), the dinosaurs probably DID exist, but they both came into existence AND died out and their fossils were created early in the Sixth Day of Creation. (This matter will be discussed below.)
God also knew that the inquisitive and creative and persistent nature of man would some day enable mankind to more carefully and thoroughly investigate human environments and history. With remarkable thoughtfulness, He made sure that fossils would exist, He provided DNA similarities of all living things, and many other intellectual artifacts. Scientists who would come to exist thousands of years in the future would be able to find appropriate evidence to be able to intellectually create logical sequences and patterns. Those scientists would eventually conclude that the human environment would seem absolutely scientifically self-consistent, and that a logical history of the past would also be (some day) absolutely logically self-consistent.
Since He has provided us with a duality of understandings of our Universe, each of which is absolutely internally self-consistent, we will NEVER have any way of proving one or the other wrong. We WILL always find that EACH perspective is "right" and can be forever confidently supported. He arranged for Creation believers to be able to conclude that He "planted" fossil evidence and even "aged" those artifacts so that they would give reassurance to the scientists who would some day find them, even though He actually whipped all of it up in just Six Days. He arranged for those people whose logic made them resist believing such a rapid Creation process, to eventually develop solid logic and science and to therefore be capable of developing a compelling scientific explanation of everything. This just means that the "views" through the two different windows of the analogy above, each show us the exact same Universe, but just seem somehow to differently present the apparent rate of the passage of time.
There are very few instances where the Bible and science stand face-to-face regarding established facts. The most prominent of these is the story of Creation in Genesis. The Book tells us what happened. Modern science also tells us what apparently happened. The time scales involved are extremely different, but we've already commented on that. The critical part would be that the SEQUENCE of the events described has to be in the same order. Then, even if the time scale appears very different, or even non-linear, the two perspectives could still be compatible. If the sequence does NOT match up very well, no realistic compatibility could be inferred.
This allowed God to give a brief, simple story of Creation to Moses for the primitive people of ancient times, while also allowing future human curiosity to find consistency in logic in everything, which would eventually include "fleshing out" the brief Genesis story with a more complete, scientifically-supported story.
It seems certainly intentional that the time scale that actually occurred while the Universe was created, was left vague. The premise of this Parallelism concept implies that NEITHER view has preference or precedence over the other. We will therefore NEVER know if He actually took six standard days, or 15 billion years, or even some other interval of time, to create the Universe! God might actually have taken two years to create everything. He might have provided one "time-lens" that made that two years appear as taking Six Days and another that made it appear to take many billions of years. We will never have any way of actually knowing.
As mentioned above, the critical matter is that the SEQUENCE of events be the same. The following presentation of Genesis 1, with comments regarding current scientific thoughts regarding the times of those events, is meant to make the case for this. There appears to be AMAZING compatibility between the two! Statistically, it represents staggering scientific proof that the Bible MUST BE true and accurate. There IS the one item that does NOT match up (the appearance of birds is one position different), but the matching of the sequences is otherwise quite striking. A mathematical statistical analysis of the comparison of the two sequences implies that there is far less than one chance in a billion that Genesis 1 could have been written with the sequence it has, without God's knowledge of the correct sequence. (the statistical reasoning.) Since science has only been able to determine the times of these events within the past few decades, the question arises to scientists: "How can you explain the writing of Genesis 1 over 3,000 years ago?" No one (except God) knew the correct sequence! How could any human author of that time know that plants came before animals, or that fishes came before land animals, or that Light came before everything else?
The actual MEANING of the word "year" or "day" is fundamentally different for Christianity and science. The two understanding happen to match up almost perfectly now and have matched up for the past several thousand years, but there was a time when they were very different. It is probably unfortunate that science and Christianity have chosen to use the same words for these actually different intervals.
My impression (and that of most of society) is that the scientific time scale is "linear". That means that each second or minute or day or year has always been of exactly the same intrinsic length, as described by some repetitive event, such as the rotation of the Earth, or its revolution about the Sun, or the number of oscillations of atoms of Cesium. In contrast to this linear time scale of science, the Creation time scale is seen as being non-linear, (at it would appear from that linear time scale) such as a hyperbolic time scale. (A chart showing such a relationship is below). A hyperbola has two straight lines called asymptotes that define its limits. Such a scale would have one asymptote (on the Christian time scale) in 4004 BC and the other asymptote being the 45-degree angle line that describes the identity with the linear scientific time scale. (In this diagram, the dotted lines represent the asymptotes.)
The 45-degree asymptote of this hyperbola would mean that our current year
2000 AD is virtually identically long in both scales and it began
at essentially exactly the same moment. This enables an indistinguishably
identical modern perception of a day or year. Even 2000 years ago, the
two time scales would have been virtually identical. The distinction between
the two would only have been significant before about 3900 BC. (For example,
3900 BC creation time might have been 3901 BC scientific time). Because of
that vertical asymptote, from a Creation perspective, nothing could
have existed prior to that year (4004 BC), so dates earlier than that
(in the Creation time scale) are meaningless.
But, looking at the chart shows that the line goes almost straight downward.
If we extended the chard downward to 1,000,000 BC (scientific), you can
see that the line WOULD exist down there, meaning that such a date
has real meaning. If a memorable event happened then, it would be recorded
in the year 4004 BC (creation). Extend the chart even farther down, to one
billion years BC (scientific), and that still matches up to some moment
during 4004 BC (creation). Effectively, this non-linear, hyperbolic time
scale would have the effect of "compressing" an enormous amount
of scientific time into a very short period of Creation time. (The
author realizes that this is getting deep!)
Regarding the question posed earlier, there are actually two different answers, depending on which time scale is being used! In the scientific time-scale, YES, certainly the year 14,613 BC occurred. In the Creation time-scale, NO, no such year could have existed. No date prior to 4004 BC (creation) has any reality. If something momentous occurred during the "scientific" year 14,613 BC, it would have been recorded as having taken place late in the Sixth Day of Creation (in 4004 BC or thereabouts).
A technically more correct way of describing the relationship between the two time scales is represented in the graph here. The Creation time scale would be along the horizontal (X) axis and the scientific time scale would be along the vertical (Y) axis. A hyperbola is drawn here, with asymptotes along a vertical axis (X = - 4004) and along a diagonal line (X = Y). This hyperbola would have an eccentricity of 2.59. (An exponentially shaped curve would also look very similar.) The 'modern' part of the curve has essentially exactly identical years in both scales (slope = 1.0).
In recent history (upper right in the graph), the curve is virtually identical to the angled asymptote, meaning the slope is 1.00000, and a year in one is the same as in the other. But at the bottom of the graph, all scientific dates much before about 4000 BC all match up to that very busy Week of Genesis (in 4004 BC on the Creation time scale)! This hyperbolic line is continuous and always has a one-to-one relationship, so every event that has ever or will ever happen is represented uniquely by one specific point on that curved line, meaning that there is one perfectly defined moment in scientific-time and one uniquely defined moment in creation-time. It is what mathematicians call a real function.
This particular drawing of the graph has greatly exaggerated the separation between the curve and the asymptotes for clarity. In reality, the angled portion would be virtually identical with the dotted line asymptote on this graph except in that tiny curved area, and the vertical portion would appear virtually identical to the vertical dotted line.
So! Did the Universe get Created in a Serious Week of Work about 4004 BC? YES, if we're talking about the Creation time scale. Did the Universe take billions of years to form? YES, if we're talking about the scientific time scale. BOTH statements are entirely and equally true! Matters such as dinosaurs are thus easy to deal with. In the scientific time scale, they appeared around 225 million years ago and the final ones died out around 65 million years ago. In the Creation time scale, they appeared during the Sixth Day and died out later on that same Sixth Day (leaving their fossils and all the rest).
This non-linear premise might actually be somewhat supportable by Genesis. If you think about it, the line on the graph must get steeper and steeper (higher slope) for really ancient scientific events. That would imply that the very first creation-day would have matched up to billions of years, while the second and following days would match up to shorter and shorter scientific time intervals. The first Day of Genesis only involves creating light, but it appears to match up with a scientific interval of many billions of years. By the time we get to the Sixth day, the slope of the line has changed so that (creation) Day only matches up to a small fraction of a billion scientific years. Shortly after the Creation, the non-linear time-scale curve would go around its curved part from its nearly vertical section to its nearly 45-degree angle section, forever getting closer to 45 degrees as time proceeds. A virtually 45-degree line on that graph today would indicate a virtual identity between the modern time-scales of science and Creation. This would explain why we see no noticeable difference today between the two time scales.
A scientifically non-linear time scale in the Genesis story might also even be somehow related to the fact that a lot of people of the Bible lived to around 900 years old! But that's a different matter and may not have any connection to the matter at hand!
This might also be a vague reference to a Big Bang event to begin
the existence of the Universe, for when scientists would eventually become
capable of comprehending the possibility of such things. Modern
science currently believes that such a Big Bang event occurred,
and various evidence suggests that this event took place about 15
billion years ago. (Notice that this Parallelism approach also allows a
compatibility of Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists.
Whether the Creation sequence took six days or billions of years
becomes a moot point!)
Logically, this seems to be a peculiar first item to create, if you think about it. Ancient people would probably expected ground or people to have been created first, then the other stuff. In ancient times, the sequence of Genesis events must have seemed very strange. Why plants before animals? Why water before plants? Why fishes before land creatures? Why light first?
From a scientific perspective, a LOT happened here. Early on, ONLY the element Hydrogen existed, the very simplest of all atoms. Gravitation caused clouds of this Hydrogen to collect in large balls. When a ball got extremely large, the weight of all the overlying Hydrogen squeezed and heated the Hydrogen at the very center. Once that Hydrogen got up above 100 million degrees or so, the Hydrogen atoms were moving so fast (that's what heat actually is, the speed of atoms moving around) that when they crashed together, they didn't always bounce off but sometimes fused together, a process we now call nuclear fusion. As a result, atoms of Helium were formed, the next simplest atom.
Eventually, the Hydrogen fuel would get used up, and the outward going radiation that was partially supporting the weight of outer layers would essentially stop. This would allow a further collapse of the size of the star, causing even greater temperatures in its center. Eventually, with massive stars, the temperatures could get high enough that the new Helium atoms started fusing together, creating more energy and even heavier atoms in the process, such as Carbon.
This sort of thing could continue (for the very most massive stars) with ever heavier atoms as fuel and even heavier atoms as results. At some point, after having therefore created nearly all the types of atoms from the initial Hydrogen, the star became unstable and blew itself apart, in something called a nova or supernova. This resulted in all those varieties of atoms being sprayed out across the Universe. With enough time, the Universe would get cluttered with such an assortment of elements and chemicals.
At a later time, a DIFFERENT cloud of Hydrogen, which included a mixed assortment of these other elements, gravitationally collected to form our Sun, and also our various planets, including Earth. There is reasonable scientific documentation for these various ideas, and collectively they are seen as being an explanation of how our incredibly complex Universe, with all its 92 elements and countless chemical compounds, could have arisen from just simple Hydrogen, given enough time.
The paragraphs above were an extremely brief presentation of the
field of Cosmology, a reasonably well-founded subject in science.
Note that there are some amazing consequences. Look at your little
finger. It is primarily composed of Carbon and Oxygen with many other
elements in small amounts. If Cosmology is correct in the above,
then every single one of those countless billions of atoms of Carbon
and Oxygen in your finger were originally fused together in some
extremely remote stars which later supernovaed! The concepts are
nearly as mind-boggling as the Bible's Genesis 1!
Also, note that right after the Sun was created (separated light
from darkness), we have the end of the First Day. The end of a day
would seem to have little meaning if the Sun had not yet been Created,
and so again, God was extremely logical in the sequence!
Research regarding the gases that are now coming out of volcanoes in Hawaii show that they include around 11.61% (by volume) of carbon dioxide and 79.31% (by volume) of water vapor. If these percentages were approximately true early in the Earth's existence, it would certainly explain large additions of water, water vapor and carbon dioxide to the earth's environment, given hundreds of millions of years of volcanic eruptions.
Note that NO oxygen came out of the volcanoes, so no oxygen was
in the atmosphere!
There is yet another important thing that happened to the atmosphere. The Earth is constantly bombarded by rather strong ultraviolet radiation given off by the Sun. Such radiation seems to be fatal to nearly all living forms. Therefore, the earliest lifeforms, such as blue-green algae, could only live under water, where the water protected them from that UV radiation. They certainly were producing a lot of oxygen as a by-product of their existence, but no land animals could yet have existed, because of that radiation. This confirms that fish were the first of all animals, again confirming what Genesis 1 told us 3600 years ago. After a lot of oxygen had accumulated in the atmosphere, some of those oxygen molecules were hit by cosmic rays from outer space, and altered into becoming ozone molecules. As these ozone molecules accumulated near the top of the Earth's atmosphere, they blocked and absorbed much of the incoming ultraviolet radiation. This had several consequences, but the most important to us is that it allowed animals to be able to survive without having to be protected under the water. So, through a complex but extremely logical process, it was finally possible that there be animals on the land (and larger plants too).
Isn't that interesting? Composed around 3,600 years ago, Genesis had told us that plants came before any animals, and now science has proved why that was true, because of the animals' need for oxygen that the plants first created. Science is not confronting Genesis, but supporting it!
For the record, the "uniform evolution" approach that
was long popular within science confronts the first of several
complications at this point. At seemingly the same time,
a broad assortment of very different new forms of life all
appeared, often referred to as the "Cambrian explosion."
The difficulty is that it seems illogical that a generalized
random process would initiate so many different types of life
at around the same time. There is moderate credibility in this
being a problem. However, critics tend to describe it as all
being simultaneous, while ten or twenty million years might have
been involved, sufficient time for millions of generations of
lifeforms to grow and possibly evolve. There are several later
examples of the same effect (not mentioned here) that were certainly
in shorter time periods, and definitely represent something that
uniform evolutionists need to explain. A substantial group of
researchers have concluded that there were bursts of rapid
evolution, within the otherwise slow and relatively uniform
evolution. In any case, the time periods involved are all so
long, millions of years, that a LOT could happen that we might
never have any evidence of. Science often has gaps in its
knowledge, some of which gradually get filled in at later times.
Enough fossil evidence of these and all following plants and
animals exists, such that sequences of subtle changes have been
found by scientists that suggest a logical progression of
how all these living things would seem to have come about.
A fairly continuous fossil record exists for some species
of plants, which suggests that later plants could have "evolved"
from earlier plants adapting to new conditions. This set of
scientific understandings allows scientists to be comfortable
with an evolutionary explanation for these events that they
can comprehend in a logical way and that they are comfortable with.
This might even offer a suggestion to science regarding
extreme cloudiness in that era, which I have not heard proposed
before within the scientific community. The Bible providing
evidence on which science can grow, imagine that!
A side note needs to be interjected here: The text being used here is the Christian translation in the King James (KJAV) Bible. This is translated from the Greek and then Aramaic and then Latin translations. The Jews have their own translation of the very same original text, which they call Bereshit. The Bereshit text for Genesis 1 is at http://mb-soft.com/believe/txo/jewgenes.htm. Specifically, Verse 21 reads:
21. God created the great sea monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, which the waters brought forth in swarms; and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was good. (However, Verse 20 also mentions birds, which confuses things.).
The Jewish text might therefore indicate a sequence where sea creatures were first, THEN creeping creatures, and THEN the birds. This actually exactly agrees with what science now believes, and so the match up is absolutely perfect!
Similar to the comments regarding that only a single thing, Light, was created on the First Day, please note that only fishes (and birds) were Created in the entire Fifth Day, and that a great complexity of Creation was kept for the last remaining day of the Six.
These two observations would seem mysterious, except for the
suggested resolution of the time scale discrepancy referred
to earlier, which not only removes the difficulty, but adds
to the credibility of Genesis from a scientific perspective!
Note the interpretation we make regarding "in our image" mentioned at the beginning of this presentation. We feel that a correct interpretation is that God "provided a Soul" which is what is meant by "in our image" and not that we necessarily have any physical similarity to God. Given this, all descendants of Adam and Eve would therefore have Souls, as per a scientific reasoning regarding genetics. It also makes clear an extreme distinction between humans and any other of God's creatures which can never be affected by any "evolution" or anything else that science might discover.
There actually are recent examples of similar evolution things. Several decades ago, modern medicine virtually exterminated the germs that caused smallpox and tuberculosis, and the agents that caused polio. Massive usage of antibiotics and other chemicals accomplished this goal. However, I said "virtually". Out of all the trillions of bacteria killed by those antibiotics, there were a few, let's say two, that managed to survive the antibiotics. Science would guess that those two had somehow "mutated", possibly as a result of the natural cosmic rays that continually bombard us from outer space. In any event, consider the situation AFTER that massive antibiotic use. Instead of trillions of bacteria having to share the available food supply, just the two were present. Can you see how they would multiply very rapidly, with essentially an unlimited food supply? Bacteria reproduce very quickly, in just a matter of hours, so those two could have had millions and billions of descendants within a period of months. In other words, the world again soon winds up with the trillions of tuberculosis-causing bacteria. But, do you see the one difference now? Since all of these NEW ones are descendants of the antibiotic-resistant two survivors, THEY are also drug resistant. You may note in current news that the medical community is extremely concerned about drug-resistant strains of a number of dangerous diseases, including TB. This is the scientific understanding of why this currently exists, as being a "natural" consequence of some individuals having a "survival advantage". In the case of TB, the recent cases are absolutely untreatable with any known treatments or medicines, so the patients ALWAYS die, a true catastrophe in the makings, and there is no way to avoid it in the very near future.
Of course, that was NOT humans, and there is the possibility that similar things do not happen regarding humans, but that is the basis for why science generally believes in "natural selection". In the event that some individual had a BIG advantage, like those drug-resistant bacteria that survived and had no remaining competition, the result is called "evolution". Please note that NO individual "evolves" into anything else, like in horror movies. Natural selection is a very gradual process that generally takes many generations of descendants before the result is noticeably different than before. In any case, whether it actually applies to humans or not, this is the correct explanation of what "natural selection" or "evolution" actually is.
By the way, there are some Christian leaders who think they are denying science when they say "You claim that evolution occurs, but you only talk about it happening a long time ago! It is obviously not true because it is not happening today!" "Natural Selection" (the more correct term for 'evolution') NEVER involves individual organisms drastically changing, but involves MANY generations to occur. Any Biology student can grow many generations of common fruit flies and experimenters have long seen Natural Selection results in countless experiments. If the student exposes a community of fruit flies to some kind of radiation, most of the flies might die. However, if any survive, and are fertile, they will be likely to genetically pass along whatever it was that kept them alive! Their descendants would therefore have a "radiation resistance" as a result of their survival. There may have only been a few that survived the radiation, but when they (the survivors) multiply, then all of the living flies would be resistant. There is no "magic" involved; simply the fact that only survivors can procreate!
The present drug-resistant TB danger represents another proof that it occurs, and that it is quite natural. Larger animals live so long that a hundred generations of them can easily involve thousands of years, and so "proof" of Natural Selection in them is far harder to establish, except through the use of ancient fossils.
This is all brought up here for a reason. Remember those two surviving bacteria that eventually "replenished the earth"? When science looks at the possibility of evolution applying to humans, they necessarily see the need for a VERY small number of beginning individuals. Thus, the concept of evolution virtually INSISTS on the existence of an Adam and Eve! In BOTH cases, it is agreed that you and I are direct descendants of (probably) two initial people. Science has no way of giving them names, but the Bible tells us they were Adam and Eve.
This combination of Genesis and science gives us a possible answer. Prior to Genesis 1:26, of making man in our image, there were many creatures populating the Earth. None of those creatures had SOULS! If science is correct regarding evolution, it could easily be that some of those creatures might have evolved into human-like beings. (This also offers an explanation of the fossils of primitive man-forms which have been found.) So, there could easily have been an existing population of human-like creatures PRIOR to Adam. When the Lord, in Genesis 1:26, made man IN OUR IMAGE, that meant that Adam had a SOUL, which no creature had ever or will ever possess.
This would have meant that there were two similar-appearing populations, the creatures that had evolved from the primitive creatures of Genesis 1:24, and the entirely distinct MAN who had a SOUL. When Cain left Eden, the Lord KNEW that he would later interact with those "creatures" and He gave him the mark. Nod and the wife and the family and the city then make sense, while not challenging any aspect of the Genesis story.
Later still in Genesis (look at Genesis 6:1-5) inter-marriage might have been occurring between the two similar-appearing populations. The "sons of God" then seem to be describing Adam's descendants, while the "daughters of men" might then be referring to the man-like creatures that had no Souls. Does it now seem obvious why the Flood was necessary? How else could the Lord have ensured that ONLY men with SOULS would populate the future Earth? (These thoughts are obviously speculations, but they are interestingly logical, better than other explanations for these matters usually seem to be.)
He created some big things but needed to tailor the possible understandings of those things to terms that both ancient and modern humans could comprehend. His Universe would appear totally self-consistent to both the Christian believer of the Bible and the scientist, who only wants to believe in things he can measure and analyze.
Notice that this does NOT mean that mankind is ACTUALLY related to other of God's creatures. Christians believe that we are distinct and separate from animals, while scientists believe that we evolved from lower animals. The Parallelism of understandings just allows each individual the choice of believing whichever viewpoint he or she comes to be most comfortable with. BOTH are completely and absolutely true! It is actually just more evidence of just how marvelous our Lord is, to provide this option for us.