Many philosophers, scientist, and holy men throughout the ages have tried to answer one question. This one question permeates history and has inspired many great things. That question is: “Where did we come from?”
There have been many attempts to answer this question, ranging from the Big Bang theory to Creationism, but there is one that people continually bring up even though there is no scientific basis to it. I would like to talk about that one.
I refer to, of course, the Biblical story of Creation in the Old Testament book of Genesis. It begins, logically, in the beginning with Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 1, where we see the following text:
[Note: There is actually a second account of Creation in the book of Genesis, which is in Chapter 2. I’ll be talking about that there]
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
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Now let’s take a moment to think about this line. Before this point, there was nothing except God. Not because it’s the first line of the Bible, but because when you think about this rationally, this line is telling you that there is nothing, not even the base elements that make up the atomic structure, before this point. God poofed them into existence.
More than that, though, is that God existed before this point. How long? A day, a week, a year, a millennium? That’s the tricky thing when you talk about things like eternity. Most Christians will say god has always existed, since even before the universe was created. Problem is, there is a lot of “always” before the universe was created. So God sat around in a true void, not even thinking. Then his first thought was to create a universe, which probably was something along the lines of “Holy Me, this is boring.”
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
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So right after creating everything, God goes for a swim. Makes sense, after an eternity of doing nothing, creating the universe is probably a pretty hard exercise. I’d probably go for a swim too.
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
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This is the first obvious scientific blunder. Visible light is created by electrons within atoms in an excited state returning to the ground state (a lower energy configuration). I won’t go into the physics of it, but the basic point is that for light to exist, it needs a source. And so far, there is no source.
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
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So we have light (still no source), which is only just now divided from the darkness (how light and dark can exist without being separated in the first place is a mystery), and now we have what seems to be rotation (night and day cycle), all of which was done in the first day.
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
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So on the second day God creates Heaven, which was also created on the first day with the very first line of the book. God divided the water so that some of it would be above, and some of it below Heaven.
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
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Here we see God has created the land, and called the waters “seas.” It is on this day that we finally see life on earth as God orders the land to produce grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruits. There are no animals, and nothing about the lower end of the food chain without which all this would not last. We can assume that the plants get sustenance from photosynthesis, since God was kind enough to create light, although we still don’t have a source for that light.
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
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Here, we finally see a source for the light. According to the Bible, God created two lights, the greater of which would rule the day, and the other ruled the night. This refers to the sun and the moon, and brings us to another scientific blunder. While the sun is a great source of light, the moon isn’t. And while it’s true on a clear night with a full moon, you can still see pretty well, this is because the moon reflects light. It doesn’t actually create light, as the Biblical account implies.
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
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Here we have God adding life to the waters, and birds that fly through the air. An interesting side note, the original text that now commonly is translated as “whale” was translated as “sea monsters” for centuries.
Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
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In this last section of Genesis Chapter 1, we have God creating all the animals that live on land. He also creates the first two humans. One thing I’d like to point out is the words God himself uses. He says “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Make no mistake; the Bible clearly indicates that these words are His words, indicating that there were other gods at this point in Biblical history.
So, that is the end of Chapter 1, of the Book of Genesis.
“But wait,” you may be saying. “What about the seventh day?”
Well, the seventh day is not actually in Chapter 1, but it is the first line of Chapter 2, which I will do another day. Chapter 2 will also bring us the other story of creation, with some stark differences, a common theme throughout this holy book.
Thank you for reading it this far, and I welcome any comments you feel like giving. Just remember, civility up, name calling down.
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