DAYS OF CREATION – SCIENTIFICALLY

THE FIRST DAY

Now the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

It makes you realise that a Bronze Aged ignorant man could not possibly have known these things or even record them. But of course we are talking of Moses. A University educated man who could use the written word.

So are there any scientific problems here? No.

The Earth was formless and empty. Science would agree. Science states that there was not even any atmosphere, no oxygen, no water, just a formless molten rock.

The Bible then goes on to say that darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. This is fine too. Science thinks (remember thinks, there is no proof) that the early Earth was bombarded by other smaller forming baby planets that upon crashing into the Earth made the Earth bigger. Other solar debris also crashed into our planet, like meteorites loaded with water. At some point water formed upon the Earth and survived the searing heat. The water would have been very toxic, not like we know of it today. But that's okay, the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, calming things down, extracting noxious substances through newly chargeable atmospheric formations and cleansing from newly forming absorbing rocks. Science will of course use different names, like Dark Matter or Dark Energy, but they are within the same tracks of thought.

Either way, the dynamism involved here is so inspiring.

And God Said "Let there be light". God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "Day" and the darkness He called "Night". And there was evening and there was morning - the first day.

Anything scientifically wrong here? No.

The Sun had not been formed yet, but with the Earth haphazardly moving around in a dark void. God used elements, like hydrogen and helium perhaps, to collapse the gases into a nebula state that then in turn became optically active. This would have been very simple for God, a Spiritual Essence of Creative Construct. God then made the Earth spin, maybe very slowly who knows, but spin nonetheless, to achieve a lighter side and a shadow side to the planet.

The main difficulty here perhaps, if the word difficulty is the right word to use in the context of God, is in the initial material that God created, which is rarely talked about, a material hidden within the text: "God Created The Heavens". To get a grip of Creation we need to change how we think about light and dark. We generally think that things are dark until a light shines, be it a household light or the Sun shining on the Earth. However, from God, everything is Light. God is Light. God is everything, radiating His Glory in every direction. So when God Created the Heavens, He also created 'Dark'. Before the Universe was Created, everywhere was light. Everywhere was not dark. Everywhere was Everything. Everywhere was not nothing. Nothing comes from nothing. Everywhere comes from Everything. Dark does not create light. Light creates dark. God created dark. Yes, this is a conundrum. It is an enigma that puzzles our brains. Yet to make this out gives a better grip of a Creator God.

THE THIRD DAY

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear”. And it was so. God called the dry ground “Land”, and the gathered waters He called “Seas”. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds”. And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the third day.

Science is in harmony with God’s Word.

According to geologists, there was originally only one land mass, called Pangaea. The rest of the Earth was covered in seas. This mirrors the first paragraph. It is also interesting to note that from a biblical point of view it never rained on Earth until the Flood. We think, from a secular perspective, it didn’t rain much in the land of Pangaea either, maybe just the once or at best, twice a year. They could easily be wrong of course, just a little bit out and well, no rain. Biblically the early Earth was kept watered by streams and underground water, which all flowed from the central Garden.

As for the second paragraph, apples come from apple seeds, pears from pear seeds etc. And I am pretty sure all evolutionary commentary would put plants before animals. Pretty sure. But I would be wrong. Animal life evolved between 550-620 million years ago (yep, that is a long long time), whereas plant life only appeared by way of some green scum about 550 million years ago. This has led some to say animal life evolved under 550 million years. It is a dilemma because animals need plants to survive. And both need good bacteria to be present. Most of all, plants need carbon dioxide and the early Earth atmosphere was a mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. I think God’s Account fits best.

We have pondered that the early Earth may have spun much slower than now. This idea is linked to a time when we are only into the Second Day of Creation and during the Second Day there was no Sun and no Moon. Here on Day Three there is still no Sun or Moon. Without the gravitational pulls of these bodies on the Earth, who knows what the rotation speed was, certainly, it could have been slower. And even a year of darkness and then a year of light might not have been a problem because no animal life was yet present.

On this Third Day the emphasis seems more on vegetation and seed-bearing trees, not the vast variety of flowers and plants we have today, these all grew out from photosynthesis due to the Sun. Nothing can survive without the Sun, the very air would freeze, let alone the water. We must remember though that while nothing can survive without the Sun, everything can survive with God.

Nevertheless, we should pick all this apart a little. Firstly, there are plants that can survive on dead plants or the fungi of dead plants, if indeed the plants died through no light source on the early Earth. We have today parasitic plants called Myco-heterotrophs and this gives us a clue to how vegetation may have survived. Of course, I am not claiming all these ideas as facts, I am putting forward how the Days of Creation can be considered scientifically plausible. The information I am recording for you is from science. Large trees can survive not only for a year but for decades without light, this is due to their considerable sugar stores and slow metabolism. It is all technically tenable to have a slower rotating Earth back during the Creation Period.

Yet I hear you say, water and air would freeze over without the Sun. I know. I have just said it myself. So there had to be an energy source prior to Day Four in order that our current Day Three could be viable. A source not just of light but of heat as well. There are options to be had here for an energy source in the absence of the Sun, yet we must also recall that it was not for too long a period that the Sun was not about, so let us not get too concerned about this.

Nevertheless, within the gap from Day One to the end of Day Three, light would have come from either an illuminated Saturn, the glow of a nearby Nebular or the Radiance of The Holy Spirit due to the proximity of God. And heat may have come from either of these three sources too, or maybe a combination. The planet Saturn is very hot to this day. Also, the inner heat of the Earth’s new early molten core could have helped a lot as a heat source. We used to always assume the Earth's core rotates faster than the rest of the planet. However, scientists have discovered this data to be inaccurate and that the core is moving much slower. There is no science available to dispute that the early nascent core would not have contributed to a warm Earth.

The Earth was not teeming with life in these early times, how could it without the Sun. Yet vegetation is all very possible, even probable. We are led to believe that vegetation can grow on exoplanets out deep into the Universe, far from the boundaries of our solar system, exoplanets that orbit dim stars, maybe even Brown Dwarf Stars.

Therefore I submit that scientifically, there is no reason to dismiss entirely the notion of a vegetation covered ‘Day Three’, if the early atmosphere did not freeze solid.

THE FOURTH DAY

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth. And it was so. God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the fourth day.

Out of all the ‘Days of Creation’, this ‘Day’ gives rise to the most comment. For three reasons.

1. How could the Sun be formed after the Earth?
2. How could there be three previous days before a Sun & Moon
3. Many millions of stars are far older than the Earth

Therefore, we need to spend some time on this. Stars (or a Sun) are formed when fusion takes place by way of various gases and atoms undergoing tremendous pressure. Clouds of gas, or nebulae are common in the Universe. A gas cloud would have given birth to our Sun. God would have been quite capable of protecting the Earth from a sudden explosive materialisation of a Sun in the centre of our solar system. The Magnetic Field, vital for the protection of all life on our planet, is a remnant of this, as is the tilt of the Earth as the shock waves battered and unhinged an un-tilted Earth. It was Good. It created the ability for the Earth to have seasons. Moses would not have known this but crucially, he recorded the events in order as given to him by God.

As we know, there was ‘light’ already shining on the Earth, which could have come from the nebula, but the light before the Sun may have come from a planet. If the Earth was spinning around before the Sun ignited, then the other planets probably were too. One of these, according to scientific research (not me) was already illuminated, thus providing Earth’s early twilight features. If I were to guess, I would say the gas giant Jupiter would have been alight. However, science has the theory that it was Saturn, not Jupiter, that was an early mini sun for our solar system. Even today Saturn, so light if you could find a bath big enough to put it in – it would float, is ridiculously hot. Too hot in fact for science to explain properly, if at all. A study of the theory of an electric universe or of plasma physics is a requirement here, but in a nutshell, the hypothesis embodies Saturn as a small Brown Dwarf Sun, with the Earth nearby. The planets were in a different order to what they are today.

When God unleashed the fireball of the Sun, the effect on the solar system would have been gigantic, it is 1,700 times bigger than Saturn to start with. Such a huge new sudden presence would have, probably by solar winds alone, put out Saturn. Even today though, Saturn still gives off more energy than it receives from the Sun. So, the emergence of the Sun would have extinguished Saturn, probably crunching nearby satellites into rings, and the new Sun would have re-juggled the order of the planets as they all began to orbit a new solar centre.

Days are named from a light-time and night-time sequence. The first three Days of Creation could have had this very sequence, as the Earth turned on its axis from the twilight aura of Saturn into facing a dark area of space. It is important to note that in Genesis it is highlighting the concept “To separate the day from the night”.

The formation of the Moon is less problematic, there is a variety of ways it could have come about, the main thing is that science would have no problem with the Moon being formed after the Earth. As I have tried to show in the picture, the Moon would have loomed large in the sky in those formative times, breathtakingly big in fact. God's idea of a lesser light to govern the night was still in effect, a very bright light, compared to its luminosity today. The Moon was not designed to slowly move away from the Earth, as it has done and is doing. We don't always appreciate by the way how strong gravity is. We know the Moon's gravity effects the tides of our oceans, but did you know its gravitational strength also causes the ground to rise underneath us by a foot (30cms) as it passes by; it is incredible we don't feel it. The Earth of course causes an even greater reaction to the Moon. The Moon's surface raises far more than 30cms, in fact the whole Moon becomes distorted and looks more of an egg shape (although we don't notice this from Earth). The Earth's gravity captures the pointy end of this egg shape to slow the Moon's rotation, which is called tidal locking, thus we only see the one side, its rotation taking as long as it does to circle the Earth. Amazing isn't it.

Finally, regarding our dating the stars as being much older than the Earth. Personally, I find this to be neither here nor there. Genesis seems to mention the stars as just a footnote within the overall commentary. Only five words (at least in English): “He also made the stars”. It is almost like an afterthought. I guess God thought: Mmm, people will ask about the stars, even though they will never go to them, perhaps I can set them out in a way to help them with navigation. Anyway, what should I say, I should say something. Mmm. I know, I will just say I made them. Yes, that will do.’

Just as my own footnote, I find it interesting that God says about setting things in ‘The expanse of the sky’, rather than just ‘The sky’. Space is indeed a great expanse.