n the first chapter I suggested that science is not the enemy of Christian beliefs, but is rather an
ally in that scientific discoveries point towards a Creator/designer. In this chapter we will explore creation and the Christian claims surrounding this topic and we will take a look at how the Bible and
scientific claims agree.Often, non-Christians criticize the non-scientific way in which the Bible portrays the story of creation, and also I have heard Christians make apologies for
the fact that the Bible is not very scientific. This is an unfair criticism. It is extremely important to place the book of Genesis into its cultural context and then see how it stands up to criticism. Genesis is perhaps about 3000 years old, and was given to Moses as an explanation of how God brought the world into existence. Moses then passed this information on to people who were completely uneducated, indeed a nation who had been in slavery for 400 years. If God had given Moses a discourse on Quantum Physics, who could have understood it? The Bible was given to foretell and explain salvation’s story, to produce faith and an intimate personal relationship with
God, not as a book to be dissected like a scientific journal.Rather than compare the Bible to the latest scien
tific journals, let’s begin by comparing the Bible story with other creation stories believed by the peoples of the world at the same time. The Zoroastrian religion about 1000 years before Islam, believed the world was a continuous battle between many gods, both good and evil. In ancient India, the home of Hinduism, the world was portrayed as resting on a large elephant. The elephant was standing on the back of a very big turtle, and the ancient Greeks believed that there was a god connected to different elements, emotions, etc.,
e.g. storms, lightning, floods, love, war and disease. To the ancients, the world was made when thegods were fighting, or when one god had been split into two parts, making male and female. The book of Genesis, when compared to the beliefs abounding at the same time, is very different from ancient creation myths. Although it was never given to Moses as a
scientific discourse, it incidentally corresponds remarkably with most modern theories of the origins of the universe.
Let’s examine some of the Bible’s claims. God created the universe out of nothing, He simply spoke it into being; ‘and God said’. Theologians call this ‘creation ex nihilo’. The first thing He created was the ‘heavens’. This does not mean that He created paradise, the place where He dwells, but rather the ‘cosmos’ which we call ‘space’. Until recently, the idea of creation from nothing had been ridiculed as crazy; however, many reputable cosmologists now believe that this is exactly what happened.
In a recent essay, the cosmologist Owen Gingerich explains that at the moment scientists now call ‘Time Zero’, the moment one 10th (43) of a second before the beginning (10 with 43 zeros), the universe as we now understand it was a ‘dense dot of pure energy’, so small that it could pass through the eye of a needle. Perhaps the easiest way to understand this would be to think of it as a seed of the universe. Just as all of the information to grow an oak tree is on an acorn, the information for the universe was within this dot/ seed of energy. Through some ‘cause’, this dot of pure creative energy bursts and begins expanding at immeasurable speed and force.
Gingerich explains that;
It is an amazing picture of pure and incredibly energetic light being transformed into matter, and leaving its vestiges behind.1
The expansion of the universe from ‘Time Zero’is what most scientists in this field call the ‘Big Bang’ theory. In the beginning this universe was a void, but as gases expanded and fused, the universe was created. We have no idea exactly how long the universe was expanding before God began the rest of creation. Science believes the age of the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years, but the Bible does not give any time limit. Genesis simply tells us that it was empty, it calls the planet earth ‘formless and empty’, and that darkness was over the deep, with the Spirit of God hovering over the waters (Genesis 1). The words ‘formless and empty’ suggest the process of fusing gases, which eventually form a surface for water which was in this case in the darkness of space. All of this is forming before God announces the end
of the first “day”. At this point there is total darkness in space, and in my opinion no time as we understand it. Scientist calculate their 13 billion years using different criteria and counting back, however, in order to have a day in human terms, (twenty four hours) we need a sun and a moon, or at least light and darkness, and these did not exist in our solar system during this period.
Then God creates light. We have no idea about this light except that it is likely a manifestation of the energy and presence of God within the area of the new universe. This is the ‘first day’ of creation (Genesis 1.v 3-5). God then creates the gravity and atmosphere, and the ‘water above’ it’s like a greenhouse effect. God creates the seas, the land, the plants and animals, and notice that throughout the text he says ‘according to its kind.’ This shows God placing the limits of species, that each thing created must be to its own kind, and it has remained so to the present time. Some scientists are still trying to naturally mate different ‘kinds’ of animals, like a sheep with a goat, but with no success.
God then creates the sun and moon, but only after the creation of plants, etc. Please note that the moon is created after the earth and perhaps a very long time after the beginning of creation. It is a powerful testimony to the Bible that the age of our moon is believed by many scientists and cosmologists to be only a few days older than the first human beings, and this is an annoying scientific anomaly. When the Americans designed the landing module for the moon they estimated that without moisture, the moon would have dust which was approximately seven kilometres deep, so the landing module was designed with special legs to sit on this dust. They were basing their plans on the assumption that the moon was several billion years old. When the craft landed it sat down on solid rock and later measured the depth of dust at an average of 10 cm. This places the age of the moon at no more than 10,000 years. The Bible story makes the moon not much older than the first human being, and strangely enough scientists have no explanation for this phenomenon, although it must also be recognised that many evolutionary scientists are now refuting this data. See notes for just a few sources of this information.
Equally puzzling is the fact that there is no scientific explanation for how a prophet called Isaiah, writing about 800 years before Jesus Christ, knew that the earth was in the shape of a circle. Until only a few hundred years ago it was believed that the world was
flat (see Isaiah 40:22). The book of Job in chapters 38-41 tells of star systems in detail, and an incredible description of a dinosaur like creature. How could the writer of Job know about start systems that we cannot see with the naked eye? Was the canopy of water acting like a telescope, or did God simply tell him what to write?
But let’s return to Genesis. On the sixth day ofcreation God then creates the first human being. James Ussher, a 17th century theologian, calculated that the creation of Adam happened about 6,000 years ago, by adding the generations and life-spans of people recorded in the Bible. Modern evolution theory suggests that prehistoric ‘man’ is at least one million years old, but ALL scientists, geologists, archaeologists and cosmologists agree that civiliza
tion is no more than five or six thousand years old, a date similar to Ussher’s.2When one reads the Greek version of the Old Testament called the ‘Septuagint’, one makes a fascinating discovery about Genesis 1:27 which speaks of the creation of men and women. The gender of the text may be read as neuter and singular. Therefore, the text should possibly read ‘male and female created He it’.3 There is a textual argument to say that the first human being was not a male or a female, but both in one body, an androgynous being. Is this the answer to the question, ‘why do men have nipples’? In the gospels Jesus told the Pharisees that in heaven there will be no marriage. Will those who spend eternity with God be androgynous beings as the angels are presumed to be, and in a sense returned to the original state of the first person?
What does modern science have to say about the human body in relation to this?All human males have the same number of male and female chromosomes, 24 X and 24 Y. Females have only X chromosomes, the ‘female’chromosome. Human males also have exactly the same amount of male and female receptors. This means that if a man takes certain hormones, which he no longer produces naturally, then he will grow breasts and can even in some cases produce milk.
The Greek version of the Bible strongly suggests that male and female were in one being, a being ‘made in the image of God’, who is strictly neither male nor female.4 Then we have the creation of woman in Genesis 2: 21-25. The word translated ‘rib’ is one of two possible translations. The other is ‘side’, a word meaning half. The same word is used elsewhere (Genesis 15: 10) to describe cutting in half, and in light of the later part of the passage saying the ‘two shall become one flesh’, I would suggest that rib is a poor translation. It was traditional to translate the word as ‘rib’, because the men who translated were not at all happy about the idea of woman being an equal half, and sadly this tradition has continued.
In other later religious writings such as the Greek myths, men and women were created when a god split in half, and the philosopher Plato writes about the first human being as an androgynous person. In both the ancient and modern language of many cultures this idea exists predominantly and many people speak of their partner as their ‘soul mate’, their ‘other half’, or ‘better half’. A huge percentage of romantic songs portray the idea that a person alone is not entirely whole, but missing half of the perfect equation. The Bible suggests that male and female were once perfectly united in one body and this being was in ‘the image and likeness of God’, a perfect being in a sense. I believe, from observing human beings, that this original perfection is like a latent memory written into our DNA, a compelling desire to be perfect as we once were. It is fascinating to me that people all over the globe associate the union of two people with the idea of perfection, of eternal love, of ‘love which lasts forever’, love made in heaven, etc. The words eternal, perfect, heaven, are used in thousands of songs, the idea being that if you find your true ‘other half’ then you will experi- ence perfection which lasts forever.
Do people have a silent instinct within them which seeks a perfection now lost? When one examines the number of people involved in religions, in self-development programs, in the new age mystery cults and sects, and even in the desire to vacation on so-called “paradise” islands, it is not hard to imagine that humans unconsciously seek to be perfect as our original ancestors were.
In summary, the Bible was not written as a scientific document but to produce faith and that, compared to other ancient creation stories, the Bible doesnot contradict scientific discoveries. The Christian teaching of ‘creation ex nihilo’, ‘creation out of nothing’, is substantiated by modern cosmology. The age of space being billions of years old is not contradicted in the Bible, as billions of years may have
passed before the end of the creation of the first day.The age of the moon being only as old as civilization is shown clearly in the Bible as the moon is created on the fourth day, and not in the original expanse of space. Job and Isaiah, written 3,000 years ago5, reveal knowledge of strange creatures, star systems, and a round earth. The Bible shows civilization as
about 6,000 years old and all scientific data agrees with this. The Bible explains the creation of men and women with incredible agreement to modern understandings of human anatomy. The Bible’s claim that the original “man” was ‘in the image and likeness of God’ is a good answer to the human quest for that ‘perfect other half’.
God never intended the Bible to be used as a scientific handbook, however, even after 3,000 years this incredible revelation can stand up to the mostrigid scientific scrutiny. However, we should never try and make the Bible fit science, for science is always renewing its discoveries as it continues to unveil the truth of God’s glory. Also, most of us are aware of the urge within to find perfection. Many people spend countless hours on the internet, or sleeping with many partners in the search of their ‘other half’, believing blindly that this union will bring ‘eternal happiness’. I believe that perfection is found in only one person, Jesus Christ, and the perfect peace we seek is found in being united to Him, not another fallen human being.