Creation and Evolution
Continuing on from the concepts of how improbable it is firstly that the universe exists and how even more amazing that life survives, I now want to explore the possibility of why. Is there a reason for us to exist? Many people think that there is a controversy over the Biblical version of creation and the scientific community’s evidence of evolution. The dispute seems to originate among fundamentalist Christians and atheists, the Christian groups follow the Bible as the literal word of the Creator and the atheists believe that all existence is the result of accidental physical and chemical reactions.
Our present view of the universe, the one based on a universe created by a “Big Bang”, is only about fifty years old. In 1959 a survey of leading United States scientists included a question asking them to estimate the age of the universe. Two thirds of the scientists who replied said, “There is no age – the universe is eternal”. Even Albert Einstein, whose own theories indicated that the universe should be expanding, was reluctant to believe the universe was not eternal and static. Finally American Astronomer Edwin Hubble convinced Einstein to travel to Pasadena and examine the proof directly; following which Einstein admitted that Hubble’s observations, “made it appear likely that the general structure of the universe is not static”.
Einstein died in 1955 so did not witness the 1965 discovery by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of microwave background radiation. Penzias and Wilson were working on a microwave detector at Bell Telephone Laboratories when they detected an unidentified background noise, which they subsequently identified as the remnants of the big bang and for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize. The proof of a beginning to the universe caused a flurry of activity among mathematicians, physicists and astronomers as they combined resources to ascertain whether the universe was oscillating (first expanding and then collapsing) or whether it would expand forever.
The director of NASA’s Goddard Research Centre, Dr Robert Jastrow headed the study to determine whether the universe was eternal and oscillating or whether it had been created as a one-time event. After fifteen years of research Dr Jastrow eventually released his team’s findings, which were published in the New York Times Magazine on 25th June 1978 and said; “This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’ …for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak, as he pulls himself over the final rock; he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
In a period of less than half a century the view that we live in a static eternal universe (which had persisted since the days of Plato and Aristotle) has been shown to be false. The real universe is closer to an earlier concept of a created universe as portrayed in the Bible. Science has moved closer to being in agreement with the Bible than ever before, it has confirmed at least part of the first sentence; there was a beginning. Resistance to this axiom was at first widespread but weight of evidence has been undeniable. Science has always been notoriously slow to accept new theories, even when they provide answers to previously unsolvable puzzles. The resistance in this case may have been as much emotional as logical, because as the Bible was right in this case and there was a beginning it might just turn out to be correct in the further claim that there will also be an end.
Those who are resistant to the possibility of Biblical accuracy currently take heart from the remainder of the first chapter of Genesis. The world was not created in six days as the Bible says. The milestones of the six days of creation are enumerated in the Bible day by day, but the Sun does not appear until day four. If this is the case how did they measure the days before the sun was created, surely we can’t be expected to believe that days were measured in twenty-four hour blocks in anticipation of the creation of the Earth. Science tells us that the universe was created (the big bang happened) about fifteen billion years ago and our Sun was formed about five billion years ago. The Sun has therefore only existed for the last third of the life of the universe, as the Bible says the Sun was created on day four of the six days it appears that science and the Bible concur. Our solar system is one-third the age of the universe.
The Bible actually does allude to evolution, but as the method of creation is subordinate to the reason for creation (in the Bible view) only half a dozen verses (Genesis 20-26) have been devoted to four billion years of natural adaptation. The Bible lists the order of creation from aquatic creatures to land animals, mammals and eventually humans, which is the same order that we have established from the fossil record. The fossil record does provide some clues that evolution may have had some help along the way. In the Cambrian period 550 million years ago we have what is known as the “Cambrian explosion” of animal life, when with no indication in the previous fossil record countless new species simply appeared.
The Bible also refers to dinosaurs, although because there were a number of Bible translations, from Hebrew to Aramaic, to Greek, to Latin and finally to English, before dinosaurs had been discovered nobody knew what the Bible was talking about. In Genesis 1:21 the only animals to whom a size is attributed are the “big taninim” a term which has been translated at different times as whales, crocodiles and even dragons. The term “taninim” is the plural of the noun “tanin” which also appears in Exodus, when Moses staff turns into a “nachash” (snake) it is also referred to as a “tanin” (reptile). So that when Genesis 1:21 says that God created the “big reptiles”, it indicates that the Bible knew about dinosaurs three and a half thousand years before science.
Coming soon; prophecy and predictions – are we in the final days?
____________________________________________________
Don’t forget to visit my website, if you have a comment go to the forum, or to find out more buy my latest book.
Our present view of the universe, the one based on a universe created by a “Big Bang”, is only about fifty years old. In 1959 a survey of leading United States scientists included a question asking them to estimate the age of the universe. Two thirds of the scientists who replied said, “There is no age – the universe is eternal”. Even Albert Einstein, whose own theories indicated that the universe should be expanding, was reluctant to believe the universe was not eternal and static. Finally American Astronomer Edwin Hubble convinced Einstein to travel to Pasadena and examine the proof directly; following which Einstein admitted that Hubble’s observations, “made it appear likely that the general structure of the universe is not static”.
Einstein died in 1955 so did not witness the 1965 discovery by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of microwave background radiation. Penzias and Wilson were working on a microwave detector at Bell Telephone Laboratories when they detected an unidentified background noise, which they subsequently identified as the remnants of the big bang and for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize. The proof of a beginning to the universe caused a flurry of activity among mathematicians, physicists and astronomers as they combined resources to ascertain whether the universe was oscillating (first expanding and then collapsing) or whether it would expand forever.
The director of NASA’s Goddard Research Centre, Dr Robert Jastrow headed the study to determine whether the universe was eternal and oscillating or whether it had been created as a one-time event. After fifteen years of research Dr Jastrow eventually released his team’s findings, which were published in the New York Times Magazine on 25th June 1978 and said; “This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’ …for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak, as he pulls himself over the final rock; he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
In a period of less than half a century the view that we live in a static eternal universe (which had persisted since the days of Plato and Aristotle) has been shown to be false. The real universe is closer to an earlier concept of a created universe as portrayed in the Bible. Science has moved closer to being in agreement with the Bible than ever before, it has confirmed at least part of the first sentence; there was a beginning. Resistance to this axiom was at first widespread but weight of evidence has been undeniable. Science has always been notoriously slow to accept new theories, even when they provide answers to previously unsolvable puzzles. The resistance in this case may have been as much emotional as logical, because as the Bible was right in this case and there was a beginning it might just turn out to be correct in the further claim that there will also be an end.
Those who are resistant to the possibility of Biblical accuracy currently take heart from the remainder of the first chapter of Genesis. The world was not created in six days as the Bible says. The milestones of the six days of creation are enumerated in the Bible day by day, but the Sun does not appear until day four. If this is the case how did they measure the days before the sun was created, surely we can’t be expected to believe that days were measured in twenty-four hour blocks in anticipation of the creation of the Earth. Science tells us that the universe was created (the big bang happened) about fifteen billion years ago and our Sun was formed about five billion years ago. The Sun has therefore only existed for the last third of the life of the universe, as the Bible says the Sun was created on day four of the six days it appears that science and the Bible concur. Our solar system is one-third the age of the universe.
The Bible actually does allude to evolution, but as the method of creation is subordinate to the reason for creation (in the Bible view) only half a dozen verses (Genesis 20-26) have been devoted to four billion years of natural adaptation. The Bible lists the order of creation from aquatic creatures to land animals, mammals and eventually humans, which is the same order that we have established from the fossil record. The fossil record does provide some clues that evolution may have had some help along the way. In the Cambrian period 550 million years ago we have what is known as the “Cambrian explosion” of animal life, when with no indication in the previous fossil record countless new species simply appeared.
The Bible also refers to dinosaurs, although because there were a number of Bible translations, from Hebrew to Aramaic, to Greek, to Latin and finally to English, before dinosaurs had been discovered nobody knew what the Bible was talking about. In Genesis 1:21 the only animals to whom a size is attributed are the “big taninim” a term which has been translated at different times as whales, crocodiles and even dragons. The term “taninim” is the plural of the noun “tanin” which also appears in Exodus, when Moses staff turns into a “nachash” (snake) it is also referred to as a “tanin” (reptile). So that when Genesis 1:21 says that God created the “big reptiles”, it indicates that the Bible knew about dinosaurs three and a half thousand years before science.
Coming soon; prophecy and predictions – are we in the final days?
____________________________________________________
Don’t forget to visit my website, if you have a comment go to the forum, or to find out more buy my latest book.
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