Arguing Science and Faith, Reason and Religion, is probably the oldest task in philosophy. Since I am a Christian, I search for ways to reconcile differences between beliefs I was taught, and logical scientific observations. Why couldn't God have created the universe in a way that is scientifically sound? The first thing we have to realize to bring science and faith closer is that God is not bound by time. For further reference see any prophecy in the Bible.
God is not eternal as we understand it. He exists in a state outside of time. Imagine for a second a cup of water that you or I poured. As we look at it, we can see the top and the bottom. We can choose to put our finger as far into the glass as we desire. And we can look at it with naked eyes and see it as a whole, or with a microscope to see each molecule. Yet the glass is holding all of the water; It is confined to the cup. God's cup is our universe. And God's water is space-time.
Genesis 1: 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
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.
Thus we set our stage with Genesis 1:3. If God created the light, then God existed before light. Light must emanate from something, so he must have created a light source. The Big Bang theory is often criticized by Christians. They jeer scientists, guffawing after a dinner at Applebey's after church saying, “Yeah, God said it, and BANG! There it was!” Big deal goofus. I pose this question to you: If God said it and it happened, doesn't it seem obvious that you are merely agreeing with a Big Bang
God said "Let there be light," and that was the first drop of our universe starting to form the Glass of water in his hands. The Big Bang theory (which coincides with Creationist beliefs) is closely tied to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. By reversing the time line of the universe's creation using Einstein's theory, the origins of the universe trace back to an infinite amount of heat and mass. Something that is infinite must be supreme, and God is supreme. So take a chill pill.
Pay attention now; your blood pressure is about to rise. The universe, according to scripture, did not just pop into being as it is today. 13.7 billion years ago (to the nearest 10 -47th of a second) that we can retrace (yes, .1 with 47 zeros in between), the universe was spoken into existence (Big Bang) and it began emitting light. Then in the second half of verse four, he divided the light from the darkness. How does this prove that the universe was not created as it is now? Well since darkness can only exist when something impedes the light, God could not have made stars and opaque celestial bodies simultaneously. His creations over time spawned planets (Earth 4.7 ish billion years ago) and whatever else the celestial chain reaction caused when God divided the light from darkness.
In Verse 5 God called the light Day and the darkness Night. A way to count time was created. 2 Peter 3:8 says "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Some folks try to take this literally as 1 day = 1k years. The verse is simply trying to explain God is not concerned with time. What is a day? On Earth, 24 hours. On Jupiter it is 10 hours, and on Venus it is 243 days. Yes, days. So time is relative. Enter the Theory of Special Relativity.
According to the theory of Special Relativity, light and time are unified in the space-time continuum. This supports the argument that God created not only the universe, but time as well. Being their supreme creator, he is not bound by the universe nor time. We cannot see into the future because we can only see our drops of water: days and nights, minutes and seconds. But for God, time is nothing more than a Glass of water to put his finger in. He poured the water, he made the glass, and it grows ever bigger.
Yet more wood for the creationist fire is found in Einstein's theory. A particle with weight cannot travel faster than the speed of light. The faster something with mass gets, the harder it is to further increase its speed. Photons, however, travel at the speed of light because they have no mass. If they did not travel at the speed of light, they would have no energy, and therefore not exist. In order for God to exist apart from the universe and time, his makeup would have to be absent of mass and matter. This is supported by John 4: 24 which says “God is a spirit.” I am pretty sure that Spirits don't have mass or matter (unless you watch Ghost Hunters on TV).
God created the universe in steps, and is not bound by time. So there is absolutely no reason to bicker about how long it "took" him to create the universe. The question is not IF God has the power to create all of this in 7 days. The question is why would he? It is time to stop putting God's abilities in a week-long box. God called light forth and then created darkness and separated them. Separate actions. Moses this a day because it's something he could grasp. God is the Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending. There is no day to God. And when we move from this life and into eternal life, it will be outside of time. We will be looking back into a glass full of water.
No comments:
Post a Comment