Quote:
Originally Posted by Pokerlogist
Some people wrongly think that Biblical Creation says that God created humans from nothing, like we popped up from "thin air". In fact, the Book of Genesis doesn't say that at all. Everything else in the universe, except humans, was created from nothingness or from something unspecified. But for humans, the Book says that Adam was uniquely created from "dust" rather than nothingness. (I mentioned this in an earlier post). "Dust" is not thin air and it is not nothing either. Why the exception? Why does the Book of Genesis go to the trouble of specifying this? Why choose "dust" over nothingness or over some purely inorganic material? Well, what dust is composed of ? We know that dust typically contains non-living materials and, more importantly, dust typically contains microorganisms. For example one study of African outdoor dust found the most abundant bacterial species, during the dust event, grouped in three different phyla: (a) Proteobacteria: Rhizobiales, Sphingomonadales, Rhodobacterales, (b) Actinobacteria: Geodermatophilaceae; (c) Firmicutes: Bacillaceae.
Could it be that as a way to create humans God decided to invigorate other living things, namely microorganisms? Choosing "dust" instead of some totally dead substance or instead of nothingness would make sense if that were the plan. So the Book of Genesis' account could very well imply that we humans are descended from microorganisms. This belief is also in accordance with the Theory of Evolution, while the "thin air" creation myth conflicts with the Bible. Bible literalists should take note.
You could take it even further. While I don’t believe for one second that there was any scientific insight in the oral traditions of the Hebrews that later became compiled into the Genesis creation account, it is possible to reconcile it with much of what modern science says about the origin of the universe. You just can’t take it literally, and you have to realize that the Genesis account is a fable, a story serving a moral purpose, not necessarily a totally realistic account.
First of all, Genesis says it took God six days to create everything. Why? God is omnipotent; presumably just by divine will it could all have been done instantly. What is the message behind the fact that it was done in six days instead? Remember, we’re dropping the literal reading here, so the true message is that creation was not an event, but a process. Everything did not instantly spring forth as we now see it, but rather developed over time. Since it’s not a science book, the details are omitted as to how long it took (plus the Hebrews likely would have had no real understanding of the number 13.7 billion or any way of even expressing such a large value).
The first day: “Let there be light”. Well, the first “day” in our universe corresponds to the Big Bang and the inflationary universe. At the earliest moments after the Big Bang, the universe was dominated by radiation. It’s would not have been visible light, but gamma rays at the high energies imvolved, but close enough, especially to prescientific people who would not have understood what gamma rays are and that they are light that has a wavelength too short to be seen.
Second day: creation of the firmament - corresponds to creation of matter/antimatter pairs from the energetic radiation filling the universe. Third day - starts to get a bit more convoluted since plants were created and we aren’t there yet in a scientific account, but gathering the waters and creation of lights in the firmament could correspond to the vcombination of electrons and protons to form neutral atoms, which made the universe transparent to light.
From there the correspondences become more obvious; creation of the stars and sun corresponds to scientific models of stellar formation. Days 5 and 6, dealing with creation of animals and humans correspond to evolution.
Again, I’m not suggesting any accuracy in the Genesis story; the story was not intended to be accurate scientifically. The point is that it is possible to reconcile religious belief with scientific accounts of the universe. Believers would be much more convincing if they did not deny scientific reality and instead look to reconcile with it. Science is necessarily mute on the existence of any deity; it does not imply atheism as many theists on here seem to think.
Last edited by stremba70; 08-24-2021 at 10:45 AM.