Creation and it's place in faith Pt 1.

One of the many questions we as humans have the unique ability to ask is "Where did we come from?". We live in a world where actions lead to consequences; a knocked-over vase will invariably fall to the ground and shatter into thousands of tiny shards, pressing down on the accelerator of a car will make it travel forwards and so on. Therefore, via a process of backwards reasoning, it is easy to see why we, as a species, would come to the conclusion that there was some initial action, performed by an entity, that created our world and everything we see in it. Since we live in a world in which vases don't spontaneously launch themselves off tables, or where cars are capable of propelling themselves without activating their internal combustion engine without some kind of force behind it, invariably the source of this action is labeled God or something similar.

However, as explained in the previous post, none of the ancient myths regarding the creation of our world in particular carry any explanation as to the Universe at large. Indeed, it seems that the Gods of religions over the years were content to concern themselves with the immediate vicinity of a single planet. Our observations of the speed at which galaxies move and background heat radiation in the deepest reaches of the Universe have shown that there was indeed some cataclysmic event, colloquially known as the "Big Bang", that was the initial action. Yet despite this grandiose event, one that is worthy of note being as it is the creator of everything we see and are, goes completely unmentioned in the texts of every religion on the planet today. Really the modern rationalization in many moderates, a result of these recent understandings of our Universe and particular place in it, are not the result of the insight of their respective texts but rather their understanding of reality based on remarkably short-sighted viewpoints.

It's with this in mind that we can turn to the texts of creation myths with a critical eye and effectively ignore the bigger questions of the Universe as a whole. Unless one were to produce a religious text that gave mention to the billions of galaxies we see and detailed their creation process, we can safely assume the average religious text only covers the celestial or divine events that resulted in our world. There are many myths that could be analysed, but for our purposes we shall look at the creation story as told (twice no less) in the book of Genesis, the first religious text in Judaism and Christianity, and to a lesser extent Islam (though the Islamic recounting of the creation of the world is notably different in the detail). Many issues regarding the teaching of evolution and intelligent design stem directly from this book, with the assumed age of the Earth by creationists, a mere 6000 years, a result of literally counting back through the generations described in the Bible. We shall take the text line for line, pausing to add commentary where it is necessary and to discuss some of the major scientific errors present.


This translation is from the following website; http://library.thinkquest.org/29178/agenesisS.htm

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Immediately, on the very first line, the Bible gets it downright wrong. Unless the heavens, a term often used in the Bible to describe the immediate sky around the Earth, could be construed as the depths of space, this line grossly understates the necessary steps needed to create a planet. We know from the observation of other celestial bodies that planets do not simply pop into existence. There is a very clear series of steps we can follow. The denser elements, such as the majority of metals and importantly organic elements that give rise to life, are created deep within the burning furnace of a star. Stars are gigantic nuclear reactors, with their primary source of fuel being hydrogen. The processing of hydrogen into energy acts as a molecular laboratory, producing elements with higher proton and neutron amounts. Once a star goes supernova, after it has long since burned out all of it's hydrogen fuel, these elements are spewed into space. There they begin to gather back together through gravitational forces, and if the clouds of dust are fortunate to gather in an orbit around another star (see the rings of Saturn for a smaller scale demostration, or the asteroid belt in our own solar system), they will eventually gather together to form a planetoid. This isn't even mentioning the necessary prerequisites that bring the star into existence, a process that occurs deep in Nebulae, colossal gatherings of gases that provide the atmospheric conditions for hydrogen to ignite and produce a star.

2 And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

As was mentioned above, dust clouds only ever coalesce into suitably large bodies around other larger gravitational forces, such as suns. Further into the text this inaccuracy is even more striking and obvious. It's also worthy that the Bible describes the Earth as being covered in water. More on this particular point below. As a final note, it is odd that God is described as a spirit "moving over the surface of the waters". This is a distinctly tangible prescence for a supposedly omnipresent God. Indeed, this ability of universal observation is a trait that only seems to have latched onto God later on in the Bible.

3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

Even a child will tell you that light and darkness do not require separating from each other. Wherever light is produced, darkness will be eliminated. Light itself is a form of electromagnetic radiation, with visible light a stupendously small section of possible "bandwidths" of this radiation. What our eyes perceive is effectively this radiation, which travels in the form of waves, shaped much like the waves you see in the ocean. These waves travel into our eyes, interact with the various components of the eye, producing an image that is sent to the brain. Darkness itself is not really a tangible entity, as it is merely a state in which no visible light rays are present. Radio waves are another type of electromagnetic radiation, though the crests of the waves are much further apart. Shorter wavelengths produce X-rays and Gamma Rays, often used in medical application but deadly to humans and other types of organic life in large doses. Yet none of these different wavelengths produce any kind of visible light for us to see. Our eyes are blinkered to the vast array of the electromagnetic spectrum, an analogy eloquently expressed by Professor Richard Dawkins as "the mother of all Burkas". If the eyes of the Burka were an inch long, representing our perception of electromagnetic radiation, the Burka would be massive in size, with many miles of materials covering the body, and equally as much covering the head. So even when we humans may see darkness, "light" is still present.

5 And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

It is worth pointing out now that the Bible refers to a day passing. This is important further on in the text.

6 Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."
7 And God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.
8 And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Firstly, it's worth noting that God appears to have made a blunder in regards to the creation of the Heavens. Remember back in the very first line, God is described to have created the Heavens and the Earth. Unless this is a very badly written prose that fails to properly attenuate the present action of the protagonist (in this case Yahweh), the action of the creation of the Heavens is performed twice. Secondly, the "expanse" as described in this passage is a literal covering that is said to cover the entirety of the Earth. Heaven, in a very literal sense, is real according to the Bible, an actual tangible plot of land floating above the Earth. Our travels to the moon and expansion, however small, into the deepest reaches of space via satellites, have proven this theory to be utterly false. Also note yet another mention of a day passing.

9 Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.

Credit where credit is due, this description is somewhat marginally accurate. It is true that the seas as they are present on the Earth are not a permanent fixture. The geography of the globe changes over many millions of years, the production of plate tectonics which see massive sections of land moving and grinding against each other on top of a "bed" of viscous magma. These movements can be seen in mountain ranges, where plates have driven against each other literally forcing the ground up into the air, or conversely in the centre of the Atlantic Ocean in the form of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. However, the idea of water gathering together to form dry land is contentious. The net amount of land present on Earth is a result of two factors; one is the amount of water present that isn't currently in a vapour or ice form, and the other is the natural layout of the surface of the planet. Though the continents have moved away and towards each other over many millions of years, the general size of the land has remained constant. The unique shapes of the present continents suggest that at one point the entire of the Earth's landmass was a single Supercontinent known as Pangaea. Taking all this into account, the Bible's description of the creation of the land is remarkably simple in the context of what we now know about plate movements.

11 Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with seed in them, on the earth"; and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

There are a few errors to point out here. First is that, as we shall soon see, at this point in the creation story there is no Sun present to allow the plants to photosynthesize. Though plants are capable of living for short periods without sunlight, many species will quickly wither and die if they are not exposed to some form of light. In regards to the order of the creation of organisms on Earth in general, evolutionary science has shown us that animals and plants evolved at around the same time and parallel to each other. One did not come observably before the other. This isn't even mentioning the millions of years prior to any multi-cellular organisms being present, where the most complicated life were single cell Prokaryotes. Then again, many believers may disregard the process of evolution as being against the idea that God created life on Earth. This is a subject we will look at in greater detail sometime in the future, but for now it is important to note that plants and animals do not appear at different points in the observable timeline of life on Earth.

14 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years;
15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so.
16 And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
17 And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.

In this section, the "greater light" and the "lesser light" are the sun and the moon respectively. Immediately, we see a problem since the moon itself does not produce any light. As Earth's only visible satellite from the surface of the planet, the light we see is the result of light from the sun reflecting at various angles. As the moon orbits the planet it "waxes and wanes", creating the unique passing of light over the surface. The Bible appears to imply that the moon produces it's own light and given governance over the night. Still this could be seen as allegorical, but after all what we are supposedly reading is an accurate record of the creation of Earth. Stars are mentioned, but their composition isn't given. Indeed, with their position in "the expanse", the literal dome over the planet, the Bible completely and utterly gets it wrong on this front. We know what stars are; they are massive spheres that burn hydrogen. Our Sun is such a star, while the ones we see in the sky are massive distances away. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun, is 4.2 light years. Light years is a unit of measurement, with one light year the distance a ray of light can travel in a vacuum over the space of a year. This is a insanely huge distance, close to 9.4 trillion kilometres. Thus the Bible's idea of the stars, stuck onto a dome just a few hundred feet above the surface of the Earth, is downright childish. Lastly, it is only at this point that the sun is even created. Prior to this day and night was cycling somehow, yet even the most creative mind would be hard pressed to figure out how exactly this is probably without a sun present to define the start and end of each day. God may have created light prior to this and separated it from the darkness, but there is no mention of the passing of that light over the Earth, or indeed if it does pass at all.

19 And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

As we have seen in the previous paragraph, this is now technically the first day.

20 Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens."
21 And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."
23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Again like the idea of plantation being present before animals, evolutionary speaking birds did not come before land animals. Modern day birds are direct descendants of Dinosaurs and other such therapods. While there is some accuracy in water-bourne organisms coming before land animals, water being the optimum environment for life to emerge, it is still after the production of plants, again events that did not happen separately but concurrently with each other.

24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so.
25 And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Since in the previous lines no mention was made of single-cell organisms or dinosaurs, it's no surprise then that land animals are all created at once in a similar vein. This is again a gross simplification, though not as starkly inaccurate as the previous order. However it is again noteworthy that land animals and birds have evolved in tandem with each other, and indeed land animals far predated their flighted cousins.

26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

It may be a moot point to bring this up before we have fully discussed the issue of evolution, but the spontaneous creation of humans is again inaccurate to reality. Modern humans, like every other organism, are the result of millions of years of evolution. In our case we diverged from the "Great Ape" families such as chimpanzees and bonobos some 2.5 million years ago. It is also odd that God would say "let Us make man in Our image". God is supposed to be a single entity, the only entity present since the beginning of time. Just who is this "Us" and "Our" that God refers to? Even more telling is that God mentions "Our image". This suggests that God, anthropomorphically speaking, bares at least a passing resemblance to humans. Of course, this idea of personifying deities is nothing new. The pantheon of Greek gods all had distinctly human traits associated with them. Thus it is no surprise this same occurrence happens with the God of the creation story. In this sense, it is God who resembles us rather than we resembling God, a theme that I shall discuss in further posts.

29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so.
31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

It is worth pointing out that, while as omnivores we are capable of eating a variety of food substances, the vast majority of plants and meats are not suitable for human consumption. In mild cases they may induce vomiting and in more severe cases death. Even in relatively biologically benign countries, such as the UK, many berries found on trees and bushes contain deadly chemicals such as cyanide. Uncooked meat in particular can be dangerous, with shellfish (any kind of organism that "sifts" it's food in order to eat) a major cause across the world. A counter argument to this would be that this was the perfect "Garden of Eden" as discussed later in the book of Genesis, though at this point there is no distinction between the plants of Eden and the plants outside of this garden.

Part 2 coming up within the next few days.