The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

What about the creation of the universe, anyway? We’re pretty sure no one was there to record it, so where did the steps come from? Why those exact steps? Is it just a story made up to explain how the world came to be, or is it something more? I certainly don’t know, but I can draw some comparisons.

For example:

Let’s assume the Big Bang theory is correct. Does that rule out the biblical creation? I don’t think so. According to popular science, the only part of the universe that existed was a black hole; there was nothing else. The bible says “In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters.” In other words, there is nothing. If you want to take it a step further, you can take the words “In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth” to mean He was assembling all that went before into the form of a black hole, preparing the Big Bang.

“And God saith, ‘Let light be;’ and light is.”

And science says “During the first three minutes of the universe, the light elements were born during a process known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. This set loose the initial flash of light created during the Big Bang.” Wow! That works!

“And God saith, ‘Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters, and let it be separating between waters and waters.’”

I know I’m stretching a point here, but substitute dark matter, or quarks, or whatever particles were originally part of the Big Bang, and you can see it as a sea of unbounded material.

“And God saith, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be collected unto one place, and let the dry land be seen’ and it is so.” In the simplest terms, this is exactly what the scientists say happened during the Big Bang – particles became attracted to each other, clung to each other, and formed objects, separating the “dry land” from the “waters.”

“And God saith, ‘Let the earth yield tender grass, herb sowing seed, fruit-tree (whose seed [is] in itself) making fruit after its kind, on the earth.’”

And the scientists say “Cells resembling prokaryotes appear. These first organisms are chemoautotrophs: they use carbon dioxide as a carbon source and oxidize inorganic materials to extract energy. Later, prokaryotes evolve glycolysis, a set of chemical reactions that free the energy of organic molecules such as glucose and store it in the chemical bonds of ATP. Glycolysis (and ATP) continue to be used in almost all organisms, unchanged, to this day.” And later ”Photosynthesizing cyanobacteria evolved; they used water as a reducing agent, thereby producing oxygen as a waste product.”

Sounds a lot like plants, doesn’t it?

On the fourth day “God saith, ‘Let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a separation between the day and the night, then they have been for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years, and they have been for luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth’ and it is so.”

That’s pretty simple. Because science says “The Earth is thought to have been formed about 4.6 billion years ago by collisions in the giant disc-shaped cloud of material that also formed the Sun. Gravity slowly gathered this gas and dust together into clumps that became asteroids and small early planets called planetesimals.” No conflict there.

Then God said “Let the waters teem with the teeming living creature, and fowl let fly on the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens.”

”And God prepareth the great monsters, and every living creature that is creeping, which the waters have teemed with, after their kind, and every fowl with wing, after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good.”

And science says “Like the plants, animals evolved in the sea. And that is where they remained for at least 600 million years.” Catch the “waters teeming with living creatures” reference?

On the sixth day, God said “‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind’ and it is so. And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good.”

And science says over hundreds of millions of years the oxygen generating organisms in the seas produced enough oxygen for animals to survive on the land, so they began to come out – as simple organisms, obviously.

And here’s an interesting scientific factoid: “Biologists reason that all living organisms on Earth must share a single last universal ancestor.” Wait. Was that one-celled organism named Adam?

Lastly, of course, God said “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” And over the next few hundred million years, that happened.

So there you are. As far as I’m concerned, the biblical description, simple as it is, jibes exactly with the scientific version. A pretty substantial argument, if you’re so inclined, for the veracity (and therefore divinity) of the Bible.

Are we sure there wasn’t someone writing this all down?