The Bible's Creation NarrativeIn the Light of Modern Science

Part 1: Day One

by

David C. Bossard

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The Creation Narrative Series

• Teleology and Science• The Creation Narrative of Science• The Creation Narrative of the Bible

– In the Light of Modern Science

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Genesis 1:3-4 (Day One)

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."

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St. Augustine of Hippo(354-430 AD)

404/21/23 05:12 PMby Sandro Botticelli 1480

Church of Ognissanti, Florence

Wikipedia

St. Augustine's Disappointment:What Sort of Light is it?

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St. Augustine (354-430 AD)

"But this is to give an allegorical and prophetical Interpretation, a thing which I did not set out to do in this treatise. I have started here to discuss Sacred Scripture according to the plain meaning of the historical facts…."

Ad Lit. I.17.34See also I.19.38

… Is This Spiritual light or material? St. A reluctantly concluded Spiritual, but was unhappy with this conclusion.

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Sources:The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Ad. Lit) (ca. 415 AD)The City of God (413-426)Confessions (397-400)

St. Augustine's Disappointment:The Problem of Darkness

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Sources:The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Ad. Lit) (ca. 415 AD)The City of God (413-426)Confessions (397-400)

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St. Augustine (354-430 AD)

How could Darkness be Created after light?

… seems to offend logic!

"... the separation of light and darkness was done, surely, in the very act of the creation of light. There could not have been any light unless it was separated from the darkness."

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St. Augustine's Disappointment:The Problem of Darkness

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Sources:The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Ad. Lit) (ca. 415 AD)The City of God (413-426)Confessions (397-400)

The darkness was NOT night time!

""[I]f I make such a statement, I fear I shall be laughed at both by those who have scientific knowledge of these matters and by those who can easily recognize the facts of the case. At the time when night is with us, the sun is illuminating with its presence those parts of the world through which it returns from the place of its setting to that of its rising. Hence it is that for the whole twenty-four hours of the sun’s circuit there is always day in one place and night in another."

[Ad. Lit I.10.21]

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Pope Pius XII at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

(1951)

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To the Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 22 November 1951

"It seems that science today has succeeded in being a witness to that primordial 'Let there be light', when out of nowhere burst forth a sea of light and radiation… The creation in time, then; and therefore a Creator; then God!"

(google translate)

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The True Nature of Light and Darkness in the Beginning.

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• Light, radiant energy, is the most fundamental building block

• When light was created there was no darkness whatsoever in the universe:

- light filled all of space!(The Riemannian geometry of general relativity)

• Darkness was created after light- about 500,000 years later!

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The True Nature of Light and Darkness:

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• Light is a material substance: - Not just the absence of darkness- At the beginning, light filled all of space.

• Darkness required something new:- Conversion to neutral atoms

- about 500,000 years after the Beginning.

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The Impact on Day One:

Verses 3 and 4 are exactly correct as written!

The Matter of Time

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• Augustine's understanding of Time: - Time is created (correct)- God didn't require time to create (correct)- Therefore God created instantaneously (incorrect)

The Missing element: WHY would God use time in his creation?

(Augustine could not give a good answer)

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The Line Gone Through All the EarthProclaims the Glory and Handiwork of God (Psalm 19:4)

deliberately embedded by the Creator in the Natural World

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"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."

"[I]t is not at all natural that 'laws of nature' exist, much less that man is able to discover them."

Eugene Wigner1902-1995

Albert Einstein1879-1955

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Cuvier on the Fossil Record

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"It is to fossils alone that must be attributed the birth of the theory of the earth; that, without them we could never have surmised that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe."

Baron Georges Cuvier (1831)

The Matter of TimeWHY would God Create in Time?

Augustine knew nothing of this-- nor did anyone else until the age of Science.

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My personal conclusion: God created in time so that these records of his creative activity would be true records, preserved in nature, andavailable to the analytical sciences, and in the fossil record,for the pleasure and benefit of those who seek to study it.

… and, in my view, intentionally placed into the natural world to proclaim His glory and handiwork.

... as Psalm 19 says.

St. Augustine's Disappointment?

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St. Augustine (354-430 AD)

BUT…

He was wrong both about light and about darkness!

… And about the need for God to create in time

… And modern science shows why...

… and why Day One is stated exactly right!

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Afterword…

If My analysis of Day One is correct…

The understandings of Science and the Bible changed.

BUT the sort of change was different …

The Interpretation of Science changed because of new data

The Interpretation of the Bible changed because of new insight from Science

… but the data (the text) did not change.… It's still, "Let there be light."