There are at present two popular stories floating around our culture about how the world and its inhabitants came to be. The first, largely extracted from the first two chapters of Genesis, is that one day the Creator said "Let there be light" and there was Light, and also Darkness. In the subsequent five 24-hour periods, He created Sky and Sea; separated Land from Sea and created plants; made Sun, Moon and stars (emphatically lower case); populated the sky and sea with birds and fish; and populated the land with animals. At the end of the sixth day He scooped up some dust, breathed His own breath into it and made Adam (lit. 'the Man'). He placed Adam in a garden paradise and gave him dominion over all the animals He had created. Having established holy community and free will, on the seventh day God rested. (Spoiler alert: Mayhem ensues.)
This version of events is commonly referred to as the 'Genesis' or 'Christian' version for obvious reasons. It is contrasted to the 'Scientific' or 'Secular' version, which goes something like this:
In the Beginning there was nothing. And then there was something. The Big Bang brought time and space into being along with enough energy to make a Universe, but it was completely without form. Not just chaotic, but Entropy = Zero. However, the early Universe was quite hot and thermodynamics set in rather quickly. It took a few millennia to get the fundamental forces sorted out and dispose of some extra anti-matter, but then most of the energy settled out into a large number of protons and electrons bouncing about in a truly enormous pressurized bath of photons. ("Let there be light" indeed) At some point, the photon bath cooled enough to let the protons and electrons combine into neutral hydrogen. Within a couple minutes, the once-charged Universe suddenly became transparent. The photon bath depressurized and became what we now observe as the Cosmic Microwave Background. At this point gravity took over, gently intensifying slight over-densities of hydrogen into structures of all sizes: super-clusters, galaxies, stars, but not planets because you can't make a very interesting planet with just hydrogen. As stars collapsed, gravity eventually tested the 'point-like' nature of atoms to extreme limits and ignited nuclear fusion. By turning hydrogen to helium, stars can hold gravity at bay for billions of years. But the Universe is very old. Eventually the hydrogen supply gave out. For a while, the dying stars burned helium to make heavier elements, but that process is much hotter and goes much faster. In their death throes, stars collapsed inward until atomic nuclei were pressed into a solid mass. The spring force from the rebounding gluons blew the stars apart, scattering heavy elements throughout the galaxy. When the second generation of stars formed they were orbited by little balls of rock called planets. On the surface of a planet named Earth, long carbon chains formed shells around tiny droplets of a polarized atom called water. Because carbon has so many bonding sites, carbon-based molecules can make and break bonds with water with relatively little energy, making these droplets especially chemically active. In time, these bubbles grew in complexity and formed rudimentary cells. Once the cells started reproducing, the oceans quickly (in geological terms) became populated by those cells that reproduced and sustained themselves best. Eventually, interactions between cells created communities that started to function like an organism. These survived because they were more robust than single cells, although complexity comes at a price. Once whole organisms could reproduce they continued the natural selection process, filling the Earth with every form of life that could be sustained. The history of organisms in this planet is a long and winding one, but about 65 million years ago, an asteroid impact wiped out most of the large species and opened new niches for the small, furry animals called mammals. A few million years ago, natural selection favored a group of mammals with opposeable thumbs, upright stance and large brains. Descendents of these first hominids became, among other things, the species Homo sapiens which has the rather unusual ability to ask questions like "Where did i come from?"
It is unlikely that anyone reading this is unaware of the battle between fervent defenders of these two creation stories. Any scientist who is also Christian has to think carefully about this because he will have to defend his conclusion to one camp or the other. After much debate from both sides, i have concluded the following:
1) Genesis is primarily a book about the origin of the Jewish people. Probably first committed to text during the Babylonian exile, its opening chapters take much of the form of the Babylonian creation myth while turning the content on its head. The Babylonian version has the Earth created by the god Marduk from the body of his grandmother Tiamat after defeating her army of monsters in battle. Most of the text is devoted to the battle and subsequent creation of astronomical bodies as homes for various gods. Regrettably, the Earth was not maintenance-free, so the gods created men to do the tasks none of them wanted to do. Thus the purpose of man is toil and it is important to bring your sacrifices and taxes to the temple of Marduk situated for your convenience in downtown Babylon.
In a time when the best and brightest of Israel were being selectively re-educated by the conquering Gentiles, the writer of Genesis had to set the record straight before getting to the real business of introducing Abraham and family. The Pentateuch is very clear that labor is a gift. Toil is a result of the Fall and much of the promise of the Promised Land revolved around labor becoming a community-building experience and not being toil. Since the Babylonian creation myth is highly stylized, we should expect Genesis 1-2 to be similarly poetic. In fact, the Biblical creation story isn't much longer than my extreme summary of the secular account. If the purpose of Genesis 1 was to provide a mechanistic account with any detail, we should expect it to be longer.
2) There is an overwhelming library of precise technical evidence to support the events reported in the 'Scientific' version, but absolutely no discussion of intent or agency. To say the Scientific version proves that the universe has no intent or agency is extremely poor logic. In fact, the Scientific version is much more elegant than the Genesis version from a technical perspective. Rather than a proliferation of rules established ad hoc to make everything run properly, it has a handful of rules and mechanisms that automatically populate the various structures required. The Maker who orchestrated such a 14-billion-year project deserves even more praise than one who slapped everything together in six days.
When this debate comes up in lab, which happens periodically, i like to hold up a sample mount sitting on my desk and ask how it came to be. The correct 'technical' answer would be something like
A 3/16" copper plate was cut with a band saw to slightly larger than 6" x 3 1/2". Two edges were made parallel using a vise carefully squared by running an edge-finder down its inner face and a 1/2" end-mill spinning at 4000 rpm. The parallel edges were then set in the vise and the end-mill used to square the other two edges so that the final plate was 6.000" x 3.500" with 1 mil tolerance. A #30 drill bit was then used to make 4-40 clearance holes centered 0.250" x 0.250" from the corners. A #43 drill bit made pilot holes at the other positions indicated in the drawing which were finished with a 4-40 tap and light counter-sink. The edges were then de-burred by hand with a 150/inch file and the plate washed in isopropyl alcohol to remove the machine oil.The answer i almost always get is "You drew up what you wanted and [machinist] made it for you." Both answers are correct, but they convey different information. If i wanted to tell a non-techie how good our machinists are, i wouldn't go into tolerances and cutting techniques. I would just make a pile of all the complicated things they've made for me and let the work speak for itself. Similarly, if i wanted to teach the next generation of civil servants about the greatness of the Creator God, i wouldn't start by teaching them astrophysics. I would enumerate the observable things that God has made and assert that they all reflect His glory. If i could do it in a repeating poetic framework so they didn't forget large sections of Creation, even better.
3) There is a God who is active in modern times and who claims in no uncertain terms to be the Creator and the God of the Bible. He is quite well known by many people and, frankly, the Scientific version of events sounds more like His MO. For example, consider the problem of sin. Adam and Eve are exiled from the Garden on page 3 of my Bible. After messing about with various societal structures and lots of water as ways to address the brokenness of mankind, God makes a covenant with a man named Abram. He promises Abra(ha)m that he will be the father of many nations and that through him all nations will be blessed. (Gen. 18:18) That happens on page 13. Abraham's family is then relocated, enslaved, multiplied, rescued and returned to the Promised Land. They rebel, are rebuked and saved (repeatedly), demand a kingdom, try to rule without God (repeatedly), fall into politics for 200+ years, lose their kingdom(s), are captured, exiled, redeemed, re-instituted and conquered again. 878 pages and three millennia later, we get to "An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham." (Matt 1:1) God's approach to making the Church is recorded in the entire Old Testament. Do we really believe He made the Universe by fiat in six days?
Modern instances of divine creation fall broadly into two categories (based on my observations in healing ministries; i have no training in theology). Either a created thing is broken and needs restoration or the Kingdom is advancing into new territory and there is an original creation. Restorative miracles can happen very quickly. People walk away from prayer sessions pushing their wheelchairs. But whenever someone says "the Lord gave me a new [job, ministry, family, etc]" they can almost always point to a long list of things that didn't make sense at the time to see how this thing was woven together over a period of time. Original creations generally take place in the framework of normal causality. God doesn't seem to be phased by long-term processes; He just starts them earlier so the thing He wants to happen happens when He wants. So i tend to believe the story about an Original Creation that brought causality into being and proceeded at its own pace according to the rules set forth at the Beginning.
4) If this blog had any readers, someone would say "Don't you believe the Bible is the Word of God?" Yes, i do. I also observe that God frequently speaks to us through song. Hence, i feel no need to physically locate the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). Powerful imagery, not a real place. Now, the Psalms are explicitly a hymnbook, but the Bible is littered with songs interspersed into otherwise historical accounts. A quick search on biblegateway turns up Exodus 15, Deuteronomy 32, Judges 5, 2 Samuel 22 and Hosea 2. Isaiah seems to spend half his time giving detailed warnings, naming cities and times, and the other half singing prophesies that are useless as historical predictions but carry timeless truths. Guess which half gets quoted more. Is it unreasonable to believe that this list includes Genesis 1? Again, the Creation of the Universe is not the central story of the Bible, so it doesn't get much press time. For a one page summary, it says more powerfully than any technical account that the Earth and the Heavens belong to the Lord, who is still resting (read: located) at the seventh day, the completion or head of Creation. Compared to that knowledge, the technical details just don't matter.
