He’s Got the Whole Snow Globe In His Hands
November 10, 2007While studying the creation story for my paper on the starlight problem, I was struck by a number of thoughts that I would like to share.
The deep, water and time all seem to exist at the beginning of the creation story. They appear to be givens almost (Genesis 1:2:”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.”). While I imagine that one can’t have a beginning without time, I would like to point out that it’s not necessarily a given. Special relativity demonstrates that time is simply another dimension, which is why we see time dilations in our universe. I’m not sure what the deep is, but it seems to have a lot of water in it, since God also uses the fountains of the deep when he chose to flood the earth.
On day one, God creates light and then separates the light from the darkness. I believe what we see is not only the creation of light, but also light speed. Light is not instant, as we have learned, and the passage does not make such overtures.
You can look at my previous post for my thoughts on day four.
On day three of the creation account, my Bible states that God caused the dry land to appear by causing the waters to gather into one place. I always thought that was an odd way to describe the raising of mountains and land masses. Upon further reflection, however, it is a much better description of the creation of gravity. I’m not sure what was keeping things together before gravity.
Similarly, day one had both evening and morning even though the sun was not created until day four. I am not sure what light was shining during the day before the sun, but clearly there was light before the sun appeared on day four, since the text states that God created light on day one, and that light delineated morning from evening.
Where I get really intrigued is on day two. Let’s review the text:
Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 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. God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
Once my mind was open to God making vast changes to our universe and the laws of physics, I no longer just saw this as God making clouds and the sky, but rather God making space itself. This same expanse is where God places the stars (in verse), so it seems pretty big.
When I shared this with Jess, she commented that there must be a lot of water out there somewhere, and that the water above the expanse could not be rain and the ozone layer because God put the stars between the waters, and the stars are further away than the clouds. I corrected Jess, telling her that the water above the expanse was simply clouds.
After a few days I came to understand, however, that I was not listening to my wife and Jess was exactly right: if the expanse is space, then there should be water at the edge of our universe. Furthermore, the universe has an end.
It seems to me that this is what God did when he refers to spreading out the heavens. People often use that phrase to refer to the creation of the cosmos or stars; however, I find it to be a much greater feat. The creation of space itself is more impressive and challenging than the creation of the cosmos.
Finally, let us consider the consequences of having water at the edge of the universe. It has been demonstrated that the cosmos is not only expanding, but accelerating. That is to say that it is not only moving apart, but being pulled apart. A large amount of water at the edge of the universe may produce sufficient gravity to explain this phenomenon. However, what I find more significant than that is that if the entire universe is encased in a sphere of water, it would mean that we are all living inside one really big snow globe.
I’ll state up front that I’m not a creationist. I don’t think that Genesis has to be a literal account of creation to be True. I strongly believe Myth can be Truth … that scripture is multi-layered and conveys multiple meanings.
With that out of the way, I also believe God is trancendent and not confined by space and time. God existed “before” time. God exists “outside” of space. So, of course, I believe that God can make massive changes in space and time.
This still doesn’t mean that I think God did that to create Earth. Saying that the creation account is literally true and that God just changed the laws of physics so it looks like it isn’t implies that God has some kind of duplicitous nature that I don’t see evidence of.
And, I’m sure you know that claiming that God arbitrarily changed the laws of physics in some way we can’t observe isn’t really going to work as a scientific theory. What predictions can we make based on that? What observations show that it is true? None.
Are creationist theories the modern equivilent of “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” What use do they serve?
I don’t think God changed the laws of physics so much as he created them. I don’t know whether the other laws were created during the creation story or if they were already there along with the deep, time, and water. As a literal creationist I take the creation story as evidence as well as evidence that is more scientific-looking. I don’t see a way to discredit my observations with non-biblical data, but as science progresses we may get there eventually.
“What use do they serve?”
Hasn’t understanding always been an end in itself for science?
Hasn’t understanding always been an end in itself for science?
Absolutly, but at the core of science, there is the scientific process — the path to understanding that is at the end of science.
You’ve have a hypothesis. if that’s where you stop, you’re not doing science. You’re just speculating.
But I think your hypothesis is testable and falsifiable.
If God moved the entire cosmos to the earth or vice versa, it would have been necessary to do so very near to the speed of light.
The only way your idea begins to make any sense is if earh is moved very close to the speed of light (This explanation and calculator will quickly show that using this simple time dialation forumla.)
For example, one of the reasons we know the age of the universe (~14 billion years) is the time it takes light from the most distant star to reach us. Light from the most distant stars takes about 12 billion years to reach us. So that star was 12 billion light years away from earth’s present position 12 billion years ago.
In order for the relativistic effects your “big move” hypothesis assumes, earth would have to be the object in motion at near-light-speed. This is the only way to get a young earth when then rest of the universe is billions of years old.
This leads to a couple of questions:
1. Moving the earth at such a speed requires an enormous amount of energy and increases the mass of the earth. Where did all this energy come from? Where did it go? (Since you rejected the Omphalos hypothesis, I think you would agree that the energy, or evidence of it, must be somewhere.)
2. Assuming you can account for energy and can come up with an acceptable presentation of time dialation, you’re still left with the evident age of the earth. How do you account for that without falling into the Omphalos trap?
Finally, consider what an early Christian writer, Origen, wrote in the third century:
The scientific process is a single philosophical viewpoint when it comes down to it. I appreciate its merits. However, there are other ways of gathering knowledge.
It is important to note that in special relativity mere motion generates reciprocal time dilation. Object 1 moving and Object 2 remaining stationary is just as valid a view as Object 2 moving and Object 1 remaining stationary. It’s relative. It is disparate acceleration on the objects that introduces non reciprocal time dilations which produce disparate ages as defined in general relativity. The tale of time travel that we are used to involves two accelerations. One to start the spaceship and one to stop it.
I don’t know where the massive amount of energy went, or if we can find it. I don’t know if God simply sucked it up to be neat, if he even had to bother, or if that is the reason why there is so much matter and so little antimatter in our universe. I did the study to prove that the age of the universe was not necessarily in contradiction with the biblical account of creation. I don’t feel the need to investigate since I see the bible stating that God acted and to suggest that the action would in something bad such as blow away part of our galaxy or even worse, would suggest that God lacked finesse. He knew what he was doing. I trust that an intelligent action by God need not be scientifically deduced. When examining an action of God you negate your presuppositions if you don’t eventually come to an original cause of God doing something.
The Omphalos hypothesis states that God did something both unecessary and deceptive: making things look old. Suppose I walk backwards in the snow so that by looking at my tracks you would think I actually walked the other way. That would be a deceptive action. Now suppose I help a friend carry a piece of furniture across some snow, wherein I walked backwards and my friend walked forwards. someone looking at the tracks would say that someone walked one way across and then walked back over the same path. That would not be a deceptive action, however, it would make deceptive evidence.
(I don’t make this next comment to you Mark but in general) If you demand God to leave a big obvious breadcrumb trail of scientific evidence, you’re in for it. It’s a bad idea to test God. He will always prove himself and it will not be to your liking how he does it.
After further thought on where the energy may have gone I came up with the following. Isn’t the act of stopping something absorbing its energy? I would say that God absorbed the energy directly. It seems the most direct way of stopping something.