THE SIX DAYS OF GENESIS 1 – A NEW LOOK AT THE 6 DAYS WHICH CAN NOW INCLUDE THE DINOSAURS

In a recent movie entitled “Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed” Ben Stein investigates recent incidents in the U.S. which have resulted in the termination of certain scientists from their employment. These scientists had hinted at the possibility of Intelligent Design in the universe. His movie takes him to various parts of the U.S. and Europe seeking answers to why this is happening. He interviews scientists who are either strong advocates of Darwin’s evolutionary theory of life’s beginnings or those who dare to raise questions about the theory.

One person in the latter camp is Dr. Gerald Schroeder, a physicist of eminent background. He is the author of several books, and in one “The Science of God”, he examines the 6 days of Genesis 1. He asks the question: “Is it possible to match the scientific account of creation with the Biblical record in Gen 1?” Schroeder is quite clear on this point. The answer, he says, is, ‘Yes’!

To achieve this, he uses quotations from peer-reviewed articles in the scientific literature and texts from the Bible. How difficult was it to do this? Firstly the reader has to gain a new appreciation of the awesome power of God.

Psa 90:4 “A thousand years in your sight are as a day that passes as a watch in the night”

II Peter 3:8 “..that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day”

Let’s look again at Genesis 1.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light:” and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.”

Since Aristotle, scientists the world over have believed that the universe had no beginning – it had existed eternally. But scientists can be wrong! One famous example is statements made by Dr. Albert Michelson, the man who received a Nobel Prize in Physics for his brilliant work in measuring the speed of light.

In 1894, Albert Michelson, at the dedication of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, took the opportunity to declare “The more important fundamental laws and facts of Physical Science have all BEEN DISCOVERED!” 10 years later, Albert Einstein published the first of his papers that were to revolutionize our understanding of nature and the universe! Einstein’s discovery that energy and matter are actually two different forms of the same entity, matter can be made from energy and the flow of time is not constant, changed

everything! He quantified this in the famous mathematical expression E = mc2 which stated that energy E and mass m were connected via the square of the speed of light ‘c’. Since the speed of light is an extremely large number, matter contains an enormous amount of energy ( c = 300,000 kilometers/sec or 186,000 miles per second).

So the statement in Gen. 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”, must be examined. In the 1960’s scientists realized Aristotle was also wrong, that the universe has not existed eternally. It had a beginning. They called the beginning: THE BIG BANG! Believers in the Bible always accepted that the universe had a beginning; now scientists had to accept that it had a beginning also! The universe is expanding from a moment in time when there was no matter, no time, just infinite space. But not just a big bang. One scientist has explained that if the energy of the BIG BANG was different from what it was by one part out of 10¹²⁰, or 1 part in…

10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

THEN THERE WOULD BE NO LIFE ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE!

The universe is therefore tuned for life from its inception. When life first appears on the third day of Genesis, the earth had within it the necessary properties for life to flourish.

So after the Big Bang, the heavens were formed, and then the earth.

So when did the Big Bang happen? Scientists generally agree on between 10 and 20 billion years ago- probably about 15 .. Let’s say 15 ¾ billion years ago, which seems to fit many of the current calculations.

Logically the calendar should start with the creation of the world but it doesn’t, the Hebrew calendar begins with the appearance of humankind … with Adam …. And brings us to about 6000 years from Adam. Once humankind appear on the earth then the passage of time is totally tied to the earthly events being described … and we are told that in Genesis 5:1

“This is the BOOK OF THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM”. And this came after the ‘history’ of the formation of the universe…….. In Genesis 2: 1 -4 “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them…

These are THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND OF THE EARTH”

In both verses, “GENERATIONS” are juxtaposed with “DAYS” in Gen. 1. So what does this imply? That there are two “GENERATIONS”, one associated with humankind’s time and one associated with the formation of the universe… or God’s time. So we need an understanding of time that is not obvious.

Once again, Einstein provided that. Einstein in 1915 wrote “The rate at which time passes is not the same at all places”

“Changes in gravity and velocity at which we travel actually change the rate at which time flows.”

The Theory of Relativity proposed by Einstein in 1915 has since been proven over and over again. So today we consider it a Law of Relativity. The theory of relativity proposed by Einstein has been proven, over and over since 1915. It is a law. He discovered a hitherto overlooked Law of Nature.

The law tells us that the flow of time at a location with high gravity or high velocity is slower than at another location with lower gravity or velocity.

It is called TIME DILATION. It means that if we found ourselves on a planet whose density was so massive that its gravity slowed time by a factor of 350,000 relative to earth’s, then 3minutes on that planet would be the same as 2 years on the earth.

Can we apply this to our understanding of the 6 days of Genesis 1?  So as we read in Gen. 2:1-4, let us consider two measurements of time. The measurement of time from Adam’s appearance… earth-based… and. the measurement of time in the total universe… cosmic time based. Is there a clock that can help us understand cosmic time?

Fortunately, “light’ in the universe is the “COSMIC CLOCK”. Why is this? Light has the mysterious property of being both a particle and a WAVE. Our visible light is just one part of the full spectrum of wavelengths we call electromagnetic radiation. Light coming from stars is not always the white light we might expect. The light may be colored. Scientists discovered the “red shift” in light from other stars…a change in the wavelength (or frequency) of the light towards the red end of the spectrum.

The stretching of the light waves to longer wavelengths or ‘red shift’ is due to the star moving away from us; that is evidence that the universe is expanding. This physical phenomenon is called the Doppler Effect and we often hear the term used by weather forecasters when they show ‘Doppler Radar’ and explain where the rain is and when it will arrive in your vicinity.

This happens with any wave-form including sound. As an object which produces sound travels towards you, the sound is high-pitched…or has a higher frequency (or shorter wavelength) than if the sound from the object is traveling away from you. A good example is the sound from a train whistle as it approaches or passes you. Similarly the sound of airplane engines as they travel towards you or away from you. If you listen carefully in such a situation you can hear the higher pitch or higher frequency, (shorter wavelength) roar as the airplanes approach, and as they pass by the pitch drops as the frequency drops.

This is the Doppler Effect.

So how does this relate to the question of cosmic time? The lights we see in the heavens originate with energy released in stellar and galactic nuclear reactions.

But there is another source of radiation in the universe, “COSMIC BACKGROUND RADIATION”. This is radiation which is an echo of the BIG BANG and was only discovered in 1965.

Cosmic background radiation fills the entire universe, unrelated to any particular source, and cosmic background radiation frequency (or wavelength) forms the basis of cosmic proper time. Positive differences in velocity, gravity and the stretching of space as the universe expands all increase (or stretch) the wavelength of radiation (the beat of the cosmic clock) is lowered in direct proportion to the increase of wavelength, this increase slows the perceived passage of TIME!

At the BIG BANG an immense amount of energy (hot radiant energy) was produced and that energy formed into matter. This was the moment of creation.

The universe was then approximately a million - million times smaller and hotter than it is today. (Today the temperature in space is ~ 2.7 degrees absolute)

Scientists know that the temperature then would have been ~ 3 x 10¹² degrees C. So today the temperature of deep space is about one million-millionth of what it was at the moment of creation.

In Genesis 1: 2 “And the earth was without form and void” …. Hebrew: ‘tohu and bohu’.  Tohu – unformed or chaotic is a fair translation, but Bohu does not only mean ‘void’, it also can mean ‘filled with the building blocks of matter’. The radiation from the moment the energy level fell below a minimum value that allowed energy to change into matter has been stretched a million - millionfold …the red shift. The stretching of the wave has slowed the frequency of the cosmic clock by a MILLION - MILLION! The million - millionfold stretching of radiation since ‘bohu’ caused that million-million-to-one ratio in the perception of time. So the cosmic timepiece as observed today ticks a million – million times more slowly than at creation. What does this mean?

The cosmic clock records the passage of one minute, while we on earth experience a million – million minutes. In that scenario, the dinosaurs ruled the earth for 120 million years, as measured by our perception of time, but cosmic time was only 1 HOUR!

If calculated in earth years, the age of the universe at 15 ¾ billion years; dividing by a MILLION - MILLION reduces the time…cosmic time to

             6 DAYS!

Genesis 1 and the scientific evidence are BOTH CORRECT!

The Bible not only tells us that six days passed between the creation of the universe and the creation of Adam, but also records the key events on each of those days. Scientists agree completely on the sequence of events: (in blue type)

In Genesis 1 : 1-25…

Day 1 The creation of the universe, light separates from dark… the Big Bang

Day 2 first the heavenly firmament forms and … the disk of the Milky Way and   earth and the earth’s solar system

Day 3 the appearance of water and land as earth cools

Day 4 Sun moon & stars become visible in the heavens… earth’s atmosphere becomes transparent, photosynthesis producing an O2-rich atmosphere

Day 5 First animal life appears & swarms abundantly in waters followed by reptiles and winged animals…first multicellular animals appear & waters swarm with animal life; winged insects appear.

Day 6 Land animals, mammals, and humankind…..massive extinction destroys over 90% of life. The land is repopulated: hominids and then humans appear.

But the Bible’s time in Genesis 1:1 is from the start looking forward and mentions a one-time event … The Spirit of God hovering over the universe. This was the START!

Now the question: “Did these events all occur in equal time periods?” NO!

Nature’s way is a logarithmic way. Eg: radioactive materials decay following the logarithmic pattern. The shells of snails grow in a logarithmic way.

So the natural logarithmic time periods are:

Day 1  15,750,000,000 to 7,750,000,000 years

Day 2  7,750,000,000 to 3,750,000,000  years

Day 3  3,750,000,000 to 1,750,000,000  years

Day 4  1,750,000,000 to 750,000,000  years

Day 5  750,000,000 to 250,000,000  years

Day 6  250,000,000 to approx. 6000  years

So what about the dinosaurs and the Biblical account?

Gen. 1: 21 “ And God created great whales…”

Hebrew ‘taninim gedolim’ (gedolim means big)… “big taninim”

Now taneen is the singular of taninim and appears several times in the O.T.

Ex. 4:3 throw your staff on the ground and it will turn into a (heb: nahash) snake

Ex. 7:10 cast his rod…and it became a (heb. taneen) a snake

Ex.7:15 and the rod which you turned into a (heb. nahash) snake

It is the same rod. Why two words?

Taneen must be a general category of animals….A REPTILE.

So in Genesis 1:21… “And God created giant reptiles.” Today we would call them Dinosaurs!

If you would like to learn more, I recommend you go to the book:

 “The Science of God”,

Dr. Gerald L. Schroeder

Broadway Publishers, 1997

(former MIT professor of physics).

Any questions? Comments? Contact Dr. Don Carruthers at D-Carruthers@sbcglobal.net