Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament and the Torah. It is the book that tells about the beginning of creation and the early relationships between God and his “chosen” people. When we refer to the genesis of anything, we are talking about the beginning or creation of it. According to the Book of Genesis, it took God six days to make the world and he rested on the seventh. Today there is great debate over the literal accuracy of these words. Creationists want to hold to the biblical description as to how the world was created. Those of a more scientific mindset have put this description aside in favor of the Evolutionary theory developed by Darwin and others. This debate started many years ago and still continues.
The Creationists want to believe that “humans” were created in the “likeness” of God and not as a process of development from fishes to apes to humans. Evolutionists point to the scientific evidence that humans have “evolved” over time and that it took millions of years for us to become what we are today. Scientists like to talk about the “Big Bang” theory as to how the world and heavens were created. According to this theory, a cosmic mass of energy and matter exploded sending superheated particles of matter throughout the universe. This matter eventually coalesced into the bodies that we call planets, moons and suns. After eons of years, life began to form (at least on the third planet from the sun in our solar system) and then Homo sapiens eventually emerged. Not all people subscribe to either theory. There are many who regard the Evolutionary theory with as much skepticism as the theory accepted by the Creationists.
I have another theory. My theory holds that it does not really matter one iota how the earth was created. I am more concerned with what we do to the earth today and less with how it was created or who created it. For all I care, it could have been created by a cosmic Leprechaun who had a really warped sense of humor. How else can you account for the acrimony that we can expend over the most senseless and useless issues? I would like to see 1/3 of the energy spent by Evolutionists and Creationists directed to help fight the environmental and economic problems that we see facing our world. Global warming (whether caused by man or nature)is happening, along with increased atmospheric and environmental pollution.
No one disagrees that we need to have economic development but at what price? Are Xboxes, IPhones, disposable diapers and fertilizers to grow really pretty green lawns on desert golf courses worth the costs incurred to the environment by their creation and usage? How much commercialism and development are our environment, forests, oceans and lakes worth? Where do we draw the line between commercial development and environmental responsibility? Who pays for the “externalities” that economists talk about?
Will we spend all of our time and energy in trivial debates about who and how the earth was created and in denying the reality of problems that we see today? Or will we spend our time and energy to all work together to maintain and create the kind of blue-green world that we want to live in. Which side will you be on? What will you do to help create a clean environment? If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. Are you waiting for someone else to do it?
In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical necessity for a beginning. One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job! [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 8-9.]
ReplyDeleteHi Rob, thanks for the comments. You and Stephen Hawking pose another alternative to the debate. Hope things are going well for you.
ReplyDeleteEvolution and religion seem to be competing accounts, but they do not need to be. Robert Godwin, the author of a blog I frequent "One Cosmos", does a pretty good job (I think) of combining the two. He says that "created in his likeness" means that we have an ultimately supernatural power to create things that go beyond what the causal natural order hands us. We are either wholly natural beings or we are not. I vacillate about which it is, but I doubt that the difference is a trivial matter.
ReplyDeleteThe climate has been warming for the past 12,000 years or so, since the end of the last ice age. The slow warming that has occurred has allowed human beings to spread out from our original narrow range to cover the world. Based on past cycles, we are about due for another major cooling spell. The question is whether our massive release of CO2 over a very brief period is enough to throw the slower cycles of repetitive change out of their course, and what would be the results if we did. The science is far from settled, in my opinion. There will be unexpected consequences whichever path we take. I think there is reason to be careful and prudent, but treating the climate as if it were a linear system, rather than a dynamic one is a mistake. I suspect there is a political agenda aimed at fashioning a world-wide energy control regime, but a dynamic, chaotic system cannot be explicitly and rationally controlled because there is no way to assemble all the distributed information embodied in it.