What if the Big Bang and Genesis are compatible explanations?

Great Debates
21

Which is fine. I just don’t understand this constant effort to show that belief in God is “compatible” with science. It isn’t. For most believers, there is no scientific discovery that would make them stop believing in God. What is the point, then, of claiming some kind of “compatibility” with science? There is no scientific phenomenon that REQUIRES there to be a God, or even indicates that there might be a God. A diety is, as I said above, an add-on.

I’m not claiming you have ever done this. Maybe you haven’t. I’m just using your post as jumping off point to state what I see a lot of religious folks do.

22

I’m either an agnostic or a soft atheist. I’ve even prayed in a mosque. Barefoot. The religous leaders just had no objection. As I was led there by a Muslim woman, I could pray to her god at my discretion. I just can’t understand the anti-Muslim bias of many Americans. At least around here.

23

My apalogies in advance for this post here. Wrong thread, and please just delete it, as I can’t.

24

I’m curious as to how you are using the word “compatible.” Usually when people claim that relgion and science are not compatible, they are claiming that religion or science interferes with an understanding of the other. From that I would say that religion and science are “compatible” when they do not interfere with each other. I have never found a scientific fact that challenged my basic belief on God (or even the manner in which I worship God). There have been a few aspects of my belief that have been given particular understanding because of scientific information, but I have never found science to be incompatible with religion.

25

(vB coding occasionally challenges my belief in a just God.)

26

(a lot of stuff I’m going to say is also in the If the long lifespans in the Bible aren’t literal, what do they mean? thread)

In Luke 3, there is a complete genealogy from Jesus to Noah and finally to Adam, with no gaps. I mean it even matches up almost perfectly with the genealogies in Genesis:
http://www.bibletime.com/bt/theory/history/adam/
A reason for the difference between Luke and Genesis’s genealogies is given here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3748.asp

For the people who have long lifespans in Genesis, it says when they had their son who is next on the list… they usually have their sons when they’re about 100, even though they lived to about 900. Using this information people can work out that Adam lived about 6000 years ago.

27

In this case the compatibility isn’t methodological or philosophical: it’s simply factual. Bible says A, science says not A. That’s the incompatibility. And of course, there is sloppy use of language here, because it isn’t religion per se that’s the incompatible side, but rather a very particular interpretation of one of many religions.

28

No apology necessary. That post gave me a good laugh as I was trying to figure out how it was a response to mine. :slight_smile:

Maybe “compatible” isn’t the right word. But let’s look at evolution. Time and again we here on this board that Christian beliefs are not underminded (ie, “not incompatible with”) by Dariwn’s theory of evolution by natural selection. I just don’t understand what that means, since science is not in the business of either proving or disproving the existence of God and religion is not in the business of descerning laws of nature. As **Lib **likes to say, they use different epistimologies.

So it seems to me that the concept of God is neither compatible nor incompatible with science-- it is completely outside the realm of science. What bothers me is when people try to insert God as an add-on to scientific theories. For example, claiming that God could have set everything in motion or that God could have ordained evolution by natural selection. Sure, God could have done those things, but there is absolutely no evidence that God did. So why tack it on to a scientific theory at all? The only reason I can think of is that people think science is a threat to religion and they have some need to shield themselves against that threat.

If you want to believe in God, that’s fine-- believe in Him. But if you (the generic you) have the need to reconcile your religious beliefs with science, then you’re in trouble. It can’t be done except by a lot of meaningless hand waving.

29

I’m sorry, but that seems obvious to me. If the two ways of seeing the world do not contradict each other (since they are using different language to address different issues), then religion is not undermined by science. Only people who attempt to treat the two “languages” as the same are threatened by the different statements by science and religion (hence Creationists). It is not a matter of “tacking God on” to scientific statements so much as noting that where the two ways of looking at the world tend to converge (i.e., there is a physical reality that we belive God created), then the physical nature of that reality is best explained by science.

I do not go into a GQ discussion of some technical point of evolutionary theory and then tack on “because that is how God wanted it.” References to God only show up in biological or cosmological discussions when a biblical literalist (whether a religious person or an atheist) attempts to pit the two ways of seeing the world against each other.

30

True, you don’t. And maybe evolution wasn’t a good example. But most (all?) Christians DO accept some interaction of God into the physical realm-- miracles, the birth of Christ, or His resurrection from the dead to name a few examples. Once you do, then you open your beliefs to the scrutiny of science, and science has never provided any collaborative evidence concerning the interaction of God with the physical world.

The conundrum for beilevers, as I see it, is this: If you propose that God has some interraction with the physical world, then you open up your beliefs to being debunked by science (which has **never **validated any such interaction). If you propose there is no interraction with the physical world, then in what way does the concept of God have any meaning to us, who are, after all, creaturs of the physical world?

31

I’m rushing off to a customer meeting and don’t have time to write a proper response, but I just wanted to say two things:

  1. I am not religious. I am not trying to find a way to shoe-horn God into science, as I agree that probably won’t work.

  2. I don’t know enough about biblical studies to understand why the timeframes in the first 5 books equate to 6,000 years

  3. I don’t know where the waters went, or why there are no dinosaurs, in the bible, but I have a theory that I will post here later today.

But most of all, thank you all for your input.

32

It’s a combination of adding up some "age at fatherhood"s:
http://www.bibletime.com/bt/theory/history/adam/
and archeology:

See the last half of this:

So anyway, the creationists already have answers to that stuff plus even more complex evolution/geology type issues on their website, or in their books and magazines.

33

A possible dinosaur in the Bible (according to creationists) is the Behemoth:

34

I think the Big Bang and Genesis are quite compatible… the difference is that I would call it a theory and some religious people would call it the “truth”. Maybe the Big Bang was when Zeus killed his father or banged Hera into a massive orgasm thus creating our world… or some other Diety sneezed.

In the end the problem is the Bible. Beleiving in God is fine… beleiving in some Genesis is fine… we can’t prove or argue logically about that. But beleiving that the Bible is a sacred text straight from God or inspired by him is a mighty weak link in anyone’s faith. Maybe in fact it is… but there is quite a good chance that its a big pamphlet and mythology compilation. (full of other cultures myths as it is.) That is one reason I don’t take “Bible” embracing zealots of any religion seriously… and I do respect people who have a “personal” faith or religion.

If I presented to you toilet paper with golden shit and said it was God that wiped his ass with it… would you worship it ? Not unless God handed it directly to you I hope.

35

Nor has science provided definitive evidence to contradict every miraculous event. I’m pretty sure that the sun did not stop to let Joshua wage a longer battle and I am fully persuaded that The Flood never occurred as described. Neither interferes with my faith. On the other hand, there are medical remissions that (so far) remain unexplained which may or may not have anything to do with God, but as long as they remain a mystery to science they provide no way to refute religious beliefs. Beyond that, even events such as the Resurrection of Jesus can be understood in ways that do not preclude science. (Such interpretations are clearly not mainstream in Christian thought at this time, but a recognition that The Flood was not an historical event is less than two hundred years old.)
As long as the believer does not attempt to impose religious doctrine in place of scientific knowledge, I do not see a conflict between the two. Perhaps God involves Himself (or herself) on the physical plane only on those occasions where science will never have a definitive voice or perhaps the Divine simply works on people’s hearts in ways that they project physical interactions based on a limited understanding of God. Either way, I do not see a conflict (except between the theistic and atheistic literalists).

Certainly, there is little room for discussion between a person who accepts only the rational physical world and a person involved in religious discourse. We begin our acceptance of what we will understand of the world based in our experience. Even attempts to argue from First Principles are simply accepted or rejected based on one’s world view before attempting to discern those First Principles (otherwise the philosophers would have wrapped up the definition of reality by now).
If your world view sees the chaos, destruction, and pain that pervades the world, you may perceive no god behind the creation or ordering of the world (or, I suppose, you might perceive Cthulhu).
If your world view sees the order, creation, and altruism that pervades the world, you may perceive a god behind the creation or ordering of the world, (or you may think that we are simply making the best of a bad hand).
Either way, that internal perception will affect every argument one hears regarding Truth and we can only look at the other side and say “Why don’t they see the obvious reality?”

36

Creationists can see a mixture… the original beauty of creation, which has become cursed (thorns, carnivores, disease, etc) containing inherently sinful people who are often wicked, but who are capable of loving others.

37

True.
I was simply throwing out contrasting views to show how different world views might form, not attempting to exhaustively define the possible world views.

38

But science CANNOT prove that “God didn’t do it”, so I don’t know see where things like medical remissions make any differeonce one way or the other. My point is that if you are going to claim some physical phenomenon as being devine in origin, then you need to subject that phenomenon to scrutiny with the tool we use to understand the physical world-- science. If not, then you have to claim that science cannot be used to understand certain aspects of the physical world, which then begs the question: why can it be used to to verify ANY aspects of the physical world, and how are we supposed to draw the line?

39

Well, we seem to be safe, then, as I (and most people I know) am (are) unlikely to go around claiming Divine intervention in the physical world and the one clearly Divine intervention in which I believe is not available for scientific testing.

Since I rarely encounter people claiming constant Divine intervention, (aside from people who escape terrible accidents thanking God for having–in their minds–led them to safety), I guess I am not sure of the point of this discussion.

On the other hand, if you are simply addressing the specific beliefs of some other religious groups, then I should probably just back out of this thread since we may be posting past each other.

40

The Big Bang proper, as opposed to issues of inflationary cosmology, anisotropy, etc., is absolutely compatible with Genesis 1:1-4 or so, the only part of the Bible which directly addresses it. At the instant of the Big Bang, the universe was extremely small, extremely dense, and of an extremely high temperature – on the order of six billion degrees (at this point and with that generality, the temperature scale used makes no effective difference). The only particle which can exist at six billion degrees is the photon (along with the neutrino and hypothetically the graviton, issues not relevant).

Yom, the noun describing what God worked during six of in Genesis 1, is translated “day,” but like English “day,” has the three meanings of “period from sunrise to sundown,” “period between a given time of day (midnight, sunset, noon, etc.) and the recurrence of said time of day,” and “indefinite period of time during which someone or something flourished,” as in “In Abraham’s day…”

But as suggested elsewhere, understanding Genesis 1 as story makes sense both in terms of writing style and in terms of divine intent. If God had wanted to provide scientific treatises, He would have called Democritus, not Abraham, and Aristotle, not Moses. What He’s intent on conveying is that (1) He did it all, not some demiurge or deus otiosus, (2) He did it by His Word calling things into existence (cf. John 1:1-18), (3) He did it in an orderly sequence, not all at once, (4) He made human beings an integral part of His creation, (5) He called everything He created good, and (6) He made a time of rest, refreshment, and union with Him an integral part of His creation. Thrown into the mix are snide comments constrasting the Israelite creation story with the Babylonian and Ugaritic creation stories: their creators work with chaos; He creates the chaos and then shapes it; Marduk wrestles with Tiamat, the monster of the deep; He creates the monsters of the deep; Ea creates and then chills out, leaving the running of the world to his offspring; He not only creates but takes an active interest in His creation and His creatures.

And the whole thing is told in a memorable repetitive style: “On the nth day God said, ‘Let there be X.’ And X came into existence, with appropriate details for X. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the nth day.” I’ve read that “evening” and “morning” need not be literal, any more than “day” is, to conform to the Hebrew terminology: they’re words for “downfalling” and “uprising,” not the specific English terms that mean only particular times of day. But without better knowledge of Hebrew than I have, I cannot confirm that as accurate.

However, that formula is reminiscent of children’s stories. Take Goldilocks and the Three Bears, for example. Any three-year-old will tell you with glee that Poppa Bear’s whatever is bad one way, Momma Bear’s same thing is bad the opposite way, and the same object for Baby Bear is just right. That repetitiveness makes for a memorable story that carries a point.

Likewise, the master prose craftsman who put together the Genesis story made sure that people of whatever age or literacy level would be able to grasp the points he was making by the same formulaic repetitiveness, bringing home the message that God made everything, made it intrinsically good, that the same God who created it all is the one who is involved with the individual person…

For the Bible-literalist, the idea that there are other meanings to “truth” than literal narrative account is difficult. Often he is best able to grasp it by looking at Jesus’s parables – which contain subtle and important truths clad in fictional anecdote.

But, for me at least, the idea that God in some way inspired Scripture is important – it’s not the manufactured ravings of a bunch of desert nomads, but their best understanding of who He is and what He is like – evolving over time. Just as a small child is unable to grasp parental guidance as opposed to discipline, and therefore needs to be told what not to do, while an older child or teen may be guided to make wise decisions for him/herself, so the concept of God evolved from absolute potentate to loving Father. (Note carefully that that says nothing about the nature of God, but about human concepts regarding Him.)