Does It Matter

Genesis 2:4 (King James Version)
4These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

Genesis 5:1 (King James Version)
1This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

 

Thanks for sharing Dr. Schroeder's name. I am a big fan of his scholarship and scientific expertise. I have conversed with him through email and find him to be humble, honest and insightful.

 

Here is some commentary provided by Dr. Gerarld Schroeder:

What is a "day?"

Let's jump back to the Six Days of Genesis. First of all, we now know that when the Biblical calendar says 5700-plus years, we must add to that "plus six days."

A few years ago, I acquired a dinosaur fossil that was dated (by two radioactive decay chains) as 150 million years old. My 7-year-old daughter says, "Abba! Dinosaurs? How can there be dinosaurs 150 million years ago, when my Bible teacher says the world isn't even 6000 years old?" So I told her to look in Psalms 90:4. There, you'll find something quite amazing. King David says, "One thousand years in Your (God's) sight are like a day that passes, a watch in the night." Perhaps time is different from the perspective of King David, than it is from the perspective of the Creator. Perhaps time is different.

The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2), in trying to understand the subtleties of Torah, analyzes the word "choshech." When the word "choshech" appears in Genesis 1:2, the Talmud explains that it means black fire, black energy, a kind of energy that is so powerful you can't even see it. Two verses later, in Genesis 1:4, the Talmud explains that the same word -- "choshech" -- means darkness, i.e. the absence of light.

Other words as well are not to be understood by their common definitions. For example, "mayim" typically means water. But Maimonides says that in the original statements of creation, the word "mayim" may also mean the building blocks of the universe.

Another example is Genesis 1:5, which says, "There is evening and morning, Day One." That is the first time that a day is quantified: evening and morning. Nachmanides discusses the meaning of evening and morning. Does it mean sunset and sunrise? It would certainly seem to.

But Nachmanides points out a problem with that. The text says "there was evening and morning Day One... evening and morning a second day... evening and morning a third day." Then on the fourth day, the sun is mentioned. Nachmanides says that any intelligent reader can see an obvious problem. How do we have a concept of evening and morning for the first three days if the sun is only mentioned on Day Four? There is a purpose for the sun appearing only on Day Four, so that as time goes by and people understand more about the universe, you can dig deeper into the text.

Nachmanides says the text uses the words "Vayehi Erev" -- but it doesn't mean "there was evening." He explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet -- the root of "erev" -- is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning is "there was disorder." The Torah's word for "morning" -- "boker" -- is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously and remains orderly. Order always degrades to chaos unless the environment recognizes the order and locks it in to preserve it. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement.

The Torah wants us to be amazed by this flow, starting from a chaotic plasma and ending up with a symphony of life. Day-by-day the world progresses to higher and higher levels. Order out of disorder. It's pure thermodynamics. And it's stated in terminology of 3000 years ago.

 

More from Dr. Schroeder:

The creation of time.

Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: "There is evening and morning, Day One." But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, Day Two." Rather, it says "evening and morning, a second day." And the Torah continues with this pattern: "Evening and morning, a third day... a fourth day... a fifth day... the sixth day." Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not "first day," but "Day One" ("Yom Echad"). Many English translations make the mistake of writing "a first day." That's because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! Because there is a qualitative difference, as Nachmanides says, between "one" and "first." One is absolute; first is comparative.

Nachmanides explains that on Day One, time was created. That's a phenomenal insight. Time was created. You can't grab time. You don't even see it. You can see space, you can see matter, you can feel energy, you can see light energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nachmanides attained this insight from the Torah's use of the phrase, "Day One." And that's exactly what Einstein taught us in the Laws of Relativity: that there was a creation, not just of space and matter, but of time itself.

 

More from Dr. Schroeder:

Time travel and the Big Bang.

But how does this help to explain the Bible? Because anyway the Talmud and Rashi and Nahmanides (that is the kabala) all say that Six Days of Genesis were six regular 24-hour periods not longer than our work week!

Let's look a bit deeper. The classical Jewish sources say that before the beginning, we don't really know what there is. We can't tell what predates the universe. The Midrash asks the question: Why does the Bible begin with the letter Beit? Because Beit (which is written like a backwards C) is closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction. Hence we can't know what comes before -- only after. The first letter is a Beit - closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction.

Nachmanides expands the statement. He says that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain "kol yemot ha-olam" -- all the ages and all the secrets of the world.

Nachmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing... but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a dimension for the speck: something very tiny like the size of a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life) and the Neshama (the soul of human life) are spiritual creations. There's only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. The speck is all there was. Anything else was God. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nachmanides describes the substance as "dak me'od, ein bo mamash" -- very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance -- so thin that it has no essence -- turned into matter as we know it.

Nachmanides further writes: "Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman" -- from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Not "begins." Time is created at the beginning. But time "grabs hold." When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no essence -- that's when the Biblical clock of the six days starts.

Science has shown that there's only one "substance-less substance" that can change into matter. And that's energy. Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change into matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold.

Nachmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I don't know if he knew the Laws of Relativity. But we know them now. We know that energy -- light beams, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays -- all travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second. At the speed of light, time does not pass. The universe was aging, but time only grabs hold when matter is present. This moment of time before the clock begins for the Bible, lasted about 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck, to about the size of the Solar System. From that moment on we have matter, and time flows forward. The Biblical clock begins here.

Now the fact that the Bible tells us there is "evening and morning Day One" (and not “a first day”) comes to teach us time from a Biblical perspective. Einstein proved that time varies from place to place in the universe, and that time varies from perspective to perspective in the universe. The Bible says there is "evening and morning Day One".

Now if the Torah were seeing time from the days of Moses and Mount Sinai -- long after Adam -- the text would not have written Day One. Because by Sinai, hundreds of thousands of days already passed. There was a lot of time with which to compare Day One. Torah would have said "A First Day." By the second day of Genesis, the Bible says "a second day," because there was already the First Day with which to compare it. You could say on the second day, "what happened on the first day." But as Nahmanides pointed out, you could not say on the first day, "what happened on the first day" because "first" implies comparison -- an existing series. And there was no existing series. Day One was all there was.

Even if the Torah was seeing time from Adam, the text would have said "a first day", because by its own statement there were six days. The Torah says "Day One" because the Torah is looking forward from the beginning. And it says, How old is the universe? Six Days. We'll just take time up until Adam. Six Days. We look back in time, and say the universe is approximately 15 billion years old. But every scientist knows, that when we say the universe is 15 billion years old, there's another half of the sentence that we never say. The other half of the sentence is: The universe is 15 billion years old as seen from the time-space coordinates that we exist in on earth. That's Einstein's view of relativity. But what would those billions of years be as perceived from near the beginning looking forward?

The key is that the Torah looks forward in time, from very different time-space coordinates, when the universe was small. But since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretches, and that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time.

Imagine in your mind going back billions of years ago to the beginning of time. Now pretend way back at the beginning of time, when time grabs hold, there's an intelligent community. (It's totally fictitious.) Imagine that the intelligent community has a laser, and it's going to shoot out a blast of light, and every second it's going to pulse. Every second --- pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It shoots the light out, and then billions of years later, way far down the time line, we here on Earth have a big satellite dish, and we receive that pulse of light. And on that pulse of light is imprinted (printing information on light is called fiber optics - sending information by light), "I'm sending you a pulse every second." And then a second goes by and the next pulse is sent.

Light travels 300 million meters per second. So the two light pulses are separated by 300 million meters at the beginning. Now they travel through space for billions of years, and they're going to reach the Earth billions of years later. But wait a minute. Is the universe static? No. The universe is expanding. That's the cosmology of the universe. And that does not mean it's expanding into an empty space outside the universe. There's only the universe. There is no space outside the universe. The universe expands by its own space stretching. So as these pulses go through billions of years of traveling, the universe and space are stretching. As space is stretching, what's happening to these pulses? The space between them is also stretching. So the pulses really get further and further apart.

Billions of years later, when the first pulse arrives, we say, "Wow - a pulse!" And written on it is "I'm sending you a pulse every second." You call all your friends, and you wait for the next pulse to arrive. Does it arrive another second later? No! A year later? Maybe not. Maybe billions of years later. Because depending on how much time this pulse of light has traveled through space, will determine the amount of stretching of space between the pulses. That's standard astronomy.

 

L15 billion or six days?

Today, we look back in time. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small -- billions of times smaller -- the Torah says six days. They both may be correct.

What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the "view of time" from the beginning, relative to the "view of time" today. It's not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning when stable matter formed from the light (the energy, the electromagnetic radiation) of the creation) and time today is a million million, that is a trillion fold extension. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. It is a unit-less ratio. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says "I'm sending you a pulse every second," would we see it every second? No. We'd see it every million million seconds. Because that's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe. In astronomy, the term is “red shift.” Red shift in observed astronomical data is standard.

The Torah doesn't say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we're sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah's perspective is from the beginning looking forward.

Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3300 years ago.

The way these two figures match up is extraordinary. I'm not speaking as a theologian; I'm making a scientific claim. I didn't pull these numbers out of hat. That's why I led up to the explanation very slowly, so you can follow it step-by-step.

Now we can go one step further. Let's look at the development of time, day-by-day, based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in "The Principles of Physical Cosmology," a textbook that is used literally around the world.

(In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That's the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.)

The calculations come out to be as follows:

The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the "beginning of time perspective." But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years.

The second day, from the Bible's perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.

The third 24 hour day also included half of the previous day, 2 billion years.

The fourth 24 hour day -- one billion years.

The fifth 24 hour day -- one-half billion years.

The sixth 24 hour day -- one-quarter billion years.

When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?

But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day.

 

Excellent and poignant post Nodak, kudos.

 

You cannot believe in evolution and the bible at the same time.[/QUOTE]

I beg to differ, I do indeed think evolution (thiestic) is a reasonable model for how God created life on earth, and I DO believe the Bible.:thumbs:

 

Not at all.

I have shared my faith with probably around 20,000 people. It is BECAUSE of this, that I know the average person is too smart to accept both evolution and the Bible; the two tings are incompatible, and anyone who believes otherwise is lying to themselves. I have met atheist professors on the streets, who knew the bible, and would put such hodgepodge faith through a cheese shredder.


Again, if I tell you I will be their in six days, but get their in 5 billion years, I am a liar. God is not a liar. He made the world in six days.

 

No, you don't. You believe in atheist scientists, and yourself.

 

OK, I will play your game for little while.

YES I DO.

 

Thanks for sharing the material from Schroeder, don't know how much I agree with, heck, don't even know how much I understand.
There are several videos on youtude of Dr. Schroeder, very interesting.
It does show that God is the the greatest scientist in the world creating not only this world; but all the laws of nature as well.

(I bet God could do my income taxes in a snap!) :thumbsup:

Kind of reminds me of those times one reads about when some folks were put to death for their scientifc view of a round earth.
In truth, there might have been a lot more going on in the creation act than any of us can fathom for our God is the God of the whole universe.

 

Thank you for your kind "reasonableness". IMHO God created the heavens and the earth through his spoken world and now enjoys the praise and glory of His creation as it unfolds before Him according to His design, the attitude and postion of Havensdad reminds me of the following quote:

Epictetus:
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.


But in all honesty, we all are often convinced, to some degree about the correctness of our own views.

 

Why not believe the thousands of scientists, who believe in God's word, rather than one that clearly is willing to compromise? These scientists are doing awesome work!

#1 It happened how the Bible says it happened. God does not lie. God said six days.

#2 You need to brush up on your history. It is a common misconception that Galileo and others were deemed heretics on the basis of their views of the earth. This is incorrect. Galileo, and others, were condemned for rejecting Aristotelian physics, and hence, transubstantiation in the Eucharist.

#3 Nowhere does the Bible say the earth is flat. It in fact, plainly says the world is round. The flat earth, was based on Roman Catholic dogma.

#4 If we can't trust God on how He said He made the earth, we can't trust God on how He says He saved our souls.

#5 God said the earth was made in six days. There is no evidence to the contrary. Why won't you just trust Him? Don't you know that scripture says...

2Pe 1:19 And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,
2Pe 1:20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
2Pe 1:21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Our children our being brainwashed to reject God, on account of atheist "science". And it is because of wishy washy, compromising Christians, that we cannot stop it.

 

Does it matter? Yes.

The Scripture itself reinforces the Genesis seven day week model.

Exodus 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Exodus 31:17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

My calendars still show seven days from Sabbath to Sabbath (Saturday to Saturday) not millions/billions of years.

HankD

 

Let us get something perfectly clear as you continually refer to anyone (scientists) who do not hold your positions on the creation events as being "athiests".
Either you are unaware of the correct definition of atheism, in which case, allow me to clarify it for you.

a·the·ist 
–noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

Despite and inspite of your continued claims I am a theist, not an atheist.
QED

Or perhaps you are just intentionally attempting to be pejorative and smear anyone who sees things and reads the Word of God differently than do you. If so, you should rethink that attitude and spirit.

 

The Bible does not discuss the subject of evolution. Rather, its worldview assumes God created the world. The biblical view is no in conflict with science, rather it is in conflict with any worldview which begins without a creator.

Equally committed and sincer believers have struggled with the subject of beginnings and come to different conclusions. This, of course, is to be expected because the evidence is very old and due to the ravages of the ages, quite fragmented. Students of the bible and of science should avoid polarizations and black/white thinking. Both should be careful not to make respective domains of knowledge and wisdom say things otherwise.

The most important aspect of the continuing discussion of beginnings is not the "process" of creation, but the "origin" of creation. The universe is not the product of random chance and chaotic systems converging. God created it with intention.

The scriptures not only tell us that God created the universe, but more important it informs us as to "who" God is by revealing His personality, His character and His design for creation. It reveals God's deepest desire is to relate and have fellowship with His creation. The heavens and earth are here, we are here. God created all that we see and experience and thus the opening statement:

God created the heavens and the earth.

 

The bible assumes? That is an unbelieveable thing to say. The scriptures declare themselves to be the very words of God.

2 Tim 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

You seem to believe that the scriptures are just a collection of men's writings. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And the reason God does not discuss evolution is because the scriptures clearly say God created everything after it's kind.

Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Gen 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Notice that the first animal mentioned in all of scripture is the whale, the largest creature that has ever lived. Evolution teaches life started with one celled organisms, the smallest creature ever.

Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

There can be variation within a kind. You can have many breeds of dogs or cats, but you can't breed a dog with a cat.

Evolution teaches that one kind or species of animal evolved into another. This is absurd and has never been shown even once. This is why evolutionists spend so much time trying to find the "missing links", that is, animals in a transition from one form to another. Oh, they often say they have found such a link, but within a few years are always forced to retract it.

Evolutionists have went so far as to invent incredible theories like the "Hopeful Monster" or "Punctuated Equalibrium". The very fact that these theories were invented by evolutionists proves they have never found provable links between one species and another, else these theories would have not been necessary.

 

You are so far offbase Winman, that I will not even dignify a debate with you. You are taking the old adage "making a mountain out of a molehill" and exponentially increasing its intention by orders of magnitude. I forgot to cite the quotation and also did some paraphrasing though not with respect to the issue that you cite.(Life Application Bible pg.5 New Living Translation Second Editon Tyndale House Publishers.) Dont be so intellectually childish, it is not becoming of you. I see you often defending against the ardent calvinists and your argurments are often strong and well thought out, here you are way off base in attempting somehow to pigeonhole me into practically being a non-believer, of this you should not be proud of yourself.

 

I only wish you took John 3:16 as literal as you take the creation account.

I agree, and Schroeder agrees in the book. Dr. Schroeder does cover quiet a bit about evolution in the book along with much of the latest views by science concerning the subject.
I assure you Dr. Schroeder is very much a creationist.
Here is an exert from the book:

[There is a popular impression that fossils have proven the validity of classical evolution. Yet most paleontologists admit this is not the case. According to the picture presented by the fossil record, bursts of morphological change occurred within startlingly brief periods of time. This staccato aspect of the fossil record had not been predicted. Its discovery has called for basic rethinking concerning the mechanisms that drive evolutions to ever greater complexity. These rapid changes cannot be explained by purely random mutations at the molecular genetic level. In light of the mounting evidence that the classical concept of evolution is flawed, the journal Science featured a peer-reviewed report titled "Did Darwin Get It All Right?" In that article we learn that "the most thorough study of species formation in the fossil record confirms that new species appear with a most un-Darwinian abruptness.]
"The Science of God" Gerald Schroeder p.87

Agreed, and Schroeder shows its absurdity through statistical mathematics.

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I really recommend the book, not particularly as something that I totally agree with; but as something to show where some of the best minds of science are at today concerning the whole subject.