Terry B
29-05-2009, 03:43 PM
Genesis Revisited
A Scientific Creation Story
By Michael Shermer
In the beginning—specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon—out of
quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang, followed by
cosmological inflation and an expanding universe. And darkness was upon
the face of the deep, so He commanded hydrogen atoms (which He created
from Quarks) to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process release
energy in the form of light. And the light maker he called the sun, and
the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now
He could see what he was doing, so he created Earth. And the evening and
the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be lots of fusion light makers in the sky. Some
of these fusion makers He grouped into collections He called galaxies,
and these appeared to be millions and even billions of light years from
Earth, which would mean that they were created before the first creation
in 4004 B.C. This was confusing, so God created tired light, and the
creation story was preserved. And created He many wondrous splendors
such as Red Giants, White Dwarfs, Quasars, Pulsars, Supernova, Worm
Holes, and even Black Holes out of which nothing can escape. But since
God cannot be constrained by nothing, He created Hawking radiation
through which information can escape from Black Holes. This made God
even more tired than tired light, and the evening and the morning were
the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto
one place, and let the continents drift apart by plate tectonics. He
decreed sea floor spreading would create zones of emergence, and He
caused subduction zones to build mountains and cause earthquakes. In
weak points in the crust God created volcanic islands, where the next
day He would place organisms that were similar to but different from
their relatives on the continents, so that still later created creatures
called humans would mistake them for evolved descendants created by
adaptive radiation. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
And God saw that the land was barren, so He created animals bearing
their own kind, declaring Thou shalt not evolve into new species, and
thy equilibrium shall not be punctuated. And God placed into the rocks,
fossils that appeared older than 4004 B.C. that were similar to but
different from living creatures. And the sequence resembled descent with
modification. And the evening and morning were the fourth day.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures
that hath life, the fishes. And God created great whales whose skeletal
structure and physiology were homologous with the land mammals he would
create later that day. God then brought forth abundantly all creatures,
great and small, declaring that microevolution was permitted, but not
macroevolution. And God said, “Natura non facit saltum”—Nature shall not
make leaps. And the evening and morning were the fifth day.
And God created the pongidids and hominids with 98 percent genetic
similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve. In the book in which God
explained how He did all this, in one chapter He said he created Adam
and Eve together out of the dust at the same time, but in another
chapter He said He created Adam first, then later created Eve out of one
of Adam’s ribs. This caused confusion in the valley of the shadow of
doubt, so God created theologians to sort it out.
And in the ground placed He in abundance teeth, jaws, skulls, and
pelvises of transitional fossils from pre-Adamite creatures. One chosen
as his special creation He named Lucy, who could walk upright like a
human but had a small brain like an ape. And God realized this too was
confusing, so he created paleoanthropologists to figure it out.
Just as He was finishing up the loose ends of the creation God realized
that Adam’s immediate descendants would not understand inflationary
cosmology, global general relativity, quantum mechanics, astrophysics,
biochemistry, paleontology, and evolutionary biology, so he created
creation myths. But there were so many creation stories throughout the
world God realized this too was confusing, so created He anthropologists
and mythologists.
By now the valley of the shadow of doubt was overrunneth with
skepticism, so God became angry, so angry that God lost His temper and
cursed the first humans, telling them to go forth and multiply
themselves (but not in those words). But the humans took God literally
and now there are six billion of them. And the evening and morning were
the sixth day.
By now God was tired, so He proclaimed, “Thank me its Friday,” and He
made the weekend. It was a good idea.
A Scientific Creation Story
By Michael Shermer
In the beginning—specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon—out of
quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang, followed by
cosmological inflation and an expanding universe. And darkness was upon
the face of the deep, so He commanded hydrogen atoms (which He created
from Quarks) to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process release
energy in the form of light. And the light maker he called the sun, and
the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now
He could see what he was doing, so he created Earth. And the evening and
the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be lots of fusion light makers in the sky. Some
of these fusion makers He grouped into collections He called galaxies,
and these appeared to be millions and even billions of light years from
Earth, which would mean that they were created before the first creation
in 4004 B.C. This was confusing, so God created tired light, and the
creation story was preserved. And created He many wondrous splendors
such as Red Giants, White Dwarfs, Quasars, Pulsars, Supernova, Worm
Holes, and even Black Holes out of which nothing can escape. But since
God cannot be constrained by nothing, He created Hawking radiation
through which information can escape from Black Holes. This made God
even more tired than tired light, and the evening and the morning were
the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto
one place, and let the continents drift apart by plate tectonics. He
decreed sea floor spreading would create zones of emergence, and He
caused subduction zones to build mountains and cause earthquakes. In
weak points in the crust God created volcanic islands, where the next
day He would place organisms that were similar to but different from
their relatives on the continents, so that still later created creatures
called humans would mistake them for evolved descendants created by
adaptive radiation. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
And God saw that the land was barren, so He created animals bearing
their own kind, declaring Thou shalt not evolve into new species, and
thy equilibrium shall not be punctuated. And God placed into the rocks,
fossils that appeared older than 4004 B.C. that were similar to but
different from living creatures. And the sequence resembled descent with
modification. And the evening and morning were the fourth day.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures
that hath life, the fishes. And God created great whales whose skeletal
structure and physiology were homologous with the land mammals he would
create later that day. God then brought forth abundantly all creatures,
great and small, declaring that microevolution was permitted, but not
macroevolution. And God said, “Natura non facit saltum”—Nature shall not
make leaps. And the evening and morning were the fifth day.
And God created the pongidids and hominids with 98 percent genetic
similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve. In the book in which God
explained how He did all this, in one chapter He said he created Adam
and Eve together out of the dust at the same time, but in another
chapter He said He created Adam first, then later created Eve out of one
of Adam’s ribs. This caused confusion in the valley of the shadow of
doubt, so God created theologians to sort it out.
And in the ground placed He in abundance teeth, jaws, skulls, and
pelvises of transitional fossils from pre-Adamite creatures. One chosen
as his special creation He named Lucy, who could walk upright like a
human but had a small brain like an ape. And God realized this too was
confusing, so he created paleoanthropologists to figure it out.
Just as He was finishing up the loose ends of the creation God realized
that Adam’s immediate descendants would not understand inflationary
cosmology, global general relativity, quantum mechanics, astrophysics,
biochemistry, paleontology, and evolutionary biology, so he created
creation myths. But there were so many creation stories throughout the
world God realized this too was confusing, so created He anthropologists
and mythologists.
By now the valley of the shadow of doubt was overrunneth with
skepticism, so God became angry, so angry that God lost His temper and
cursed the first humans, telling them to go forth and multiply
themselves (but not in those words). But the humans took God literally
and now there are six billion of them. And the evening and morning were
the sixth day.
By now God was tired, so He proclaimed, “Thank me its Friday,” and He
made the weekend. It was a good idea.