A take on creationism with an astro theme?

[Terry B]

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.

[sheeny (Al)]

Al.

[glenc (Glen)]

Some people believe God created the universe 6,000 years ago. They also believe that God is eternal.
What did God do (for most of eternity) before he created the universe?

[GTB_an_Owl (Geoff)]

i think he was working on the introduction of "the long weekend" Glen

geoff

[Campus Dweller]

Beautifully composed, Terry. It deserves a wide audience.
Although creationists make an issue of attacking evolution, it is rare to see their alternative, the Bible creation story, scrutinized so well. Your article describes excellently everything missing in the first passages of the Bible in light of what we now know about the nature of the universe.

One of my weapons is to ask creationists how it is that god made night and day on the first day, but waited until the fourth day to create the Sun (to accompany the day) and the Moon (to accompany the night - the author obviously had little idea about the moon phases).

Apparently we're supposed to throw out every modern textbook on Geology, Astronomy and Evolutionary Biology and replace it with a few prosaic passages of a story written thousands of years ago

Yours in having an open mind - but not letting the part of your brain that deals in reason fall off.
Drew

[Rhino1980 (Ryan)]

Too funny. Can't wait to see or hear the rebuttal!

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

I enjoyed a lot because I used to be a creationist!

[Campus Dweller]

Originally Posted by mswhin63

I enjoyed a lot because I used to be a creationist!

But, Malcolm, you have a questioning mind that enabled you to break free of beliefs, that, like myself, you were possibly brought up with and told not to question.

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by Terry B

Genesis Revisited

A Scientific Creation Story

By Michael Shermer


By now God was tired, so He proclaimed, “Thank me its Friday,” and He
made the weekend. It was a good idea.

Very good, very subtle, the right mix. I can't help wondering in the Light of All This, was He a Trade Unionist, probably with prominent eyebrows.

Cheers

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Originally Posted by Campus Dweller

like myself, you were possibly brought up.

I was not grown up with it, just a phase, my ex boss was a religious fanatic and during my apprenticeship and some of my working life was flooded with info. Almost like Brainwashing but I can assure you it was very different to mainstream religion.

I even questioned during the that time even other religions.

Eventually too many inconsistancies occured and when questioning Space theory and prehistoric evidence finally i snapped out of it.

Funny how accurate the take on creation below describes quite well how I broke out of it.

My parents were releaved afterwards.

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

Originally Posted by GeoffW1

Very good, very subtle, the right mix. I can't help wondering in the Light of All This, was He a Trade Unionist, probably with prominent eyebrows.

Cheers

Nah, he was a contractor. Us guys with prominent eyebrows have spent the last 6000 years trying to improve the design

Bill

[marki]

There's going to be tears over this one .

Mark

[Terry B]

Originally Posted by Campus Dweller

Beautifully composed, Terry. It deserves a wide audience.


snip

Yours in having an open mind - but not letting the part of your brain that deals in reason fall off.
Drew

I thought it was interesting also.

I did not write it. It is from Dr. Michael Shermer. He is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University.

[Enchilada]

Originally Posted by Terry B

I thought it was interesting also.

It is, but it leaves out the important section of beings that were many in the pre-Noah era / 10% remaining after the flood , who were known as the Nephilim (translates to Giants) I.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim

(A certain Biblical 'extinction' event IMO)

It is also interesting that according to this reference the "Nephila specifically referred to the constellation of Orion, and thus Nephilim to Orion's semi-divine descendants (cf. Anakim from Anak);[10] the implication being that this also is the origin of the Biblical Nephilim."

I make no comment if I (or you) believe in it or not, but it presumably answers the question of the origin of Cain's wife - which is highlighted as a main puzzle by many non-Christians - mostly often offered in open debates on Genesis, evolution, and the biblical origin explanations of the World etc.

Zero offence intended. - ZOI

"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance."

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. "

Terry Pratchett : English Author

Note: My favourite of Prachett Cosmology is;

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."

...and another one for believers to chuckle on ...

"He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting "All the gods are *******s."

Gotta Love it, methinks.

[iceman (Mike)]

There are likely some members of IceInSpace who will take offence to this thread so I'm going to close it now.

Discussion of religion, even in jest, will offend some people and is against the TOS.