Showing posts with label science vs revelation. Show all posts

At BioLogos, Stephen Meyer Clarifies the Disagreement Separating Intelligent Design from Theistic Evolution - David Klinghoffer - January 19, 2015

At this website by various means we seek to defend life, to encourage Christian faith, to promote Catholic tradition, to edify Marriage in its link to the Creator, to encourage families and individuals, and to support missionary disciples of Jesus. G.S.

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https://evolutionnews.org/2015/01/at_biologos_ste/

At BioLogos, Stephen Meyer Clarifies the Disagreement Separating Intelligent Design from Theistic Evolution

David Klinghoffer @d_klinghoffer January 19, 2015, 4:53 PM

The theory of intelligent design has supporters and detractors both among religious believers and among atheists and agnostics. An atheist sympathizer like Thomas Nagel, the renowned New York University philosopher, is an interesting case. No less so are those Christians and Jews who dislike the idea, despite the fact that traditional theism prompts us to expect objective evidence of design in nature.

Regarding the latter and their style of critique when it comes to ID, I think you could advance a two-part hypothesis: Religious believers who are not familiar with the relevant science feel free to criticize ID on scientific grounds. However those who do know the science are more likely to reject ID not on scientific but on theological or philosophical grounds. That is rich with implications.

Currently at the theistic evolutionary website BioLogos, Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer helps clarify this. BioLogos published a series of critical reviews of Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt, and graciously invited him to reply. Dr. Meyer writes:

I have especially appreciated how the reviews in this recent series have unexpectedly clarified the nature of disagreement between proponents of the theory of intelligent design (ID) and the proponents of theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) associated with BioLogos. I — and many others — have long assumed that the debate between our two groups was mainly a scientific debate about the adequacy of contemporary evolutionary theory. Surprisingly, the reviews collectively have shown that the main disagreement between ID proponents and BioLogos is not scientific, but rather philosophical and methodological.
In particular, the reviews have revealed that the central issue dividing the BioLogos writers from intelligent design (ID) theorists concerns a principle known as methodological naturalism (MN). MN asserts that scientists must explain all events and phenomena by reference to strictly naturalistic or materialistic causes. The principle forbids postulating the actions of personal agency, mind, or intelligent causation in scientific explanations and thus limits the explanatory toolkit of science to strictly material processes or physical causes. The principle of methodological naturalism is, of course, not a scientific theory nor an empirical finding, but an allegedly normative methodological rule, against which I have argued in depth, both in Darwin’s Doubt (see Chapter 19) and in my earlier book, Signature in the Cell (see Chapters 18 and 19). My colleagues have also argued against MN in their responses to some of the BioLogos reviews of Darwin’s Doubt (see, for example, here and here).
Recall that Darwin’s Doubt argues that intelligent design provides the best explanation for the origin of the genetic (and epigenetic) information necessary to produce the novel forms of animal life that arose in the Cambrian period. In making this case, I show first that neither the neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations, nor more recently-proposed mechanisms of evolutionary change (species selection, self-organization, neutral evolution, natural genetic evolution, etc. — see Darwin’s Doubt Chapters 15-16) are sufficient to generate the biological information that arises in the Cambrian period. Instead, I show — based upon our uniform and repeated experience — that only intelligent agents have demonstrated the power to generate the kind of functional information that is present in biological systems (and that arises with the Cambrian animals). Thus, I conclude that the action of a designing intelligence provides the best ("most causally adequate") explanation for the origin of that information.
Now, one might have expected that Ralph Stearley, a paleontologist, and Darrel Falk, a geneticist, both of whom have extensive knowledge of evolutionary theory, would have critiqued the main scientific argument of Darwin’s Doubt on scientific grounds. In particular, one might have expected that they would have argued that either the neo-Darwinian mechanism, or some other evolutionary mechanism, does have the creative power to produce the information necessary to build new forms of animal life. Instead, except for raising a few minor objections about incidental scientific matters, both acknowledged that evolutionary theory has left the problem of the Cambrian explosion unsolved — i.e., that the mutation/natural selection mechanism lacks the creative power to account for macro-evolutionary innovations in the history of life.

As Stephen Meyer notes, the difference between ID and theistic evolution, as articulated by theistic evolutionists who are also scientists or philosophers of science, centers on an issue apart from the science:

Of the three reviewers, Wheaton College philosopher of science Robert Bishop was the least persuaded by DD‘s arguments — but, interestingly, he was also the most explicitly committed to the principle of methodological naturalism. Indeed, he objected to the thesis of the book precisely because it openly rejects (and violates) the principle of methodological naturalism.
Consequently, his four-part critique, by far the longest in the BioLogos series, said very little about my scientific arguments. (He did argue that I was wrong to claim that newer models of evolutionary theory represent significant deviations from neo-Darwinian orthodoxy. Yet, notably, biologist Darrel Falk’s review affirmed my assessment of these newer theories over and against Bishop’s.) In any case, Bishop focused his critique on what he called my "rhetorical strategies," giving particular attention to philosophical issues concerning the legitimacy of design inferences in biology.
In Bishop’s judgment, intelligent design flagrantly violates the rule of methodological naturalism — a rule that he regards as normative for the practice of all natural science because he believes (incorrectly, as it turns out) that "methodological naturalism is the way scientific investigation has been done since before the time of the Scientific Revolution." Indeed, as my colleague Paul Nelson pointed out in his response to Bishop’s critique, Bishop badly misreads the history of science. The design arguments developed by Isaac Newton — in the Opticks and the Principia, for instance �– alone contradict Bishop’s claims.

You sense that between the view of Stephen Meyer and Robert Bishop there is room for a fascinating and profound discussion — not so much about the science, though, as about philosophy. Meyer observes:

Unfortunately, methodological naturalism is a demanding doctrine. The rule does not say "try finding a materialistic cause but keep intelligent design in the mix of live possibilities, in light of what the evidence might show." Rather, MN tells you that you simply must posit a material or physical cause, whatever the evidence. One cannot discover evidence of the activity of a designing mind or intelligence at work in the history of life because the design hypothesis has been excluded from consideration, before considering the evidence, by the doctrine of methodological naturalism (and the definition of science that follows from it).
Nevertheless, having a philosophical rule dictate that one may not infer or posit certain types of causes, whatever the evidence, seems an exceedingly odd way for science to proceed. Scientists tend to be realists about the power of evidence, but skeptics about philosophical barriers — which, if it is anything, the rule of MN surely is. Placing the detection of intelligent design out of the reach of scientific investigation, before the evidence has had a chance to instruct us, looks like rigging a game before any players have taken the field.

Exactly. Still, an in-depth conversation between Meyer and Bishop would be something to watch. When it comes to religious folks who don’t know the science, it’s different. There the discussion tends to circle back on itself very quickly. In a blog for the Jerusalem Post, for example, writer R.P. Nettelhorst swings wildly:

I’ve disliked the Intelligent Design concept since I first heard about it several years ago. From the theological standpoint, I believe that the theory is deeply flawed. It is simply a new version of a very old error: the God of the Gaps fallacy. To put it simply, the God of the Gaps fallacy argues that God is to be defined as mystery. Where there is mystery, there is God: if we find something in the world we don’t understand, the explanation is always the same: God did it.
This is an incredibly lazy approach to the world.

"Lazy," you say? But obviously, as anyone knows who has followed the debate about ID, that’s not at all how intelligent design advocates argue, not remotely close. I tweeted to Nettelhorst, who teaches Bible at Quartz Hill School of Theology in Southern California, to ask how deeply he had studied the science behind ID, to allow him to judge it so harshly as science and as theology. The answer: Not too deeply. What books has he read by ID advocates?

All right, so he read a book several years ago. That probably puts him at an advantage compared to Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman, of the group Sinai and Synapses.

Reactions to the fantastically popular Eric Metaxas article in the Wall Street Journal, arguing for intelligent design at the cosmological level, attracted criticism from Rabbi Mitelman, among others, writing at the Huffington Post. From his credentials, Rabbi Mitelman sounded like he must be a thoughtful guy. I tweeted with him too, and received a variety of comments on ID’s inadequacy as science.

See here for Casey Luskin on peer review and other signs that ID has the upper hand. As for not wanting to hear about ID from anyone associated with the intellectual hub of the ID movement, that would clearly handicap any scientific exploration he chose to do. But okay, I asked, how about physicist and Nobel laureate Charles Townes? No comment from Rabbi Mitelman.

What has he actually read on the subject?

If there was an answer on that, I missed it. I urged him to study up a bit, since the frontier of science and religion is advertised as his area of expertise. The best I could get from him was an agreement that informing himself, despite a priori objections, would do "no harm."

On ID as testable, falsifiable science, see here, here, and here for an introduction.

So there you have it. When they’re familiar with the science underlying the design inference, they give you philosophy. When they don’t know the science, they talk about the science, or simply make a hash of the two. Speaking of inferences, you can draw your own.

I’m on Twitter. Follow me @d_klinghoffer.

https://evolutionnews.org/2015/01/at_biologos_ste/

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC

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THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE - By: Dr. Gerald Schroeder (This text found May 22, 2006 - current update at the linked source - October 2013)

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THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE

By: Dr. Gerald Schroeder

(This text found May 22, 2006 - current update October 2013)

http://geraldschroeder.com/wordpress/?page_id=53

In our discussion of God’s making and creating our magnificent universe, we’ve reached the stage at which we must elaborate on the time-line as described in Genesis chapter one. From comments submitted by readers of the pervious chapters in our Genesis Project, there seems to be the impression that we differ from the Biblical statement that six days passed between the creation of the universe and the creation of humankind. I make this definitive: I take the Bible as it stands.

Yet, one of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Torah and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5700-plus years. Whereas data from the Hubbell telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the age at 14 to 15 billion years.

Let me clarify right at the start. The world may be only some 6000 years old. God could have put the fossils in the ground and juggled the light arriving from distant galaxies to make the world appear to be billions of years old. There is absolutely no way to disprove this claim. God being infinite could have made the world that way. But there is another approach that also agrees with the ancient commentators’ description of God and nature. The world may be young and old simultaneously, and simultaneously with absolutely no bending of the wording of the Bible to match science. In the following I describe this latter option. Please bear with me as we go together through the text of Genesis, finding the “apples of gold” [the deeper meanings] within the “silver dish” of the Bible (see Proverbs 25:11).

In all that follows and in all of my research and writings, I refuse to use any modern Biblical commentary. All modern commentators know sufficient modern science to be influenced by the science. The trend becomes to bend the Bible to match the science. The classic example is to claim that since science has discovered that the world appears to be approximately 14 to 15 billion years old, then “let’s says that the six days of Genesis were not really days, but instead were indefinite, long periods of time.” Rest assured, you will not get that insulting, trivial and misleading message here. It is simply a modern attempt to bend the Bible to match the science. We’ll discover that there is no need to either bend the Bible or the science. As the 12^th century theologian Maimonides taught in The Guide For The Perplexed. If you find a conflict between science and the Bible, there is usually one of two possibilities. Either you don’t understand the science or you don’t understand the Bible. Let’s try to understand both.

The only data I use as far as Biblical commentary goes is ancient commentary. That means the text of the Bible itself (3300 years ago), the translation of the Torah into Aramaic by Onkelos (100 CE), the Talmud (redacted about the year 500 CE), and the three major Torah commentators. There are many, many commentators, but at the top of the mountain there are three: Rashi (11th century France), who brings the straight understanding of the text, Maimonides (12th century Egypt), who handles the philosophical concepts, and then Nahmanides (13th century Spain), the earliest of the Kabbalists.

These ancient commentaries were finalized hundreds or thousands of years ago. There is no possibility modern scientific data influenced these concepts. That's an essential and absolute component in keeping the following discussion objective.

At the out-set, it is instructive to look historically at trends in the assumed age of the universe. Absolute proofs are not forthcoming. None-the-less, we can and should see how science has changed its picture of the world, relative to the unchanging Biblical picture of the Genesis of our world.

In 1959, a survey was taken of leading American scientists. Among the many questions asked was, "What is your concept of the age of the universe?" In 1959, astronomy was popular, but a deep understanding the universe was just developing. The response to that survey was recently republished in Scientific American - the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists, that is the overwhelming majority, gave the same answer: Beginning? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal. Oh, we know the Bible says 'In the beginning.' That's a nice story, it helps kids go to bed at night. But we sophisticates know better. There was no beginning.

That was 1959, less than 50 years ago. Then came the discoveries, in 1965, by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. They revealed that the entire universe in all directions is bathed in a sea of very long wave of very ‘cold,’ radiation. They had discovered the echo of the big bang, the radiation left over from that intense vastly hot moment that marked the beginning. It was the one piece of information needed to nail down whether or not our universe had a beginning. For this they earned the Nobel Prize. Over night the world paradigm changed from a universe that was eternal to a universe that had a creation. Understand the impact. Science said that our universe had a beginning, that the first words of the Bible are correct. I can't over emphasize the importance of this scientific "discovery." Evolution, cave men, these are all trivial problems compared to the fact that science has come to agree with the Biblical statement that our universe had a creation.

Of course, the fact that there was a beginning does not prove that there was a Beginner, a God who “created the Heavens and the Earth." Physics allows for a beginning without a beginner. But having proven that there was a creation goes a long way toward opening the door for the likelihood of a Divine, Godly Creator. I'm not going to get into that today, but my book, "The Science of God," examines this in great detail.

Having established the validity of the Creation, the question we're left with is, how long ago did the "beginning" occur? Was it, as the Bible might imply, 5700-plus years, or was it the billions of years accepted by the scientific community?

The Biblical calendar is calculated by adding up the generations listed in the Bible. But the first aspect we have to understand is the zero point at which we start the calculation. This was established well over 1500 years ago and recorded in the Talmudic teachings, not as some new and surprising fact, but as common knowledge. The Biblical calendar is divided into two parts. We have a clock that begins with Adam. The six days of Genesis that lead up to Adam form a calendar unto themselves, separate from the time after Adam. The Bible has two clocks.

That might seem like a modern rationalization, if it were not for the established fact that Talmudic commentaries, 1500 years ago, bring this information. The calendar that leads to approximately 6,000 years begins with Genesis, chapter one, verse 27 in which God created the soul of the Adam. [Beware of erroneous translations.] The Six Days of Genesis are separate.

Now 1500 years ago, when this information was first recorded, it wasn't because the commentators were trying to match science. Remove yourself from the sophistication of 2006. You have to put yourself in the mind frame of 1500 years ago, when people traveled by donkeys and we didn't have electricity or even zippers. Most thought the world was flat and beasts or demons inhabited the other side. The Six Days were taken out of the calendar because time as described in the Bible is broken into two parts. Time is described in a unique manner in those Six Days of Genesis. "There was evening and morning," day by day.

Once we come to Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years and have a child named Seth. Seth lives 105 years and has a child named Enosh (Genesis chapter 5). From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human in concept. Vastly differing from the previous "evening and morning" sequences.

Moses, himself, broke the calendar into two parts. In his closing speech to the people, Moses said if you want to see the fingerprint of God in the universe, "Remember the days of old, consider the years of the many generations" (Deut. 32:7). The Kabalist Nahmanides (ca. 1250) taught that ‘Remember the days of old’ relates is the Six Days of Genesis. ‘The years of the many generations' is all the time from Adam forward." ??

In trying to understand the flow of time, we have to remember that the entire Six Days is described in 31 sentences. The Six Days of Genesis, which have given people so many headaches in trying to understand science vis-à-vis the Bible are confined to 31 sentences! At MIT, in the Hayden library, we had about 50,000 books that deal with the development of the universe: cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, paleontology, archaeology, the high-energy physics of creation. Up the river at Harvard, at the Weidner library, they probably have 100,000 books on these same topics. The Bible gives us 31 sentences. Don't expect that by a simple reading of those sentences, you'll know every detail that is held within the text. It's obvious that we have to dig deeper to get the information out.

Now, again, put yourself into the mindset of 1500 years ago. Do you think that 1500 years ago they thought that God couldn't make the world in 6 days? We have a problem today with the claims of an old universe based on scientific data. But 1500 years ago, what's the problem with 6 days for an infinitely powerful God? No problem. If fact if we think about it, six days is not too short a time. It is too long! Why should an infinitely powerful creator need six days. Why not have it all in a snap of the Divine fingers.

So when the commentators excluded these six days from the calendar, it wasn't because they were trying to rationalize what they'd seen in some telescope or the local museum. There were no telescopes and no local museum. No one was out there digging up ancient fossils. They excluded the Six Days of Genesis from the calendar because those days do not fit.

Let's look at those evocative Six Days of Genesis as they are recoded in the Bible.

Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. At the end of the first day, we read: "There is evening and morning, day one." But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, day two." Rather, we find "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 Ehad"). 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! As Nahmanides wrote almost 800 years ago, there is a qualitative difference between "one" and "first." One is absolute; first is comparative. For the Bible to have written “a first day,” there would have had to have been a second day. First is relative to the second.

Nahmanides explained and scientific opinion centuries later confirmed that on Day One time was created. Hence at the creation, there was no second day with which to compare it. That by itself is a phenomenal insight. Time was created. You can't grab time. You don't even see it. You can move your hand through space, you can see matter, you can feel energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nahmanides attained this insight from the Torah's use of the phrase, "Day One.”

We look at the universe, and wonder about its age? We look back through the history of the world’s genesis and discover the billions of years from the creation of Adam back to the creation of our universe. That's our view of time. But the Bible's view of that same flow of events is seen, not as history looking back in time, but instead from the beginning looking forward. That is the secret, the ‘golden apple,’ of the verse, “and there was evening and there was morning, one day.” A view from a moment before which there was a second day with which to compare it.

This might imply that perhaps those unique six days were not actually 24 hours each. But this is not the case. No such simple explanation is possible because every ancient commentary, with no exception, and that includes the Talmud (in the section called Holidays, ca. 500), and Rashi (ca. 1090), and Nahmanides (that is the kabala, ca. 1250) all tell us that the Six Days of Genesis were six 24-hour periods “not longer than the six days of our work week. [!]”

Nachmanides continues the statement: although the days are 24 hours each, they contain "kol yemot ha-olam" - all the ages and all the secrets of the world. Six 24 hour days contain all the ages of the universe. How?

Again, the Kabala as derived from the Bible: Before the universe, there was only God. Then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck, with a dimension not larger than the black pupil of an eye, perhaps akin to the size of a grain of mustard. That was the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation. All other creations were spiritual. The creations of the Nefesh (the soul of animal life, Genesis 1:21) and the Neshama (the soul of human life, Genesis 1:27) are spiritual creations. That first speck of space contained all the substance that would be used for making everything else. Nachmanides describes the substance as "dak me'od, ein bo mamash" - very thin, no graspable substance to it. As this speck expanded out, this substance - so thin that it has no material 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 "time begins," but “time grabs hold.” Time was created at the very beginning. But time "grabbed hold" when matter condensed, congealed, coalesced, out of this substance so thin it has no material essence. The Biblical clock of the six days starts then.

Science has shown that only one "substance-less substance" exists that can be compressed so densely that all the eventual matter of the universe, the makings for 100 billion galaxies each to contain 100 billion stars, can be pressed into a speck no larger that the black of an eye, and that can later then change into matter. And that is energy, the super-powerful light beams of the creation. Energy is ultimately compressible. Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, tells us the numerical relationship between matter and the energy from which is it constructed. At the speed of light, time does not exist. Once light beams change form and become matter, they enter the realm of time. Time literally grabs hold when matter forms from the light beams of the big bang creation. Keep in mind that this understanding of our cosmic genesis was written centuries prior to the scientific discoveries that have confirmed it.

Nachmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I wonder 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 grabbed hold when matter formed from the energy. This moment of time before the Biblical clock begins lasted about 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck. The Biblical clock, the Biblical perspective of time for the six days, begins here.

The laws of relativity and the discoveries of astronomy and cosmology tell us that three aspect of our wonderful universe affect the flow and perception of time. In locations of high velocity or high gravity time flows more slowly relative to (and hence the name, the laws of relativity) locations of lower velocity or gravity. The third aspect that affects the perspective of time is the stretching of space as the universe expands. It is this third aspect of time with which I work. Gravity and velocity do not enter the calculations.

We look back in time, and say the universe is approximately 14 to 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 full statement sentence is: The universe is 14 to 15 billion years old as measured from the time-space coordinates that we exist in on earth. But what would those billions of years be as perceived from near the beginning looking forward, from a moment in time when the universe was vastly smaller? Since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretched. And that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time. The following discussion is based totally on Nahmanides and the Kabala’s millennia old insight of viewing time from near the beginning and the effect of the stretching of space on the perspective of time.

If we were to view with some superbly powerful telescope events happening in a galaxy billions of light years away, we’d see those events only after the light had traveled to us through the space between the distant galaxy and us. But as the light traveled, the space through which it sped was stretching, and so the events as we viewed them would be stretched out in time. What may have happened in a few seconds could appear to use as happening in periods of hours or years or millennia depending upon how much space had stretched. If the universe had stretched to be 100 times larger by the time the light reached us, then what actually took one hour would appear to us as taking 100 hours, if one second then to us it would appear a 100 seconds. To know the actual timing on that distant galaxy, we’d have to divide our observation by that ratio factor of stretching. In this case it would be dividing by100.

Today, we look back in time. We see some 15 billion years of history. But the Torah, looking forward from when the universe was vastly smaller - billions of times smaller – teaches six days. In truth, they are both correct. And correct with absolutely no bending of either the Bible or the science.

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 or astronomy textbooks all bring the same number. The general expansion factor, the change between the scale or size of the universe from near the beginning at the moment of stable matter formation (nucleosynthesis is the term) to now is a million million, a trillion. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. It is a unitless ratio. The universe is now a trillion times larger than it was at nucleosynthesis. When a view from the beginning looking forward says "The following events happened in one day," we would see those very same events lasting a trillion days. That's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe. In astronomy, the term is “red shift”.

The Torah tells us that from the perspective of Day One, six days passed between the creation of the universe and the creation of Adam. How would we see those six days? From our perspective in time, looking back into history those six 24 hour periods would stretch into six million million days.

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. Not a bad ‘guess’ for 3300 years ago. When we correct for the fact that Adam received the Neshama, the soul of human life, during the sixth day and not at its very end and so less than six complete days passed, and for the recent observations that the universe is actually increasing in its rate of expansion, the calculated age of the universe decreases by approximately 10% to 14 billion years.

The way the scientific and the Biblical ‘ages’ match 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 the derivation based totally on ancient biblical commentary and modern science can be followed step-by-step.

Now we can go one step further. Let's look at the development of time, day-by-day. Every time the universe increases in scale by a given factor, the time as perceived at the beginning is divided by that same factor. When the universe was small, its rate of doubling was very rapid. But as the universe got larger, the time it took to double in scale took ever longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in "The Principles of Physical Cosmology," a textbook published by Princeton University Press, and used literally around the world. The decreasing in the factorial rate of growth tells us that the early 24 hour days of the Genesis week contained most of the historical time as we perceive it.

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 we add up the Six Days, we find that the time between the big bang creation and the creation of the Adam is 15 and 3/4 billion years. Again, correcting for the fact that Adam received the Neshama part way through the sixth day and that the universe is actually increasing in its rate of expansion, the age becomes approximately 14 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?

But there's more. The Bible is so certain that it brings the truth that it tells us 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 the Biblical claims day-by-day. And I'll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up the spine of even a confirmed atheist.

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http://geraldschroeder.com/wordpress/?page_id=53

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Applying the above, with the adjustment suggested at the end, here are the numbers we come up with:

Day one - 6.9942856 billion years ago LIGHT

Second day - 3.495 billion years ago SKY (PLANET EARTH)

Third day - 1.7475 billion years ago DRY LAND & VEGETATION

Fourth day - 0.87375 billion years ago or 873,750,000 years ago SUN, MOON, STARS

Fifth day - 0.436875 billion years ago or 436,875,000 years ago BIRDS & FISH

Sixth day - 0.2184375 billion years ago or 218,437,500 years ago CATTLE, ANIMALS, INSECTS
(Human beings coming at the "end" of this period) MAN & WOMAN

Today - 13.765847 or 13,765,847,000 billion years later

FASCINATING!!!

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Is the Bible True or Not? - Wilderness Reflections – 5 – Meaning and Purpose of Life

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Wilderness Reflections – 5 – Meaning and Purpose of Life

Is the Bible True or Not?

Dear Fr. Gilles, we would greatly appreciate your input regarding religion class for our daughter. Her teacher is stating that the story of Adam & Eve, Noah's Ark, and a large chunk of the Old Testament is myth. She is frustrated and asking us whether the Old Testament is real or fictitious. We have explained that The Bible is very real and feel that this approach to the Bible in a Catholic School does nothing to up build a 14-year old’s' faith. Please help with insight. Blessings, Your Friends.

My dear Friends, Parents, and Youth, this is simply a good opportunity for you to help each other make acquaintance with our secular culture - now's as good a time as any. Our beloved Youth needs to see for herself the difference between looking with eyes, mind, and eyes of faith or looking with eyes and mind only. For example: "Adam and Eve is a myth" means that it happened so long ago that there were no movie cameras, no reporters, no tape recorders, and we have absolutely no documentation left at all from the time of that first man and woman. That is true.

Some people use this fact to draw the conclusion that nothing in the Bible is real or can be trusted, often because they don't like parts of the Bible - especially the commandments - such as God really doesn't like adultery or stealing, because these things kill our spirit. Others don't like the Church and so they want to discredit the source of the Church's authority, which is God's divinely inspired Word. Others mean well, but there's something about this story and really all of the Bible which makes them feel uncomfortable; so they just dismiss it and rely on arguments from science to discredit the validity of the Bible. They think they are doing something good, by exposing something old and unreliable, they think; so that young minds can venture into life without the burden that the Bible seems to put on people's minds and consciences. We shouldn't blame them, they simply have never understood how to approach the Bible with respect as well as with intelligence.

Whether there actually was a first man called Adam and a first woman called Eve isn't really the point. Keep in mind that Adam means "man" and Eve means "from man". Let's make no mistake - there definitely was a first man and a first woman. Apes didn't mysteriously and gradually become human - so that it would be impossible to tell who exactly the first humans were. The best that the most brilliant scientists can do is formulate theories, and since the origins of humanity are buried in time, it is very difficult, if not impossible to test these theories. This is an area of science where old stories have as much relevance as scientific theories.

Pope John Paul II is on record for saying that some scientific theories are not necessarily in disaccord with faith. It's possible that God created man and woman in ways similar to the story told in Genesis. It's also possible that the first human beings evolved from primates, but what made them human wasn't simply evolving, but God giving them a supernatural soul. Once they received a soul within their body, they became "awake" and could now know God through personal experience. They now had a conscience and could tell the difference between right and wrong. They could now choose to love and put others first or refuse to do that. They could receive from God spiritual gifts such as faith, which allows them to see with inner, spiritual insight into things and their inner meaning beyond what only their eyes or mind could reveal.

A person of faith looks at the apparent mythical origins of Adam and Eve and sees that someone took the trouble to try to remember something about the first human beings in order to help their children remember the lessons to be learned from the experience of that first human couple. This is where the Holy Spirit exercised his power - in the lives of the first couple themselves, who came to understand what happened to them and what it meant - in the lives of succeeding generations who tried to remember the story and the meaning of it for them, and in the lives of those who eventually recorded the story in the form we now have today, and finally, in the lives of those of us today who read the story and open our minds and hearts to receive the truths that God wants us to have so that we can face life and learn from the painful experience of Adam and Eve.

The central truth told in the story of Adam and Eve is that God created them and gave them a close relationship with Him. There was a difference in the relationship that the man and woman had with God - Adam remembered God telling him not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but Eve did not - she had to take Adam's word for it. The tempter exploited this difference and the weakness in Eve's relationship with God and tempted her with knowledge that would make her equal to God. She was tempted not to trust any longer that God would give them all good things and grab it for herself.

When Adam went along with her, what they were doing was trying to make themselves into something more than what they were - they no longer trusted that what God had made them was good enough, they no longer trusted that what God was giving them would satisfy them. What they were really doing was rejecting God's role in their lives - they were no longer satisfied with the way God was exercising his role in giving them life - they were deciding to take God's role over themselves and decide how to shape their own lives. They would decide what is good and evil. They believed the lie of the tempter that they were lacking some knowledge, and if they had it they would be equal to God. They were lacking the experience, the taste of evil. What the evil was that they tasted, the story does not tell, only that it appeared desirable to the eye and tasted sweet, but the result was very bitter.

What exactly was the “original sin”?

If we extrapolate from the final results, namely, the shame this first couple felt over their nakedness; we may formulate a hypothesis that the evil they did had to do with their bodies. It may very well be that they were tempted not to patiently await the unfolding of God their Creator’s plan for the development of their intimate relations, but instead were tempted to take their cues from the other creatures around them. This is not at all a bad hypothesis, considering the current situation of the human species.

To this day we human beings are poised on a razor’s edge between a tender hearted and other centered view of our human sexuality, which seeks the good of the other ahead of one’s own desires, on the one hand; on the other hand, is the mad rush in every society and culture for seeking one’s own pleasure, which all too often is at the expense of the other’s well being and dignity. Men in particular are tempted to “take” pleasure from their woman – or even assorted women – with little or no concern about how the woman experiences them. As it turns out, what may be briefly pleasing for the man may actually be painful for the woman.

In effect, then, human beings sacrificed civility, kindness, tenderness, and genuine love of the other on the pagan altar of selfishness, impatience, unfettered emotion and impulsiveness. What God intended to be gracious and kind with tenderness has become violent, brutal, and destructive for the pursuer as well as the pursued.

Whatever the original sin was, as the direct result, the man and the woman now became ashamed of their nakedness, they became afraid of God and hid when He called them to walk with them in the afternoon in the Garden as He usually did with them. When God questioned them, they lied: Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. Neither of them took responsibility for what they had done, so God had no choice but to let the evil consequences continue to grow inside them. God described what the effects would be like for them.

Adam would be frustrated in all his efforts to cultivate the earth. Eve would have a distorted, exaggerated desire for her husband - a kind of grabbing that would give her husband the impression he was being strangled; so he would react and dominate her with his strength. They would suffer the loss of harmony with God, with each other, with the creatures and with the earth, because they had broken their trust in God, in each other, and in the earth - they broke their trust that everything God created would be sufficient to bring them happiness. The desire of their heart became corrupt.

So that is what the story is really about. It is the same with all the other stories in the Bible. They are all inspired by the Holy Spirit to remind us of truths that we have forgotten or never known. Jesus said that the truth will set us free to know and love God, each other, and all God's creatures. God created the world around us and He gives us a share in his responsibility to care for this world and do all we can to keep it in harmony.

May you have peace and love in Jesus, our Lord, Fr. Gilles

Originally composed February 26^th, 2003

March 8th, 2021

Gilles A. Surprenant, priest of Montreal, Associate of Madonna House Apostolate, & poustinik

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