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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
(Post 1732281)
As does a completely different field of study. How long is a light year? How long did it take the light from Proxima Centauri to reach us? How long did it take the light from NGC 4203 to get here? The furthest star in our own galaxy is approximately 95,000 light years away, so either the galaxy is that old or God lied to us. Either one is untenable to any theology (well, except the Greeks and the Norse, but their stories are myths while our stories are the truth).
Science is science and faith is faith, and apparently never the twain shall meet.
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Not that simple...there is first grade evolution and first grade creation.
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How did G-d create the world? The Torah commentator Rashi tells us that G-d created everything in potential on Day One, and then different species developed from that primordial soup. (see Genesis 1:24, 2:4) It is worthwhile noting that as he was writing in the 11th century, Rashi was not making apologetics in the face of a scientific challenge!
Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch (19th century Germany) further explains that each "Day" represents a specific stage of creation - i.e. a mingling of raw materials and bursts of dramatic new development. As you go through the Torah's account, you see described a gradual process from simple to more complex organisms - first a mass of swirling gasses, then water, then the emergence of dry land, followed by plants, fish, birds, animals, and finally, human beings. This pattern may be similar to the evolutionary process proposed by science. It is truly fascinating to realize that the Torah's position never changed; science has come to match it! In fact, the recently proposed Punctuated Theory of Equilibria is a further step toward the reconciliation of Judaism and science. In other words, Arnold Penzias, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on the Big Bang, remarked: "What we see marking the flight of galaxies with our telescopes, Maimonides saw from his metaphysical view."
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15 Billion or Six Days?
Today, we look back in time. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small ***8213; billions of times smaller ***8213; 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 ***8213; one billion years.
The fifth 24 hour day ***8213; one-half billion years.
The sixth 24 hour day ***8213; 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. And I'll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.
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Actually when take aside this superficial bashing its quite fascinating.
You can look at it as adapting religion to since or the other way around still its interesting. |
