file name physics like Genesis1.txt
by John Engelbrecht Grovetown, GA January 11, 2012 Non-registered copyright (c) 2012 John Engelbrecht
Abstract
A faith-based, literal view of Genesis Chapter 1 has interesting parallels to the creation story as related by popular-press, secular science books.
Scope
Pastor Rodney Coe's sermon series on Creation and Evolution gives me pause to consider notes I had previously made in my Bible. I notice a remarkable number of common threads between Genesis and what I understand modern physics saying about origins, as related by popular-press books. This essay records these threads so I can share them with others. This essay does not take the view of God setting the early universe into motion and then stepping back to watch it unfold.1 The view of this essay is to be rooted in a conservative reading of Genesis, as Jesus was when he referred to the Jewish scriptures. No consideration is given to multiverses. Ps. 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Jn 1:3 Of all the things that were made, Jesus made them all. Col 1:16 By him all things were created...created through him and for him. Isa 45: He who founded the earth did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited [by people made in His image, able to reason, and able to choose obedience].2, 3
The Hebrew word for day in Genesis 1 can be interpreted "age," though this is much criticized. Http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=391. Whether or not this is accepted by the reader, consider the following speculations.
Gen 1:1
When the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, God had created something but had not given the physical laws that we know. The Spirit was hovering over whatever existed at that time, giving order and preventing chaos. There was no light or energy and no gravity.
When God gave light, he gave the phenomena of energy, matter, E=mc2, and the quantum laws about the interplay of photons and electrons (QED). He also gave the physical constants (search the web for "anthropic coincidences"), time, dimensions, the four forces that physicists talk about (the strong nuclear force, electro-weak force, gravity), all of chemistry and plasma physics, thermodynamics, enough laws of molecules to let organic chemistry support life (such as polymerization, which goes beyond crystallization), and the quantum effects that are currently researched. But stars and planets were still in the future, in the second day. When God saw that the light was good, it means that what he was making was suitable for bringing about future believers, and that was all that mattered at that point.
When God separated light from darkness, there were still no planets or stars. But there were clumps of matter dense enough that light was blocked, in other words there were shadows. Secular physics' time line of 380,000 years after the big bang sounds like this, when matter had formed, things were cool enough for atoms to not be ions, light could travel without immediately being reflected by dense plasma (the Dark Ages), and the background cosmic radiation (currently three degrees above absolute zero) would be cooling below incandescence. (Cosmologists say stars first formed at 100 million yrs.) If you have read The First Three Minutes, it is neat to see that secular physics can be seen to follow along with Genesis. The 380,000 years goes like this: matter was hot plasma during the first 380,000 years. If we assume the leading edge of matter was going at the speed of light, the universe at that time was 760,000 light years across, and it was cooling but still hot (almost incandescent) matter of somewhat uniform composition, with no gravitationally induced clumps, but almost entirely hydrogen and helium. We can compare the 750,000 light years to the diameter of the Milky Way, 100,000 light years. How extraordinary is it that all the universe's matter was contained in a sphere of diameter 7.5x the Milky Way's diameter? Realize that spiral galaxies are quite flat. The Milky Way is 1100 light years thick, in the "thin disk" dimension. So the Milky Way's mass is primarily in a flattened disk that is only 1/680 of the 750,000 light years. But don't lose sight that the theory is that there were no stars, not even clumps of matter, at 380,000 years. But if we continue to imagine, a Milky-Way-shaped disk could be fit into a 750,000-light-year-diameter sphere something like this: vol of 750,000 lt yr/vol of Milky Way = 4/3 pi r cube/(1100*pi r squared) = 27,000. This is far short of the 2 trillion galaxies, so it seems matter then might have been 74 million times as dense as the average Milky-Way density. But I suspect this density would still be pretty dilute.
At the completion of the first evening and morning, the first day, there was no sun to keep track of time, and there was no rotating earth to give meaning to "day." So if the Hebrew word for day can also mean age, that makes verse five understandable in a wider context.
Gen 1:6
When God made an expanse to separate the water below from the water above, he was making the earth, the atmosphere (the expanse or sky), and the other planets. (Especially if water means matter.) But this second day still had no sun.
Gen 1:9
The third day's creation brought about land, sea, perhaps tectonic plates and continental shelves, and weather. God's evaluation, that it was good, means that there were some places on land that had moderate weather which would allow Adam and Eve to need no coats or blankets. Species of plants came about and did photosynthesis (a complex process that is still not completely known in detail at the atomic level by biochemists) by light that came from somewhere other than the sun, for the sun came about on the fourth day. If plants were bearing seeds for some long age without pollinating insects, that is a manifestation of the harmful nature of mutations: the plants had not been harmed yet by mutations and didn't need insects to do the pollination.
Gen 1:14
On the fourth day, God made the sun and moon. At some time here, he made the earth to have a magnetic field to shield life from cosmic rays, otherwise DNA would be damaged at an excessive rate. The sun was set at an angle to the earth's axis so that there were seasons. (Climatologists know that the tilt of the earth's axis, to an accuracy of one degree, is vital to moderate climate, and also that the earth's average orbital radius and the sun's average energy output must be stable to within some low percent.) The main utility of the moon is not mentioned in Genesis, but it is to (in some very complex way, but obviously planned by God) stabilize the orbit of the earth. God again notes the goodness of the separation of light and darkness. After sin came about, in Genesis chapter two, darkness was found to be convenient to hide sin.
Finally, on day four, the rotation of the earth under the sun is available to mark out days.
I pause now for two paragraphs to consider some science.
The stability of the earth's orbit is especially interesting to astronomers. As pointed out in Newton's Clock, when trade by ships across oceans required men to study longitude and have accurate timekeeping, mathematicians were up to evaluating the stability of the orbits of planets. At the time of Kepler, they knew that planetary orbits are not delicately balanced--orbits are very resilient. They also knew that it is easy to design a solar system with planets too heavy or too closely spaced to give stability--once a planet's orbit is pulled out by the gravity of heavier planets, it can gyrate around and throw everything off. Some were quite eager to find how long our particular solar system will be stable. They found early on that it is stable for more than 6000 years. Later, they extended the prediction of stability to hundreds of thousands of years. Computer simulations since 1980 have proved our solar system to be stable to over 200 million years, and of course conventional science works only when the earth's orbit is stable in the five-billion-year range.
Simulations and probability have, for decades, been used to judge the likelihood that life would develop on earth. Just the climate aspect is very improbable, to get the right axis angle, day duration, radius from sun, stability of sun, eccentricity of solar orbit, atmosphere thickness, gravity to retain air (Mars has too little gravity), greenhouse-gas mix, ozone to absorb UV, ocean currents to distribute heat, ice floating so the oceans don't ice up solid from the bottom, special properties of water vapor to moderate temperature through dewing, insulation of the atmosphere so nighttime temperature doesn't drop to absolute zero, etc. The probability of all this being amenable to life is very low. Then there is the probability that atom properties, molecules, and energy would be suitable to, short of creating life, just be able to sustain life, foster procreation, and avoid an accumulation of poisons or disease organisms. This is a very low probability. (If you think about poisonous heavy metals like mercury, radium, and cadmium, think of all the poisonous metals tied up in ores in the crust. They aren't contained in any container, they are loose in the crust. What would happen if they poisoned groundwater at a high rate? Sounds like there is some intelligent design working on this problem.) If you think about the probability that molecules could self-assemble to make self-replicating organisms, and beneficially mutate to create new organic chemicals, proteins, and organs, there are a whole lot of zeros after the decimal point when you figure that probability. And then there is the oxidizing nature of the atmosphere, a chemical property that causes combustion and yet is stable over thousands (billions?) of years. Have you seen the PBS commercial that points out some reasons to watch PBS? The ad says that if all the DNA molecules in a person's body were unwrapped from the little spindles, the tight coils were uncoiled, and the chromosomes put end to end, your DNA would reach from here to the moon!
Gen 1:20
On the fifth day, the created animals teemed in the water and air but not yet on the land. On the sixth day, good animals, including livestock amenable to domestication, came about. Before harmful mutations, every animal and plant served good uses, even mosquitoes, wasps, snakes that are now poisonous, plants that now have thorns, and botulinum.
Also on day six, God created man and woman, "in our likeness." This likeness centers on man's brain, the ability to think. The Christian tradition is that people can reason, they can reason with the aid of God's word, and they can predict. This is a key reason, supported by much writing by experts, that science went ahead in Europe but lagged behind in cultures that were without Christianity.
The heavens and the earth were complete in their vast array. But they were made so that living things could vary within their types. Given time, native Americans had corn that Europeans needed for food, and Europeans bred corn and improved corn--have you seen photos of how poor corn cobs were when Europeans first came to the New World?
In Genesis 2:3, it is stated that God worked on all this creation. It was a lot of work, and it was active work, not sitting back and watching it unfold.
"God is clearly seen in the created order." Romans 1:20
There is a proper way for man to relate to God. We have brains that can understand what the Bible says, and it says that we are accountable to God. God wants us to respond to him. Many men demand proof, but our brains and our wills are able to respond the way God wants, namely in faith.
There is a way that an old earth, an earth that could accumulate miles of sediments and dinosaur bone beds, could have happened. It is that Adam and Eve obeyed God for a long, long time but did not have children. Genesis says little about Adam and Eve aging (though Adam was 130 when Seth was born), sweating, giving birth, or toiling until after they disobeyed (since by man came death; sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death), but it is possible that plants and animals around them were aging, eating each other, being buried and becoming fossils. It is worth wondering if Adam and Eve remained obedient to God long enough for the exotic, ingenious, radioactive means of dating to act, or did God create an new, antique earth? This is vigorously criticized at http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=157, in response to a Yahoo search for "how long was it before Adam and Eve sinned?" I am inclined to count all six days of creation as 24-hour days because God has enough power to get that done, but if you consider some alternatives, it is interesting.
Notes for other essays:
1) The separation of potentially life-harboring planets is conveniently large compared to the lifetime of individuals so that the urge to view life on other planets or contact them is a peripheral endeavor for man. If earth-like planets were a fraction of a light-year away, many people would be distracted by trying to get to them. (Coast to Coast AM radio program.) This would be an endeavor akin to the Tower of Babel. In God's providence, he has placed other habitable planets a long way away.
2) There is no place in Genesis for supernova-created elements heavier than helium. The First Three Minutes states that the initial creation only got as far as hydrogen and helium, and all heavier elements (those needed for life) waited for supernovae to perform nucleosynthesis. The scarcity of lithium lends credence to the secular theory of the nucleosynthesis of the heavier elements. Is it possible that God's creation made the heavier elements without an early phase of nucleosynthesis, but with just a light sprinkling of lithium, so that life on earth would not be poisoned by lithium?
3) Why did God create what we know as the universe? The only answer I know is that God relates to his creation and has made man with brains that are able to relate to him, obey him, and honor him. Consider that there is no "fat" in the design of people: the brain is as small as it can be to think, to relate in faith to God, and to distinguish between faith and proof. The entire function of the rest of the body is to host the brain and procreate descendants who can relate to God. It seems logical that God might make the entire universe and the earth, all as a platform for the part of his creation that he really wants to relate to, people. If you think this is very inefficient, don't set your expectations too low about how God has fun.
If God had not made man, would God be lonely? (This, to me, is a terrible thought if I did not realize that God is not limited by time and did not wait around, lonely, until deciding to create man. God was not longing for man.) What else would God be doing? Is there any evidence in the Bible that God carries on pursuits in other universes?
4) https://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/home/more-circuit-design/when-god-painted-himself-into-a-corner presents a logical argument for a creation that looks very old.
5) Rev 20:11, the great white throne and the judgment Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. Rev 21:1 The first heaven and the first earth had passed away.
These verses indicate that God's dealing with man on earth comes to a conclusion. Creation started at Genesis 1:1 and the creation persists until Revelation 20:11. At Rev 20:11, everything that had been created is dispensed with. Heb 1:3 The Son...sustains all things by his powerful word. Heb 1:10-12 You laid the foundation of the earth...they will perish...you will fold them up. 2 Pet 3:7-13 the present earth is reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction. It will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed, melting in the heat [at the time that the Son stops sustaining them]. Heb 12:27 & Haggai 2:6 I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. Heb 12:28 says the earth and heavens will be removed. The final two chapters of the Bible are about men in the places that endure: a new heaven, a new Jerusalem, and Hell.
1 In 1814, Laplace wrote about what would be called determinism: An intellect knowing at any given moment all forces and positions of bodies in the universe could predict all the future. Determinism held sway until modern physics had to admit that random processes and chaotic behavior, such as Brownian motion, overwhelm predictability.
2 My belief, informed by the Bible, is that the entire creation was for one purpose, to host Man, who can reason & choose to obey or disobey. Furthermore, Jesus' first design in His creation was the human brain. The body was designed to carry around the brain & allow it to function. Chemistry, physics, gravity, & everything else is there to provide an environment for people, an interesting environment where people can explore and, if they choose, aid each other & help each other to relate to God. This is a viewpoint that logically goes along with traditional families as the best place for children, with a mom & dad; the June 26, 2015 ruling by Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges is not the best for children.
3 Nehemiah 9 Lord, you made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you...You came down on Mount Sinai [Jabal Musa]...gave them regulations and laws that are just and right...and good...you keep your covenant of love.
The NIV Bible
New Oxford Review (articles about evolution)
Feynman's QED
Newton's Clock
The First Three Minutes
Geology Illustrated