Sunday, January 30, 2005

Kol B'seder

"So let me keep it simple: how many different types of beings are described as being created in Genesis? If you work with just those beings, what's in the wrong order? (i.e. list the beings in the order they appear in Genesis, and then list the beings in the order in which evolution dictates they appeared."

Ok, sure.

First day according to Bible: The earth was astonishingly empty with unlimited waters and God made light and separated it from darkness.
According to science: The Earth and water did not come before light and actually came billions of years after the start of the Universe. But in saying that light was the first thing created would fit with modern cosmology if you extend the word "light" to the Big Bang's explosion of all energy. But this energy did not flash or light up until some time later. According to science the Universe began with a blast, but not with a flash.

Second day: Fimament in the waters (which already existed from before the first day) to separate the waters below from the waters above.
Science: There are no "waters above" and there is no "fimament"otherwise our space program would have had significant technical difficulties.

Third day: God separated the waters below by land. And god made all plants, even fruit trees.
Science: If you take the story world view as written the Earth's land is surrounded on all sides by waters. Below, all sides, and even above - from which it is protected by the firmament. Clearly the world is not like that. Anyway, the Earth's rocky surface was formed way before any liquid water was on it. And terrestrial plants and fruit trees did not exist until billions of years after the Earth formed.

Fourth day: Luminaries, the Sun, Moon and stars set in firmament to serve as signs.
Science: The Sun was made way before the Earth as were the stars. And they are not "set" in any firmament. They travel freely in open space.

Fifth day: Sea life, and flying things are created.
Science: Life did begin in the sea, but they didn't all begin at the same time as the Bible projects. Many sea creatures today actually have ancestors who were land animals: e.g. whales, sea lions, etc. And as for flying things, which includes insects and birds and bats, insects were the earliest flyers and they did evolve from sea animals, from arthropods like lobsters, but birds and bats came millions of years later. Birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Sixth day: All land animals and humans created.
Science: Correct if you ignore the fact that birds should come after many land animals and that new animals are still evolving even after the advent of humanity to this day.

Seventh day: God finished and completed all his work.
Science: Stuff is still going on in the Universe. New species are evolving. New stars are being born. Complete, how?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

At last I have gotten my feed back. That you for the interesting article..
There are many Gods and Goddess, long before the Jewish bible came about, and I am sure you know that it has been change over hundreds of years.

I really did find it very interesting, and I will take Science as the truth..

Thank-you for taking and time, and the writing notes must have really been a takena great deal of effort.

Nanilee

Anonymous said...

on birds and dinosaurs:

Larry Martin [one of the world's foremost experts on the birds of
the Mesozoic era], The Sciences, March/April 1988: "I began to grow
disenchanted with the bird-dinosaur link when I compared the
eighty-five or so anatomical features seriously proposed as being
shared by birds and dinosaurs. To my shock, virtually none of the
comparisons held up....the moral of the story is that such poor
attention to detail has been repeated with almost every feature
cited to support a bird-dinosaur relation. No wonder that [the book
criticizing the link] has an undercurrent of righteous outrage, or
that it has been so bitterly attacked by the practitioners of the
faulty logic it exposes."

Orthoprax said...

Alex,

Larry Martin is a critic of the dinosaurs-birds link, but he progresses that birds and dinosaurs share a common reptile ancestor. To note, that thesis is rejected by the wide majority of experts in the field.

This is all fascinating from a paleontological vantage point, but irrelevant when comparing science and the literal text of the Bible.