I'm back, Kyra, with the link and one chapter. It's a bit long, because of dialogue, but I hope it sets the tone for where I'm coming from - or my alter ego and the character, 'The Would-Be-Protagonist'.
http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=1857The Evolution and Creation Discrepancy (ch 17):
Anna is chewing things over, going over old ground. I thought I was done with this lot when I extricated myself from the tangle of super-strings, but apparently not. Anna wants to know more…
‘So, you were there at the Beginning?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Not in as many words, I suppose, but you did say that you were there before Time began. I figured that would mean the same as the Beginning.’
I think Anna is hung up on the Beginning, as she calls it. What if there wasn’t an actual beginning?
‘Don’t be silly. You know what I mean. Creation, if you like.’
‘What do you mean by that? The beginning of the physical world, or the beginning of everything that ever was, whatever it was?’
‘Let’s go for the physical, shall we? What we know…’
‘What we know? What we know is an infinitesimal fragment compared to what we could know - and in the future, will know.’
‘It doesn’t take Einstein to figure that out.’
‘Oh, okay, okay. But what exactly do you want to know?’ I suppose I knew what was coming, but that doesn’t mean to say that I was prepared for what she asked next.
‘Well, being as you were there, I wondered if you could throw any light on the discrepancies between the Evolution according to Science and the Biblical Creation?’
‘Discrepancy? What do you mean?’ I’ll have to put my thinking cap on, but don’t let on.
‘Well, according to Scriptures, the Creation took place less than six thousand years ago…’
‘Get away!’ (Sorry, I couldn’t help it - but sarcasm is lost on her anyway.)
…’Yet Science seems to have proven that this event - whatever label you assign it - happened almost sixteen billion years ago. A bit of a difference, don’t you think? And we know which one is correct, don’t we?’
She seems to have forgotten that I have been around a while. Or she’s trying to trick me again.
‘I’d say they both are.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘Oh, yes it is. I’ll try to explain.’
‘I thought you didn’t like maths?’
‘So you realise that there has to be some calculations involved, then?’
‘Fairly obvious, I should have thought.’
‘They aren’t my sums, just so you know. These calculations were made some 3000 years ago.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Just listen, will you?’ Does she have to know every little detail? We’ll never get off the spot at this rate. And now she’s shaking her head, making me feel uneasy.
‘I’m not sure that this will make sense to you or anyone else, but according to the Jewish faith - which preceded Christianity…’
‘Will you stop stating the obvious!’
I’ll ignore these outbursts and continue without rising to her bait. At least I’ll try!
’…according to the Jewish faith, as I said, Time was ‘set in motion’ when the first humans were imbued with the soul of human life.’
‘Wait a minute.’
Anna looks excited. I hope she’s not going to veer off at a tangent again.
‘No, you wait!’ Honestly, this is almost impossible. ‘Anyway, counting from that symbolic moment of Creation…’
‘You mean Adam and Eve?’
‘I mean the first true humans, symbolically known as Adam and Eve. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Counting from that moment, about 5800 years have passed.’
‘That doesn’t make almost sixteen billion years, by any calculations.’
‘Now you’re being stupid.’
‘Hang on a minute…’
‘Have some patience, will you?’
‘Get on with it then.’
‘The six days of Creation in Genesis are described in just a few sentences - 31, I think (and no, I didn’t actually count them!). How can you describe Creation in not much more than a paragraph? Well, I’ll tell you. They didn’t seem to need all those details that we find so fascinating today. They couldn’t extract data or look backwards in time…’
‘Look backwards? You have already said that that’s an impossibility.’
‘I actually said that humans couldn’t travel backwards in time - as of yet anyway. But they can look backwards through time in the cosmos, through the Hubble telescope, for instance…’
‘Ah..’
‘Besides, what do you know of thermodynamics, palaeontology, light-energy physics, chemistry or cosmology?’
Anna looked downhearted. ‘Not a lot. Nothing, really.’
‘There you are then! But there are people today who do know. Lots of people. And there are hundreds of thousands of books (I think) dealing with the Universe and its development. And the Bible, or the Torah, gives us 31 sentences!
‘I think I see what you mean.’
‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, consider Time. The six days of Creation have been omitted from the count. Time didn’t exist until the ‘sixth day’. Not in the way that it was recorded from then on.’
‘Hm, I’m not sure…’
‘Seen from the Time-Space angle - that is the time in which you exist - those ‘six days’ can be estimated, time wise.’
I can see she is confused. I’ve confused myself for that matter. I’ll need to give myself a bit of time to work it out. ‘We’ll come back to Time in a while.’ Is that a look of relief in her eyes?
‘Have you considered that some of the misunderstandings of the text could be due to incorrect translation?’
‘Always a possibility, I suppose.’
Take the Hebrew word ‘mayim’. It’s usually translated to mean ‘water’ in the Bible, but in the earliest Hebrew texts about Creation, the word may also have meant ‘the building blocks of the Universe.’
‘Did they use those words then?’
‘Words to that effect, perhaps.’
‘Any other examples?’
‘Yes, did you know that what is usually translated as ‘there was evening’ in the creation story, actually means that there was disorder - or chaos - right up until the fourth day?’
Anna’s eyes are narrowing. ‘What? You said that there was no chaos when you became aware of your existence - when you spoke of the Great Expansion.’
‘But I didn’t say when in the chain of events that was. I don’t actually know. Anyway, from the point on the fourth day when the sun first rose, the world became ordered (’bikoret’). It flowed from disorder to order. Or if you like, chaos to cosmos.’
‘That sounds as though it happened by design.’
‘That’s an entirely different argument.’
‘You mean you have to think about it?’
‘I have to think about one thing at a time.’
‘Right.’
There’s that giggle again. I wish she’d let me finish.
‘You’re making me lose my thread. Anyway, as it’s Biblical, many people will pooh-pooh it. But it’s thermodynamics, too, you know. Well, I think it is. And it was all calculated 3000 years ago. Or so.’
‘And how would you know?’
I put my finger to my non-existent nose, tapping it. I understand that it means she should mind her own business. She doesn’t like it much.
‘I suppose you are going to give me some calculations now, to work out the Time thing?’
She doesn’t seem to remember, but she jotted down what I suppose to be the scientific calculations on a piece of paper, a while back. Don’t quite know why, but it's coming in handy. I’m glad I remembered!
‘Well. Let’s see (I’ll pretend to understand. I bet she doesn’t):
The exponential rate of expansion has a particular number - hm - averaged at 10 to the 12th Power…’
‘Eh?’
‘That’s the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy…’
‘Stop!’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t understand any of it.’
‘But I haven’t finished. I’m trying to tell you about the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the Universe expands.’
‘Well, tell me so that I can understand. You’re blinding me with science.’
‘Resorting to clichés now?’
‘Will you get on with it?'
‘Okay, but I just want to mention Einstein.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes, you see, although these calculations were made by Jewish scholars of the Torah and the Talmud, thousands of years ago, they agree with Einstein’s space-time theory of calculating time when looking back towards what is perceived as the Beginning.’
‘The Theory of Relativity and all that?’
‘You could say that.’
‘Give me the simplified calculations then.’
‘Well, as I understand it, Day One - when looking back from today’s perspective, lasted 8 billion years.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, I’m not.’ Why would I be joking? ‘The second day (always looking back from today’s perspective, remember), was half of that - 4 billion years - and so on.’
‘Right, so each subsequent ‘day’ was half as long as the day before because of the manner and speed in which the Universe was expanding. Yes?’
‘Yes!’
‘So the third day lasted 2 billion years, the fourth day - 1 billion years, the fifth day, half a billion years and the sixth day, a quarter of a billion years. Wow! Adding that lot up, it makes 15 and ¾ billion years.’
‘Yup. The same as modern cosmology has it.’
Anna looked dumbfounded and excited at the same time.
‘So no discrepancy?’
‘None to speak of, as far as I can see. You can check the so-called six days of Creation, you know, against the scientific facts of Evolution. I’ll bet you’ll be surprised at how closely it all matches up.’
‘If you think I have time to delve into all that…’
Well, you have to laugh. She wants to know about everything, but doesn’t mind someone else doing the research.
‘But you already knew.’ Anna is looking at me accusingly. What is she accusing me of?
‘No, I didn’t. Who had heard of thermodynamics at the beginning of the first Millennium AD, when I was supposedly around? ‘
‘So what was all this?’
‘Well, I picked up a bit here, and a bit there. Listened, read over your shoulder - and you know…’
‘So you can’t prove any of this?’
‘Not personally, no, but it made you think, didn’t it?’ It made me think, too, for that matter.
*********
There you have it!