by Secular Human
In the Beginning
We know the universe in at least 15
billion years old and the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old
according to Wikipedia. We even know where in the sky the 'Big Bang'
originated which the constellation of Virgo. Clearly the universe
was not created in seven days or even 7 billion years.
In Genesis, the Earth is created before
light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and
flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from
science is the opposite.
Scientists know that solar systems are
created around suns from whirling disks of dust, gas and water. The
dust aggregates into larger and larger spheres until small planets
emerge that grow larger over billions of years.
One of the big questions scientists are
still working on is where did all of the water on Earth come from.
Some scientists believe the water was already into the dust cloud
that surrounded the early sun. Others believe that the Earth got
most of its water form comets and asteroids during the Great
Bombardment. which occurred about 4.1 billion years ago.
According to Genesis God separated
light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet
he/she/it didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the
stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19).
How could there be "the evening and the morning" on
the first day if there was no sun to mark them? 1:3-5
Plants were made on the third day before
there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19).
1:11.
How is this possible? No plant can survive without sunlight. God then
lets "the Earth bring forth" the plants, rather than
creating them directly.
God makes two lights: "the greater
light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to
rule the night." But the moon is not a light, but only reflects
light from the sun. If God made the moon to "rule the night",
why does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky?
1:16.
Of course, the people of Ur (modern Iraq) worshiped a moon goddess
which may explain this reference.
After making the animals, God has Adam
name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept
Adam busy for a while. 2:18-22.
We also know not every species of animal lived near the Garden of
Eden which was probably in modern day Iraq.
God fashions a woman out of one of
Adam's ribs. Because of this story, it was commonly believed that
males have one less rib than females. When Vesalius showed in 1543
that the number of ribs was the same in males and females, it created
a storm of controversy. 2:19.
More importantly, the first living creatures were asexual and could
reproduce spontaneously. Males have vestigial breasts that suggest
when the first sexual animals evolved which was around 1.5 billion
years ago, males actually evolved from females.
Noah is told to make an ark that is 450
feet long. 6:14-15.
Archaeologists know that the story of the Great Flood appears in many
different cultures and believe the Israelites added this story to the
Bible during the Babylonian Captivity.
The Babylonian story is far
older than the story that appears in the Bible. Archaeologists
believed the Great Flood really describes the a flood that started
when the Tigris and Euphrates overflowed their banks pushing out a
barge filled with caged animals and other goods into the Persian Gulf.
The real story of creation
How was the Earth really created?
Rightardia has alluded to dust cloud around our G-class sun that
eventually formed planets. G-class suns have along life cycle of
10-billion years. Fortunately, the Earth was created in a zone around
the sun where life was possible. The planet was neither too close to
the sun or too far away for life to survive.
The Earth also got the benefit of huge
gas giants much farther out in the solar system which had huge
gravitational pulls. These gas giants attracted a lot of debris that
is floating around our solar system and prevented asteroids and comets
for hitting the Earth. Jupiter, if fact, is so large it could have
became a sun. However, it would have had to have been 60 times as
large as it is to ignite into a sun. tore massive
Around 4.5 billion years ago, the MOON is carved out of Earth by a huge impact. The Mars sized object that hit the Earth deposited most of it iron core on the Earth. This larger iron core created a huge magnetic field around the Earth and also drove plate tectonics. Mars, on the other hand, lost most of its magnetic filed and most of it atmosphere billions of year ago.
The large moon also keeps the Earth's axis in check because the moon is very large for a small planet like Earth. Without the moon, the Earth would experience wide climate changes throughout the year because the Earth's axis would wobble a lot more.
After the Great Bombardment ends, the
oceans formed on Earth. Around four billions years ago, anaerobic
life forms develop on Earth. During this time, Earth's only life
forms were aquatic, one-celled bacteria that extracted energy from a
variety of sources such as hydrothermal vents. To most of these
organisms, free oxygen was poisonous.
At this time the Earth's atmosphere was
primarily carbon dioxide about 100 times as much as we have in the
atmosphere today. The world's oceans were green with the iron. Then
cyanobactera developed about 2.15 billion years ago that produced
oxygen and also also caused the iron in the oceans to particulate
into red rust beds on the ocean's floor.
Edicaran fossils
The GARDEN OF EDIACARA rose about
565-543 million years ago. These creatures may have been mosaics of
both plants and animals much like the corals or today which get most
of their energy from plant colonies that live within the body of the
coral.
By 410-360 million years ago the first
amphibians walk upon the land. Amphibians evolved into archosaurs
that had features of both dinosaurs and mammals.
The Permian extinction occured 245
million years ago and the Dinosaurs become the predominate land
animals.
Jump forward more than 200 million
years and the first early ancestors of humans show up in the fossil
record about 6 million years ago. The first humans appeared about
200,000 year ago in Africa, not in the Middle East.The oldest human fossils from Israel are Neanderthals that are only 47,000 years old.
The Earth exists today because of a
series of fortunate events. Our planet formed in a region is space
where life can exist around a long lifed G-class sun. The gravity of
gas giants like Jupiter protect our planet from asteroids and comets
that might otherwise have hit the Earth. We have an abundance of
water.
A large moon formed that keeps the
Earth's axis from wildly wobbling which would produce harsh climate
changes. When the moon formed, the Earth picked up the iron core form
a Mars sized planet that hit the Earth.
The large core drives plate
tectonics that have affected evolution on the planet and also has
provided a magnetic filed that has protected the Earth's atmosphere.
Without the fortunate collision and extra iron in the Earth's core,
all life on Earth might be extinct today.
This is the real story on how life was
created on Earth which was through a series of fortunate events. It is quite a bit different from the story in the
Bible.
Sources:
http://www.thegreatstory.org/timeline.html#radiance
and http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html
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