THE BIBLE, THE GENESIS,
CREATION
Seven days?
Who has not wondered: seven days? Yes, who would not? -as we look at each other
askance, with a mean grin.
It is a fact that fewer and fewer people believe that God created the heavens
and the earth in seven days.
What about the dinosaurs? Well, by the time this question arises (a purely
rhetorical one, of course) we are already engaged in a discussion that might
embarrass even the toughest hooligans.
Usually, speaking of Genesis leads us, inevitably, to an irreconcilable division
between science and religion. Apparently, one overrides the other. If Genesis
says seven days, and science has proved there were six billion years, it all
indicates that something is wrong, obviously... in The Bible.
It is difficult for us to say that the analysis of science is wrong, apart maybe
from a hundred million years up or down. So, following this logic, we will base
this analysis on what science claims that were the early days of the solar
system and of our planet, the Earth, based on the current findings.
Well, if the solar system and the Earth have been in existence for more than six
thousand million years since they were just a cloud of dust and gas floating
adrift in our beautiful galaxy... how did we get to those seven days? Sure, I
know, don't tell me: pure superstition, myths, and ancient tales of various
mythologies. Well, I don't blame you, I was of the same opinion until, reading
the Bible to my youngest son, I discovered that something was wrong with the
texts of Genesis, or wasn't?
Something in the sacred texts caught my attention and I stopped for a moment to
look at them and I thought: what if the Genesis made sense? What if the
narrative were consistent with the scientific explanation? What if the text of
Genesis was the vision of someone who has seen the creation of the solar system
like in a movie? And I remembered how many discoveries have started with this
simple phrase: What if...?
And yes, let's try to approach the issue from that perspective, after all… what
could we lose?
Of course, I should clarify at this point that I believe in God. I believe that
God created everything. I am, as they say, a believer.
Philosophically I lean more towards the Hindu-Buddhist side, than towards the
Jewish-Catholic-Muslim, but as God is the same in both cases, I see no conflict
in reading the holy books of both religions, and analyze what God has told men,
in Mesopotamia as well as in the Indus Valley.
Well, let's see then what God has told us.