The Creation of the World

This post is a continuation from Faith and the First Scientists

The heated debate over the working of the universe, we have discussed so far, had little relevance outside the scientific and theological communities. Whether it was the sun or the earth at the center of the universe, or what laws falling bodies obeyed, it made no difference to people’s faith. The new discoveries diminished neither the splendor of the creation nor the greatness of the creator. For most people, religious teachings were about how one goes to heaven, and not how heaven goes.

This attitude still prevails nowadays, when even the most religious of people do not expect their religious practices to explain nature, and are happy to leave these pondering to science. In all areas, that is, but two: the age of the universe and evolution.

According to Genesis, the world was created in six days, and by counting the generations in the Bible since Adam and Eve, theologists concluded that the creation took place some 6000 years ago. This figure is supported by the Jewish calendar, which is believed to commence from the first day of the creation. Contemporary mainstream scientific theory, on the other hand, draws an entirely different picture. It estimates the age of the earth at about 4.6 billion years, and that of the universe at over 13 billion years. Interestingly 6000 years, roughly coincides with the end of the last ice-age, and the beginning of human civilization, as we know it.

Interpretations of the text in Genesis which aim to address this dichotomy have been around since the 19th century. A common explanation was that the Bible, speaking to the ancients who could not comprehend numbers like a million or a billion, did not speak of a ‘day’ (yom in Hebrew) as a period of 24 hours, but rather in a metaphorical way as an unspecified duration of events which could last thousands, millions or even billions of years. (By the way, such big numbers could not be written, let alone understood, before the introduction of ‘0’, which happened around the 7th century in the Arab world, and 13th century in Europe.) Alternative interpretation suggests that the six-days of Genesis do not represent the time of the creation itself, but a six-day period during which God revealed the truth of the creation to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

Despite the various interpretations, many are still adamant that the literal interpretation of the Bible is correct, and that the problem lies with science. They point out that unlike the previous conflicts mentioned, the age of the universe cannot be found by observation or any other direct method, but is deduced from a combination of complex theories with many underlying assumptions. They claim that as theories change frequently they cannot be trusted, and in the end, scientific theory will discover that the biblical age of the universe is correct.

Regardless of future scientific development, this dispute – just like those mentioned previously – threatens only human interpretation and not faith itself. Six days or 13 billion years, it leaves the magnificence of the creation intact, as it does the need for a creator. This, however, is not the case with the theory of evolution, which threatens not only the role of God, but also Her very existence.