4c) How Accurate is the Bible Scientifically?
The Bible was not intended to be a science book, but it is not unscientific. Let's look at some of the Biblical accounts and some of the observable facts: First, let’s look at the question of origins – the origin of life. We can observe that the smallest step from non-life to life is insurmountable by accident or time. Compare the formula for any rock with that for DNA or with RNA as found in the simplest life forms. We also observe that there is no process known, which can produce new genetic material. All we have found are variations of existing material. Hence, whatever life is around today must have been around since the beginning. While science has no claim for the origin of life, these observations fit with God's revelation in His Bible. He says that in the beginning of this universe of ours, He created things already mature. I say this approach fits well with the fact that He was creating all this for the specific purpose of companionship, as He has indicated in His Bible. So we only have to go back so far before we are allowed to say that God did it that way because He wanted to.
This explains the origin of our universe, but not the various progressions
that followed. For example, the Creationist would say that God created trees
with rings in them already. If they did not have rings, they would not be
trees. Likewise, if God created the planet itself, then it too was already
mature. If so, He bypassed billions of years of apparent evolution from something
more primordial-looking. It would be no more difficult for God to create a
fully mature planet than for Him to create the constituents of a "Big
Bang". He had to start with something that would be extremely complex, but
wherever He started it would have the appearance of age.
A tree is no more complex than a seed; a seed than a single cell; a cell than
the singularity postulated to be present prior to the Big Bang. Insinuating that there was an enormous
time before the development processes started still begs the question of how
the first “stuff” got there.
Scientific observations of the processes in effect today are used to
extrapolate backwards towards the origins. We now have such incredible
technology to gather information about the processes in action around us. Some
of the key new technology tools we now have are: Satellites that give us the
global view on a daily basis; Personal Computers that enable scientists to
process their data quickly; and the Internet, which enables worldwide communications
in near-enough realtime. Information abounds! These tools have caused a
worldwide information explosion.
Note: If all the accumulated information from the beginnings of mankind to 1845 were represented by the thickness of a postage stamp; then the accumulated information would have grown to the thickness of a nickel by 1945. By the year 2000, the accumulated information would be represented by the height of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. (555 ft). However, this is knowledge, not wisdom. We have more knowledge than ever imagined before, but do we know how to use it?
Scientists are finally able to accurately correlate independent factors with
consistency. The evidence of rings in trees, bubbles in ice cores, radioactive
decay, archeological digs, and historical documentation are all considered when
scientifically dating through the historical past. See Appendix 1 for a summary
of how scientists are dating ice cores. Here is where the attention to the
scientific method really pays off. The consistent correlation among these
independent indicators adds credibility to each dating technique. However, the
end result seems to indicate longer times were involved than indicated in the
Bible. So, how can we jive our various dating techniques with the time scales
presented in the Bible?
Is it possible that the Biblical accounts and the scientific evidences can each
be interpreted so that they do not conflict? My position is that our entire
universe was created with the appearance of age from the start, as if a model
were made of a pre-existing angelic situation elsewhere. Angels live on planets
that are in the process of continuous change. So God models one of those
planets at a given point in that process and everyone recognizes it as actively
changing in a typical fashion. From the point of its creation onward, our
scientists can follow the processes, but they can't work backwards beyond the
starting point. The evidence appears to carry the record farther back, but
angels who watched the creation of this model planet know better. God had to
start with something recognizable, but whether it was an egg or a chicken, a
tree or a seed, a planet or some electro-magnetic fields, it would have the
appearance of age.
In my model of these things, God is creating by thinking and everything He creates is therefore in His mind. Similarly, when I think of something, it immediately appears in my mind as a mature thing. I don’t need to go through some long evolving process of change over enormous time. If indeed everything is happening in the mind of God, ie in the “Thought Domain”, then I suggest that it is entirely logically to expect every thing to have been created with the appearance of age.
26 July 2001, updated 17 November 2001
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