Genesis Reconsidered

1600 words, 7 minute read

For most of my adult life I have argued that the description of ‘creation’ found in the first chapter of Genesis is compatible with the prevailing scientific theories of cosmogenesis and evolution. More recently, I came to believe that the Genesis narrative is denotatively equivalent to those theories. Now I have concluded that the Genesis account is actually superior to the standard model. How so?

According to the standard model, the Universe came into being spontaneously, along with spacetime itself, at an event of uncertain etiology that we call ‘Big Bang’. At that moment, the Universe was presumably at the maximum possible temperature, the Planck temperature, i.e. 10^32 Kelvin, with the least possible entropy (disorder) – a neat trick if you can pull it off!

But within one second (10^0) that temperature dropped 22 orders of magnitude to a relatively comfortable 10^10 K at which point various elementary forces and particles began to crystallize, ultimately leading to nucleosynthesis. Now fast forward 14.8 billion years (10^17 seconds) and the Universe has cooled another 10 orders of magnitude, down to an admittedly bracing 3° K (I wonder what the wind chill is).

So far, this model fits the data better than almost any competing theory, but ‘needless to say’ the required physics is extremely complex, ever evolving, and in some respects a bit dubious.

‘Almost any competing theory’? Almost! I am aware of only one exception: the Old Testament Book of Genesis delivers an even better data fit, and it’s overwhelmingly preferred according to the standard known as Occam’s Razor:

First, the Genesis model is temperature agnostic; Planck temp not required at birth. Second, it relies on just a single fundamental force, called ‘separating & gathering’ (aka yin & yang, warp & woof, love & strife). Check it out:

“In the beginning when God ‘created’ the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the abyss and a mighty wind swept across the waters.  And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light…and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’.” (Genesis 1: 1 – 5)

The first two things to notice about the Genesis account of ‘creation’ is (1) that entropy naturally assumes its lowest possible value (“Fiat lux”) and (2) that no one makes anything. God lets be (light), separates (light from darkness), and labels (day and night)…only!

Sidebar: It is standard practice to refer to models of cosmogenesis inspired by Genesis as ‘creationism’ - ironic considering that Genesis makes no mention of any active process. God’s role is that of ‘enabler and labeler’; the so-called ‘creation’ is akin to bootstrapping.

The verb ‘to be’ appears twice in Genesis 1: 3. The Hebrew grammar (e.g. the Jussive Mood) is unfamiliar to Indo-European speakers but in the much respected pre-Christian Greek translation, the Septuagint, ‘to be’ first occurs in the passive voice (“let it be”) and then in the middle voice (“it came to be”).

God is more Michaelangelo than Frankenstein (sorry, kids). God uncovers/reveals (aletheia) form latent in the formless (e.g. a block of marble), i.e. Aristotle’s pure potentia. Mary Shelley’s anti-hero manufactures his Monster: Frankenstein assembles (active voice), God enables (middle voice).

“Then God said, ‘Let there be a vault between the waters… Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear… Let the land produce…plants and trees…according to (separated into) their various kinds’. And it was so…” (6 – 11)

Again, Genesis sticks to the formula: ‘Let there be…and it came to be’…followed by differentiation (i.e. separation of light from dark and of apples from oranges).

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night…’ and so it was.” (14)

Genesis presents separating and gathering, not as two conflicting forces but as two aspects of a single process, resembling the dynamics of a two stoke internal combustion engine. 

At the time that Genesis received its final edit, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Empedocles (c. 450 BCE ), was espousing a similar concept, independent of the Judeo-Christian tradition:

“At one time all coming together by love into one and at another time all being borne apart separately by  the hostility of strife.” (Fragment 25)

Note: The idea that a single force can separate and/or gather depending on circumstances should pose no difficulty for us. The OT Book of Ecclesiastes (3: 1 – 8) famously speaks of “a time for everything…a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.”

The Electro-Magnetic (EM) force can repel (like charges) or attract (opposite charges). Plus, the standard model of cosmology includes forces (gravity, dark energy, cosmological constant) that may be alternately attractive or repulsive; the Genesis model is not introducing any new level of complexity.

“And God said, ‘Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky’. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind… (20 – 21)

Speciation (“according to its kind”) is a product of ‘separation and gathering’ – an elongated continuum of genetic mutations spontaneously breaks into disjoint populations (aka species) capable of sexual reproduction.

That single force is presented as Wisdom (Sophia) in the Old Testament…

“’The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be… I was there when he set the heavens in place…and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.” (Proverbs 8: 22 - 29)

…and as Word (Logos) in the New:

“In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God… Through him (logos) all things came to be.” (John 1: 1 – 4)

But back to Genesis: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness’… So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them…” (26 – 27)

At last we have a reference to what might be considered God’s creative act but that too proves illusory: ‘in our image…(and) likeness’. We are a reflection of God. We are ‘created’ in the same way that I ‘create’ my image in the bathroom mirror every morning.

God separated the genus homo from the rest of the animals, gathered us into a single species, sapiens, and then differentiated us into genders: “Male and female he created them.” Separating and gathering, gathering and separating, via mundi (the way of the world). As a species we reflect (image and likeness), but as an individual (gender specific) I refract, God.

The process of human reproduction (sex) is itself a reflection (or metaphor) of ‘divine creation’. A man and a woman ‘gather’ in sexual union and generate offspring (separation) who in turn gather with others of their generation to form sexual unions of their own, and so on. Warp and woof!

The process of ‘creation’ as imagined in Genesis is on-going even today. According to Genesis, we are in the 7^th day (phase) of cosmogenesis. God has rested; ‘the material world’ (Marx & Madonna) has taken over where God left off.

So how is this model better than Big Bang? First, it imposes fewer preconditions (e.g. no need for Planck temps and only a single ‘force’). Second, it is ongoing, phenomenal, even today. (When was the last time you witnessed a Big Bang?)

Still, you may be balking. After all, Genesis is so…ancient. Can it really be relevant today? You bet, it is as ‘now’ as Tik-Tok. Continental philosophy in the 19^th and 20^th centuries was dominated by dialectics (Hegel, Marx, et al.). Every thesis generates its own antithesis (separation) which in turn leads to a synthesis (gathering), i.e. a fresh thesis.   

On the other side of the channel, English Empiricism (Mill, Hume, et al.) climaxed in the systematic philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, aka the Philosophy of Organism or Process Philosophy. Whitehead built his magnificent theoretical edifice around just 3 undefined terms: “one, many, creativity.”

The many (multiplicity) are gathered into one (actual entity) which in turn adds to the many. What Whitehead calls ‘creativity’ the authors of Genesis called ‘separating and gathering’. So whether you are an Idealist (Hegel), a Materialist (Marx), an Empiricist (Mill), or a Vitalist (Whitehead), you are espousing a cosmology that was first outlined 2500 years ago...in Genesis.

20^th century science has attempted to produce a model of cosmogenesis that eliminates the need for a transcendent agent (aka God). The result is still incomplete and incredibly complicated. (Think ‘Ptolemy’ before Copernicus!) It includes a number of underivable values that function as transcendental actors in the cosmic drama: Is God sneaking in through a back door?

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for another Copernican Revolution to straighten things out. That revolution already took place…2500 years ago. We just need to acknowledge it.