Chapter 2
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.
નેક્સટ...
Chapter 3
BILLIONS
First, let´s reflect on the "never well weighted" seven days.
Of course, the seven biblical days should have some sort of explanation, I thought, and I devoted myself to find it.
The first thing that occurred to me was that if God was infinite, a God´s day might last a billion years, so seven days of God may well be six billion years. You may say, why six billion years? Well, because it is currently estimated that from the original nebula to the present six billion years have passed, and four billion six hundred million years since the consolidation of the Earth.
Although Occident has not handled major figures-and when I say major figures I mean numbers as large as billions of years- in their mythologies, it may be interesting to note that in India, at the time of writing the Genesis-they were already used to thinking of numbers of that magnitude...
