Expert: Messianic Rabbi Yochanan Levine - 1/29/2010

Question
QUESTION: The following is a copy paste of what I have typed on a message board:


Day 1

God makes heaven and a formless earth, and light and dark.

The earth was formed 9.2 billions years after the big bang, not even remotely close to each other in time periods...



And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Evening and morning the first day... hmm... that sounds like a 24 hour day  (6 days of 24 hour periods). The timeline of the big bang however is in the billions of years



God raises up the land on a watery earth, and then he creates trees and grasses.

Plants and grass were later arrivals in the history of life and earth. Grasses arose in the Cretaceous, angiosperms evolved in the Jurassic. This would put them past day 5 (after fish).


Good one:  Day 4:

God gets around to making the sun and the moon and the stars.


The sun and moon came BEFORE life existed on this planet, not after... MAJOR inaccuracy of genesis...

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Well more evidence that the days were really 24 hour periods...

Day 6

God creates terrestrial animals, and people. The people are put in charge


I'm sure anyone who has even been to elementary school would know about fossils and how ancient they are. And anyone who has studied biology AT ALL will know animals came before (long before) humans did.

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Even more for the 24 hour time periods

--

So in the above, basically the bible is proven to be wrong... open up genesis and see for yourself, or I can quote the verses in a areply if you'd like.

ANSWER: Hi Mike,

Biblical creationism verses evolutionary theory is not an area I specialize in personally.

Understand however that comments such as "The earth was formed 9.2 billions years after the big bang, not even remotely close to each other in time periods..." are based on the assumption that the ever changing scientific theories are known facts. If that were the case, the scientific theories would not be constantly updating and changing as their researches advance.

At this point neither side of this argument can conclusively prove its views objectively.

Understand also that no serious scientist would state that 9.2 billions years after the big bang such and such happened. For scientists all such dates are approximations at best. Also, many serious scientists, including Eisenstein, reject the validity of the whole idea and today most scientists reject the Big Bang theory as envisioned originally. For instance see:

http://www.olduniverse.com/
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/bigbang.htm
http://nowscape.com/big-ban2.htm

If you seriously wish to understand what the proponents of the "Young Earth" theories say and see the evidence they offer, I would suggest going to the Institute for Creation Research: http://www.icr.org . This is the area they focus on. You can contact them about their views and I suspect you will be surprised at how solid the case for Creation is.

There is also another view that holds that Genesis offers two different creation accounts:

Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

This is given as a stated fact with no detail on how or when the initial creation occurred.

Gen 1:2  And the earth was without form, and void...

The Hebrew word haw-yaw, translated in the King James version as "was" ("the earth was without form") is more correctly translated as "And the earth [became] without form...."

"Form" is translated from the Hebrew word to'-hoo which literally means not that it had no shape, but that it became (haw-yaw) a desert wasteland, void --with usable form.

It is held by some therefore that the time and exact methodology of the original creation of the universe is not given in the Bible, that some great catastrophe occurred about 6000 years ago according to biblical calculations. This would be easily within the margin of error of what is accepted for the start of the present warm phase (the Holocene) that some believe followed the sudden ending of the Younger Dryas period, about 11,500 years ago; in geological terms as conceived by the Secular sciences 3000 - 4000 years difference is nothing. Such a climactic event could easily alter our readings of the fossil records that much. This view answers most of the arguments of the "Old Earth" scientific opposition without refuting the "Young Earth" view.

This is not the "black or white" issue both sides wish to make it appear. We are still trying to understand many things.

Again, this is not an area I am that interested in personally. The icr.org website does have a lot of solid evidence you might wish to examine if you are sincere. Look at all the evidence before writing off either side.

Many "Bible Believers" reject scientific evidence out of hand when it seems to contradict their religious views, and many Secularists reject all biblical evidence as well as scientific evidence that supports the biblical model, when such evidence challenges their views. In both cases it does not speak well of human nature.

Good luck with your research,
~ John of AllFaith

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Actually modern scientists say they are able to calculate (with a very high degree of accuracy) the age of the universe, 13.72 billion years old, in fact up to 4 decimal points.

When we look into telescopes, we see galaxies. The light from these galaxies we see, can be for example 4 billion years old (left that galaxy 4 billion years ago) or it can be 2 million years old if we're looking at andromeda... jus examples.

The big bang has strong evidence for it:

1) Microwave background radiation

2) The expansion of the universe

3) The cooling of the universe

) The ratio of hydrogen, helium, lithium, and beryllium.

5) The extreme density smoothness throughout the universe that's over 99,999 parts per 100,000.

6) Why the fluctuations in spacial density that occur at under a billionth the volume of a proton are exactly the same pattern as the largest scale structures in the universe very strongly suggesting that at one point the entire universe was smaller than a billionth the volume of a proton.

7) Why slow role inflation is continueing to this day.

8) Why the amount of matter is exactly the amount predicited by CP breakdown  

Answer
Hi again,

--- Actually modern scientists say they are able to calculate (with a very high degree of accuracy) the age of the universe, 13.72 billion years old, in fact up to 4 decimal points.

The ones you are reading may make this claim, but scientists are far from united in their views on this. Such a claim is ridiculous and unscientific.

In any case, as I said, this is not an area of interest to me. The age of universe is irrelevant to my beliefs.

The purpose of this site is to ask questions the user wishes to understand more fully, not to promote ones views to the volunteers. I see no questions here. If you wish to understand the views of "Young Earth" Creationists I suggest http://www.icr.org.

I just realized a typo in my initial reply to you. I wrote:

"Form" is translated from the Hebrew word to'-hoo which literally means not that it had no shape, but that it became (haw-yaw) a desert wasteland, void --with usable form.

That should have been:
"Form" is translated from the Hebrew word to'-hoo which literally means not that it had no shape, but that it became (haw-yaw) a desert wasteland, void --without usable form.

Good luck,

~ John of AllFaith