Charlemagne II wrote: " you’ll never be able to explain why the description of the initial stages of the universe is consistent between Genesis and the Big Bang. Coincidence? "
Nonexistence. Let’s see how consistent it is. I will deal with the story in Genesis 1:1-2:4, since the other doesn’t deal much with cosmology.
According to Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens and the earth “in the beginning.” That can only mean both within a relatively short time. The Big Bang Theory (or BBT) says about 10 billion years. Genesis says six days, each defined by an “evening and morning.” No hint of evenings and mornings in Big Bang theory.
Genesis 1:2 says “the earth was without form and void.” BBT posits nothing at this stage which can be called “earth.” There are not even any atoms heavier than hydrogen and helium. In fact, no atoms yet at all.
Genesis says there were “waters” that the Spirit of God hovered over. What could they refer to? Here we run into the standard problem of all such attempts to reconcile Genesis and science, namely the irresistible impulse to read current knowledge back into the text. We see “water” and realize that less than a trillionth of a second into the BB, there was no water, so immediately we assume the author of Genesis referred to something else, something conveniently formless and chaotic. What justifies us in saying that? How do we know Genesis didn’t mean exactly what we mean: wet, drinkable, etc.? Well, because science says…But wait – the author of Genesis – call him Moses for convenience, though I don’t believe Moses wrote Genesis – knew nothing of modern cosmology. There is no justification for interpreting “waters” here as anything but “waters”, which we know to be two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen, without reading modern knowledge into Genesis. You would have to show that Moses meant something different, which you have no evidence for.
But let’s go on to see more amazing compatibilities." God said “Let there be light,” and there was light." Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! Light, photons, expansion – what could be clearer? Well, what about God dividing the light from the darkness? What could that mean? Photons travel through another medium than the vacuum of space? Remember, only a tiny fraction of radiation comprises the wavelengths within our visual range, which we call “light.” Smaller and larger wavelengths produce X-rays, microwave radiation, gamma rays,ultraviolet, and so on. Are you suggesting that Moses had X-rays and microwaves on his mind? If so, how? And what indicates that in the text? If not, what can he have meant by “light”?
At any rate, nothing in BBT suggests that photons and other particles alternated in some unspecified field in which neither was present with the other, but by regularly timed intervals, as Genesis suggests by “evening and morning.”
Verse 4, God makes a firmament to separate the waters from the waters. Where is that in BBT? Verses 9 and 10 say God gathered the waters under the firmament, which were the same as the waters above it until God separated them, and were the same waters the Holy Spirit hovered over in verse 2, right? God separated those same waters from dry land and – wait a minute! As far as we have got in the Big Bang, less than a second has passed, but in Genesis we have dry land and wet water! Where did we get those? BBT says they are billions of years down the road. First stars have to form, then create heavy elements, then go through their life cycles and explode, strewing those heavy elements into space; then they have to condense into a planet small enough to become dry land rather than a giant gas ball, then cool down enough to produce enough water to gather into oceans.
Note also that this is only the third “day;” God doesn’t make stars, from which all this land came from, until the fourth day. And according to Genesis, the “waters” above the “firmament” are the same substance as those underneath, which is normal sea water; so we have a solid substance separating an ocean underneath it from an ocean above it, sloshing around in space (since “heaven” or “sky” is the space between the two oceans, verse 7.8, and God lives there, Is. 40:22). What keeps it there? Why doesn’t it dissipate into space?
I could go on for many more pages of absurdity, but surely I’ve made my point. There is absolutely no compatibility between Genesis 1 and modern cosmology. However, this raises an interesting question about inspiration. Apologists are always telling us to interpret scripture according to historical context, which is good advice. I only wish they followed it more consistently. For instance, if you read cosmologies contemporary with Genesis, you find the features of the world it describes were common: the flat disk of the world with a solid dome overhead and pillars underneath supporting it. Now presumably, in his uninspired moments, Moses had some sort of idea like this, which he learned from his culture, of how the cosmos was constructed. The question is, if God inspired Genesis 1, why didn’t he get the human writer to tell the truth? Obviously, according to our current knowledge, the cosmos is nothing like the one in Genesis. God must not have cared whether Moses wrote the truth, or God did not inspire Genesis 1 at all in any meaningful way that makes it different from books written without divine inspiration.
.
