I have a question. What is your standpoint on the creation of the universe/earth/our coming into existence and how does this compare to other sects of Catholicism and/or Christianity? I'm just curious as I've heard conflicting view points on the subject.
Thanks.
(Response)
Hey,
This is a great question. Sorry that it took me so long to get back to you, but hopefully I can provide a little insight on this topic, or at least the best understanding/explanation that I've ever come across.
There are, for the most part, two major schools of thought surrounding this matter. First off, you have creationists who believe that God created the world, and that the account in Genesis is the literal portrayal of the creation story. In extreme circumstances, creationists believe that the world, and the universe for that matter, is some 6,000 years and 6 (if you will) days old. However, if you were going to track the genealogies to the "T", that number would probably be more accurately projected in the high 5000's. At that point though, the argument becomes somewhat irrelevant because a debate between a few thousand years is really nothing compared to science's projection of a universe that is some 15.5 billion years old, and an Earth that is somewhere in the ballpark of 4.5 billion years old.
Thus, the other major school of thought. These ideas rely more on the scientific data and often times gives way to evolutionary theory. However, it is important to remember that while "creationism" touches on both the creation of the universe and the creation of man, evolutionary theory is, in many ways, mainly concerned with the origin of man (and most species that exist today). However, evolutionary theory carries with it certain implications that produce inevitable claims about creation. The theory uses fossil samples that are thousands, and in some cases millions, of years old. Thus, if the samples are in fact genuine, the world is bound to have been created far more than 6000 years ago. For this reason you often hear this debate as one that exists between creationist and evolutionists.
Ultimately, we have two sides of a very wide spectrum, and then many different theories and suggestions that fall somewhere in between.
Personally, I do not think that the answer exists with either extreme, but rather that it can be found by taking pieces of each theory and recognizing the notion that science and theology need not be exclusive or in conflict with one another. (A concept recently reiterated by Pope Francis.)
Okay, so... I am going to try to do my best with this, but keep in mind that I am explaining some very complex theory and in some respects I might not be able to do it justice. However, I'll attach a youtube podcast that will allow you to listen to the theory from the actual physicists that proposed it, though you might find my explanation a little more approachable.
For starters, I think two things: 1. That the universe is probably about 15.5 billion years old and that the earth has consequently been around for about 4.5 billion of those years, and 2. That time most likely does not relate to God and man in the same way.
These two concepts are important because they are the foundation of Gerald Schroeder's theory on creation, and consequently the one that I think is probably the most accurate account.
It all starts at the beginning (as it appropriately should) because that is where God is. Genesis states that God made the Universe and everything in it in stages. Each of those stages occur on different days of creation. Now, you will hear some people suggest that "days" in the bible are not real days or meant to be interpreted that way, but that isn't entirely accurate. According to the Talmud, the days in Genesis are exactly that, days. However, they are not days on Earth, but rather days at the center of creation and that distinction is extremely important. Remember how we talked about Einstein's theory of relativity and how gravity can act like friction for time? Well, the gravity at creation (the point of the big bang) is so strong that the time lapse between us and that point in space is a million million seconds. In other words, for every second that occurs at creation, a million million seconds have occurred here on earth.
This is the first thing you need to understand. Time for us is different than time for God. And furthermore (as noted by Moses in the Book of Numbers) time in the first chapter of Genesis is actually different than time throughout the remainder of the book. The best, and easiest, way to think about this is that one (at creation, in the beginning) is God's time and the other (the rest of biblical history) is Man's time.
So, why is all of this important? Well, when you start to do the math you begin to realize that the conversion eerily aligns with the different days of creation, and the things that occurred on each day. If each day is an expansion of the universe, and consequently one day for God, but millions of years for man (remember, with each expansion, though smaller than the one before, the world is moving further from creation and thus time is ultimately "speeding up") then the six days of God's time correlate to about 15.75 billion years in Man's time.
Check out this chart and what you'll find is that the biblical explanation of these scientific events mathematically aligns with the scientific dating of the same events. When the earth was created 4.5 billion years ago (between day's 2 and 3) we were in the midst of our third expansion and while only
days had passed for God, billions of years had already passed at various points throughout the universe.
In short, I think that the big bang did in fact occur, but God was the catalyst for that big bang. He created the universe and everything in it, and the reason that He is talking in days and we are talking in billions of years is because time, quite literally, moves at different speeds relative to its location in the universe. Thus, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive; they are not in conflict with one another. The Bible is not suggesting that the universe is only 6000 years old, and the ancient Jewish commentary even says so. Did God create everything? Yes. Did He do it with a Big Bang? Yes. And did He do it in six days? Yes. The only difference is that what was days for Him (based on His "location") was billions of years for us, based on ours.
If this doesn't make any sense at all, try to watch this video: https://www.youtube.
It is dense, but fascinating.
Hope this at least sheds a little light on everything or something...
Thanks.
MRD
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