Genesis and the history of the universe

I've been reading the book of Genesis from the beginning, and I must admit it's quite challenging to me on many levels. Every time I read a particular story that sounds pretty fantastic, I poke around and see what other people have to say about it. It's lead me to put together an entirely new interpretation of the creation story than if you took the book of Genesis literally, word-for-word. After a little research, I’ve put together two basic timelines for comparison. One is the Naturalist timeline, based on as much scientific data as we have available today: archeological, radioactive, chemical, genetic, etc. The second is a timeline based on the events listed in chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis.


Naturalist timeline:

Universe forms from a single point and all matter is expelled outward.

Earth forms and solidifies from swirling nebulaic dust. Sun begins to form about the same time. Earth is a rotating celestial body, being bathed on one side with light and radiation energy from our developing sun. You could say these are the earliest “days” and “nights”.

A giant object strikes primitive earth, blowing a tremendous amount of matter into orbit around the earth, forming the earth’s only moon.

The earth’s surface cools, earth's first atmosphere is formed from volcanic activity and steam escaping from the crust. Oceans had not yet formed, as there was not enough water on earth yet.

Icy protoplanets and comets impact the earth, vaporize, and eventually settle onto the earth, covering the entire surface with water.

The first land masses appear as a result of the cooling of earth’s crust and mantle.

First life appears in the oceans in the form of single-celled organisms. Blue-green algae, archaeans, bacteria. Due to the incredibly high-energy asteroid bombardment of earth at the time, it is possible that life developed and was extinguished more than just once.

The many land masses merged into one supercontinent, called Rodinia.

Ocean is filled with all existing phyla of life, albeit in their primitive forms. Supercontinent of Rodinia breaks up into smaller land masses.

First primitive plants appear on land.

Bony fishes and other complex marine life evolves. First amphibians appear - essentially the first animals to live at least partially out of the water.

First winged insects appear. These are the first living creatures that fly through the air.

Land masses again form into one supercontinent called Pangea. Reptiles appear; along with winged insects, these are the first animals that can live solely out of water.

Dinosaurs and the first mammals appear, and follow through the 3 periods of dinosaurs: Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretacious. The supercontinent Pangea breaks up and the resulting land masses start to resemble modern-day continents.

The first birds appear in the Jurassic period. Most of modern plant life evolves during the dinosaur era.

Dinosaurs end in extinction probably due to asteroid impact or high tectonic/volcanic activity. The first marsupials develop.

The first large mammals develop and proceed to thrive successfully.

First hominids appear – these are the first primitive primates to walk upright. Australopithecus Afarensis is among the first known hominid species. Megalodon (ancient giant shark) appears in the seas.

After about 20 different hominid species, the first modern humans (Homo Sapiens) appear in east Africa. Prehistoric beasts are aplenty: mastodons, saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, giant ground sloths.

Human civilization develops as humans leave Africa to populate the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. The migration is mainly fueled by the increase or recession of ice ages, which provided either an abundance or shortage of available food, and also geographically unlocked different parts of the globe.


Biblical timeline:

Universe forms. Earth and oceans form.

Light from the sun provides the first days and nights.

The sky/atmosphere develops, separating the earth’s water from the rest of the universe.

First land masses appear. The land produces all modern complex plant life.

Every other celestial body in the universe develops (or at least appears visible on earth), appearing as our solar star during the day, and our moon and other stars in our night sky.

Life develops in the oceans. Birds develop.

Life appears on land in the form of all complex modern life.

Modern humans appear on land, namely the Garden of Eden, hypothesized to exist anywhere from Iraq to northeast Africa (in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers)

Human civilization develops in Mesopotamia until God scatters humans across the globe after the building of the Tower of Babel.


Reading these two sequences of events gives obvious notice of their differing order, and the lack of mention of many events in the Biblical timeline. The timespan of the Naturalistic timeline is about 15 billion years, with the earth forming and all life on earth developing during the last 4.6 billion years. So for each item in the list, figure anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions of years. The bible gives a timespan of 6 days. However in recent years, as more Christians accept scientific data showing the true age of the earth, these “days” have been interpreted as ages or eons, so that the biblical timeline extends to hundreds of millions of years and more closely reconciles with the actual age of the earth.

This last note about the 6 “days” or “eons” gives rise to a very important note: If you take the first chapter of Genesis literally, it doesn’t even remotely agree with an overwhelming amount of scientific data that has been discovered since Genesis was written. However if you choose to interpret the story as a metaphoric narrative, then it can be loosely reconciled with the naturalistic history of the universe. But of course this is where the whole of the faith comes to a gripping paradox: if the creation story itself must be interpreted a certain way to make sense, and is not necessarily the literal infallible word of God, then what else in the Bible can we take this way? If Genesis can only make sense when taken with a grain of salt, then it leaves the entire faith up to interpretation.

There is much in the bible that is pretty historically accurate, although sometimes a little contradictory. It was written by many different sources over thousands of years, but when brought together the core of the different stories overlap pretty well to give a fantastically detailed history of north Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Middle East over the last several thousand years. But like the history of the universe and earth, it fails to mention what was going on in the rest of the world. That doesn’t make it inaccurate, just incomplete. I don’t think it challenges the validity of the bible just because they didn’t give a detailed history of South America, I just think the people who wrote it had no idea about the rest of the world, just the parts that they were directly experiencing. But many people will say that this itself challenges the divinity of the bible. If its authors were being channeled by God’s divine and all-knowing word, why wouldn’t they write about things that no man could have truly known at the time, such as the existence and extinction of dinosaurs? Or at least the proper order of the development of life in the sea, land, and air? It could be said that the history recorded in Genesis is really a matter of the authors' perspective and limited understanding of the world. Maybe God did impart to them the infinite nature of the universe and the exact formation of the earth, but they really only understood and wrote down a small fraction of it. This still of course challenges the literal word-for-word infallible nature that the bible is supposed to uphold. However personally, I don't have a terrible problem with it if that's the case. If these people were gifted with such an overwhelming insight, I think they did pretty well with what they had to work with.

It is also safe to say that science isn’t always 100% accurate either. Just the discoveries made in the last 15 years through genetics has already shed new light on old scientific facts. However science is much more accepting of changing data then religion. Despite politics and profits, over the course of time science will always gravitate toward new and provable data to mold its most updated explanations of the universe. Whereas religion already has their answer, and they will pick and choose (or re-interpret, or ignore) data as they see fit to property reconcile with their holy doctrine.

I’ve heard it said “Science has questions that may never be answered. Religion has answers that may never be questioned.”