Problems With a Biblical Cosmology
Wayne Adkins
March 07, 2006
Today we take for granted some ideas that were unthinkable just a few hundred years ago. We have sent men to the moon, sent probes to other planets and photographed other galaxies millions of light years away. But it wasn?t until the 1600?s that Galileo looked through a telescope and saw, to his amazement, that the moon had a terrain that included mountains and valleys and craters. He discovered that Jupiter had moons orbiting around it. He saw ?handles? on Saturn, the familiar rings which allow any first grader to identify that planet today. He discovered that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, was actually made up of billions of stars too dim to be seen with the naked eye. Galileo was able to confirm what Copernicus had argued decades earlier, that the earth was not the motionless center of the universe that it was once thought to be.
Although Galileo was right, he was forced in this old age to recant his claims about the motions of the earth, sun and planets. Why? Because the church was in power and was very afraid of Galileo?s findings. They believed that they contradicted the Bible, so they threatened him with torture if he did not recant.
Today, the church is still very afraid of the discoveries being made by scientists. Just look at how they lobby Congress in this country to ban important research like stem cell research and cloning and bioengineering research. They have had to make concessions when science has offered irrefutable proof that they are wrong. But after being proven wrong in so many cases, there are still those who would say that if science contradicts the Bible, science must be wrong.
So let?s look at how the Bible describes our cosmos and compare it to what we know to be true today. Ancient men believed that our world had three parts, arranged like floors in a building. There was the earth, which was widely accepted as flat and thought to have edges or borders. There was the sky, or firmament, which was solid like glass and held water above it. The Gods were thought to reside above the waters of this firmament in heaven. Then there was the underworld, Hades or Hell, which was inhabited by the evil and the dead. That is where terms like ?up in heaven? and ?down in Hell? originated; odd terms for people who live on a spherical world. The Bible was written with just this kind of primitive cosmology in mind.
In Genesis 1:6-8 God said ?Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven.? Here the Bible clearly says that there was water beneath and above the firmament. You say so what? You?ve read that a thousand times?
Let?s get a better understanding of what the firmament is. It?s not a word with a place in most people?s vocabulary today. Strong?s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible shows the Hebrew word for firmament is ?raqiya,? which means ?an expanse, i.e. the firmament or (apparently) the visible arch of the sky.? Genesis 1:20 says ?fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.? From the meaning of the original Hebrew word ?visible arch of the sky? and the context in which it describes a place where birds fly, we can safely say that the firmament is the sky, or atmosphere of earth. Notice that the writer specified the ?open? firmament of heaven. There was, in this ancient cosmology, what could be described as the closed firmament of heaven, that is, it was solid. There was an open space above the earth and a solid dome that was the sky.
This is not a view that is peculiar to the creation accounts in Genesis, but it is reflected in other parts of the Bible as well. Job 37:18 says ?Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?? And Genesis 7:11, in the flood narrative, says ?The windows of heaven were opened.? The writers obviously believed that the sky was solid or they would not have described it as strong, as a molten looking glass, or as having windows.
It was believed that there was water, as described in the creation account, above this solid dome sky, which fell through the windows of heaven as rain. Job further asserts in chapter 38 that there are treasuries where snow and hail are kept in heaven (verse 22), and that rain water is kept in bottles in heaven (verse 37).
In their book, The Genesis Flood, Whitcomb and Morris attempt to explain this water above the firmament:
On the second day of creation, the waters covering the earths surface were divided into two great reservoirs ? one below the firmament and one above, the firmament being the ?expanse? above the earth now corresponding to the troposphere.
What they are saying is that the water did exist in our upper atmosphere! They go on to explain:
As we have seen, these waters apparently existed in the form of a great vapor canopy around the earth, of unknown but possibly very great extent. As vapor, it was quite invisible, but, nevertheless, would have had a profound effect on terrestrial climate and meteorological process. Although we can as yet point to no definite scientific verification of this pristine vapor protective envelope around the earth, neither does there appear to be any inherent physical difficulty in the hypothesis of its existence, and it does suffice to explain a broad spectrum of phenomena both geological and scriptural.?
Their explanation is that the water above the firmament was in the form of an invisible vapor canopy in the upper atmosphere. Does this explanation fit the description in the Bible? No, the Bible says it was water, not vapor, above the firmament. There were certainly other Hebrew words that could have been used to convey the idea of a vapor. Job says that life is as a ?vapour? that appears for a short time and vanishes. Genesis says that a ?mist? went up from the ground to water the earth. But the word used here is water because both the water above and below the firmament were divided from the same body of water and that is the idea intended by the writer and the cosmology it represents.
For support I will point to Job 38:25-26 which says ?who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lighting or thunder; to cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness wherin there is no man.? A ?watercourse? is a channel or aqueduct that was used in ancient times to direct the flow of water into cities and homes. This verse demonstrates a belief in the existence of watercourses that directed the flow of the waters above the firmament to rain on different parts of the earth. If the waters above the firmament were vapors, they could not flow in channels as does water in its liquid form.
Another problem with this cosmology is the statement that the sun, moon and stars were set within this firmament. If these waters were a canopy within our troposphere, as Whitcomb and Morris claim, then they are placing the sun, moon and stars inside our atmosphere! Genesis clearly says that the waters were above the firmament, but it says that the sun and moon were ?set in the firmament of the heaven? (Genesis 1:17).
Obviously, our sky is not solid; there is no water above it, no treasuries of snow or hail, no windows to open and no watercourses to direct the rains. The stars are not ?set? and the sun and moon are not within our atmosphere.
In Genesis 1:14 the stars are called ?lights in the firmament of heaven.? Then in verse 16 it says he made ?two great lights? referring to the sun and moon. We now know that the sun is not a greater light than the stars, it is simply a closer light, and the moon is not a light at all, but simply a body that reflects the sun?s light.
Another interesting point about the creation account, it goes through a cycle of three mornings and three evenings before listing the sun as being created on the fourth day. What constitutes a morning and evening if there is no sunrise or sunset?
The creation account says that God created the stars to be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years and to give light upon the earth. So the stars, we are told, were made for the benefit of man, apparently before we invented the atomic clock to keep time and the light bulb to give us light. If that were true, would it be necessary to make stars so distant that we could not see them?
Another problem arises when we consider the stars. We know that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. While that is a mind-boggling speed, it still takes light more than four years to cover the mind-boggling distance from the closest star to earth. Using that measurement, the distance light travels in a year; we can say that the nearest star is four light years away. That means that the light we observe today left its star over four years ago. There are stars, galaxies full of stars, which are millions of light years away from earth. That means that the light we see from those stars today, left those stars millions of years ago.
The problem is that according to the Biblical chronology, the earth is only a few thousand years old. The accepted range in theological circles is six to ten thousand years old. A man named James Usher stated in the mid 1600?s that the world was created ?upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian calendar 710? (4004 B.C.). It?s not possible to be quite that precise from the Biblical record, but given the genealogies going back to Adam and the ages given for each person, a range can be established and it can be safely said that the Bible allows an age of the world of not much more than 6,000 years.
If that were the case, then we could not yet see any star farther than 6,000 light years from earth, and yet we see stars millions of light years away. Some would say that God created those distant stars with light trails already in place to earth. This is part of the ?appearance of age? theory that is employed whenever evidence points to an earth older than the Bible allows. But there is a problem when it comes to stars.
All of the stars we see are not the same age. In fact, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured some amazing photographs of stars in the early stages of formation from gas clouds. We can also observe the nebulae left behind by supernovas, exploding stars at the end of their lives. But the most powerful argument is that we are seeing and recording the explosions of stars. SN1987A is what we call the exploding star detected on Feb 23, 1987. It occurred in the Large Cloud of Magellan at a distance of 150,000 light years from earth. At its peak brightness it could be seen with the naked eye. Now if we observed that star exploding in 1987, then at a distance of 150,000 light years, the event actually took place 150,000 years ago. Either the star is older than 150,000 years, which you would have to concede blows the Biblical timetable, or you must concede that God created a record, in light, of an event that did not actually occur. We?re not talking about creating an object that looks older than it is. We?re talking about creating the illusion that something happened which did not happen. What we?re talking about is that when the Bible says that God created the stars, at least in some cases, it means that he created the illusion of stars. If you accept that notion, then you cannot rely on any other part of creation to be any more than an illusion. Freaky, huh? If you concede that God left a record, in light, of an event that never occurred (a supernova), how can you argue that God would not leave a record, in print, of events that never occurred (the Bible)? It?s much saner to admit that the Biblical timetable is wrong and that the cosmos is indeed very old.
Although Galileo was right, he was forced in this old age to recant his claims about the motions of the earth, sun and planets. Why? Because the church was in power and was very afraid of Galileo?s findings. They believed that they contradicted the Bible, so they threatened him with torture if he did not recant.
Today, the church is still very afraid of the discoveries being made by scientists. Just look at how they lobby Congress in this country to ban important research like stem cell research and cloning and bioengineering research. They have had to make concessions when science has offered irrefutable proof that they are wrong. But after being proven wrong in so many cases, there are still those who would say that if science contradicts the Bible, science must be wrong.
So let?s look at how the Bible describes our cosmos and compare it to what we know to be true today. Ancient men believed that our world had three parts, arranged like floors in a building. There was the earth, which was widely accepted as flat and thought to have edges or borders. There was the sky, or firmament, which was solid like glass and held water above it. The Gods were thought to reside above the waters of this firmament in heaven. Then there was the underworld, Hades or Hell, which was inhabited by the evil and the dead. That is where terms like ?up in heaven? and ?down in Hell? originated; odd terms for people who live on a spherical world. The Bible was written with just this kind of primitive cosmology in mind.
In Genesis 1:6-8 God said ?Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven.? Here the Bible clearly says that there was water beneath and above the firmament. You say so what? You?ve read that a thousand times?
Let?s get a better understanding of what the firmament is. It?s not a word with a place in most people?s vocabulary today. Strong?s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible shows the Hebrew word for firmament is ?raqiya,? which means ?an expanse, i.e. the firmament or (apparently) the visible arch of the sky.? Genesis 1:20 says ?fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.? From the meaning of the original Hebrew word ?visible arch of the sky? and the context in which it describes a place where birds fly, we can safely say that the firmament is the sky, or atmosphere of earth. Notice that the writer specified the ?open? firmament of heaven. There was, in this ancient cosmology, what could be described as the closed firmament of heaven, that is, it was solid. There was an open space above the earth and a solid dome that was the sky.
This is not a view that is peculiar to the creation accounts in Genesis, but it is reflected in other parts of the Bible as well. Job 37:18 says ?Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?? And Genesis 7:11, in the flood narrative, says ?The windows of heaven were opened.? The writers obviously believed that the sky was solid or they would not have described it as strong, as a molten looking glass, or as having windows.
It was believed that there was water, as described in the creation account, above this solid dome sky, which fell through the windows of heaven as rain. Job further asserts in chapter 38 that there are treasuries where snow and hail are kept in heaven (verse 22), and that rain water is kept in bottles in heaven (verse 37).
In their book, The Genesis Flood, Whitcomb and Morris attempt to explain this water above the firmament:
On the second day of creation, the waters covering the earths surface were divided into two great reservoirs ? one below the firmament and one above, the firmament being the ?expanse? above the earth now corresponding to the troposphere.
What they are saying is that the water did exist in our upper atmosphere! They go on to explain:
As we have seen, these waters apparently existed in the form of a great vapor canopy around the earth, of unknown but possibly very great extent. As vapor, it was quite invisible, but, nevertheless, would have had a profound effect on terrestrial climate and meteorological process. Although we can as yet point to no definite scientific verification of this pristine vapor protective envelope around the earth, neither does there appear to be any inherent physical difficulty in the hypothesis of its existence, and it does suffice to explain a broad spectrum of phenomena both geological and scriptural.?
Their explanation is that the water above the firmament was in the form of an invisible vapor canopy in the upper atmosphere. Does this explanation fit the description in the Bible? No, the Bible says it was water, not vapor, above the firmament. There were certainly other Hebrew words that could have been used to convey the idea of a vapor. Job says that life is as a ?vapour? that appears for a short time and vanishes. Genesis says that a ?mist? went up from the ground to water the earth. But the word used here is water because both the water above and below the firmament were divided from the same body of water and that is the idea intended by the writer and the cosmology it represents.
For support I will point to Job 38:25-26 which says ?who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lighting or thunder; to cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness wherin there is no man.? A ?watercourse? is a channel or aqueduct that was used in ancient times to direct the flow of water into cities and homes. This verse demonstrates a belief in the existence of watercourses that directed the flow of the waters above the firmament to rain on different parts of the earth. If the waters above the firmament were vapors, they could not flow in channels as does water in its liquid form.
Another problem with this cosmology is the statement that the sun, moon and stars were set within this firmament. If these waters were a canopy within our troposphere, as Whitcomb and Morris claim, then they are placing the sun, moon and stars inside our atmosphere! Genesis clearly says that the waters were above the firmament, but it says that the sun and moon were ?set in the firmament of the heaven? (Genesis 1:17).
Obviously, our sky is not solid; there is no water above it, no treasuries of snow or hail, no windows to open and no watercourses to direct the rains. The stars are not ?set? and the sun and moon are not within our atmosphere.
In Genesis 1:14 the stars are called ?lights in the firmament of heaven.? Then in verse 16 it says he made ?two great lights? referring to the sun and moon. We now know that the sun is not a greater light than the stars, it is simply a closer light, and the moon is not a light at all, but simply a body that reflects the sun?s light.
Another interesting point about the creation account, it goes through a cycle of three mornings and three evenings before listing the sun as being created on the fourth day. What constitutes a morning and evening if there is no sunrise or sunset?
The creation account says that God created the stars to be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years and to give light upon the earth. So the stars, we are told, were made for the benefit of man, apparently before we invented the atomic clock to keep time and the light bulb to give us light. If that were true, would it be necessary to make stars so distant that we could not see them?
Another problem arises when we consider the stars. We know that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. While that is a mind-boggling speed, it still takes light more than four years to cover the mind-boggling distance from the closest star to earth. Using that measurement, the distance light travels in a year; we can say that the nearest star is four light years away. That means that the light we observe today left its star over four years ago. There are stars, galaxies full of stars, which are millions of light years away from earth. That means that the light we see from those stars today, left those stars millions of years ago.
The problem is that according to the Biblical chronology, the earth is only a few thousand years old. The accepted range in theological circles is six to ten thousand years old. A man named James Usher stated in the mid 1600?s that the world was created ?upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian calendar 710? (4004 B.C.). It?s not possible to be quite that precise from the Biblical record, but given the genealogies going back to Adam and the ages given for each person, a range can be established and it can be safely said that the Bible allows an age of the world of not much more than 6,000 years.
If that were the case, then we could not yet see any star farther than 6,000 light years from earth, and yet we see stars millions of light years away. Some would say that God created those distant stars with light trails already in place to earth. This is part of the ?appearance of age? theory that is employed whenever evidence points to an earth older than the Bible allows. But there is a problem when it comes to stars.
All of the stars we see are not the same age. In fact, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured some amazing photographs of stars in the early stages of formation from gas clouds. We can also observe the nebulae left behind by supernovas, exploding stars at the end of their lives. But the most powerful argument is that we are seeing and recording the explosions of stars. SN1987A is what we call the exploding star detected on Feb 23, 1987. It occurred in the Large Cloud of Magellan at a distance of 150,000 light years from earth. At its peak brightness it could be seen with the naked eye. Now if we observed that star exploding in 1987, then at a distance of 150,000 light years, the event actually took place 150,000 years ago. Either the star is older than 150,000 years, which you would have to concede blows the Biblical timetable, or you must concede that God created a record, in light, of an event that did not actually occur. We?re not talking about creating an object that looks older than it is. We?re talking about creating the illusion that something happened which did not happen. What we?re talking about is that when the Bible says that God created the stars, at least in some cases, it means that he created the illusion of stars. If you accept that notion, then you cannot rely on any other part of creation to be any more than an illusion. Freaky, huh? If you concede that God left a record, in light, of an event that never occurred (a supernova), how can you argue that God would not leave a record, in print, of events that never occurred (the Bible)? It?s much saner to admit that the Biblical timetable is wrong and that the cosmos is indeed very old.
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