Don’t panic: Genesis 1 and how the universe began
From a Sunday 3 event in September 2001
Testing God video
On arrival, “Testing God” video (about Intelligent Design).
Welcome
- Perhaps video has raised some questions in your mind. Don’t forget them, and in a moment after our reading I’ll be asking what questions you have about Creation.
- Then we’ll worship, and there is a short talk and quiz.
- Then groupwork, get together for feedback
Dramatic reading Genesis 1:1 – 2:2
Audio: Adiemus
Visuals: Earthscape from Apollo 17
Any questions?
As you watched the scientists in the video and listened to the reading about Creation, what questions came into your mind?
[Put them on the flip chart, but no answers at this point.]
Does science conflict with religion.
Has science removed the need for a Creator God?
Why are dinosaurs not mentioned in the Bible?
How come science says it took millions of years for the earth to form, and Genesis talks of 6 days?
Sometimes these questions feel difficult and challenge our faith. But we want to say “Don’t panic”
Don’t panic
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."
Astronaut
Imagine you are an astronaut in a spaceship exploring a remote part of the solar system. You come across an unusual object and change course to examine it. It turns out to be a sophisticated space capsule with controls, communications and scientific equipment. Clearly it has been designed with reliability in mind for there is lots of redundancy and if a fault develops it is able to repair itself.
Then you discover that there is room on board for creatures just like ourselves: the space inside is just right, there is breathable air maintained at exactly 21% oxygen, and temperature maintained within a few degrees of a comfortable average. In fact it seems to have been designed for humans. Where can it have come from? Who made it?
You send a message back home and there is enormous excitement. There must be intelligent life out there. But what sort of life? Is it conscious? Can it communicate? How significant is it that the space capsule design apparently had humans in mind?
Just as the astronaut in the story investigated the space capsule thoroughly, scientists this century have been investigating the universe with all the tools at their disposal. It appears to be a carefully designed universe, very suitable for human beings, a delicate balance of physical constants and rates of change that are highly improbable to be pure chance. Has the universe been designed with humans in mind? What is the designer like? There are three possibilities (seen in the video): a ‘theory of everything’ we haven’t discovered yet, trillions of universes (multiverse) and we’re the only one containing life (we cannot know whether this is true), or there is an intelligent designer.
Worship
This Sunday 3 is all about how the universe came to be. Next time, in October we’ll look at the origins of life and evolution. But now let’s worship the Creator.
[Songs]
Interpreting Genesis 1
Some of the questions we had were:
Does science conflict with religion.
Has science removed the need for a Creator God?
Why are dinosaurs not mentioned in the Bible?
How come science says it took millions of years for the earth to form, and Genesis talks of 6 days?
Today we are going to look at the Creation account in Genesis and ask ourselves. What does it mean? What was the original author trying to communicate? What we will find is that there are several layers of meaning. Just like Pass the Parcel [produce real one] has many layers of wrapping paper and there is something valuable in each. But Christians sometimes disagree about how many layers there are. So we’re going to gradually unwrap our Creation Story and think about the layers of meaning that can be found in it.
Irrelevant story
But just as Creation is about God’s work, I’m going to ask Sally to tell us about her work, and then there will be a quiz so listen carefully.
“Who is this? (show Darren Gough photo)
I met Darren Gough’s wife the day her baby was born. He was in Australia for the Ashes, and it was night there, so he was asleep. She decided not to tell him because he might be too excited to play well. So she waited until he had got three wickets for England before telling him he had a baby boy”
From what you have heard,
What does Sally do at work? – Meets people (You didn’t know she is a doctor from the story, did you)
Can you tell how long she spends at work? No
Can you tell what order she does things in at work? No
Why do people tell little irrelevant stories like this about their work? (It helps us get to know them)
Some people think that the Creation story is basically an irrelevant story apart from helping us to get to know the author a bit better.
Open the first wrapper of the pass-the-parcel.
The first layer of meaning is relationship – it helps us get to know the author.
Actually just about everyone agrees that layer of meaning is there even if they only consider the human author. For us who recognise God’s part in writing the Bible, sometimes he shows himself to us as we read. How many people have ever had an experience where God has suddenly seemed more real as you read the Bible?
Myth
Let’s look for another layer.
Sally, Tell us about your work.
[Show spanner.]
“My work is like being a repair man. People expect you to be able to tighten up some nuts and bolts, put in some oil, unblock a few tubes, put in some spare parts and get everything good as new. Sometimes it isn’t that easy.”
OR
“My work is like being a gardener: looking after little seedlings, feeding and pruning them, removing pests, trying to help the plants be at their best”
From the story,
What does Sally do at work? Fixes something. Tries to makes something better.
What do you call that way of describing things? Metaphor, analogy or picture.
Can you tell how long she spends at work? No
Can you tell what order she does things in at work? No
Open next layer. Principles. The second layer of meaning is Principles.
Sally used a metaphor (picture) to describe her work, and it tells you quite a lot of the principles of her work, but you shouldn’t take it literally. Some people think the Creation story is just a myth – it has some important spiritual principles in it, but you shouldn’t take it literally.
Here are some of the important principles that you can find:
- The physical world is good
- Humans are special
- It is good to be creative and make things
- It is good to have a pattern of rest in your life
Literary framework
Let’s look for another layer. The quiz questions need you to listen carefully. Adults, pay particular attention to this way of telling a story.
Sally, tell us about your work.
[Show Pooh tells the time, move clock hands]
“At 8 o’clock I leave the house
At 9 o’clock I have a meeting with the other doctors
At 10 o’clock I see some patients, find out what’s wrong, and help them get better
At 11 o’clock I see some more patients ?do some paperwork
At 12 o’clock I visit a sick person at home
At 1 o’clock I have lunch”
What does Sally do at work?
In what order does she do things at work? (Sometimes, not always)
How long does it take her to get to work?
How long does her meeting with the other doctors take?
But what about all the times Sally said? Was she lying? No – telling a story like this is a literary framework. She didn’t mean the times to be exact?
How long does she spend at work? Don’t know
Some people understand Genesis 1 is a literary framework – it has layers of spiritual truth and it also explains what happened, without necessarily telling us the sequence or length of time involved.
So as well as the spiritual principles we also have:
- God created everything out of nothing, then gathered and used the basic chemical components to make other things
- The creation is separate from God
- It was created in stages: it was formless and empty and he formed it and filled it
- The universe is orderly
Day-age theory
Let’s look for another layer.
Sally, Tell us what you do at work.
“No, you tell us what you do at work!”
I started work on my most recent project just before Christmas last year. On Day Zero we all got together in Reading and worked out how we would build the website and call centre and get it all ready to go live on Day One – a date which was not allowed to move. So that meant we left out lots of things and put them in the plan for what we called Day Two.
“How long did it take to get the website and call centre ready to go live?” 4 months.
“So when was Day Two?” 3 months later
“How come you said it was Day Zero, Day One and Day Two?” Day Zero is like Ground Zero – it means the start of the project. Day one was the first day of our new system. We called it Day 2 because that was the day when our second lot of work was finished. It is jargon to explain the stages of work and the order of doing things.
Some people understand Genesis 1 by saying
Not only have we a layer of principles
Not only have we a layer of what happened
But we also have a layer of truth about the sequence: the days are stages or ages, and they can be as long as was needed. Day age theory – the sequence is the important thing. “A day in the sight of the Lord is as a thousand years”.
So these people have no problem with the dating theories of the physicists and geologists that suggest that the universe is 10-15bn years old, Earth 4.5bn years, life 50-100,000 year.
But people who choose the Day Age theory still a bit of explaining to do when some aspects of the sequence in the Bible differ with scientific theories of the day. And you will find research that tries to tie them together.
Young earth creation
Lets look at one more layer.
Sally, tell us about your work.
“I work on Thursdays and Fridays at the doctor’s surgery in Chapeltown. I have a meeting with the other doctors at 8.30 on Thursday, and then I see patients from 9.30-11.30, and prescribe medicine or refer them to a specialist. Usually I will do a couple of home visits and then study on Thursday afternoon. On Friday it is much the same, but in the afternoon I see more patients in the afternoon from 4-6pm.”
Let’s look at all the layers
You now know Sally better.
You know what’s important to her at work? Helping sick people get better
What does she do at work? Meetings, Sees patients
In what sequence does she do things at work?
What is the extra thing you know this time?
[open final layer before present]
You now know how long each part of her work takes? Sally was telling you her timetable.
Some people understand Genesis 1 by saying
Not only do we get to know God
Not only have we a layer of principles
Not only have we a layer of what happened
Not only do we know the sequence
But we are also to understand how long each stage took.
Young earth creationist – the entire universe (or sometimes just the earth) is understood to have been created in six 24-hour days.
The real challenge is to harmonise the scientific evidence with this understanding of Genesis. Very big in America, and is often called Creation Science. There are many websites devoted to this subject.
A range of interpretations
I want you to realise that each time Sally and I told the truth about our work. Sometimes we intended just to give you a glimpse of our principles, sometimes it sounded like they Sally was talking about a timetable but she wasn’t, and in the end she actually was talking about a timetable. But they were all telling the truth.
Genesis 1 is true, but what layers of truth did the author intend to teach us? How should we interpret it. In fact Christians have a range of opinions, so your project can be to ask around the room today. You will probably find that some people are confident about some layers of truth, but aren’t quite so well-thought-out about other layers. That’s OK, we haven’t all read enough geology and physics to inform our opinions. So respect the fact that there are different views here, and when you are talking in your groups try to think about helping one another in the situations where it becomes an issue, watching television, at school etc.
But one thing you do need to know. Science will never prove or disprove God.
Heb 11:3 says “It is by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command.” Many respected physicists like Polkinghorne and Houghton take that view.
Speaker’s corner tomato
There is a story of a Hyde Park orator who was attacking all ideas of belief in God and declaring that the world just happened without any personal or intelligent agent being responsible. As he spoke a rather soft tomato sailed through the air suspiciously close to his head. ‘Who threw that?’ he demanded angrily and a small Cockney voice from the back of the crowd replied “No-one. It threw itself”.
Now it is just possible that it was purely accidental. But whatever the possible scientific explanation, the combination of events left noone in any doubt that in fact someone had thrown it deliberately. It had all the marks of a deliberate insult.
How do you know? The scientific method can only explain HOW and WHEN things happened, not WHO did them or WHY. “It is by faith we understand that the universe was made at God’s command.” Science gives us a sense of wonder at the universe, and what we see is consistent with there being an intelligent designer. But to know that designer (who is God) we need revelation: and he has communicated with us.
If you watched the video you will have seen that many physicists take the view that the universe is incredibly improbable, and there is evidence of design (irreducible complexity), and therefore an intelligent designer. For example Paul Davies, who won the Templeton Prize recently. But they have not taken the necessary step of faith to connect their findings with the very reasonable conclusion that their intelligent designer is the God of the Christian Bible.
“It is by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command.”
Next time you are playing pass the parcel, remember the layers of meaning in the Creation story. Which layers did the author intend us to find?
Group work
One group did a mime/drama of the 6 days of creation. Once at a leisurely pace and once extremely quickly, illustrating that different people interpret the same story in different ways.
David Wallace, 16/09/2001